Roulette
44 years ago - Veronica Sinclair is born in Monte Carlo, the daughter of Stephen Sharpe, the infamous Gambler, and Rebecca Sinclair, a cousin to the Prince.
37 years ago - 7-year-old Veronica's father Stephen Sharpe flees Europe to escape a hit placed on him by a Swedish crime boss.
32 years ago - 12-year-old Veronica is sent to the Université Notre Dame Des Ombres by her mother, not wanting her family associated with her father Stephen Sharpe after his time with the Injustice Society.
28 years ago - 16-year-old Veronica leaves the Université Notre Dame Des Ombres for America where she reconnects with her father, Stephen Sharpe, helping him build the first of his underground casinos.
26 years ago - 18-year-old Veronica goes to the University of California Berkley to study statistics. She starts building her betting algorithms, allowing other students to bet on everything from amateur sports to politics.
23 years ago - 21-year-old Veronica leaves school when her father Stephen Sharpe is arrested by King Faraday, Christopher Chance & Cole Cash. She begins moving his assets, rebuilding his gambling empire in Abu Dhabi.
14 years ago - 30-year-old Veronica uses data analysis of Henry King’s powers to create persuasion field technology, allowing her to control fighters and build her underground fighting tournaments.
7 years ago - 37-year-old Veronica contacts Ted Grant as he competes in local fighting promotions, slowly mind controlling him into her underground powered fighting tournament.
6 years ago - 38-year-old Veronica's father Stephen Sharpe escapes from prison and joins her in managing her underground fighting tournament. He pushes for larger events, putting Ted Grant against Baran & Selinda Flinders. Ted is severely injured, leading Black Canary & Sandra Wu to shut down the entire operation, with Veronica framing her father.
4 years ago - 40-year-old Veronica's persuasion field technology is adopted by the Golden Dragon, using it to expand their human trafficking operations.
2 years ago - 42-year-old Veronica's new fighting tournament is found by Black Canary. Veronica does everything she can to manipulate her to compete but she resists, shutting down the persuasion fields & freeing the mind controlled fighters.
1 year ago - 43-year-old Veronica attends the Monkey Fist Tournament, handling island security. Cassandra Cain single-handedly beats her entire security force.
It's very fair to say that while the superheroes set the tone and the style of the world building, the actual events that actually happen are almost always driven by their rogues gallery. You do often see comics where they try to introduce the idea that the superheroes are going to be proactive but it seldom works, it's very much the bad guys who are responsible for setting the stage for the drama that unfolds. Some villains are better at it than others but occasionally you find someone like Roulette, who was so clearly purpose-built that she slots into the world of superheroes like she was always meant to be there. She's a surprisingly minor character for how important she FEELS.
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Roulette's Comic HistoryRoulette first appeared in JSA Secret Files #2 in 2001, setting up her first story in JSA #28. She was a new creation of series writer Geoff Johns and artist Derec Donovan. She's a very deliberate attempt at a modern take on the classic Golden Age villains of the Justice Society, characters like The Wizard or The Fiddler of The Gambler, single concept villains who were built around a single core concept. The operator of a meta-human fight club, she'd challenge the Justice Society but would continue to appear through the series as a recurring villain. In later stories, we discover that Roulette is in fact a legacy character. We're introduced to her grandmother, Debra Sinclair, who also went by Roulette when she was an enemy (and femme fatale) for the original Mister Terrific, Terry Sloane. This was used to set her up as a personal foil for Michael Holt.
Roulette has gone on to appear in several other series both pre and post new 52; Justice League, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Catwoman, Batgirl, Birds of Prey... because she so clearly establishes exactly what sort of story is going to be told, she becomes incredibly easy to just plug and play with practically any superhero, even though some definitely do fit into her world of meta-human prize fighting better than others. A lot of the success of the character can be attributed to her really eye-popping design. She's been interpreted in live action several times, and even had several of her own episodes of the animated Justice League Unlimited. |
Our Roulette StoryRoulette occupies a very interesting corner of the world, because what she's actually doing is so well-defined. She's running an underground fighting tournament. This automatically suggests an environment well-suited for very specific characters who are built around the idea of fighting competitively, most notably Wildcat and Black Canary. She fits that world SO well that we're actually focusing her stories on those characters rather than the entire Justice Society.
We also found an cool way to implement her backstory, where in canon she is the granddaughter of a retconned golden age villain. Similar gambling-themed Golden Age villain The Gambler actually does have a legacy in modern DC in the Injustice Society character Hazard, and we found that if we instead connected these two a really compelling history between the two characters arose. And of course, finally... We also used Roulette as part of the our Monkey Fist Tournament story. Rather than being a participant, she's managed to become part of the organization of the event. She'll be handling security, and it will be really fun to watch Cassandra Cain wreck her whole show single-handedly. |
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