The MatchmanThe World
Meet the Cast
VALentine Complex - the good guys
Matchman
Our hero, and the title character of the comic that bears his name. In everyday life he masquerades as one Scott Suffix, famed genetics research scientist and full-time laboratory klutz - until the signal calls and he bursts forth as Matchman, defender of togetherness and apostle of true love.
Z-Girl
Azusa Zeitzler is the young twentysomething niece of Suzanne Grace, chief astrologer of the VALentine Complex team. She grew up amid savagery, super-science and sorcery, trained hard, and became Z-Girl, Matchman's quick-witted, deadly-skilled sidekick.
Suzanne Grace
The ever-graceful (and ever-patient) Suzanne Grace is the resident astrology expert of the VALentine Complex team. She spends her days at the computer terminal charting the fates of friend and foe alike, and dispatches Matchman whenever hearts need mending.
Dr. Rhoda Dendrite
This brilliant middle-aged woman is the mental counterpart to Lance Corporeal's magnificent strength, and a co-founder of the VALentine organization. The youngest woman ever to win the Nobel Prize for medicine, she is the world's leading authority on biogenetics, and the mind behind much of Matchman's extraordinary ability.
Sergeant Striker
The good Sergeant's origins are difficult to explain, and even more difficult to believe once explained. A former U.S. Marine reduced by wartime disaster to an ambulatory assemblage of oversized kitchen matches, he now serves as Matchman's dispatcher, directing him to every mission despite one deathly, not-so-secret weakness: fire.
Lance Corporeal
This gentleman is the Head of Security at VALentine Complex and the brawn behind all of that organization's brainpower. Oxford- and Sandhurst-educated, a former Zairian military officer and circus strongman, he co-founded VALentine Complex with Dr. Rhoda Dendrite and has been Matchman's personal trainer since day one.
Corbin & Clementine
These cute and charming children are slated to appear in the Matchman movie that is currently in the works, as well as the next comic. Corbin is the nephew of Lance Corporeal, Clementine the niece of Dr. Rhoda Dendrite, and each has inherited the opposite of their relative's gift: Corbin the scientist-in-training, Clementine the budding powerhouse.
The DoubleSign Twins
David and Doreen, the DoubleSign Twins, are conjoined (“Siamese”) twins joined at the hip - a brother and a sister, British subjects of Japanese descent, orphaned in their teens. Masters of aikido, judo, jujitsu, karate and kung fu (plus the secret “Wax Tadpole” technique), they fished Matchman out of the Thames, nursed him back to memory, and became his gleefully unreliable interpreters in Tokyo.
B.L.A.H. - the bad guys
Dr. Dejection
Speaking of evildoers, this creepy cloaked gentleman is their grand chief and evil genius. He commands Badguys Leagued Against Humanity (B.L.A.H.), a global syndicate posing as just another corporation, and has nursed a long vendetta against the hero who keeps foiling him at every turn.
Discordia
Once upon a time she was merely a nondescript secretary from San Jose, California. A mysterious accident on a Greek holiday changed all that, leaving her glowing gold from head to toe and wielding a mystical golden apple as Dr. Dejection's chief henchwoman and Z-Girl's sworn archenemy.
Super Ficial!
As we all know, every superhero worth his salt has an evil twin lurking somewhere in his background, and Matchman is no exception. Separated from his brother Scott at birth and raised by carnival folk, Stan Suffix developed the power to drive people apart, donned a mirror-image costume, and now schemes with Dr. Dejection to bring his nicey-nice twin down.
El Burro Bandito
One of the more obvious freaks in Dr. Dejection's traveling sideshow of villains, El Burro Bandito is a genetic disaster on a grand scale. Born with a donkey's head after his mother's overexposure to New Mexico nuclear testing, he fled to become a cigar-chomping bandito before enlisting with B.L.A.H. as a paying gig.
Forbin the Tongue Colossus
This poor bastard is constructed of the flesh of a million hijacked human tongues. Built by Dr. Dejection to terrorize New York with the body's strongest muscle multiplied a millionfold, Forbin is ill-tempered and, ironically, incapable of coherent speech himself.
The Anticupids
These little terrors are one of Dr. Dejection's many private armies of soul-destroying evil. Old, scrawny and blue, armed with blunt lead arrows that cancel love in a heart, they are the storm troopers of despair - fearsome in numbers, but cowards when faced down.
The Beefeater & HAL
Shrouded in shadow and whispered rumor, the figure known only as The Beefeater is a terrifying enigma in the modern world. The only known escapee from a black-site wing built for delusional psychopaths, he is obsessed with violently reclaiming the British throne, and never stalks alone - HAL, his sentient, bloodthirsty halberd, is always at his side.
Supporting cast
The Government Agent
This faceless and nameless man-in-a-gray-flannel-suit is the nondescript representative of an equally nondescript government agency -- one so secret that it could be any and all of those that currently exist. Whoever they are, they keep a shadowy liaison with the VALentine Complex to guard the domestic peace against Dr. Dejection.
Selena Garbanzo
Selena Garbanzo is, of course, a currently popular singing sensation, the authenticity of whose minority origins is in directly opposite proportion to the megalocarpous nature of her nether regions. By day a pop diva balancing dance numbers in towering work boots; by night, a secret Government courier smuggling documents in the least likely of hiding places.
Bim Bongo
What we have here is a depiction of the archetype of the famous male celebrity actor. Bim Bongo has starred in dozens of movies, shows and commercials, and is the off-screen amour of pop sensation Selena Garbanzo - a turbulent romance that always ends up back in each other's arms.
Allies & guest stars
The SUPERSIGNS
Twelve unnaturally tall, pitch-black shadow-warriors with glowing white eyes and a single white zodiac sign blazing on each chest - a secret esoteric order of martial-artist guardians, led by the Aries Supersign. A heroic mirror of Dr. Dejection's own shadow-design, they arrive in a sleek black van whenever Suzanne Grace's emergency line rings.
Arnie Stetchkin
A self-taught eighteen-year-old vigilante from Rego Park, Queens - “a younger, handsomer Woody Allen with a crew cut” - who learned ninjutsu from Rambo and Dolph Lundgren movies and fights with Pier One katanas and yellow Star-of-David throwing stars. He cracks the Ultima Thule case wide open, joins VALCom, and gains super-speed from Saucer radiation - his whole hero career powered by a hopeless crush on Z-Girl.
Kimoko
A petite Japanese-intelligence agent who briefs VALCom on the Vedic-Atlantean backstory of the Ultima Thule project and gains density-and-invulnerability powers from the Saucer radiation. The powers first trigger in her bathtub, dropping her through the floor and getting her evicted - so she moves in with Z-Girl instead.
Officer Ikebana Shikibu
A tough, beautiful Tokyo police officer and ally who helps Matchman bust the anti-love Ina Morata cult - and insists, to the DoubleSign Twins’ endless disagreement, that ninjas simply do not exist. She flirts with Matchman shamelessly along the way.
Watchwomyn
Matchman’s gay counterpart, who runs her own LAVentine Complex (“LAVCom”); her costume is a colour-negative of his. Together they foil the Homophobe’s plot to dump a “heterotoxin” in the city reservoir, treating each other as respected mirror-image peers - “fellow stormtroopers of romance.”
A-Boy
Watchwomyn’s sidekick and Z-Girl’s opposite number on the LAVCom side - effeminate but tough, and the one who talks the closeted Homophobe out of his self-hatred.
The Duchess of Dorking
A plucky, foul-mouthed minor royal whom the Beefeater kidnaps in his scheme to be crowned King of a reborn Empire. Rescued by Matchman - and thoroughly smitten with him by the end (“you great big sexy bastard you!”), much to Z-Girl’s jealous annoyance.
The Queen
The reigning Queen of England, holding court at Buckingham Palace. When the Beefeater kidnaps the Duchess of Dorking in his mad scheme to depose the crown, it is the Queen who takes charge - “My word! Kidnapping? This will not do! We are not amused!” - and personally calls in the VALentine Complex to set matters right. Imperious, unflappable, and every inch the sovereign.
Ghislaine
“Fromagent 3” - one of the hypnotized, Audrey-Hepburn-styled ninja women in Le Grand Fromage’s army, deprogrammed by a single kiss. She switches sides, guides Scott through the Musée d’Orsay to rescue Discordia, and returns his anti-brainwashing cufflinks as a final act of conscience.
Rogues' gallery - villains of the week
Mezuzah
A medusa-villainess and wife-smuggling “marriage broker” who turns people into action figures, with a Fran-Drescher voice and a tragic backstory (stood up at the prom by one Artie Finkelstein). Matchman defeats her, then reforms her by matchmaking her a husband of her own - turning a villainess into a heroine of love.
Dr. Wang
Matchman’s old Fu-Manchu-style nemesis in Hong Kong, who claims to have gone legitimate but remains a megalomaniac at heart. He is backed by identical-twin henchmen Yuk Fu and So Long, and a pair of “pump-you-up” enforcer robots named Hans and Franz.
The Soviet Onion
An alien vegetable intelligence bent on re-imposing communism, allied with Dr. Dejection to re-sell weapons in post-Soviet Siberia. It speaks in malapropped slogans (“Workers of the world untie!”) and duels Matchman alongside the naïve would-be hero Dennis Ivanovitch.
OTAKU
Seppuku Wakizashi - the hooded leader of the anti-love Ina Morata cult, who lures Matchman to a Tokyo convention as a trap. His followers and a Great-Buddha mecha-robot are routed by Matchman and the DoubleSign Twins.
The Homophobe
A closeted-gay B.L.A.H. villain in a yellow unitard, hired by Dr. Dejection to attack a Gay Pride event. Talked out of his self-loathing by A-Boy, he is redeemed - and ends up happily married to a fellow inmate, Spike.
Wilhelmina von Kenya
The villain of the Ultima Thule arc: a Black woman obsessed with Aryan/Nazi ideology - a Grace-Jones-meets-Heydrich caricature - and a former seismologist who unearthed a buried Nazi superscience cache in Antarctica. She tortures Matchman, drains his powers with the Stealth Saucer, and dies in its crash shrieking “I AM THE EMPRESS OF ALL CREATION!”
Schlinkenhammer
Wilhelmina von Kenya’s sidekick: a winged, talking dachshund of pompous Teutonic loyalty (“Jawohl, meine Führerin!”) who commands her Flying Dachshund Circus and “pilots” the Stealth Saucer by dancing on the controls. He bitterly hates being nicknamed after foods, and survives the crash vowing “I’ll be back!”
Der Glockenspiel
Jorg Meisterbader - a “mild-mannered manufacturer of quality playthings” turned armoured villain, whose chest-plate is a literal glockenspiel that Matchman plays “Greensleeves” on while beating him. He hides Nazi brainwashing transmitters inside wind-up toy monkeys and commands platoons of swastika-armband cymbal-monkeys.
Clockface
Der Glockenspiel’s ten-foot robot lieutenant, assembled from Black Forest clocks with a clock-face head and a cuckoo door in its forehead. It fights with sharpened clock-hands and inserts “(tick)…(tock)” into every line - until Arnie beheads it and a cuckoo springs out.
The Antisemit
“Tex Ali” - a grotesque sheik-meets-cowboy B.L.A.H. recruit who kidnaps Z-Girl, convinced VALCom is a “Zionist” front. He spouts conspiracy boilerplate that bores even the other villains, and is fried by Z-Girl when Scott hits the deactivation button on his belt.
Le Grand Fromage
The Paris-arc villain: a literally sentient, telepathic wheel of Roquefort - an escaped French bioweapon - whose blue mould hypnotizes beautiful women into an army of Audrey-Hepburn-clone ninjas, the Fromagents. He kidnaps Discordia to recruit her, and is killed when he flees out a window and lands on a café table of drunk Frenchmen, who promptly eat him.
Archetypes - the lonely hearts
The Cute Girl
A warm, pretty redhead with dark-green eyes and a shy, hopeful smile - not so much a cast member as the franchise’s emotional thesis: the archetypal lonely woman - cute, cuddly, and certain she is inadequate. Matchman rescues her from an Anticupid and matches her to a stranger in the very first comic; her moral: no one ever sees their own worth the way others do.
The Random Guy
The male half of that first match: the archetypal lonely single man, too out of touch with his own feelings to even realize he is lonely - thinking about a sandwich, or his job - until VALentine Complex drops true love in his lap. True love never arrives when expected; better to just let it happen.