|
Marvel's Furyous Basterds Minimates
After Noir, Zombies and 1602, Marvel talks steampunk in its
newest limited series! Telling the story of a secret guerrilla
squad in the 19th century, Marvel is once more re-imagining
some of our all time favorite heroes, fighting vampires under
Lincoln's command. Now we are proud to present the 2“ versions
of the series' inglourious characters. Ladies and gentlemen,
we give you
They aren't extraordinary gentlemen and you
won't feel pleased to meet 'em, for they're the Furyous Basterds,
Lincoln's finest.
My name is Nicholas Joseph Fury, born in that
part of Manhattan the Times nowadays calls „Hell's Kitchen“.
First time I appeared before the public was also the last: On
April 15th, 1865, I saved Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated
by a guy called John Wilkes Booth, a bloody vampire, pun intended,
but I'm not kidding about blood suckers walking in our country.
I was trying to hunt down that fellow for quite a while and
when I had a talk with Mr. President afterwards, he got me a
job. Only a few people were sitting together on that evening
when the old man made his decision: Under no circumstances should
it be made public, that the Dreadful were released from hell,
since this great country of ours is already standing on the
edge to chaos. I was asked to form a small but effective group
of men, being able to hunt down those vampires. No pride. No
prejudice. No zombies. Low profile. He provides what ever I
need and doesn't ask questions. Neither do I. We don't exist,
but what exists is a rumor and a name. Furyous Basterds. If
that helps us spreading fear amongst those nasty blood suckers,
I'm happy to be called like that. Some say God turned his back
on us when the vampires first approached. I don't need any Gods
or whatever you believe in. We are not fighting for a greater
Good, we are fighting against a greater Evil, and I know what
it looks like. If we're successful, no history book will ever
talk about us. If we don't, people will say, Nick Fury was right.
 
Clint Barton was a gunslinger from Waverly, Iowa,
wasting his life in a traveling circus. Being an orphan since
the age of three, he has no memories of his parents, but nightmares
seeing their murderers drinking his parents blood. You might
see a connection here. You might think that's a little too obvious.
For me, I see a man with a motive and that's something I can
work with. I saw Clint once performing his skills during a stay
in Five-Points, and was deeply impressed by his marksmanship.
He uses the prototype technically enhanced gun built by Stark,
which even increases his skills. Let me try to explain it this
way: If I ever feel the need to let someone shoot an apple off
of my head from a fair distance, he's the guy I'd choose and
even allow him to step some dozen feet backwards.
 
Imperialist and railroad tycoon Anthony Edward
Stark is as narcissistic, greedy and compulsive, as he is a
genius. Given the money he earned by investing early in the
Transcontinental Railroad, he was able to not only invent but
also produce steam based operational systems, changing the face
of the world once and for all. Established by his father decades
ago, Stark Enterprises is now one of the leading forces in steam
based developments and the railroad industry. Stark is a well
known and respected man both in public and the scientific society,
his family being connected with families like Reade, Brainerd
and Campion, the young Archibald Campion visiting him very frequently.
His financial independence granted him the possibility to work
on his own vision of the future, so he finally was able to construct
a steam driven suit, providing him unbelievable strength. It's
hard to keep him calm, since working in the shadows doesn't
feed his invincible ego, but he can finally create all of his
ideas instead of wasting his talents to railroad and steamboat
construction. It's obvious that you need a man like Stark in
your team, since he's developing most of our equipment.
 
I don't know much about that lad born as Nathan
Christopher Charles Summers, but I know enough to rely on him.
He knows a lot about weapons and a lot of weapons is what he
carries around. Besides guns and revolvers he got a left arm
made out of unbreakable metal. I'm neither a physicist nor a
doctor, but as far as I see it, that artificial arm is no armour,
it's something like a prosthesis. Nobody knows how it works,
but it does. Same for his glass eye, providing him enhanced
eyesight. He says something about coming from the 20th century
and some fellow called Nikola Tesla built those gadgets for
him. But there is no such man known in the scientific community.
I don't know what those 'visions' of him might be, but you can
count on him when it comes to hunting vampires, so I don't ask
questions which answers might scare the blazes out of people.
And as long as nobody thinks of himself being some kind of a
mythical God, I can live with that.
Jonte Eric Støresund is a tough guy, leaving
Trondheim, Norway on the same route as Leif Ericson did some
800 years before, to start a new life in America. I first met
him in New York one year before the John-Wilkes-Booth situation
took place. He told me about vampires suddenly appearing in
the area around Tromsø, up in the north of his homeland.
That was three months after my own first contact in New Orleans,
Louisiana. After Lincoln let me found the unit, Jonte Eric was
the first person I tried to contact. Because of his Scandinavian
heritage and his hydraulic hammer, a prototype constructed by
Stark Enterprises to be used by railroad workers, we call him
Thor. Mighty cliché, I know that.
 
A Canadian lumberjack going by the name of Logan.
He left Fort St. James, British Columbia, to earn some more
money by working for the Union Pacific Railroad. He signed a
contract and soon became lead man, which eventually brought
him to New York. He's a man of few words, but for all of us,
'furious' might fit him best. Sometimes. Let me put it this
way: if there is a bar brawl, this is the guy who would be last
standing no matter what, asking for another shot. If things
get ugly, he is the right guy to send. He's the best in what
he does, and what he does is bloody vampire business. Since
he is a very skilled hand-to-hand combatant, Stark equipped
him with a neat little gadget: Powered by a steam turbine carried
on his back, he wears hydraulic claws on both hands, making
him even more effective to make dead things deader.
|
