Here’s the thing: At the rate of only putting out one superhero a week, I’m getting buried under my sketches. In an effort to keep up with myself, I’m going to start doing two a week. Here we go:

Securitaur

When a minotaur finds himself mysteriously transported form his mystical home realm to New York City, what does he do? How does he go about his life in a world so unfamiliar? Like anybody else, if a minotaur wants to fit into society, a minotaur needs to get a job.

Suppose you live in a world where crazy supervillains, colorful crimelords, overt ninjas, and evil aliens all abound. Sure, superheroes do their part to preserve the status quo, but suppose you own a bank or a company or something, and you think you’re likely to be robbed or attacked by superhuman criminals. The regular superheroes will show up when the fighting starts, but if you want to create some preventative measures, you need to hire a security guard. A security guard like Securitaur.

If I got to do a comic about Securitaur, it would be all about crazy absurd fights and set pieces. Also, Securitaur would be the face of his security company, but would have a squad of teammates, and would have to answer to a cranky boss and shareholders. It would be an action-packed sitcom starring a man-bull, and I am honestly surprised that isn’t the dominant genre on television.

Mythologikelly

When nine-year-old Kelly Doukas and her family moved to a new town, she discovered a ball in the basement of the new house. Later, while reading a book about heroes of Greco-Roman myth she’d got from her grandparents, the ball started to glow. When Kelly touched it she found herself transformed into Hercules himself! At least physically she was Hercules, mentally she was still Kelly.

Though Kelly doesn’t know it, she’s discovered the Eidolon Sphere. This magical device allows her to occupy the idea-form of whatever Greek of Roman hero she is focusing on. Kelly can transform to any of the mortal heroes, Odysseus, Achilles, et cetera (even a couple of actual women like Atalanta and Camilla), but none of the gods. The catch is that Kelly can’t just repeatedly be the same hero, and the strength of an idea-form is dependent on the hero’s kleos, or how well they are known in the world. So while Hercules and Odysseus would still be pretty renowned, other heroes, like Iarbus (who doesn’t even seem to have a Wikipedia page), would be less useful.

I was going for a sort of Saturday morning cartoon here, based entirely on Ben-Ten, a show I have heard about, but never seen. I know it’s about a kid who can turn to a variety of (ten?) aliens. Also, there’s a bit of Captain Marvel in here, with the idea of a young person turning into a full-grown hero (especially given the connections to mythology). For the sake of ease, I’d keep the Greek and Roman myths together, because they’re certainly close enough, but at some point, probably, Kelly would have to encounter someone who can transform into the heroes of some other mythologies (Sumerian, Norse, Egyptian, Aztec, anything with enough mortal heroes, really).

There is a pandemic in the galaxy. Something, some virus-like alien lifeform, is spreading from world to world, bringing death and chaos with it. It adapts itself to any form of life it encounters, breeding and spreading, apparently unstoppable. And now it has come to the Earth.

The symptoms: Usually the infected experience cold sensations and itchy skin, followed by hallucinations scripted by the virus to make the victim unknowingly do the virus’s bidding. When the virus’s bidding is more complex, it can also cause mutations in its hosts, giving them otherworldly powers. And it is not limited to humans, it can also infect animals, plants, even Earth-viruses. Humanity needs an expert. That expert is: Dr. Vedzax.

Dr. Vedzax is a member of the League of Space Doctors, the most highly-trained medical minds in the Cosmos. He has devoted his life to eradicating this disease.

So anyway, Dr. Vedzax is an alien. I’m always annoyed when alien characters look just like humans, so Vedzax here does not. Real alien life is probably going to be astoundingly different, and science fiction should be preparing us for that (after all, if fiction teaches us to relate to inhuman beings, we’ll probably even get better at relating to other humans). Even Vedzax here has eyes and a mouth on his face, which is on his head and all that. Vedzax has limbs in the basic configuration we’re used to (though notice the small extra set of arms under his coat). But I figure, it’s less humanoid than a lot of aliens in comics, so it is a step in the right direction.

Also, having the hero be a doctor means that I don’t have to have every story solved by violence. I will grant you, that there have been excellent comics starring doctors who solve problems with violence, but a bit less of that would not hurt superhero comics at all. For real.

Lynn Leaton was a brilliant scientist working on some sort of super-science experiment when she was caught in a chemical explosion. Her body mutated into a sort of viscous slime, and her mind went blank. This astounding Gunk went on a rampage, destroying the laboratory and several surrounding buildings, then fled. Now the Gunk wanders the countryside and has no memory of life as Lynn Leaton, except when it sleeps and dreams with Lynn’s thoughts, usually leading the Gunk to wake up and try to do things that Lynn would do, but without Lynn’s consciousness to guide her. hunted by her former colleagues and by the military, who have to stop the Gunk to keep the public out of harm.

Our society places an awful lot of importance on the appearance of women. It’s true that the vast majority of male action heroes are super handsome, but you can get away with all sorts of deformity in a male protagonist that you don’t see in females ones. Especially this particular kind of mutated-into-a-monster-person type like the Hulk or the Thing. Off the top of my head I can think of very few women who fit that kind of niche. There’s some She-Hulks, but you’d better believe they’ve got bodies that aren’t exactly frowned upon. There is Sharon Ventura, who goes back and forth between hottie and monster, but she is, and the She-Hulks for that matter are too, just female versions of the male characters. I don’t doubt that there is a few ladies trapped as monsters in comics, but I don’t know them off the top of my head.

As an extension of that, you can get stories where the mutated male hero gets an attractive woman who falls in love with him. It’s the Beauty and the Beast thing, and it is almost never the woman who is the Beast of that pair. Sure, Ben Grimm’s first love interest as the Thing was a blind woman, but even there, she knew full well that he was a dude made of rock, and there have been other, sighted women who also fell in love with Grimm in spite of his looks. So, if I were to make some sort of Astounding Gunk comic, I’d have to explore that route, with a man who is in love with Lynn. Maybe he’s trying to track her down and help her find help, but with her lack of memory, she continues running from him like everyone else. Something like that.

In the amazing days of the Twenty-First Century, humanity has found itself reaching into the vast and mysterious universe and found danger. Who can keep the Earth safe in this time of cosmic change? None other than Gus Comet, Rocket Officer! Soaring through the cosmos in his Rocketship, Gus Comet battles evil aliens, captures space criminals, and explores new planets of all kinds. Hooray for Gus Comet!

Gus’s crew includes:
Brains O’Brien, a scrappy rough-and-tumble super-genius orphan from Brooklyn. Hyram, a talking cyborg hyena who solves mysteries. And, Andrianna: Princess of the Robots.

I don’t think that anyone can argue that the golden age of science fiction would be a bit disappointed about how the twenty-first century has turned out. I am the first to admit that we’ve got some great technology going on with out internets and our computers, but it is all kind of lazy technology. It’s the sort of technology that makes sitting around really great, but isn’t exactly the stuff of Adventure. I approve of sending robot drones to Mars and all that, but there’s no denying that the world would feel a little bit more special if we had heroic people off doing wonderful things at the frontiers of human experience. That’s a world I want to live in. Shame on us for not being there. If I ever had a means to tell stories of Gus Comet, the juxtaposition between his adventures and the mundane truths of our world would be at the forefront.

Malevolent spirits waft through the cold night. Demonic imps lurk in the shadows, waiting for a chance to strike. Evil is on the Earth and humanity needs a protector. The Conjuroid is that protector. Fashioned from metals from beyond this world, this robotic champion tracks down demons and captures them, storing them inside its own enchanted chassis. The captured demons are then offered a choice: They can seek redemption by serving the Conjuroid, or they can remain trapped for eternity. As a result, the Conjuroid has a legion of demons and spirits willing to serve it in its quest.

I admit it: I’ve got a weakness for a robot in a cape. There needs to be more robots in capes. Sure, there are a few high profile superheroes who are androids wearing capes, like the Vision or DC’s Red Tornado. But those are practically just humans in appearance. What I want is proper robots in capes. The only one I can think of right now is Bender from Futurama as Super King. That is not enough. Not nearly enough. (See also Ezekiel Purple in Secret Government Robots.)

I didn’t know where I was going when I started drawing this one. I knew I wanted a robot, but this fusion of robotic and the supernatural just took shape as I was going. I guess the basic idea here is that Conjuroid is basically a walking containment unit that will shoot a demon into a bad guy’s face when the situation calls for it. I suspect that the situation would call for it a lot.

(Guest Coloring by my friend @sanityormadness)