Crime Lords Guest Article: Right on target

Crime Lords Month is a wonderful thing. It brings people together, don’t you think? This world of disparate bloggery, why, it’s a wonder people even know how to talk to each other…

… but Crime Lords Month, it just brings the best out of the blogosphere.

Speaking of which, RanmaSolo, who has his own shiny little corner of the blogosphere over here, has penned a little something on one of his favourite Crime Lords, the master marksman Bullseye.

Who’s got the best flavor text in the game? I’m sure there’s lot of potential winners that could be argued for and against. There’s so many great ones. From funny, to cool, to flavorful, they all have something going for them.

Mr. Mxypylk and his insistence that Aquaman is sand, not only is it funny on it’s own, but it’s a meta joke referencing a Marvel card! “Say it, Thing.” “Say what?” “You know what.” “I’m not gonna say it.” on It’s Clobberin’ Time. Joker: Clown Prince Of Crime’s three or four lines of, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.” “HULK SMASH!!!” is a classic line and I just wish it was on Savage Beatdown instead of the old 7-drop Hulk. Speaking of great text on unplayed cards, “Kneel before Zod!” is a hell of a contender, even though General Zod: Ruler of Pokolistan absolutely sucks. She-Hulk telling us, “Hey, wouldn’t I look better as a foil?” is cool because it’s part of the first easter egg alt-foil, fits the character and her fourth wall breaking series perfectly. Plus, she does look better as a foil! “Bullseye.” on Roy Harper <> Speedy is a really cool, simple line. It’s not the best in the game, but it has one thing right. Bullseye, definitely has the best flavor text in the game.

Don’t believe me? Just look at it!

 

Of course, part of the reason that flavor text is so cool, is what it means. If you don’t know, let me tell you a little bit about my favorite Marvel Universe assassin.

Bullseye was created by Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr., a fact I myself did not now until now! Thank you Wikipedia. Bullseye is both a physical and philosophical foil to his constant nemesis Daredevil. While Bullseye technically has no mutant or superhuman abilities, his aim and use of anything as a lethal projectile is pretty much as close as it comes. This ability shows what someone like Daredevil could be with his superior human senses.

If he was a psychopathic killer anyway.

Through out Bullseye’s history he’s been one of Daredevil’s most dangerous foes. When Elektra, former lover of Daredevil’s secret identity Matt Murdock, replaced him as the Kingpin’s assassin of choice he solved his employment issue by killing her. With her own sai! “You’re good… But me, I’m magic.” A line so cool they actually got it into the movie adaptation. Hopefully a future bit of flavor text on something really playable!

 

Bullseye has doggedly pursued the hero, hating Daredevil so much that at one point, after having been saved by him once before, he stabbed Daredevil in the hand to prevent Daredevil from saving his life a second time. This lead to him falling multiple stories and his back being broken. Bullseye was left paralyzed. Like any good character though, he would eventually return better than ever!

 This time he received the gift of adamantium reinforcement over much of his skeleton. What did he do with his ability to walk and enhanced toughness? Why try to kill Daredevil of course! However, you probably could’ve guessed that. The next major event in Bullseye’s career would be working for Mysterio.

Mysterio, mainly a Spider-Man villain, hired him to harass and confuse Hornhead, so that Mysterio could drive Daredevil insane, get him to kill Mysterio, who was dying anyway, and cement his legacy as a master manipulator.

It was during this story that Bullseye killed yet another of Matt Murdock’s love interests, Karen Page. Doing so with Matt’s very own billy club! During the climactic battle Bullseye collapsed, informing Daredevil that he has a brain tumor.

This lead to a story where Bullseye purportedly revealed his origin for the first time, but in the end he says he made most of it up. I like this. I like this a lot. When I read Wolverine: Origin I thought it was kind of cool, but not as cool as many of the ideas I had come up with on my own. Mystery is it’s own reward sometimes and I don’t think Bullseye would be quite as awesome if we all knew he was picked on by a bully named Bobby and he liked Susan, but she liked Tom and so on and so forth.

I think Bullseye’s stint in VS so far doesn’t quite live up to his potential. He has good cards. He has some cool cards. I just wish they worked in some sort of a playable deck. While the 4-drop I think has the best flavor text in the game, my favorite version is definitely Bullseye, Assassin For Hire.

 This 3-drop has nice stats (5/4), is a Reservist, Sinister Syndicate and Crime Lords dual affiliated and has a KO effect. The price of that KO is pretty steep. First you have to get Bullseye to stun a defender and then you have to KO a resource you control. However, in his favor is that he can team attack to achieve that stun. Unlike other characters such as Dead Eye or Yelena Belova <> Black Widow who KO’d a character outright, but had to do all the work on their own.

I expect to see at least two new Bullseye card in the next VS set Marvel Universe. With the set’s focus on Civil War, I would be surprised if there wasn’t a Bullseye card for Thunderbolts to represent the team taking on more and more super-villains to hunt down unregistered super heroes. I’ll hazard to guess they’ll use the version of the team lead by Norman Osborn as a focus and that Bullseye will be a concealed character with a nasty effect. Perhaps a two drop with something akin to Deadshot’s effect or a three drop who may KO characters he stuns, but lets the opponent draw cards if you do.

What we’re really excited about though is the Crime Lords refeature! After all, this is Crime Lords month! I hope to see Bullseye as a prominent member of the team with some Legend card treatment. Perhaps something more aggro than the 7-drop, which let defenders with reinforcement KO attackers they stunned. Perhaps something that removes reinforcement from defenders. After all, I always thought it was weird that the team with reinforcement as a theme didn’t get to remove their opponent’s reinforcement. I mean, they’re the CRIME Lords, if they have reinforcement… They probably stole it!

-Mike