Character Creation Question

On Webtoons, where you can also find the comic, someone asked me a question, basically asking if the characters were all original ideas.  I did answer him on there, but I thought I'd talk about that.  

My characters: most of the characters in my comic are all original creations, there have been many sources of inspiration for them over the years, but I'll save that for another time, for now through I'm going to just talk about those characters that are pulled from other sources.  

The Gods of the Earth, when I started my comic, I wanted it to tie in with mythologies from around the world, something that has fascinated me since I was a kid. I was already familiar with Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, but over the years I've expanded my reading to include many other pantheons. Because these myths and the ancient sources they're based on are in the public domain, I was able to draw inspiration directly from them rather than from modern adaptations. When designing each god or goddess, I first looked for surviving physical descriptions in ancient texts, as well as sculptures, carvings or other historical artwork. If none existed, I researched the culture (clothing and material history of the people who) worshipped them and designed the character in a way that I felt fit that historical setting. Whenever possible, I try to stay close to the ancient sources, but where those sources leave details unknown, the final design is my own interpretation.

Alternate Earth 8, these are actually characters created by my brother when he was younger, but I use with his permission!  We decided together to put them on an alternate earth in the comic and he picked the earth number he wanted them on.  Whenever they appear, it is with my brother's input and guidance.

Fairy/Folk Tales, sometimes I pull inspiration from other sources, again all of these sources are in the public domain as they generally date back to around the 1300's and 1400's.  My character of the Blood-Red Man is an adaptation of The Black Man fairy tale.  My character of Danaë is my adaptation of the Daughter of the Sun fairy tale.   There are other characters that will be introduced soon, I call them "The Cousins Three", they are an adaptation/modification pulling from two fairy tales, the first is Jean de l’Ours and the second is Palace Under the Sea.  

Monsters/Creatures, the last category are the monsters and mythological creatures that roam around in my comic, with more appearing all the time since the Pinnacle Forest was destroyed and the creatures were set free on the Earth.  While some of the creatures were created by me, the majority of them come from centuries of stories from various cultures around the world.  All of them are in the public domain and I try to learn about them and keep the feel of the creature as close to the original stories as I can.

Everything else are totally my creations!

Book in Progress!

One of the things that I'm working toward is writing an encyclopedia for the comic.  That is part of the reason that I'm redrawing my entire catalog of character.  I'm using the new drawings for the individual UltaPedia pages, but the artwork will ultimately go toward the new book.

Here's a mock-up of a random page in of the book.  This is unedited and it's using old artwork, but I wanted to get a feel of how it looks.  

In reality the book probably won't be published until near the end of next year.

Issue 52

The newest issue is up and here's the link: Issue52

I hadn't realized I missed two months!  I knew for this year the book was going to be bi-monthly, but somehow time got away from me - but I'll try to do another issue in June!  I've already started working on it!

Here's a panel from the issue, just for fun:

 

Sneak Peek

I've been busy working on stuff for the comic and while I'm not ready to share a lot yet, I thought I would give a sneak peek of some characters that will be making their debut later this year!

The Creation of Power Boi, the True Origin

In the latest issue we explore the origin of Power Boy, and you can read it here if you'd like: Ultra-Origins 3  

I won't give anything away from that issue, but the origin here was a long time in the making.  As I mentioned in the past, I started to create the first characters for my team when I was in fifth grade, but he came a little later.  I didn't get the idea of creating Power Boy (yes, how I originally spelled the name) until I was in eighth grade.  

In fact, here he was the first time I drew him!  While his costume changed a lot from what appears in the comic, some of the elements are still there.  The color scheme and the glider wings remained the same.

My struggle was with his origins.   When I first started his story, I originally had him as another childhood friend of Titan and Magno and Titan also gave him his powers.  Not too impressive or original, but good enough for eighth grade!

The problem arose when I started to write the first stories with him.  Originally had had him come in and become a love interest for Crossbow, creating a love triangle with Titan, Crossbow and himself and while I wrote several versions of that story, I wasn't happy with any of them.

Then I decided to stay with that idea, but added a level of complication to it and make him a bisexual character, still in the love triangle, but now open to other dating options.  Again, I wrote several versions of that story and again, I wasn't happy with any of them.   In total I must have written over twenty versions and couldn't come up with any that I liked and decided to ditch the whole love triangle/dating element of his character.    At that time, I left his origin intact; and honestly, I didn't think much about it over the years.  

Flash forward to when I was getting ready to launch this comic.  At that time, I revisited every single character and looked at the costumes, their origins and what role I wanted to each to play in the series and basically mapped out a ten-year plan to each character.  

That brings me to Power Boy.  I was never that happy with the stories I had attempted with him and the origin I originally came up with just didn't work for me any longer as that was basically the same origin as Spark, Magno and Mango 2.  I wanted to do something different, but I wasn't sure what. 

The first thing I did was revisit his orientation.  Where I had left off with him he was bi, but I decided to make him gay in this series and that's when I changed the name to Power Boi.   I also started to get the idea of the origin that was used in the issue (sorry, but you'll just have to read it) and I started to work toward that, but in all honesty it took me a few years to sort that out and finalize a firm plan for what I had in mind. 

When I finally had a everything set the way I wanted to, I started to draft this issue.  This is actually the February 2026 issue, but I started the draft of it last summer and knew I wanted it to fall after issue 50 of the series.  It actually takes place at the same time as Issue # 51.  

Check it out if you have the time...the last 3 panels set the stage for something pretty important in the comic. 

Advanced Ultra-Pedia

This year will see the release of Advanced Ultra-Pedia pages for comic universe!  These are encyclopedia pages for all of the characters in my comic.  

Here is a link if you want to check them out: Advance UltraPedia

Right now, there is only 1 page done and posted in the album and that is for Titan.  I'll also put his page here:

Several years ago I did Ultra-Pedia pages for my characters, but I did them in 2019 and 2020 and there is has been so much revealed about the characters since then, the pages were very outdated.  Also, at that time I was new to the comic (having only launched it in 2018) and I lacked the skills to create better pages.  In addition to that the program I used locked the pages I did in, so I couldn't ever edit them, now I'm doing it in a way that I can modify them as needed.

Status at this time: only Titan is 100% done with 55 others are written and getting edited now and will be posted in the next couple of months.  There are 8 more written, but being held back as it would give away too much story and they will be posted later in the year.  Then I have over 100 more to write, so definitely more to come!

Issue 51, Director's Cut and Year-End Thoughts

First off, issue 51 is out and here's a link to it: Issue 51

For Year-End thoughts, it was an interesting year for the comic.  I had been going strong and being almost monthly for a while, but then with the injury to my arm I couldn't put out any new issues for close to 2 years.  That definitely destroyed the momentum I had built up in the series.  It was frustrating at the time as I suspected that would be the case, but there was nothing I could do about it.  Even now, being monthly again since March, the readership is way down and I'm hardly getting any interaction on any platforms.  I know it will take time, but I miss where it had been.  Hopefully it will get back there some day.

This year was interesting, I introduced my comic to TikTok and I've enjoyed that to an extent.  I also played with doing 1 AI image of each of my characters and that is what I've shared on TikTok.  While I've gotten some good feedback, it has also been very frustrating, there are a lot of negative voices on there and most of the people on there just see one image on their page of a single character, but they don't look beyond that and they don't see the 'whole' picture of what my universe is about.  Those that do have been wonderful to talk to though; I've had some good and interesting chats with some other creators on there.

As for the future of the comic, it is still going strong and will for the foreseeable future, but it's going to be a little less than monthly.  I work a full-time job and the comic takes up most of my weekends with writing, drawing, coloring and lettering as well as prepping the promotional posts - and while I do enjoy that, it has not left me any time to do any other creative things that I want to pursue - some are even related to the comic and I haven't been able to do them as I've been stretched too thin time-wise. 

I've decided to stress less about being monthly and make some time for myself to do other things.  The comic will still come out, but sometimes it might be bi-monthly for much of 2026 as I work toward getting other things accomplished.   I'll announce more when the time comes. 

Spoilers Ahead: Ok, this won't really give away what happens in issue 51, but it will hint at some things and reveal a bit.  When I was writing this book, I had originally planned a longer conversation between Titan and Magno II, but decided to shorten it as I felt it would have dragged out too much in the comic.

The scene that I really changed from the original concept was the scene with Phantom.  When I wrote the issue, I had it where he returned to the headquarters with Water Wonder and then they talked about the spell, which I really wanted to include in this issue.  However, there is an underlying story with where Master Mind was buried that is part of a bigger story arc that ties in with Phantom and I decided to alter the scene to still include the spell, but not have him return to the Headquarters yet.

There are also two cut scenes and the reason I cut them is because they were humorous and I wanted this issue to have a more serious tone with the funeral for Master Mind.  The first scene deals with David, Crossbow's brother, who learned that he gained powers.  I was going to have him testing them out.  I won't reveal much as I plan to use that scene in a future issue.  The second scene cut deals with Phantom.  With what happens at the end of the issue with Titan and Crossbow, I was going to have Phantom overhear them and comment on it in a funny way, but it didn't really fit the tone. 

Well, that's it for the director's cut!  More coming soon!