Digger Goes Electronic

So I decided to make a new character in City of Heroes, and I thought, "Why not see if I can make Digger?" As it turns out, not so much.

The look, I think I got pretty close on. I don't have a scan of one of my later Digger drawings, after the character had evolved a bit, but here's an early one that has most of the major elements: two-tone blue shirt, tan pants, boots (with wacky fringe that I later decided to replace with Captain America-style buccaneer flaps), blasters on the arms. Ignore the other characters in the drawing. They're character concepts for a super-group I was trying to put together, but they were generally silly and went nowhere (except for that yellow-and-red arm on the left - keep an eye out for him, because you may run into him sometime later if Hero Go Home ever gets published).

And now, the City of Heroes version (pardon the dark colors):

As you can see, I kept the two-tone shirt, although I reversed the colors (not sure which way I like best). They didn't have the straight break across the torso that I liked so much (another design element lifted from Captain America - Kirby was a genius), so I made do. For the blasters, I used the same gloves I used with my first 'toon, Metatronic, with more metallic colors. The boots look pretty good, although I'm not thrilled with the color - something about their browns doesn't translate well to the character.

Of course, I couldn't even come close on the powerset. Two of Digger's most basic powers - digging tunnels and clinging to walls - do not exist in the City of Heroes repertoire. And the powers don't mix-and-match, so you've got to select groups of powers that come close to what you want. I built him once as a Scrapper, with super-fast reflexes. But the closest I could come to a main attack power was claws, which just... no. So now I've rebuilt him as a Tanker, nearly invulnerable, with energy punches, which fit the Driller Beam Generator concept more closely, although he doesn't get any knockback :( Oh well...

As far as the real Digger's adventures, I finally wrote a scene that I'd been afraid to write since late November, so I'm that will get the book back on track. I want to finish the first draft by the end of February; that's my goal.