I’m sure I still have the notes somewhere, but the really short version is that I wasn’t a huge fan of George W. Bush at the time (2007), and I thought it’d be really funny if it turned out the president kept taking so many vacation days (which is something W did a lot) because he was actually the Hulk.
Like he would randomly turn into a Hulk-like creature and it’d be up to a group of overachieving college students to track him down and bring him back to the Oval Office because the Secret Service agents were too busy partying with Columbian prostitutes. (Which is a thing that actually happened. The prostitutes … not the president turning into the Hulk. At least, as far as we know anyway.)
So pictured above is Amaya and Travis, the two college students charged with finding and rounding up the hulked-up president using an assortment of gadgets, and also the hulked-up George W. Bush himself.
I kind of want to have this going on in the Liberty Universe for a couple of reasons. First because I don’t want to use the current president (or whoever the next president is) because then it ages the comic. If you go back and watch the animated Dark Knight Returns (or read the comic) when you see Reagan as the president it does really date things. At least it does for me, even if it’s later revealed there is no president and it’s actually Brainiac and Luthor running things and oh God the Dark Knight Returns sequel is so bad I still get angry thinking about it. DO NOT READ THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN!
The other reason I want this going on is that the Liberty Universe is meant to be a little goofy. Not completely goofy to the point where you can’t take it seriously, but goofy to the point where even if they’re dealing with serious stuff, there’s always something funny that I can use to break things up so it doesn’t get too dark or serious, which is a major problem I have with a lot of modern superhero comics. If I never see the words “grim” and “gritty” again to describe a superhero comic I could die happy. I know there’s a place for that, and those comics have their fans, but it’s just not for me.
Characters In Development
Anyway, that’s not why I wanted to get this post online. I’m still dealing with some crappy stuff and I wanted to post an official update on some of the characters you can expect to see here on this blog soon while I work through that. In February you can expect to see on this blog:
1. Red 5 - Our transgendered superheroine who is also the defender of NYC.
3. A currently unnamed super villain
4. Eclipse (who has nothing to do with the Sunrise character)
5. And the big one: La Amazona, the star of the “50 Shades of Grey with superheroines” romance novel I keep talking about.
I didn’t even realize this until I just typed out the list, but Sunrise, Eclipse, and La Amazona fall more on the “sexed up superheroines” side of the costume spectrum.
La Amazona and Sunrise because I was trying to match what they look like to what you’d see on a typical romance novel. (In a bookstore, that’s where you’ll find this book filed.) The guy super villain for that book will also look that same way.
Remember: Anything having to do with the 50 Shades of Grey with superheroines thing is not part of the Liberty Universe, so I’m not holding them to the same standards costume wise that I would the Liberty characters. Liberty is a PG-13ish comic. The 50 Shades of Grey with superheroines thing is a big honking R. Maybe even an NC-17. I don’t know. That’s up to the agent, editors, and publisher.
Eclipse, who is a Liberty character, is dressed the way she is because she’s a super villain. I really wanted to use the comic itself to talk about the expectations everyone has for heroes and villains in comics. The characters are all very self-aware, and so I liked one of the villains just sort of having this attitude of, “I’m going to do whatever the hell I want and wear whatever I want, fuck you.” It’s really similar to Liberty’s attitude, except one of them doesn’t play by the rules, and over the course of the story where you see Liberty thinks more and more about becoming a supervillain, she looks at Eclipse in this costume and doing whatever she wants and it’s just really appealing to her. “Why can’t that be me?”
That’s a long way of saying, everything with this comic has a reason for the way it is. I don’t want anyone to look at Eclipse and go, “Oh well they just wanted to write and draw hot women.” That’s really not the case. Anything that exists within Liberty has a purpose, and so Eclipse looking the way she does has a specific purpose behind it in terms of the story.
As far as Red 5 goes, I don’t have too much I want to say about her simply because I don’t want to make it a big deal that she’s transgendered. Liberty is a lesbian, and I honestly don’t waste any time talking about that. It’s 2015. Who gives a shit?
Red 5 doesn’t play a huge role in this specific Liberty story, but she is a major character within their universe and she does make a few appearances. The issue is that I’m sticking very much to “If it doesn’t make sense to the story, don’t include it” rule, and since Red 5 is the protector of New York City, and Liberty is based in Chicago where most of the story is set, there aren’t a lot of reasons for them to interact with each other. You will see her though in the comic and I’m excited to get her drawn soon.
Alright, I said more than I planned on for today. If you’re excited about Liberty and the 50 Shades of Grey with superheroines novel, tell a friend. There’s a lot more to come.
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