WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: 120 heroes and villains in one PDF, retailing for $9.95. Every character has game stats and art by Dan Houser. This was part of a promotion where people purchased slots for their characters, Mr. Houser drew them in the style associated with the ICONS rulebook and game stats were published for them. In addition, several of the ICONS characters from the corebook are also provided, such as The Whisper, The Hangman, All-Star and All American Girl. A whole slew of standees are also present, which should cover every character in the book as well as some blanks.

WHAT WORKS: If you're a fan of cardboard style standees in your game, having a bunch of new ones to play around with is always fun. Some of Mr. Houser's character designs are really great, providing some very interesting character images.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Backgrounds are not present for any of the characters. Vital statistics such as height and weight are likely inaccurate as well, as a particular height and weight shows up a LOT (5'6" and 140 lbs) even when it seemingly makes no sense at all in context of the picture . Many of the Aspects are not defined (with only Epithet, Catchphrase, Social, etc.) listed, making the lack of background for several of the characters even worse.

CONCLUSION: While not a bad idea, the execution is flawed. You don't really get 120 ready to use Heroes and Villains, instead getting a few mostly ready to use Heroes and Villains and a bunch of guys you still have to use a little creative work on to make table-ready. While the standees, character images and what you can glean from the concepts aren't bad at all, be warned that this is not an "out of the box" product.

These reviews should be changed. Its NOT $2 anymore- so reviews saying how great it is for ONLY $2 should be gone. Its is now $9.95. It is still a good product. Good- not great. 3 stars Why? They have a spot for the heroes real names, height, weight, first appearance,etc. 90%+ of the heroes names are listed as unknown- so why have it? 90%+ of height/weights are identical. A small skinny hero is 5'6 and 140 pounds. What looks like a large dinosaur lizard hero is- 5'6 and 140 pounds..... "First appearance"- I guess its suppose to be cute- like comic issue Avengers #27. Its not, the numbers just go -"wave zero 025" and just go in order.... Some heroes ahve a catchphrase- either nothing is listed or several have the same thing- "Dont run."....... If you are going to list a catchpharse or epithet- at least list something original. If the things I listed were fixed Id give it a better rating.

Definitely worth 2 bucks. Dan's artwork has grown on me. (As a decent amateur artist myself, I confess that when I originally saw his work I used to think I could do better. Whether or not that is true, as I said his art has grown on me. It is whimsical, seems to capture for me the spirit of ICONS and at the very least gives you an impression of what the characters might look like.) Tons of characters. Some are obviously better than others (much better), but again for 2 bucks there is more than enough raw material to out right use or modify where needed. Thanks Adamant, ICONS, and Dan for this and all your projects which up till has consistently displayed much more love for the game than for the buck... and as such has produced a lot of bang for the buck. I sing your praises with epitaphs such as "The hands down best beer and pretzels game out there" and "One of the best simple games out there". PROS: cost, breadth of characters, Dan's artwork, bonus characters in back of the book CONS: consistency of creativity of characters (nature of the beast of a fan generated work), some formatting glitches (for example: are all the versus villians... I was unclear. Only a few had villian written under determination)

What’s not to love about a product that gives you 120 superhero and superhero illustrations by Dan Houser with ICONS stats? Most of these heroes and villains were submitted by ICONS fans in response to the offer printed at the end of the ICONS rulebook, though some are, well, iconic characters from the ICONS products themselves. On the negative side, however, the product offers nothing more than the stats and illustrations—there is no background information on any of the heroes or villains, even those who get a full-page treatment. (In the preview page on Dan Houser’s PhotoBucket account, 1/2 the page is illustration and stats, and 1/2 the page is background and story information.) That kind of “fluff” would make the product significantly more useful.

Cool array of heroes and villains for ICONS rpg. Useful as NPCs or pcs for a pickup game. All art by Dan Houser is cool and fits the genre perfectly. Can't beat the price either.

Awesome product! This is a truly unique because it was not done by one writer but by over 20+ writers. It really is fan generated. As an added bonus you get the Heroes in the rulebook and of different modules with complete stats including new artwork.

Dan Houser's artwork has always been a joy. I love the fun style he uses. In this product, here really comes into his own. The artwork is absolutely awesome. Reverant and Hangman was breath taking as well as many others.

For anyone playing ICONS this is a must have. Not only for the characters, but to see how wonderful the ICONS character engine is. The writers really shine with their imaginative use of the powers mixing to create truly memorable characters.

All I can say is "Wow!". Between the great art and really clever characters, I cannot believe this was less than 2 dollars. If you own ICONS, there is no reason not to pick this up. A fantastic value, plus All-American Girl!

For the low, low price of $1.99, there are dozens of ready to use characters for the ICONS roleplaying game. I have loved Dan Hauser's art from the get-go, but in this character pack you can really see a progression in his style. For example, in the original ICONS rulebook there is a drawing of the Revenant on page 7 that, while nice, is very much improved and detailed in this new character pack. That is not to say that the characters in this pack are do-overs of previous characters. Quite the contrary..there must be close to 100 character cards in this pack, presented as ICONS cards, 2 per page for the first 45+ pages. There are then several pages of cutout standups (much like in the original Marvel FASERIP box sets), and the final 25 pages or so consist of full character sheets for many of the characters drawn in the ICONS core book such as All-Star, All-American Girl, and the Mighty Saguaro.

All in all, I can't think of many RPG products that I've been as happy that I purchased than this one. The characters are all fresh and colorful and described in mechanical aspects, allowing me to come up with whatever type of backstory I want to incorporate them into my games. Like I mentioned earlier, I like Mr. Houser's art, and to see that it's only gotten better and better is an added plus.

And all of this for less that $2. I still can't believe it...

The only minor nitpick I have is that in the villain section of the character pack, the Real Name/Determination/Stamina section is hard to read being black text on a dark blue backdrop. Switching the font out with a lighter color to improve the contrast would help this set of older eyes. But this is a minor critique in the face of what is otherwise total and complete praise of my purchase.

I really appreciate what Adamant is doing with their new pricing structure. I would've bought this product at significantly more than the asking price and been just as happy with it. That it was only $2, means that this went from a merely great purchase to an epic one.