#deltavengers

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I just finished your Deltavengers comic from 2014. It is incredible and it's fascinating that marvel would do some hulk body horror years later.

I also love your black widow design, she almost feels heightened, like she is the black widow concept but in a warren Ellis type of world.

I'm glad you liked it @the-unspeakable-tsar! Wow, 2014 was a whole decade ago, I think I've been on this website too long.

Anyways, I have not thought about those guys for a while. But you hit the nail on the head, the "point" of the redesigns was to try to hone in on the core of the characters. The Hulk is something between Godzilla and a child. Tony Stark is Howard Hughes with a mech (and some unfortunate drug addictions, rather like the real guy). Captain America gets most of her past wiped out in service to her country, etc.

And, of course, Black Widow is secretive to the point of no one knowing what she looks like.

Of course, a lot of Marvel comics have also used these concepts, and I'm happy that people finally realized that the Hulk comics should have lots of body horror.

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Hello, here is a prearranged reminder to write about the conclusion of that Sabertooth-unwillingly-attached-to-pissed-off-Bruce-Banner storyline from Deltavengers that still gives me SUCH joy... 8)

Thank you for reminding me!

For new followers, Sanguine Tensor began years ago as an Avengers AU. While it was very fun, it already was MASSIVELY different than anything from Marvel and I wanted to own my work, so I excised all the Marvel bits and made Sanguine Tensor. See the Deltavengers tag on my tumblr for more.

A few key differences from the comics and MCU are that Sabretooth has an adamantium skeleton, the Spot had 4D pass-through-stuff powers, Bruce Banner is in a neck brace that sedates him if he gets too riled up, and Florida is full of invasive genetically modified giant raptor chickens.

This particular story started with Sabretooth and the Spot breaking into a Florida SHIELD base that happens to have Bruce Banner. The break in goes badly, they take Banner hostage, and the Spot decides to ditch Sabretooth and mess with his former co-worker Banner by taking one of SHIELDs adamantium handcuffs and slipping it on both Sabretooth and Banner. Chaos ensues.

Sabretooth breaks out with Banner (hard to take off handcuff when your wrists are too full of unbreakable claws to flex easily, and the other dude will turn into a giant angry monster if you manhandle him too much). And he flees across Florida, with a very annoyed Banner. Sabretooth hates Banner because he can't hurt him without facing the Hulk, and Banner hates Sabretooth because he's a huge asshole who stinks.

There's on the run for about a week, staying at awful motels and dive bars heading towards a meeting place with "The Lockpick" who claims she can open the handcuffs. Pretty quickly Bruce gets very tired of this and at one particularly dangerous bar he chucks a bloody mary at the biggest biker he sees, causing a massive barfight.

The whole time the two of them are bickering and Banner gets riled up enough for the collar to sedate him a few times, but they finally make it to the meeting place, an abandoned airport in the middle of raptor chicken swamps. "The Lockpick" arrives in a little plane and they meet in a decaying hanger. Turns out the Lockpick is Deadpool (a woman in the AU) and there was a bit of miscommunication… she's broken past SHIELD locks in the past by blowing them up. With explosives.

Sabretooth is pissed and Banner loses it. As usual the collar goes off, except this time a warning goes off "SEDATIVE DEPLETED. PLEASE EVACUATE THE AREA" and everyone kind of goes "ooooh."

Deadpool isn't stupid, she flees and starts up her plane, and Sabretooth starts clawing the now transforming Banner. He briefly seems to be dead, but of course he gets up pretty quickly, and looms over Sabretooth.

That's when Sabretooth hears the single most terrifying word in his life. "Kitty."

Sabretooth panics, slashes at the Hulk, who squeals in pain (he's just a big baby) and kicks Sabretooth hard enough to break the adamantium handcuffs and punt Sabretooth out the hanger. Deadpool is ready to take off, Sabretooth jumps in, and as they head for the runway they realize something. Deadpool left the doors open.

There is a giant raptor chicken in the back of the plane.

The chicken panics, and attacks. Sabretooth is trying to fight it off while Deadpool tries to get the plane in the air. At this point the Hulk exits the hanger, chasing them while shouting "KITTY."

Deadpool gets the plane off the ground, but the Hulk is about the catch up, Sabretooth finally gets the upper hand against the chicken, and chucks it out the door. It impacts the racing Hulk and effectively explodes in a burst of feathers, and it's ridiculous enough to distract him from the plane long enough for their escape.

In the end, everyone is covered in blood and feathers and they all pretty much decide to never speak of that week again.

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Some more sketches. I’m still working out Sanguine Tensor, I think the three dragons concept is changing, there’s something still like it but they no longer have human heralds, I prefer them being inhuman and alien for my purposes. 

Upper Left: I really liked the old Deltavengers Hulk, so I’ve surgically removed all the marvel bits for Sanguine Tensor. Her name is now Gracie and she is eight. She is also ten feet tall and loves unicorns.

Upper Right: More Thumper, I’ve figured out her powers now, something to do with eddy currents. Her bones are some sort of extremely strong magnets and she can generate eddy currents that are strong enough to slow down non ferrous metals (like bullets, or slowing down her falls if she’s near a building). The science here is a little bullshit, but i’m confident I can massage it enough to fit into Sanguine Tensors’ “Harder than most comics, but not exactly hard” science.

Lower Left: Floyd is fun to draw. He looks horribly sickly though, mostly because he used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, the AIDS is only a small part of the reason he looks like a warmed over corpse. Also a small picture of maybe how he transforms, it doesn’t feel very good. 

Upper Right: I told you he’s fun to draw. A few things have changed with him. Now he transforms either by dying or by being exposed to enough high frequency radiation, including UV rays. Basically, the hyperspace worms want energy so they force their way out when they sense enough of it. Regular visible and infrared radiation isn’t quite enough to rile them up. This of course means that Floyd dresses like a vampire when going out in the day. Despite all this, he’s still determined to do science. Just don’t call it mad science.

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While I presume you're not really doing much with that setting given you're putting parts of it into your own original setting, I may as well ask, what would the WTFAvengers-universe version of the Great Lakes Avengers be like? If only because I can't help but imagine it'd be extremely cursed.

Because there's a lot less super powered people in general, and no mutants at all, there wasn't really the equivalent of the GLA or similar small groups. However, Squirrel Girl did exist as a scientist researching animal communication and I had some plans for a short story where she antagonizes Banner/Hulk. She'd make Banner get pissed off over something and well, the Hulk thinks squirrels are cute, he's not going to fight cute animals! I never figured out the details but yes, Banner/Hulk are defeated by Squirrel Girl. Banner is much more upset about this than Hulk is. Hulk saw a squirrel! It was great as far as he was concerned. As a small aside, Sanguine Tensor does have something like the X-men and people will absolutely hate me for what I do to them. It's nothing they don't deserve though!

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I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I finally decided to dust off the Deltavengers, surgically remove all the Marvel bits, and stick them into my Supervillian universe I’ve been poking at for years. I already turned Tony Stark into a leftist kitty-cat, so why not bring in more?

And then of course my worst instincts came online and I started thinking, why not bring in a Superman/Sentry analogue along with Bruce Banner and Co. WHY NOT MAKE SUPERMAN AND BRUCE BANNER KISS. NO ONE CAN STOP YOU. YOU KNOW YOU LOVE SUPERHEROES KISSING. DON’T LIE TO YOURSELF. YOU HAVE THE FURNACE AND THE SURGEON SMOOCHING AND IT IS GOOD. DO MORE.

And uh. Here we are. It’s got going fairly quickly once I realized that the Deltavengers were so different that the Marvel Avengers that it wouldn’t be too hard to pull those bits out.

On the left we’ve got the Vanguard, who got fire powers from an alien probe (now why would aliens do such a thing, not out of the goodness of their hearts surely) and is one of the three most powerful officially sanctioned superheros (there is rumor of a fourth, the rumors are not good). On the right we have a scientist who wanted to look at cool particle physics and accidentally attached himself to a hyperdimensional flaw in spacetime. Unfortunately, said flaw in spacetime is something like .2 degrees Kelvin and he is very cold and you should not touch him. Unless you have heat powers.

Like most superheros, the Vanguard isn’t actually allowed to make legitimate changes for good. He’s allowed to save people from floods and fight monsters, but fighting companies that dump waste into rivers? Advocating for cheaper medicine? Not allowed. He’s not super happy with it but for various reasons goes along with it.

Not sure about his name yet, but our mad scientist is declared a supervillian pretty quickly (he kinda saw what he turned into, and went “welp, time to steal goverment property to do MORE cool science”) which means they met in a fight and getting together is awkward.

Don’t be fooled. They both have massive issues. One’s just better at hiding it.

This was partly done as a stylistic experiment, here’s hoping I get my butt in gear and start doing some more stuff.

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To celebrate Free Comic Book Day, here’s links to two of my free comics!

Aphelion 1.1

Deltavengers 1i

Aphelion is the hard SF comic I spend most of my art time on, and Deltavengers is a pulpy SF take on the Avengers. Both have a fair amount of body horror and gore, just so you know.

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I know how you feel buddy.

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It's done! Check out Deltavengers 1i: Orthogonal! Now available for free here as a pdf!

What is all this nonsense? Early in 2014 I decided to put my drink-n-draw time to actual use. I also wanted to practice stuff like faces, plotting, and lettering. Thus, I started adapting my weird Avengers fanart into a thirty page black and white comic. This one focuses on Bruce Banner to start, but a certain Russian shows up soon enough.

It's a strange Avengers alternate universe, much more indebted to  pulp-sci-fi than anything else, and while not hard science it's definitely harder than anything I've seen in a comic lately (a low bar, I know). Hopefully I explained things clearly and didn't mess up the physics too much.

There is some violence in here, some nudity, and a fair amount of good ol' body horror.

If you liked it a lot, here's my better not-done-in-a-bar comic, Aphelion!

Comments/critiques are super appreciated!

P.S. LIGO is real, and hecka cool