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So, once again I'm going to be using my Artistic License column to tell you about something I'm working on. I did this, years ago, with a project called "Gladiators" that I totally failed to stick with. I also announced HeroBlog here, and I've managed to stick with that pretty well.
Recently, I got the bug to do a comic of my own and, of all the ideas I've had over the years, only one kept coming back to the front burners of my brain as something I'd really like to do. I first conceived this project as my personal vision for DC's Legion of Super-heroes, so you could say this is yet another Legion column but it's not, exactly.
As I conceived it, the Legion was too small. My idea was to have dozens of Legion Outposts throughout United Planets' space, staffed by squads of Legionnaires, and eliminate the (as I see it) stupid rule about duplication of powers. They always made an exception for Superboy and Supergirl, but there was no exception for a Brainy Boy and Brainy Girl, so it's a racist, exclusionary policy that actually weakens the mission! HA! Anyway, I think it's wasteful to toss out good characters just because they duplicate the powers of another member. With the Legion spread across the UP, you'd have the need for as many qualified Legionnaires as possible and if that means recruiting seven Braalians or Carggites, so be it. While I would, given the opportunity, expand the Legion to the size of an army, I would never, ever want them to be a true military force. The Legion Outposts would be large space stations, and would be research stations, as well as staging points for the Legion.
So, that's where this all began. I made notes, and tossed them aside. I'm never gonna get hired by DC to write or draw the Legion. Then, a few months later, I hit upon the idea of working this concept in with my own "universe". This was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and the project I was working on, then would have been called "Powers", but someone else published under that title before I ever got the chance. It evolved into Gladiators, which never went anywhere, but always, set way in the future, was this super-team called "Ad Astra".
Ad Astra means, literally, "to the stars" and it makes such a good title and name for a super-team, I cannot conceive why it hasn't been used before. I planned to set the story more than a thousand years in the future of Gladiators, but that never went anywhere. As I thought about it, the idea for Ad Astra fit in with my evolving HeroBlog universe even better, and so I started working on a way to tie the two together.
Then, a couple of things happened. I got the itch to do a comic about the same time as I discovered Google SketchUp and the little, flickering, nearly burned out "IDEA" light came on over my head and I began to see how I could make reusable models and work them into a comic. This was especially handy with something like Ad Astra, because there would be lots of space ships and other sci-fi gadgetry that I might want to feature over and over. Being, basically, a lazy bugger, it appealed to me.
So, I worked and I worked with SketchUp all summer and I got pretty good with it. Good at making it do what I wanted to do, anyway.
Well, I launched Ad Astra a few weeks ago, beginning with a history lesson. I'm telling the history of the planet Atlas, following the "Exile Event", which occurred or occurs on 12 AUGUST 2119. On that day, the demihuman overlord calling himself "Magister" took over and threatened to destroy Earth's space elevator. While Magister really hated the elevator and other examples of high technology, he never really intended to destroy it, the threat was a lure for Earth's super-heroes. He had a spell prepared to eliminate his opposition for all time and he needed one of the major supers on hand for the spell to work. As it happened, he got the "most key" member of the supers community, Apex, the 170 year old "superman". Apex's powers made him nearly impossible to kill and his aging was so slow it was hardly noticeable, even after 150 years in the spotlight.
But, Magister was lazy . . . sloppy. As a demihuman, he had extraordinary powers and he was never patient with the kind of meticulous research needed for working real magic. He mistranslated the ancient spell and misunderstood it's purpose. The spell, in the original K'nuum script, called out to the universe to test it's children. Using Apex as the prime exemplar, the spell select alien "exile worlds" as testing grounds. The example I've used in the early Ad Astra strips is Atlas, a world with approximately 6 times Earth's gravity.
It isn't just superheroes who get exiled, villains, are taken, as well. Also people who've never used their powers in a fight, and some who were close to expressing their powers, but never had. The transition to the exile world triggered them all and once transported, a curious thing happened. Not one of them could mentally form the intent to return to Earth. Even those who'd traveled in space before, or whose powers should make the trip as easy as a jog around the park. The spell had done its work, the testing had begun and no power in the 'verse could alter it. Like it or not, they were stuck there.
I haven't made a full list of Exile Worlds, because ideas are still coming to me. The way I'll deal with it is simple, as I think of one, I'll introduce a character from that world, or we'll go along and discover it, and make first contact.
With Atlas, everyone who was transported there fell into the came "power class". They were the "bricks" and "flying bricks". The strong men and women, the tough ones. The bulletproof people. But, because they don't all get that strength from muscle and bone, the effects of the oppressive gravity are more pronounced on some, than others.
The University is a large, mobile space platform, built and paid for by Ad Astra Industries, whose main concern is interstellar faster-than-light communication using tachyons. The school is run by two retired super-heroes, survivors of a lost universe, whose powers will not let them die. Rather than succumb to stifling boredom, they choose to build something that will help the people of the galaxy and will help perpetuate the values they have always upheld. Ad Astra University is a school, in the sense that it dispenses knowledge and provides a place for research in medicine, technology and science. One of the goals of AAU is to bring the scattered human exiles back together and to find Earth. Earth, you see, is quite lost. Few still living have first-hand knowledge of Earth and they can't form the intent to look for their home planet, because of the spell. Their children are under no such compulsion, but they lack the knowledge to find Earth. Nobody thought to bring along detailed star charts.
Ad Astra is also meant provide a basis for understanding and cooperation between the various human and exotic races.
Your hosts, at Ad Astra are Paul Chandler, Dean of Students and his wife, Cassandra Chandler, President of the University. Paul, who sometimes goes by the name "Mega" and Cassandra, were both members of the super-team called The Guardians, based on a parallel Earth which was destroyed. They later formed a new Guardians team based out of Los Angeles, as chronicled in HeroBlog. This is a shot of Paul and Cassandra in one of the conference rooms at Ad Astra. The Guardians' blue "astrojet" and a portrait of the original Guardians team can be seen on the wall behind them.
They don't look bad for a couple who've been married half a millennium.
SketchUp is such a wonderful tool. I love how you can paste images on the "walls" of your models, like hanging a picture.
When I am done with the history lesson, in a few weeks, we'll meet three children of Atlas. The first is Nick Childress, a young man with great strength and a reasonable degree of resistance to injury, who goes by the nickname "Ajax". He is a second year paragravity engineering student at Ad Astra University. Nick is from a "grounder" family, meaning they cannot fly. They form the largest class on Atlas and have often suffered discrimination and limited opportunity due to their inability to defy gravity. Nick is planning to change that.
As you can see, Nick wears a distinctive belt, called an "atmosfield" belt. An atmosfield is a specialized paragravity field that holds only certain molecules, providing breathable air and comfortable temperature and pressure for the wearer. This field is selectively permeable and, as a safety feature, repels noxious chemicals, making it ideal for rescue crews and the like. Nick has added a feature that will become standard issue. He calls it the "flypod" and it's attached to the back crosspoint. The flypod modulates the paragravity field to produce a propulsive effect, identical to that used in flight packs and reactionless drives. Nick hopes to outfit every grounder on Atlas with a flypod, one day.
Next, we have a daughter of Atlas. A peer, actually, styled Lady Ardath, at present. Her name is Ardath Antares and while she's a child of privilege, she wants nothing more than to be an old-style super-hero. She's chosen the name "Galaxia," for herself and has had many "costumes" made. She is fond of the classic colors and reds and blues feature strongly in her wardrobe.
Galaxia draws from many sources. First of all, she's my Supergirl, obviously, and her costume reflects my favorite Supergirl outfit. The name comes from a character in our old Guardians team, as does the white hair and the color scheme, though the current Galaxia's colors are drawn more from Apex than anyone's.
Her other name, Ardath Antares, was inspired by an idea cooked up by the daughter of our great and beneficent taskmistress (that's you, Sheryl), when Sidra sent me some character ideas for a team of kid supers. One of the characters was named Ardath, and for several years, the character who became Galaxia was (in my head anyway) named Sidra Ardath, a brunette who called herself Starlight. Well, everything evolves, or whatever, and so as Starlight became Galaxia, the white hair seemed a natural change, because of the old version. I came up with the idea of the "star clans" and I like the name Antares, so Sidra Ardath became Ardath Antares. It's kinda traditional for supers to have alliterative names, so it works on that level, too! And, that's the rest of the story . . .
Galaxia is the classic strong-guy, in smoking hot girl form. She's the most powerful Antares in two generations, and has the full Apex package, as well as the energy projection the star clans inherited from Jason Chandler (Paul's brother, Wildstar. She's strong enough to throw a battle tank......on ATLAS (remember, 6X Earth gravity) and she can fly at 70% lightspeed. She can withstand almost any impact, and can turn most energy weapon-fire. She also has hyper-senses that allow her to "see" across enormous distances and in spectra normally invisible to humans, even Atlasians.
She is as confident as any member of her class, on Atlas, but her first time away from the homeworld finds her a super-powered fish out of water.
Next, another daughter of Atlas, but with a twist. I mentioned that Atlas was harder on some than others. This girl is one of those. Her strength is barely sufficient to survive on Atlas and, even then, she suffers from what Atlasians call "grav sickness", not really a disease, but a syndrome which afflicts a small minority on Atlas. It's kinda like chronic fatigue syndrome and it works like this. Suppose you live in an environment where your muscles and bones aren't strong enough to support you. You either adapt or die. Your mind has the power to support you, to keep you alive, to keep you strong enough. So, it does. Basically, it's crippled telekinesis, which is used, from early childhood, to lift and support every molecule of your body against the drag of six times Earth's gravity. On Earth, you probably would have been a flyer, but on Atlas, all you can do is just barely get by. You're tired all the time. Your mind is tired, all the time. Most people with grav sickness, by the time the story begins, will have moved to Antaeus or one of the orbital habitats where they can live under modified gravity conditions.
Some could never afford to leave.
Her name is Celia Vasquez and she's a maid in the service of the future Duchess Antares, Lady Ardath Antares. Shanghaied into going to Ad Astra with Ardath, she makes a startling discovery when she enters a low gravity environment. She can't keep her feet on the floor. Or her head off the ceiling. Nick Childress adjusts a flypod belt to help her with the adjustment to the new conditions. As she learns to control her power, she learns that she can do more with it than just levitate. At the periphery of her senses, she can feels the tachyon flow that star pilots call "starwinds", the FTL energy flows that AstraCom uses for interstellar communications. Eventually, she will learn to ride the starwinds and fly faster than light.
Her costume is one of the designs I developed for Galaxia, which works because in the story, she borrows it from Ardath, when they're forced into action on the way to school . . . but that would be telling.
There are more characters coming and you can see some of them on the Cast page for the web comic.
Of course, as they develop into a super-team, Ad Astra will need villains and I have a few ready to show, here.
From the top, Styflos is the cousin of the exotic (not alien, they're "exotics") super-hero Ragnar, who will play a part in Ad Astra. Ragnar was intro'd early in HeroBlog. Styflos is, like Ragnar, a genetic throwback, but he's more of the totalitarian dictator type, than the psionic strongman Ragnar is.
The D'jinn is just a crazy slasher/killer, who can turn to vapor when he needs to.
Lord Dagon is also an exile worlder, he's the leader of a world populated by mutated Dagon clones. He's your basic evil overlord type.
Shadowmane is just a cool name, and I always liked shadow-casters, so I came up with him. I don't have a back story on him, yet, but he's the uncle of a student at Ad Astra, Seth Shadowmane.
Malus is the great destroyer. It was he who destroyed the Overguards and, presumably, slew the sentient quasar that powered them. He's back and he's pissed. He's evolved out of my idea for an evil Guardian of the Universe, a la Green Lantern.
The rest form Sanction: Extreme, you could call them my Fatal (Four). Uurgu is big, dumb and strong, and shoots plasma out of his chest port. Krieger is a cyborg war machine. Glamour projects frighteningly real psionic illusions. Positron is composed of antimatter. His suit is made from a for of exotic matter that doesn't react with either form of matter.
As I was working, I naturally conceived a few spin-offs from my earlier columns. As Ad Astra is my take on the Legion, and Sanction: Extreme is my Fatal (Four), it occurred to me to work the League of Super-Assassins into the thing, somehow. Thanks to Jeff Valentine who suggested the name "Exterminators" for the group.
The League was intended to be the pastiche X-Men to compliment the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, but I never felt they worked in that way. The parallels are too broadly drawn for my taste. So, I present, for the first time ever, the Exterminators!
Filling in for Prof. X and/or Jean Grey, Brainburn, the psionic terror! In honor of my favorite torrent site, I named the one with the tail, Demonoid and tried to give him some of the little green demon's looks from the logo. Also, as originally conceived, Nightcrawler was a "demon".
From the left, Ironside, an iron golem from the Magic War of 2069. Balor, an alien octopoid with an evil eye, named for the Celtic monster. Balor takes a host, to help him get around, and just to be generally creepy. Windscream combines Storm and Banshee, she can shout up a tornado or wail out a hurricane. And the little guy, Bearcat, as uncuddly as any furry critter could be.
There will be others. And some non-villainy type stories. I promise to keep the time travel and spacial anomalies down to a minimum. I promise space ships and ray guns and aliens and adventure and cute chicks and questionable science :P
Oh, and for the Legion fans like me, there won't be any teleporting across the galaxy and that kinda thing. That kind of deus ex machina bugs me, so I won't be using it. All the interstellar teleport, wormhole, star-gates, etc. were shut down by the time-quakes of the 2090s.
Well, that's another one down, what next . . . I'll let you know, next month.
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