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That was meant to be a one-off, but recently, I got the idea of doing something more with it, turning it into the first of a series, or rather, limited series. I asked Jeff to come up with some ideas and he picked more Nova covers. And, of course, this meant creating soe new characters, as stand-ins for the villains in those issues of Nova. So, for Powerhouse, we get Flatline and for the Condor, Silver Condor.
I admit to revising the text on #2, because Condor, in the original, says he's "swoop down" when he's clearly going up, in the shot. That kinda thing annoys me. But, what started this whole thing was a story I had thought up, about 30 years ago. It was when Jeff and I were always working and reworking our Guardians characters. I had this idea where Mega would take a test flight of some new ship and get snatched by aliens through a wormhole. Imagine my surprise when I saw Farscape . . . Anyway, I had this image in my head, from all the way back then . . .
The idea formed the kernel of a story that I've decided to do as 4 limited series covers. It goes like this....Mega, Paul Chandler, had always believed he was strong enough and tough enough to handle anything. He'd fought bigger men, and other things, than himself and always come out on top. Then, he fought Kodiak. In their world, all superpowers come from exposure to the Starfall, when a mysterious luminous substance rained down on Earth and triggered the development of super-normal powers. Adults exposed to the Starfall sometimes developed powers, usually of a very limited nature. A very few, men and women who already thought they were more than human, developed really impressive power levels. Kodiak was one of these men. Already a strong, tough fighter, the Starfall made him more. And when he fought Mega, a boy of 19, who thought he was the strongest man in the world, Mega was beaten bloody for the first time in his life. It's with his confidence shaken that he takes the test flight in the Dart, a little test ship with a new hybrid reactionless drive. When the ship goes up, the drive signature trips an alarm on a cloaked alien ship in orbit and his ship is sent down a wormhole to another star system. His ship is immediately captured and, when it's discovered he's not what they were looking for, he gets dumped into the dungeon, which is were the cover to #1 comes from.
In the second issue, we learn that the prisoners in the dungeon are awaiting execution in the arena. The arena grounds are protected with energy dampeners and gravity amplifiers, to keep the more... energetic... competitors from just jumping out of the arena and fleeing. In addition to these, I have two more covers for both these fake mini series, and I had the idea to do companion pieces to the covers, by doing the last page of each issue. I have sketched them out, but not worked them up, yet.
Joe L. Singleton
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