Champions -- again?

I have to admit, my gaming has been in spurts -- I do several days if not weeks of  Skyrim, then move on to something else.  Right now, its been Champions.  And I've been finding out things -- finally.

I tried the other day a freeform character -- something you can do if you have a Gold (paid) account.  I was inspired by a costume contest that wanted to do various earth themes.  I tried to make an ice/earth weilding characte, essentially a tank, with some of both.   It worked surprisingly well and I got it up to the low teens relatively easy.  I teamed with a friend for a while , being sidekicked.   She was playing a pure ice character it seemed, and was doing a massive ice bombardment when I was doing an earth eruption via the Tremor powr.  It made a hell of a mess.     One of our missions was saving a bank -- between the two of us we were taking the villains down, but must have been doing a lot of damage "saving" the bank.

I played around with a British themed character, but could never get it right.  Costume is good, but the name and powers never fit.   One approach had a toggle buff power that was all oriental symbols & guestures.   Not something that makes sense on a character like that.

I'd tried psychic  characters before , but then never really felt good.   The canned TK is more of a healer and less a fighter.   They've plenty of Telekinetic powers though.  I hit on combining Force Field and TK on a Freeform.  I decided to use an old CoH character name I'd used -- Psideways.   That's him in the donut above.  Not the same as the one in Faultline.  

Playing Psideways has been a blast.   The first day I got him up to 18 -- Today I got him up to 20, and he looks to be on his way to becoming my main character.  I even go 6 covers done for him so far.  I'll be posting them this week.  I'm hoping to get him into a particular supergroup, once I finally link up with the leadership in game -- and it has ties to City of Heroes.  More on that if it goes through.

I'm seeing a lot of Superman clones in the game.   It never fails.  Every superhero movie and they come out in droves.  Strangely enough they are doing the CLASSIC Superman with the briefs and yellow belt, rather than the all blue outfit with the red belt.   Old habits die hard I guess.

One thing -- I've not yet even placed in a Costume contest.  Not even an honorable mention.  Despite several attempts.  I did win some trivia questions -- done to pass the time while they judge each category.  Enough to get 26Gold on a lvl 9 hero.   I just wish I knew what was doing wrong.  I think my costumes are good but apparently not the judges.