ASH: CSV Annual #3 - Zoo of Malice (by Tony Pi)

[Dave Van Domelen]

In article <k19198$6ek$1 at dont-email.me>,
Scott Eiler  <seiler at eilertech.com> wrote:
>On 8/20/2012 8:22 PM, Dave Van Domelen published:
>I will say, the characters look kind of like they got tossed together in 
>a role-playing campaign.  Publishers may prefer their master 
>supervillains without catchy one-word code names.  Even Victor von Doom 
>has *two* words in his codename.  I can totally see Conflicto picking a 
>short zippy name like "Conflicto", but I'm unclear on why the others put 
>up with him.  He seems more like a minion than a master.

     To be fair, this is a somewhat oddball subset of the Conclave of
Super-Villains, at a moment in their history where things are in flux.
Conflicto is in transition between court jester and grownup villain at this
point (in fact, this story can be seen as a pivotal moment in that process).
Burnout is still getting used to a shared existence (not really mentioned in
this story, but she's actually got two minds in one body, and one of the
people spent a lot of time trying to kill the other before the merge) so
isn't really up to speed.  Kaliban and Myriad are strictly minions at this
point, although Kaliban does some growing later on.

     To give some idea of timescale, this story takes place a year and a half
before the most recent issue of ASH...and something like 75 issues of ASH
have come out since then.  Conflicto is still something of a goofball, but
he's done a lot of growing up despite the lack of CSV issues in that time.

     Dave Van Domelen, figures partially dying in "Four to Never" also helped
with the growing up.