Marvel OC: Timeo de Santis (Earth-ARV42)

Decades ago, while the US Government attempted to replicate the formula of the Super Soldier Serum, HYDRA seemed to do the same. For this, they hired Maria Vaselli, who seemed to know the procedure, where she witness the test to Tadzio de Santis. The experiment didn't really end well, with Vaselli defected to the United States instead. The real reason why it didn't work was that Vaselli's formula was deemed imperfect by herself, and due to this, she was taken sanctuary by SHIELD instead. During her work on SHIELD, she eventually perfected her Super Soldier serum, hoping to keep it for anyone deemed worthy enough to be injected with it. Unfortunately, 2 years following the Great Avengers Purge, Vaselli was killed during William Stryker Jr.'s attack on the now-former Camp Lehigh, with a potion of Vaselli's Super Soldier serum being stolen by Orchis. Moments before, Vaselli had actually recorded a warning message that had the Super Soldier serum was given to the right person, he must take responsibility to defeat HYDRA and Orchis. She even warned about the existence of Tadzio de Santis, who she saw as equal but twisted, and a mere monster. The recording was kept by SHIELD, but it was eventually showcased to Moijira upon learning about the nature of Vaselli's Super Soldier serum.

Years later, Orchis decided to use Vaselli's Super Soldier formula stolen from SHIELD as part of their Super Soldier experiment; from this, the mutant, Moijira Maulana (designated as Weapon I who would would later went on as the second Patriot), received his mutation's change instead. Realizing that the Super Soldier program can't be continued any further, Tadzio —now the Grand Skull of HYDRA, and the sworn nemesis of Captain America (Scott Summers)— decided to take an alternative: to focus on adopting Orchis' technology instead.

Of course, Tadzio's son, Timeo de Santis, was no exception. Hoping to life up his father's name, Timeo, who is also a child prodigy, became a subject to cybernetic augmentation in a similar manner to Bastion, becoming the Grim Skull of HYDRA. Despite not inheriting the Super Soldier power from his father, Timeo saw his new role as an opportunity to hunt down the very mutant that Tadzio saw as the one who took the last potion of Vaselli's Super Soldier Serum... Moijira Maulana.

And Timeo sees the hunt as the game, and an honor. And he will not stop until Moijira was killed in his hand.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

While the Earth-ARV41 version of Moijira (as Rasuk) got a locust-themed villain, this ARV42 counterpart got something worse: a villain themed after a natural predator of the spiders: WASP.

So... the 400th post, eh? Let's get started with my new Marvel OC, Timeo de Santis! Of course, while I referenced him as the Grim Skull, really, I haven't figured out the actual official codename for this guy. If you guys have another idea for the name, lemme know!

Yes, I indeed adopted some parts of the 1990 Captain America movie here. Maria Vaselli and Tadzio de Santis are now native to Earth-ARV42, but instead of coming from the WWII period, they existed since the late 20th to 21st century. Might referenced her later on my ARV42 Patriot bio.

Of course, we got Tadzio de Santis as the leader of HYDRA, but instead of becoming the Red Skull, he becomes something more: the Grand Skull. Stole the idea from Bucky Barnes from the 6160 Ultimates (2024) series. Not pretty sure how would I depict Tadzio here, but I guess it's like Red Skull and Megatron combined into one.

Now, for the suit design, I wanted to make Timeo's armour mirrors ARV42 Moijira's design, but for the worse. The primary inspiration for this was the Yellowjacket's unused concept arts from 2015 Ant-Man movie; one from Andrew Kim: https://andrewkimart.artstation.com/projects/81lLO and the other one from Andy Park:

While I haven't even draw the ARV42 Sentinels yet (let alone the actual ARV41 version of those), I thought that would be hella nice to see some influences from Bastion, being a mechanical antithesis to mutants. Also, I thought giving him a halberd would be a nice touch, to stimulate the "false death angel" image!