Character Creation Question

On Webtoons, where you can also find the comic, someone asked me a question, basically asking if the characters were all original ideas.  I did answer him on there, but I thought I'd talk about that.  

My characters: most of the characters in my comic are all original creations, there have been many sources of inspiration for them over the years, but I'll save that for another time, for now through I'm going to just talk about those characters that are pulled from other sources.  

The Gods of the Earth, when I started my comic, I wanted it to tie in with mythologies from around the world, something that has fascinated me since I was a kid. I was already familiar with Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, but over the years I've expanded my reading to include many other pantheons. Because these myths and the ancient sources they're based on are in the public domain, I was able to draw inspiration directly from them rather than from modern adaptations. When designing each god or goddess, I first looked for surviving physical descriptions in ancient texts, as well as sculptures, carvings or other historical artwork. If none existed, I researched the culture (clothing and material history of the people who) worshipped them and designed the character in a way that I felt fit that historical setting. Whenever possible, I try to stay close to the ancient sources, but where those sources leave details unknown, the final design is my own interpretation.

Alternate Earth 8, these are actually characters created by my brother when he was younger, but I use with his permission!  We decided together to put them on an alternate earth in the comic and he picked the earth number he wanted them on.  Whenever they appear, it is with my brother's input and guidance.

Fairy/Folk Tales, sometimes I pull inspiration from other sources, again all of these sources are in the public domain as they generally date back to around the 1300's and 1400's.  My character of the Blood-Red Man is an adaptation of The Black Man fairy tale.  My character of Danaë is my adaptation of the Daughter of the Sun fairy tale.   There are other characters that will be introduced soon, I call them "The Cousins Three", they are an adaptation/modification pulling from two fairy tales, the first is Jean de l’Ours and the second is Palace Under the Sea.  

Monsters/Creatures, the last category are the monsters and mythological creatures that roam around in my comic, with more appearing all the time since the Pinnacle Forest was destroyed and the creatures were set free on the Earth.  While some of the creatures were created by me, the majority of them come from centuries of stories from various cultures around the world.  All of them are in the public domain and I try to learn about them and keep the feel of the creature as close to the original stories as I can.

Everything else are totally my creations!

Book in Progress!

One of the things that I'm working toward is writing an encyclopedia for the comic.  That is part of the reason that I'm redrawing my entire catalog of character.  I'm using the new drawings for the individual UltaPedia pages, but the artwork will ultimately go toward the new book.

Here's a mock-up of a random page in of the book.  This is unedited and it's using old artwork, but I wanted to get a feel of how it looks.  

In reality the book probably won't be published until near the end of next year.

Issue 52

The newest issue is up and here's the link: Issue52

I hadn't realized I missed two months!  I knew for this year the book was going to be bi-monthly, but somehow time got away from me - but I'll try to do another issue in June!  I've already started working on it!

Here's a panel from the issue, just for fun:

 

Sneak Peek

I've been busy working on stuff for the comic and while I'm not ready to share a lot yet, I thought I would give a sneak peek of some characters that will be making their debut later this year!

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. 

Advanced Ultra-Pedia

This year will see the release of Advanced Ultra-Pedia pages for comic universe!  These are encyclopedia pages for all of the characters in my comic.  

Here is a link if you want to check them out: Advance UltraPedia

Right now, there is only 1 page done and posted in the album and that is for Titan.  I'll also put his page here:

Several years ago I did Ultra-Pedia pages for my characters, but I did them in 2019 and 2020 and there is has been so much revealed about the characters since then, the pages were very outdated.  Also, at that time I was new to the comic (having only launched it in 2018) and I lacked the skills to create better pages.  In addition to that the program I used locked the pages I did in, so I couldn't ever edit them, now I'm doing it in a way that I can modify them as needed.

Status at this time: only Titan is 100% done with 55 others are written and getting edited now and will be posted in the next couple of months.  There are 8 more written, but being held back as it would give away too much story and they will be posted later in the year.  Then I have over 100 more to write, so definitely more to come!

Issue 51, Director's Cut and Year-End Thoughts

First off, issue 51 is out and here's a link to it: Issue 51

For Year-End thoughts, it was an interesting year for the comic.  I had been going strong and being almost monthly for a while, but then with the injury to my arm I couldn't put out any new issues for close to 2 years.  That definitely destroyed the momentum I had built up in the series.  It was frustrating at the time as I suspected that would be the case, but there was nothing I could do about it.  Even now, being monthly again since March, the readership is way down and I'm hardly getting any interaction on any platforms.  I know it will take time, but I miss where it had been.  Hopefully it will get back there some day.

This year was interesting, I introduced my comic to TikTok and I've enjoyed that to an extent.  I also played with doing 1 AI image of each of my characters and that is what I've shared on TikTok.  While I've gotten some good feedback, it has also been very frustrating, there are a lot of negative voices on there and most of the people on there just see one image on their page of a single character, but they don't look beyond that and they don't see the 'whole' picture of what my universe is about.  Those that do have been wonderful to talk to though; I've had some good and interesting chats with some other creators on there.

As for the future of the comic, it is still going strong and will for the foreseeable future, but it's going to be a little less than monthly.  I work a full-time job and the comic takes up most of my weekends with writing, drawing, coloring and lettering as well as prepping the promotional posts - and while I do enjoy that, it has not left me any time to do any other creative things that I want to pursue - some are even related to the comic and I haven't been able to do them as I've been stretched too thin time-wise. 

I've decided to stress less about being monthly and make some time for myself to do other things.  The comic will still come out, but sometimes it might be bi-monthly for much of 2026 as I work toward getting other things accomplished.   I'll announce more when the time comes. 

Spoilers Ahead: Ok, this won't really give away what happens in issue 51, but it will hint at some things and reveal a bit.  When I was writing this book, I had originally planned a longer conversation between Titan and Magno II, but decided to shorten it as I felt it would have dragged out too much in the comic.

The scene that I really changed from the original concept was the scene with Phantom.  When I wrote the issue, I had it where he returned to the headquarters with Water Wonder and then they talked about the spell, which I really wanted to include in this issue.  However, there is an underlying story with where Master Mind was buried that is part of a bigger story arc that ties in with Phantom and I decided to alter the scene to still include the spell, but not have him return to the Headquarters yet.

There are also two cut scenes and the reason I cut them is because they were humorous and I wanted this issue to have a more serious tone with the funeral for Master Mind.  The first scene deals with David, Crossbow's brother, who learned that he gained powers.  I was going to have him testing them out.  I won't reveal much as I plan to use that scene in a future issue.  The second scene cut deals with Phantom.  With what happens at the end of the issue with Titan and Crossbow, I was going to have Phantom overhear them and comment on it in a funny way, but it didn't really fit the tone. 

Well, that's it for the director's cut!  More coming soon!

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.  

The Big 50th Issue

After much to do, the 50th issue of my comic is out!  Here's a link if you'd like to read it: Issue 50

If you've never read an actual issue of the comic before, this would be a good one to read!  

A traitor is revealed, a hero loses their life and an old ally returns!  

October Issue

Wow, I'm a bit behind, I forgot to put up a post about the October issue!  It's been up since October 29!

Here's a link if you'd like to check it out: Issue49

This one is a holiday issue and has a bit of humor built into it.  Every hero is mentioned in this one.

September Issue

The new September issue is out - here's a link if you'd like to check it out: Issue 48

This issue brings the Ogg War to an end.  

Honestly, I have to confess - I wasn't happy with the way the story played out and it's my own fault!  When I created the Worioggs, which look like this:

I really messed up the design.  While they look fearsome, they aren't really practical as a threat.  Their legs are too short and their mouths are too small, so basically you have this oversized creature with pretty much just the tail as any sort of threat. 

When I was setting up the comic, this was one of the first monster creatures I created and I realize now that my design was flawed.  While I did tell the full story that I wanted to tell, I actually cut most of the fighting scenes with them from the last two parts and in fact they only appear 'off camera' in the last issue.

A lesson learned for future stories.  For now, onwards and upwards towards the next issue!

Return to YouTube!

I've decided to get back into uploading the issues to YouTube and here's a link to the channel if you'd like to check them out...YouTube Channel

When I stared this series, my original plan was to put the issues all up on YouTube, and they were all originally fitted to that size ratio.  

However, as I went along I realized that most of my interaction, and reactions, from fans were coming from Instagram, so I opted to reformat the size of the panels so that they fit Instagram better.  Of course they still work on YouTube, but look a little different than before.

When I took a break from the comic I kind of moved away from YouTube and the videos and I hadn't realized how far behind I was in posting them.  

I saw recently that the last one I posted was the Annual back in 2023 and then nothing until now.  I'm a bit backlogged, but I do plan to get all of the issues uploaded on there within the next two weeks.

Power Surpreme

The August issue focused on Power Supreme, a character that has been in the book since issue 9 and I figured it was time to reveal his origin.  I had several subplots running through the book, but then having to take so much time off of the book due to injury, I wanted to wrap those up and move forward with new stories.

In the books right now, the heroes are fighting the Worioggs, an invasive species.  Before my time away from the books, this is the storyline that I was working towards and had always planned to do Power Supreme's origin during this story.

For the creation of the character, like most all of my characters, I had created him years ago.  I don't know if you've ever read the classic Legion of Super-Hero comics from when they were first coming onto the scene, but in those early issues it wasn't like the comics of today where a character is introduced and onboarded onto the team.  Back then they would do a group shot and there would just be new heroes there and they would explain later how they got there (sometimes much later).  That was kind of how I did my comic originally.  

When I was first creating these characters, for about 11 years starting when I was in fifth grade, I never really did any stories about how they got on the team; I just created them and started drawing them with the team and that was it.  It wasn't until I started to prepare for this series a few years ago that I realized that I need to address this.  Actually, to this day I don't usually put a lot of detail into it, by that I mean I just kind of move things along and get them onto the team, which is why I created the plot device of Diodarius showing Titan who would play a role in the team so they can join quickly.  I'm dealing with such a large cast of characters, I really just can't take the time to show each one building trust with the team, that would get very boring and redundant.

Also back at that time, I wasn't always creating origins either.  I created half of the origins and the other half I hadn't bothered to.  Power Supreme was one of them.  The inspiration for the character came from an old red shirt that was handed down to me from my father and I just wore it around the house, it was well worn and broken in and on me it was much larger and yeah, that's it; that's the entirety of how I created the character. 

I originally called him Power Plus and he had a purple mask, but when I was prepping the series, I changed the name, ditched the mask and created an origin story for him and here we are!  I thought I would share here the first time I ever drew the character:

TikTok

Coming late to the party, but the Ultra-Elite Team is now on TikTok.  Well, actually we joined on July 20 and I don't know what the future of the app hold, but for now we are on there.  Here's a screen capture of what the page looks like today:

At this time it is mostly made up of min-bios of the characters.  Each entry is The AI image, second the hand drawn image and third a mini-bio of each character that so far is exclusive to TikTok.

I have also put up a few exclusive drawings there and have created some content just for TikTok that don't appear anywhere else.  In time it will have more original content and less AI, but I kind of joined on a whim and had to find something to post quickly!  

AI Art

I am aware of the debate of AI for artistic purposes and I debated myself if I wanted to use it.  I can truthfully say that do not, have not, nor will I ever use AI in the creation of my comic, in terms of art, story-telling or world-building.  

I created these characters when I was a child and I’ve spent a lifetime dreaming of what they would look like as real people.  AI gave me the chance to make that dream come true and that has brought me more joy and happiness than I can put into words.  I created one image of each character to see what they would look like and I'm sharing that here.  AI Art

Of course AI art may not be your thing.  Personally, I found it to actually be limiting and lacking in creativity for the most part and since I have completed my renderings on there, I have since cancelled my subscription, but again I am grateful for the chance to just once see what they look like as real people, well as close I will ever get to that anyone. 

Issue 47

The August issue is out and you can find it here: Issue 47

In this issue the war against the Worioggs is still going on as Power Supreme takes center stage.  We learn that t
he Worioggs devasted his planet in the past as he returns home for the first time in years. 

July Issue

 The newest issue is out and in this one war breaks out against the Worioggs on all planets in Cat's solar system.  

You can check it out here: Issue 46

Marksman's Debut

In the June issue we were introduced to several new characters, one of whom was Marksman.  Years ago, when I created him, I intended him to be part of the main Ultra-Elite Team, but when I was reworking the characters for this series, I decided that he really works better as part of the IPG (Interplanetary Protectorate Guild) and opted to leave him on that.  

That's not much of a difference from what his original story was, I had always planned him to be on that with his brother, Golden Guardian, but in the original stories I wrote, he eventually left them and came to Earth full time.  

Of course, he also went through a few costume changes over time as well.  The costume he wears in this issue was actually the third one I designed for him.  I'm attaching my original sketches for the character here from when I drew him for the first time when I was a kid up to landing on his final costume design (well, at least pretty close to the final desgin).

In this issue we met him when he is undercover looking into an illegal smuggling ring in his solar system.  When I first started to draw this issue, I planned to have him in an open-air market and having the guards chase him through that before ending up on the same place where he jumped out onto the platform.

As I was doing the breakdowns, I realized at this time it was more than I wanted to draw, as I'm just getting back into the series being monthly after an injury, so I decided to scrap that part of it.  When doing that I had only inked one panel and thought I would share it here as artwork that will probably never be used in the series.

  

June Issue

The June issue is out now, here's a link: Issue 45

In this issue, the team finds themselves going through a membership change, but before they can catch their breath, their old ally Moonlight shows up and warns them of an impending invasion of Cat's solar system by mysterious invaders called the Worioggs.  

Of course, our heroes agree to go there to help - but will they arrive in time?