Name recomendations

One of the secondary ideas I've been plugging away at for my SuperFic setting is a team of late teens heroes. So far I've been tagging them either Teen Team or Young Heroes. I don't really like either the name. No real reason for the latter, but the first is because its already been used by at least one other super-hero parody writer I know. I've thought about going with Junior League, but thats a name I've already set aside for a team of actual kid (average age like 9 or 10) supers in my MSH rpg setting. So any ideas for a name? Serious and non-serious are fine. And that the major two teams I've got right now are The Team and a Justice League parody called the Super Legion of Justice Friends or SLJF...

Edit: Oh wait, I almost forget the Power Rangers parody group Magi Prinsessa Soldat Force...

Sunday Trade: Beyond!

Written by Dwayne McDuffie, Art by Scott Kolins, Colors by Paul Mounts and Letters by Dave Lanphear

After a week of great comics thats tainted by something as craptastic as Titans East its good to reread a book like Beyond!. For those who don't follow DC books, Judd Winnick did a one-shot story meant to set up the return of the classic Perez/Wolfman era Titans as a team. Again. And to do so he (possibly under editorial fiat) needlessly killed off a half-dozen minor teen characters. Which is par for the course for DC of late, and to some lesser extent Marvel...

But Beyond! is a book that tells a great story using nothing but D-listers and former A-listers. Its loosely a sequel to the 80s Secret Wars story, where a god-like cosmic being called the Beyonder gathers a bunch of heroes and villains together on a mishmash world and makes them battle it out for an "ultimate reward". It was a cheesy marketing gimmick, that never the less had plenty of cool moments and even several long term effects. For example the symbiote alien/black costume of Spider-Man's that leads to Venom and then Carnage and then a bunch of others has its origin here...

In this story a being claiming to be the Beyonder gathers another group of supers together and tells them they'll have to fight to the last man standing to earn their reward and be returned home. And what a group it appears to be at first glance. Hank Pym (in his geek scientist phase), the Wasp, Medusa, Matt Gargan Venom, Kraven Jr, Gravity, Firebird, Spider-Man and the Hood. If you're wondering who some of these guys are, well you wouldn't be alone. But it doesn't really matter. McDuffie manages to bring out the personalities of even the fringiest d-lister in the group...

Plus of course the story is full of shocking reveals and cliffhangers, where the individual issues would have ended. And further bonus artist Kolins actually creates a version of a Watcher (I'm not sure if its Uatu or not) that actually looks...cool. And his visuals add into McDuffies script to make even perennial loser characters like Kraven Jr and Pym seem...well awesome...

Beyond! is one of those stunning bits of story-telling and art that remind you of why us fan boys and girls keep going back to the House of Ideas after so many disappointments. And why no character deserves to be slaughtered to provide a useless bump for a new threat...

Loser

This was a surprisingly sweet movie. Except for Greg Kinnear who was a creepy, pretentious jerk in need of several hard kicks to the groin and/or face. And Jason Bigg's roommates. Who deserve any and all horrible things that might ever happen to them, up to and including being eaten alive by fire ants. But Biggs and Mena Suari? Adorable and good natured and deserving of their romcom happy ending...