Issue 50 the Director's Cut

Something I thought about doing for a while, which was to do kind of a behind the scenes of the issue and take you through some things that changed as I was creating it. 

In the opening scene we see that Spider-Star and X-Ray Boy discover that Beam was a traitor and that their portals weren't working.  They meet Marmet who shows them where the villains were leaving through their own portals and then they go and attack the villains to try to stop them.  In the original draft of this issue, I had Marmet lead them into a room where the portal was being created and when they failed to stop that a fight with the villains broke out in that room. 

When Titan, Magno and Throttle get to India they soon realize that they walked into a trap.  I originally planned for them to fight Shock Troopers there and that Zesto was only there as a hologram, but opted to leave that out.

When Beam reveals herself to the team and attacks Master Mind and Crossbow, I didn't have her say anything and as I was lettering the issue, I thought about if I wanted to come up with dialogue for her, but decided to keep the scene silent.  

After Cat defeated Ox, I thought about having Lizard Lady come up from behind him to also attack Cat, but decided that I didn't really want to slow the story down with another fight that Cat would have won.

With the scene with the Gallina Negra, that is not an original creature, but it comes from myth/folk tales and I had heard that it was believed to be Cuban in origin, but I think it actually extends beyond that.  As for the milk escape that Yahgan uses, that comes from folk/fairy tales and is a seldom referenced trick that was first mentioned centuries ago.

When Spark goes into the Control Room, he sees a weird device that is plugged into four USB ports at once and he knows that doesn't belong there. 

When Spark takes Power Supreme to the Medical Center, I originally planned to show him putting the injured hero on a bed and showing Mr. Roboto run a scan on him, but just cut the scene entirely.  

When David got free and snuck back to headquarters, I originally planned to show him peeking through the bushes and watching the shock troops dragging Crossbow into the realm, but thought that might have slowed the pace of the story down too much.

There is an art error on the gloves that David puts on.  The gloves are meant to be very tight and form-fitting, which I hadn't thought of when I drew the scenes.  Instead of redrawing anything, I just made the gloves appear loose on David, but that really is an artistic error.

When Crossbow gets free, I originally thought about having her give a knife from her boot to Janice so her sister could free herself, so Crossbow could chase after David, but decided to just do away with that all together.

Pacing:  originally I planned to have Titan get back and encounter Janice in the hallway as Crossbow was coming along dragging Beam, but decided that I really wanted Janice out of the picture before Titan and Crossbow spoke.

In the final scene you see that Freedom has returned!  I originally planned for Magno to come in and find Freedom protecting Master Mind's body and ask how he got there, but I felt that would have taken away from the emotional impact of the scene and decided to save that scene for issue 51.

The Truth About Master Mind

Hopefully by now you've read the big 50th issue of the comic.  If you haven't, there are major spoilers ahead!  

Ready?  Okay - here we go!

As I've mentioned before, I started to create my comic when I was in 5th grade.  When I created the team, it was more akin to the way that the Legion of Super-Heroes handled things in the 1960's; by that I mean I just created the character and boom - they were on the team!  I didn't deal much with onboarding the members, they were just there. 

When I created the comic Master Mind was not a founding member of the team.  In fact, she was actually dead before I created her.  When I created her, I did so as a member of the team who had been killed in the line of duty at some point in the past and the heroes just remembered her.  In fact, they had a golden metal statue built for her memory that they kept on the grounds of their headquarters.  

The original story went that she was the first hero to join the team, but was killed by the traitor Beam during an assault on the headquarters.  Much of the story in issue 50 stayed true to the original version, except for Master Mind having been a founder of the team.  I felt that her being a founding member would add more emotional impact to the book than just some random member who came later.

The other change that I made:  in the original stories, the team used a castle as their headquarters and the members lived in barrack-like structures built on the grounds.  After that was destroyed, when Master Mind was killed, they moved into the U-shaped building that they stayed in.  

When I was creating this comic a few years ago, I decided to leave out the castle/barrack set up and just have them in the U-shaped building from the start.  

I'm going to reveal something here that the public as never seen before!  The original headquarters layout and a breakdown of each floor of the castle.  Again, please keep in mind that I was a kid when I drew these...

The image is broken down into three sections.  The upper left shows the castle.  The lower left shows the damage the castle took in the battled that killed Master Mind and the left side of the image shows the castle in relationship to the barracks.

The image above shows the breakdown of each floor of the castle's interior.

At some point, maybe on some Alternate Earth storyline in the future the castle might just have to make an appearance again one day!

Oh, before we go - you might be wondering whatever happened to Beam in the original version of the stories?  Good question!  I actually had two outcomes in mind for her; in one version of the story she was killed (which the option I went with in this issue); in the other version she went into hiding and was never seen again.  I felt that since I had no other stories for her, I opted not to go with that version of the story.