Name: (horrific insectoid noises)
Alias: Badurong Broadcasting Executive, Lord of the Late-Night Timeslot, The Almighty Lord of Bloodsport, Spandez
Age: Yes.
Personality: On stage, Spandez is cheery, jovial, and constantly smiling. As a gameshow host should be. However, he is also a bloodthirsty tyrant who draws sustenance from sentient creatures' desire for violence. He relishes the sights and sounds of combat, and is eager to throw contestants at a planet until it's ready for conquering. He speaks in broken English, having had to learn Japanese to invade Tokyo, and gets furious when someone mentions the words "Rangers," "Excellent Super-Bat" or "Lightning Round."
Powers: Spandez is, surprisingly, quite quick and quite heavy. His chitinous shell is fluted like a bird's bones, but due to his compressed body, his nerve endings are tightly packed. Thus, while his shell can stop bullets, it will still hurt like the dickens. When the situation gets dire and there's no other way out, he can return to his true form- The Almighty Lord of Bloodsport.
Weakness: He can't resist showing off. He also has a very low pain threshhold until transforming, meaning he tends to chicken out fairly quickly. As the Almighty Lord of Bloodsport, he is easily angered and becomes incredibly bloodthirsty, lashing out at friend and foe alike. Thus, he will not return to his giant form unless absolutely necessary.
Appearance:
Here. The form at his feet is his true form, an insectoid creature about the size of a city bus. He shrinks and contorts his arms and wings to appear more humanoid, the wings folding to form his trademark suit and his transparent ears becoming his distinctive eye-markings.
Bio: Spandez is, in fact, older than many benchmarks for "old." He might actually be among the oldest living beings in the cosmos, as he was born when the first sentient creature thought how awesome it would be to see two animals fighting. Spandez is the literal embodiment of bloodsport, from gladiatorial combat to violent sporting events. He spent a long time as a spacefaring conqueror, setting up gladiatorial arenas to amuse and feed himself. But he began to notice that a lot of other creatures would pay to get in… which led to profits, which led to faster expansion, which led to more spectacular arenas, which led to more power for himself.
One day, thousands of years later, an agent for the Badurong Corporation came to Spandez's Skull-Palace of Pain and explained the wonders of television to the Dark Lord of Bloodsport. The Network could not only broadcast his gladiatorial matches to the universe, but harvest the energy created by those enjoying the battles. They even offered to provide more unique equipment and gladiators (be they insubordinate employees, a bored Action Commander, or a prisoner from another world), provided they got a cut of the advertising revenue. Spandez even got a free cable package, which led to him discovering a gameshow. His gladiatorial matches had many contestants, but very few were volunteers. It had many fans, and many viewers, but also many decrying the barbaric spectacle.
But gameshows… people were willing to do insane things for those prizes. They would humiliate themselves in public. They would take candy from children. They would leave people stranded on alien worlds with no food and water if the prize was great enough. And that's when Spandez hit upon the idea that all his gladiatorial matches needed was a fresh spin.
And thus he hit upon an idea. Badurong would offer prizes to his contestants. The contestants would sow chaos and discord on planets. If the contestants won and managed to conquer the planet, they'd get legal ownership of it and a choice between becoming a planetary governor or handing it over to the Network's Mining and Exploitation Branch for a hefty prize. If they lost, they'd often do enough damage to the planet's infrastructure through the gameshow's challenges to make conquering the planet much easier for the mercenary forces of Badurong. This brilliant stroke elevated Spandez from a powerful warlord to chief executive of the Badurong Broadcasting Network and a trusted enforcer of the CEO.
And then Spandez tried to do the show on Earth. The first 15 minutes of the 30-minute time limit looked to be incredibly promising, with the contestant ravaging Tokyo. And then a bunch of weirdies in spandex started beating the crap out of his contestant. By the time the 22 minute mark passed, the contestant was dead, and Spandez was left wondering what the hell just happened. The rest is chronicled in
The Spandez Conquest Hour: Season 5,103 (marketed in Japan as Super-Bat's Squadron: Justiranger), but the long and short of it is: The spandex-wearing freaks stymied the invasion for an entire 52-episode-once-every-7-cycles season- the longest anyone's ever managed. Though the rules of the show say that the contestants' government will not be a contestant again, the Badurong Legal Firm found Spandez a loophole- Earth doesn't have a single government. Thus, technically, the show's free to start up on a different government's turf. So Spandez has decided Jump City will be the next contest ground- after all, how many superheroes can this planet have?
Arc Ideas: He runs an intergalactic gameshow. Give me the word and one or more contestants are invading with a hare-brained scheme.
Other: An alien game show host who uses his program to expand an interstellar megacorporation by offering invaders fabulous prizes for performing typical Sentai monster antics to destabilize a planet's infrastructure. Also, "Titans Forever."
3x Thank
