Arilou

Or you know, do both. Like they've been doing since launch, and like just about every MMORPG does.

LOTR actually has both very specific cultural references (although Th Hobbit has many moe of them) there's a couple of times when Tolkien's "narration voice" explicitly compares things to the "real World"

It gets less comon as the show goes on though.
And even so there are still a ton of cultral references there: Farmer, innkeeper, steward, king..

You do know the implications of what you're saying, right?

And how a piece of fiction without cultural references would be completely incomprehensible, right+

True, and I'd expect it would get here at some point.

However, that does NOT mean it will be done by I20.

You're confusing the greek "tyrant" with the roman "dictator", the latter was indeed a temporary appointment in terms of crisis (Caesar made it permanent) the greek tyrants were simply people who managed to grab absolute power. (Usually by quite informal means, eg. bribery, good speaking skills, and friends with big muscles) they tended to not formalize their positions (with the exception of Syracusae)

Legal according to what law? There's no indication that it was undemocratic. (although that is an absence of information more than anything else) And even if it were illlegal, it would not be undemocratic because of that.

The Sec. Council presumably speaks with the voice of their respective governments. True, the security council in itself does not have that kind of power, but the governments that make it up can easily grant it those power, should they desire to.

The way I understand it...

Arachnos was the "original" villain group, founded in Italy some time in the early 20th century.

The 5th Column is a separate, fascist group, created in 1938 by Requiem (should probably be noted that Requiem is italian, not german)

The Council is a separate group (that split off from Arachnos) led by the Centre.

Quite recently (with the help of time-travelling PC's) the 5th column was overthrown by the Council, the vast majority of it's leadership simply switched sides (no one knows the Centr'es powers, but he can apparently be VERY persuasive)

Now, to further confuse this, for a while the 5th was controlled by the Reichsman (alternate statesman from Axis America Earth) who usurped control from Requiem. Requiem seems to be the Nictus' main contact on earth (and it's probably time-travelling Requiem who introduced Romulus to the Nictus)

Now, for a while the 5th column was undergroundm but recently the Reichsmann was broken out by sheer stupidity, and he apparently resumed control, which made most of the 5th column rank-and-file join up back with him.

However, the entire leadership (Requiem, Nosferatu, Vandal, Arakhn, Burkholder, etc. etc.) seems to have stayed on with the Council.

Only now there's apparently some kind of split between these two too, one tip mission mentions that Dirge of Entropy (Requiem's Nictus half) has some kind of plan, and the Centre apparently wants to stop it.

Now I'm going to have to make an AE arc featuring Debuffaloes.

Not to mention that "actual tyrant" can easily be taken to mean "absolute ruler" ala. the greek roots of the word

Malta (as they see it) are trying to protect the world (or at least America) from anything that threatens it: Communism, superpowered beings, whatever. They're clearly a vigilante group. They don't want to take over the world, they just want to eliminate any threats.

They're clearly vigilantes, as they operate outside the law to try to eliminate threats to it.

They also seem to work with more radical and vigilante-ish people (like Officer Freymuth)

They're not in it for the money (rogue) or to take over the world (villain). They're here to (as they see it) punish bad guys.

Speaking of which, Sky Raiders is another rogue-ish faction.

EDIT: My understanding is that the KoA are related to Malta in that Malta tends to hire them. They're a mercenary org, so they don't really have any loyalty except for that to a good employer.

I think they'd be closer to vigilante than rogue, actually.

KoA on the other hand, could totally be rogue.

The most common "end points", cited tends to be A) Gwen Stacey dies. B) Two relatively contemporary storylines involving drugs (one with Speedy, one with Harry Osborn) both of which were printed without the Comics Code seal.