If I was pulling someone in from the Harry Potter stories, it would be Hagrid. Or possibly the werewolf whose name I’ve momentarily forgotten.
Another vote for Harry D’Amour here. He’d take the story to darker and scarier places than Dresden would.
An obscure one:
Dhioban Boughtrider from the short story Stains on the Ether by Peter Crowther. Imagine Sam Spade was born in Faerie and works in our world.
If we can do obscure ones, I want to rope in the reluctant hero from The Manual Of Detection.
How about Anita Blake? I dropped out of the series long ago but she has a good skill set.
Thanks, Waldo! I just added that to my book list.
I’ve occasionally wondered if the key to a proper League-ensemble is to staff it with strong supporting characters, not the leads from their franchises.
That said…
Aaaaand…I’m too groggy to think of anyone else right now. 'Srry.
This is an excellent start.
But doesn’t he use his power basically to speak to some unseen entity in front of him?
That’s some creepy power there. Clearly he’s working for the Ancient Gods.
I grabbed the bulk of these from the best selling books since 1990. I guess you have more obscure tastes…
The reason superheroes should be kept out of the game isn’t that superheroes are too powerful. It’s that the point of the game is to make a superhero team using non-superheroes. A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that has Superman and Batman in it isn’t the League of Extraordinary Gentlement: it’s the Justice League. However, I would allow an exception for Wolverine, for the purposes of metahumor. If you’re building a team of '90s characters, you have to have Wolverine in there, because Wolverine was in every goddamn team book in the '90s.
The other vibe that’s at work in the comic is, as Prof. Pepperwinkle rightly noted, that the League is made up of malcontents, disenfranchised, and the actively criminal. The characters ought to either an antagonist in their original work, or somehow brought low by events following the work they appeared in. So, Harry Potter, as is, isn’t a great choice. Harry Potter wouldn’t work for the League. If he showed up in a LoEG comic, he’d be a stuffed shirt working at the Ministry that tries to interfere and gets intimidated and/or beaten up by the League. On the other hand, “the Widow Weaselly” works great - particularly if you play up the “mudblood” thing, and set up that after Ron died, Hermione found herself frozen out of the upper echelons of wizard society.
That actually parallels nicely with how Mina was treated after letting herself be “soiled” by that dusky foreign Count, so I’m taking Hermione as the leader of my group, in the Mina role.
In the Nemo role, I’m picking Hogarth Hughes, a reclusive hippie burnout living in an airplane wrecking yard in the Canadian hinterlands. Hogarth has been bitterly distrustful of the government ever since they tried to nuke his hometown in the '50s, in response to learning that Hogarth had uncovered and “befriended” a derelict Martian war machine.
For the Hyde role, I’m going with Daniel Osbourne, Zen Buddhist and werewolf from sunny California. I’m kind of breaking my own rule by casting a protagonist, and not making him significantly darker than he was in the source material, but I like the contrast of having this incarnation of the League’s giant murderous rage machine be the most emotionally centered character in the group. Plus, he has a thing for witches, and Hermione has a thing for gingers, so that could be good.
I’m taking the Allan Quartermain role of the “older badass” and giving it a bit of Hawley Griffin’s “amoral sociopath,” and casting an aging Anton Chigurh. An implacable killing machine, willing to do absolutely anything for money. Slowing down quite a bit, now that he’s in his sixties, but no one’s been able to stop him yet.
Lastly, for our group sneak, instead of going with “invisible” I’m going with “unnoticeable.” He can pass unremarked in almost any room. An accomplished liar, he can talk his way out of any situation, making the most improbable string of bullshit sound completely believable. A successful criminal in his own right, he controls a sizable underworld empire through fear and misdirection. My last pick for the new League, is Verbal Kint.
Members of my family suggest various cast members from Grimm and the BBC version of Being Human.
Harriett the spy?
Seriously Artemis Fowl (you want a rich inventor)
One thing I would insist on is the transportation for the League: A certain red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury.
My wife and I debated this over the weekend, and we came up with the following team of six:
“L” (from the anime/manga series Death Note – a contemporary Sherlock Holmes who’s proven he can manage a team very effectively. Team leader.)
Hermoine Grainger (A polymath, and a very capable magic-user.)
Lestat (Charismatic, insanely powerful vampire)
Beatrice Kiddo, AKA The Bride (All-around badass assassin)
Dexter Morgan (Stealth and close-quarters combat expert)
Walter White (Master chemist, ruthless pragmatist)
I think the two wild cards here are Lestat and Walter. They’re both pretty much amoral, and extremely dangerous under the wrong circumstances. It would take very careful team management to keep things running smoothly. I feel confident that L is up to the task, though.
Pretty much everything he writes has a major character brutally raped or someone attempts it. In Miracle Man, the mentally-unstable Kid Miracleman is gang-raped by a bunch of boys in the bathroom of an orphanage. In Watchmen, the first Silk Specter is beaten and nearly raped by The Comedian - I think Hooded Justice stopped him before. Evie was about to be raped and killed by the Fingermen in V for Vendetta, when V introduces himself. I stopped reading him in the 80s, but tried LOEG but on the flip-thru it looks as if Mina Harker is raped by the Invisible Man, who’s raped and killed by Mr. Hyde.
Well, sure. I mean, Lestat can offer a cure for Walter’s terminal condition, right?
How about Harold Finch and The Machine as the billionaire who provides resources (and intelligence)?
Another vote for Walter White. An interesting twist would be to somehow use Skyler (She’s as ruthless as Walter, and at the very least is good with money laundering).
Not sure who else to mention for the team.
For a villain, how about Nina Myers? Somehow or another she faked her death.
Hah, I had a flashback to that old Newgroundsparody animation of the X-Men. Wolverine even complains that he is sent to 3 different teams at the same time.