AGE OF AQUARIUS

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.  These model sheets are in the process of coloring right now, but I'm continuing a preview of them here.

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.

Roger Blaisdell, a.k.a. AQUARIUS, is the youngest Environaut and the team's embodiment of the "Ocean."  Indeed there is not much that Roger loves better than the sea; whether he's surfing at a semi-professional level or working as a lifeguard, he's happiest in or near the ocean.  He's an aspiring actor and model as well; typically his favorite thing to model, as you might guess, is swimsuits.  Roger would like to be a movie star, but his life as a hero may keep him performing on a very different stage.  Roger skipped a grade in school and is almost as intelligent, in his own way, as his best friend and the Environauts' leader, Lucky Vega, a.k.a. Lucky Star himself.  Roger is the person that Lucky loves and trusts the most (except for Lucky's lady love, Professor Elise Hall) and is the second in command of the team in spite of being the youngest.  Taking the lead is a role to which Roger has long been accustomed; in his very dysfunctional family he was always running interference between his alcoholic mother and big brother Trey and their emotionally withholding father.  Roger and Trey tease each other back and forth, but an unbreakable bond of love runs through their relationship and extends to Roger's interactions with the team; Aquarius is the emotional "glue" that holds the Environauts together.  Perhaps because of his home life, Roger has always been romantically attracted to girls who are different from his family:  black girls, Latin and Asian girls, girls of every type but blonde and Caucasian.  His greatest love will not even be from Earth:  Nerelle, the ocean-exploring alien lass who is directly responsible for the origin of the Environauts!

Aquarius has the power to transform himself into a body of living liquid and perform a variety of water-related power stunts.  He can become waves and sprays of water that can hit with the force of most powerful waves that surfers ride, or the discharge of the strongest fire hose.  He can envelop a foe in his own liquid body or use his body to protect one of his partners from falling or being thrown.  Perhaps his coolest ability is the power to control his own surface tension.  Aquarius can pass through another body of water without dissolving into it, grab and hold onto something while he is liquid, or flow up and down walls and across ceilings.  He can also assimilate moisture from the atmosphere or an outside source if he needs to replenish himself.  When Aquarius is on the job, the surf is up and the bad guys are sure to go down.

SKY HIGH WITH CIRRUS

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.  These model sheets are in the process of coloring right now, but I'm continuing a preview of them here.

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.

Warren "Trey" Blaisdell III, the sexy CIRRUS, is the "sky" character.  Trey, the oldest of the four friends, is the classic "reformed bad boy," a once wayward youth with a heart of gold.  A recovering alcoholic and drug addict who's done prison time for possession and sale of illegal narcotics, Trey is the member of the Environauts who feels as though he has the most to prove to the world, and to his friends.  He's also been by far the most sexually active of the lot; by his own reckoning he has bedded every girl he's met since he was 14.  His adventures in the circle of Lucky Vega will bring him to the one girl that he'll want for life--if he can convince himself that he deserves her.

Cirrus possesses the power to become a living body of water vapor and charged particles, a human storm system who can shape himself into fog, invisible water vapor, a thunderstorm, freezing rain and hail, gale-force winds, even a small tornado.  He can generate lightning at will and has been known to threaten to show his opponents "what ball lightning tastes like".  The most aggressive member of the team and the one least patient with fools and authoritarians, Cirrus is the one that the other Environauts are most likely to have to hold back for the good of everyone.  To his credit, Trey is unswervingly loyal and would unhesitatingly lay down his life for the others, especially his little brother Roger (Aquarius), whom he calls "the Squirt".  Though he is a loose cannon, Cirrus always has everyone's back.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE BOYS

The central characters of the Quantum Comics universe are, how shall we say, fantastic “for” a number of reasons.  They are Earth’s most celebrated and loved adventurers, the Beatles of the heroic world:  the Environauts.

The origin of the Nauts, as they’re often called, takes the origin of another very famous comic-book quartet and turns it upside down.  Lorenzo “Lucky” Vega, super-rich super-science genius and the smartest kid in the world, takes his three best friends out for a submarine ride to test an experimental technology that catalogues the sounds made by marine life.  While they’re out there, they discover something that has never been recorded before--because it belongs to no ocean on Earth!  It captures them and tries to transform them into the vanguard of an alien invasion.  The intervention of an alien female (whom we’ll be meeting in the future) saves the boys, leaving them still human but super-powered--and making them the only thing that can save mankind from conquest by oceanic beings from another world.  (Meanwhile, Olympic gymnast Travis Roykirk is battling the same invasion, a battle that will result in his becoming the World Champion.)  Lucky’s brilliance and the four friends’ powers make them the explorers, discoverers, and protectors of Earth’s future; the world’s leading super-science heroes and pillars of the superhuman community.  These four boys are the pioneers of everything that is “super”.

The Environauts are so famous and so popular that in the Quantum Comics world you can’t turn on your TV or computer, or open a magazine or look at a newspaper, without seeing, hearing, or reading something about them.  And going out in public?  Remember how the Beatles couldn’t do a thing without being swarmed by screaming girls?  Imagine mobs of screaming girls and guys hurling themselves at you wherever you go.  It can make the business of saving the world even more complicated than you’d expect.

This group shot is the result of my latest tinkering with the team uniform.  As you can see, the Nauts wear the same suit in individual colors with individual symbols as well as a team symbol.  (There’s also an equally sleek-looking “dress” version of the suits, which I’ll have to show you sometime.)  Earth’s greatest heroes are (from left to right) openly gay, biracial Lionel Marshall, aka The Stone, who can transform his body into super-strong, invulnerable living marble; Roger Blaisdell, aka Aquarius, who becomes a figure of living liquid and does all manner of watery power stunts; team leader Lucky Vega, aka Lucky Star, with the power to become a body of living plasma, as in a neon sign or the Sun; and Roger’s big brother Warren “Trey” Blaisdell III, aka Cirrus, who becomes a body of living water vapor and charged particles, a human storm system that can produce all sorts of weather effects.  The powers of the Environauts are meant to reflect the spheres of the natural environment through which life has evolved.  Life as we know it began in the ocean and moved onto the land, certain creatures took to the sky, and man has uniquely begun to reach into space.  So the Nauts are figures of Ocean (Aquarius), Land (The Stone), Sky (Cirrus), and Space (Lucky Star).  

We’ll have individual posts for each of the Environauts in weeks to come.  In the meantime, let’s hear it for the boys.