Evolution of the Series

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!  

YouTube Update

 Wow, tonight I realized that I haven't been too good at all in uploading the issues to YouTube as I've been completing them.   I spent some time tonight and uploaded the last 5 issues and we are now caught up on there.

Going forward I'll try to get the issues uploaded there when I get them done.  

Here's a link to the YouTube channel if you want to watch some...YouTube Channel

2023 Promos!

Happy New Year!  

To get ready for the new year, I did some promo images with some hints of what is coming for next year in the series!

This first promo deals with a subplot with Power Boi and his connection to the T9 Team, something that was hinted at a few months ago.  While the entire story might not be revealed this year, you will get quite an insight for a bigger story that will follow.

The second promo deals with the Book That Cannot Be Named - a subplot that's been running in the series for a while now and that will wrap up in early 2023.  While we've seen this character in the series, this promo is the first time she appears in her costume. 

The third promo deals with something that I've been hinting at for a couple of years.  During the Realms War storyline a lot of magical energy was released and that lead to the revival of the Monsters of Myth, who are starting to make their existence know.  

The last promo sets the stage for the first Ultra-Elite Team Annual next summer which will introduce a new group of villains to challenge the team.  This promo was done as a homage to All-Star Squadron #1, because just like that book, we deal with an insane amount of characters!

See you in 2023!

Issue 35

Wow, I've really been slacking in the blog posting arena!  I've been putting out content and forgetting to blog about it!  Let's get the ball rolling and start to catch up. 

Here is a link to issue 35, Issue 35, this is a shorter issue as I knew that issue 36 was going to be one of the longer ones I did 35 and 37 as shorter issues to not to be overwhelming.

This issue introduces a new threat, starts to move along on a subplot in Africa and the Ultra-Elite Team finally addresses the media in this issue.

I was also able to sneak in a homage to the MTV Teen Wolf series, one of my all-time favorite shows!  I had wanted to pay tribute somehow and finally was able to work it in.  

I'll be posting more again soon!

Genealogy

Besides comics, another passion of mine is genealogy and I've worked for over a decade tracing my family tree and also connecting with hundreds of cousins on various branches of my family.  I decided to incorporate genealogy into my comic.  

I know over the years some of the heroes from the main publishers have dealt with their ancestry, I think most notable was the Silver Age Superman who had quite a well-documented family tree.  As for looking forward, very few dealt with descendants as much.  If I recall, Flash did for a while in the late 90's or early 2000's, but it wasn't too detailed.

I decided to go a little further and develop a full tree going forward for the descendants of Titan.  So far, I've brought the tree forward about 200 years to his eight-times great-grandchildren.  This has led to the creation of many new characters along the way.  Some of this has been hinted at in the comics already, but the entire tree isn't revealed yet - in fact, I'm still working on building it and probably won't finish it until near the end of 2023 or maybe mid-2024.  

Here's a sneak peek of part of the tree: 

Below is a peek of some of the new characters that I've created (in no certain order) and who will one day play a role in the series.  

Lots more to come!

Status Update

I just wanted to touch base with everyone and let you know what I've been up to with the book and where it's going.  

The early part of the year the issues were coming out regularly, but as I mentioned in my last blog, my brother and I took a cross-country trip in May, which was a wonderful trip!  This of course pushed me back a bit in the comic, but I did get another issue out.  Then silence...

I wasn't actually silent, I was working on a larger issued for Webtoon's "Call To Action" contest.  After putting a lot of effort into that I was able to take part in the contest and meet the deadline they had.  Since this was published outside of the normal series on there, and since the contest winner won't be announced until September 30, you can only see the issue in its entirety if you search it out on Webtoons.  However, I 'wrote ahead' and this will actually become the October issue of the book, once the contest is over and I'll link to it then.

Here's one panel from it (less dialogue)

As for the future of the book, well there's a lot going on with it.  I've decided to up my artwork going forward.  As I work a full-time job, I pushed to try to get the book out monthly; often sacrificing quality for quantity and I've decided not to do that any longer.  From now on the artwork will be more detailed and dynamic, and if that means doing shorter issues or skipping a month then I'll do that.  

The next regular issue will be out in September and then should be monthly again for quite some time.  As for the long-term plans, next June I plan to do the first Ultra-Elite Team Annual (more on that later) and I'm working on putting together an Ultra-Pedia, an encyclopedia of my characters with all new artwork that I'm planning for about 2 years from now - I think it will be worth the wait, but I just want to get some more content out to make it worth the read when it finally gets published (my plan is for this to be an actual physical book as opposed to a webcomic).  

Anyway, I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and I probably won't have much to share until September, so I'll be back in the fall!  

Rich

Off Topic - Where I've been

I hope everyone is doing well as we move into the summer season. 

As you may have noticed, I haven't been too active on here lately, nor with the comic the last few months. 

My brother and I went on a bit of a cross-country trip (we live in the Northeast) and drove out to visit Mount Rushmore and the areas surrounding there, pressing on to Devils Tower in Wyoming before working out way back through Minnesota and a stop in Wisconsin Dells, all within an 11 day trip!

We had a lot of fun and some wonderful memories of our adventures!  Here's a picture (one of many) we took out there:

This of course has put me behind on the comic a bit.  I'm just starting to work on new material again this week after taking almost a month off.  So...no new content for a bit, but it was worth it for the trip and I'll have new stuff to share soon!