BY SPECIAL REQUEST

This post of Quantum Comics Blog is in response to a request from a fan-friend of mine who wanted to see Draco Rex and his best mate Baslysk together.  I thought that was a great idea, so here it is.

OTHER BUSINESS FOR DR. VEGA

We're about to switch scenes in this first Adventure of Lucky Vega.  In this strip we set up a scene transition away from Lucky and company for a moment--just long enough to introduce another character in our cast.  It seems Lucky's pal Roger has a big brother who's been set up for a job interview with Esteban, and Dr. Vega turns his attention at least for a moment away from the mind-boggling mystery of the cybernetic attacks to the potential newest member of his payroll.  We get our first inkling here of whom we're about to meet in our next strip.  Stay tuned, as they say...

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.

THE LOVE YOU TAKE IS EQUAL TO THE LOVE YOU CREATE

We all know that characters in comics can do things that people in Life as We Know It cannot.  But that isn’t limited to characters with super-powers.  For instance, suppose you are a character in comics and you are a man in your 50s who’s led an unhappy, unfulfilled life in which you’ve never had the love of your dreams.  In fact, what if you met and worked with the man who was everything you wanted, but he was exactly the type who never wanted you and was a heterosexual besides?  And suppose this man died, leaving you in grief for what could never have been.  If you were such a character and you also happened to be an expert in robotics and artificial intelligence...perhaps, just perhaps, you would set out to design, build, and program the man of your dreams and make him everything you ever wanted, created to love you!  In The Adventures of Lucky Vega that’s exactly what a man named Professor William Favor did.  The result of his work to create the love for which he’d hungered all his life was an android named Tycho!

Tycho is an android, programmed to be Professor Favor’s companion, servant, and committed lover.  He is a fully sentient, artificially intelligent being.  He even has free will; he is actually capable of breaking up with Professor Favor and leaving him!  But he doesn’t--because in the way of so many sentient beings for as long as sentient beings have existed, he adores, worships, and is devoted to his creator!  In a twist that some characters (such as Lucky himself) find bizarre and disturbing, Tycho never even calls William Favor by his first name; he is given to addressing and referring to his creator as “The Professor” or “Sir” in spite of the intimate (to say the least) nature of their relationship!  And Tycho is even equipped to defend himself and his master from danger; he is superhumanly strong and possesses electrical and magnetic powers. 

To make things even more intriguing, though the man in whose perfect likeness Tycho was made is dead, the lover android is the exact image of one who is very much alive.  David Strayhorn, the man Professor Favor loved, was part of Dr. Esteban Vega’s space initiative, working both to perfect humanity for life in space and perfect man’s ability to travel to the stars.  David Strayhorn died in a test of an experimental space-warp engine.  But Strayhorn’s look-alike son, Jeff, is still with us, just as heterosexual as his late Dad--and sleeping with Paloma Reyes, Dr. Vega’s head of security and Lucky’s fitness and self-defense instructor.  Suffice it to say that when Paloma first gets a look at Tycho she is in for a very embarrassing surprise when she thinks the artificial being is her favorite bedmate!  And from there, things keep getting interesting...

Dr. Franken Furter, eat your heart out!