Carnival of Killers: Roku (Patreon)

Alright, our next villain for the Sideshow serves as the Rubberman for the series! Meet Roku, a former gymnast and mercenary for the Unknown Circle who is possessed by a Japanese Yokai!

ORIGIN

The Think Tank wasn’t the only organization that Tora Fanner had liberated members of her Carnival of Killers from. When Tora had recruited Dimitri Debauche into her crusade against the Sideshow and the world, she discovered that the methods that trapped him in his ventriloquist dummy form had been acquired from ancient haitian scriptures that he had borrowed on loan from the Think Tank’s sister organization, the Unknown Circle. Dimitri had acquired them from the Curator and had promised to pay him back with the funds he had hoped to acquire from his big comeback. But the unfortunate events that left him trapped in his dummy Dum-Dum meant he no longer could pay back the Unknown Circle for the scriptures, and had been on the run. At the time Tora had come to recruit Dimitri, the Unknown Circle had tracked him down via one of their own agents- a cursed man named Orochi Komatsu.

Orochi had once been a promising Olympic gymnast in his home country, but he had been cursed while lost on his way to visit distant relatives in remote parts of Japan. Forced to spend the night in an inn that was haunted by a terrible yokai spirit called a Rokurorubi, Orochi had barely escaped with his life when the killed the spirit that tried to devour his soul, but in the process he himself had been cursed with the yokai’s own essence, transforming him in some twisted way into a rokurorubi himself. Like Tora, Orochi had been “rescued” by the Unknown Circle with a promised cure for his condition, instead forced to become one of their magical supervillain leg-breakers by channeling his newfound hunger for flesh and souls against their enemies. So when Tora learned of this, it was all to easy to convince Orochi to leave the Unknown Circle to join her Carnival of Killers.

Powers/Abilities:

An olympic-level athlete whose flexibility and contortionism is enhanced by the yokai essence possessing his body, His main power is the ability to stretch and elongate his neck to extreme lengths, becoming more flexible and durable as he does so. Also wears a horned helmet of unknown material as an additional weapon and to protect his head.

So, Roku was another original member for the Sideshow that I decided to revamp as a villain, but he was always meant to be the rubber man in the circus aesthetic. Honestly, I went through a few different ideas for rubbermen because I didn't just want a generic elastic character for the series, I wanted his elasticity to have some sort of hook or limit to make it stand out. As you can guess by his origins, my inspiration came from Japanese myth utilizing a creature called a rokurorubi, which is an evil, female Japanese yokai whose most prominent trait is its ability to stretch its neck to great lengths. Having the elasticity limited to just the neck like some sort of metahuman giraffe seemed like a freaky way to do a rubber man while also finding unique ways to make it powerful.

But man, figuring out Roku's origins was tough. I mean, I had his basic origin figured out from when he was going to be a hero that I liked enough to carry over, but figuring out his reasons for joining a supervillain team like the Carnival of Killers was tough. Ultimately, when I made the Human Volcano a metahuman liberated from the Think Tank, it gave me this idea that since Roku's original are magical in nature I could do the same for him and have him be a former member of the Unknown Circle, which is the magical Think Tank in my universe. I've been wanting to build on them more anyway to match the heavily developed Think Tank at this point, so it all worked out.

Hope you guys like this new Sideshow Villain! Let us know with a comment below!

Sideshow: The Greatest Superheroes on Earth © NRG Comics

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Art by Danilo Cassonato