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Description

I had done a couple of these earlier, but instead of making a new one, I thought it'd be kinda fun to just make one big image and go from there.

So for those of you who didn't see the earlier posts (which is included in this one) or just don't remember (I barely do), here it is in a nutshell. Sometime late last summer, I stumbled across an old sketchbook from my high school years, containing some older characters of mine. Since I have very little artwork from that time period, I thought it might be kind of fun to redraw some of them, sticking to their original designs and not modernizing them at all. After the first few, I wanted to do some more and I decided it'd be fun to just go all the way up to 2000 and I decided to put them into chronological order. So from the top, from left to right...

1. Nightstalker: I had a character before him, but this was the first one I actually did comics with. They weren't exactly high quality... I mean, they were basically ashcans. (For those that don't know, "ashcans" in comic terminology is basically a fanzine. They're minicomics made via photocopier. It may not sound too impressive, but they were sold and it counts.) Nightstalker was basically a "Dark Science Crusader", which sounds a lot cooler than it really was. It was the 90s and we were all into that angst and crap. I remember (vaguely) that he had this green energy that flowed off of him. He had this staff which had his dead wife's emerald earrings affixed to it, and it would shoot out energy blasts. You know, green energy, emeralds... Of course they work together, because you know... SCIENCE!! I need to point out... I was 15.

2. Firebat: It was the early 90s and we all were infatuated with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld's X-Books. And 90s kids, don't deny that you bought X-Force. That thing sold a million copies. SOMEONE bought them! (Even if we did eventually wise up.) So we all wanted to create our own super-team. And Firebat was "the chick". She was the pyrokenetic and could fly around and stuff. (Because you know, being able to make fires means you can fly. Don't you people know anything about science? Gawd!) As for her outfit... Again, I need to point out, I was 15. I remember having some other characters, but she was the only one I actually did any stories with.

3. The Forever Man: Oh yeah, like I mentioned before in the earlier post. I was young and thought I was being cool. The Forever Man here had some story where an immortal and went around hunting demons, having to kill like a 666 of them in order to be granted mortality. He has a sword called the Nosferatu Impaler (seriously!) And he'd run around stabbing monsters and stuff with it. I was *just* getting into, what I called, my Vertigo Phase, where I found the less super-heroic books to be more my flavor then. (Really hard to believe there was a time that ever happened.) So it was intentionally dark and depressing. Not to mention, I was just out of high school, and I thought I was being edgy. (Batman: Mad Love had not entered my life yet and changed everything for me... Though it was indeed coming very soon.)

None of those first four are around today in any shape or form. Which is probably for the best. Moving onto the later stuff...

4. Janine Dalinde: It feels weird to me to talk about Janine like she's this old character of mine, as she's the main character in the Third Accelerator comic I'm still writing. But the truth is that she's been around since 1995, when I started college. (The first time when I went to learn art, as opposed to the second time when I went to learn health care.) For being created in the mid 90s, she was actually kind of a progressive creation, as she was a bisexual. But I was kinda stupid and didn't quite understand that important thing we like to call "understanding the source material". As I didn't even meet my first LGBT person (that I knew of, at least) until my second year of college, I had basically went off what I knew from late night Cinemax. Yeeeeeah... My research for a LGBT character was a Zalman King movie marathon. I'd like to believe that I've gotten my head pulled out of my ass in the last 19 years. Janine's current design for the upcoming comic can be seen here, where I think she's wearing something a lot less ridiculous: machsabre.deviantart.com/art/T…

5. John McSawyer: Like Janine, he's also been around a while. He was actually the alter ego for Nightstalker, and after a while, he just became the main character of sorts. Here's the thing about him, that's even more embarrassing than my confession with Janine. John is basically me. Seriously, brown hair, green eyes, and back in early college, I had a lanky build. (Before I apparently started inhaling carbohydrates.) His personality was that he was a socially awkward dork that got himself involved in various adventures including aliens, time travel and the like, due tot he company he kept around. He was kind of like Rick Jones from Marvel... Not an actual superhero, but getting involved in enough actions because of them. Eventually, he got shifted to the side as I focused on newer ideas. His design though, eventually became young Jackson Snow in Shadowgirls. (Though with a more reddish tint to the hair.)

6. Marica Kitamer: Marica's been floating about for about fifteen years or so, and in just about every project I've done, she originally had a role in it. (Except the Transformers ones.) She's gone through multiple character designs, from black hair to red hair, having purple eyes, to blue eyes to the heterochromatic eyes she's currently sporting. She's had bat wings, like she has here, to feathery wings (which in a few other pictures), to no wings, to even just plain old wing tattoos. She's kind of a mascot character for me, and I've always been fond of her. She was even the base design for Becka from Shadowgirls. (She even appeared in Shadowgirls too. For those of you who have the trade paperback, check out page 168. That's her snipering Mother Hydra.) I've been trying to work out a decent story for her for a long time, as recently as last Christmas. And I might have one now... But it needs a little more work.

7. Jinx: So Jinx here is actually a shared character between me and my friend Nik. When we created her, the anime boom hadn't happened yet, and so the idea of “catgirls” and “furries” hadn't really hit the public lexicon yet. In western comics, if you had a catgirl, you were either referring to Tigra from the Avengers or the Thundercats. (Or maybe even Alley Cat Abra from Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew.) So we thought we were actually ahead of the game. Yeah, we know the name Jinx isn't the most original... But she was named after a friend's cat, so it stuck. Even though it's been a while, I think her back story is still pretty clever and fun. It's just going to take a bit to get to it. She was basically the friend to another character we had named Phade Sinclair... And I would have drawn Phade for this thing too, but that girl hasn't gone through any redesign. If you check the link I gave with Janine, she's one of the protagonists in the upcoming Third Accelerator book. And she looks the same there as she did back then. (Except she might have had blue eyes.)

8. Stephanie Reese: Ah, Steph. This girl's been a constant in some way, shape or form for quite a while now. She's always been this six foot tall, muscular wild girl, and she's been in the early stages of multiple projects. She's a fun character to draw AND write. She's extremely flawed and has her history of mistakes. But she's also got this heart of gold, which plays off nicely with some of the main cast. However, in all the years she's been around and all the writers and partners I've worked with... I've never met anyone who "got" the character. Whenever I explain her history, they either resort to stereotypes or worse yet, like she's this broken lost girl, who needs saving... Which is the furthest thing from what she is. Currently, she's no longer sporting the wild hair color, as it has grown out to her natural Irish red. (Though she still tattooed.) She's the main character in a comic I'm wanting to do called the Black Banshee. (Interestingly enough, it's the same story idea that Marica appears in.) And honestly, if I can ever focus, how soon I can ever do it depends on if I feel like doing the book in color or B&W. (If I decide on B&W, you may be seeing that comic before Third Accelerator.)

9. Maxine Luisa Marquez, aka Max Pneumatic: Max is awesome and that's all there is. For the late 90s to early 00s, she was pretty much THE comic I did. Cyborg lady with a giant robot arm. She did have an appearance in Shadowgirls, but I'm not sure how much of that I will keep canon. Currently, along with her daughter and brother, I have a story idea in mind for her. Currently, she's wearing a more conservative tactical outfit, and is wearing her hair in dreadlocks. (Trivia, her hair is actually not dyed but it's a side affect of the cybernetics. It tends to tint her hair green.)

10. Molli Marquez aka Sprocket: Yeah, Max has a daughter. A computer whiz at engineering, and often updates and creates new cybernetic arms for her mom, even though she's only 14. I totally do have a story for her as well Max and the next one, called Return to Vermilion Rock. And between that, the Third Accelerator and Black Banshee... I start coming across like an unfocused flake. (But if I can pull it off, I can have my own Avengers-like team.)

11. Orson McCallister aka Zero: Max's adoptive brother and partner in mischief. Fearless and a sharpshooter. I wanted a big musclebound guy who can keep up with Max's hyperactivity on the battlefield, so Zero flies about on a jetpack with a plasma gun. When drawing him, I was reminded just how much I never did like his design. It's just... Boring. So whenever I get around to doing Return to Vermilion Rock, he'll probably undergo a drastic makeover.

12. Charon McKay: Gee, I have no idea what happened to her.

I hope you enjoyed this little indulgence of mine. I'd do one for the 2000s, but really... All the comics I drew in the last decade was basically Max Pneumatic, Shadowgirls, a western-fantasy Onward Bound for Darrick Chen and some Transformers comics. So basically I'd be just drawing the cast of Shadowgirls.

Anyway, that's it for this little trip down memory lane. Later!

PT.1 machsabre.deviantart.com/art/R…

Pt. 2 machsabre.deviantart.com/art/R…

Description

I had done a couple of these earlier, but instead of making a new one, I thought it'd be kinda fun to just make one big image and go from there.

So for those of you who didn't see the earlier posts (which is included in this one) or just don't remember (I barely do), here it is in a nutshell. Sometime late last summer, I stumbled across an old sketchbook from my high school years, containing some older characters of mine. Since I have very little artwork from that time period, I thought it might be kind of fun to redraw some of them, sticking to their original designs and not modernizing them at all. After the first few, I wanted to do some more and I decided it'd be fun to just go all the way up to 2000 and I decided to put them into chronological order. So from the top, from left to right...

1. Nightstalker: I had a character before him, but this was the first one I actually did comics with. They weren't exactly high quality... I mean, they were basically ashcans. (For those that don't know, "ashcans" in comic terminology is basically a fanzine. They're minicomics made via photocopier. It may not sound too impressive, but they were sold and it counts.) Nightstalker was basically a "Dark Science Crusader", which sounds a lot cooler than it really was. It was the 90s and we were all into that angst and crap. I remember (vaguely) that he had this green energy that flowed off of him. He had this staff which had his dead wife's emerald earrings affixed to it, and it would shoot out energy blasts. You know, green energy, emeralds... Of course they work together, because you know... SCIENCE!! I need to point out... I was 15.

2. Firebat: It was the early 90s and we all were infatuated with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld's X-Books. And 90s kids, don't deny that you bought X-Force. That thing sold a million copies. SOMEONE bought them! (Even if we did eventually wise up.) So we all wanted to create our own super-team. And Firebat was "the chick". She was the pyrokenetic and could fly around and stuff. (Because you know, being able to make fires means you can fly. Don't you people know anything about science? Gawd!) As for her outfit... Again, I need to point out, I was 15. I remember having some other characters, but she was the only one I actually did any stories with.

3. The Forever Man: Oh yeah, like I mentioned before in the earlier post. I was young and thought I was being cool. The Forever Man here had some story where an immortal and went around hunting demons, having to kill like a 666 of them in order to be granted mortality. He has a sword called the Nosferatu Impaler (seriously!) And he'd run around stabbing monsters and stuff with it. I was *just* getting into, what I called, my Vertigo Phase, where I found the less super-heroic books to be more my flavor then. (Really hard to believe there was a time that ever happened.) So it was intentionally dark and depressing. Not to mention, I was just out of high school, and I thought I was being edgy. (Batman: Mad Love had not entered my life yet and changed everything for me... Though it was indeed coming very soon.)

None of those first four are around today in any shape or form. Which is probably for the best. Moving onto the later stuff...

4. Janine Dalinde: It feels weird to me to talk about Janine like she's this old character of mine, as she's the main character in the Third Accelerator comic I'm still writing. But the truth is that she's been around since 1995, when I started college. (The first time when I went to learn art, as opposed to the second time when I went to learn health care.) For being created in the mid 90s, she was actually kind of a progressive creation, as she was a bisexual. But I was kinda stupid and didn't quite understand that important thing we like to call "understanding the source material". As I didn't even meet my first LGBT person (that I knew of, at least) until my second year of college, I had basically went off what I knew from late night Cinemax. Yeeeeeah... My research for a LGBT character was a Zalman King movie marathon. I'd like to believe that I've gotten my head pulled out of my ass in the last 19 years. Janine's current design for the upcoming comic can be seen here, where I think she's wearing something a lot less ridiculous: machsabre.deviantart.com/art/T…

5. John McSawyer: Like Janine, he's also been around a while. He was actually the alter ego for Nightstalker, and after a while, he just became the main character of sorts. Here's the thing about him, that's even more embarrassing than my confession with Janine. John is basically me. Seriously, brown hair, green eyes, and back in early college, I had a lanky build. (Before I apparently started inhaling carbohydrates.) His personality was that he was a socially awkward dork that got himself involved in various adventures including aliens, time travel and the like, due tot he company he kept around. He was kind of like Rick Jones from Marvel... Not an actual superhero, but getting involved in enough actions because of them. Eventually, he got shifted to the side as I focused on newer ideas. His design though, eventually became young Jackson Snow in Shadowgirls. (Though with a more reddish tint to the hair.)

6. Marica Kitamer: Marica's been floating about for about fifteen years or so, and in just about every project I've done, she originally had a role in it. (Except the Transformers ones.) She's gone through multiple character designs, from black hair to red hair, having purple eyes, to blue eyes to the heterochromatic eyes she's currently sporting. She's had bat wings, like she has here, to feathery wings (which in a few other pictures), to no wings, to even just plain old wing tattoos. She's kind of a mascot character for me, and I've always been fond of her. She was even the base design for Becka from Shadowgirls. (She even appeared in Shadowgirls too. For those of you who have the trade paperback, check out page 168. That's her snipering Mother Hydra.) I've been trying to work out a decent story for her for a long time, as recently as last Christmas. And I might have one now... But it needs a little more work.

7. Jinx: So Jinx here is actually a shared character between me and my friend Nik. When we created her, the anime boom hadn't happened yet, and so the idea of “catgirls” and “furries” hadn't really hit the public lexicon yet. In western comics, if you had a catgirl, you were either referring to Tigra from the Avengers or the Thundercats. (Or maybe even Alley Cat Abra from Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew.) So we thought we were actually ahead of the game. Yeah, we know the name Jinx isn't the most original... But she was named after a friend's cat, so it stuck. Even though it's been a while, I think her back story is still pretty clever and fun. It's just going to take a bit to get to it. She was basically the friend to another character we had named Phade Sinclair... And I would have drawn Phade for this thing too, but that girl hasn't gone through any redesign. If you check the link I gave with Janine, she's one of the protagonists in the upcoming Third Accelerator book. And she looks the same there as she did back then. (Except she might have had blue eyes.)

8. Stephanie Reese: Ah, Steph. This girl's been a constant in some way, shape or form for quite a while now. She's always been this six foot tall, muscular wild girl, and she's been in the early stages of multiple projects. She's a fun character to draw AND write. She's extremely flawed and has her history of mistakes. But she's also got this heart of gold, which plays off nicely with some of the main cast. However, in all the years she's been around and all the writers and partners I've worked with... I've never met anyone who "got" the character. Whenever I explain her history, they either resort to stereotypes or worse yet, like she's this broken lost girl, who needs saving... Which is the furthest thing from what she is. Currently, she's no longer sporting the wild hair color, as it has grown out to her natural Irish red. (Though she still tattooed.) She's the main character in a comic I'm wanting to do called the Black Banshee. (Interestingly enough, it's the same story idea that Marica appears in.) And honestly, if I can ever focus, how soon I can ever do it depends on if I feel like doing the book in color or B&W. (If I decide on B&W, you may be seeing that comic before Third Accelerator.)

9. Maxine Luisa Marquez, aka Max Pneumatic: Max is awesome and that's all there is. For the late 90s to early 00s, she was pretty much THE comic I did. Cyborg lady with a giant robot arm. She did have an appearance in Shadowgirls, but I'm not sure how much of that I will keep canon. Currently, along with her daughter and brother, I have a story idea in mind for her. Currently, she's wearing a more conservative tactical outfit, and is wearing her hair in dreadlocks. (Trivia, her hair is actually not dyed but it's a side affect of the cybernetics. It tends to tint her hair green.)

10. Molli Marquez aka Sprocket: Yeah, Max has a daughter. A computer whiz at engineering, and often updates and creates new cybernetic arms for her mom, even though she's only 14. I totally do have a story for her as well Max and the next one, called Return to Vermilion Rock. And between that, the Third Accelerator and Black Banshee... I start coming across like an unfocused flake. (But if I can pull it off, I can have my own Avengers-like team.)

11. Orson McCallister aka Zero: Max's adoptive brother and partner in mischief. Fearless and a sharpshooter. I wanted a big musclebound guy who can keep up with Max's hyperactivity on the battlefield, so Zero flies about on a jetpack with a plasma gun. When drawing him, I was reminded just how much I never did like his design. It's just... Boring. So whenever I get around to doing Return to Vermilion Rock, he'll probably undergo a drastic makeover.

12. Charon McKay: Gee, I have no idea what happened to her.

I hope you enjoyed this little indulgence of mine. I'd do one for the 2000s, but really... All the comics I drew in the last decade was basically Max Pneumatic, Shadowgirls, a western-fantasy Onward Bound for Darrick Chen and some Transformers comics. So basically I'd be just drawing the cast of Shadowgirls.

Anyway, that's it for this little trip down memory lane. Later!

PT.1 machsabre.deviantart.com/art/R…

Pt. 2 machsabre.deviantart.com/art/R…