Scandal Savage
64 years ago - Scandal Savage is born, the daughter of Vandal Savage.
56 years ago - 8-year-old Scandal is taken from her mother by her father Vandal Savage. She is placed under the tutelage of a cabal of the greatest assassins in the world.
50 years ago - 14-year-old Scandal finally defeats and kills her teachers, taking the Lamentation Blades for herself. She becomes her father Vandal Savage's most trusted assassin.
48 years ago - 16-year-old Scandal discovers that she has inhereted her father's healing ability, making her half-immortal. Vandal Savage subjects her to experiments attempting to isolate and replicate the effect. One of the scientists working on her, Niles Caulder, objects to her being used this way and tries to free her, the resulting explosion leaving him in a wheelchair. Scandal escapes him and returns to her father.
42 years ago - 22-year-old Scandal fails to assassinate one of the leaders of the Order of St Dumas. She is imprisoned in Belarus under a fake name. As a punishment, Vandal Savage does not look for her.
37 years ago - 27-year-old Scandal escapes her prison and kills her captors. She works on her own until Vandal Savage finds her, forcing her to return to him. Her trust in her father is irrevicably broken.
28 years ago - 36-year-old Scandal is subjected again to further experiments by Vandal Savage. She finally refuses, and fights him to a standstill. She leaves his service, working as a freelance information broker and operative.
19 years ago - 45-year-old Scandal is kidnapped by the Monkey Fist Cult and brought to their island to be tested. She and Sandra Wu escape together and fight their way out.
18 years ago - 46-year-old Scandal's location is exposed to Vandal Savage by Kobra. She kills the mercenaries sent to collect her, handing over Kobra secrets to S.H.A.D.E. becoming an agent.
7 years ago - 57-year-old Scandal discovers S.H.A.D.E's wartime records of Vandal Savage's children that were dissected in his effort to replicate his immortality. She helps fellow agent Thomas Tressler shut down the agency. While Tressler turns himself in to Argus, Scandal goes back to living on the run.
1 year ago - 63-year-old Scandal is tracked down by Vandal Savage's new assassin retainer, Lady Elaine Marsh-Morton, and injected with a nano-virus that will burn out her consciousness and rewrite her as a loyal follower within 48 hours. She escapes, and find her way to the Doom Patrol on Oolong Island, which is attacked by an army of Savages mercenaries. They hold them off, and once the virus is counteracted she fights off the rest of the attackers. She joins the Doom Patrol, where she first meets Kitty Faulkner.
Characters that were invented during DC's mid 2000s had a pretty rough shake. The stories being told were more about deconstructing the tropes of what had come before, and there wasn't a lot of room for building anything new. Still, some creators managed to innovate even in that enviornment, and Scandal Savage is perhaps one of the best examples. She's a character with deep roots in DC lore who was smashing barriers from her first arrival on page, and If she'd been invented in a different era, I believe she would have gone on to have a much bigger role DC's larger story. As it is, we get to build her into our world in a way that takes advantage of her fantastic potential.
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Scandal's Comic HistoryScandal appeared for the first time in 2005, in the Infinite Crisis lead-in series Villains United by Gail Simone. In it a group of five villains are blackmailed to antagonize the new Secret Society. When we first meet Scandal she's a pantsuit-wearing administrative assistant for the team's financier Mockingbird, but it becomes clear very quickly that she is absolutely not to be messed with. When they are all captured and tortured and fight their way out she more then holds her own... She doesn't just bite off Fatalities ear, she swallows it. When the team finally goes on the offensive and she suits up in a more traditional costume, she dons the Lamentation Blades, weapons that have been in her family "for a very long time". It isn't until we first learn her last name that we find out just who that family is.
The miniseries was followed up by Gail Simone's Secret Six, where Scandal continued to lead a small group of former/current villains banded together for survival. The strength of the series was Gail Simone's character work. We saw Scandal fall in love with the New God Knockout in one of the most prominent gay relationships in comics... which then pushed the envelope even further when it became a polyamorous relationship with another woman. Scandal has made appearances outside of the Secret Six comic, and even popped in here and there in the New 52 and beyond, but the bulk of her story comes from her original series. |
Our Scandal StoryScandal's whole role in comics was really built from within that one series which was pretty relationship driven, so what most people remember her for is as one half of a pretty ground breaking romantic partnership. What people often seem to forget is that she was also built in a way that sets her up to be by far one of the most badass fighters in the whole DC lexicon. SHe's an intensely brutal fighter with weapons that are essentially a part of her, who can heal all sorts of injuries thanks to carrying some of her father's immortality, up to and including regrowing internal organs. For all intents and purposes, Gail Simone managed to craft a completely unique take on Wolverine.
For our part, we want to find a way to really take advantage of the character here, using all the intriguing charater ideas that made her a mainstay in a long-running team book, but also taking advantage of her potential. That means giving her a story that puts her at odds with her father, while also building her up as one of the most dangerous people on the planet. Eventually, we want to find a home for her where she can thrive. |
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Scandal's CostumeScandal was introduced without any sort of costume at all, and for some time she was just fighting her way through armies of enemies wearing a pantsuit. When she finally changed into her fighting outfit (right in front of everyone, because this IS a comic from 2005) she had already established just how cool she was, so it was almost an afterthought. It IS a cool design, and it's one that stayed with her pretty much through all of her Secret Six run, so There really isn't much that needs to change. If anything, it might just be a little too generic to really make her an iconic character with her own unique silhouette, but that's probably just a task for some artist to really take her design and make her their own.
There was a brief redesign in the New 52 era, essentially trading her bare midriff for bare legs... It looks pretty good here by Argentinian Marvel artist Luciano Vecchio. I like how he plays up Scandal's Brazillian heritage and the shock of blue in the hair is a nice touch. I don't know if the actual costume is actually better, but it's a cool look. |
Scandal's RelationshipAs we said earlier, Scandal was really defined by being in one of the first really prominently featured gay relationships in comics. and we really wanted to find a way to do that again. We do, unfortunately, run into a problem when trying to include her cannonical wife, Knockout.
Knockout was originally introduced back in the Superboy series in the 90's as a sort-of villaness, sort-of love interest. She's a New God, a former Female Fury, and that presents a real problem for us. We try very hard to limit how often we introduce a whole population of super-powered beings, and the New Gods in particular are so powerful that we have put a lot of work into limiting how and how often we use them. Her role in this relationship aside, Knockout just isn't so dynamic a character that she justifies adding another New God to our timeline. We had a pretty interesting search for a new love interest for Scandal that involved a lot of feedback from readers. Ultimately we decided on Kitty Faulkner, a fan suggestion we wish we could take credit for, because it is honestly just perfect. |
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Scandal's FutureWhen looking for a role for Scandal to fill moving forward in our story, we almost immediately went straight for the Doom Patrol, since our version of the team has a long-standing connection with Vandal Savage, and bringing his daughter into the mix continues that connection even after the death of Niles Caulder. The new Beast Boy-led lineup of the Doom Patrol is meant to be a little more openly heroic, and having an unstoppable killing machine on the team really opens up the types of enemies they can go up against quite a bit. It also presents interesting challenges for her as she comes out from the shadow of her father and gets to decide what she's going to be.
Even setting all of that aside, She brings something the Doom Patrol just flat-out needs. They've always had one of DCs most unbeatable fighters in Elasti Girl, and now the new lineup has that with Scandal. It just makes sense. |
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