Crime Lords Month: The Task at hand

A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket… or however that thing’s supposed to go, I have no bloody idea… Today though, we return to Crime Lords Month with Marvel’s Master of Mercenaries, the Trainer of Thugs, the guy who somehow endeavours to make an ugly costume look menacing…

Yup, Taskmaster. A guy who’s shown up on a few VS cards (most impressively the alternate art version of Press The Attack), but it wasn’t until MHG that he actually made his appearance as a character proper.

But we’ll get to that in a minute.

FIrst, let’s take an eye-candy-ful wander through the fashion-challenged life of Tony Masters…

(yup, that’s right, Taskmaster’s real name is Mr T. Masters. Clearly the height of Marvel’s creative naming right there…)

First off, let me apologise for the slightly misleading intro pic. See, I referred in my opening to Taskmaster having an ugly costume, and then I go and open the article with a pic of his costume redesign by the boys at UDON.

True, the redesign is significantly more badass than the original, what with the bright orange cape, tighty wighties, and a vague attempt to copy every weapon used by the Avengers.

Yup, I’m talking about this monstrosity (as depicted by John Watkins-Chow).

Yup, it looks pretty menacing… as far as primping malevolent ballerinas go.

I mean, nothing says “I’m ridiculously dangerous and malevolent” Like white cuff-boots, flared white gloves, and a white hood over a white mask. In a number of the depictions the outer cape is white all the way, it’s just the inner lining that’s bright orange… to match his straps and belt pouches and chest plate thingie.

A slightly darker colour scheme really didn’t make that much of a difference:

 It’s still pretty darn ugly, no matter how you want to look at it.

Thankfully, some later depictions removed the underpants, but they keep cropping up now and again. You’ll see them in some of the other pics in the article.

Now, UDON did a great job of revamping the costume and actually making it look moderately menacing, while keeping the skull-style mask, hood, and significant white costume accents, and in fact it’s this version of the costume that finally made it onto a VS card with MHG’s release of Taskmaster: Mnemonic Assassin.

The problem is, though… as menacing as he actually looks in the new getup, it’s just not him. It takes away from the core of the character.

See, all those goofy accoutrements actually had a purpose, a direct link to who he was and what he did.

Time for a look at what he actually does.

Tony Masters has a neat little “gift” that’s gained some recent visibility thanks to the inclusion of the character Echo in the New (Secret) Avengers. Photographic Reflexes.

What this barrels down to is, if he sees you do it, he can do it. No practice, no warm-up, he can just directly emulate whatever it was he saw you do.

Thing is, though, Taskmaster doesn’t have superhuman strength, speed, agility, whatever, so while he can flawlessly duplicate one of Spider-Man’s twisting dodges, he can’t do it as fast. While he can mimic one of Daredevil’s clear-the-room billy-club tosses, he doesn’t have Daredevil’s radar sense to know where everyone is, in front and behind, at all times.

What he can do, however, is imitate Captain America’s shield-slinging. Black Knight’s swordplay. Hawkeye’s archery. According to one source he actually has copies of Spider-Man’s web-shooters.

Admittedly, none of his versions are anywere near as nifty as the originals – his shield isn’t Vibranium, his sword isn’t whatever-the-heck Black Knight’s was, his billy club isn’t as balanced as Daredevils, yadda yadda yadda… but each piece of equipment he carries is a direct reminder of who he is, and what he can do. 

UDON’s revision of the costume basically gave him a katana and some guns; dangerous and scary, sure, but in the end Taskmaster just isn’t Taskmaster without a bloody ugly costume and an overdose of weapons and peripherals.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, Taskmaster’s come a long way since running underground schools for thugs and miscreants.

  
After receiving working for “the man” during Marvel’s Civil War, he ended up back in prison after taking a shot at Sue Storm (Invisible Woman), who responded to her husband taking the bullet for her by piledriving Taskmaster into the asphalt with an invisible force field collumn.

The unconscious Tasky was then tossed in the Negative Zone Prison until he was released by fellow merc Deadpool, who was trying to re-establish his rep. Meh, the politics of gunsells.

He then received a presidential pardon after breaking into a SHIELD Helicarrier to test its security (which no doubt thrilled Billy to bits), before taking on probably the first job he’s had with a pension, as a trainer for the Fifty States Initiative.

Somewhere along the line he crossed ways with Moon Knight, a story arc that gives us pretty much the only scary/menacing art of his traditional costume that I could find.

See, even with the bloody orange and white and stuff that still looks creepy as all heck. Sure n’ begorrah it’s down to the individual artist’s style (I think it was David Finch in this case, someone’ll correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, I’m sure), but heck… at least Marvel was able to find an artist that could pull it off.

Let’s bring our heads around to VS. This is meant to be a VS blog, after all.

 Crime Lords, ah how we love thee.

This is probably my favourite 6-drop for the Crime Lords.

12/12 with range isn’t anything to write home about, but it isn’t embarassing either. The art’s a solid representation of UDON’s costume variant, even the flavour text is a good representation of the character, since Taskmaster frequenlty studies his opponents so as to be able to copy their moves.

Add in the fact that he’s always going to have either average 12/12 stats or bigger and he’s pretty shiny.

If your opponent’s playing a weenie deck, they have to get over a 12/12 character, all the while assuming you’re playing Crime Lords tricks like Face The Master (or whatever functional reprint we end up with in MUN).

If your opponent’s playing a stall deck, well, it’ll be quite amusing to see your opponent play a hefty 7-drop or an 8-drop only to find out that your 6-drop is just as big as they are… while your own 7-drop (and 8- if you packed one) are also on the board to be dealt with.

Is he teh borkens? No, not really. If your opponent never recruits anyone with higher stats, he’s just going to be a bland 12/12. Is he thematic and fun? Yar, ya got me there. His power aligns nicely with his photographic reflexes, and it’s really quite entertaining seeing him stand on equal footing with bruisers like 7-drop Thing… and thanks to DJL-095, you could even make this fight happen on the tabletop:

He may be garbed in a ridiculously gaudy affront to fashion editors everywhere, but Taskmaster has a certain coolness about him that makes me curious as to just what UDE’s got up their sleeves with MUN.

Will we see a new Taskmaster? How will his abilities be represented? Will he have an ability similar to MHG’s, or will we get something more along the lines of Rogue: Power Absorption?

One way or another, I’m reeeaalllyy looking forward to the Crime Lords card previews starting…