Clutter!

 I decided to invest in some miscellaneous crates, trash cans, etc to add a bit more life to the tabletop, and wow am I glad I did. Here are some examples, positioned against the rear faces of last post's buildings to make a proper alley.

These are are O Scale train accessories, mostly Downtown Deco, but the barrels are JV Models and the tarp-covered bits are Bar Mills.

More buildings

 Don't have space for a proper layout, but I grabbed some pics of all four buildings so far. Really pleased how they look together. 

First Building for 1930s Chicago

 One of the driving forces for this whole superhero project has been my interest in local architecture, and the idea of creating a custom cityscape for the heroes and gangsters and cops and nazis to fight over. It's taken a lot of trial and error, but I've finally figured out a building process I'm happy with.

The buildings are based on pictures I take around the city, scaled and adjusted in photo software and then printed on foamcore at Fedex.

I cut them out and glue them to a collapsible carton (like you'd use for a sixpack of beer bottles). The bottom of the carton has been sprayed black for a roof, but I may add cardstock for a better fit.

The facades are not glued, but magnetized, so I can have multiple facades for each building depending on the specific setting of an encounter, e.g. fancy vs rundown, commercial vs industrial. The tops of the foamcore are edged with brick-colored play-doh, smooshed into an approximation of coping tiles.

The goal is to have about a dozen buildings of varying heights, one to four stories, a few double-wide, all collapsible so as to fit a whole board's worth into a single case or backpack. I also have O-scale accessories like trash cans and streetlights, 1/56 scale cars from 1st Corps, and eventually some road tiles to put it all on. I also have plans for magnetized signs and awnings for further variety, more on that as it develops.

Playtest

 This project has been resurrected in the past few months, and while none of the miniature aspect has progressed enough to merit posting, I have started dabbling with adapting a rules set for the role playing. I ran a playtest with my gaming group and got some pics in between all the adjudication and note-taking...

Godlike

Godlike is the title of a table-top roleplaying game about superpowered soldiers in a WWII setting. It's been very influential in planning this whole project, although I will probably use its less-constrained successor Wild Talents for the actual rules.

Godlike is also an apt descriptor for these four, probably the most physically powerful characters that will exist in this campaign. Hercules might be available as a playable character since superhuman strength is his *only* power, but the other three are just as strong and can also fly and do other stuff as well, so they are all strictly NPCs. Fighting even one of them would be an epic encounter...

Bonus: another Superman vs Namor staredown vignette, using custom Chicago scenery (more on that later)...

A wizard is never late, nor is he early...

...he arrives precisely when he means to.

Here is a quartet of golden-age magic characters, arranged in order of ascending sartorial flamboyance:

The first is Doctor Occult. I could not find any actual minis of him, but since he's just a dude wearing a fedora and trenchcoat, I painted up a heroclix "Maggia Goon". He's definitely reaching for his mystic talisman, not a handgun.

Next is Zatara, golden-age father of the much more famous Zatanna. He's a heroclix Zatara, but fully repainted and with a bowtie I made from paper.

After him is Sargon the Sorceror, not to be confused with the ancient kings or fascist youtuber named Sargon. Another converted heroclix, the original model had an absurdly tiny head, so I replaced it with a plastic medieval Arab head from a historical kit.

Finally we have the Ancient One, washed and highlighted but not converted at all. The character was not invented until the 60s, but would have existed in the 30s, much like Howard Stark and Vandal Savage.

two more NPCs: Mr. President and friend

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a scientific advisor, Howard Stark.

Stark's kid won't invent the Iron Man suit for another three decades, so I wonder what's in the red suitcase?

Howard is (perhaps obviously) a Tony Stark repaint. FDR is a Professor X mini, with hair added and face resculpted a bit.