The Hero Business

So, it was fun developing these obvious X-Men analogs for this week’s strip. The challenge is how to change them up enough for further use… but still keep them recognizable for easy-identification jokes.

Wolverine proved the toughest, as you see from the wide variety of versioning. Once I decided to make him more wolfen, the alpha male thing popped in my head. Totally a Wolvie trait– and then Alpha Mauler. Ah, perfect. Storm became Weather Witch, so I shifted her powers to become Voodoo in nature. Cyclops, I just turned into an actual one-eyed monster. I almost called him “One Eyed Monster” (tee-hee) until I thought of “Eye Sore,” which I liked better.

Poor Downer didn’t get to appear. She’s the Rogue analog – a goth girl who sucks the energy out of the room. She’s also morose and kinda depressing.

Yeah, these guys gotta appear again at some point. I have one definite idea in mind for Alpha Mauler!

Or, perhaps this is “Rough Tuesday”, if you are celebrating Memorial Day.

This week, I thought I’d share something that popped up from this past week’s strip. I don’t usually like to explain or point out a joke, but I thought this was one of those inspired little homage-y moments. I originally sketched it out like this:

But I wasn’t exactly happy with Bravado in that first panel. An artistic little voice in my head said, “not good enough.” Bravado should look a little more pissed, or something. Ah… then it occurred to me:

Yup, that was one of the revamps that floated around in my head while developing this storyline. So I began sketching this:

Yeeeeeeah, that feel right. See? I work hard for you guys. ; )