A few years ago I touched briefly on the origins of the series itself and I thought I would talk a bit about how all of this came about as we approach five years of the series being published.
These characters have been with me for a good portion of my life and I've put a lot of time and effort into their creation and story over the years, although some years I put more effort in than others.
When I was six I created the character that became known as Diodarius, at the time I called him Wonder Boy, but hey - I was six. For many years I created stories with him and started to come up with the rough concept of his children. Originally these stories were not the same universe as the rest of the characters, but I decided a long time ago to merge them together.
Now I went to elementary school in New York state where the school year runs from September to June and it was early June of my fifth-grade year that I had the idea of creating my team. At that time I had been reading comics from mostly DC and a few from Marvel, but I didn't always like the directions the stories went in, so I thought maybe I should create my own characters and decide their stories myself.
Now I'm sorry to say that I didn't keep records as to the exact date that the characters were created or even the order that they were created at that time, so I'm going off of memory here - but I do know that the first character I created was Titan. That same day I created Cat, Crossbow, Magno, Phantom and Mr. Roboto.
This kicked off the 'first wave of creativity'; there are what I consider four waves of my creations. The first wave of creation went from when I was in 5th grade to when I was in 10th grade in school. Now I created them around the first week of June, but I hadn't really drawn them yet. When school let out for the summer about three weeks later, my family and I headed to Lake George, New York (a resort town), for the 4th of July week. I brought some crayons, pencils and a pad of paper and I drew the characters for the first time in color. By this time I had created other characters too, but again - I don't know the order.
Now I did go on to draw many posters with my characters and I did date them so I can get a bit of an insight as to when some of them where created, using the day of creation for the original characters, we'll go from there.
11 months after the day of creation, I drew my first poster - by this time Diodarius was now tied in with my Ultimate Team comic! The other characters that I had created in this time were Vapor, Stellar, Spider-Star, Master Mind, Water Wonder, Frosti, Whirlwind, Electode, X-Ray-Boy, Axioppea, Savage, G'Ion, Coil, Whiz Kid, X-Over, Marmet, Lady Bug, Lizard Lady, Zesto, Whirl, and Crossbow's sister. (Every entry that follows as another poster and each builds off the prior entry, not the day of creation.)
The next month I created Serpent and Rainbow Lad.
Over the course of the next two months following that I created Beam, Mythos and Master Mind's cousin.
The next poster was 14 months after that, in those months I created Spark, Tiger, Strong Boy, Power Boi, Element King and Shaddowwalker.
Within two months of that I created Magno II.
Withing two months after that, I created Bubble Mistress, Crossbow's brother, Tri-Force, Freedom, Orb, Squirrel, Golden Guardian and Phantom Queen.
The last group in the 'first wave of creativity', came seven months later, in that time I created Echo, Power Supreme, Moonlight, Flip, Hacker, Chain, Saxx, Cord and Raw. It was also during this time that I came up with the future Ultra-Elite Team 2 and the Terminators of Evil as well as the rest of Diodarius' children who aren't named here.
Now when I say within two months, or seven months - I was creating characters during those months, but I can only place their creation during that time due to posters I was drawing that I did date at the time.
The 'second wave of creativity' came during the last two years of high school, now the characters had full back stories created, but not as many original stories created for them. They were Chronus, Echo, Prime Leader, Ebon Wolf, Heam, Mindbender, Hummingbird, Prince Arrin, Commander Foo and Yaghan.
At this time I graduated high school and got my first job and started college and I hate to say it, but my characters kind of took a back seat to the rest of the things going on in my life. By the second year of college (three years after leaving high school), I decided to draw one last poster of my characters and that would be the last time I would draw them for over a decade, but at the time I didn't know that. This was what I consider the 'third wave of creativity' and it is the shortest of the waves. Over the three years before I did this poster, I created only five new characters and their names and powers, but no origins nor any stories for them at all. They included Trekka and Rapture (whose name I'm changing to Swol and you'll meet him in the series next month.
Now, some of the characters I can't reveal yet - yes, there were a lot more created than I listed, but for this list I'm only including those who have already been introduced in the comic. By the way, the comic was originally called The Ultimate Team, but that was before Marvel did their Ultimate line and I didn't want anyone to think I was copying them, so I altered the team name, but did establish with the copyright that the Ultimate Team is an alternate name for them.
For the 'fourth wave of creativity', what I consider us in now - is when I started work on launching this series as an actual comic that the world can see (the story of getting started was published here a few years ago), but this wave started in 2015 and will go as long as the series runs, as I plan it right now. The characters created for this run are Italus, Semeulke, Professor Faraway, Hanu, King Italus, Dinosass, The All, Dire Wolf, the Alternate Earths (unless stated above), Cormorant, Major Hole, I5, Power Sprite, the Gons, GeoMancer, Blood-Red Man, Dark Bow, Dark Alux, Koldun'ya, Rimrock, Sandstorm, Serpent Fire, Shock Troops, Thunderball and Zero Stratus so far.
Someday, many years from now - when the series is closer to the end, I will update this to include all of the rest of the characters I created in the past that you haven't met yet - and believe, there's a lot more coming!
