Worlds Apart

The Name is Slice

2010-04-28T01:11:00.006-04:00

The name is Slice.

Check her out in Worlds Apart.

The lowdown on Slice is here.

Another image of Slice is here.

Phil McDougall, a.k.a. the Sensational Sand Dollar

2010-02-14T11:18:00.007-05:00

On page 7 of Worlds Apart, we meet a rather intriguing minor character. Just as the Trishy Tanaka Hostage Crisis starts heating up, Chet, the talking head from Lyon News, introduces a guest analyst to provide expertise and perspective on the unfolding horror: Phil McDougall, better known to the world as the sensational Sand Dollar.

Okay, you may be asking. Just who the heck is the Sand Dollar? And what would he possibly know about the superheroes and super-villains of the Trademark Universe?

The answer to this question lies in the history and career of two major Trademark heroes. The first, Airfoil, we’ve already met. The second, Beachcomber (later known as Aquarius), won’t be appearing in Worlds Apart per se. However, his influence in the Trademark Universe should be addressed.

The titanic Trademark Handbook provides this entry on the Beachcomber:

Beachcomber/Aquarius (Bobby Sands) An aimless drifter most of his life, Bobby Sands could claim one talent that set him above the rest -- hydrofoils. An ace-mechanic and pilot, Sands invented a revolutionary new hydrofoil system and started his own company, Aquarian Technologies, to profit from his ideas. Quickly proving a failure in the business world, Sands gladly accepted the buy-out offer from a large aeronautics firm interested in commercially marketing his innovations.

Suddenly finding himself a millionaire with no direction in life, Sands opted for early retirement in the quiet coastal California community of Lasher Beach. Envisioning an endless summer of bitchin’ waves, bikini-clad babes, and tinkering in his workshop, Sands slowly came to realize that Lasher Beach wasn’t truly the sleepy seaside town it first appeared to be. Run by a local crimeboss called Yellow Beard, Lasher Beach was actually a safe haven for drug smugglers, pirates, arms dealers, and other lowlifes.

Trying his best to steer clear of the local criminal element, Sands found himself slowly drawn into the brewing conflict between Lasher Beach’s law-abiding citizens and the unsavory thugs now in control of the town. One such thug was a brutish bully dubbed Phil the Enforcer, a brawny, red-headed brawler who walked around Lasher Beach like he owned it. On more than one occasion, Sands and Phil traded words and punches, with Sands typically coming out worse for it.

Then one night Bobby Sands’ life at Lasher Beach took a drastic turn. As Sands was testing out his newest invention, a hydrofoil bodysuit, he inadvertently stumbled across a major drug bust gone horribly and violently awry. As Sands quickly learned, his nemesis Phil the Enforcer wasn’t a thug at all, but rather an undercover DEA agent named Phil McDougall, who had been infiltrating Yellow Beard’s gang in an effort to bring it down. With Yellow Beard’s thugs getting away in high-speed motor boats, the good guys had only one chance to catch the fleeing murderers.

Bobby Sands chased the motor boats using his hydrofoil suit, and then battled the bad guys long enough for Phil McDougall to call in reinforcements and arrest the miscreants en masse. Angry that corrupt sources within the DEA had ratted him out to Yellow Beard, McDougall resigned his position and fell in with fellow retiree Bobby Sands.

With Yellow Beard’s boys still controlling much of Lasher Beach, Sands and McDougall took up the fight for law and order vigilante-style. Combining Sands’ mechanical genius and McDougall’s knowledge of explosives and weapons, the two would-be adventurers re-invented themselves as superheroes: the Beachcomber and the Sand Dollar. In addition to the ability to travel at high speeds over water, Beachcomber’s hydro-suit also converted its water jets and air jets into non-lethal weapons. For his part, Phil McDougall armed himself with a variety of sand-dollar-sized disks outfitted with various gimmicks: explosives, knock-out gas, Taser-like electro-shocks, etc.

After an inauspicious start, the “Beach Bums,” as they were known in the super community, fought a host of pretty unspectacular villains like Yellow Beard, Crowbar, and the Longshoremen. The duo didn’t vie with any truly powerful superbaddies until they tangled with Tempest, a madman possessing a trident power-staff that enabled him to control water. Completely out of their league, ‘Comber and Dollar were quickly beaten and taken prisoner. It was at this point that a friend of theirs, world Frisbee champion Larry Kramer, modified Sand Dollar’s disk arsenal into larger Frisbee-like weapons. Thus was born the hero Airfoil.

Together, the three Beach Bums ultimately defeated Tempest, and Beachcomber “inherited” the villain’s power-staff. Over the course of several years, as Sands’ proficiency with the staff grew, he became more and more powerful. Signing on for a stint with the Protectors, Beachcomber used the group’s training exercises to increase his control of the staff to godlike levels. Here he came under the watchful eye of the super-villain Pythoness, who gradually seduced Beachcomber with a hodge-podge of New Age mumbo-jumbo and mind control.

Under the influence of Pythoness, Beachcomber discarded his old identity to become the apocalyptic world-beater Aquarius. Convinced he could single-handedly reform the world in his image and usher in the Age of Aquarius, the former Beachcomber subsequently ran afoul of the combined might of the Protectors, Challengers, Irregulars, Fury Force, and United Front. Eventually, after repeated struggles, Sands saw the error of his ways and vanished into seclusion beneath the sea.

Being closer to Bobby Sands than anyone, Phil McDougall has seen firsthand how dangerous and corrupting super-powers can be. As a hero who has fought alongside the Protectors, Challengers, and hosts of others, Phil McDougall makes up in savvy what he lacks in power. Opinionated, bull-headed, and bit rough around the edges, the sensational Sand Dollar dispenses the kind of compelling, sound-bite-driven analysis that Lyon News loves.

Go Ask Marisol -- Slice!

2010-02-07T15:23:00.010-05:00

Slice, a.k.a. the Living Razor, stands as a rather late Trademark creation, at least the Marisol Garcia version that appears in Worlds Apart. I first wrote a character called Slice back in the early ‘80s. (Let’s call her “Slice 1.0”) Basically a generic homicidal maniac à la Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (see my previous blog entry), she fought alongside Spree in the ranks of Maniac’s Götterdämmerung.

Sketching a rudimentary background for Slice 1.0, I conceived her as a teenage runaway turned psychotic sadist. Never a central member of Maniac’s minions, Slice 1.0’s biography only came to light in snatches of raving, misandrist dialogue. With her outspoken hatred for the male gender encapsulated in virtually every voice balloon, I imagined her primarily as a child of the streets who had lived her teenage years suffering under the domination of abusive men while doing anything possible to survive. (You can use your imagination here.)

My inspiration for such an urchin-turned-predatrix lies in myriad pop cultural icons that informed my youth and adolescence. The melding of two distinct archetypes -- the damsel in distress and the femme fatale -- became a staple of teenage exploitation entertainment like Go Ask Alice (1973), Born Innocent (1974), Switchblade Sisters (1975), Taxi Driver (1976), Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976), Hardcore (1979) and, of course, the 1984 cult classic Angel. Earlier blogs regarding Spree and Mosquito have already revealed that I formed a bizarre kind of psycho-sexual fascination for “bad girls” during my teenage years. Even before I was exposed to Russ Meyer and neo-Nazi sirens, though, I found myself inexplicably drawn to the prurient personas of troubled, desperate waifs living on the edge.

I can pretty much trace my first exposure to ingénues in crisis with Go Ask Alice in 1973. How and why 8-year-old Mark Kozak was allowed to watch this trashy, over-the-top TV movie, I’ll never know. My sister was twelve at the time, and I’m sure my mom wasn’t really paying close attention as I absorbed the horrific plot complications besetting the main character. Besides, the cast boasted Andy Griffith, and I’m sure my mom never thought Sheriff Taylor would attach himself to anything less than wholesome.

A short time after digging Alice, I grooved on Born Innocent with Linda Blair. Once again, I’m amazed my mom let me watch such programming. This made-for-TV trash-fest boasts a graphic scene with a toilet plunger some twenty-odd years before NYC cops similarly assaulted Abner Louima with a broomstick. Then, in 1976, network executives struck exploitative gold again with Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, featuring the very fetching Eve Plumb (“Jan Brady”) forced into one compromising position after another.

With the advent of cable-TV in my household, I caught up with some major Hollywood entries in the teen exploitation sweepstakes: Taxi Driver, Switchblade Sisters, and of course Hardcore. By the time I got around to creating Slice 1.0, then, I was pretty much warped beyond redemption. For the next few years, Slice 1.0 remained a stock, two-dimensional psycho-babe; good for a few slashing, dashing fight sequences, but little else.

As explained in previous blogs, the Trademark Universe underwent some drastic overhauling when I began attending Ohio University in 1984. New influences, scholarly and social, re-informed and re-invented the characters conceived in my youth. With Buckshot’s college career essentially mirroring my own, most of my new stories centered on the hybrid hood turned hero. Needing a kind of counterpoint to Buckshot’s penitent journey, I returned to the ranks of Maniac’s Götterdämmerung and decided to re-envision one of my stock super-baddies.

Immediately, Slice leaped out at me. Unlike Spree and Mosquito, characters consistently developed to be in their mid-twenties, Slice occupied relatively the same age bracket as Buckshot (and myself for that matter). Bitten by the bug of multiculturalism and diversity, I discarded my previous portrayal of Slice as typically caucasian. Sporting a major crush on Miami Vice’s Saundra Santiago at the time, I lustily re-imagined Slice as Marisol Garcia, a teenage prostitute turned psychopath with an unspecified Hispanic/Latina heritage. Thus, Slice 2.0 was born circa 1984. In subsequent stories, I took the new character through a journey of her own, from sadistic psycho-bitch to soul-searching super-heroine.

For more on Slice, let us once more consult the Titanic Trademark Handbook:

Slice (Marisol Garcia) Formerly a member of Maniac’s Götterdämmerung, Slice’s entire body is encased in a permanent force-field, transforming her into a living razor. By concentrating, Slice can adjust the sharpness of her razor field, enabling her to easily cut through stone, brick, and even dense metals like a hot knife through butter. At its most acute level, Slice’s razor field has even severed molecular bonds. However, the energy spent on such an endeavor quickly exhausts her.

Gradually wooed over to the side of law-and-order by a persistent Buckshot, Slice originally attempted to go straight by abandoning Götterdämmerung and joining the Protectors. Immediately finding herself at loggerheads with Silver Streak and Hangman, however, Slice quickly left the group and struck out on her own.

Continually fighting the savage impulses hardwired into her hybrid brain, Slice’s journey to redemption has been much more difficult than Buckshot’s. Left to her own devices after deserting the Protectors, Slice regressed more than once to her old ways. Never comfortable as a super-villainess, though, Slice eventually fell in with Wolf and his loose confederation of unconventional heroes, the Irregulars. Since then, she’s been more or less a hero (unless you talk to Silver Streak, that is).

Weapons -- Her entire body.

Personal Items -- Marisol is a beautiful young woman who can never touch a normal man for fear of slicing him to ribbons. She has, however, managed a few relationships with men. During her Götterdämmerung days, she hooked up with Rival, as he was able to transform his skin into a substance invulnerable to her razor field.

Later, during her short stint as a Protector, Slice found some solace in the arms of the invulnerable Achilles. In typical Achilles fashion, however, the demigod soon tired of Marisol, and since then she’s been relegated back to untouchable status.

Inspired by Buckshot’s example, Slice makes a conscious effort to channel her aggressive emotionalism into more constructive pursuits, namely sculpting. For a brief period, Marisol even attended Ohio University with Buckshot, majoring in Art. Unfortunately, the structure and demands of university life didn’t agree with her, and Slice dropped out before attaining her degree.

The Big Guy -- Achilles

2010-02-06T18:15:00.011-05:00

I’ve never tried to hide my debt to the comic books of my youth. The Trademark Universe itself is one boy’s (now man’s) passionate homage to the creative writers and artists at Marvel and DC who inspired my youthful imagination. I can wholly understand if someone sees Worlds Apart for the first time and immediately starts matching up Trademark heroes and villains with their Marvel and DC analogs.

Obviously, Achilles owes much if not all of his character to Marvel’s Asgardian and Olympian stalwarts, Thor and Hercules. If you want to call Achilles a Thor/Herc knock-off, well, knock yourself out. First, however, let me explain a little bit more about his genesis and addition to the Trademark Universe. You may find yourself second-guessing your first impression.

Before I knew the Lee/Kirby versions of Thor and Hercules, I knew Achilles. Myths and legends comprised 100% of my reading in the first and second grades. Well, maybe “reading” is a tad exaggerated. The Coe School library had some pretty cool children’s collections of Greek, Norse, and Arthurian tales. Paramount for a young Mark Kozak stood a pair of vividly illustrated compendiums: D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths and D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths.

Reading contemporary reviews of the d’Aulaires’ two books, which are still available on Amazon.com I might add, the verdict is unanimous. These books, and especially the illustrations, make an impression on young readers that remain locked in their memories for the remainder of their lives. I thrilled to the d’Aulaires’ renderings of Hercules and Thor long before I saw my first issue of Journey Into Mystery or The Mighty Avengers.

When I first began creating my own comic book stories, then, the myths and legends I knew played as much a role in my characters as the DC Comics I venerated. My first quasi-mytho-legendary hero wasn’t Achilles, however. Instead, I roughed out some very raw stories featuring a time-transplanted hero of Arthurian persuasion, a certain flower of chivalry known as Sir Launcelot. I will address these early pre-Trademark efforts in subsequent posts.

The main point here is that I felt an instinctual need to combine myth, legend, and superheroics several years prior to discovering Lee & Kirby’s Thor. If I was “ripping off” anyone with my take on Sir Launcelot, Prince Valiant would be the victim. My childhood barber, Hank Janik of Hank’s Barber Shop fame, had a table filled with old comic books for his younger clientele: Prince Valiant, The Phantom, etc. To this day, I still remember those old, tattered funny books, which could have fetched hundreds of dollars at comic book conventions if they were in mint condition. Of course, I couldn’t follow the dense narrative in the Prince Valiant issues, but the artwork certainly captured my pre-literate fancy.

When I began reading Marvel comics a few years later, the Asgardian and Olympian gods immediately became some of my favorite characters. Given my love of mythology, I already knew quite a bit about the archetypes Lee & Kirby were reinventing. When I saw Tyre or Heimdall or Ares for the first time, I already knew who they were and what they represented. With every issue of The Mighty Thor, I marveled (no pun intended) at the cool, epic storylines spun from the fabric of the Norse and Greek myths I’d already internalized.

As I began conceiving the Trademark Universe, I knew my heroic pantheon would need to be peopled with gods and heroes of the same stature as Marvel’s Asgardian and Olympian contingent. Not wanting characters merely identical to Marvel’s deities, I fashioned the Elementals, a subject I discuss in a previous blog. While the Elementals certainly provided me the super-powerful godlike entities I desired, I quickly realized they weren’t enough. Something was missing.

I discovered what I lacked when I began to conceive my first superhero team, the Protectors. Obviously patterned after the mighty Avengers, I faced the same problem Tony Stark encountered when he began creating his New Avengers several years back. As Stark explained to Ms. Marvel, the team needed a “Thor.” I, too, sensed the same dearth when I marshaled my prospective roster for the Protectors.

If my new team was truly to be The World’s Greatest Heroes, I needed a blockbusting representative from the myths and legends I loved. More importantly, the Protectors needed a Thor, a bedrock of raw fighting prowess about which the other team members could assemble. With super-tough-guys Thor and Hercules already taken by Marvel, I looked through my edition of Bernard Evslin’s Gods, Demigods, and Demons for MY Thor.

Theseus? Too obscure and not badass enough. Meleager? Talk about obscure! Atlas? Possibly. I flirted momentarily with Gilgamesh, but I couldn’t get past the unsavory elements of his character. Samson? No, that would bring the whole Bible into the mix, and I was trying to keep things simple. I toyed with the notion of Sir Launcelot again, but he was too woefully mortal.

I needed a guy who was going to kick ass and take names, the kind of hero a “normal Joe” super-baddy would flee immediately. My mind drifted to the Trojan War, to a certain invincible, hot-headed demigod prince who clashed with kings and gods head-on and never backed down from any fight. Achilles, Son of Peleus, would be my Thor. And, unlike Marvel’s somewhat watered-down characterizations of Hercules and Thor, my demigod would be torn from the pages of Homer himself, strutting and fretting upon the pages of The Protectors, dysfunctional warts and all.

Just recently I finished Caroline Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles. I find her take on Homer’s Achilles fairly spot-on: arrogant, immature, petulant, but still heroic in the final summation. Other epics and cycles of Greek mythology also deal with the figure of Achilles: the Aethiopis, the Achillead, the Cypria. In these works, however, Achilles is more superhero than human.

In the renderings of Achilles I read as a boy, authors like Bernard Evslin and Edith Hamilton drew their sketches from all these sources. When I created my own Trademark version of Achilles, I kept the superhuman aspects of the character, while also shading him with much of Homer’s three-dimensional elements. On the negative side, he would brood, feud, and often enter the blackest moods. On the positive side, he lived for the glory of battle, and a Protector could find no better comrade-in-arms if the chips were down.

For more on Achilles, let’s turn to the Titanic Trademark Handbook:

Achilles (No secret identity, but will often refer to himself in the third person as the Son of Peleus) The fabled Trojan War hero was resurrected by the Protectors in their battle against the mythic super-baddie Antaeus, son of Gaia. Achilles is a super-strong, relentless fighting machine whose body is invulnerable save for a small molecule-sized spot on his right “Achilles” heel. Needless to say, after spending a few millennia in a coma because of Paris’ lucky shot during the Trojan War, Achilles now wears a pretty sturdy pair of adamantium boots. But as we know in the super-biz... stuff happens.

Since his resurrection, Achilles has proven a staple in the Protectors line-up. Unlike Marvel’s Norse and Greek gods, however, Achilles did have to learn English. Luckily, fellow Protector Flurry, a virtual immortal herself, knew ancient Greek well enough to serve as the Son of Peleus’ translator and tutor.

Not the brightest of super-guys, Achilles still has problems with modern English at times, which causes him frustration. Anyone who’s read the Iliad knows this warrior-prince can be a real hot-head, too, and his three-thousand-year nap didn’t really cool him off much.

Weapons -- An invulnerable suit of adamantium armor forged by Hephaestus (not that he needs it much) and a battle sword that cuts through just about everything.

Personal Items -- Achilles is a bit of a womanizer who has cut a swath through the hearts of various super-heroines, most especially Flurry, Howitzer, Clarion, Driad, Maze, and Slice. He’s also walked on the dark side, bedding marquee villainesses like Morningstar and Paradise. Needless to say, none of these relationships fared very well, and the son of Peleus is still a confirmed bachelor.

Achilles’ best friend is the sometime superhero Cheetah, who has marketed his super-abilities into a lucrative Hollywood action-hero career. Both men are incurable womanizers who can dive off the libertine deep end if not properly supervised. Among the Protectors, Achilles is closest to Flurry and Airfoil. He respects Silver Streak, but still challenges his authority at times. One Protector Achilles does not challenge is Hangman, who basically gives the Son of Peleus the proverbial willies.

Unrepentant, Unrelenting Justice -- Hangman

2010-01-01T18:38:00.006-05:00

I believe this will be the most difficult blog entry I’ve written to date. I’ve actually been putting this one off. In addition to being one of the original Trademark Universe creations, Hangman also stands as one of the most complex.

First, we have the vast array of influences that went into his conception. You can tell Hangman is the creation of a ten-year-old comic book geek because his myriad, disparate super-powers make him simultaneously invincible as a hero and unwieldy as a written character. With Professor X’s telepathic abilities and the Vision’s phasing powers, nothing can really defeat Hangman, and even at the tender age of ten I knew this.

So I fashioned weaknesses for him, disabilities borrowed from other favorites in the comic books I read. I always loved Matt Murdock’s blindness as a limitation for Daredevil. So I did DD one better, making Hangman not only blind, but deaf, dumb, and without the senses of smell, taste, or touch. He is, in essence, trapped inside his body. His only contact with the outside world occurs via mental telepathy.

At age ten, I had only a smattering of life experiences. So I really couldn’t wrap my mind around the kind of solitude, loneliness, and alienation a truly insensate human would bear. I tried, however, and my Hangman stories revolved around his isolation as much as his fight against super-villains.

As powerful as Hangman could be, he did possess some very obvious and exploitable weaknesses. Being a telepath with no other senses, he was entirely dependent upon the consciousness of his opponents and any other heroes or bystanders present. With no minds to read, Hangman’s only option was to render himself immaterial until the situation changed. Thus, in a mano-a-mano donnybrook versus robots or inanimate machines, Hangman was virtually worthless.

In the Trademark Universe, Hangman played a similar role as the Specter in DC comics. He occupied an almost godlike position among the pantheon of super-beings I’d created. He single-mindedly dispensed justice regardless of any complications arising from emotion, affection, or human compassion. Even at the tender age of ten I realized what kind of complications might arise from such omniscient vigilantism.

Telepaths and Thoughtcrimes

I read George Orwell’s Animal Farm at age nine. My older sister was reading the book for school, and I borrowed it when she was finished. Much of the brilliance of Animal Farm resides in its accessibility to readers of all ages. I read the allegory on its surface, a fantastical fable about rebellious farm animals. Kind of a twisted take on Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons.

When I find an author I like, I never stop at one work. I quickly discovered that Orwell had written another very popular classic, 1984. So I checked it out of the North Olmsted Public Library and tackled it with youthful naïveté.

Whoa.

I’d love to say I understood the novel completely at nine years of age. But that would be a lie. What I did take away from 1984 was the concept of Thoughtcrime or Crimethink. When I developed the character of Hangman, the concept of Thoughtcrime immediately occurred to me. As an almost omniscient telepath, Hangman would actually be able to detect criminal tendencies in perpetrators BEFORE they acted. He would in essence, then, be in the unique position to be a TRUE thoughtpoliceman.

I loved the concept and the conflict it presented. Here we have Hangman, a hero who KNOWS someone is innately bad PRIOR to the commission of any bad act. So what can he do? What should he do? What limits should be placed on such power? How would the rest of the world view a hero who punishes people BEFORE they do wrong?

I addressed these very same questions in the first several issues of the Hangman comics I wrote. In the first such story, Hangman simply appears in a dark alley just as a novice rapist is crouched in the shadows, sizing up his inaugural victim, a pretty oblivious young lady. Telepathically, Hangman tells the would-be rapist he knows the evil in his mind. He tells the sicko he has but two choices: turn himself in to the authorities for treatment or face punishment for his deviant proclivities. The terrified and rageful rapist does what comes naturally.

Knife slashing, the would-be rapist lashes out violently towards the ghostlike man in the creepy hood who has invaded his mind. The fight isn’t much of a fight at all. Being able to read the rapist’s mind and anticipate his every move, Hangman quickly and violently dispatches the miscreant. Ironically, the rapist’s intended victim hears the ruckus in the alley and rushes to the defense of the very man who sought to despoil her. This noir, neo-gothic scene is Hangman’s first taste of the bitter ironies of thoughtcrime-fighting.

With subsequent stories, I explored the early stages of Hangman’s career. I briefly detailed his origin (covered below), and crafted tales revolving around the practicality and morality of dispensing pre-emptive justice. Using his telepathic abilities to identify prospective criminals before they acted, Hangman first attempted to counsel future felons against crossing the line of the law. If these “bad seeds” refused -- or worse yet resisted his authority -- Hangman showed no compunction against rendering them catatonic with a telepathic lobotomy.

Needless to say, such extreme measures put Hangman’s vigilantism squarely at odds with the law, and it wasn’t long before he attracted the attention of S-1, the governmental agency entrusted with policing super-beings. Thus, the hunt began, and many early issues found S-1 protecting the very scum that Hangman pursued. It was during this time that Hangman first encountered Silver Streak, the hero who would later convince the telepath to give up his solitary existence and take up the mantle of a Protector.

Now that we’ve briefly explored the creative influences and thematic considerations behind the Hangman, let’s turn to the Titanic Trademark Handbook for a closer look at his character and origins:

The Hangman (Christopher Sword). Miles Sword was a billionaire with a dream. He wished to create a male heir with genetically-hardwired telepathic abilities which could be passed on to future generations. In this way, Sword believed, his descendents would be able to perpetuate indefinitely the vast business empire he had built.

Enter a dark and mysterious stranger, a man who simply refered to himself as Mr. Cain. Cain promised Sword he could fashion such a child from a frozen embryo. When completed, the embryo was implanted inside Tilda Sword, Miles’ blushing young trophy wife, and the proud parents waited for the birth of their wonder child. As Tilda blossomed with her pregnancy, the baby’s telepathic abilities became apparent. Mother and father could sense his every incubating thought and feeling. Cain had delivered upon his promise. Their child would be everything they dreamed and more.

But alas, when baby Christopher Sword was delivered, a gruesome discovery was made -- he was a deformed mutant. He possessed no exterior senses via his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or skin. In addition, baby Christopher continually altered his density without warning, transforming from solid flesh and blood into an immaterial, ghostlike state.

The Swords were horrified. Cain promised them he would be able to fix baby Christopher, and he began creating a series of mentally-integrated mechanical devices that eventually allowed Christopher to move his limbs freely, control his density, and interact at least somewhat with the world outside his insensate body.

From the moment of his birth, baby Christopher could only truly sense the world through his unparalleled psychic abilities. As an infant, he instinctively learned to eat by phasing food into his digestive tract. As he grew older, he was able to move and grasp objects with the assistance of the special gloves and boots designed for him by Cain, and then later modified and perfected by his brilliant older half-sister, Kristin. These devices, coupled with his own mutant physiology, gave him super-strength and unparalleled physical coordination and stamina. While growing up, Christopher Sword telepathically taught himself every conceivable fighting technique, mastering these martial arts by reading the minds of the world’s greatest practitioners.

Thus, in a fight, the Hangman is virtually unbeatable. He enters his opponents’ minds and knows their every move before they make it. He has trained himself to control his body while viewing it from the outside, much like a video game player operates a computer-generated character. His psychic abilities also allow him to enter the mind of any bystander, human or animal, which subsequently provides him strategic perspectives from myriad angles.

Being dependent upon telepathy in a fight, Hangman does not fare well against robotic or non-sentient opponents, a weakness duly noted and exploited by his enemies. When this happens, Hangman typically renders himself into an immaterial state, where he is virtually untouchable. Even in his phase state, though, he is still susceptible to electric shock, radiation, and other EM wavelengths.

Hangman spends his off-time strapped into his psi-filter, probing minds all over the planet in search of evil-doers. When he encounters super-baddies, he gets a lock on their location and then heads off in pursuit. Once he enters the outside world, he phases himself completely and travels directly towards the source of the evil, oblivious to everything else.

Weapons -- Hangman is armed with a high-tech hangman’s noose constructed of virtually indestructible cable. The Hangman also operates out of a secret lair lined with a special alloy which shields him from the random thoughts of the universe. Amid the vast array of sophisticated computer equipment at his disposal, Hangman’s psi-filter allows him to psychically probe the outside world in search of evil-doers. His entire crimefighting arsenal is the handiwork of his older half-sister, Kristin, one of the Trademark Universe’s ranking technological wizards.

Personal Items -- Most if not all of Hangman’s early childhood memories are repressed due to savage physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by his father and mother. The extreme depravity he experienced as an infant and young man conditioned Christopher Sword to be unrelenting and unforgiving in the face of any and all evil. One of Hangman’s first acts as a vigilante saw him punishing his abusive parents, rendering them catatonic with a fierce mental assault.

Hangman can be exposed to the outside world for only limited amounts of time before becoming exhausted by the telepathic background noise. Thus, he avoids human contact at all costs. In his early career, he confided only in his sister, Kristin. She herself is resentful of her brother’s dependency on her, and the situation has caused tension between them in recent years.

Since forming the Protectors with Silver Streak, Hangman has been forced to adjust his personality and his perspective to a more social and sympathetic outlook. His ability to read the minds, and hence the darker thoughts, of his teammates puts him somewhat at odds with Buckshot’s aggression, Clarion’s lust, Airfoil’s immaturity, and Achilles’ arrogance. Although loyal to his Protector teammates, Hangman reserves real friendship for Silver Streak and Flurry, the only members he truly respects.

Several years prior to the events of Worlds Apart, while fighting the super-villain Mandroid, Hangman peered into the villain’s brain and discovered images of his wife, Doreen. The images were so strong and Hangman so exhausted that he began to meld minds with the criminal and fall in love with his wife. Beating Mandroid to a pulp until the villain was brain-dead, Hangman then entered the Mandroid’s lifeless shell, in effect possessing the villain’s body. Hangman then left his own body in his secret lair and assumed Mandroid’s life: wife, kids, the works.

This ruse lasted for several months until the Protectors launched a search for the missing Hangman at Kristin’s insistence. Finding Hangman’s comatose body inside his lair, the super-team tracked down “Mandroid” to Hangman’s adopted suburban home. Obviously, Hangman had great difficulty convincing his teammates he was actually Christopher Sword and NOT the Mandroid. Only when his “wife” Doreen intervened did the Protectors finally believe Hangman’s story. Although he’d never confessed the truth to Doreen, both she and the children had known from the outset that something was different about the head of their family.

Suddenly realizing the horrific fraud he’d perpetrated, Hangman gave up his retirement with Doreen and resumed living inside his atrophied body. With physical and mental therapy provided by his teammates, Hangman built himself back to peak strength, and returned to the super-biz a wiser yet even more emotionally-isolated man.

Breakneck R.I.P.

2009-12-27T15:03:00.007-05:00

If you’ve already checked out page 21 of Worlds Apart, then you know the bad news.

Breakneck is dead, his self-triggered nuclear holocaust absorbed by Hellfield and vented into the Flame Universe from whence our resident Fire Elemental hails. (For more on Hellfield’s powers, please see my previous blog entry). What starts as a BANG instantly becomes little more than a whimpering pile of ashes at Hellfield’s feet. The shocked looks on the faces of Breakneck’s Götterdämmerung comrades says it all.

Maniac’s hybrid minions have come to Fantasy Land fully expecting to die. In true terrorist fashion, the prospect of plunging headlong into eternity never scares them. It inspires them. Like all fanatics, they thrill to thoughts of departing this world in a harrowing blaze of homicidal glory.

Yet somehow the anticipated apocalypse hasn’t only been delayed; it’s been denied... with extreme prejudice. Suddenly Breakneck, their field general and Maniac’s BIG GUN, has been dispatched by one of the “second-stringer” Irregulars as little more than an afterthought. The tide of terror has changed.

It is now Götterdämmerung’s turn to be afraid... very afraid. While never terrified of facing death on their own terms, Breakneck’s untimely demise signals not only the end, but the failure of Götterdämmerung’s mission. Reality sets in. They aren’t facing the Protectors anymore. Not only have the rules of engagement changed, but even the very nature of the game itself.

But enough foreshadowing. The next few pages will bear out the fates of Maniac’s minions. For now, let us turn our attention to the first casualty among their ranks, Breakneck.

When we first meet him, Breakneck has taken teenage starlet Trishy Tanaka hostage, vowing to rape her on international TV before detonating a nuclear bomb that will not only level Los Angeles but perhaps destroy our solar system as well. As the Protectors and the Irregulars soon learn, Breakneck is not open to negotiation. It isn’t a matter of IF he will initiate a catastrophe, but rather WHEN. Before his short-lived reign of terror is snuffed out by Hellfield, Breakneck even drops trou in a depraved attempt to coerce oral sex from a sickened and stupefied Achilles.

Obviously, this guy has issues. So just who the heck is he, anyway?

For the answer to this, I will once more turn to the Titanic Trademark Universe Handbook.

Breakneck (Dante Taylor) The field commander of Maniac’s Götterdämmerung, Breakneck possesses savage super-strength that increases exponentially as he gets angrier and angrier. At its peak, Breakneck’s strength puts him in Achilles’ class or maybe even a tad stronger. Such exertion does take its toll on him, however, and the more energy Breakneck expends, the longer it takes him to recharge.

Dante Taylor began his criminal career as a small-time hood, stick-up man, and carjacker with a penchant for sadistically beating and savagely raping the victims of his extortions and robberies -- be they female or male. One such episode, the carjack-kidnapping of a married couple and their three small children, landed Dante in prison with a life sentence and no chance of parole.

In prison, Dante resumed his sadistic sexual attacks on his fellow inmates. When a fifteen-year-old Todd Harper found himself sentenced to Taylor’s cell block, Dante devoted all his attention to breaking in the “new meat.” Harper was able to defend himself, however, and the two developed an enmity that extended beyond the prison walls. (See my previous blog entry on Buckshot)

As one of the prison system’s most violent and unrepentant inmates, Dante made the perfect subject for Darius Kilhausen’s experimental “rehabilitation program.” When Kilhausen’s subjects developed hybrid super-powers, Dante organized the massive breakout that eventually led to the creation of Maniac’s Götterdämmerung. Taking the name “Breakneck,” Dante Taylor assumed a leadership role in Maniac’s shock troops, ranking as Kilhausen’s favorite right behind Maniac’s prodigy, Buckshot.

Even while they both served Maniac, Buckshot and Breakneck hated each other. In many ways, Buckshot’s loathing for Breakneck is what first separated him from Götterdämmerung and inspired his quest for redemption. So keep this in mind as you chuckle at the pile of ash that marks the final culmination of Breakneck’s criminal career.

Christmas & Comic Book Heroes

2009-12-20T14:19:00.007-05:00

I’ve been experiencing a bit of writer’s block lately. Actually, that’s not entirely honest. Put bluntly, it’s more like writer’s constipation. I’ve thoroughly digested my subject matter, and I feel it quivering at the ends of my hands awaiting sweet release. However, for one reason or another, I just can’t seem to push out the words. Hence my rather scatological analogy (and yet another bad pun … uggh).

So I’m going to temporarily skip my treatise on the character developments of Hangman and Achilles and write something a little more in keeping with the holiday season. Hopefully, this is the diversionary diuretic I need.

Many who get to know me are surprised -- no, make that SHOCKED to learn that I love Christmas. Being a card-carrying cynic and skeptic (yes, I do actually carry a card), I’m not a particularly sentimental person. My fascination with religion and religious symbolism is rooted in scholarship not spirituality. Yet despite my deep and abiding agnosticism, I am very proud to admit that I love Christmas. I love the story, the symbolism, the songs, and the sense of brotherly love and charity that envelopes our society in a sweet, albeit short-lived season of sanity.

If the world celebrated the Christmas spirit three hundred and sixty-five days a year, ten years a decade, ten decades a century, and ten centuries a millennium, I truly believe my worldview would be fashioned from simple faith rather than chaotic doubt. Doubt is the bedrock of my being. Doubt is why I am neither a believer nor an atheist. In a world governed by uncertainty, I approach any kind of fundamentalism with a jaundiced eye. As far as the celebration of Christmas, however, I side squarely with town square manger scenes, bell-ringing soldiers in the Salvation Army, schoolchildren singing “Silent Night,” garish lawn displays, and Linus Van Pelt’s annual recitation of Luke 2:8-14.

Since I was old enough to listen and understand, I’ve always approached the story of Jesus’ birth from the perspective of a great narrative. Given my early love of mythic, legendary, and comic book heroes, this should come as no surprise. The Nativity is one of the world’s great Origin Stories. Right up there with King Arthur, Superman, and Momotaro. Would-be world beater Herod is hunting down all infants and toddlers in order to exterminate the newly-born King of the Jews. Meanwhile, the baby Jesus is born with no protection in absolute abject poverty. Throw in the shepherds, wise men, and a heavenly host, and you’ve got a tale that kept young Mark Kozak on the edge of his seat.

My childhood memories of Christmas were built around this narrative. The music of Christmas, which I love to this day, reverberates with this gripping story. The symbolism of Christmas -- manger scenes, trumpet-blowing angels, ornamental stars, presents for loved ones -- also resonates with the key elements of this grand adventure. As a child, I played with the lifelike figurines from my Grandmother Kozak’s manger display the way I played with my Mego action figures of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Green Arrow. Feeling that Matthew and Luke left out a lot of the details, I made up my own stories and my own characters revolving around the Nativity.

When I see Christmas attacked today, I react viscerally. Mind you, I am NOT uninformed. I know WHY non-Christians resent the public display of the holiday. Many are well-intentioned souls who truly do believe that the public celebration of Christmas is a kind of cultural torture of non-Christians by an insensitive, bullying majority. Then there are die-hard atheists who just hate anything that smacks of “bible-thumping, patriarchal, theocratic superstition.”

Like I said, I get it. Okay. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people in this country (myself included) don’t believe in the literalism of the Bible in general or the historical details of the Nativity in particular. We all know this. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Wiccanism, and Atheism aren’t big secrets any more. However, if the celebration of Christmas is oppressing you, that’s YOUR problem.

I mean, I hate Dancing with the Stars and rap music, two cultural phenomena that occupy A LOT more space in our cultural landscape than Christmas, but you don’t see me petitioning local and national governments to outlaw them. No, I’m not trying to belittle a non-believer’s right to dissent. I’m not saying non-Christians should keep quiet about their non-belief during Christmas or any other season.

Quite the contrary.

Talk and educate all you want about your particular faith or lack of it. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to do so. Just STOP attacking manger scenes and school Christmas pageants like Carrie Nation on a rampage at the local saloon. Attempting to outlaw the public celebration of Christmas makes you look ridiculous to the majority of Christmas-loving Americans (like me) while simultaneously ginning up the very “bible-thumping” base you seek to silence.

Meanwhile, as the battles wage in the Christmas war, I’m going to sit back, drink my eggnog, decorate my tree, sing along with my Harry Connick Christmas CD, wrap my carefully-chosen presents, and wish everyone I know a Merry Christmas -- whether they want me to or not.

One Righteously Bad Mutha -- Wolf

2009-12-05T10:03:00.012-05:00

I’m finally going to devote a full blog entry to the creation and character of Wolf. As leader of the Irregulars, Wolf is the driving force behind the action of Worlds Apart. Among the heroes and villains that populate the Trademark Universe, Wolf may be my favorite super-citizen. The story of his origin is a marriage of myriad pop-culture influences working in tandem with my need to explore ideas of justice, morality, race, and redemption.

Influence #1 - Blaxploitation

My dad took us to a lot of drive-in movies when we were young. Normally, my mom insisted we see some wholesome Disney fare. Occasionally, my dad was able to talk my mom into letting us see more adult-themed movies. I saw Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes at the drive-in. I also saw the entire early James Bond series. My most vivid drive-in memory, however, was a movie called Slaughter.

Being a native Clevelander, my dad was a huge Browns fan. This meant he was also a huge Jim Brown fan. When Jim retired from football and began making movies, my dad made sure he saw Brown’s first effort, a blaxploitation classic entitled Slaughter. I’m not sure what year we saw Slaughter at the drive in, or what summers we also saw Shaft and Hammer. What I do know is that by 1976 I knew enough about the plots and conventions of ‘70s blaxploitation films to be enthralled with the “street life” world of pimps, prostitutes, numbers runners, street gangs, and the eternal struggle with “the Man.”

Influence #2 – The Black Panthers & Black Muslims

As a boy, I was acutely aware of the very real presence of racial discontent in our country. Given my family background (which I’ve covered in previous blogs), I watched the evening news with the eye of someone twice my age. Civil rights protests marred by violence, scowling black militants, pro athletes like Cassius Clay and Lew Alcindor converting to the Nation of Islam -- the nightly news images both thrilled and scared me.

By the time I was 9 years old, I knew all about the inhumanity of slavery and the scourge of Jim Crow. I understood why Black leaders were angry and demanding redress. I wanted Black Americans to succeed in their struggle, to be happy and treated with justice and respect. Decades before Rodney King’s famous quote, I myself asked: “Can’t we all just get along?”

Influence #3 – The Falcon and the Black Panther

After my first comic book convention in 1973, (covered in my previous blog entry) I attended similar events with my dad on a regular basis. Sometime before 1975, I picked up some Fantastic Four and Avengers comics featuring T’Challa, the Black Panther. I immediately loved the character, a brilliant scientist who was also one of the Marvel Universe’s most fearsome fighting machines.

During the same timespan, I ended up discovering the now legendary Captain America #117 in a stack of my brother’s discarded comics. This issue featured the first ever appearance of Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon, a man who would soon join Cap as the co-star of the retitled Captain America and the Falcon. Once again, I was taken with the unique personality of a Black Superhero.

1976

I’d created the Trademark Universe months earlier. My first Black superhero, Brigade (later known as the Retaliator), debuted a few months after my first wave of heroes: Skater, Hangman, Beachcomber, Son of Liberty, and the Optimist. With Brigade/Retaliator’s face obscured by his helmet, I felt the need to create a more visible and upfront Black superhero.

My initial attempt occurred in a Skater story. While investigating the nefarious puppet-masters behind an inner-city riot, Skater came across a street-based mystery man who called himself Black Wolf. An obvious rip-off of Black Panther and Falcon, Black Wolf’s imagined costume combined T’Challa’s early costume (circa Avengers #53) and Falcon’s original, wingless, groovy, green-and-yellow get-up. Needless to say, Black Wolf possessed the standard super-soldier powers -- heightened speed, strength, and reflexes -- in addition to ferocious fighting ability.

Warning Skater to “stay off my turf,” Black Wolf grudgingly accepted the established hero’s aid in bringing the hate-mongering culprits to justice. Subsequent Skater stories featured more and more of Black Wolf. Constantly butting heads, the two heroes-cum-adversaries relentlessly patrolled the city along different paths. At some point, Wolf inexplicably dropped the “Black” portion of his alter ego and started dressing more like Shaft than a superhero. As I continued developing his backstory and private life, I slowly realized that my one-time supporting player presented a far more compelling character than the more straightlaced Skater.

I should pause here to remind everyone that I was an eleven year old suburban white kid trying to create “real” black characters based solely on pop culture archetypes. In other words, my efforts were unintentionally offensive, being rife with stereotypes. The more I wrote Wolf, the more various elements from the blaxploitation genre colored his character.

An advocate of “street justice,” Wolf had no qualms about befriending or assisting neighborhood denizens of questionable character in pursuit of the greater good. His crash pad boasted a bevy of big afro-ed, bare-midriff-showing, black beauty queens with names like Delilah, Cleopatra, and Nefertiti. Whenever Wolf got called into action, he would invariably be roused from a large bed amid two, three, or even four of his “does.” These same women constantly provided Wolf with “walking around money,” although no mention was made of how they earned the “dough.” Never openly labeling these women as prostitutes, even I could read between my own lines.

Within the working world of the super-biz, Wolf garnered the reputation as a notorious “player.” (Yes, thanks to countless blaxploitation films, I knew the word DECADES before it entered popular parlance.) Clarion, Maze, Howitzer, Gypsy, Lioness, Diatom, Pythoness, Kali, Paradise -- Wolf loved and left almost every superheroine and super-villainess in the Trademark Universe. His torrid affair with the equally libidinous Clarion provided the Trademark Universe’s first interracial romance. In the made-up letters section I wrote for Silver Streak’s comic book, fan reaction split straight down the middle between admiration and outrage.

When Tony Lewis and I finally decided to go ahead with Worlds Apart, I had a decision to make. I could “whitewash” Wolf to be more in keeping with modern, politically-correct sensitivities. Or I could keep him the way I developed him, blaxploitated warts and all.

Needless to say, just a few panels of Worlds Apart make clear that I’m going with my instincts and presenting Wolf as originally conceived. My reasoning, whether good or bad, will become evident as the story progresses and the Irregulars plunge headlong into a world they never made.

Now, for those of you wondering just how Wolf came to find himself cavorting around with the likes of Silver Streak and Hellfield, let’s turn to Wolf’s entry in the Titanic Trademark Handbook (Please note, much like Buckshot, Wolf’s origin story was developed and embellished over almost a decade of stories. The entry below encapsulates the final, revised version of Wolf’s origin):

Wolf (Archibald Turrentine) Wolf’s origin actually begins two hundred years before his birth. American patriot and Revolutionary War vigilante Jonathan Masters, a.k.a. the Son of Liberty, gains extraordinary physical abilities by ingesting an herbal concoction formulated by his slave, Brown Tom, a former tribal medicine man. This recipe is passed down as a well-guarded secret among Brown Tom’s kin for three generations. The “miracle elixir,” as Masters called it, finally vanished after the death of Brown Tom’s great-great-grandson, Moses, a slave to the Turrentine family during the mid-1800s.

One hundred years later, geneticist Dr. Linus Turrentine spends his spare time obsessively researching the lost family formula after finding mention of it in recently uncovered journals. After a decade of trials and errors, Linus finally stumbles upon the right combination of herbs. Dubbing his rediscovery the Meta-Vitamin, or Metamin for short, Turrentine hypothesizes that the Metamin acts as a catalyst of sorts, spurring the human body to utilize 100% of the energy stored in foods. Turrentine’s first guinea pig is his own son, Archibald, a star high-school athlete, who begins taking the supplement with extraordinary results.

With heightened reflexes, speed, stamina, and strength, Archie becomes the most highly-recruited high school athlete in the country. With so many offers pending, Archie fails to register for any of the colleges and universities before getting drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam. As a soldier, Archie is beloved by his fellow grunts and hated by anyone in authority. Archie fights the war “Archie’s Way,” and his bravery on the battlefield is only equaled by his contempt for the bureaucrats and pencil-pushers making the command decisions. As a fitting conclusion to his military career, Archie bears the singular distinction of being awarded the Medal of Honor while simultaneously being dishonorably discharged.

Resurfacing at UCLA in the late 1960s, Archie’s consciousness is seized with radical new ideas of civil rights, social justice, and struggle against the elitist ruling class. Against his father’s wishes, Archie abandons his college athletic career for a life of radical and revolutionary activities. During one such protest, Archie stumbles upon one of his revolutionary idols secretly colluding with FBI agents in an effort to destroy a fellow black activist and political rival.

Disillusioned once again, Archie retreats to Harlem, retiring from active life to own and manage a health food store based upon the herbal remedies of his forebears. Joining Archie from home, his brother Robbie provides the brains behind the operation. A brilliant chemist who inherited Linus’ scientific gifts, Robbie keeps Archie supplied with the Metamin while cooking up a variety of other herbals and medicinals that soon find him running afoul of the local drug pushers in the neighborhood.

As his Harlem neighborhood consumes itself with violence and criminal activity, Archie turns a blind eye to the social blight, preferring instead to keep to himself, his pet dog Wolf, his books, his yoga, martial arts, and countless female companions. When Robbie runs afoul of a notorious drug kingpin, Archie provides him no support, preferring to stay uninvolved despite pressure from his brother and threats from local thugs.

Failing to read the writing on the wall, Archie is utterly devastated when gang members ransack his store, kill his brother and his main squeeze, Cleopatra, and kidnap his dog, Wolf. Setting out to find his dog and wreak vengeance, Archie stumbles across the gang’s hideout, kicks ass, and ends up incinerating their entire operation. Archie is unable to save his dog, however. He finds its corpse being eaten by one of the gang’s killer guard dogs.

Overwhelmed by grief and shame for his apathy, Archie takes to the streets as a vigilante, taking the name Wolf in honor of his fallen pet. It is during one of his initial forays that he encounters the man who will be both his greatest influence and his most bitter rival, Silver Streak. Fighting the Klan, the FBI, the Army, and anyone else who represents “the Man,” Wolf’s constant nonconformity to superhero norms eventually drives him deep underground. Here he remains for a good fifteen years until finally emerging to face the outstanding charges against him.

In a highly publicized trial that sees almost every superhero (and some super-villains) in the Trademark Universe testifying for either the prosecution or the defense, Wolf is eventually found not guilty on all counts, save one manslaughter charge: the accidental killing of a vicious National Guard commander. To this charge, Wolf voluntarily pleads guilty, resigning himself to whatever fate awaits him.

In an enlightened sentence, the judge places Wolf on probation, requiring him to carry out his community service by becoming a mentor to super-powered felons who have expressed the desire to reform and go straight. Forming a kind of superhero halfway house, Wolf’s loosely-knit squad eventually forms the basis of the world’s most iconoclastic super team, the Irregulars.

Comprised of members who have grown frustrated with the legal limitations shackling mainstream super-teams, the Irregulars present a constant chaotic presence in the super-biz. As their single-minded general, Wolf’s no-holds-barred approach to social justice makes him one of the most dominant and controversial forces in the super-biz.

Weapons -- Wolf possesses night-vision goggles which allow him to see in relative darkness.

Personal Items -- A deeply committed radical and champion of social justice, Wolf is probably, along with Silver Streak, the most ethical (and at times self-righteous) hero in the game. He does have one major skeleton in his closet, however. His long-estranged son, Jacob, who has been taking the Metamin since birth, is the super-villain Caracal.

As leader of the Irregulars, Wolf must constantly put on a stern all-business demeanor to keep his less-than-disciplined troops in line. Although he knows that any of his teammates could kill him without batting an eye, he still manages to intimidate them, commanding their obedience and respect.

Eddie "Iron Man" March Meets Luke Cage -- Retaliator

2009-11-27T07:19:00.013-05:00

I went to my first comic book convention in 1973 when I was eight years old. The event took place in the Grand Ballroom at the Statler Hotel in downtown Cleveland. My dad took me. Although not a huge comic book fan, he loved nostalgia from his youth, and amid the boxes of “funny books” he found a treasure trove of souvenirs from old radio shows and movie serials.

Surrounded by what seemed like millions of comic books, I clutched the $10 bill my dad had placed in my hand. Today, $10 wouldn’t buy squat at a comic book convention. In 1973, however, $10 purchased me so many comics I actually struggled with my goody bag on the way out of the hotel. The fact that my dad gave me $10 -- which would be roughly $50 today -- wasn’t lost on me. I knew I had to spend my money wisely.

With half my funds, I purchased some virtually mint Adventure Comics (featuring Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes), Flash, and Justice League of America issues. At that time bagged issues in excellent condition ranged from 50¢ - 60¢. With the rest of my funds I bought 100 assorted coverless comics for 5¢ a piece.

For a kid who just loved comic books, it didn’t matter that “collectors” considered coverless comics as worthless junk. My grab-bag of goodies provided a treasure trove of rapturous reading. The majority of titles were DC, and I spent hours poring over pages of Hawkman, thrilling to the exploits of Adam Strange and Green Lantern. By this time, I’d begun reading the more challenging Marvel comics my brother collected, and I was very excited that almost a third of the books were already-familiar titles like Fantastic Four and Spider-Man.

In this cornucopia of comics, I first discovered my favorite series from that era, Captain Mar-Vell. I was also introduced to Iron Man and Marvel’s predominant black superhero at the time, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. The lone Iron Man issue happened to be the classic Invincible Iron Man #21. In it, Shellhead “retires” from the super biz and hires a successor to be Iron Man, veteran boxer Eddie “Iron Man” March, who also happens to be African American. At the end of the story, Eddie almost makes the ultimate sacrifice, and Tony Stark realizes he must never forsake the responsibility of being Iron Man again. To this day, Iron Man #21 still ranks as one of the most influential comics in my life.

By contrast, the Luke Cage offering in my grab bag (#5: “Don’t Mess With Black Mariah”) didn’t quite suit my eight-year-old tastes. The villain of the story, Black Mariah, was a huge, obese black woman with no super-powers. The whole tale seemed ridiculous. A superhero like Cage should be able to punch a fat lady through a wall. Story over. Still, I found something fascinating about Cage’s “for hire” mentality.

Looking back on that first comic book convention, I truly believe my $5/100-comic grab-bag might be the most important and significant monetary investment of my life. A short time after losing myself in all those stories, I began imagining the heroes that would later populate the Trademark Universe. One of my first creations owed his very identity to both Iron Man #21 and Luke Cage #5.

In fourth grade social studies, we read about the Haitian Slave Revolt of 1791. I remember the historical account intrigued me. If Haiti’s slaves were able to revolt, why weren’t U.S. slaves able to do the same? Needless to say, I admired the Haitian slaves who had been able to break the chains of slavery themselves.

Several weeks after creating the Trademark Universe in 1975, my ten-year-old self experienced the vague notion that something was missing. Although I didn’t know the word back then, I surmise now that I was experiencing a lack of “diversity” in my characters. Fabricated upon the three-dimensional “realistic” concept of Marvel Comics, the Trademark Universe seemed more like the two-dimensional monochromatic world of DC Comics in its inception. Skater (later Silver Streak), Hangman, Beachcomber, Son of Liberty, the Optimist, Vendetta -- my league of extraordinary white gentlemen exposed a certain paucity in my creative powers, not to mention my social consciousness.

The solution came to me immediately. The Trademark Universe needed a black superhero. I recalled Iron Man #21 and the character of Eddie March, a black prize fighter who became the first substitute Iron Man. I also mulled over the origin and character of Luke Cage, an innocent convict who loans his body out to a corrupt government in exchange for parole. Comingling these two influences with my fascination with the Haitian Slave Revolt of 1791, I created the Trademark Universe’s first “black” superhero: Brigade, a.k.a. Timothy LaPierre, a.k.a. the Retaliator.

For a short while, Brigade, who quickly took the name Retaliator (see below), sufficed as the TU’s sole superhero of color. However, as I gradually realized, my first black American hero really wasn’t a BLACK hero because no one could see the color of his skin beneath his helmet. In other words, I’d somehow created a black hero that no one knew was black.

I resolved this dilemma in two ways. I created a story arc where LaPierre’s identity (and thus his race) became public, and I created a second black superhero whose skin color and racial identity presented no ambiguity whatsoever: Wolf. (Much more on Wolf in my next blog entry.)

For more information regarding Retaliator’s origin and career, I will once again cite the Trademark Universe Handbook I provided to Tony Lewis when we originally decided to make Worlds Apart a reality.

Retaliator (Timothy LaPierre) A black American professional boxer of Haitian descent, Timothy LaPierre boasted not only a Golden Gloves championship but an Olympic gold medal by age 18. Known as “The Haitian Machine,” hard-hitting LaPierre had a penchant for putting down his opponents in the first round. Finally, after battling through dozens of professional fights, LaPierre got the title shot of his dreams against Heavyweight Champion Malcolm “Bruiser” Bruno. LaPierre’s dream, however, quickly turned into his worst nightmare.

Viciously race-baited by Bruno during the pre-fight weigh-in, LaPierre entered the ring determined not only to beat Bruno, but to punish him as well. As the fight started, Bruno’s racially-charged taunts enraged LaPierre, throwing the young challenger off his fight. Bruno even managed to land a hard uppercut that sent LaPierre to the canvas, something that had never happened to the young boxer before.

As a dazed LaPierre pulled himself together, Bruno stood over him, jeering and spitting down on him. Struggling to his feet, LaPierre found himself strengthened by a cold, merciless rage. As the fight resumed, LaPierre overwhelmed the champion, unleashing a flurry of punches that made the onlookers gasp. As the coup de grace, the Haitian Machine delivered a devastating knockout blow to Bruno, a punch so hard it broke Bruno’s neck, killing the champion instantly.

Needless to say, pandemonium broke loose inside and outside the ring. Amid the chaos, LaPierre found himself being drugged and hustled out of the ring by mysterious men in black suits, who then dumped him into a waiting black helicopter. Hours later, LaPierre regained consciousness and found himself being held in a top-secret underground research facility. During a relentless interrogation, LaPierre discovered where he was and who was holding him. The installation belonged to the U.S. government’s top-secret S-1 Operations Bureau.

S-1 Operations, LaPierre soon learned, constituted a top-secret agency entrusted with policing America’s super-powered citizens, heroes and villains. S-1’s primary objective at the time was the recovery of a valuable piece of re-engineered alien technology: a visor mask which enabled the wearer to view the world in slow motion, as well as see through walls and perceive surroundings with 360 degrees of peripheral vision. The visor had been stolen by a man named Matt Carpenter, a.k.a. the Optimist, an investigative reporter turned super-powered vigilante.

Faced with the prospect of criminal prosecution for the death of Bruno, LaPierre was offered a position with S-1 in order to pay his debt to society. To combat the Optimist, S-1 designed a suit of battle armor projected to be ten times more effective than the Optimist’s visor. However, they had been unsuccessful thus far finding a man with the reflexes and physical abilities required to control the armor. After studying LaPierre for months, S-1 believed they’d found their super-soldier.

Undergoing rigorous training with S-1’s battlesuit, LaPierre was given the codename Brigade and dispatched to retrieve the Optimist’s visor. After hunting down the Optimist for weeks, LaPierre slowly realized the truth behind Matt Carpenter’s actions. S-1 abused their authority while breaking countless laws, and Carpenter, as the Optimist, had only been fighting to expose S-1’s corruption. What finally turned LaPierre against S-1, however, was knowledge that S-1 operatives had actually been the ones to kill Bruno in the ring. S-1 had framed LaPierre for the slaying in order to secure his cooperation.

Disenchanted with his employers, LaPierre divulged the information to Silver Streak and the Protectors while bringing suit against S-1 and the federal government. For their part, the Protectors swore to protect LaPierre until his trial, and for a brief time he signed on with them, still under the name Brigade. S-1 tricked the Protectors into leaving Brigade alone at Protectors HQ, however, and with the team absent, S-1 moved in to silence their rogue agent once and for all.

Needless to say, Brigade survived the assault and lived to fight many more days. Tricked into believing that the Protectors betrayed him to S-1, Brigade left the group, relocated to Haiti and went into “business” for himself as the Retaliator, “a superhero who looks out for number one.” Retaliator works for anyone (except criminals) who pays his fee: $10,000 a day plus expenses -- in cash. Essentially given asylum by the Haitian government because of his super-powers and duel citizenship, Retaliator constantly flaunts his outlaw status in the States by crossing the border with impunity. During one such mission, Retaliator fell in with a ragtag bunch of marginalized superheroes led by another black superhero, Wolf. The resulting partnership led to the creation of the Irregulars.

Weapons -- Originally designed by S-1 from back-engineered alien technology, Retaliator’s suit is one giant weapon giving him super-strength, speed, and invulnerability, as well as the ability to fly, survive the vacuum of space, and fire high-intensity energy blasts. Years after first donning the armor, Retaliator’s suit received an upgrade with even more advanced alien technology during an off-world adventure. Presently, Retaliator is one of the Trademark Universe’s most powerful heroes.

Personal Items -- Retaliator’s pariah status in the superbiz makes establishing any close contacts nearly impossible. Quite simply, his motto of always “looking out for number one” means even his teammates don’t completely trust him. A year before the events of Worlds Apart, LaPierre met and married Somali supermodel Ayanna, and the two have a baby girl. LaPierre’s status as a family man governs his actions at the opening of Worlds Apart, where he very un-superheroically leaves the battle with Breakneck to save his own family. Such unpredictable and nonconforming self-interest is emblematic of Retaliator’s character and career.

Possibly the Vilest Trademark Villainess -- Mosquito

2009-11-22T21:46:00.006-05:00

In my last blog, Running the Race, I offered my take on the topic of race in general terms. For the next three blog entries, I’m going to explore this topic in more specific terms, namely how my childhood views on race influenced the development of three very prominent characters in the Trademark Universe: Mosquito, Retaliator, and Wolf.

When I was a child, I spent quite a bit of time on Cleveland’s near west side. My father grew up on Trowbridge Avenue in a largely Czech neighborhood between Fulton Road and West 41st Street. While I was growing up in suburban North Olmsted, my grandmother and aunt still lived in that old house. When my parents took a vacation every year, my siblings and I spent a week in the old neighborhood familiarizing ourselves with the landscape of my dad’s youth.

One of the local landmarks in Cleveland’s Czech community was the Ceska Sin Sokol Hall on Clark Avenue. My grandmother took us there many times for weekly suppers featuring traditional Czech food. Coincidentally, right across from the Ceska Sin stood another Cleveland landmark, this one not so community friendly: the Cleveland headquarters for George Lincoln Rockwell’s National Socialist White People’s Party.

Whenever my grandmother took us to the Ceska Sin, I invariably turned a curious, horrified eye across the street towards the run-down storefront brazenly brandishing the swastika. Admittedly, the place held a sick fascination for me. Given my upbringing as the grandson of a prominent civil rights activist, I knew a lot more about racist ideology than your typical lily-white pre-teen suburbanite.

Even now, I remember being astounded how blatantly these American Nazis advertised. I couldn’t believe they operated so openly, and no one -- not cops, nor protestors, nor well-meaning vigilantes -- shut them down. I also noted, with a kind of smug satisfaction, that I never saw anyone entering or exiting the storefront. Perhaps these racists could operate legally in our country. But they still boasted no members.

I was disabused of this naïve notion on a warm spring afternoon when I was twelve years old. During one of those yearly sojourns in the old neighborhood, I found myself stopping at the Ceska Sin with my aunt and grandmother while they ran errands. As they talked inside the hall with friends, I ventured outside onto the street. Immediately, my eyes riveted to the ramshackle building across the street.

Something was different about the headquarters this day. Something very different.
Unlike the previous times I’d studied the dormant storefront, the headquarters that afternoon buzzed with people and activity. A small squad of uniformed men stood outside the large black swastika hand-painted across the boarded and barred windows. Sprinkled among these armbanded brownshirts, a handful of teenagers strutted up and down the sidewalk shouting slogans like “White Power” and “Send Them Back to Africa!” while passing out pamphlets.

I pause now because I’m about to make a confession in the next few paragraphs that I’ve never disclosed to anyone. So please, remember, I was twelve years old at the time. And go easy on me.

As my gaze swept over the gaudy, unseemly spectacle of a mini Nazi rally, my eyes focused like the proverbial laser beam on one of the hate-spouting street urchins. She must have been about 14 or 15 years old. She had long black hair, pale white skin, wide doe eyes, a face like Pamela Sue Martin, and a pair of cantaloupe-sized breasts that strained against the black swastika emblazoned across her blood-red t-shirt. To say I was drawn to her would be like saying a fly is drawn to a pile of horse manure.

In what can only be described as a hormone-induced trance, I sauntered stiff-legged across the street, barely breathing as I approached the object of my early-adolescent adoration. As the old expression goes, she saw me coming from a mile away. She walked towards me with a big smile on her face, her out-stretched hand offering me a black-and-white illustrated pamphlet formatted like a small comic book. She then asked me a question for which she obviously knew the answer: “Hey, do you like comic books?”

“Uh... yeah...” I stammered, unable to talk through the arousal coursing through my dilated blood vessels. “I love comic books.”

“Do you love the white race?” she pressed as she pressed the comic book in my hand.

“Yeah...”

“Good. You’ll love this comic book. It’s all about what you can do to stand up for our race against all the niggers and kikes.”

“Okay, cool.” I just kept staring at her, stupefied by her face and breasts. “What’s your name?”

“Anne.” She wasn’t walking away, so I thought maybe something about me had impressed her.

“My name’s Mark.” I paused. “I hate niggers, too,” I suddenly blurted in a desperate attempt to convince her to be my girlfriend... FOREVER!

“It’s not just the niggers. Remember. It’s the Jews, too. They control the blacks and are using them to destroy our race. The Jews are the real problem. Without the Jews we could beat the niggers down no problem.” She smiled, and I knew she was about to leave me... FOREVER! “Remember, White Power!” she crowed before swiveling her impossibly perfect posterior back into the brownshirted phalanx.

I walked back to the Ceska Sin, flushed with shame and lust. I folded up the comic book and stuffed it into my back pocket only moments before my grandmother and aunt exited the hall. Unbelievably, they looked at me the same way they’d always looked at me. Obviously, the egregious nature of my hate crime branded me with the Mark of Cain. Without any discussion regarding what I’d been doing outside the hall, we drove back to their house. A short time later, in the privacy of their basement, I slid the comic book out of my back pocket and lost myself amid the poorly-drawn panels.

Through the haze of memory, I recall the short black & white comic being all about a white kid getting bullied by black students at school. As a victim of bullying myself, the tale drew me in on a purely guttural level. The comic recounted how the poor white kid fought back against his black oppressors until finally triumphing and becoming a hero for the white race. Many years later, while scanning the internet for a presentation on hate literature, I came across what I think must be the same comic, White Power Comes to Midvale.

Gazing upon those panels some thirty-odd years later, I can’t believe I once responded so viscerally to the amateurish script and mediocre artwork. For some reason inexplicable and unfathomable to my twelve-year-old self, I found the comic not only thrilling but stimulating (if you get my drift). Yes, I’m absolutely mortified to admit for the first time in my life that I not only proclaimed my hatred for the black race in order to impress a girl, I also... uh... pleasured myself while reading a race-baiting comic and thinking of Anne, the Teutonic Temptress.

So what does all this have to do with Trademark Comics in general and Worlds Apart in particular? Well, the experience with Anne and her racist comic book inspired the creation of perhaps the Trademark Universe’s most despicable villainess, the Mosquito. When I first created Maniac’s Götterdämmerung, one of my initial hybrid shock troopers was based explicitly (pun intended) on Aryan Anne.

Mosquito, as originally conceived, came to Maniac’s ranks through a neo-nazi skinhead gang. Transformed into an insectoid freak with wings, super strength & reflexes, and an organic exo-skeleton, Mosquito also possessed the power to drain blood from her victims, which in turn further amplified her own formidable prowess. Immediately, she became one of my “go-to” baddies, especially in racially-charged Silver Streak and Wolf stories where she provided the perfect bane for the ever-squabbling heroes.

Due, no doubt, to the pangs of guilt and self-loathing born from my shameful encounter with Anne, I instantly rendered Mosquito in terms of the grotesque. Her ghoulish outward appearance thoroughly complemented her abhorrent inner nature. Subconsciously, I guess, I was attempting to strip away any sense of the misplaced attraction I’d cast in the direction of Aryan Anne, her real-life inspiration. Even among Maniac’s über-evil yet racially-diversified Götterdämmerung, Mosquito’s virulent, uncompromising white supremacy cast her in the role of pariah. As Buckshot once commented, “You know you’re really a sicko when even Spree doesn’t hang with you.”

Despite my best efforts to make Mosquito completely unappealing, I continually found myself drawn to her character as a means of exploring my own confusion, fear, and fascination with issues of race in American culture. As I filled notebook after notebook with Trademark tales, Mosquito stories became my darkest and most violent offerings. My multi-issue arc chronicling Mosquito’s involvement in the Rhodesian civil war shocked even myself as I reread my words. The things Mosquito said and did, her actions as well as her motivations, pushed the proverbial envelope well beyond the borderline between good and evil. Of all my super-villains, Mosquito singularly possessed the unique ability to bring out not only the worst but also the best in Trademark heroes and villains.

In the opening of Worlds Apart, we see Mosquito in all her racist rancor. Her confrontation with Silver Streak displays the essence of her evil. Gripping two pretty teenagers in her horrific clutches, she forces the ultra-moral hero to make a Sophie’s Choice, of sorts, between a pair of victims, one black and the other white. Tony Lewis’ artistic depiction of Silver Streak’s utter paralyzing horror is worth a hundred voice balloons.

Later on, as the plot of Worlds Apart develops, we will see other, even more horrifying instances of racial hatred and racial violence being perpetrated upon innocent victims. Such disturbing unexpurgated content found its way early into my Trademark stories. Even at the tender age of twelve and thirteen, I was tentatively exploring the limits of my own imagination and capacity to fictively deal with the evil I’d encountered within myself that warm spring afternoon on Clark Avenue.

Running the Race

2009-11-15T10:51:00.010-05:00

In my previous blog concerning Silver Streak, I mentioned the character Wolf and how I created him as a kind of political and racial counterpoint to the ultra-conservative, pro-establishment, and very white Silver Streak. I’ve also discussed in another blog entry, Moral Clarity, my family’s involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1950s, ‘60s & ‘70s. The issue of race relations in America has always fascinated me, and that fascination, in turn, wove itself into the creation of the Trademark Universe as well as my other writing.

Over the years, I’ve been told my views on race are naive, provincial, and/or uninformed. I’m neither surprised nor angered by that assessment. I grew up in North Olmsted, Ohio during the 1970s. We could count the number of African American families living in our suburban community on one hand. Although I do recall going to school with a smattering of Asian and Hispanic Americans, only one distinctive color ran through my childhood and adolescence: white.

Some would say my lily-white past disqualifies me from writing anything substantive regarding race relations or racism in the United States. I can respect that. What follows may explore the most wrong-headed assessment of the white/nonwhite divide ever conceived. So please, let me apologize beforehand. I can only write from my own experiences. To do otherwise would simply be disingenuous.

I formed my seminal opinions concerning race relations and racism from a combination of complementary and often contradictory influences. In my entry Moral Clarity, I briefly explored my mother’s background as the daughter of a somewhat controversial minister strongly committed to the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement. I grew up, then, with an acute awareness of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow, as well as a fair amount of knowledge regarding the historical plight of Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, Japanese-American internees, migrant farm workers, and other disenfranchised and exploited minorities.

Coupled with my mother’s philosophical commitment to equality and social justice, I also learned a great deal about the practical, day-to-day aspects of race from my father. My dad is a professional jazz musician, and I grew up loving jazz and idolizing jazz icons the way most normal kids revered rock musicians and star athletes. Considering that jazz music was invented by black Americans and most of its pioneers and innovators were African Americans, any notion of white superiority among professionals is absurd.

More than a decade before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball, Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and Charlie Christian shattered similar barricades with Benny Goodman’s band in the mid-to-late 1930s. Whereas social commentators and historians still extol the cultural significance of Goodman’s actions, musicians take a much more pragmatic view of the decision. Being able to hire excellent black musicians simply meant band leaders were able to fill their chairs with the best talent they could find, black or white.

In other words, as socially just as Goodman might have been, he didn’t hire Teddy Wilson because he was black. Goodman hired Wilson, and later Hampton & Christian, because they could PLAY.

PERIOD.

During my youth, when my dad and I listened to recordings of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich, or Frank Rosolino, the issue of their race wasn’t only irrelevant; considering it would have been inconceivable. Among musicians, all that matters is the music.

PERIOD.

For example, Buddy Rich was, by many accounts, a tyrant, bully, and four-star jerk. (Just listen to this if you don’t believe me.) He also happened to be one of history’s greatest drummers and bandleaders. The thought that any musician would discount Buddy Rich because of his personality is ludicrous.

Similarly, Charlie Mingus had a reputation for bi-polar meltdowns and punching out his sidemen. When musicians talk about Mingus’ bad temper, they never discuss his race. They just talk about what an asshole he could be. In the same breath, they’ll also talk about what a great bassist, composer, and bandleader he was. Who Mingus or Rich were had NOTHING to do with their music. Anyone who judges any musician by anything other than the music isn’t a musician, and frankly not worth considering.

Growing up, I heard lots of stories from my dad regarding race in the music business. He told me how his father, a brilliant piano player, took him to see pianist Art Tatum when my dad was still a young boy. Tatum was performing in the upstairs living room of a black family living in one of the racially-segregated neighborhoods in Cleveland. Although my father and grandfather were the only whites in attendance, they were welcomed warmly into the home without any attention paid to race. Among musicians, all that matters is the music.

As a teenager, my dad regularly ventured to jazz clubs that were deemed “colored.” He sat and listened to the music, struck up professional friendships, and never experienced any discomfort whatsoever. Among musicians, all that matters is the music.

Trumpeter Red Rodney travelled with Charlie Parker’s band in the ‘50s and was forced to pass as an albino black man because of white racial prejudice and strict segregation in the South. Although Benny Goodman had broken the color barrier north of the Mason-Dixon Line years earlier, Jim Crow still dominated the southern US until the 1960s. Musicians still laugh at the ignorant “white power structure” represented by this story.

My point citing these anecdotes is not to say that prejudice doesn’t exist among musicians. Of course it does. Prejudice exists everywhere. However, among true professional musicians, prejudice doesn’t factor into who gets hired or who is admired. Among musicians, all that matters is the music.

I was raised, then, by a combination of influences. From my mother, I acquired a philosophical belief in racial equality, and from my father a practical sense that someone’s race should never be a factor in determining their worth. Needless to say, all these high-minded ideals remained fairly easy to maintain considering I didn’t really know any black Americans in real life.

Like many white suburban kids from my era, the only African Americans I encountered appeared in movies, television, and comic books. Luke Cage, the Falcon, Black Panther, Mal Duncan -- these were the “black” friends of my childhood. Other forays into Black popular culture included blaxploitation movies, TV characters like Terry Webster from The Rookies, and myriad professional athletes. As grounded as I may have been in the ideals of racial equality, my young mind still couldn’t help gravitating to the stereotypes presented by Superfly, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Spearchucker Jones, and Christie Love.

Needless to say, my creations in the Trademark Universe reflected these stereotypes. Before Wolf, I created Retaliator, my first African American hero, who was actually more an anti-heroic cross-pollination between Luke Cage and boxer-turned-substitute-Iron-Man Eddie March (Iron Man #21). With his face hidden behind a helmet, however, Retaliator wasn’t in-your-face black, and most in the Trademark Universe never even knew his race.

A short time later, I wrote a Silver Streak story featuring an openly black hero I dubbed “Black Wolf.” Based primarily on Falcon & Black Panther, Black Wolf owed much of his personality to the street-smart “Black Superman” archetype promulgated by movies such as Shaft, Super Fly, and Hammer. Black Wolf spoke like these blaxploitation bad-asses, and during his down time he surrounded himself with a bevy of Christie Love & Foxy Brown lookalikes.

I loved the character immediately. I actually found him easier and more fun to write than Silver Streak, the star of the book. Without explanation, I quickly dropped the “Black” from his name, and simply referred to him as Wolf. He came to co-star in the book just as Falcon co-starred with Captain America. Unlike Cap & Falc, however, Wolf and Silver Streak were never partners or friends. They fought crime in the same city, and thus continued crossing paths and butting heads. It was a blast to write, and I’ll be talking about Wolf himself in greater detail with a later installment.

Over the years, as I grew to know and befriend Americans of every race, my take on Wolf and other minority Trademark characters grew slightly more complex. But, truth be told, Wolf, Retaliator, Slice, et al have remained pretty much as I created them, stereotypical warts and all.

As Worlds Apart develops, please pay attention to my portrayal of race, race relations, racism, and racial stereotypes. These themes play a prevalent role in the coming pages, just as they have throughout my life. Although you may disagree with my ultimate conclusions, I hope you respect my honesty. For me to write Worlds Apart any other way would be, as I said before, disingenuous.

The Flash Meets Captain America – Silver Streak

2009-11-08T10:27:00.008-05:00

When I first started reading comic books, I immediately decided my favorite superhero was the Flash. Not only did he have the best super-power -- super-speed IS the ultimate power, bar none! -- he also had the coolest costume: red bodysuit with yellow lightning bolts -- and I just loved those wings on the side of his head.

Whenever my dad brought home comic books for me, I always prayed the stack would include a Flash comic. My favorite adventures involved Kid Flash and/or Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash from Earth-2. I also loved when Flash would race Superman.

Even at the tender age of five, I admired how DC editors navigated between the horns of the “Who’s Faster?” dilemma. Flash was actually a microsecond faster than Supes, but Flash didn’t have Kal-El’s limitless endurance. In other words, Flash beats Supes in a dash; Supes beats Flash in a marathon. That made total sense to me.

Needless to say, when I first began creating prototypical superheroes based upon DC antetypes, my seminal “Adam” was a blatant Flash rip-off. He bore the appellation Blue Bolt. His costume? A navy blue bodysuit highlighted by white lightning bolts. His teenage partner called himself Blue Streak and wore a white bodysuit offset with blue lightning bolts.

As recounted before, my taste in comic books drifted from DC to Marvel a few years after I created my initial DC-esque characters. My favorite Marvel character was Captain Mar-Vell, originally because of his green and white costume, and then later because I dug the whole “hero who’s actually a villain” conflict. Alongside Mar-Vell, I also idolized Captain America, especially after reading a reprint of a Cap story that originally appeared in Tales of Suspense #59.

In this short feature, a gang of thugs breaks into Avengers Mansion because the only Avenger on duty is Captain America. Since Cap possesses no awesome super-powers, the crooks assume he’s a pushover. Naturally, Cap kicks all their butts in true Cap fashion. This single story made me a Cap fan forever. Shortly afterwards, as I followed his stint in the Avengers, I grew to admire his unflinching morality and staunch adherence to ethical behavior. Somewhere along the way, I also noticed that Cap, like the Flash, also had a pair of wings on his head mask.

Coincidence?

When I first began crafting the Trademark Universe, then, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that my initial creation came out as a combination of the Flash and Captain America, with a nod in costume design to Captain Mar-Vell. Originally deemed Skater, my first hero was a super-speedster who streaked about on a pair of “super skates.” In addition to super-speed, he also possessed a super sense of right and wrong. Unwavering in his pursuit of law and order, Skater became the Trademark Universe’s Captain America.

As originally conceived, Skater stood as your basic super-patriot. Recovering from a career-ending injury, Olympic speed-skating champion and hockey star Mark Hunter found himself recruited by the U.S. government to become its first Super Secret Agent. Repairing Hunter’s damaged legs with space-age surgical techniques, the government convinced him to lace up a pair of high-tech skates and a friction-resistant jumpsuit. The skates allowed Hunter to skate over any flat surface and defy gravity at near light speeds. Thus was born the Skater!

Okay, I know “Skater” is a stupid name. I knew it even when I created it. I just couldn’t think of anything better, so the name stuck. Years later, I tried new names -- Defender, Silver Skater, Blue Streak -- before settling on Silver Streak.

During his long and storied career, Silver Streak helped found S-1 Operations, a government agency policing superheroes, as well as the Protectors. Things weren’t always easy for Silver Streak, however. As my life and ideals changed, Mark Hunter’s initial backstory transformed over several retellings, while my original Trademark hero experienced many character-defining pitfalls and hardships.

Two years after first creating Silver Streak, I came to realize the potential for personal conflict posed by his unflinching law-and-order mentality. As a kind of moral counterweight to the lily-white Silver Streak, I created my first black superhero, Archibald Turrentine, b.k.a. Wolf. At the time, I didn’t know that I was juxtaposing SS’s conservatism versus Wolf’s liberalism. I just liked the idea of these two ultra-moral superdudes constantly arguing the issues of the day as they fought their own interpretations of evil.

Of course, I owed my original inspiration to DC’s revolutionary Green Lantern / Green Arrow series. However, truth be told, I actually think my take was even better because my heroes were divided by race in addition to politics.

Wolf first appeared as a character in Skater stories. The more Wolf stories I wrote, the more I developed his backstory, thereby generating more ideas concerning Skater’s true origin. Unlike Archibald (Wolf) Turrentine, Mark Hunter -- the ultra-patriot -- never served in Vietnam. Hunter was too busy winning gold medals and serving the military in a PR capacity, making stateside speaking appearances and filming TV ads. After completing the terms of his enlistment, Hunter went into the world of professional sports while Turrentine slogged in the bush, finally being dishonorably discharged after refusing to obey orders in a massacre incident reminiscent of Mai Lai.

Needless to say, Skater and Wolf started off on the wrong foot, and their relationship never improved. Years later, when Skater, now calling himself Silver Streak, spoke out against the tactics used by “rogue” heroes like Wolf and Retaliator, Wolf retaliated by banding these like-minded heroes together and deeming them the Irregulars. The action at the onset of Worlds Apart clearly demonstrates the conflict between Silver Streaks’ “Law & Order” Protectors and Wolf’s “By Any Means Necessary” Irregulars. I’ll be delving deeper into the ramifications of the Silver Streak vs. Wolf conflict in a later blog dealing with Wolf.

For the remainder of this entry, I’ll refer to Silver Streak’s entry in the original Trademark Universe Handbook I drafted for Worlds Apart co-creator & artistic force, Tony Lewis:

Silver Streak (Mark Hunter) Highly skilled in all forms of hand-to-hand combat, Silver Streak excels in kickboxing. He is also a top-notch gymnast and acrobat both in and out of his skates.

A staunch patriot and the quintessential “good soldier,” Silver Streak remained oblivious to much of S-1’s “darker” shenanigans while acting as its titular head. During his tenure as S-1’s CEO, Silver Streak unwittingly functioned as the unit’s public face while other less reputable forces saw to the agency’s actual workload. Only later did Silver Streak learn of S-1’s “Black Ops” activities, at which point he resigned from the agency in every capacity.

Severely disillusioned, Hunter “retired” from the super biz, taking his skates with him and travelling the country “in search of the years he’d lost.” His self-imposed exile ended when confronting the threat that led to the founding of the Protectors. Since then, Silver Streak has served as the group’s leader on numerous occasions, generally splitting the duty with Flurry.

Weapons -- Silver Streak’s skates create ice-like surfaces over any flat, semi-smooth surface: concrete, brick, even grass. The skates allow him to defy gravity by skating at ninety-degree angles and upside down. At top speed, SS can approach light speed, thus allowing him to dodge high-energy and laser blasts. The laser-sharp blades of his skates can also be formidable weapons, seeing as Hunter is an expert kick-boxer.

Personal Items -- At times, especially in his earlier days, Mark Hunter’s boyscout-like faith in the “American Way” made him a little unrealistic when dealing with the super biz’s numerous shades of gray. His simple, straight-forward, unrelenting morality, however, has been a positive force in reshaping the lives of several former superbaddies, most namely Buckshot and Slice.

At one time romantically interested in Flurry, Silver Streak stepped aside without ever pronouncing his love when he learned that his old Cold War mentor and comrade, the Spring, loved the exotic elemental, too.

Despite their obvious differences, Silver Streak and Hangman have become close allies over the years. In fact, it was Silver Streak’s endorsement of Hangman that convinced the government to cease treating the hero as a threat, thereby allowing Hangman to be co-founder of the Protectors.

I'm Back

2009-11-08T07:04:00.003-05:00

As some of you may already know, my father was diagnosed with bladder cancer earlier this summer. At first, the procedure to remove the tumor appeared to be relatively simple. However, when doctors did the first surgery, they discovered the tumor had grown larger than originally estimated. At this point, with the tumor more complex and dangerous, my father began seeing numerous specialists to determine the severity and spread of the cancer.

Over the course of two months, a consensus was finally reached. My father required major surgery to remove his bladder and other affected organs. From August through mid-October, my father grew quite sick as he underwent the numerous procedures and tests that typically precede such surgery. Finally, on Monday, October 19th, he had the surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, and, weeks later, is recovering nicely at the family homestead.

During the period of my father’s illness, I took an extended leave of absence from work and ceased writing for this blog. Meanwhile, my partner Tony Lewis has managed to upload some fantastic pages for Worlds Apart. Now that things are kind of back to normal, I hope to make my regular posts and commentaries on this blog. So check back regularly if you'd like to know more about the characters and themes in Worlds Apart.

Psycho Punk Rock Ripper -- Buzzcock

2009-10-11T02:39:00.004-04:00

At the risk of alienating myself from a good percentage of my readers, I’m going to admit right now that I’m not a big fan of punk music, nor was I part of the punk subculture that grew into existence during the formative years of my adolescence. In fact, as a teenager growing up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I looked rather askance upon the “punk scene,” at least as it was portrayed in the media and bastardized in the halls of North Olmsted Junior and Senior High. To my eyes, punks (as they called themselves) were ridiculous, posturing poseurs who dressed like clowns and listened to intentionally crappy music. I just didn’t get it, and although I have more of an appreciation for punk now, I still don’t truly get it.

Granted, I am biased. Coming from a family of musicians and studying music myself, I couldn’t help but look upon the punks’ poor musicianship and atrocious songwriting with a sense of scorn. To my ears, good music is about melody, harmony, and rhythm performed with expressive emotion and technical expertise. Good music -- even angry, loud, dissonant music -- strives for some sense of beauty.

Punk, as exemplified by bands like the Sex Pistols, didn’t strive for beauty. In fact, punk musicians and songwriters took the opposite approach. Their goal was the presentation of raw emotion and rhythm without the tempering of melody, harmony, and excellent musicianship. I worshipped at the musical altar of Mozart, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck, Buddy Rich, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Yes. To my adolescent ears, the Sex Pistols, Ramones, et al sounded like crap.

Yes, I know. I didn’t get it, which is why Punk both stupefied and angered me. My disdain for the punk scene inspired me to create one of the Trademark Universe’s most despicable hybrid villains, Buzzcock. Like many of my early Trademark creations, Buzzcock went through quite a few character developments over the years.

Of course, his nom du crime is lifted from the British band of the same name. Even if I didn’t like punk bands, I still couldn’t help but dig some of the more clever band names. Buzzcock, as I originally created him, stood out among Maniac’s Götterdämmerung because of his over-the-top punk persona coupled with the space-time distorting guitar strapped around his shoulders. True to the anarchist, nihilistic ethos of punk philosophy, Buzzcock’s sole raison d’être centered on mass destruction, riotous chaos, and unrelenting terror. Given Buzzcock’s penchant for creating catastrophes, Maniac continually tried expanding the zone of Buzzcock’s reality warps in the hopes of destroying Earth itself. Fortunately, the Protectors, Irregulars, and other Trademark heroes were always there to prevent this.

The character of Buzzcock stayed fairly one-dimensional until I began exploring Buckshot’s origin in the series I discussed previously. Here I re-invented Buzzcock with his own backstory. I revealed in this series that Buzzcock really wasn’t a British punker named Charles Blaire, but rather an American teenage sociopath named Robby Prentice who merely affected the attitude and cockney accent of his idols from across the sea.

Robby Prentice met Todd Harper (Buckshot) in prison, where Prentice found himself doing time for stalking, kidnapping, raping, and murdering one of his high school classmates. An outcast in school from an early age, Prentice had transformed himself into a “punker” as a means of coping with his alienation. At this time, he developed an obsession with a popular cheerleader named Donna DeGenero, which eventually led to the aforementioned crimes.

Once in prison, teenage Prentice found himself both target and prey for the institution’s predators. Befriended by fellow teen inmate Todd Harper, Prentice survived his incarceration to escape with Darius Kilhausen’s “students” and then become Buzzcock. As Buzzcock, Prentice is able to live out his sickest, most depraved fantasies, and it is eventually his horrific crimes that turn Buckshot against Götterdämmerung and towards a life of justice and redemption.

In the opening scene of Worlds Apart, we encounter Buzzcock at his best -- or worst, depending on your perspective. Ultimately, it is Buzzcock’s reality-warping powers that set in motion the cosmological events yet to come.

The Dreaded Deadline Doom

2009-09-28T12:15:00.002-04:00

Check out the newest page of Worlds Apart here!

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, Worlds Apart will no longer update on a regular weekly schedule. We started with plenty of lead time, but it has gradually been whittled away to the point where new pages will be posted as soon as they are completed.

As always, I’ll be fitting Worlds Apart in amongst the demands of “real life,” but rest assured that new pages will be going live periodically at Webcomics Nation!

Redemption

2009-09-12T11:55:00.008-04:00

Character is shaped by failure, not success.

I detest clichés and pithy bon mots. The moment I encounter a speaker or writer excreting such pseudo-philosophical detritus I tend to ignore every other word that follows. By now I’ve forgotten where I first encountered the above adage regarding the relative merits of failure versus success. I may have caught the words on a late-night Tony Robbins infomercial, or perhaps the back cover of a Zig Ziglar paperback. Then again, the words could have been delivered off-the-cuff by William Faulkner or Thomas Hardy. The sentiment is trite, no doubt. But does its banality make the message any less true?

Character is shaped by failure, not success.

I remember the first time I read the real tale of Heracles (Hercules) in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. Hamilton’s version wasn’t the expurgated, bowdlerized version I’d previously found in elementary school library books, but rather the actual story: homicidal rage, infanticide, and all. At the very beginning of Hamilton’s telling, a young Heracles gets angry with his music teacher, Linus, and strikes him dead with a lyre.

Huh?!

Several paragraphs later, a happily-married Heracles is once again consumed by blind fury, this time slaughtering his beloved wife and small children.

What? What the hell kind of hero does that?!

These horrific incidents in Heracles’ early career drastically affected how I read the rest of Hamilton’s account. I mean, this guy killed his innocent music teacher (FYI, my dad is a music teacher), and then slaughtered his whole family as an encore. His wife and kids?! Despite Heracles’ acclaim as Greek mythology’s greatest hero, I just couldn’t get past the senseless killings. To my thinking, Herc was a jerk and no hero at all. It didn’t matter how many monsters he killed or kingdoms he saved, Heracles could never truly atone for his early crimes. Even a second-tier hero like Meleager deserved top billing over a guy who killed his kids.

To my recollection, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology was my first venture into adult treatments of myth and legend. At that point in my young life, my hunger for heroic tales was pushing me far beyond the confines of juvenile retellings and sending me headlong into the works of Robert Graves, Thomas Bullfinch, and unedited original sources like Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Just as with Hamilton’s work, these new authors forced me to encounter more complicated versions of the characters I’d loved since early childhood.

For the first time, I learned that Gilgamesh was hated by his subjects for being a tyrant who raped the brides of his male subjects before their wedding days. Similarly, I discovered that Sir Lancelot’s intentions towards Guinevere were anything but pure. King Arthur didn’t misunderstand their relationship. Lancelot stole his best friend’s girl, and then openly committed adultery with her. No wonder he was unworthy of the Holy Grail.

Every adult retelling, it seemed, revealed hitherto unknown details of deceit and treachery committed by heroes, many during their wayward younger days. The more I read, the more disillusioned I became with the heroes I’d once idolized. Then something happened in my own life, which forced me to reconsider my harsh, unwavering judgment.

Character is shaped by failure, not success.

Right around the time I was digesting the warts-and-all presentations of my favorite legendary heroes, I attended an art exhibit with my family. Given that I was only nine years old, it should come as no surprise that I and my brother Mike (he of Sad Sack comic fame) were bored out of our pre-adolescent minds. As we trudged among the displays, one eventually caught my eye. The piece, Four Wedges, resembled four small triangular ramps arranged in an alternating pattern along the floor. Finally seeing something worthy of interaction, I asked one of the adult attendees if I could walk up the ramps.

She answered, “Absolutely...”

My foot stepped on the ramp --

“... NOT!”

I pulled my foot away immediately. A frigid cavern opened at the juncture of my stomach and my bowels. My eyes locked like lasers on the Four Wedges. A large crease resembling the bottom of my Thom McAnn’s dress shoe imprinted on the stretched canvas.

Immediately, the room exploded with horrified indignation. My father offered grave apologies to the artist and the people running the show. I heard obscene dollar figures being furtively bandied about. My mortified mother dragged me from the gallery in tears, and by the time we arrived home her embarrassment had boiled over into scalding rage. Never before had my parents been so angry at me, and never again did I want to feel the agonizing shame of such sheer, wholly justified disappointment.

Character is shaped by failure, not success.

I certainly don’t want to exaggerate, but deep down I know this one inauspicious childhood moment has since dictated every succeeding decision in my life. To this day, I am terrified of making wrong judgments that will subsequently hurt innocent others. Combine this phobia with my impatience and incessant need to do something, and you can only imagine the self-flagellation that ensues when I inevitably do make a mistake.

The coincidental timing of my art show debacle with my disillusionment concerning childhood heroes forced me to reconsider my harsh judgment of Heracles and company. Suddenly, without being able to put my revelation into words, I had come to realize a great truth of the human condition.

We all commit regrettable acts. We make decisions and mistakes that harm other people. Some of these are errors of judgment rooted in carelessness, impaired cognition, or just plain apathy. Others are conscious decisions based upon selfishness, sadism, or other base desires. Whereas these bad acts may undoubtedly shape us, we must do our utmost every day to make sure they never define who we are. We must somehow blot out the black stain of our previous crimes and redeem ourselves in our own eyes.

We see this struggle played out in the legendary careers of Heracles (a murderer), Gilgamesh (a rapist), and Lancelot (a treacherous adulterer). In light of their inglorious pasts, each of these heroes is driven by an urge -- no, make that an obsession for redemption. Yes, these heroes are products of supernatural nativity, and yes they possess great powers that allow them to accomplish mighty deeds. But we aren’t inspired by their successes. Rather, we are drawn to their narratives because they accomplish their mighty deeds while overcoming personal failings and failures.

In other words, heroic character is shaped by failure, not success. As a youth still reeling from my monumental misstep at the art exhibit, I drew comfort and consolation in the stories of men who became heroes despite grave errors or even evil acts committed in their youth. Like Heracles himself, I vowed to overcome my own careless crime by erasing the look of shame, anger, and disappointment in my parents’ eyes.

As I explored the theme of redemption even more closely, I quickly realized its presence in the biographies of my favorite comic book heroes. Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Captain Mar-Vell, Hulk, Namor, Doctor Strange, Green Arrow & Speedy -- their heroism is forged in the shame and regret of past mistakes and prior bad acts. Given my own black stain and subsequent thirst for redemption, I found their origins more compelling than victims turned heroes such as Batman and Daredevil.

A year or so after the art exhibit debacle, when I began creating the Trademark Universe, the theme of redemption weighed heavily on the origins of heroes such as Wolf, Retaliator, and later Buckshot and Slice. In a previous blog entry, I outlined the theme of redemption and its relationship to the life of Todd Harper (Buckshot). Later blogs will deal with redemption in the development of the remaining Irregulars: Wolf, Retaliator, and Slice. In fact, the Irregulars themselves were founded upon the notion of redemption, much like their inspiration in the Marvel Universe, the Defenders.

As Worlds Apart progresses, we will also see redemption at work in other characters we have yet to meet. While reading Worlds Apart, then, it might be best to keep that old adage running in the back of your mind: Character is shaped by failure, not success. You never know where or to whom it may apply next.

NOT a Dazzler Rip-Off AT ALL -- Clarion

2009-09-06T10:08:00.003-04:00

I’ll address this right from the start. Clarion is a rock star turned superbabe. Dazzler is a rock star turned superbabe. I created Clarion circa 1976, at least three to four years before Dazzler first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #130 (1980). So Clarion is not in any way inspired by or even related to Dazzler. I’m not bragging, though.

To be frank, my original conception of Clarion stands as a blatant rip-off of DC’s fishnet-stockinged diva Black Canary. Of course, I lifted traits from other super-songstresses, too, namely Marvel’s Lorelei (1969) and Joan Collins’ portrayal of the villainess Siren (1966) on the old Batman TV series. I based Clarion’s not-so-secret identity as a gorgeous, glamorous rock star on youthful obsessions with Olivia Newton-John, Nancy Wilson, Stevie Nicks, and the Runaways. Later, when Madonna hit it big, I cribbed much of Mad’s personality and style for the developing storylines surrounding Clarion.

Ironically, the most overtly sexualized female character in the Trademark Universe owes her true birth to a missionary pamphlet I stumbled upon as a kid. The tract was entitled Clarion Call, and the illustrated logo was a striking female angel blowing a trumpet. Originally, I toyed with the idea of Clarion’s sonic powers emanating from a large mystical bugle of sorts. Wisely, I scrapped that idea and just went with voice-generated sonic abilities similar to those displayed by Marvel’s Banshee (1967).

Of course, when Marvel introduced Dazzler in the early 1980s, I grew extremely annoyed. Not knowing much about plagiarism laws at the time, I sincerely toyed with the idea of writing Stan Lee and informing him that I had come up with the idea of a rockbabe-turned-superbabe first. I must have thought better of this foray into the nebulous world of intellectual property because after a few months I simply accepted the fact that both myself and Marvel Comics had spontaneously generated identical creative concepts.

Clarion continued playing a major role in the events that shaped the Trademark Universe. As a member of the Protectors, she battled would-be world beaters by day while dating just about every available (and sometimes unavailable) superdude during her off hours. Often she juggled two or three super-suitors simultaneously. One such love triangle busted up the long-standing friendship of Airfoil and Beachcomber, while subsequently driving Beachcomber to adopt a life of super-villainy as Aquarius.

In keeping with her life as a rock star, Clarion also must regularly battle the temptations of drug and alcohol abuse. Combined with intimacy issues and a passionate, volatile temper, Clarion is one of the Trademark Universe’s most unpredictable and unstable heroes. As seen in the opening pages of Worlds Apart, she clashes immediately with Hangman over his handling of the Trishy Tanaka hostage situation. Her impulsive attack against Götterdämmerung’s Buzzcock actually sets in motion all the events to follow.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t dismiss Clarion as a knock-off of any past super-songstress. Thirty-five years after her creation, she deserves to be treated as her own woman, foibles, failings, and all.

Gashouse, Gacy, and Gay Awareness -- My Evolution

2009-08-30T08:22:00.005-04:00

I learned the facts of life, so to speak, the way most people my age did back in the ‘70s. When we were in fifth grade, the school system scheduled a once-a-week, four-session “Family Living” class with a professional sex-ed teacher. Girls were separated from boys for the Big Lesson, and within the safe confines of our own gender we ultimately learned what goes where to create the miracle of life.

I must confess that I already had a pretty good idea about the birds and the bees before Family Living class. No one told me formally. I just picked it up via intellectual osmosis (mostly from reading Greek myths) combined with some good old-fashioned guess work. Family Living class simply confirmed what I already suspected. By the time I was twelve years old, then, I was operating with a pretty good early-adolescent understanding of human sexuality. At least as far as heterosexuality goes…

As I’ve written previously, I watched A LOT of TV when I was young. In fact, I still do. Back in the ‘70s, if kids wanted to watch TV they had to be content with their parents’ viewing tastes. Typical households only had one television, which was duly controlled by mom and dad. Back then, it wouldn’t have mattered if the kids had their own set anyway. All television programming in primetime was aimed at adults. Remember, the 1970s was long before the advent of cable television and myriad TV channels devoted solely to kids’ programming. Up until the 1990s, children themselves were not even considered a viable marketing demographic during the evening primetime viewing hours.

Thus, as a kid, I regularly watched shows that today’s tweens and teens would never even deign to try, e.g. Medical Center, Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, Barnaby Jones. Two such dramas, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Kojak, were regular episodic staples in the Kozak household. In the space of one year, circa 1975-76, both these programs aired controversial episodes concerning human sexuality that dovetailed almost precisely with my formal sex education in Family Living class.

In 1975, Marcus Welby, M.D. got the ball rolling with an episode called “The Outrage.” In this story, a high school teacher, played by Edward Winter, is caught molesting a male student. The abuse comes to light because the student’s injuries from the encounter require surgery, which is where Dr. Welby and his team enter the story. Needless to say, I had a hundred questions after the episode concluded, questions my parents deflected with a hasty “It’s a very complicated matter. You’ll learn all about it in Family Living.” Of course, I knew what Family Living was because my older siblings had gone through the course years before. So I kept my questions to myself and filed them away for future reference.

Before being enlightened in Family Living, however, Kojak aired a similarly themed episode, “A Need to Know,” that further confused my nascent, naive understanding of human sexuality. In this episode, Telly Savalas & Co. hunted down a foreign diplomat accused of molesting boys and then hiding behind his diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution. Once again, questions poured forth at the episode’s end. And once more, my parents deflected those questions with the promise that all would be explained in Family Living.

Well, it wasn’t. Nothing was explained regarding homosexuality or pedophilia whatsoever. I even tried asking questions based upon what I’d seen on Welby and Kojak. No go. The sex-ed teacher, a very nice, patient woman named Mary Ward, explained that I really needed to discuss such matters with my parents. She did offer some advice, however, which was the same advice we heard every year during the North Olmsted Police Department’s annual visit to Coe School, i.e. “Don’t Take Candy from Strangers.”

I never did return to my parents with questions regarding what I’d seen on Marcus Welby and Kojak. Instead, I turned back to the first place I’d learned about human sexuality, Greek myths. In the space of a few short years, I suddenly grasped the truer, deeper meanings of mythic relationships such as Ganymede and Zeus, Hyacinth and Apollo, Heracles and Hylas, and even Achilles and Patroclus. Given my rudimentary knowledge of coital mechanics, I quickly realized that two males could easily approximate heterosexual coupling.

With my sudden epiphany regarding homosexuality, I quickly answered my own nagging questions regarding the plots I’d seen portrayed on TV. Alongside the heterosexual world existed a homosexual world. Bad people existed in this homosexual world, and they committed sex crimes against innocent, unsuspecting males. I was scared to death, just as most kids my age must be when first encountering the reality of homosexuality devoid of any rational perspective or societal context.

My burgeoning homophobia remained fairly dormant for the next few years. In fact, I repressed my fears to such a point that I barely even allowed myself to ruminate on the existence of homosexuals. Unlike every other troubling teenage neurosis over which I obsessed, my issues with same-sex molestation and rape never entered into the stories I created for the Trademark Universe. All that changed, however, when I learned about John Wayne Gacy.

1980 found me in high school. In a previous blog, “Todd Harper, a.k.a. the Battling Buckshot,” I discussed rebooting and retconning the character Buckshot. I also mentioned the character of Don McHale, a child-killer befriended by teenaged Todd Harper while both were serving time in prison for murder. It was this same Don McHale that recruited Harper into Darius Kilhausen’s experimental inmate “rehabilitation” program. Kilhausen’s “treatment,” as it turns out, was actually the beginning of Götterdämmerung, the army of genetically re-engineered sociopaths and murderers commonly known in the Trademark Universe as “hybrids.”

Among these hybrids, Don McHale took the name Gashouse. Through Kilhausen’s biomechanical re-engineering, McHale acquired the ability to generate and control all manner of gasses, from plain old oxygen to deadly sarin. Needless to say, Gashouse’s abilities, combined with his sadistic lust for death, made him one of Götterdämmerung’s most deadly soldiers. Readers of Worlds Apart see evidence of McHale’s horrific propensity for mass murder in the opening pages, as he gleefully kills hundreds of innocent bystanders during the Trishy Tanaka hostage crisis.

So what does all this have to do with serial killer John Wayne Gacy?

Well, when I first created Don McHale in the early ‘80s, stories of John Wayne Gacy’s savage murders had already run their course through the morning papers and evening newscasts. Viewing the stories with a teenager’s penchant for the perverse, Gacy’s grisly crimes of homosexual rape, torture, and murder reignited the dormant homophobia I’d been submerging for several years. The fact that his victims were predominantly teenaged males like myself only further convinced me that homosexual serial killers like Gacy posed a very real threat to boys my age and myself personally.

The character of Don McHale, as I first imagined him, represented my adolescent attempt to understand not only the character of killers like Gacy, but perhaps even more importantly their motives. I read everything I could find on Gacy in addition to numerous other “boy killers” chronicled in the criminology and true-crime books I found at the Cleveland Public Library. One particularly graphic article in a sociology journal related the experiences of convicted child molesters being victimized by other inmates while in prison. In this study, I first learned of the hierarchy among prisoners that exists on the Inside. In a few short weeks, I considered myself an expert on such deviants. Finally willing to confront my fears of homosexuality and same-sex rape, I plunged headlong into incorporating a Gacy-like criminal into the Trademark Universe.

Enter Don McHale, a.k.a. Gashouse. Like Gacy, McHale was an upstanding family man in his community, the “last guy anyone would ever think” could be a sexual sadist, sodomizer, and serial killer. In prison, however, McHale lived the life of a constant target, continually being victimized by fellow inmates incensed with a self-righteous sense of prison justice. As McHale’s relationship with Todd Harper grew, I explicitly referred to his homosexual lust for the teenager. When I added the character of Robby Prentice (later to become Buzzcock), I made it quite clear that McHale and Prentice were engaged in a homosexual relationship, a situation which both disturbed and disgusted Todd Harper.

When the inmates in Kilhausen’s program escaped from confinement and formed Götterdämmerung, Gashouse went back to serial-killing young men in his spare time. Now working with superpowers, Gashouse’s grisly crimes became even more ghastly. Whenever heroes like the Protectors, Vendetta, or Wolf faced Gashouse, the stories had a tendency to visit the darkest corners of my teenaged mind.

Years later, as I met, socialized with, and befriended gay men at OU, I actually became ashamed of my immature, ignorant, hysterical depiction of Gashouse as a representative of all homosexual males. During my “Buckshot, the College Years” stories, I made a conscious effort to realistically and positively portray the gay men and gay culture I regularly encountered. In one story arc, Buckshot met and teamed up with an openly gay superhero named Bulwark, who despite the slings and arrows of American society went on to lead the reformed superteam United Front.

Of course, Gashouse made numerous appearances during Buckshot’s collegiate career. Enlightened or not, I wasn’t about to kill off one of my best super-baddies, especially when he figured so prominently in Buckshot’s backstory. Gashouse’s villainy changed, however.

No longer was Don McHale’s evil a product of his homosexual lust. Rather, he existed -- like John Wayne Gacy -- as an evil man who simply happened to be homosexual. My new portrayal focused on Gashouse’s pathological self-hatred caused by society’s virulent homophobia, a self-loathing he then turned outward on his young male victims. Years later, when another homosexual serial killer emerged -- Jeffrey Dahmer -- elements of Dahmer’s personality and crimes also worked their way into Gashouse’s character.

To this day, I still rank Gashouse as one of my most complicated and original creations. When I first conceived of Worlds Apart lo those many years ago, Gashouse’s opening foray against Flurry and Hellfield became the first small scene crafted in my original draft. In many respects, the growth of Gashouse’s character mirrors the growth of my own.

What the 'ell is an Elemental? or, FAQ: Flurry & Hellfield

2009-08-10T06:24:00.015-04:00

Prelude -- My wife, Jennifer, reads these blogs. I think she enjoys them. She tells me she does. She also tells me she doesn’t understand a lot of my more esoteric references. So she just skips over them. She insists this doesn’t detract from her enjoyment. I can’t help but wonder if this is true, however.

In the next few paragraphs, I’m going to introduce two pretty arcane concepts: Elementals and Byronic Heroes. I apologize ahead of time for the way my mind works. I wish I could simplify my writing and make references to Stephen King and The Sopranos instead of Lord Byron and De Occulta Philosophia. That being said, let’s get on with it.

When I first created the Trademark Universe circa 1975, I knew I needed “gods.” Normal superfolk just aren’t enough if you really want to tell epic tales. The only way to test the mettle of mere “mortal” superdoers is to set them alongside beings vastly more powerful, and then see how they fare.

Marvel Comics invented this formula with Thor. Thor being an Avenger allowed thoroughly-human heroes like Captain America, Wasp, and Hawkeye to strive for justice on the cosmic level. By the 1970s, Marvel titles boasted a plethora of immortals from both the Asgardian and Olympian traditions, not to mention the Eternals. Likewise, DC Comics utilized gods of their own. Marquee characters such as Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel (Shazam!) were rooted in classical mythology. Once Jack Kirby introduced his New Gods in the early 1970s, the DC universe finally possessed its own pantheon to rival Marvel.

So where did that leave ten-year-old Mark Kozak as he was creating the Trademark Universe? What was I supposed to do when all the good gods -- old and new -- had already been taken?

At first, I thought of going into Egyptian mythology. Problem is, I just couldn’t dig the characters of Ra, Osiris, Horus, and their ilk. I think watching the live-action show Isis on Saturday mornings may have had something to do with my reservations. Needless to say, I continued looking elsewhere.

Somewhere at this time, I came across an issue of Marvel’s Supernatural Thrillers. Although I can’t be certain thirty-five years later, I believe my next-door neighbors had the issue in their comic book drawer. Supernatural Thrillers introduced me to another kind of “god,” namely creatures called Elementals.

Basically, Elementals are creatures akin to spirits that control one of the four classical elements: air, fire, earth, and water. Back in the olden days, magicians and alchemists believed they could perform spells and transmute base metals to gold by subjugating and harnessing the powers of these elementals. Elementals, then, were godlike creatures with powers on the cosmic scale. Marvel’s versions -- Zephyr, Hellfire, Hydron, and Magnum -- vied for control of the universe on several occasions.

Being a kid, I knew a great idea when I saw one. Since Marvel was only using their elementals in a two-bit “horror” comic, I had no qualms about borrowing the concept and tailoring it to my own needs. My Elementals would be the gods of my new superhero universe. Thus, I birthed Flurry (Air), Hellfield (Fire), Torrent (Water), and Landslide (Earth). But I wasn’t done yet.

Besides their status as gods, my Elementals allowed me to explore another avenue of story-telling I found compelling -- sibling relationships and rivalry. As I’ve mentioned in my previous blog, The Worst Trade Ever, much of my childhood was spent interrelating with my three older siblings. We fought each other, schemed together, and relied upon one another. In comic books, I saw these same kinds of relationships personified in Sue and Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four, as well as evil-mutants-turned-Avengers Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Using Johnny, Sue, Wanda, and Pietro as templates, I fashioned my own dysfunctional brood of sibling gods. Naturally, my characterizations relied heavily upon normal brother-sister conflicts as reflected in the natural struggle and balance among all four elements. Water douses Fire, yet Fire boils Water. Earth imprisons Air, yet Air erodes Earth. You get the idea. In the Trademark Universe, my Elementals played out their family alliances and rivalries with global consequences.

Foremost among my four Elementals, Flurry and Hellfield saw most of the cosmic action. Thus, I tended to predominantly concentrate on their interactions with each other and towards the super-community as a whole. Personality-wise, they (and their two siblings) shared some similar characteristics, arrogance and hubris being the most noticeable. Aside from their innate presumptuousness, however, Flurry and Hellfield couldn’t have been more different.

As originally conceived, Flurry stood as the most rational and sympathetic of her brood. In my imagining, Flurry was literally the wind. Thus, she could either be a calm, cool breeze on a torrid summer day or a cataclysmic wind storm such as the tornado that leveled Xenia, Ohio when I was nine years old. Within the ranks of the Protectors, Flurry functioned as a kind of first lieutenant under the dual leadership of Silver Streak and Hangman. Later, when those senior heroes took leaves of absence, she assumed leadership of the group. Along the way, she fell in love with and wed the Spring, a retired hero later placed in charge of S-1, the U.S. government agency devoted to policing superheroes.

In complete contrast, Hellfield never fit in anywhere or with anyone. First written as Flurry’s hot-headed petulant brother, Hellfield was admittedly based on Stan Lee’s early characterization of teenage Johnny Storm. Put bluntly, he hated humans, or “blood bags” as he referred to them. Most of his early appearances occurred in the role of villain, laying waste to cities and countries like some kind of polysyllabic Hulk before being pacified by sister Flurry and the Protectors. As I developed Hellfield, though, I began shading his personality to make his motives more interesting and complex.

Once again borrowing from Marvel comics, I decided to “humanize” Hellfield by redrawing the dynamic of his relationship to Flurry. Like Stan Lee’s Quicksilver, Hellfield, too, possessed a jealous, overprotective devotion to his sister, Flurry, that bordered on a kind of incestuous obsession. Later plots found him reluctantly allying himself with the blood bags he so passionately despised merely to keep a “watchful eye” on his sister. Of course, his tenure with the Protectors was rocky and short-lived to say the least. As years went on and the Trademark Universe developed, he popped up sporadically until finally drifting into the ranks of Wolf’s Irregulars right around the time I entered college.

As I’ve mentioned in other blogs, my time in college spurred an intense creative outburst within the Trademark Universe. The new concepts and theories I encountered harkened a renewal -- no, make that a rebirth for the heroes and villains I’d been living with for over a decade. I re-conceptualized a large portion of the Trademark Universe, bringing long-standing characters and plots into line with the self-consciously literate, post-modern sensibilities I ingested on a daily basis. During this period, no Trademark character underwent a more drastic overhaul than Hellfield.

My sophomore year at OU found me deeply immersed in the Romantic Period of English Literature. Not surprisingly, when I encountered the life and writings of George Gordon, Lord Byron, I was drawn to the self-torturing darkness of his world view immediately. His concept of the anti-hero, or Byronic Hero as it came to be known, struck me instantly as something tailor-made for exploitation in the Trademark Universe. For those of you not familiar with the Byronic Hero, he can be quickly defined as an idealized but flawed character who is, in the words of Byron’s ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Wikipedia provides a further list of characteristics exhibited by the Byronic Hero:

-- high level of intelligence and perception
-- cunning and able to adapt
-- sophisticated and educated
-- self-critical and introspective
-- mysterious, magnetic, and charismatic
-- struggling with integrity
-- power of seduction and sexual attraction
-- social and sexual dominance
-- emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness
-- a distaste for social institutions and norms
-- being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
-- “dark” attributes not normally associated with a hero
-- disrespect of rank and privilege
-- a troubled past
-- cynicism
-- arrogance
-- self-destructive behavior

The further I explored the ideal of the Byronic Hero, the more I realized I had unwittingly created my own rendition in the personage of Hellfield. Suddenly, one of my longest-standing creations finally and truly came to life in my mind. In honor of Hellfield’s rebirth, I crafted an entire story-arc in my mind that once and for all addressed the origins and nature of Hellfield, Flurry, and their brethren.

Until this point in my life, I had never tackled the issue of who or what the Elementals really were. To be honest, I don’t think I possessed the literary or intellectual chops to explain their existence. Flurry and her siblings had been around since the dawn of time living as physical embodiments of the four classical elements. No other information provided nor necessary.

Re-imagining Hellfield, though, opened up my mind to the possibility of re-imagining the entire brood of Elementals. They were the gods of the Trademark Universe, damn it, and it was high time I gave them the attention and respect they deserved. So finally, more than a decade since their creation, I wrestled with the overwhelming question surrounding their existence: who are they, and where did they come from?

My story began in The Protectors and ended in The Irregulars. Along the way, I travelled through eons of history beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the present-day. The four Elementals sprang into existence in our universe the moment of the Big Bang. Before then, they had existed each in their own separate elemental universe. Flurry lived in the Air Universe, Hellfield the Fire Universe, Torrent the Water Universe, and Landslide the Earth Universe. When the Big Bang happened, the cataclysm tore each of them from their respective universe and birthed them together in our universe.

Existing in corporeal form, their physical bodies act as tangible portals or valves connecting their respective elemental universes to our own universe. In order to manifest their powers in our universe, they simply “fold” a portion of their physical bodies back inside themselves, thereby opening the portal/valve and unleashing a part of their original universe. Theoretically, their powers are as infinite as their respective universes. However, since they inhabit physical forms in our physical universe, they are governed by the same physical laws governing everything else. In other words, they get “tired” when manifesting their powers for prolonged times over great distances, thereby becoming physically exhausted. So they can be beaten if forced to over-exertion, an outcome Hellfield knows only too well.

Historically, they lived through the physical and metaphysical events which occurred at the birth of our universe. They saw the galaxies and planets being formed. They sensed the war between God and the fallen angels as it transpired in the Heaven Dimension. They never interacted with the Supreme Deity, however, nor have they ever seen true angels or demons. They gravitated to Earth because they sensed consciousness here with which they could interact and communicate. At first, they had to be content with animal life. Then, however, humans evolved, and they were finally able to intelligently communicate with others separate from themselves.

The first men worshipped them as the first gods. The Elementals alternated between accepting this worship and ignoring humans altogether. Sometime later, beings crossed over to our universe from other universes. These beings were powerful, but not as powerful as Elementals. These beings, unlike the Elementals, purposefully set themselves up as gods among men. Their power actually grew as man worshipped them. In time, these gods actually rivaled the Elementals. Occasionally, these “gods” would vie with the Elementals, but for the most part both groups kept their distance. Eventually, as man’s worship lessened and their powers dwindled, these gods left our planet for greener galaxies.

For the last two millennia, then, the Elementals have been the sole “gods” on Earth. Flurry, unlike her siblings, has chosen to reside almost exclusively with humans, taking on human form and marrying a succession of human men over the centuries. Torrent and Landslide, on the other hand, remain almost completely divorced from humanity. Hellfield, forever the wild card, finds himself drawn to life with humans while simultaneously longing to be rid of them.

So now you have it, Trademarkers. The Elementals in a nutshell. Next up, Clarion and Hangman!

A Psychopathic Serial-Killing Synthorg Stripper -- Spree

2009-07-31T06:20:00.008-04:00

When I was in junior high, the sudden advent of VCRs and cable TV transformed my teenage life. For the first time, I had access to “adult” movies. I’m not talking XXX porn. I’m talking sexploitation & blaxploitation films like Vixen!, Foxy Brown, Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, I Spit on Your Grave, and Women in Cages. By the time I was in high school, I’d immersed myself in the entire lexicon of trashy ‘60s and ‘70s softcore. Of all these films, however, one stood above the rest:

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)

The title still makes me salivate to this day. Psycho-killer go-go dancers. I mean, what’s NOT to love? I first saw Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! during my junior year in high school. I’d seen my share of violent sexploitation B-movies prior to FPKK, but nothing prepared me for the adventures of Billie, Rosie, and Varla.

Russ Meyer’s paean to oversexed, sadistic, thrill-killing überfrauen directly inspired my creation of Spree, Götterdämmerung’s psychotic, serial-killing, synthorg stripper. As originally conceived back in the early ‘80s, Spree was a two-dimensional cyborg hybrid, kind of a cross between the Bionic Woman and Deathlok. Possessing the body of Adrienne Barbeau, the face of Charlene Tilton, and the personality of FPKK’s Varla, Spree delighted in committing sadistic psychosexual atrocities upon men, women, and children alike. Within the feminine ranks of Maniac’s Götterdämmerung, Spree’s penchant for viciousness was only surpassed by Mosquito and a young psychotic prodigy named Marisol Garcia, a.k.a. Slice.

As I further developed Spree’s character in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I began crafting a suitable back-story of appalling childhood sexual abuse to explain her extreme psychopathology. Borrowing biographical bits from real-life killers like Karla Homolka and Aileen Wuornos, I created a more three-dimensional version of Spree, which made her both more compelling and more horrific. In these later stories, Spree developed a lesbian infatuation with teenage Slice, who reciprocated to some degree before turning away from Götterdämmerung and joining the forces of good. Needless to say, Spree viewed Slice’s defection not only as a desertion from Maniac’s cause but also as a personal betrayal.

Spree, as I originally wrote her, was literally a killing machine. Every limb on her body featured a highly-destructive weapon. When I introduced the character to Tony Lewis, however, he reconceived the nature of her hybrid powers.

Tony saw Spree not as a stereotypical, clichéd cyborg, but rather a kind of “synthorg.” In Tony’s rendering, Spree’s arsenal isn’t comprised of conventional weapons attached to her body. Instead, the weapons become organic in nature, growing out of her body like synthetic appendages. The bullets fired from her bodily weaponry actually form from her living skeleton. Some twenty-five years after her creation, Tony has finally transformed Spree into a true living weapon.

Todd Harper, a.k.a. the Battling Buckshot

2009-07-30T23:14:00.004-04:00

As I alluded to in a previous blog entry, Todd Harper, a.k.a. Buckshot, and I share a lot of history. In many ways, Buckshot is me and I am Buckshot. What do I mean by this? Well, let me try to explain.

I missed a lot of school in junior high. Amazingly, this never affected my grades. I think I might have missed over 25 days during my eighth-grade year. No one ever said anything because my dad was a teacher, my mom was PTA president, and I aced all my classes. These days, a kid like me would be red-flagged immediately. Back in the ‘70s, the schools didn’t see “danger signs” with kids like me.

In retrospect, I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I think moody teenagers were allowed to be moody teenagers back then. These days, Sturm und Drang is a medical diagnosis treated with a host of pills. I’m sure a happy medium exists somewhere between these two approaches to adolescent malingering, but as of yet no one has striven to find it.

But back to me and my sick days. Why did I miss so much school? The answer is simple. I was being bullied. For some reason, some kid I didn’t even know and had never spoken with decided to make my life a living hell. Like any skinny, acne-ridden coward with a sense of self-preservation, my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in on the flight side. I never stood up to my bully in real life. I spent many school days at home feigning illness and trying to forget that I had to return the next day and be dehumanized all over again.

I created Buckshot one such day. I told myself a story about a kid like me getting bullied in school. Also like me, the kid didn’t stand up for himself and face down his tormentor. Unlike me, however, the kid’s reluctance wasn’t born of fear of his bully, but rather fear of himself. This kid knew if he ever fought back, he would kill his bully and possibly every other student and teacher in the school. This kid was a living bomb. If he ever punched or kicked something in anger, an explosion would radiate from his fists or feet. I called my alter-ego “Buckshot.”

Buckshot didn’t exist as part of the Trademark Universe per se. He couldn’t. His story was too personal. The events in Buckshot’s comic book mirrored events in my own life, right down to the names of the supporting characters. Buckshot was me. I wasn’t living in the Trademark Universe alongside other superheroes, so neither was Buckshot. Buckshot’s stories existed in a universe separate from my Trademark characters and remained that way until I entered high school.

My victimization stopped in high school. To my great joy, my nemesis found himself in the detention home when I started at North Olmsted High. For the first time in years, my fear disappeared. Although I still loved the character of Buckshot the Human Shotgun, I didn’t need him to be me anymore. That part of my life had concluded. So I did what any comic book writer does when he runs out of creative inspiration for an established character. I retconned him.

Mind you, I did this in 1979 before the term or concept of retconning had even been coined by DC Comics (in reference to events occurring in their book All-Star Squadron circa 1983, I believe). Suddenly, in this newly-imagined scenario, Buckshot burst onto the Trademark scene as part of Götterdämerung, Maniac’s terrorist shock troops.

My new retconned Buckshot was a bullying thug named Todd Harper. He had all the powers of my original creation with a homicidal streak to boot. In a bit of cruel irony only I appreciated, the new Trademark version of Buckshot had essentially the same personality and character as my own real-life bully. With his every ass-kicking at the hands of the Protectors, I got to relish an imaginative, vicarious ass-kicking of the real-life bully who’d once plagued me. I told myself these stories for a good six months until something unforeseen happened.

Just when I’d started living my life outside the shadow of my junior high bully, he reappeared again. The first day I saw him in the halls of the high school, the newly-found testosterone flowing in my blood crystallized into shards of ice. He looked at me as I looked at him. Then, to my utter shock, he turned away with barely an acknowledgement.

The D.H. changed my tormentor. He walked around school clutching a Bible, and he spent his free periods in the art room drawing. I never saw him commit another act of physical aggression or verbal bullying again. Granted, I refrained from associating with him and speaking to him, but I observed him from afar. He genuinely seemed committed to his own redemption.

Meanwhile, in the Trademark Universe, the new Buckshot was undergoing some character development, too. I guess my sentimentality towards the original Buckshot refused to die. For two long angst-filled years, Buckshot had been my alter self, my outlet for all the fear and anger I felt in junior high. Given this, I just couldn’t let Trademark Buckshot be nothing more than a cardboard-cut-out super-baddie.

So I began tinkering with the personality and nature of Todd Harper. I explored his childhood and fleshed out a rather grim, nurture-based explanation for his hostility and anti-social tendencies. Gradually over the course of a dozen or so adventures, Todd Harper transformed into the sole homicidal hybrid in Maniac’s army capable of rediscovering his conscience and soul. Unlike the rest of Maniac’s minions, Buckshot actually imagined a better life for himself. In dramatic fashion, he broke away from Maniac’s hard-wired reprogramming and surrendered to his most hated foes, the Protectors.

Thus began the next stage in Buckshot’s heroic development, the quest for redemption. In a later blog, I’m going to address the concept of redemption and how it relates to the archetypal heroic journey. For now, let me just say that I’ve always believed very strongly in mankind’s capacity and thirst for redemption. Throughout the various heroic stories I love -- Heracles, St. Paul, Sir Tristan, Shane -- the theme of redemption plays a paramount role in the forging of the true hero.

Buckshot’s own quest for redemption saw him paroled to the Protectors for one year. At first, none of his new teammates trusted him, especially Hangman, whose telepathic abilities allowed him access to the homicidal urges Buckshot continually repressed. Over time, however, Buckshot proved himself repeatedly in the eyes of Airfoil, Clarion, Flurry, Silver Streak, and even Hangman. Upon his twentieth birthday, Buckshot learned that Hangman had declared him cured while also arranging for Todd Harper to attend Ohio University as a freshman on a four-year full scholarship. Thus began the next stage in the parallel lives of Buckshot and Mark Kozak.

Like me, Buckshot attended Ohio University in the fall of 1984. Also like me, Todd Harper was slightly older than the rest of his freshman class. Unlike me, however, Buckshot bore the extra burden of trying to hide his notorious true identity from his new peers. For the next four years of college, Buckshot’s adventures paralleled my own college experiences. He was an English major; he was a news reporter on the campus radio station; he traveled overseas to England; and he temporarily taught middle and high school. Taking pages from Buckshot’s first incarnation, I actually incorporated classmates and professors from my own real life as supporting characters in the Buckshot comic book I continually narrated in my mind.

After graduating from college, Buckshot and I parted ways again, at least in regards to our mirrored lives. I got a job and entered the real world. Buckshot rejoined the Protectors full-time and seriously committed himself to ridding the world of Maniac’s legion. Along the way, he also became obsessed with rescuing and reforming another of Maniac’s minions, a child prostitute turned super-powered serial killer, Slice. But more on her later -- A LOT more.

To fill in the rest of the blanks regarding Buckshot, let’s once more consult the Titanic Trademark Encyclopedia:

Buckshot (Todd Harper) Young Todd Harper was a school bully and juvenile delinquent who ran afoul of the law in his early teens. Spending much of the time between 13 and 15 in juvenile detention facilities, Todd was finally tried as an adult at age 15 and convicted of first-degree murder in the death of a classmate. In prison, teenage Todd found himself the target of a whole host of predatory prisoners. An unusually savage and gifted fighter, Todd managed to successfully defend himself against his various assailants, sending most to the infirmary with life-crippling injuries and killing two inmates outright.

Ironically, Todd’s personality went through a dramatic shift at this time. The one-time bully now began sticking up for the prison’s victimized underclasses: homosexuals, child molesters, white-collar criminals, and others. One of these rescued victims, notorious serial killer Don McHale, never forgot what Todd did for him. During his second year inside, Todd befriended a new prisoner named Robby Prentice, a bespectacled teenage punk rocker convicted of kidnapping, torturing, raping, and mutilating three girls in his high school.

Under Prentice’s influence, Todd began selling his “protection services” to other inmates instead of offering them freely. Gradually, Todd and Robby became exactly the kind of predators that Harper had previously battled. Also during this period, the prison acquired the services of a special consultant, Dr. Darius Kilhausen, a brilliant scientist and researcher seeking test subjects for a radical new treatment to “cure” psychopathology and anti-social personality disorders using biomechanical technology. One of Kilhausen’s “students,” Don McHale, suggested that Todd Harper and Robby Prentice might make excellent additions to Kilhausen’s “school.” Kilhausen agreed, and Todd and Robby were recruited to join Kilhausen’s program.

Unbeknownst to prison officials, Dr. Kilhausen wasn’t committed to curing criminal behavior. In fact, he was using his prison “school” to recruit the sickest, most violent offenders into his own private terrorist army. Kilhausen’s biomechanical technology not only warped his “student’s” twisted psyches to inhuman extremes, his “treatments” also furnished them with a host of grotesque and ghastly superpowers. Todd himself was transformed into a kind of human shotgun whose hands and feet discharged massive explosions when striking solid objects. Likewise, Robby Prentice, Don McHale, and a host of other prisoners metamorphosized into hybrid super-soldiers.

Finally, having assembled and trained his army, Kilhausen staged a breakout and unleashed his super-powered shock troops on the world. His goal wasn’t world domination. Rather, it was world destruction. Knowing that his army would inevitably confront the community of earth’s superheroes, beings that he denounced as “itty-bitty false gods,” Kilhausen deemed his terrorist force Götterdämmerung, i.e., the Twilight of the Gods.

As Götterdämmerung wreaked havoc on an unprecedented planetary scale, Todd Harper’s propensity for violence earned him a spot on the Maniac’s first “team” of terror. After several particularly vicious assaults, the young super-thug earned the sobriquet Buckshot. Buckshot is able to vibrate his hands and feet so rapidly that they explode in powerful concussive blasts. One of his punches or kicks can level a brick wall or punch a hole through reinforced steel. A succession of his rapid-fire blows can devastate most anything.

After a year of battling earth’s superheroes on an almost daily basis, Buckshot was eventually subdued by the Hangman during a no-holds-barred slugfest. Sensing deep pain in the teen as well as a sense of remorse, Hangman did not turn Harper over to the authorities with the rest of his comrades. Instead, Hangman appealed to the courts, which gave the Protectors custody over Buckshot in the hopes he could be rehabilitated. Within the confines of the super-group, Buckshot worked through his probation until finally being accepted as a full-fledged member of the team several years later. During this time he has mastered all forms of self-defense under the tutelage of Silver Streak and Hangman.

Weapons -- He doesn’t need any.

Personal Items -- At first a hot-head and a bully, Buckshot has gradually transformed into a stable member of the Protectors and the super-community in general. He has personally brought several of his ex-anarchist buddies to the right side of the law, namely Rival and Slice. Through intensive years of practice, he has managed to control his power bursts to a refined degree. This new-found control allows him the limited ability to fly, maneuver in mid-air, and hover. Use of his powers over extended periods of time exhausts Buckshot, and his body often needs to recharge after a grueling fight.

Although contentious at first, Buckshot’s relationship with fellow Protector Airfoil has developed into the first real friendship Todd has ever experienced. Todd is also very close with his former Götterdämmerung teammate Slice, whom he considers his sister. Just recently, Todd became intimate with fellow Protector Clarion, although neither has any idea if the connection will grow or where it may be headed.

Larry Kramer a.k.a. the Fabulous Fris-- er... Awesome Airfoil

2009-07-26T17:07:00.009-04:00

The first character casualty in Worlds Apart occurred years before I ever finished my first draft. I took his demise particularly hard because he was one of my oldest and most endearing creations. This hero wasn’t killed by some sociopathic super-baddie or noble act of self-sacrificing martyrdom. The causa mortis listed on his fictional death certificate would read something like: Acute Litigatory Apoplexy. In layman’s terms, my original character died because his legal right to exist rested on some pretty shaky ground. Let me explain.

In the horrifically humid summer between fourth and fifth grade, I created a superhero in my backyard while amusing myself throwing frisbees. Using the flying discs as projectiles, I engaged in a kind of target-shooting exercise against the side of our garage. At some point, I grew tired of retrieving the thrown frisbees and hit upon an idea. Punching small holes in the lips of the discs, I threaded some fishing line through the openings. My frisbees were now attached to fishing line which wrapped around my throwing hand. Suddenly, I could not only hurl the discs, but also recall them back into my hands with a snap of my wrists.

A hero was born -- the fabulous Frisbee! I imagined him as a kind of Hawkeye or Green Arrow, albeit armed with an arsenal of gimmicked frisbees. I bestowed a not-so-secret identity upon him, world-famous frisbee champion Larry Kramer. I already had a home for him, too. His character would fit in perfectly with Beachcomber, a Trademark Comic I’d started a few months earlier with an aquatic-themed superhero and his sidekick, the sensational Sand Dollar. (Note: this is the self-same Sand Dollar who appears as a Lyon News analyst at the opening of Worlds Apart.)

Lovable Larry Kramer’s first appearance in Beachcomber found him stopping a gang of smugglers using only normal frisbees and some stainless-steel trash-can lids. Taken under wing by Beachcomber and Sand Dollar, Larry spent the next couple issues slacking and cracking wise before circumstances forced him to put aside such childish things. Inspired to use his natural gifts to fight evil, Larry Kramer became the Frisbee, one of the Trademark Universe’s oldest and most-utilized superheroes. Case closed. Or so I thought.

Enter Worlds Apart artist and amateur legal scholar Tony Lewis. When first introduced to the fabulous Frisbee back in the mid-‘90s, Tony off-handedly mentioned that he didn’t think I could actually use the name Frisbee if we ever created a comic book. “Frisbee,” Tony informed me, is a registered trademark of the Wham-O toy company. I pooh-poohed him, told him the word “frisbee” had to be in the public domain by now, and promptly dispensed with his obviously paranoid reservations. I never even gave the matter another thought until years later when Worlds Apart started becoming a reality.

Much to my chagrin, as Worlds Apart started coalescing, Tony reintroduced the subject of Wham-O’s trademark on the word “frisbee” and their penchant for litigation. After doing some further research, I found myself compelled to agree. The fabulous Frisbee had to die. We could rename him, of course. But he would never be the same. A part of my childhood and my creative life required euthanasia. Not to be maudlin here, but I actually passed through all Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ stages of grief before actually allowing myself to mourn his tragic passing.

From the ashes of the fabulous Frisbee arose the awesome Airfoil. He’s still Larry Kramer, and he’s still the same slacker-turned-super-dude. But he’s not the fabulous Frisbee. For more on Airfoil, let’s consult his revised entry in the Titanic Trademark Encyclopedia:

Airfoil (Larry Kramer). Known by beach bums the world over as the undisputed master of the flying disc, Larry Kramer was content to spend his teenage years living off endorsements, catching rays and waves, and chasing bevies of bikini-clad babes. All this changed, however, when Larry relocated to Lasher Beach and took up with a couple of fledgling superheroes, Beachcomber and the sensational Sand Dollar. During a tussle with super-baddie Tempest, Beachcomber and Sand Dollar were taken prisoner, and Larry took it upon himself to save his friends and the world to boot. Modifying Sand Dollar’s arsenal into an array of high-tech flying discs, Larry became the awesome Airfoil and hasn’t looked back since.

Since first arriving on the scene, Airfoil has continually butted heads with old-school, establishment-type heroes like Silver Streak, Hangman, and Flurry. Often looked upon as immature, lazy, and a bit air-headed, Airfoil’s membership in the original Protectors was only considered probationary. In fact, he wasn’t accorded full Protector status until years later during his fourth stint with the team. Needless to say, Airfoil spent most of those “probationary” years trying to establish a respectable reputation in the super-biz, a task made all the more difficult by his problem with authority and his penchant for partying and playing pranks.

Weapons -- Airfoil is armed with a flying disc for practically every occasion, his most popular being the exploding variety and those with razor-sharp edges. For transportation, Airfoil tools around town on a disc-shaped craft he calls his Hover-Bee.

Personal Items -- Airfoil likes his freedom and hates taking orders. On the other hand, he desires nothing more than adulation and recognition as a real super-hero. Subsequently, Airfoil has been a Protector (several times), a member of both the Challengers and the United Front, as well as flying solo. At one point, Airfoil was heavily involved with Clarion, but mostly he prefers keeping things loose and his possibilities open. Currently, Airfoil is on his fourth tour of duty as a Protector, where he enjoys the camaraderie of Clarion and his best bud, Buckshot.

NEXT – the FYI on Todd Harper, a.k.a. the battling BUCKSHOT!

The Worst Trade EVER!

2009-07-19T11:25:00.008-04:00

My oldest brother Bob has been reading and lurking this blog. Maybe one day he’ll be inspired to leave a comment here. In the meantime, I believe I’ve devised a sure-fire method to draw him out. I know Bob is dying for me to publicly relay a story he recalls from our childhood.

This misbegotten tale of unspeakable woe involves my older brother, Mike, a neighborhood kid named Jimmy Wilcox, Amazing Spider-Man #77 and a Sad Sack comic book. Personally, I can remember more compelling exploits from my distant past, but Bob does have a point. It’s a funny story, and it involves comic books. So why not tell it here? Like Bill Cosby said before the Junkyard Gang broke into song, if we’re not careful we may even learn something before this is all done.

I loved the old comic book vending machines, the metallic monstrosities with blurry display windows and long, clunky levers. North Olmsted boasted one such machine. It resided at the old Topps department store located on what would later be known as Great Northern Boulevard. This Topps should not be confused with the local grocery chain that came into the greater Cleveland area years later. Topps the department store competed for market share with discount chains like Uncle Bill’s, Kresge’s, and Woolworths. Our family occasionally shopped there, which is where I first encountered comic book vending machines.

The machine at Topps stood in the fluorescently-lit vestibule like a gawdy green-and-blue sentry guarding the jerky automatic doors. In my mind, this comic book machine had about fifty display windows (probably closer to twenty) corresponding to slots filled with various Marvel comic books. Each window featured the cover of the next comic book to be dispensed in its respective chute. You inserted a quarter into the slot, pulled the lever beneath the corresponding window, and your comic slid down the machine’s insides into a stainless steel receptacle tray.

I’m not going to say I worshipped that machine. But it stood as a kind of sacred totem during my early childhood. While my parents waited in line to pay at one of Topps’ cash registers, my brother Mike and I would go stand by the comic book machine and study the covers in the windows. Invariably, we would find an issue we just had to have, go back into the store, find my parents, and then beg my dad for a quarter to realize our dreams. More often than not, he’d part with two bits just so we’d stop with the whining and nagging.

Although I can’t remember the exact day we came into possession of Spider-Man #77, I’m fairly certain I can imaginitively recreate the scene as it probably occurred. To begin with, I’m almost positive I know what my brother Mike and I were wearing. Back then, my mom always dressed me, Rob, and Mike in matching outfits. This wasn’t particularly awful when the clothes were plain shirts and pants. However, my mom regularly purchased sets of plaid trousers and shorts for us.

When I say plaid, I mean PLAID. Loud in-your-face 70s Superfly plaid. My dad said we looked like “little burlesque comedians.” My older sister Kathy coined another catty phrase in reference to my mom’s penchant for plaid shorts: “Matching cutesie shorts.” I'm pretty sure Mike and I were donning such garish outfits the day he purchased Spider-Man #77. I’m also fairly certain that Kathy was standing in the vestibule with us as he made the purchase. Kathy always took it upon herself to “watch us” and “keep us out of trouble.” (Mike and I called it being “bossy.”)

So, on one such shopping trip to Topps circa 1969-70, my brother finagled a quarter from my dad and acquired Amazing Spider-Man #77. In this particular issue, guest star Human Torch helped Spidey defeat the loathesome Lizard. At the time he purchased Spider-Man #77, Mike would have been around six years old, and I probably four or five. I know we couldn’t even read the comic at that time, but the art was captivating. For the next few years, we kept that comic book in pretty great condition considering most of the comics in our collection lost their covers on the way home from the store.

By the time I was nine years old, I had already started regularly reading Marvel comic books, and Spider-Man #77 held a place of honor in my burgeoning comics collection. Simply put, Spider-Man #77 was my favorite Marvel comic book, surpassing even X-Men #65, Captain Marvel #6 and Invincible Iron Man #7. I held this issue in such high estimation that I sealed it in one of the special plastic “comic book bags” my dad bought me at my first comic book convention at the Statler Hotel in downtown Cleveland. Rereading Spider-Man #77 years later in reprinted form, I can see why. The simplicity of the story-telling, mixed with Spidey and Johnny Storm’s respective moral dilemmas, was classic Mighty Marvel.

Now that I’ve set the scene, let me get to the action of my little fable. One HOT summer day, I walked inside the house from my garage sanctuary (see my previous blog “Cool Dry Places.”) in search of my comic book box. I wanted to reread some of my favorite issues to pass the unbearable afternoon. I scooped up the box from under my bed and headed back out to the garage. Ten minutes later, after rumaging through the box two to three times, I became acutely aware that Spider-Man #77 was missing, along with some other now-forgotten comics.

I freaked out. I ran back inside and scoured my room for the missing comic book. I screamed for my mom, who undoubtedly told me that I had probably just misplaced it. “It didn't just get up and walk away,” I’m sure she told me. But, of course, she didn’t understand my plight. As careless as I may have been with needless accoutrements like hair brushes and belts, I NEVER misplaced something as crucial as comic books, especially the crowning jewel in my comics collection.

I fretted over the missing comic book all afternoon until Mike and Kathy walked in shortly before suppertime. They had been out visiting some neighborhood kids, a brother and sister duo named Dawn and Jimmy Wilcox. Upon their arrival, I noticed immediately that Mike clutched a handful of comic books -- new never-before-seen issues of “funny book” dreck like Archie and Richie Rich.

“Wh--what are those?” I asked, my paranoid young mind already conjuring a glimmer of the horrific tragedy about to ensue.

“We traded some of our old comics to Jimmy Wilcox for these,” Mike explained, proudly displaying his ill-gotten booty.

The omnipresent sense of dread I’d been experiencing all afternoon suddenly crystalized into one thoroughly soul-crushing revelation. “You... didn’t... trade my... Spider-Man #77,” I croaked, barely able to even conceive of such a crime against humanity. “Did you?”

“Yeah,” Mike chirped. “I got this Sad Sack comic for it.”

“Whaaaaaaaaat?” I wailed.

By now, my mom no doubt entered the room. Even to this day, my typically loud voice always crescendos into a shrill, booming yawl when I become enraged. When I was a kid, my mom called me a “bellowing buffalo.” I’m sure families all across North Olmsted’s Deerfield housing development heard my young heart’s death knell that torrid summer evening.

I cried. I screamed. I raged against the dying of the light. But, alas, to no avail.

Despite my most fervent protestations, my mother refused to dispatch Mike back to the Wilcox household to retrieve his errant trade. When I beseeched my dad with a desperate appeal for justice, he, too, would not sanction such an obvious foray into “Indian-giving.”

But the comic book was MINE. Mike traded MY comic book.

Mike didn’t see it that way, though. He recalled that he actually purchased the comic from Topps. He had only given it to me years later to hold in my collection. He still claimed owner’s rights despite the fact he hadn’t read the issue in years. These rights, then, superceded my rights as the de facto steward of Spider-Man #77. In other words, if he wanted to trade sacred Spider-Man #77 for a damnable Sad Sack comic, it was his right.

My parents, who obviously viewed the prospect of Mike asking for the comic’s return as unseemly, agreed. Case closed. Court adjourned. Let’s eat supper.

“Whaaaaaaat?!”

I raged on, aghast at the injustice being perpetrated upon me by own family. Such a propensity for righteous indigantion still dominates my personality to this day. To paraphrase the oft-misquoted words of Saint Paul, I don’t suffer fools gladly. When faced with inequity, especially inequity I deem “foolish,” I am prone to explode with contemptuous, inconsolable fury. Ironically, such fulminations only succeed in worsening contentious situations. You think I would realize this life lesson after decades of dire disappointments.

Well, I haven’t. Whether confronted by narrow-minded college professors, callous call-center “customer service” representatives, intractable government bureaucrats, or bullying bean-counting bosses, I still cannot and WILL NOT suffer fools gladly. I know it’s thirty-odd years later and I should be over it by now, but I’m not.

For the record. Spider-Man #77 was MY comic book. My brother abrogated all rights to said comic book when he blithely entrusted it to my care without a second thought. Thus, Mike had no right to trade my Spider-Man #77 to Jimmy Wilcox for a loathesome Sad Sack comic. Moreover, my parents should have compelled him... no, make that sentenced him to return to the scene of his crime against nature and retrieve MY Spider-Man #77.

In light of their failed judgement decades ago, my parents should re-open this case, re-evaluate the argument, reconsider their verdict, and righteously rule in my favor. Mike should be forced to relocate Jimmy Wilcox and retrieve my comic book, or he should be required to make restitution by purchasing me a copy of Spider-Man #77 in commensurate condition to the issue he unjustly traded away.

To paraphrase Tom Mullen, Mel Gibson’s character in the remake of Ransom: “Give me back my Spider-Man #77!”

Case closed. Court of Appeals adjourned. Let’s eat supper.

Cool Dry Places

2009-07-12T15:40:00.009-04:00

I’ve always hated the summer. Heat makes me nauseous. Humidity renders me lethargic, and sunshine triggers the inevitable fusillade of cluster headaches. I’m not talking about extreme heat and humidity either. Any outside temperature over 50 degrees will typically trigger an adverse change in my mood. When the thermometer reaches 65 or 70° my anxiety level quickens, and even more drastic distempers can set in.

Internally, I’m miserable for more than 50% of the year. What starts as discomfort in April blossoms into full-blown agony during the so-called dog days of July and August. I only reach a kind of physiological equilibrium by the time Halloween sets in. Perhaps that’s why Samhain season has always been my favorite time of the year.

I’ve always found it rather peculiar that the DSM-IV covers Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), i.e. “winter blues,” so extensively. An entire library of studies have been devoted to SAD’s causes and treatments. Yet my particular condition, let’s call it “summer sorrow,” only rates an off-hand appellation as Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. Adding further insult to injury, Wikipedia disses us summer sufferers, offering a voluminous entry for SAD, while no entry at all for so-called Reverse SAD. To put things into further perspective, even Glenn Frey’s ill-fated TV series South of Sunset rates its own Wikipedia entry, and CBS only aired one episode back in 1993.

I discovered my aversion to June, July, and August at an early age. Most kids worship the season between spring and fall. In late January and early February, shivering children in schoolyards all across the country whisper the words “summer vacation” the way Peter and the Apostles murmured Jesus’ name in those dark days before the first Easter. Conversely, young Mark Kozak blanched at the thought of impending spring and the three stifling, blazing, interminable months that followed. Like I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I was not a normal kid.

Since early childhood, then, my unfolding life can be viewed as one futile, never-ending, anti-heroic quest to retreat from the heat and find the ultimate cool, dry place. While other kids reveled in fifteen unabated hours of sweltering sunlight, I studiously avoided the outdoors unless I sensed the chill of dusk or the cool dark breezes of approaching rain. Quite happily, I spent the summers of my youth barricaded in the back corner of my family’s garage, battling beneath the walls of Troy with broken broom handles, or poring over the pages of my burgeoning book and comics collections.

During those long summer “vacations” between the ages of seven and thirteen, I read and reread my comic books continuously, just as I periodically lost myself in the pages of The Boy’s King Arthur, the d’Aulaires’ illustrative retellings of Greek and Norse myths, or any of Bernard Evslin’s books. That corner of the garage became my first cool, dry place, and even today serves as a repository for numerous cardboard boxes containing poetry, short stories, and Trademark comicbook sagas from my high school and collegiate years.

With early adolescence, I found a greater degree of freedom to explore the outside world while seeking even cooler, drier places. Only forty-five minutes from my house via the 75 RTA bus, I discovered the Cleveland Public Library downtown, specifically the John G. White Collection of Folklore, Oriental, and Medieval Literature. This collection, housed in its own designated room in the old library, became my sanctuary after school and during the summer break. Armed with nothing but my youthful love of myths and legends, I began digesting Homer, the Eddas and Malory in their original translations while simultaneously tackling some pretty heady scholarly works along the way: Frazer’s The Golden Bough, Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, Middleton’s Evolution of Arthurian Romance, to name just a few. Although I had no idea at the time, my fun summer reading was unwittingly preparing me for my next cool, dry place -- the seventh floor stacks at Ohio University’s Alden Library.

I discovered Alden’s seventh floor stacks early during my first fall at OU. While other “typical” freshman frolicked outside, soaking up the waning warmth of Athens’ September, I retreated into the comfort zone I craved: quiet, solitude, air conditioning, books. I hadn’t even completed my first week of classes before I stumbled upon an article in a scholarly journal that provided me with a truly Joycean epiphany. I wish now that I’d written down the author’s name or the article’s title, but alas I didn’t. I do recall that I found the article in a sociology journal because I’d done a subject search on “comic books.”

Essentially, the article compared the transmission of comicbook idioms into our popular culture to the transmission of mythic lessons into the cultures of various ancient societies. Here, for the first time, I encountered a school of social and literary criticism that not only considered comicbooks serious literature, but also defined comicbooks as “modern mythology.” Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I began to understand why I couldn’t just simply put away my comicbooks with other childish things.

Almost from the moment I began reading myths, legends, and comic books, I intuitively sensed a deep archetypal connection between ancient epic heroes and contemporary superheroes. All I had to do was look at the characters of Thor, Hercules, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel (Shazam!) to see that comicbooks not only borrowed from myth but actually retold the ancient stories with a modern twist. When I started fashioning my own primordial superheroes and villains at age seven, my first creations were based on mythic characters I loved: Sir Launcelot, Fenris, Momotaro. Several years later, when I birthed the Trademark Universe, I quickly incorporated Achilles, the biblical Cain, and four elemental gods -- Flurry, Hellfield, Torrent, and Landslide -- into the mix. Somehow, almost instinctively, I knew my new universe needed a tangible link to the traditions of Hesiod, Snorri and La Chanson de Roland.

Amazingly, my college literature courses didn’t kill my love of comicbooks or my desire to create my own personal, modern mythology. In fact, higher education only succeeded in making my vision of the Trademark Universe even more ambitious. The entire time I was deconstructing Thomas Hardy and crafting Carveresque works of short fiction, I was simultaneously and surreptitiously scripting comicbooks inside my head. No one in the Honors Tutorial program for English had any idea that I was internally narrating the story of my life in the form of a comicbook.

Just like me, eighteen-year-old hybrid Buckshot found himself attending college incognito, terrified at the prospect of being revealed, looking for a girl that might accept him (homicidal past and all), and basically just trying to fit in. When my mentor Dr. Laurence Bartlett introduced me to Shakespeare’s Prospero, Milton’s Satan, and Shelley’s Prometheus, I found myself utilizing aspects of their complex personalities in the development of Trademark’s arch-supervillains, the Maniac, the Suzerain, and Cain. Likewise, my introduction to the concept of the Byronic Hero breathed new life into my decade-old creation Hellfield. In fact, Worlds Apart itself draws direct inspiration from a work first encountered at OU, John Barth’s postmodern, metafictional classic Chimera, introduced to me in a graduate creative writing workshop by the late, great Sheila Schwartz.

In many ways, my four years at OU represent one long, extended respite in a cool, dry place. Since leaving the bucolic surroundings of that Harvard on the Hocking, I’ve never again been able to meld the mundane preoccupations of my external existence with the esoteric ruminations of my internal landscape. Put more plainly, every day in the real, working world is caniculares dies, a dog day at the height of summer.

Jobs, bosses, customers, bills, taxes, standing in line at the DMV -- it all makes me nauseous, lethargic, and sick in the head. If not for the cool, dry places of my mature adulthood -- rambling talks with my wife, ambling hikes with my dog, aimless evening drives listening to Frank Rosolino, quiet back booths savoring a cold beer and a good book -- I doubt I ever would have finished Worlds Apart. In fact, I’d probably still be hiding from the sun in the corner of that old garage, fruitlessly dreaming among the stacks of unopened boxes, desperately waiting for the weather to change.

Welcome to Social Networking

2009-07-04T18:26:00.004-04:00

As of this moment, Worlds Apart is now officially on MySpace & Facebook.

http://www.myspace.com/worldsapartcomic -- This will pretty much mirror the blog as it appears here.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Worlds-Apart/100000076928415 -- This will have a lot of art from the comic, but no blog.

Mark Kozak is also on Twitter: http://twitter.com/m_e_kozak -- Following Mark on Twitter will get you the latest news on updates made to this blog as well as the graphic novel @ http://www.webcomicsnation.com/artcorps/worldsapart/series.php?view=archive&chapter=39363 . Mark's Twitter will also give you a glimpse into his personal life aside from Worlds Apart.

Mark & Tony welcome all comments & e-mails made here or via any of the other official Worlds Apart web venues.

Remember, Always Look for the Trademark!

Buckshot vs. Mosquito

2009-07-01T22:30:00.000-04:00

Some early concept art for Worlds Apart!

Worlds Apart is Now Online!

2009-06-14T22:13:00.001-04:00

Worlds Apart is now online at Webcomics Nation!

Here is the link to the latest installment:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/artcorps/worldsapart/series.php

Meet Slice

2009-05-31T20:13:00.000-04:00

Introducing Slice, one of the heroes of Worlds Apart!

The Titanic Trademark Universe

2009-05-29T13:53:00.007-04:00

As I’ve alluded to in previous blogs, the action in Worlds Apart commences with a senses-shattering splash page setting up what is admittedly an over-the-top, supercharged slugfest scenario. A gang of super-powered terrorists known as Götterdämmerung storms the global telecast of pop princess Trishy Tanaka’s live concert from Fantasy Land Amusement Park. The gang’s de facto leader, a brute named Breakneck, is wired up with a nuclear warhead, making him the ultimate suicide bomber. Breakneck’s plan is psychopathologically simple. He wants to rape Trishy Tanaka in front of a worldwide audience, and then detonate the bomb he’s wearing, thereby wiping out Fantasy Land and the surrounding metropolitan area.

Poised to thwart Götterdämmerung are two teams of superheroes, the Protectors and the Irregulars. The Protectors, as their name indicates, represent Law & Order. The Irregulars, on the other hand, embody the credo “By Any Means Necessary.” What emerges, then, is a three-way conflict between the two teams and the super-terrorists they oppose. As readers first peruse these opening panels, they hopefully find themselves asking some curious questions. Namely, just who the HELL are all these characters? Where did they come from? Is all this supposed to be immediately understandable?

Good questions, and they’re all answered briefly in the succeeding pages. Don’t worry. But I know a lot of readers are like me, and brief answers contained within the narrative just whet the appetite for more in-depth exploration. Think of this blog entry, then, as a kind of FAQ for the characters and situations encountered in the opening of Worlds Apart. Once you’ve finished reading the next few paragraphs, you should be armed with all the background information you could possibly need.

What is Trademark Comics?

Trademark Comics is simply the name I gave to a comic book company I created when I was 10 years old in 1975. Trademark Comics began with one character, Skater, who was eventually renamed Silver Streak. He was soon followed by a host of other superheroes and villains that comprised the Trademark Universe (TU). I took the name Trademark as a pun on my first name, Mark. Before Trademark Comics, I had created another universe of superheroes and villains, but I never formalized their creation into a “comics company.”

Who are the Protectors?

The Protectors is a team of Trademark heroes unabashedly inspired by Marvel’s Avengers. They are the TU’s Law & Order superteam led by Mr. Law & Order himself, strait-laced super-speedskater Silver Streak. The Protectors originally banded together to battle a mythical, juggernautical giant named Antaeus. The team’s original members included Silver Streak, Hangman, Mastodon, Flurry, Maze, and Airfoil. After Mastodon’s shocking and untimely death on page 4 of Protectors #1, the team was forced to recruit a super-powered heavyweight that could go toe-to-toe with a baddie who drew virtually unlimited power from Mother Earth herself. Tapping into Flurry’s powers and wisdom as an ageless Elemental, Hangman was able to resurrect the invulnerable demigod Achilles. Achilles quickly replaced the easily-forgotten Mastodon and came to be regarded in later years as a charter member of the team. Through subsequent line-up changes, the team would add Clarion, the sonic songstress, and Buckshot, the living cannon. (Note – Buckshot is the first and so far the only of Maniac’s hybrids to completely overcome the sadistic and homicidal impulses resulting from re-engineering.) The Protectors’ chief nemeses are the Suzerain and Cain, wannabe worldbeaters born more from Milton’s Satan than Burgess’ Alex. The Protectors are a little bit out of their comfort zone when confronting the new breed of psychopathic supervillain exemplified by the Maniac and Götterdämmerung.

Who are the Irregulars?

The Irregulars are a somewhat looser team of Trademark supertypes, perhaps more accurately defined as anti-heroes rather than heroes. Originally reminiscent of Marvel Comics’ Defenders, the team’s concept evolved during my adolescence as I began exploring the morally-ambiguous writings of Nietzsche, Rand, and Sartre. Basically, the Irregulars do whatever needs to be done in the fight against evil, often employing identical methods to the villains they battle. Led by former militant radical Wolf, backed up by Hellfield, an amoral Elemental, and Retaliator, a kind of cross between Iron Man and Luke Cage, the Irregulars routinely earn the enmity of heroes and villains alike. Shortly after the group’s inception, they welcomed their fourth member, Slice, a former prostitute and drug addict turned hybrid killing machine. Unlike Buckshot, Slice has never been able to fully control the sadistic and homicidal impulses resulting from Maniac’s re-engineering. Primarily, the group wages an endless battle with Maniac and Götterdämmerung, next-generation supervillains indebted more to Manson than Machiavelli.

Who is Maniac, and what is Götterdämmerung?

Maniac is an insane genius supremely gifted in the science of merging inorganic objects with human genetic material. The resulting synthesis creates Hybrids, mentally-twisted amalgams of man and matter. Unlike your garden-variety superbaddie, Maniac entertains no delusions of ruling the world. Rather he wishes to inflict unspeakable horror upon humanity before ultimately snuffing out all life. To reach his goals, he has assembled his most inhuman hybrids into an army of sadistic, genocidal super-terrorists, christened Götterdämmerung. Key members of Götterdämmerung include Breakneck, Gashouse, Mosquito, Spree, and Buzzcock. Only two hybrid members of Götterdämmerung have ever managed to escape the terrorist legion: Buckshot and Slice. Before their respective roads to redemption, both were high-ranking members of Götterdämmerung, responsible for many deaths and other crimes against humanity.

Who are the Challengers?

Yet another Trademark superteam, the Challengers comprise a kind of second-rate Protectors, much as Marvel’s original Champions functioned as a minor-league Avengers. For the purposes of Worlds Apart, the only Challenger we need to consider is Diatom, the TU’s answer to Reed Richards.

This concludes the Introductory FAQ for Worlds Apart. Any questions? Please post a comment below.

More of these FAQs will follow as the story progresses.

Until then, Always Look for the Trademark!

Meet Hellfield

2009-05-24T01:36:00.000-04:00

Introducing Hellfield, one of the heroes of Worlds Apart!

Moral Clarity

2009-05-22T06:13:00.005-04:00

In a previous blog, I spoke briefly regarding my father and his influence on my life, worldview, and early love of comic books. By emulating my father’s example, I grew to internalize the qualities of personal responsibility, fundamental decency, and hard work, not to mention a love of the arts. I am not just my father’s son, however.

Being the product of a very loving and stable nuclear family, I’d be quite remiss if I failed to acknowledge the instrumental role my mother played in shaping my personal and creative values. From my mother I inherited a thirst -- no, rather make that an obsession -- with moral clarity. Even as a small child, I was adamant about not only knowing what was right, but why it was right. Consequently, the issue of fairness became my constant preoccupation. No wonder my favorite comic book hero of all time is still Terry “Fair Play” Sloane, b.k.a. Mister Terrific, a.k.a. The Man of a Thousand Talents.

Family members constantly point out that my temperament falls more in line with my mother’s side of the family than my father’s side. I’ve always taken this as a compliment. What some may call impatience I deem forthrightness. Although I may be prone to flights of indignation, they tend to be of the righteous variety, not self-righteous. My father may have inspired and nurtured my love of comic books, but my mother’s influence gave that love expression and meaning.

My mom grew up a PK. For those of you not familiar with 20th century acronyms, PK stands for Preacher’s Kid. PKs, like Army Brats, live in a kind of parallel universe alongside the children of lay or civilian folk. My mother once described growing up a PK as living in a fishbowl. Every eye studies you, expecting you to be perfect, and then delighting when you fall. Some PKs “act out” against their parents’ authority and society’s expectations. Other PKs embrace their identities and follow in their parents’ footsteps. Much to her credit (and often to her dismay I’m sure), my mom zealously pursued the latter option.

My grandfather, the late Reverend Huber F. Klemme, wasn’t exactly your typical American preacher. From the onset of his ministry, he used his pulpit to address quite a number of controversial causes. Throughout the 50-plus years of his ministry, my grandfather remained deeply and unequivocally committed to the core principals of the Social Gospel movement: civil rights, social justice, world peace, and economic equality. Given the political climate in our nation during the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s & ‘60s, his unyielding stance invariably set him face-first against our culture’s prevailing winds.

During the 1930s, amid the first Red Scare, my grandfather proudly declared himself a socialist. My mother, a grade-schooler at the time, found herself in quite a bit of trouble when she informed her teacher that her household supported Norman Thomas for president over FDR. A short time later, my grandfather’s pacifist philosophy prompted him to counsel Conscientious Objectors during World War II. (Think about that for a moment-- not the Vietnam War, but WWII.) In the 1940s & ‘50s, he zealously advocated for civil rights and the abolishment of Jim Crow, long before public sympathy got swept up into the monumental social upheavals of the 1960s. My grandfather’s recognition of racial injustice and Black Achievement certainly rubbed off on my mother. Once, when another grade school teacher asked my mother to name a famous scientist, she responded with George Washington Carver. Obviously, the teacher wasn’t impressed, as she snidely dismissed Carver as “just an old nigger.”

As a teenager and college student, my mom proudly followed her father’s example, becoming active in a wide variety of social and religious causes. After graduating from Heidelberg College, she taught in the Cleveland schools for a few years before marrying my father and starting a family. Understandably, my mom was strict with my brothers, sister, and me. She suffered neither fools nor brats gladly. Each and every time I was punished, however, I not only learned what I’d done wrong but why it was wrong.

In retrospect, I think those hard object lessons probably spoiled me. From childhood on, I’ve always looked for the same clarity and consistency among the legion of authority figures I’ve encountered in life: teachers, bosses, policemen, elected officials. Needless to say, I am constantly disappointed and troubled in this regard. Perhaps this sense of anomie, more than anything else, explains why the world of comic book superheroes became so significant to me.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, both the comic books I read and the superhero stories I wrote all revolved around questions of right and wrong, idealism vs. pragmatism, selflessness vs. expediency, the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few. I may not have been familiar with Nietzsche, William Faulkner, and Ayn Rand way back then, but I still instinctively sought out those heroes whose conflicted hearts daily wrestled with both inhuman monsters and inner demons: the Specter, Mar-Vell, Hank Pym, Mr. Miracle. Reflecting these ideals in my own fledgling work, I created a host of similarly torn and wounded souls caught up in myriad morality plays.

One of my early, precocious efforts pitted arch-conservative Silver Streak against arch-liberal Wolf, two staunchly idealistic characters who would often lose sight of a common enemy while engaged in endless socio-political debate. A little later, I became fascinated with dangerous philosophical concepts like amorality and nihilism, which I explored through my Elementals, Flurry and Hellfield, beings who were literal, corporeal forces of nature. When I first encountered the Orwellian notion of thoughtcrime, I conjured up Hangman, a blind, deaf, mute telepath driven to pre-emptive vigilantism after experiencing a joyless childhood of sexual and emotional abuse. Oh, and don’t let me forget Buckshot and Slice, just two of the numerous antisocial juvenile delinquents recruited and reprogrammed as soldiers in Maniac’s hybrid army, Götterdämmerung.

At the beginning of Worlds Apart, the reader immediately gets punched in the face with a classic philosophical dilemma embodied by two superhero teams -- the Protectors and the Irregulars -- and an army of supervillains, Götterdämmerung. The Protectors, led by the aforementioned Silver Streak, represent the staunchest ideals of law and order. The Protectors possess an intractable code of conduct that defines Right and Wrong like two mutually-exclusive circles in a Venn diagram. Any action residing in the Wrong circle is prohibited whether committed by criminals or the heroes opposing them.

The Irregulars, on the other hand, view Right and Wrong as two intersecting Venn sets. Their leader, Wolf, places the Irregulars squarely in the overlapping portion where Right and Wrong meet. It is only from this position, with one foot squarely over the line, that Good can confront and defeat true Evil. Heroes constrained by their own moral limitations will invariably and tragically fail. In other words, the Irregulars fight Evil’s fire with an intense controlled burn, not a trickling garden hose.

The third element in this combustive formula, Götterdämmerung, seeks only chaos, depravity, and destruction. Unlike the typical supervillains routinely routed by the Protectors, Breakneck and his hybrid crew aren’t would-be world beaters or malevolent martinets. Rather they are sadistic rapists and genocidal maniacs, genetically re-engineered and psychologically reprogrammed into the ultimate agents of social terror and mass destruction.

I’m certain my mom won’t like the stage I’ve set in Worlds Apart. Her tastes run more to Murder She Wrote than Natural Born Killers. However, beneath the deranged exterior of Tony Lewis’ carnally crafted panels lies an interior dialogue I know she’ll appreciate. The opening frames pose the same fundamental, tripartite question she inspired me to consider when I was first in diapers: What is Right? What is Wrong? And Why?

Meet Wolf

2009-05-17T19:59:00.000-04:00

Introducing Wolf, one of the heroes of Worlds Apart!

Questions of Character

2009-05-15T21:39:00.001-04:00

My first comic books were purchased for me by my father at Parma, Ohio’s legendary James Books on Ridge Road. My father worked 80-90 hours a week as a school music teacher, a private teacher of woodwind instruments, and a professional musician playing five nights a week at Pesano’s Restaurant, a somewhat notable supper club in Garfield Heights, Ohio.

Monday was a short workday for my father. He only had to work two jobs that day: teaching school from 7AM to 3PM, then teaching music lessons at Grabowski Music in Parma from 4PM to 9PM. Grabowski’s was a stone’s throw away from James Books. When my dad had his break for dinner, he would grab a bite to eat and saunter over to James Books. He never left the store without buying my brothers and sister and me bubblegum cards and comic books.

When I talk to my father now about those bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived days back in the 60s & 70s, he always seems surprised how much of an impact they made on me. He was just a man trying to get by and feed his family. He regrets all the long hours away from home and the fact that he didn’t do more with my siblings and me. I try to tell him that waiting up for him Monday night so that I could read my new comic book and watch Monday Night Football with him and my brothers was the highlight of my week.

I always treasured the time I spent with my father when I was young. All of my friends had the kind of love-hate relationships with their fathers that have become so cliché in literature and popular culture. From an early age, I instinctively knew the sacrifices my father made for our family, and I never felt anything but gratitude, respect and admiration for his tireless efforts and selfless work ethic.

I relate this now because my feelings towards my father directly interacted with my feelings towards those early comic books I digested. My father always bought me DC comics because DC featured the heroes that he grew up with: Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern. Coincidentally, DC comics also revolved around heroes who were decent men and women that all seemed cut from the same cloth.

Others before me have already pointed out that, for the most part, the heroes that populated the DC universe and comprised teams like the Justice League, Justice Society, and Legion of Super-Heroes were pretty much interchangeable throughout the Silver Age. In other words, if you suddenly gave Barry Allen’s super-speed to Hal Jordan and Hal Jordan’s ring to Barry Allen, not much would change. The heroes rarely argued, debated strategy, or expressed any difference of opinions.

Exceptions to this rule only occurred among the few “human” heroes that had to fight alongside their more godlike colleagues. “Hot heads” like Karate Kid and the later retooling of the Green Arrow did seem to have small chips on their shoulders when dealing with Superboy’s Legion and Superman’s JLA respectively. Generally, though, their outbursts were viewed negatively by their teammates, and KK and GA always found themselves back on the right track by the end of the story.

At age five, when I first began creating superheroes in my head and mentally scripting their adventures, the Silver Age DC template guided my creativity. My first heroes were blatantly lifted from DC archetypes and joined together in superteams with names like the Super Legion. Like their Silver Age DC inspirations, these heroes and heroines were also invariably decent people blessed with a wide array of powers -- super-speed, super-strength, growing and shrinking -- and naively crafted with interchangeable personalities.

I fantasized about these characters for several years as I continued reading DC comics. I even jotted down some rudimentary plots and stories when I dreamed up particularly good adventures that I wanted to relive. During this time, my older brother discovered Marvel comic books, and he began teasing me that Marvel’s characters and stories were way better than my stupid DC comics. Because I simultaneously hated yet wanted to be like my older brother, I openly eschewed his Marvel comics whilst surreptitiously trying to read them when he wasn’t home to guard his collection.

Marvel comics of that era were very different from DC. For one, the art was bold, brash, and splashed all over the page. Unlike the simple line drawings and primary colors favored by DC’s artists, Marvel’s artists used much heavier shading and the entire spectrum of the color wheel. Similarly, Marvel’s dialogue balloons and boxes also seemed stuffed with words, while DC favored a more minimalist, journalistic feel. The biggest difference, however, rested in the faces of the characters.

DC’s heroes had two facial expressions: happy and determined. By contrast, the faces of Marvel’s heroes ran the gamut of emotion. You could tell just by the art when the Thing was arguing with the Human Torch, or when Captain America was upbraiding a sarcastic, recalcitrant Hawkeye. To be honest, the personalities of Marvel’s heroes and villains scared me a little even if I couldn’t read all the words they were saying.

When I first began perusing Marvel comics at age 7, I was still unable to read them from cover to cover. Conversely, DC comics, from a readability standpoint, posed no problem for me even at 5 or 6 years old. Gradually, as I pored through more and more pages of Marvel comics, a tectonic paradigm shift occurred in my reading ability, and this invariably added depth to the fantasies and adventures I concocted in my head. To this day, I am convinced that my desire to decipher Marvel comics hastened my cognitive development from toddler to adolescent.

By age nine, I had already begun having introspective, interior monologues with myself à la Peter Parker. Unlike the rest of my male classmates in the third & fourth grade, I already found myself obsessed with such angst-ridden teenage concerns as girls, popularity, and the constant sturm und drang of isolation and alienation. When I realized how different this made me from my friends, I quickly learned to keep my thoughts to myself. With no way to express my feelings, my interior monologues grew even more troubled and neurotic.

I finally found a way to exorcise my inner demons when I began incorporating my psychological turmoil into the superhero stories I had begun writing down in notebooks. By age 10, I had created a whole new slew of heroes and villains more in keeping with my Marvelesque sensibilities. Alienated, psychologically-fractured heroes like the Hangman and Wolf fought warped world-beaters like Cain, the Suzerain, Abraham Seth, and, of course, the Maniac. My superteams -- the Protectors, the Fury Force, the Challengers, the Irregulars, the United Front -- consisted of myriad personality types with a wide variety of values, ethics, and ongoing personality conflicts. In keeping with my Marvel templates, I had my staunch moralist in Silver Streak and my wisecracking slacker in Airfoil. But I also had truly damaged heroes like Slice and Buckshot, not to mention heroes who weren’t really heroes at all: Hellfield, the Lynx, Pythoness.

In other words, the characters I created changed with the transformation of my own personal character. The five-year-old boy who once stayed up on Monday nights to see his dad and read DC comics filled with decent men acting decently gave way to a moody, vaguely troubled youth who was precociously neurotic and prematurely adolescent. I guess someone out there might blame comic books for stealing my childhood, but in retrospect I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Worlds Apart wouldn’t live today if any part of my childhood had been different or “happier.” My father may still not understand how those Monday nights comprised some of the happiest moments of my life, but he really doesn’t need to. All he needs to understand is that his decency and commitment to our family polished the lens through which I view not only comic book superheroes, but the everyday heroes I encounter each day of my life.

Next blog I’ll tell you about my mother!

Meet Buckshot

2009-05-10T22:13:00.000-04:00

Introducing Buckshot, one of the heroes of Worlds Apart!

Genesis -- or How This All Got Off the Ground

2009-05-08T21:14:00.001-04:00

We’re all familiar with the old cliché: a lifetime in the making.

Well, I won’t go that far when describing how Worlds Apart (WA) grew from concept to reality. Various bits and pieces of WA are as old as my first creative memories. Some portions took their original shape in my grade-school years. Larger chunks occupied my thoughts in high school and college. Something approaching an outline of WA’s final form solidified in my mind during the early 1990s when I briefly lived in New York City. The possibility that WA could actually become real, however, didn’t happen until the mid 1990s when I met Tony Lewis.

Tony worked as a periodicals clerk when we first met circa 1995. At that time, I found myself back home in Cleveland, gainfully and painfully employed as an assistant manager for a large national bookstore chain. I was Tony's immediate supervisor. From his first day of work, I appreciated his dry, laconic, sardonic sense of humor. He, I found out later, considered me one of the few people in the store he could tolerate. So he talked to me because he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Even misanthropes get bored, I guess.

Many offhand conversations later, we discovered a mutual passion -- comic books. Not the overly-stylized, Mangan or Liefeldesque fare cluttering up our comic book racks and graphic novel section -- but the REAL stuff, the Silver Age stuff -- colorful newsprint chock-full of hard-hitting heroes and bad-ass bad guys, splash pages and slugfests, legible line art and letters sections, and above all, obsessively-compulsive (for the most part) continuity.

As our lunchtime discussions evolved, we found ourselves good-naturedly deconstructing the entire genre of the comic book. Slowly, we both came to realize that we had a kind of yin-yang dynamic going on. I was a guy who wanted to write comic books, and Tony was a guy who wanted to draw them. One day, as I told him about some of the characters I’d created over the years, Tony offered to draw an assortment for me. All he needed, he insisted, was a basic description.

I told him I could do one better than that. I had pages of old notebooks in my apartment with hundreds of plot ideas and scripts that I’d scribbled out since my days in elementary school. I told him I’d give him some short scenes, and he could design and draw the characters however he wanted.

The next day, I handed him some scenes. Scant days later, I finally saw some of my creations in comic book form for the first time in my life. The experience was revelatory. Our partnership was formed that day. I knew if I was ever going to live my dream and write comic books, that Tony Lewis was going to draw those comic books and share in my dream – 50/50.

Much has happened in our lives since Tony pounded out those first rudimentary panels in the mid-90s. We both met the respective women of our dreams, got married, and started families. Tony and his wife moved away from Ohio and lived in California for a few years. I went through a few employment changes before finding a functional 9-5 job that puts food on my family’s table.

Through all these changes and upheavals, though, one thing has pretty much remained constant. Worlds Apart.

Of all the concepts I’d dreamed up over the years, WA was the one that struck both Tony and I as our Genesis, our Beginning, our opening salvo across the bow of the industry. When you actually witness the pages unfolding -- the story and the art -- I’m sure you’ll see why this project held so much sway over our creative imaginations. WA is the kind of rip-roaring yarn a comic book writer searches an entire lifetime to spin. WA is also the kind of superheroic Sistine Chapel that a comic book artist aspires to not only begin but finish.

The idea of WA is simple. Every Silver Age aficionado loved those big team-up books: Justice League & Justice Society, Avengers & Defenders. When DC and Marvel began crossing over their universes and creations, we all pored over the pages of Superman vs. Spider-Man. Later, we watched Superman meet the Hulk and Batman team up with Spawn. Heck, we even took a curious gander at Archie Andrews joining forces with the Punisher. Of course, the pinnacle of all crossovers has to be Busiek’s & Perez’s JLA/Avengers in 2003.

At its heart, WA is one tale in a long tradition of team-up books. WA features heroes from two very different and somewhat contradictory universes meeting up to fight a common foe. Other similarities exist between WA and the myriad crossovers and team-ups preceding it. But I can guarantee that WA takes the crossover/team-up dynamic to a level never even attempted in comic books before.

Such bold claims require bold evidence. You will discover such evidence in the pages of Worlds Apart.

‘Nuff said!

Worlds Apart Poster #1

2009-05-03T23:30:00.000-04:00

Thematic Considerations

2009-05-02T09:07:00.000-04:00

I grew up reading comic books. That makes me exactly like millions of other kids from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Comic books and superheroes weren’t just a pastime for me, though.

Along with mythology books, “Le Morte d’Arthur,” and other collections of legends and folktales, comic books like Superboy & the Legion of Superheroes, the Justice League, the Avengers, Daredevil and Captain Marvel (Marvel’s) provided me with a sort of moral landscape that I still try to live within today. I often joke that I ask myself “What Would Captain America Do?” when faced with any kind of ethical conundrum.

Comic books, myths, and legends create a subconscious narrative that plays in my brain as I go through day-to-day life. The basic archetypical outline followed by all epics, whether we’re talking The Iliad or the Kree-Skrull War, posits a world where brave heroes stand and strive against foes while simultaneously trying to adhere their own senses of purpose and identity.

Just because someone defeats an enemy doesn’t make that person a hero. When we fight monsters, we must always make sure we stay distinct from the monster. When we finally see the enemy, we must make sure we are not simultaneously seeing ourselves. In the world of myth, legend, and comic books, heroes not only defeat their adversaries, but they do this by staying true to themselves without transforming into a mirror image of the enemy.

In my real life, I’ve been plagued with my fair share of “bad bosses” and “crazy coworkers.” Most savvy workers react to these kinds of personality conflicts by fighting fire with fire. I routinely see fellow workers at odds in the office slowly become what they hate, all in a Sisyphean quest to create their perfect workplace in the sun. They cheat, lie, gossip, and pass blame, always looking for the means to get one over on a bad boss or get one up on an arch nemesis.

I must admit that I’ve tried to fight this kind of war at times. Something inside me always derails my Machiavellian machinations, however.

Achilles becomes evil in his battle and ultimate victory over Hector. Yet the tears of Priam, Hector’s father, soften Achilles’ hard heart. After his brief immersion in the dark side, Homer’s hero walks back out into the light. Likewise, during Mar-Vell’s early career, he was a spy working against planet Earth, torn between his loyalty to the Kree and his sense of morality. Neither Achilles nor Mar-Vell were perfect men doing perfect deeds perfectly.

In other words, heroes don’t always do good. They don’t always make the ethical decisions. Ultimately, though, heroes define themselves by their ethics. When heroes transgress into the mindset of their enemies, they eventually realize this and seek to make amends. Put more simply, a hero is one who is inexorably drawn to the light of redemption.

Worlds Apart directly reflects the very moral landscape I’ve been attempting to describe in these few meager paragraphs. My partner Tony, whose art brings to life the flickers projected against the walls of my mind, proclaimed once that Worlds Apart had gradually become “a freaking epic!”

I took a step back from my computer monitor and had to agree. Good epic or bad epic (our readers will be the judge here) Worlds Apart is an epic. Without consciously wishing to do so, I have created a universe -- actually two universes -- hewn from the moral building blocks of Homer, Beowulf, Bullfinch, Mallory, Cervantes, Lee, Fox, Englehart, and Ditko, to name but a few.

My heroes are heroes. My villains are villains. The battle is about victory -- victory over the evil before us and the evil inside.

More thoughts in my next installment.

First Post

2009-05-01T11:11:00.000-04:00

This is the official blog for Worlds Apart, an original graphic novel by Mark Kozak & Tony Lewis.

It is an epic tale of costumed heroes with superhuman abilities, inspired by seventy years of comic book history, which we intend to publish online.

Worlds Apart is currently in the early production phase, and should go live next month.