TRUE IDOL

If you lived in Los Angeles in the world of Quantum Comics and you happened to look up and see rainbow-colored trails of light in the sky, you could rest assured that any villains or evil-doers in the vicinity were in big trouble--because you’d know Idol was on the job!

Just one look at Idol tells you exactly who he is:  He’s out, he’s proud, and he’s got more than enough power to back it up.  Even when you see Mark James Worthy out of costume, his Human Rights Campaign “Equal Rights symbol” tattoo and his fuchsia triangle ear stud put his identity right out there.  Idol’s costume takes its inspiration from the ACT UP “Silence Equals Death” graphic--but there’s even more to it than that.  Idol is a character in the spirit of another character for whom some people remember me.  I used to be the artist of a series of super-hero strips in Gay Comics that starred an All-American gay super-hero called Sentinel (later called Pride).  Though I didn’t create the sensational Sentinel, I always liked him and considered him my “beloved stepchild”.  (You see him below on the cover of Gay Comics #20, penciled by me and inked by George Perez.  He’s the star-spangled blond hunk at the center of the composition.)  I wanted to do another character who would symbolize the strength and pride of gay America and embody it in a classical super-hero.  That character, then, is the intrepid Idol.

The origin and intro story for Idol is one that makes me smile to think about it.  One warm night in Santa Monica, an engineering student named Mitch McGrath meets the most perfect boy he’s ever seen--young fitness instructor Mark James Worthy--browsing in the CD section of a bookstore.  They head for the cafe where they drink and talk and quickly fall in love.  Mark takes Mitch home to bed.  They lie together afterward, deliriously happy.  Thinking Mitch is dozing, Mark decides to step out for a bit in just his tighty whities and enjoy the cooling night.  Mitch wakes up, spies Mark slipping out to the side of the pool, thinks his new boyfriend is going to take a dip, and is ready to join him--when suddenly Mark lifts himself into the air and flies off in a rainbow streak!  A stunned and disbelieving Mitch at once realizes that he is sleeping with a super-hero!  When Mark (who’s been giving LA’s night life quite a show, clad only in his underwear with his aerial celebration of new love) flies back home a short time later, he has some major explaining to do.

Thus Mark shows himself to Mitch in costume for the first time, and Mitch calls him “some kind of costumed idol”--a name that will stick.  Mitch learns his super-powered lover’s origin.  Mark is the only child of Evan Worthy, a realtor who came out to himself only after marrying heterosexually; and Carol James Worthy, a caterer with bouts of depression.  Evan was prosperous but miserable, finding happiness only in an affair with another realtor, Patrick Sayers, who encouraged him to come out--and he did, ending his marriage and sending Carol into a tailspin.  The embittered and depressed Carol did everything to poison the mind of their son Mark against his father, railing against the “selfishness” of gays and their supposed agenda of destroying and tearing apart families.  Carol’s manipulations came to nothing when Mark realized his own gayness and Carol attempted suicide with pills and alcohol.  Still loving his mother but unable to live any more in a toxic home, Mark went to live with his father and Patrick while Jenny went into therapy.  Then a car crash claimed the lives of Mark’s Dads, leaving Mark with their money and property, his budding fitness-trainer business, and a life filled with grief.

Reeling from his losses, Mark felt himself being bombarded with the conflict over gay rights in the media (a painful reminder of his mother) and began to shut himself off from the world until he couldn’t stand it any more.  One fateful day he felt the need to run--not to any specific place or destination, just to run.  Pushing himself to his physical limits, he tripped and fell off a trail, rolling down a hill into a wooded area, and sprawled unconscious in the brush.  There he lay--until IT appeared.  It was something incredibly ancient, older than humanity, shaped like a large, hollow triangle.  It called out to Mark’s mind and he stepped into the center of the strange object.  There he was charged with immense power, and a costume and a set of wristbands with a symbol identical to the mystery object fashioned themselves onto his body.  (The wristbands enable him to switch back and forth from common clothes to his costume.)  Mark had been chosen for a purpose that he would understand if he used his new powers in the way they were intended.  His mission was simply to protect the world and humanity and be a force for good.  What was the mysterious object that endowed Mark with powers almost like those of a god?  What was he meant to do?  All this he would learn if he simply returned to the world and lived the full measure of his love, his pride, and his power.  Free of the despair that had overcome him and ready to engage with the world again, Mark returned home, recommitted himself to his business, opened his eyes to new adventure--and met the boy with whom he now planned to spend his life.  And that’s where a wonder-struck Mitch came in.

Idol is one of the most powerful beings ever to live on Earth.  He occupies the highest percentile of strength and invulnerability of all superhumans, a category that he shares with the Bearcat and some other characters you’ll be meeting in the weeks ahead.  He can fly faster than a supersonic fighter jet in Earth’s atmosphere and reach near-light speeds in space.  He can live and travel in space without a spacesuit.  The telltale signature of Idol’s presence in an area, as we noted earlier, is the rainbow-colored trail of bent light that he leaves behind him when he flies.  He can create force fields to protect others, and generate force beams capable of demolishing buildings with one blast.  He can sense energy in any form in any place.  He can emit a light so strong that it seems to turn night to day, which he does at Mitch’s suggestion during an adventure that happens later on their first night together.  Idol is as super as super gets.

Silence may equal death and action may equal life--but pride, power, and valor add up to Idol! 

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!

HE IS THE CHAMPION, MY FRIEND...

"He is the Champion, my friend.  And he'll go on fighting to the end..."


With the 2012 Olympics just a little more than a month away, what could be more fitting than a hero who was an Olympian?  Ladies and gentlemen, it's the one-and-only World Champion!

Travis Roykirk is a character I've had for many years who has existed in different forms, but he has always been a gymnast with an Olympic Gold Medalist background.  Men's Gymnastics is one of the few sports that I will actually take time to sit and watch on TV, and I look forward to seeing it in every Summer Olympics.  I think of male gymnasts as not just superb athletes but beautiful artists, and I like their sport not for its competitiveness but its grace and beauty and its expression of personal, physical excellence.  (Of course that doesn't stop me rooting for the Americans; I am a little competitive.)  


In his last iteration before this one, the openly gay and proud World Champion was an Australian clad in a gymnast's outfit in the colors of the Olympic flag (blue, yellow, black, green, red, white).  As I thought about him I realized that my heroic cast was lacking one primal archetype:  the all-American, flag-wearing hero in red, white, and blue.  This was my motivation for changing his origin to make him an American and for re-doing his costume to its present design.  Travis, prior to becoming the World Champion, appears in The Adventures of Lucky Vega as a gymnastics champion and a hardbody Martial Arts competitor specializing in Tae Kwon Do and the Bo staff.  Hardbody training transforms bone, causing it to lay down more tribeculae (calcium structures) after being traumatized.  In this manner bones grow denser, harder, more durable.  Ancient martial artists rendered their bones denser by striking sand, stone, and iron.  I picked all this up from an episode of a program called Fight Science on National Geographic Channel featuring an Australian fighter named Bren Foster who is one of the most spectacularly beautiful specimens of manhood you will ever see.  He went on to star as Quinn in the daytime soap Days of Our Lives!  


Watching Bren and learning about hardbody training, I naturally began to spin the whole idea into concepts for my work; I had been looking for details to use in the origin of the World Champion and this was a natural.  It sets up things that happen to Travis after his Olympic Gold Medal wins, when he becomes the chosen protege and surrogate son of a man named Jack Samson who is the world's leading exercise and fitness mogul (and the father of a brave young gay lad who died standing up to bashers).  It is because of his closeness with Samson that Travis becomes the recipient of the Samson-Vega Patch, a super-body-enhancing skin patch created as part of a project to prepare humans for life in space.  Wearing the Patch takes Travis from physically superb to nearly superhuman and is a critical step in his odyssey to become one of the leaders of the world's emerging super-heroes.


Wearing the red, white, and blue with pride, Travis Roykirk is truly the Champion of the World!

ONE GIANT LEAP FOR THE QUANTUM

I often think about questions of identity and self-image.


For instance:  Some people think the desire for physical beauty is shallow and superficial.  Is it really?  And some people I've known have seemed to believe that everyone else in the world is "pretentious," or that any attempt to distinguish yourself in the world or to stand out from other people is just a neurotic bid for attention or merely a pose.  But is that actually so?  Can there be nothing sincere about it?  Not according to some people.  To some, personal distinction is not a legitimate concern.  You have no business believing you are, or wanting to be, any more special than anyone else, regardless of your mind or your gifts or anything you may have to offer.  Anyone who wants to be anything more than another sheep in the flock or another brick in the wall (apologies to Pink Floyd) is pretentious.


And who are we, really?  Are we the selves that we present to the world?  Or are our real selves, our truest and most legitimate selves, the people that we are inside?  I tend to think it's the latter.  The real "you" is the "you" of your dreams.  Much of the business of living is, or I think should be, the attempt to peel away the falsehoods of the people we are in common life and expose the real self within; or to turn ourselves inside out and release the people we carry around inside us.  That's why we go to the gym and go on diets and patronize plastic surgeons and follow the latest fashions.  I'm sure it's also one of the motivations for going to school (or going back to school), for taking classes and pursuing degrees and keeping ourselves in growth.  Part of it, a very significant part, is the quest to transform the self.  Remember what Yoda once said to Luke Skywalker:  "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!"  


And that's the way I see super-heroes.  The super-hero is a metaphor for our dream selves.  He is an ordinary person turned inside out.  He's the person who has reached inside and woken up the "luminous being" sleeping within him.  In his physical beauty, in his superhuman powers, he is the human who has shed the shell of the mundane and become who he really is.  And that's one of the reasons we've always loved super-heroes.

The character of the Quantum is based on this theme.  I originally called him Wonder Boy and he originally had a different costume.  I renamed and made him over because in Wonder Woman in DC Comics there was once a teenage character to whom the Amazons gave the honorary title of Wonder Boy, and on seeing this I thought at once, Now all DC has to do is trick out this kid with powers and a costume and have him recruited by the Teen Titans or Young Justice, and I'm going to have to scramble for a new name.  So I decided to be proactive about it.  And besides, having a hero called the Quantum in a brand called Quantum Comics makes the same kind of sense as Marvel Comics hanging onto the name Captain Marvel (and creating a succession of characters to keep the trademark in play, forcing DC to call any comic book starring the original Captain Marvel "SHAZAM!")  


The Quantum is a character that I created to address issues of identity and self-image.  What you're seeing is one character with two distinct physical forms, one of them super-powered.  Corey Lonigan is a college student majoring in computer game design.  He is handsome but not the athletic "jock" type and frequently feels invisible in the presence of such boys as well as attractive girls.  But he acquires a power that complicates the "game" of his life quite a bit.  Corey is a metamorph with the power to become...well, the taller, even handsomer, wondrously muscled figure you see in the costume here.  And in this other form, Corey is not only super-strong and invulnerable; he can fly and can assimilate, process, and shoot energy from any source.  Corey takes to calling his other physical self "The Quantum" and embarks on a secret life as a super-hero who gets the kind of attention and respect that at times eludes him in his original form.  But because he's a smart boy, it all makes him wonder what it is that people really see in him when he's "that way," and whether it's all for real and whether it's all really worth it, and whether the Quantum could ever have what people think of as "a real life."  He even wonders whether the nature of his transformation might be a message he's unconsciously trying to tell himself.  Does the Quantum being that kind of specimen mean that Corey is gay and trying to come out?  Yes, in the Quantum we have a super-hero who is a questioning heterosexual!


Corey Lonigan/the Quantum, more than any other costumed champion, is a character who questions himself and everyone and everything else--because when you're one boy who is two boys, you have to assume that nothing in yourself or the world around you may really be what it seems!

WILD JON!

I don't know how I managed it, but somehow I actually forgot to create a new post for this week!  Well, let's make up for that straight away, shall we?


Before you stands the simplest, yet perhaps the most complex, of all Quantum heroes:  WILD JON!  He's a character who will be introduced in one of The Adventures of Lucky Vega, but there's enough to him for adventures of his own to go on forever.  Wild Jon is an example of how I sometimes don't draw inspiration necessarily from comics but from media and entertainment outside of comics.  The inspirations for this character actually come from the movies--in particular certain Walt Disney movies and, if you can believe it, the musical Across the Universe!

Jon actually dates back to a series of illustrations that I created, that I sold on eBay:  Jungle Jon, Prince of the Wild.  After I saw the movies Across the Universe and Enchanted I was so touched and moved by them that I wondered if I could capture some of the feelings that I got from them in super-hero form.  Across the Universe, if you'll recall, was a musical incorporating Beatles songs, telling the story of a boy named Jude who came from Liverpool, England (natch) to find his natural father in America, and in the process found true love and the social turbulence of America in the 60s.  What touched me was the purity and simplicity of Jude's spirit.  All he really wanted was love.  He wasn't a screwed-up, neurotic character; he was a boy with very pure motives.  No one has greater trouble in this world than people with pure motives, a fact well illustrated in the story of young Jude.  (And with great music to boot!)  


Enchanted, the long overdue self-parody of the Walt Disney company, was another story of a character with pure motives, and one that shrewdly tore down and rebuilt everything that people have ever loved about Disney movies.  It was also one of the very essence of Disney-style romance, and I especially admired how they made Manhattan seem like a magical storybook kingdom.  I tried to take that feeling on board for my own creation, as well as using elements of other Disney flicks such as the Disney Tarzan (obviously) and Bambi.  All of that went into the mix of creating Wild Jon.


Our young hero, Jon Wilde, is more than he appears to be.  He is in fact the Prince of a race of human/animal shape-changers from an alternate, perhaps future, Earth that is modeled after those shows you may have seen on cable TV that imagine what Earth would be like if all the humans disappeared.  His father is a wealthy Englishman who traveled to that world by means I won't reveal (because it's one of my cleverest ideas!) and became the consort of a wolf/human Princess, giving her a son, Prince Jon.  Unlike the rest of his tribe, Jon is not a shape-changer, but he possesses a unity with the natural world, a range of animal-like powers, and the ability to befriend and command all beasts.  Through other twists I won't tell you (which include the death of Jon's mother in a twist inspired by Bambi), Jon's father brings  him to this world and raises him in what the narration will call "the enchanted kingdom of Manhattan," where he grows up to be the wild but princely boy you see here.  (I imagine the whole thing being narrated in the style of an ongoing bedtime story, complete with "Once upon a time...")  Jon's one true love, whom he recognizes by scent alone, is Tom Tierney, a law student who represents everything that Jon is not:  rational, intellectual, analytical, methodical, orderly.  Tom and the animal-like, instinctive, emotional, spontaneous, wild Jon are total opposites, but theirs is a love of two individuals who complete each other by being what the other lacks.  And basically, there is a purity and innocence of spirit about Jon that the world cannot touch no matter what it does, which melts Tom's skeptical, clinical heart.


There's a lot more to the stories of Wild Jon:  the Museum that his father builds in Manhattan with a penthouse at the top where Jon lives; the evil, jealous Queen Cynbar of the world where Jon comes from, who can become a terrifying harpy; her enforcer, Shaag, who can morph into a murderous Sasquatch Bigfoot with immense strength; the means of travel between the two worlds that I'm still not going to tell you...  I'm still working out a lot of it, but the saga of Wild Jon will be one of the most fascinating parts of Quantum Comics.

DON'T TREAD ON THE SERPENT!

Here's a character design that I first presented on Facebook.  Meet Beau Gaston Rousseau, originally created with the name Beau Constrictor, now called THE SERPENT.


This is a hero idea that I whipped together over a weekend in response to a contest given by Stan Lee himself and Todd McFarlane for the best new character concept.  I don't know who or what actually won that contest, but I liked Beau well enough that I decided to keep him among my Ideas That I'm Not Using That Are Too Good to Discard, in the event that I wanted to work with him later.  This is actually the redesign of Beau to accompany his new call-sign.  I rolled the name "The Serpent" around in my head for a few days, as I at times do with the name of a new character to see how well I like it, and it stuck.

So, here's what I have on young Beau Rousseau.  He's a high-school student, age about 17, living in the Los Angeles area but originally from Louisiana.  His ancestry is part French and part Native American, probably Choctaw Indian.  His ambition in life is to be a professional fighter in those octagon fighting shows you see on Cable TV; you know, those Ultimate Fighting Champion-type shows where muscular guys wearing nothing but shorts enter the octagon and engage in all sorts of hand-to-hand combat.  (Which are meant to appeal to heterosexual males, but come on, who's kidding whom here?)  However, his family line has an interesting genetic predisposition.  Like many Native American tribes, they can enter into a rapport with an "animal spirit guide".  The identity of the animal is different for every individual.  Beau's guide happens to be a powerful constricting snake.  But here's the difference:  Beau has just the right genetic makeup that he can take on the physical attributes and powers of his guide.  And Beau's guide is not just a spirit, it is an inhabitant of another dimension and the nemesis of a malignant force called the Darknest, which would just love to invade our universe and our world.  When the Darknest threatens to strike, Beau must claim his heritage and become not just a would-be fighter in athletic competitions but the protector of Earth against a monster that would make monsters of us all!


That's the basic, rough concept.  I see the Serpent as a classic super-hero who will juggle battles against villains with the stresses of growing up, going to school, family life, friends, rivals, and a rich girlfriend with a disapproving father.  (For gay fans, don't worry about Beau being straight; I believe in having gay and straight characters coexist and there will be numerous gay heroes for the Serpent to interact with.)  


The Serpent retains the powers of the original Beau Constrictor concept:  to change all or any part of his body to a scaly, supple, and invulnerable reptilian-like form and elongate each of his limbs and his torso to a maximum length of 12 feet. In his Serpent form, he is strong enough to lift vehicles and demolish stone walls, and resistant to injury by most weapons. He can also stretch or compress himself to slip through cracks and under doors, and can climb rapidly up trees and walls. The Serpent is capable of tracking an enemy by scent, vibration, and heat signature. He can lunge and strike faster than the eye can follow, and entrap an opponent in his coiling limbs. He can squeeze an opponent hard enough to stop the breathing and the heartbeat, and even break bones. In his fully human form, Beau has the strength, speed, and endurance of a 17-year-old human boy accustomed to routine, strenuous physical training.


Villains and evil-doers of the world, beware:  Don't tread on the Serpent!

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA #1 COVER

The first 8 pages of The Adventures of Lucky Vega are now in the queue to be inked--as is this cover image.  I tried numerous different cover drawings before settling on this one.  When it's inked, the upper part about the "Kirby Krackle" will all be black with stars and meteor trails.  

Meanwhile, in the weeks ahead I'll be showing a number of character designs that reflect the intended long-term future of Quantum Comics, even beyond The Environauts, which is where Lucky's adventures eventually go.  Some people have seen these designs on Facebook already, but I'll be featuring them here as well, and you never know what other surprises I'll be coming up with.  So don't be a stranger; keep those visits coming to Quantum Comics Blog.

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGE 8

Paloma is down, but she's not nearly out.  Lucky does not immediately press the advantage he's gained.  "Are you all right?" he asks.

Paloma replies, "What have I taught you about being afraid to hit 'a girl'?  Against some opponents that could cost you.  In fact, that could cost you now if you're not careful!"

Lucky says, "You're the teacher!"  As Roger looks on, Lucky shuts off the energy sword of his duo-blade and swings it around to its other business end.  And from the targeting laser that the other end emits, we get our first inkling of the truly clever and versatile way that the duo-blade lives up to its name!  Our mock combat has just gotten even more interesting...

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGE 7

See what Lucky is doing with his gloved hand in Panel 1?  You'd think he was about to fire a line of webbing, but this is the wrong character and the wrong universe for that!  What he's really doing is activating the emitter in his glove for...the Vega Shield!  It's a personal force field whose original purpose we will learn as our adventure progresses, but for now Lucky and Paloma are field testing it in their mock combat on the Vega Estate grounds.  So far it's proving pretty effective--which is to say, effective enough to use as an offensive weapon with which Lucky gives his teacher a swat and sends her flying!  Lucky scores the first fall in the battle--but will he really be able to get past Ms. Reyes and break the Saturn-shaped pinata, emerging triumphant in her challenge?  We'll see...

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGE 6

And the battle for the Saturn-shaped pinata, the challenge having been laid down in the previous post, is on!  With the energy swords of their duo-blades at the ready, Lucky and Paloma have at it!  FZZZAP!  Roger looks on as the duel is joined, narrating in his thoughts.  Lucky Vega--smartest kid in America, maybe the world.  My best friend.  Anything scientific, he can do it.  And he's as rich as a small country, probably richer than some big countries.  He and his Dad are out to create the future.  They invent things, make things happen.  And I get to see it first.  What scientific surprises is Roger about to witness this morning and in the adventures yet to come?  Keep following along and you'll get to see them too!

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGE 5

We left off with Lucky facing a challenge and here it is.  The lady facing him, also with a duo-blade, is Paloma Reyes.  She is the head of security for Vega Enterprises and Lucky's self-defense and martial arts trainer.  Esteban hired her to keep an eye on Lucky years ago, after Lucky went through an abduction-and-ransom experience and was traumatized.  If you think of The Adventures of Lucky Vega as a latter-day Jonny Quest, Paloma is Race Bannon.  We'll learn more about Paloma as we go along.  What we need to know about her for the moment is that she is essentially a fearless woman.  In fact she loves danger and challenge and faces risky, perilous situations with a smile on her face that can be positively unnerving.  It's almost scary the way nothing ever rattles her.  She's an expert at all forms of armed and unarmed combat and can drive or ride anything, especially if it's male and gorgeous, as we'll see--though she loves her job with the Vegas and considers Lucky and his father off-limits.  They are among the few hot-looking single men whom she will not take to bed! 

Another young stud who is exempt from Paloma's voracious appetites is Lucky's best friend, Roger Blaisdell, the blond lad who also makes his first appearance on this page.  Lucky is an only child (another thing we'll be going into); Roger is kind of a surrogate brother for him.  Roger is a drama major and a semi-professional surfer; he's working as a lifeguard while he's in school.  He is Lucky's closest confidant; he and Lucky tell each other pretty much everything.  One day, Lucky and Roger will be half of a super-powered hero team, The Environauts.  (And we'll be meeting the other two as we go along--one of them, in fact, is right around the corner in this very story.)  Lucky will be the team leader, Lucky Star; Roger will be his lieutenant, called Aquarius.  It is here in The Adventures of Lucky Vega that we begin to learn that Roger always has Lucky's back.

Lucky's challenge from Paloma is simple:  All he has to do is use his duo-blade to break the Saturn-shaped pinata that she has mounted behind her, using the skills she has taught him and the technology at his disposal (not all of which we've seen yet, so keep following along!)  Oh, and to do it...he has to get past Paloma.  If you're thinking this will be easier said than done, you've obviously been paying attention!

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGE 4

Segueing ahead from the Prologue (see the previous two posts), it's now the "Tomorrow" that little Lucky Vega dreamed about on hearing his father talk about the future he wanted Lucky to help him create.  That "Tomorrow" is also literally our tomorrow:  morning on the great Vega Estate in Manhattan Beach, CA.  But our Lucky is not so little any more:  He's 21 years old look at how he's grown up!  The weapon you see him handling here is called a duo-blade.  It appears to be a light sabre of the type that the Jedis and Siths used in Star Wars.  It's one of Lucky's father's inventions and there's a little surprise to it that George Lucas and company didn't think of; among the pages immediately to follow you'll learn just what that is!  Meanwhile, Lucky seems to be challenging someone to some kind of duel.  But whom would he be facing--an invader in his home (while he's dressed like that!) or someone else?  Keep following future posts and you'll see!

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGE 3

Finishing the Prologue for the first Lucky Adventure, our little future hero is getting a bit sleepy.  Esteban, who has just shared his vision of the future with his son (see the previous post), asks Lucky, "Would you like to help Poppa make that happen?"  Though he's starting to nod off, Lucky is still awake enough to be enthusiastic.  "Yes, Poppa...!"  "Then it's off to bed with us for now," says Esteban, picking up his little boy and carrying him out of the observatory.  "The future is coming, Lucky.  The future is always coming."  And as Lucky finally nods off to sleep, he still sees the vision of the universe beckoning before him.  He softly murmurs, "Tomorrow..."

And "tomorrow" is where Lucky Vega is always looking!

THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY VEGA: "INTERFACE" PAGES 1 AND 2

Original page art for the very first Adventure of Lucky Vega has gotten under way.  The first Adventure is called "Interface," for reasons that will become clear as the story unfolds.  (Wait till you find out what incredible super-cosmic menace our young Lucky is going to have to face right off the bat!)  What you're seeing here is the artwork for the first two pages--or, more to the point, the revisions of same.  I did a first pass at these and a cover drawing earlier, and what happened then was what happens when you're a perfectionist and never satisfied with anything:  I got to thinking, Can I do these better?  So these pages are a "Take 2".  They are part of a Prologue that I created, set about 17 years before the time the main Adventures begin.

On these pages, Lorenzo "Lucky" Vega (we'll also learn later the origin of our hero's nickname) is about four years old when he's spending the evening at an observatory with his father, Dr. Esteban Vega.  Now Esteban is one of the coolest guys in the world.  Imagine a Steve Jobs type with that kind of money and that kind of computer/electronics empire behind him, and all the resources that that entails, who has committed himself to a vision of helping the human race perfect itself and pursue its destiny of leaving Earth and venturing out to live among the stars.  That's Lucky's Dad--or "Poppa," as Lucky calls him.  Here we see Esteban giving his little boy a glimpse of the wonders of the universe and telling him the future he foresees in which a better human race will embrace the Cosmos from which it came.  Lucky, who idolizes his Poppa, is properly awestruck.  Here's Page 1:

And Page 2:

For the original versions of these pages, I penciled in the heavy, flat blacks to be inked later on.  (You can guess that these would go in the shots of space, for example.)  For the revisions, to save time ("work smarter, not harder") I saved these areas for the inking.  We'll see the rest of the Prologue in the next post, then start to move on to the main story. 

THE REBIRTH BEGINS...

This is the first post of the all-new Quantum Comics Blog.  Some years ago I had a Website called Quantum Comics that I created as a launchpad for a line and universe of comics of my own creation, with my own characters and my own stories.  For reasons of health, I wasn’t able at the time to keep up with the work and maintain Quantum Comics in the way that I wanted and make it the thriving concern that I had meant it to be.  But I have adhered to the ambitions that informed my work then, which have been with me since I was in school.  I have continued creating and planning.  I have refined my work, added to my ideas, and modified my methods.  And of late I have recommitted to a goal of recreating Quantum, better than it was before.  In this Blog you will see the works of Quantum in progress.  You will see characters being born and a universe taking shape.  I hope you will find you are seeing wonders coming into being.  Wonder is one of the most critical, key things that Quantum Comics is about.

Everything in Quantum will be based on a set of indispensable and uncompromising core values.  The values to be reflected in every hero (and many of the villains!) and every story are...

ADVENTURE
WONDER
INTELLIGENCE
HEROISM
BEAUTY
ROMANCE
SCIENCE
FUN

Oh, and one more value, never, ever to be parted with, is PERSONAL VISION--the deeply held personal vision of the creator.  This is because it is my own deeply held conviction that the best art AND the best commerce come from people doing what they believe in.  I expect that in the weeks and months to come we’ll be talking a good deal more about all the values of Quantum Comics, and my position on all of them.  I hope you’ll look forward to it as much as I.

All the stories I have planned for Quantum--and there is a universe of them that can go on for many years--will be designed to address a set of questions.  In the original Quantum Comics I called them THE BIG QUESTIONS.  They can be expressed in this way:

How will we be affected or changed by the discovery that we are not alone in the universe?
How do we use science and technology to broaden our horizons and improve our quality of life without destroying ourselves?
How do we nurture our connection with the living Earth and the creatures that share it with us?
What do we—or should we—believe about our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe?
How do we overcome prejudice and superstition and embrace the diversity that is essential to our survival and growth?
What is the responsibility of the best and the brightest, the exceptional and the distinguished, to the world as a whole and the common people in it?  How do the exceptional and the common learn to respect and value one another?

 

The central project that I have planned for the return of Quantum is called The Adventures of Lucky Vega.  It is the prequel to the master comic of the Quantum super-hero universe, The Environauts.  To understand the premise, you might say The Adventures of Lucky Vega is about Challenging the Unknown before characters begin to acquire super-powers and things start getting Fantastic.  In the midst of seeing the work in progress for Lucky, you’ll also get to glimpse the future super-heroes of the Quantum Comics universe.  There will always be something beautiful and wondrous going on here, as there will be in the eventual comics themselves.

I hope you’ll be a regular visitor to the Quantum Comics Blog.  When I launched the original Quantum it was with the slogan “There’s a saga born every minute!”  This will be where the sagas are born again.