Comrade Hero

Naked in the background.

Of course, the Comrade Hero piece by Shannon Brocas has him naked in all his full glory. But you'll have to gaze at that on deviantART when I finally post it.

A lot of the pages are similar, but I did spend a lot of time doing rewrites and edits after feedback and analysis, and examining bilingual publications here in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The inclusion of elements of Māori and Polynesian cosmologies, and also Aboriginal and Slavic mythological elements, came about when comparing mythology with contemporary superheroes and looking at the parallels.

There's nothing particular new with this, but I liked the idea of shifting the focus away from Anglo-American and Western European mythologies (Graeco-Roman and Norse mythology for example) to match the geographical regions of Aotearoa, Antarctica, Australia and the South Pacific that I'm using.

Another change is that the pages have been decompressed after exploring and comparing print and digital formats. Working out the page/panel ratio for a variety of different sized viewing devices was a major consideration, and is still being experimented with.

This is pretty much still a work in progress for me, and one that has taken a while. Mainly because I'm paying for everything. Not easy, but manageable so far.

Thanks for the your well wishes. Whether City of Heroes is reincarnated into a new version, or quietly fades away, I'll be busy working on creative project for the foreseeable future.

My creative writing project has proven to be quite cathartic lately. Still here and logging in, although I've been in poor health. Protector has been quiet for a few years so the drop in population count in the past month hasn't spooked me much.

If you get the chance watch Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters. Episode 3 deals with Disease.

In this episode that recreated the account of a mortally wounded Irish warrior who was immersed in a bath full of bovine blood in an attempt to infuse the warrior with the vitality and strength of these animals. Needless to say, the attempted cure didn't work.

Thanks for picking that up. Not quite sure what happened there, must have had a brain fade.

That at least is a small piece of good news!

I stalk... err... follow a few of you over on deviantART and Facebook so it's not so sad.

Quite a few veterans jumped over to http://unleashed.philotix.net/index.php years ago. In the MMO section you can catch up on the remembrance thread for City of Heroes there as well.

True enough with the accents, although the Federation did have a class system of Grades that were assigned to those born on Federation worlds. The Federation is nothing if not obsessive in controlling the lives of its citizens.

It was pretty difficult to improve your Grade, but quite possible to be downgraded. In the television series there are four Grades that are mentioned or attributed to major or minor characters - Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta.

Villa stated that he's a lowly Delta Grade and that Blake is in the privileged Alpha Grade. Servalan mentions that Jenna is "a superior grade citizen." But aside from Blake and Villa it's never explicitly stated what Grade the rest of the other main characters are. The television series also mentions occupation based classes - Labor Grade (Free and Slave), Technician Grade, Security Grade and Service Grade.

Be interesting if they pulled a reverse Star Wars for a remake of Blake's 7 and made all Federation characters have American accents, and the fugitive/rebel main characters all have British accents.

The only two were weren't convicted criminals amongst the original seven were Cally and Zen (Blake included the master computer that operated the Liberator as the seventh member, to bemusement and irritation of Avon).

Roj Blake: Convicted child molester (framed).

Kerr Avon: Convicted embezzler.

Vila Restal: Convicted thief.

Jenna Stannis: Convicted smuggler.

Olag Gan: Convicted murderer (declared insane).

Cally: Non-human. Auron Telepath and resistance fighter.