Our first ever annual is out – and here’s the link: Annual 1
A little behind the scenes: When the last issue came out, it
was the April/May issue and the annual was planned to be the June issue, but my
brother and I were in a car accident in May (not our fault) and that pushed
things back quite a bit and as a result there was no June issue.
In the past I’ve done a few posts about my creation of the
characters and I want to do that here for the characters that appear in the
annual.
Power Boi
Now Power Boi’s origin hasn’t been revealed in the series
yet, although I’ve dropped quite a few clues about it, although I’m not ready
to reveal it fully yet. I originally
created him when I was in eighth grade with basically the same powers and a
costume very close to what he wears now.
Power Boy (the way I spelled it at the time) had a different origin, in
the original version he was another really good friend of Titan’s and got his
power through him, and he was straight.
I toyed with the idea of having a love triangle between
Titan-Crossbow-Power Boy and I wrote several drafts of that storyline, but it
just wasn’t working well for me.
Then I got the idea to add a layer of complexity and made
Power Boy bisexual and again I wrote several drafts, but nothing in that
storyline worked for me so I dropped it all together and then made him a gay
character. He was actually the first
LGBTQ+ character I created. Of course in
my comics you’ve already read about Phantom, who’s bi and Water Wonder, who’s
gay, and while both of those characters were created before Power Boy, it
wasn’t until I was prepping this series more than five years ago before I
decided to make them queer characters.
It was also about that time that I changed the spelling to Power Boi as
well.
Swol
As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I left high
school, got my first job and started college I kind of moved away from my
characters, although they never left my head I didn’t have the time to work on
them. In that time I created about five
new characters, but didn’t really do anything with them. I only created what
they looked like and their powers; I created no back stories or real names.
One of those characters was named Rapture, and there he
sat on that drawing for years when I really didn’t know anything about
him. When I was prepping the series and
got to how Power Boi was going to fit into this series I knew I wanted to have
a boyfriend for him and I didn’t want it to be Phantom as I had other plans for
him. So I looked at Rapture, a blank
slate, and worked up a back story for him and the rest kind of wrote
itself. As for the name, well there
wasn’t any real reason for him to be call rapture, so a few months before his
debut in the comic I changed the name to Swol to reflect the times and his
powers do make his body swell up.
One of the things that will play out is that there is a
contrast between Power Boi/Swol and Phantom.
Power Boi and Swol are looking to be a committed, monogamous couple;
whereas Phantom knows that his powers protect him from getting any sexually
transmitted diseases, so he is perfectly happy with the hook up culture.
Edge
Edge is a character I created in high school. At the time he was just more of an
acrobat/street fighter who joined the time and while I liked the costume I
created, he didn’t play a very big role in my series. By the way, his costume is the exact same as
how I created it, I never modified it from the first time I drew it. The last time I drew my characters in
college, I realized that I made a mistake with Edge, I drew the torso like a
male figure, but the hips and legs like a female and had him in more of a
feminine position, both of which were unintentional. As I looked at the drawing I decided to make
him a female-to-male trans character.
At the time Edge had long hair, but as I became more
aware, or perhaps more educated, I learned that most FTM trans people kept
their hair on the shorter side, so I gave Edge a haircut and he was ready to
go!
Major Hole and the
DLHS
Major Hole was created when I was prepping this series a
few years ago and I had no real back story for him from back in the day,
although in this series he is moving up the ranks and playing an important role
with the Preventers, and now we learn he’s part of the DLHS as well (not sure what
that means? – please read the annual).
As for the DLHS, I originally got the idea to do the
annual in late summer of 2022 and that’s when I started to create the
characters. I actually created two
additional members, but decided to hold them back for now and use them in the
future. When I originally wrote the
first draft of the annual the team’s leader, Limp Lisp, was going to be killed
by Vitikus, but I changed my mind and didn’t kill him off.
Gay Titan, Magno
and Crossbow
One of the long running subplots in the series is
Phantom’s infatuation with Titan, who is totally CIS straight. In order to get over this, Phantom decided to
find an alternate Earth where that Titan was gay and that is who we meet in
this annual.
The idea for these characters came to me in October of
last year and originally I wasn’t sure where I was going to use them, but then
I decided to bring them into the annual.
Vitikus and Arson
Parson
Vitikus came to me last summer when I was writing the
annual and originally he was going to be the only villain in the story. However, as I started to draw the annual
(which I started in late April of this year) I came up with the idea of the
Arson Parson (truly, I only created him about three weeks ago) and here we
are.
Both of the villains are CIS straight characters and in
fact are the only two non-queer characters in the issue. That is why in the opening panel you see
Power Boi on his phone with his cousin (Warmth), but you don’t see her in the
issue. I originally had a back and forth
scene with the two of them, but decided that the only straight characters in
the book would be the main villains, so the cousin has to stay “behind the
scenes” as she’s also straight.
I hope you like the issue and I’m already working on the
draft for next year’s annual!
