Our first ever annual is out – and here’s the link: Annual 1
A little behind the scenes: When the last issue came out, it was the April/May issue and the annual was planned to be the June issue, but my brother and I were in a car accident in May (not our fault) and that pushed things back quite a bit and as a result there was no June issue.
In the past I’ve done a few posts about my creation of the characters and I want to do that here for the characters that appear in the annual.
Power Boi
Now Power Boi’s origin hasn’t been revealed in the series yet, although I’ve dropped quite a few clues about it, although I’m not ready to reveal it fully yet. I originally created him when I was in eighth grade with basically the same powers and a costume very close to what he wears now. Power Boy (the way I spelled it at the time) had a different origin, in the original version he was another really good friend of Titan’s and got his power through him, and he was straight. I toyed with the idea of having a love triangle between Titan-Crossbow-Power Boy and I wrote several drafts of that storyline, but it just wasn’t working well for me.
Then I got the idea to add a layer of complexity and made Power Boy bisexual and again I wrote several drafts, but nothing in that storyline worked for me so I dropped it all together and then made him a gay character. He was actually the first LGBTQ+ character I created. Of course in my comics you’ve already read about Phantom, who’s bi and Water Wonder, who’s gay, and while both of those characters were created before Power Boy, it wasn’t until I was prepping this series more than five years ago before I decided to make them queer characters. It was also about that time that I changed the spelling to Power Boi as well.
Swol
As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I left high school, got my first job and started college I kind of moved away from my characters, although they never left my head I didn’t have the time to work on them. In that time I created about five new characters, but didn’t really do anything with them. I only created what they looked like and their powers; I created no back stories or real names.
One of those characters was named Rapture, and there he sat on that drawing for years when I really didn’t know anything about him. When I was prepping the series and got to how Power Boi was going to fit into this series I knew I wanted to have a boyfriend for him and I didn’t want it to be Phantom as I had other plans for him. So I looked at Rapture, a blank slate, and worked up a back story for him and the rest kind of wrote itself. As for the name, well there wasn’t any real reason for him to be call rapture, so a few months before his debut in the comic I changed the name to Swol to reflect the times and his powers do make his body swell up.
One of the things that will play out is that there is a contrast between Power Boi/Swol and Phantom. Power Boi and Swol are looking to be a committed, monogamous couple; whereas Phantom knows that his powers protect him from getting any sexually transmitted diseases, so he is perfectly happy with the hook up culture.
Edge
Edge is a character I created in high school. At the time he was just more of an acrobat/street fighter who joined the time and while I liked the costume I created, he didn’t play a very big role in my series. By the way, his costume is the exact same as how I created it, I never modified it from the first time I drew it. The last time I drew my characters in college, I realized that I made a mistake with Edge, I drew the torso like a male figure, but the hips and legs like a female and had him in more of a feminine position, both of which were unintentional. As I looked at the drawing I decided to make him a female-to-male trans character.
At the time Edge had long hair, but as I became more aware, or perhaps more educated, I learned that most FTM trans people kept their hair on the shorter side, so I gave Edge a haircut and he was ready to go!
Major Hole and the DLHS
Major Hole was created when I was prepping this series a few years ago and I had no real back story for him from back in the day, although in this series he is moving up the ranks and playing an important role with the Preventers, and now we learn he’s part of the DLHS as well (not sure what that means? – please read the annual).
As for the DLHS, I originally got the idea to do the annual in late summer of 2022 and that’s when I started to create the characters. I actually created two additional members, but decided to hold them back for now and use them in the future. When I originally wrote the first draft of the annual the team’s leader, Limp Lisp, was going to be killed by Vitikus, but I changed my mind and didn’t kill him off.
Gay Titan, Magno and Crossbow
One of the long running subplots in the series is Phantom’s infatuation with Titan, who is totally CIS straight. In order to get over this, Phantom decided to find an alternate Earth where that Titan was gay and that is who we meet in this annual.
The idea for these characters came to me in October of last year and originally I wasn’t sure where I was going to use them, but then I decided to bring them into the annual.
Vitikus and Arson Parson
Vitikus came to me last summer when I was writing the annual and originally he was going to be the only villain in the story. However, as I started to draw the annual (which I started in late April of this year) I came up with the idea of the Arson Parson (truly, I only created him about three weeks ago) and here we are.
Both of the villains are CIS straight characters and in fact are the only two non-queer characters in the issue. That is why in the opening panel you see Power Boi on his phone with his cousin (Warmth), but you don’t see her in the issue. I originally had a back and forth scene with the two of them, but decided that the only straight characters in the book would be the main villains, so the cousin has to stay “behind the scenes” as she’s also straight.
I hope you like the issue and I’m already working on the draft for next year’s annual!
