The Standard

And here we have the first appearance of The Corpse, another popular character in the series.  If the original Gilbert Graham Standard was an icon of the Silver Age, the Alex Thomas iteration of The Standard is more representative of 90s excess, with his busy costume design and the pouches.  The Corpse represents another, darker aspect of superhero comics that came to the fore during the 90s.

With the original rise of Image Comics, we got a whole new wave of heroes, inspired by the darkness that came to the superhero comics of Marvel and DC in the late 80s but pushing it to a whole new blood-drenched extreme.  It seems like for a period, our classic heroes were cast into the shade in favor of uber-violent, gun-toting, borderline psychotic “anti-heroes” with names like BLOODRAVEN and KYLLBASTARD (not actual character names, to my knowledge) who would sooner eviscerate their enemies than put them in jail.  The Corpse is very much my answer to that phase of superhero history.  And Jon Rector portrays that beautifully, right down to the flowing, shredded Spawn-style cape.

Jon’s not the first person to draw The Corpse, however.  The first person to design the character was…. umm… me.  Way back in 2009, I took part in Tyler James’ 30 Characters Challenge, where you draw a character for each day of the month of November, and come up with a story for them.  Now, I’m no artist (as you’ll see below), but it seemed like a fun exercise to do, so I jumped in and gave it a go.  And here is entry 21, both the picture and the character bio, presented for your viewing pleasure:

The Standard isn’t the only superhero in Sky City.  There’s also The Corpse.  Of course, not everyone would agree that The Corpse is a superhero.  Many, particular amongst Sky City’s police department, would call him a dangerous vigilante, a wanted criminal, even a serial killer.  But it cannot be denied that the recent decline of supervillains in the city has something to do with The Corpse.  After all, he’s been killing them all.

Though The Corpse is a master martial artist, with access to a wide range of weaponry, he has no superpowers.  All the same, he is more feared by the criminal underworld than even The Standard, because while The Standard has a strict no-kill rule, The Corpse goes out of his way to execute lawbreakers.

Nothing is known about his identity or his background.  It is speculated that perhaps his whole family was murdered by gangsters when he was a child, and he has dedicated his life to avenging their death.  Or perhaps it’s simply the fact that he’s only 5’7” tall and has a tiny cock that has left him perennially pissed off at the world.