Next Month

Coming next month will be issue # 4 of the comic and also an announcement of something new that I'm doing with the comic.

Stayed tuned!

Overview

I have some news to share about the comic coming this weekend, for which I needed to write and overview of the comic and what its about.  After writing it, I thought I should share it - it might put the comic in more context as to the story I'm telling:

When a mysterious prehistoric threat named G’Ion Detheon returns to Earth after a 6,000 year exile the last active Greek God, Diodarius, causes the gathering of young powerful mortals, who band together and become known as the Ultra-Elite Team.  Titan, Crossbow, Cat, Magno, Phantom and Master Mind must learn to work together to become the heroes the world needs in order to defeat a threat that they know almost nothing about.

Titan Through the Years

A little trip down memory lane!  I was in 5th grade when the idea of the characters started to come to me.  The first one I created was Titan, but he looked a little different then - here's how he looked the first time I drew him:

Of course that was the best I could do at the time - artwork wise that is.  In my original drawings he looked this way for 2 years, when I decided to modify his costume, and came up with this:

While this was starting to look more like what we are used to now, it wasn't quite right and the following year I came up this this costume:

This is the costume that I settled on and basically the one he has warn since.  As I mentioned, for over 10 years I hadn't drawn at all and while I had the idea to launch the comic in 2012, I didn't actually attempt the drawing part of it until 2013, below is the first time I tried to draw Titan in over a decade:

Clearly I needed some practice - so by the time we get to 2018, he's looking like:

I'm happy with the way he turned out over the years!

Personalities

While most of the world still doesn't know my comic exists yet, I thought I'd write a little about the founding members personalities:

Titan - he is set up as the leader of the team, but as time goes on he realizes that Crossbow is really the co-leader.  While he sometimes seems to not know what is going on, Titan uses the ploy to misdirect people as to how focused he really is.  Titan seems to actually always know what is going on and while he's not afraid to take chances, he also always has a trick up his sleeve or some secret he's keeping for one reason or another, he is never one to show his full hand at any time. 

Crossbow - she is quickly proving herself as a the co-leader of the team.  She is a take-charge, no-nonsense leader who is not afraid to do what it takes to get the job done.  She also had trust issues, in that she doesn't trust the rest of the team yet.

Cat - he is solely on Earth, and part of the team, looking for action and adventure.  He has no concept of friendship or human relations and so far has not exhibited much interest in learning, causing him to come off as somewhat distant and cold. 

Magno - prior to being a hero, he was best friends with Titan and followed him onto the team.  Magno has serious doubts about if living the life of a hero is right for him, but for now he's going along with his friend. Magno is generally friendly, but fairly reserved when dealing with the others.

Phantom - he is having the time of his life being on the team.  He has magic powers, not all of which he's mastered yet, and he's having a great time learning as he goes. Phantom is very friendly to others and sometimes seems playful in nature, or it could be he just has a unique way of viewing things.

Master Mind - She has incredible power, and while is not afraid to use it, she insists on only using her powers to help others.  She is friendly toward the rest of the team, but runs a little on the shy side.  

Careless Error Leads to Name Change

When I was doing issue # 1 I was very focused on the heroes, but not as much on the villains and that ended up causing a little problem.  When I originally created the character (pictured below) I created him with the name Whirl, but when I was doing issue 1 I had forgotten that and used the name Twirl, which was also the name I have the copyright for on this character - so a careless error on my part led to me changing the name.

One of the things that I've really enjoyed about doing this series is getting to see my characters in full color, they way they always looked in my mind.  As a kid when I created them, I drew a lot of the original images with crayon.  As I got older, I used markers (which fade badly over time), but the colors were never really bright enough, or clean enough, for me.  The first time I got to see them in full, crisp colors I was very happy.

Of course the one exception to this is Twirl, he's the only character that I actually think looks better using marker, I haven't been able to digitally duplicate what I can do with marker when I color him in.

Debut Image Original Art

Back when I had the idea to do something with my characters, I hadn't drawn them in over 10 years - in fact I hadn't drawn anything in over 10 years, so I was a little rusty, at some point I'll do some posts showing how my artwork changed over the years.  

It was in 2016 that I started to actually draw issue # 1 and that is when I created (what I'm calling now) the debut image - when everyone got to meet my characters for the first time.  It had been a long time since I drew all of my founding members together.  Here is the image as I originally drew it.

Luckily for me, I was able to fix Phantom's face in the final ink job, but for the most part I'm pretty happy with the original pencil art.

I don't recall how long it took me to ink it, but it was the first panel for issue one that I colored in digitally.  It took me 6 hours to color it.  To be honest, it was quite a bit of a learning curve to do digital coloring.  Now I can color and letter a panel in about 15 minutes.  Below is the final edit of this image:

Issue 3 Deleted Scene

Not much to share in terms of deleted scenes, in fact there was only one deleted one for issue 3, it was inked, but I didn't go any further than that.

This was right after Titan and Crossbow kissed in the future. I actually wanted that to be a fairly short scene as I didn't want to give away too much of any future story line.  When I was putting the words in I realized that I would have to had say more  than I wanted to, so I decided to just cut this scene.

The other alteration, while this is not a cut scene, was some dialogue altered from the original script.  When Crossbow and Diodarius are going up Mount Olympus, the original script had him telling her who the Emperor at that time and her not knowing enough about history to know who that was, then he went on to mention the 207th Olympic games and that is when she figured it out.  As I was doing the panels though I thought that would slow down the flow of the book and wasn't really needed.

Issue # 3

Issue # 3 is now live!

Issue 3

Albany Comic-Con

Today, June 3, 2018 is the Albany, New York, Comic-Con.  

It will also be the first time that my comic might get some exposure to the comic community - I've been allowed to put fliers out at the show, so fingers crossed that both the fliers are noticed and people like the artwork on it.

I'm attaching on here:

Issue 3 - Coming Soon!

Issue 3 features Crossbow and from the looks of this picture - she might be getting into more than she bargained for!

Find out when Issue 3 goes live at 6 PM EST on Tuesday, June 5!