Okay, I have debated with myself for some time about putting this out here. It's not finished, but I've been working on it for over a year now. This is the "biography" of my main comic-book character, Vega. I first came up with her in the late 1970s, btw, long before the Street Fighter character of the same name. She was my first female superhero character. I have also not yet added any pictures to this. But it's her whole backstory and a synopsis of all the stories I've so far written with her. Even a few that aren't finished. Have a look.
16 pages. Gonna have to set some time aside to go through this, but I predict a good read. Brief observation from the first page: Feels like a cross between Angel and Shadowcat (martial arts side, not phasing). Good -- always felt that Angel was a rich boy pansy
Very entertaining. Why did the death of the mother estranged the father and daughter? I would have expected the opposite.
The death of the mother estranged the character's older brother, not her father. Since there are twenty years between Stacy and her brother, her mother was fairly old when she became pregnant with Stacy. The mother desperately wanted another child even tho her doctor warned her that it was very dangerous for her. She went thru with it anyway, and her husband (Stacy's father) supported her even tho they both knew it was a huge risk. Stacy's brother thought the whole idea was insane and when Stacy's mother died during the birth, blamed the whole thing on Stacy.
Another Work in Progress I've been persuaded to post this story here. It's something I've been working on pretty obsessively lately for some reason. Vega is in it but she's not the main character. This is about the first few days of a newly-transformed character called the Gray Squirrel (who is mentioned in the Vega document upthread). I don't really intend for these stories to ever get published or anything . . . not any more, anyway . . . but I write them for practice. To develop the skills to write something bigger and more sell-able. Like the novels I sometimes work on. This thing is mostly a characters-talking deal. It's not action, not battles or stuff like that. It's working on characterization. I keep thinking about how to distinguish the four characters from each other. Subtle differences in speech patterns, mostly. In the chronology of my superhero world, this is right at the start of the second wave of superhumans to emerge, or somewhere around ten years after the first heroes began to appear. Of the characters in or mentioned in this, Vega has been active for a bit more than two years, Eagle and Air Devil for nearly ten, Jetman for a little longer, and Dragon-Man for maybe five. Vega is between her first and second major story arcs, the first overall big story has happened - the attempted takeover of the US government by a villain called Overlord - and my "Justice League," a group called E-Team, has been formed in reaction to that. In terms of when these characters were created, the first wave characters I mostly came up with when I was very young - around seven or eight. Some of them had different names originally. That's Jetman, Eagle, Air Devil, and Dragon-Man. Vega and the Gray Squirrel are a bit more recent, coming along in the mid-to-late 70s when I was in my teens. Anyway, let me know what you think. It's 24 pages long, so not a quick read, but it's at a logical breaking point. I'm not done with it, but I'm at one of those spots where I now need to think about what happens next.
And here's a more action-oriented piece. This is Talon and Vega's first meeting and takes place right before the story in the post above this.
I'm almost done with another Talon/Vega story, this one a lot further along the timeline. But I'm interested in a question . . . We all make typos as we write. Simple misspellings, transposing letters ('teh' instead of 'the'), things like that. But I have a quirk that makes me mental. If I capitalize the first letter of a word, I very often also capitalize the second letter. So for instance, instead of "Vega" I'll type "VEga." And then just recently I seem to be leaving out entire words. I mean to type "They searched for a way ahead." But what comes out is "They searched for a ahead." Anybody else do this?
And the latest. This takes place much later in the timeline than the last story. It comes after the conclusion of Vega's second major story arc.
New sketchbook piece. I used to work with a woman who is just take-your-breath-away beautiful. Finally got around to doing a sketch from a photo of her I have.
Another new sketchbook piece. A random monster that's been rattling around in my noggin. These things are always more svelte in my imagination and get bulky when I draw them for some reason.
Since last winter I have been rewriting (for at least the fourth and possibly the fifth time) the three stories that begin my Vega character's second major arc. These stories have gotten longer each time I've rewritten them. Taken together, the word count is above 50,000, or so Pages tells me. This means that I've exceeded the National Novel Writing Month goal of 50,000 words. It just took me six months to do it. Anyway, should y'all be interested, here they are. First one is Rampage, then How to Hijack a Hero, and finally Turnabout, which is the longest at nearly 20k words all by itself. Character notes: Catman, Calico, Mouflon and Black Sabbath are actually my brother's characters from when we were kids. I used them in my stories just to have a "crossover" with him. Vega, Gray Squirrel, Dragon-Man, Air Devil, Talon, Aikido and Lao, and a couple of supporting characters are mine. Like I said, over 50k words all together, or a short novel. Any feedback would be appreciated if anyone feels like wading through them.
Lessee, since I posted those last three here, I've finished two more. Dream Capture at 11,926 words and Breakaway at 3,428 words (yeah, short). I've started two more, one of which has become more interesting to me than the other and is called The Morning After. Currently it's at 5,515 words and is maybe halfway finished. Also been tipped off to a website called I Write Like, which will "analyze" a paragraph or two of your stuff and tell you which popular author you write like. Depending on what I submit to it I come out as either Stephen King or Dan Brown. Eh, not bad company I reckon.
Here's an old sketch of some of my characters to scale (they're all the right size compared to one another). It's not dated but IIRC it's from around 1990 or so.
Okay, that site is tits. Not sure how accurate it really is. Bram Stoker? Really? But it's definitely fun to play with.
My very first superhero character, Jetman. The original version of him dates back to when I was about seven years old. Oh the pain, the pain. This picture was done in April of 1993 on bristol board. I have just hooked up my new large-format scanner and spent the afternoon adding stuff to my DeviantArt account.
I got HP Lovecraft o.0 While I'm aware of and enjoy his mythos because of pop culture immersion and references, I've never read his stuff.
I got Cory Doctorow when I plugged in a recent blog post. I'll have to see what happens when I put in a few others or some stuff written for other contexts.
Just scanned this one tonite. A character called Ultra-Man. First conceived long before I ever heard of the Japanese TV show. Illustration completed May of 1993.
I just tried it with a bit of my latest story and it gave me Raymond Chandler. So, probably not terribly accurate. Still fun to play with.
Y'know, I just totaled it up. Since about a year ago I've been working on Vega's second story arc and I'm over 105,000 words with all the stories. I've written a novel. It's not actually a novel, but a collection of short stories. But collectively it's as long as a novel. In about a year. Why the hell haven't I been working on one of my actual novels? I'd have a first draft done by now!
Edna Mode: No capes! My only critique of Talon is that his right hand looks a little out of proportion. As far as his costume's colors, eh, that's a matter of taste. It works
