THE BIGGEST LITTLE HERO

Not every Quantum hero is from the good old US of A.  Some of them are from the other side of the Pond.  Great Britain is the home, for example, of the most mysterious of heroes, Hero X.  In time the British government will put together its own team of costumed super-champions, whom the media will dub "Her Majesty's Heroes".  They will officially be called the Battle Line, and they will rightly be considered every bit as powerful as the Wonders, the American team that will include the World Champion, Draco Rex, the Satellite, and the Bearcat.  We'll meet Hero X and all of the Battle Line as we go along.  For the moment, however, we direct our attention to another battling Brit.

Physics student Eric Quill, a native of Woking, outside of London, is called THE POINT.  He is my own personal take on the archetype of the "shrinking hero".  The Point has the power to reduce his volume--i.e. shrink in size--until he is about as big as a .38-calibre bullet.  The analogy to a bullet is especially apt since when he reaches that size, the tendency of electrons to repel each other does something equally remarkable.  It sets up a powerful energy flux in his body that the Point can utilize to make himself shoot through the air like a projectile.  His mass remains the same and the energy flux gives him an invulnerability power as a side effect, which enables young Eric to punch his way through walls, doors, ceilings, objects, and--in the most potentially dangerous effect of his power--other people.  This, as you can imagine, is why when Eric's xenosome-given power manifests, he isn't eager to share the news.  In fact he spends a great deal of time by himself, practicing his powers until he is absolutely sure he can use them safely without the risk of "bulleting" himself through innocent persons!  When he first acquires his powers, his isolation probably costs him a girlfriend (he's another of the straight ones), but it's necessary.

I imagine us first encountering the Point in an Environauts story in which the Nauts travel to England to investigate a strange cosmic phenomenon and wind up battling native English arch-villain Graeme Grimstead.  I see the Point being drawn into this battle and teaming up with Earth's greatest adventurers to help them against their greatest foe.  I also see Eric winning a research grant from Vega Enterprises and deciding to come to California to work on whatever super-project he has in mind.  Once he's in LA he meets up with the Champ and his sidekick, the All-Star (you'll be meeting him in some future post), as well as Draco, the Satellite, and Giantess (a heroine to whom I also have not yet introduced you) in a dire super-emergency to be announced, and the lot of them decide to stay together and form a new team; this, then, is the origin of the Wonders.  The Point and Giantess become a couple in the bargain.  (And yes, there will absolutely have to be a storyline in which the Wonders meet, battle, and team up with the Battle Line; that simply must happen at some time.  It's too irresistible.)

As for Eric's background:  As noted above, our young lad grows up in Woking, England, which happens to be one of the initial settings of one of my favorite stories, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, and which happens to have a statue of a Martian tripod commemorating that classic novel.  Eric, as a little boy, is captivated by the statue and becomes a huge Wells fan.  Learning that some of the things in Wells's stories have gone from science fiction to science fact (laser weapons, tank warfare, nuclear fission, atomic weapons, and at least the theories of time travel) spurs him towards science as a profession.  Otherwise I thought it would be intriguing to make Eric a "regular, everyday guy"--not someone common, classless, unrefined, and uncultured, but rather someone who, except for his chosen life's work and the "super" life for which destiny chooses him, would be just a regular bloke who likes to watch football and have a pint at the pub.  He'd be a character who would participate in super-hero life while standing a bit "outside" of it and reflecting and remarking on it from the perspective of someone closer to the average man.  The inspiration for the idea actually comes from a song--the British pop hit "Our House" by Madness.  It describes an English family and home life that are perfectly ordinary in every respect, but very special to the parents and children who belong to it.  Eric is one particular line in the song:  "Brother's got a date to keep; he can't hang around"--just a regular, middle-class young Englishman who lucks into a life that's far more than "regular".  And that is the point of The Point.

THANK YOUR LUCKY STAR

With a Webcomic version of The Adventures of Lucky Vega now in thumbnailing, I decided it was time to have a set of final master drawings of the lead characters of The Environauts, both as they will appear when they acquire their super-powers and become Earth's most awesome adventurers, and as they'll appear in the prequel.  With this post, the coloring of these model sheets is complete.

The powers of the Environauts reflect the spheres of the natural environment through which life has evolved (or will evolve as man advances), from Ocean to Land to Sky to Space.

The unquestioned leader of the Environauts, Lorenzo Roberto Miguel Vega, mainly called Lucky Vega and known in his super life as LUCKY STAR, is the "Space" character and the embodiment of science and the future.  If you can imagine the elastic leader of another very famous comic-book foursome as a 22-year-old Latino, that's Lucky.  Unlike that character, however, Lucky is not quite so verbose, much more emotionally open, and has an aggressive edge to match his scientific brilliance.  Lucky would have been the youngest of three children if his older brother and sister had survived; the third time Dr. Esteban Vega and his wife Rosita tried to have a child, they finally got "Lucky".  Young Lorenzo, the heir to a computer and technology-industry fortune larger than the budget of the United States, is every bit his father's son.  Esteban Vega, a genius at computers and everything scientific who had a vision of perfecting the human race for its destiny in space, was determined that his only boy would be a man of pure science, free from all superstition, dogma, prejudice, and magical thinking, and embracing higher human principles (not invented supernatural authority) as the source of all human virtue.  That's how Lucky was raised  (which came between his parents when Rosita turned back to the Catholic Church, which Esteban absolutely rejected) and that's who he has become.  Lucky is either personally capable of anything scientific, or able to summon masters of any scientific discipline to his aid.  His scientific genius and resourcefulness are virtually super-powers in themselves and the potential undoing of many a villain.  Lucky is filled with wonder at the incredible things he encounters in his adventures, things that would overwhelm or terrify most other people.  Confronted with aliens, monsters, mysteries of the universe, and strange new technologies, Lucky smiles and uses his favorite expression:  "This is amazing!"  Lucky's amazement is always greater than his fear, which makes him the greatest of heroes.  The ironic thing about Lucky is that for all he has and for all he is capable of doing, at heart he wishes he could be "a regular boy" and wants nothing more than to have the things in his life--friends, girls, sports, fun--that regular boys have.  Lucky is attracted to older women and in love with his college physics professor, Elise Hall, whose ex-fiance, Graeme Grimstead, becomes Lucky's most personal enemy and the arch-foe of the Environauts.  The most touching part of his relationship with his three closest friends and partners is that while he affords them a life beyond their wildest dreams, they in turn are his touchstones to a life that he would otherwise never know.  The bond of loyalty and friendship between Lucky and the others is actually the greatest "power" that the Environauts possess.

Lucky Star can become a living, incandescent body of plasma like that in a neon sign or the Sun.  In this form he can fly as fast as 300 MPH and emit beams and bolts of plasma energy, or give off powerful electromagnetic pulses.  Like a star, he is also a strong source of heat and light.  His corona can melt weapons and projectiles that come near him, and he can dissipate the discharge of energy-based weapons or attacks from energy-powered opponents.  His one vulnerability is to strong magnetic fields, which can disrupt him and force him back to human form, but he's working on that.  Lucky is always working on something, which always keeps his friends' lives exciting and interesting.  When Lucky Star calls his friends together, they know they'll soon be heading into something awesome.