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Way back, in the mists of time...
Before the internet made long distance phone calls and
letters obsolete...
Back in those days, we'll call them the 1970s and
early 1980s, my friends and I didn't know what fandom
was. We didn't know about APAs and Fanzines. We were
the only comic fans we knew, at the time. So, in
addition to reading our comics and arguing about who
was the coolest X-Man, we thought about doing our own
comics.
My first attempt at creating characters were pretty
lame, but slowly, painfully, I learned. Most of my
early efforts were collaborative. Me, the wannabe
artist and my friend, Jeff Valentine, the wannabe
writer. The first character we worked on was one of my
own creations. I'd been rolling the name around trying
to find a character to pin it on, for years. I'd first
come upon it reading Jack Williamson's BROTHER TO
DEMONS, BROTHER TO GODS. It was perfect for a
superhero: ULTIMAN.
The first incarnation of Ultiman (this pre-dates the
Big Bang character by many years, circa 1978) was a
teenager, abducted by aliens and transformed into a
superhuman. He had superstrength, telekinesis and
telelpathy, plus a hidden alien starship as his base.
Being raised by aliens, he was out of touch with
human interaction, so he had two friends helping him
fit in and understand the world in which he lived.
What writer/creator can resist including himself in
his earliest stories? I don't think I've ever met one.
So, Ultiman's friends were comic versions of me and
Jeff.
Ultiman's original costume represents my attempt to
marry different costume styles together and it's just
horrid. Not the worst design ever in the history of
spandex, but close. Fortunately, it didn't last long
and we realized we didn't need Ultiman, and started
coming up with ideas for how our doppelgangers could
get superpowers. Jeff came to school one day with a
sketch for a character called Quasar, who used energy
storing armbands and gems on his belt and costume. A
few days later, Quasar appeared in Marvel Two-In-One
with the Thing. This began our experience with people
telepathically stealing our ideas. :P
Since Marvel was using the name Quasar, I came up with
Blazar, after reading an article in Omni or something.
The first original character I devised for myself was
called Magnus, a sort of Cosmic Boy/Magneto
clone...with a costume I thought was cool at the time.
It wasn't long before Blazar's name changed again,
this time inspired by the character Derek Wildstar, in
the American TV version of Space Battleship Yamato,
which was titled Star Blazers, here. I liked the name
and it stuck, as readers of my HeroBlog will know. My
character changed as well. I became less enamored with
point-and-shoot powers, preferring the hands-on
approach and switched my character to super-strength
and indestructibility. Invulnerability is for pussies!
Of course, I needed a new name and found one...Mega.
At this point, Mega's costume changed, with my tastes,
but this is one of my favorites. I like the simplicity
of it. Wildstar's costume remains my favorite design,
ever. It represents the first wrap-around design I
ever did, which I continue to prefer to this day, and
it has a boldness that is integral to the design,
regardless of the colors. I planned, at one time, to
use a version of this costume for a different
character, in white and gold, and it worked extremely
well.
It wasn't long, before we began integrating our
friends into our mythos. One of the guys I went to
school with, Bob, wanted a character who was a
body-builder type. Bob was about 5' 6" and a
weight-lifter. He would have made a perfect Wolverine,
if we could have done the hair. His idea became Titan,
a sort of Hulk/Hercules type.
Bob's brother, Chuck, had an interest in the occult,
so I designed a dark, mysterious style outfit for him.
Chuck chose the name Mantra, and he became our team
sorcerer.
The team grew and we included other friends. Richard
became Firehawk, Roger became Corona. Our armored
Centurion was entirely made-up, since none of our
friend was interested enough in an Iron Man type
character. The girls we added to round out the team
are all entirely ficticious, except for Aurora, Mega's
girlfriend, who was based on my girlfriend Tammy.
Aurora had magnetic powers.
You may note a trend here. Many of the names we used
would later appear in comics as published characters.
That's understandable, we never published, but most of
our inspiration came from readily available sources.
Here's where it gets creepy.
In the center of this team illo, there's a character
called Galaxia.
Galaxia is a character I came up with late one night.
I sat up in bed, with the ideas fully-formed and wrote
for half an hour on a chalk board I had on the wall
next to my bed. Galaxia, and her brother Corona, were
the heirs to an alien throne. They fled their
homeworld to escape the invasion that destroyed their
palace and wiped out their family. Their powers were
the mark of royal blood, on their world and they'd
escaped to Earth for protection. Eventually there
would have been a story where our team, The Guardians,
went to their world and liberated it and there would
have been a big emotional scene were Galaxia had to
choose between becoming Queen, or returning to Earth
with Wildstar, the man she loved. <sniff>
A week or two later, DC Comics Presents #26 came out,
presenting the New Teen Titans...where Starfire, an
alien princess escapes to Earth from the clutches of
the Gordanians who have invaded and occupied her
homeworld!!! AAARRRGGGHH!!! They're in my brain!!!
You might say "great minds think alike", but I prefer
to think they used dark magic, sacrificing hundreds of
kittens and baby seals, to read my thoughts!
Ultiman would later factor into our plots that were
never published...or even illustrated...as our one and
only "cosmic" being. A human, born with a connection
to the infinite, he became the Ultiman and travelled
the cosmos. Mostly inspired by Jim Starlin's WARLOCK
and CAPTAIN MARVEL stories.
Yes, the power is green because of Green Lantern.
Also, it just looks cool.
Now, we have a team of heroes, but we need villains to
really drive a story, right?
Kodiak was one of the first villains I ever designed.
Originally, a big, burly, GRIZZLY ADAMS-looking guy in
buckskins, he evolved into this.
I still like this design, it evokes some of my
favorite costume designs. The original Sabertooth,
Timber Wolf and Dave Cockrum's Fang (from the Imperial
Guard).
Another early villain was Magma. I never decided if
he/she/it was human and turned to magma, or if it was
a magma creature. I just liked the name and the melty
look.
Originally a design for my friend Bob, he hated the
idea of being called Bobcat (a nick-name he'd been
tormented with in his youth) so I made him a villain.
Shorter than Wolverine, with clawed gloves and a mean
streak.
Two characters who have survived to appear in my later
work are our fire-and-ice duo, Icelord and Sunstorm.
Lyle and Kyle Bartholomew, brothers whose powers
manifested at different times. Lyle's powers
manifested when he was washed overboard in the Bering
Sea, while smuggling heroin from the USSR. Kyle's
powers blazed forth when he was electrocuted for the
murder of a bank guard, during a robbery in Miami.
(this was the 80s, when Florida still used the
electric chair, if my memory is not too faulty)
Of course, every group of villains needs a femme
fatale, we had Chrysalis. With the power to transmute
matter, she was easily the most powerful character,
good or bad, in our world. I always like this costume
and will have to find a use for her in HeroBlog. She
should be fun.
Last, and most certainly, least, is Battle Axe. I
don't recall how he came to be, but he's stuck in my
head as the flunky of Kodiak. I parodied him in
HeroBlog as the hopelessly inept Berserker. I redeemed
Berserker, recently, when I gave him a heroic death.
There were countless other characters, and maybe one
day I'll delve back into that well to bring them out
again. I've had so much fun doing this month's column,
I don't know how I'll top it. It's been interesting to
roll back the layers of dust and debris, to recall
from whence some of their characters spawned.
After years of self-redaction, I have managed to come
to terms with the fact that other people are going to
come up with ideas the parallel my own and that
there's nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing legal,
anyway. So, now I publish them in my HeroBlog and get
my characters and concepts out where they have some
protection under copyright laws. For what it's
worth...
See you next month!
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