U-Teens

I'm hoping to have the next issue out by, or on, next weekend, so I thought I'd take a look at the U-Teens and how they came about.  The next issue coming out is the U-Teens Special # 1.

First up is Spark, the younger brother of Titan.  When I originally created Titan he didn't have any siblings, but when I found out that I was going to have a younger sibling in real life I decided to create one for Titan as well. For many years I was a only child and had actually created my characters, well started to anyway, during that time.  For a while when my mom was expecting we thought she might have a girl, but that wasn't the case, but that is why the original design of Spark had a more feminine look to the collar and shoulder area.  When my brother was born, I basically just changed the head of Spark, but continued to draw him the same way for years.  In 2012 I decided to make the neck and collar more masculine.  Below are some drawings of Spark that I did; from left to right they are the first time I drew him, a picture of him and Titan together from around 1992, and then when I drew him again in 2012 with the updated collar.

Next up is Magno II, and the picture below is from the first time I drew her.  While her costume had a few tweaks over the years, it is very similar to how she was originally created.  While she might not be playing such a large role right now, she will in the future.  Being the younger sister of Magno, I took a bit of a different approach with portraying their relationship - in contrast to Spark and Titan who truly get along, the two Magnos are not close and Magno II often finds herself being ignored by her brother.

Next up is Power Supreme, this is a bit of an interesting character for me.  He is one of the characters that I originally couldn't remember his backstory in 2012 when I was prepping the series and so I decided to create a whole new origin for him, which includes him being a protege for Master Mind.  Below is how I first drew him and his costume hasn't hardly changed at all.  His costume actually was inspired by a very baggy hand-me-down shirt I had at the time.  Originally I called him Power Plus, but opted to change the name for the series.  

Lastly is Phantom Queen, and the truth of her creation and character.  The truth is I have no idea what I'm doing with this character.  Near the end of my original stories that I was doing I thought it would be cool to have a female Phantom character, so I created Phantom Queen and basically stopped there - with just the knowledge that she was Phantom's brother.  I never wrote any stories with her, I just drew her on the posters I liked to do at the time.  In fact it wasn't until 2012 that I decided to make them twins and have their origins tie together.  Honestly though, I don't know what I'm going to do with the character, whereas I know the fate of the rest of my characters, but for her future it's a blank slate and I'm making it up as I go along. Below is the first time I drew her, and actually the only time I drew her by herself until recently.  

As for the idea of them forming the U-Teens, a sub-division of the Ultra-Elite Team, that was never in the original stories that I did, the idea came to me around 2015 when I wrote the issue that introduced them and even when I was writing that the idea of doing a special on them hadn't really crossed my mind at the time. When I was working on the book in late 2018 I knew the story would be coming up, so I decided to write the special (that will be out next week) and the only draft of the story was in my head, I never wrote it down.