DRAGON WITH A MANE

While we're looking forward to more of The Adventures of Lucky Vega, I have a number of other things for your entertainment.  Remember a while back when I did a quick pencil sketch of Draco Rex, King of Dragons, with longer hair?  I decided to take that idea back to the old sketchbook recently, and do it up more comprehensively and put color to it.  (And take the mousse out of the hair!)  What do you think about this?

FRIEND OF THE DRAGON

While we're awaiting the continued Adventures of Lucky Vega, I have a few other things to show you. To start: Here's a brand-new character that I whipped up as a companion for the mightiest warrior in all space and time, Draco Rex. This reptilian rapscallion is called Baslysk, and he is actually a replacement for another character. Therein lies a bit of a story, as always.

Draco Rex was originally conceived--or originally willed himself into existence--as a supporting character for the Environauts. The strength and presence of the character made it clear that Draco would never be content to be anyone's supporting player; he was a star and nothing less. So I undertook to flesh out his background and where he came from, and as I did so one more thing that occurred to me is that as a mythic hero he was going to need a faithful companion. Every great, conquering hero of the mythic type needs a loyal and trusted fellow traveler, someone who always has his back. In the comic books mighty Thor had Balder (who is conspicuously absent from those movies). Orion of The New Gods had his pal Lightray. The TV Hercules went about his legendary journeys with a sidekick named Iolaus. A character to tag along with the deathless Draco seemed like a good idea.

My first notion for Draco's companion was a character I called Loren Python. As personalities go, Python would be most distinctly different from the mighty King of Dragons. He was a wrestler by vocation, with the power to lunge, strike, and pin an opponent with the speed and strength of the snake for whom he's named, and the ability to tap people's nervous systems with a touch, inducing unbearable pain or euphoric pleasure at will. Python preferred to use the "pleasure" side of his powers, and he loved best to use it on...women! In the matriarchal society of Varonia where Draco comes from, Python--who, being a Quantum Comics hero, was excruciatingly beautiful--was every woman's favorite stud, and he loved nothing better than to serve them. He never slept alone and frequented more than one bed in a day. When he wasn't wrestling, or traveling and adventuring with his best mate, Prince Declan Draco, he could be found servicing some maiden or maidens of the realm. Python made Sam Malone look like Sheldon Cooper.

I opted not to use Python eventually, not because he was a bad character--in fact he was a very clever, fun character--and not because he was so egregiously heterosexual, but because he was also too much of a character for a supporting role. He was a lead character in a supporting player's skin, as Draco himself had started out. I decided at length to put Python away and find some other use for him, perhaps try him out as a gay character on his own at some point. Meanwhile, that left Draco without a faithful companion. What to do, what to do?

The answer came from somewhere else in the reptile family. The Basilisk lizard of South America is a relative of the Iguanas. Basilisks have a distinctively look, with prominent, fin-like crests on their heads and backs. They are among the fastest of the reptiles, so fast that they are famous for running across ponds on their hind legs to escape predators. This knack for running on water is said to be why Basilisks are called "Jesus Lizards". Where that actually comes from is that the first time a white man saw a Basilisk do that, he hollered, "JEE-sus!" and the name stuck. I didn't have a super-speed character in the Quantum Comics universe, and modeling one after the Basilisk seemed a wholly unique way to bring one in. So I sat myself down and designed a reptile-inspired speedster with scales and a crest on his back and one of the prettiest costumes I think I've ever come up with, and there he was.

Baslysk, one of the noblest warriors in the realm of Varonia, was honored with a bath in the mutagenic Dragonblood, from which he emerged with dorsal scales and a dorsal crest--and the power to move faster than the eye can follow. He can run across large bodies of water and up and down the sides of buildings. Blink and you'll miss him--but if you're his foe or the enemy of his realm, he won't miss you. He's a messenger and explorer by trade, and a chrononaut (time traveler) at the side of the Prince when called upon. Unlike the pulchritudinous Python, Baslysk is very much a man's man, honoring women as all men under the rule of Queen Tiamat must, but not bedding them. He's for men only. That's the one boundary he doesn't skirt (pardon the expression). If you ever chance to see a green and black blur out of the corner of your eye, relax; that's just the blazing Baslysk en route to perform some deed of bravery like the large-living lizard guy that he is.

SUDDENLY HE REMEMBERS...

This is the last of the Adventures of Lucky Vega strips that I have completed for the time being.  But a great many more are waiting in the thumbnail-sketch stage to be penciled, inked, and lettered for your entertainment in the weeks and months to come; we're nowhere near finished!  And you can rest assured that Quantum Comics Blog will not just be coasting until the strip resumes; I have some other goodies to show you in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, we leave off with Trey Blaisdell remembering what he's supposed to be doing this morning, which has nothing to do with the young waitress that he picked up last night, in whose apartment he's just woken up!  As Trey hurriedly tosses on his clothing (for now) and speeds out of the apartment, he leaves behind a girl that neither he nor we will ever see again and--though he can't know this now--speeds away to a future of wonderment and adventure such as he's never imagined!  We'll all be sharing in that wonderment soon, so keep coming back for more.

ENTER TREY

We take our leave of Lucky himself just for a moment to have a look at what's going on in a little apartment in North Hollywood where another member of our cast is just waking up.  Roger's big brother, Warren Blaisdell III, commonly called just Trey, has not had an easy time in his young life.  He is what people used to call "a wayward youth".  Make that VERY wayward.  He wants to do better than he's done so far, but as we're about to see in our next strip, his wayward impulses still get the better of him.  In The Environauts, when Trey acquires his super-powers, he'll be called Cirrus. You'll also note that his wayward impulses are decidedly heterosexual ones.  For our gay visitors, take heart:  The Adventures of Lucky Vega will have gay characters and gay material as we roll along.  We now just happen to be introducing a very straight boy.  Keep an eye on Trey as our story unfolds.  As you'll also see, he's more than worth keeping an eye on.

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...

MENACE IN THE MACHINERY!

Rejoining The Adventures of Lucky Vega for the new year, the maddening mystery of who has been attacking the data infrastructure of the world continues--and Dr. Esteban Vega doesn't know what he's going to do about it, at least not yet!  Lurking in the future is an evil so vast, so all-consuming, that the assaults on corporate information technology are only its first expression.  What is about to attack the Earth and all mankind is something far more deadly than it appears, as we shall see...

THE PHANTOM HACKER!

Resuming The Adventures of Lucky Vega:  When we left off, Esteban Vega was so upset about something that he was unusually critical of Lucky's testing of the Vega Shield.  As we see in this strip, he has plenty to be upset about.  Who is attacking the IT infrastructure of high-tech companies?  Who is it that works with such mysterious and sophisticated methods that he strikes and disappears like some kind of cybernetic ghost that no one can trace?  And could this be only the merest hint of a super-science threat so strange, so awesome, so terrifying that only the genius of Lucky Vega and his father could possibly be a match for it?  I'd bet on it...