What's in a Name and Setting the Pace

In creating my comic, I did come across a few challenges.

The first was the name of the team - in my stories (and my heart) it the Ultimate Team - that was always what it has been since I created it.  All of my original notes and artwork had that on it as well.  However, something that was unknown to me - sometime since I last dealt with my creations- over 15 years prior (before picking them up in 2012) Marvel Comics had created their Ultimate line.  

Now, as I've come to understand (and if I'm wrong, someone please correct me) their line is not group name but more of a way of telling stories and getting to the essence of their characters, whereas my was the actual team name.  To be honest, I was a bit hear-broken as I didn't want anyone to confuse the two or to think I was choosing a name to mimic an established concept, so around 2015 I changed the name of my team to the Ultra-Elite Team, although I did copyright the Ultimate Team as an alternative name for them, I don't plan to use it as much - although it might sneak into the stories here and there.  

The other challenge I faced was "where to start the story?"  I thought about starting at the beginning, maybe the characters' origins and going from there, but I found that too off-putting.  When the world is getting to meet my characters for the first time - I want them to (hopefully) like them and want to learn more - and I thought that perhaps starting with unknown characters' origins might be a bit much for characters that nobody knew.  

Instead I decided to start the story about two weeks after the Ultra-Elite Team formed.  This way people are coming in right from near the beginning, but not getting bogged down with a lot of back story.  As for origins?  Well, yes they are written - my plan now is to do them starting in issue 13, I'm hoping by then that people will be liking my characters and anxious to learn more.

To do this I decided to keep issue 1 a little light on story (something I debated a hundred times over and still not sure if that was the right decision) and just kind of introduce my characters to the world.  Starting with issue 2 we delve into the stories deeper and we hit the ground running with that one - with at least one new character introduced every issue for a least the first two years.