The Creation of Power Boi, the True Origin

In the latest issue we explore the origin of Power Boy, and you can read it here if you'd like: Ultra-Origins 3  

I won't give anything away from that issue, but the origin here was a long time in the making.  As I mentioned in the past, I started to create the first characters for my team when I was in fifth grade, but he came a little later.  I didn't get the idea of creating Power Boy (yes, how I originally spelled the name) until I was in eighth grade.  

In fact, here he was the first time I drew him!  While his costume changed a lot from what appears in the comic, some of the elements are still there.  The color scheme and the glider wings remained the same.

My struggle was with his origins.   When I first started his story, I originally had him as another childhood friend of Titan and Magno and Titan also gave him his powers.  Not too impressive or original, but good enough for eighth grade!

The problem arose when I started to write the first stories with him.  Originally had had him come in and become a love interest for Crossbow, creating a love triangle with Titan, Crossbow and himself and while I wrote several versions of that story, I wasn't happy with any of them.

Then I decided to stay with that idea, but added a level of complication to it and make him a bisexual character, still in the love triangle, but now open to other dating options.  Again, I wrote several versions of that story and again, I wasn't happy with any of them.   In total I must have written over twenty versions and couldn't come up with any that I liked and decided to ditch the whole love triangle/dating element of his character.    At that time, I left his origin intact; and honestly, I didn't think much about it over the years.  

Flash forward to when I was getting ready to launch this comic.  At that time, I revisited every single character and looked at the costumes, their origins and what role I wanted to each to play in the series and basically mapped out a ten-year plan to each character.  

That brings me to Power Boy.  I was never that happy with the stories I had attempted with him and the origin I originally came up with just didn't work for me any longer as that was basically the same origin as Spark, Magno and Mango 2.  I wanted to do something different, but I wasn't sure what. 

The first thing I did was revisit his orientation.  Where I had left off with him he was bi, but I decided to make him gay in this series and that's when I changed the name to Power Boi.   I also started to get the idea of the origin that was used in the issue (sorry, but you'll just have to read it) and I started to work toward that, but in all honesty it took me a few years to sort that out and finalize a firm plan for what I had in mind. 

When I finally had a everything set the way I wanted to, I started to draft this issue.  This is actually the February 2026 issue, but I started the draft of it last summer and knew I wanted it to fall after issue 50 of the series.  It actually takes place at the same time as Issue # 51.  

Check it out if you have the time...the last 3 panels set the stage for something pretty important in the comic.