All my life, I’ve wanted to write superhero comics. And while my experiences writing fart jokes for the Hulk’s action figure helped scratch that itch a little bit, it’s not the same as writing a full-out, illustrated action comic.
So five years ago I realized that I was never going to get an offer to write the X-Men based on said fart joke writing skills, so I decided that I was going to create my own comic, get it illustrated and get it published. That’s not such a tall order, right?
But ah…what the hell to write about? Luckily, one day I had a flash: Super-teams. College fraternities. My college sketch comedy group. All three were groups of people who came together for a common goal and called each other by special code names (I was Hemlock DaRosa, btw). I could write about a college frat that was also a super-team, and I could draw on the experiences I had in my sketch comedy group. (You’d be amazed how applicable sketch comedy group experience is to both frat life and being in a super-team.)
That just left the small matter of plot. My mind immediately started to go to murder mysteries and terrible conspiracies, and I had to stop myself and think, “Hey, idiot – if people know you for anything, it’s for dumb comedy. Nobody wants to read a depressing murder mystery from a comedy writer.” (Unless it’s Woody Allen, which I’m not.) So I set about coming up with a plot that had some drama in it, undoubtedly, but also left plenty of room for humor and would be, above all, fun to read.
And the first thing that plot needed was a main character. So the next post (after our preview pages – see above) will deal with Nate Hedges, formerly known as teen hero Turbine the Turbo Teen. Yeah…he’s embarassed by the name now, too.
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