In other news, I did a guest strip for a webcomic called Beeserker and it went up this week. After doing things online since 2002 or so, maybe it is time to get out into the “community” for a while.

David Winter

It has been foretold that there will be a boy who will make the world a better place. He will have the power to stand up against all the forces of evil and drive them away. That boy is David Winter. Could he be the most important person to ever exist? He certainly seems to think so, and is not ashamed to let you know that. With his posse of more colorful and interesting friends, David spends a lot of time talking himself up, and hasn’t yet taken a single step toward making the world better.

As a person who hates almost every aspect of everything I love, I must say that near the top of the list of things I hate in fiction is the Chosen One narrative or anything where a character is prophesied to do great things. I admit it can be done well (generally I can tolerate it a bit more if it causes problems for the character), but too often it is just a way of telling the reader that the character is important. I don’t want to see characters that are important because of outside influence. I prefer to see characters earn whatever importance they wind up with.

Killer Emote

Kids these days are all about the texting. There’s a lot to worry about with kids online, you’ve got cyber-bullying and sexting and, of course, the supernatural serial killer who slaughters any teens stupid enough to get his attention. The Killer Emote! His information can be found on the darker sides of the Internet, and when a teenager tries to contact him (usually on a dare), things end in a bloody mess.

I already did a slasher movie villain from the “makes jokes and has a personality” vein, so to balance things out, I knew I had to do one who comes from the “silent, slow-moving masked killer” mold. This type of slasher villain can get away with not being supernatural in nature, but this is Supernatural Sundays month, so the Emote is. The Killer Emote is the type of character who would have appeared in a low-budget slasher from the early 2000s written by people who know texting is the popular new thing and just need to find a way to turn it into horror flick.

Cosmic Chief

Hundreds of years ago, a strange otherworldly energy burst into a small village from some other dimension. A handful of people were exposed, and were mutated into cosmically powerful new forms. One of those individuals was particularly cruel and fought among the others, but was eventually driven away to outer space. There, he became known as the Cosmic Chief, making an alien army, and after a century finally returned to Earth to find it populated by all manner of superheroes and villains. He immediately resumed fighting.

This one is another design and story from when I was a kid. The idea was that the strange energy was the source of most of the powers in that universe (what I now call Universe Orange). After that original group was exposed, their powers spread. Anyone present when one of these beings was killed would gain be exposed to their energies, gaining some diluted form of their own powers. And any offspring of those people would inherit them. Furthermore, in the stories I plotted back then, the Cosmic Chief was killed and one of his hands, referred to as the Cosmic Fist, was detached and could be worn by others, giving them great power. Pretty much an Infinity Gauntlet ripoff, if on a lesser scale. Plus, it’s an actual guy’s fist.

Pain Guy

Like the Wine Taster, the Pain Guy is an Unsettling Oddity, which means it is his goal to just freak people out. While the Wine Taster preys on social situational anxiety, the Pain Guy takes a decidedly more visceral tack. Imagine being alone on a dark street, when a scantily clad man runs around a corner, sprints straight toward you, and starts hurting himself. He throws himself on the ground or against walls, drives nails into his flesh, or even stabs himself with a knife. His screams and moans are terrible, when he isn’t actively damaging his own voicebox. After a few moments of this, that would surely feel much longer, he would crawl or limp away.

I bet you’d find that pretty freaky and confusing, wouldn’t you? Well then you’re just the kind of sap the Pain Guy wants to visit.

For the record, that’s supposed to be barbed wire wrapped around Pain Guy’s limbs, not Frankenstein stitching.