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No time to do my regular column this month. The job I
use to pay the bills and keep me in style to which I
have become accustomed has been taxing my temporal
resources the last week or so. In place of my usual
stuff, I thought I'd preview the cast of a comic
project I'm working on with a couple of friends.
Way back in the last century, I had a chance to do a
comic of my own, but the timing was all wrong and the
deal fell through. This was 1996, just about the time
the comic market took a dive due to the speculator
bust. I had twelve penciled and inked pages, seven of
which were lettered, when it happened. Those pages
have spent a lot of time on a shelf, since then, but
the project has always been in my mind.
Recently, while excavating through a small mountain
of papers, I discovered the manuscript for the last
several pages of that first part of the story and got
the bug to do something with those pages. At the same
time, I've made a new acquaintence on the web who is
looking to do some inking and was looking for a
project for us to work on together. So, I decided to
pitch the idea to him and my friend who does a bit of
writing, to help me over the rough spots.
For about a year, now, I've had a Yahoo group
dedicated to this project and the world in which it's
based. If you're interested, you can find it here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gladiators2003
Originally, the series was supposed to be titled
"Powers", but I've lost that title, due to delays.
When it became necessary to find a new title, I went
with "Gladiators", based on the title of one of the
seminal works of "super-hero" fiction, Philip Wylie's
"The Gladiator", the direct inspiration for Superman,
right down to the blue-black hair.
I wanted a title that would allow us to tell any kind
of story, without specifying a particular character or
group, and I wanted something that would make sense in
the Golden Age, as this first story takes place in
1940.
When I began, I had no intention of recreating the
JSA or Invaders, I started, in a lot of cases, with a
character name and a rough idea of powers associated
with them. I took, as a naming convention, the names
of fighter planes and bombers, for many of my
characters. From there, I designed characters that fit
the name and powers, I tried to design costumes that
were possible, and practical, in 1940. Only two of
them are based on the circus acrobat sort of costume
made popular by Superman.
In my world, things are a little different than in
most comic book universes. In the world of
"Gladiators", there were no American costumed
super-types until late 1939, when Richard Kincaid
decided to become a living symbol of individualism and
freedom, and took the name "Liberator", following a
disastrous trip to Germany to investigate the
superhumans he'd seen in newsreels and the cover of
Life magazine.
My thinking here is that the Nazis would tend to
dress their superhumans up in costumes inspired by
Teutonic mythology, so when a large red-headed soldier
developed electromagnetic powers, he was a natural to
be styled "Donar", after the Teutonic thunder-god.
At one point in his history, Richard Kincaid,
Liberator, wished for nothing more than to find other
people like him, people who had been hiding their
superhuman powers all their lives. His trip to Germany
taught him that simply sharing this distinction,
superhuman powers, was not sufficient to make "all
super-men, brothers". The realization that others, in
America, might be inspired to take on such destructive
roles caused Kincaid to seek out an American
mythology, something to symbolize the sort of rugged
individualism he admired and sought to model to the
world. That's when his eyes lighted on a garishly
colored flimsy pulp magazine. In the cover, a man in
blue tights and a red cape was leaping into the sky of
a clean, modern city. Superman. This would become his
model, a piece of new American mythology.
Designing his own costume in such a way that it would
stand out, he consciously chose a color scheme that
would not identify him with any particular ideology or
nation.
Following his appearance, others appeared. Some with
inborn powers, like Jameson Thorne, the Oklahoma-born
Choctaw Indian whose speed and stamina had caused him
to be nicknamed "Mustang", in his youth.
Some with powers conveyed to them by mechanical or
"magical" objects, like Gold Star and Magneton.
And others, without any powers at all, carrying on a
tradition as old as the United States of America, The
Hawk.
Of course, the new super-heroes aren't limited to
American shores. Across the pond, England's first
publicly-known superhuman wrapped herself in the Union
Jack and took the name of the stalwart British fighter
plane, calling herself Hurricane.
And, with heroes in the world, there are bound to be
villains, as well, such as the terror of the American
West, El Tormento.
In the story we're working on, the main villain of
the piece is another man, transformed by a magical
object into the total opposite of Liberator, who calls
himself Dominator.
The story brings most of these early heroes together
to form the first super-team in their history.
In addition to the Yahoo Group, where you can see
more of my work and notes on this project, some of
Jeff Valentine's stories are there, as well. One of
the other contributors on the project, the other
artist, that is, is Jesse Hansen aka: Cadre, you can
see his work here: http://www.cadre-art.com
See ya next month!
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