I have found my way through another year of school and some people gave me some letters:

Cartoons and Comics: A-
Close Reading: B
Creative Process: A
History of Catholicism: B+
Intro to Human Geography: A
King Arthur: A
Pulp Fiction: A-

I have to admit, these are better than I was expecting. This year, more than last year, I basically felt tired and overworked the whole time. I expected my marks to suffer more than they actually seem to have done. Oh well, here’s what I learned: next year I am taking fewer classes at a time.

Last Year’s Marks

The Violence Sisters

In the battle that was the dawn of time, The Great Genitor, the Space Spirit of Creation and founder of the Astrolympians, banished the Twin Emptinesses to allow room for existence to exist. But Genitor’s victory did not mean there was an end to battle. Even to this day, Genitor’s daughter, the Space God of Courage Valia, has to deal with several enemies powered by the negative influence of the Emptinesses. Lord Terryr, the Space God of Fear, for instance is the son of an Emptiness, but not all of their servants are their direct offspring. The Astrolympians’ Space God of War has many children, some among them allies to Valia, but a set of triplets begotten by War and the Space God of Hatred are among the most problematic foes Valia has to face.

The Violence Sisters, Cruelty, Brutality, and Ferocity. As with all gods, Space or otherwise, they are the living embodiments of the things they symbolize. While Lord Terryr is out for his own goal of domination of humanity, the triplets are loyal to the Emptinesses and their goal of destroying creation. The sisters dwell in the Caves of Emptiness, a sort of pocket dimension full of portals through which they can view and travel to the Earth. By influencing events, often taking the form of mortals to influence events so that any potential conflict escalates to the deadliest outcome they can.

There is no hierarchy among the group, each contribute to their cause as needed without any need for discussion. Ferocity is most likely to incite a crowd to violence, Brutality is the one who works to ensure that that violence is as savage as possible, and Cruelty exists to make sure the violence lasts as long as possible. It is up to Valia to show the mortals that sometimes the braver way to act is not to resort to violence. But luckily for her, she also gets to beat up on this terrible trio to further that cause.

I guess I can also mention that I originally sketched Brutality and Ferocity separately without any intentional connection between the two. When I picked up on their similarity, I added Cruelty because I felt like a trio would work even better. With that done, seeing they were named after concepts, I figured they’d fit into a pantheon of gods and it turned out I already had one of those lying around. The triplets were a perfect fit for the Astrolympians. I had already given Valia one villain in the form of Lord Terryr, and I hadn’t planned on spending so much time building up her supporting cast like this, but I do find that the Astrolympians are one of the things that have come up in my Super Sundays that have best stuck in my mind. I will possibly return to them at some point. But considering that neither these nor Terryr were intentionally created for that purpose, it will probably have to happen unintentionally.

Underchampion

In the city of Cemeteria there is a competition. Every year the city’s greatest warriors gather for contests of strength, speed, and intelligence with the winner gaining the title of Underchampion. Traditionally the Underchampion has been awarded a position as top soldier of the royal army, but the latest winner is not particularly pleased with the current government. Rejecting the traditional post, the Underchampion is actively leading a rebellious group against Queen Deathknell with intent to make the Underchampion the ruler of the sacred city.

I like this idea because in addition to stories about the Underchampion sending his forces against those of Queen Deathknell, I could also do stories of the two of them competing in the Cemeteria contests. On some level, I’m confident that this was inspired by the rivalry between T’Challa and Erik Killmonger in Black Panther comics.

Xaxhak

Mentions of Xaxhak can be found in ancient scrolls in the Mystical Library of Vodin, on stone tablets discovered in the ruins of a Scottish castle, and carved onto a wall at the scene of a massacre in the middle of Los Angeles. Cave paintings have even been discovered depicting an angry mouth eating human figures. Since as long as humanity has known, every 28 years, Xaxhak arrives on Earth with the intention of devouring 72 human beings. Unfortunately for Kelly Doukas, the twenty-eighth year has just come again.

When I drew Xaxhak (done with intention of having an easy drawing in addition to filling the supernatural being niche), I looked at the thing and though “This thing should be called ‘The Carnivortex'”. Unfortunately, looking the word up on Google, I found out that that was the name of some band’s album. Oh well. The choice to make her the villain for Kelly was just a whim of putting some things together that I didn’t intend, which has worked out well for me so far.