Name: Goth Sulkman
Alias: Brooder
Nickname(s): N/A
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Powers: None. Unless you count infinite budget as a power.
Skills/Abilities: - World-class martial artist / hand-to-hand combatant
Exceptional detective skills
Genius-level intellect
Skilled Acrobat
Military Special Forces training
Doctorate-level knowledge in various fields
Equipment: - Main weapon: a retractable metal polearm, about 1.5 ft when retracted, and 5 ft when extended. This pole can be split into two weapons if need be.
Dart Gun
Grapple Gun
Smoke Grenades
Knockout Gas
Taser Pellets
A pill that temporarily grants superhuman strength and durability
Various other small specialty devices
Although he doesn’t carry every device with him, Brooder has a piece of equipment for virtually any situation back in his lair.
Appearance: Stands approximately 6’4”, with a very muscular build. Goth has jet black hair with icy blue eyes.
Goth has a large, wide jaw with a permanent five o’clock shadow. The bridge of his nose is perfectly straight, going off at an almost perfect 45 degree angle in relation to his face, and his mouth is pursed in an eternal frown, his lower lip sticking out ahead of the upper lip. Even after getting plenty of sleep, Goth has dark circles under his eyes. His eye brows are thick, and his eye ridge is always furrowed down as if in deep concentration.
Running diagonally across the middle of his forehead lies a long, straight scar. When any one asks, Goth says he got it in an epic duel with a skilled swordsman. In reality, he got it as a young boy at a friend’s house. He fell into a food coma on the floor next to the kitchen counter, and Goth’s friend accidentally dropped a butter knife on him.
Costume: His costume consists of a black trenchcoat, and a black full-body suit. He has a black mask that completely conceals his facial features. His eyes appear as white slits. The only colored feature of the costume is a dark, silver belt that wraps around his trenchcoat.
Beneath his trenchcoat, Goth wears a black utility built made of reinforced polymer. This belt contains all of the various gadgets and equipment that he carries around.
The trench coat isn’t made for anything special besides appearance. Goth’s bodysuit on the other hand is made of a synthetic weave, making it light enough to wear for long periods of time, but durable enough to withstand bullets and bladed weapons. This classified material also has the interesting property of evenly dispersing kinetic energy from impacts, effectively increasing the wearer’s durability.
On top of that, plates of graphene nanocomposites are layered on top of the suit to protect the vital organs, major limbs, and fingers, all without limiting movement.
Of course, Goth also commissioned a layer of under armor made of the recently discovered Awesomium, giving him resistances to extreme heat and cold, radiation, electricity, and pathogens. This suit if very fragile though, and is easily torn, even from sudden, extreme movements.
Lastly, Goth has a pair of specially made tanks of compressed air strapped to the back of his calves. These tanks are capable of blasting air in a burst powerful enough to propel Goth great distances. The tanks don’t allow flight, only boosts to Goth’s jumps. They automatically refill themselves by cycling in and storing the surrounding air.
Personality: Goth is a stoic, introverted man. He has been hardened by his life experiences, and sees the world only in black and white. His motivations in life are rooted in his emotions, but he makes every decision with his head, always choosing the most logical path over what “feels” right.
Goth is in a perpetual state of brooding, always thinking about why life is full of suffering and why everything that has happened has come to pass. Because of this, he’s usually found staring off into the distance at nothing, and will occasionally speak at random intervals based on what he’s thinking.
When spoken to, he will often respond with some philosophical-sounding nonsense. It may seem to have some deeper meaning, but most people brush it off as incoherent ramblings. (Example: "How does the cricket know when to chirp?" "Crime is like a cookie...it always crumbles." "What does the fox say?" "A thousand Starbucks' cannot drown my sorrow.")
Goth vehemently avoids dairy products, as it reminds him of his dead parents. He especially dislikes chocolate ice cream.
Goth isn’t opposed to killing criminals, but he usually reserves death for criminals that directly threaten or have taken human lives.
History: Goth was born into a family of wealth and privilege, but has experienced a childhood of trauma and heartbreak. His great-great-great grandfather made his fortune from a successful dairy farm, eventually monopolizing the worldwide dairy industry. Goth’s grandfather was born lactose intolerant, so he decided to expand the family business into an area that he thoroughly enjoyed: military weapons development.
As the child and heir to the world’s largest dairy producer and weapons developer (Sulk Milk & Lead, Intl.), Goth was poised to live out a comfortable life of endless partying. However, on one of his month-long party cruises, Goth’s yacht ran into a storm, throwing him overboard. He washed up on an island in the South China, thinking it was deserted. Thankfully, he happened to meet a fellow stranded survivor, an ex-Special Forces and CIA operative named John Tuffmeister. Tuffmeister trained Goth in everything he knew, from combat, to espionage, to survival techniques, and numerous other fields.
Goth and Tuffmeister lived on the island for 2 years before finally realizing that the island was less than half a mile from the mainland and swam back to civilization. Unfortunately, Goth learned that his parents, trying to drown the sorrow of losing their son, decided to watch a light-hearted musical, only to end up being mugged and killed in an alley after the show. Depressed, Goth turned to alcohol to drown out his own sorrows.
Eventually, Tuffmeister finally located Goth and got him sober, getting him back into shape to rejoin society. Goth offered Tuffmeister a full-time position as a butler in his house, which Tuffmeister surprisingly accepted.
Rather than wasting his life being boozed up, Goth decided to put the skills and knowledge he had acquired to good use, cleaning up the city so that no one else would have to suffer as he had. Gathering together his nearly limitless resources, he commissioned specialized equipment for use in the field, as well as everything a budding vigilante would want in a secret lair.
However, thanks to the spectacular efforts of the Infinite Knights, Archer City was almost crime-free, save for super-villains, the occasional monster/extra-terrestrial attack, and super-secretive criminal organizations. Most days, Goth sits atop one of the city’s many skyscrapers, earning the name “Brooder” from civilians that have claimed to have seen him.
This doesn’t mean Brooder is inexperienced, far from it. There has never been a criminal that has escaped or defeated him (so far), and he has taken down beings with superior physical builds, super powers, and both.
Writer’s Note: Yes. yes, this is meant to be a Batman / Iron Man / (insert billionaire superhero with a tragic backstory here) clone. Not in any serious way, though. Rather, this character is meant to be out of place in a light-hearted setting like Spectacular, taking their levels of grimdark to ridiculous, cheesy, campy levels. Brooder is a parody of the Batman-type superhero.
Spectacular!
