#261: Daemon: The .006-Million-Dollar Mandroid

     Do you know that Spongebob used to be good? Seriously, I've recently managed to stumble upon some clips from the beginning of its run via the world-wide web, and as a baby of 2001, I am totally dumbfounded. Pretty sure I'll be binging seasons 1-3 as part of my animationducation along with Batman: TAS. Man, the Instagrammers were actually right. The '90s were a superior time. Really, though, I should probably get to the character now. So, ladies and gents, I present to you . . . Daemon, the .006-Million-Dollar Mandroid! Ah, 1960-something. A time when the Space Race was a-blazin', and the hippies were frequently a-lazin'. Not a soul was a-lazin' at [Redacted] Labs, however, for the covert government establishment's top noggins were hard at work on something revolutionary. Blueprints were scattered about, and the plan in place dealt with a variety of pieces: a mannequin, a lot of titanium, and a sharp persian blue suit and matching tie, among other things. Putting all this together along with the finishing touch--a computer so high-tech that it wouldn't be on the market for another 20 years--and what they had was . . . *inhales* the 1st ever fully-fancy, functional-to-a-tee, emotive-to-a-point, post-modernish mandroid for espionage escapades! And that mandroid's name . . . was 528885. But to his buddies he was Daemon. With a Self-Sustaining Scorchy Gun™ for sticky confrontations, a keyboard built into his ribcage, and a British accent programmed for optimal spy-iness, Daemon the .006-Million-Dollar-Man went forth outwitting sinister Soviets as yesterday's spy of tomorrow . . . today! (Note: sorry if this post was a bit shorter and less JC-Verse-connected than usual. I wanted it to kinda stand as its own little chuckle-worthy entity.)

(Sorry that the chap didn't slap on a smile for the occasion. I did say emotive-to-a-point, mind you.)

GO SEE KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS.

     Seriously, it's amazing. Go see it. Not kidding.

#260: The Crew of the Lurching Draconian

     Yes, I know I am the dummkopfiest of all currently-existing dummkopfs for not posting in 21 Earth-days. Yet, I don't know the exact number of sorrys necessary to apologize for it. So, since I'm doubtful there's an equation to deduce that sort of thing, here's 40 of them. Just to be safe:

Alrighty, hopefully that's resolved. Moving on. Before we get started, I want to say that I HAVE been working on things in the bazillion days since my previous post. I just . . . can't really say what they are yet. I guess only time will tell. That snitch. Now, onto the character(s): the crew of the Lurching Draconian! Odds are that you fine folks aren't familiar with the Lurching Draconian. Nor do I expect you to be. So, plop yourselves down all comfy-like, because it's time for a tale . . . of the good old-fashioned "alien ghost pirates" variety! It all started a good couple centuries ago, on the quaint JC-Verse planet of Kazemboo. Kazemboo was surrounded in every direction by bussling imperial planets lightyears ahead of them in terms of tech, and this didn't bode well for the guys. So, in a desperate attempt to protect themselves from their neighbors, the Kazem empress Jattā͔hweh decided to enact an ancient spell. One that made dead people not so dead anymore. So, when the battalion ships of one such neighboring planet, Jarlon, finally did arrive, the empress unleashed her new army of reanimated warriors on them. But even with such fear-inflicting and admittedly shnasty soldiers fighting for them, the Kazem people were soon defeated, with only three of the undead having survived. But right when they were about to meet their doom at the business ends of some battalion blasters, those three surrendered, and brought forth a deal: getting to keep their rotting bodies intact, in exchange for becoming slaves. The Jarlonian attackers gladly accepted, and brought the trio aboard one of their ships heading homebound. End of the story, yes? Yes . . . for the Jarlonian crew, anyway. *insert finger-across-the-neck sound effect here* Now with a swaggy ship and arsenal of weapons at their disposal, the undead outlaws took to the far reaches of the JC-cosmos, pursuing interplanetary riches as the famed and frightening crew of the "Lurching Draconian!" (Boom. Alien ghost pirates.)

( RIGHT TO LEFT: Challik, Captain Zarr and "Zatoo", nicknamed after a Kazem word meaning "socket" for . . . obvious reasons.)

#259: Xanna Scardust

     Okay, guys. The metaphorical 104 days of my summer vacation have officially wrapped, and just as P&F so wisely predicted, school came along just to end it. This Monday, I officially started 9th grade. For the record, I did get 16 posts (9 of those being full-on characterz) published over the roughly 3 months of my freedom, so I would consider the whole deal an overall win. However, I do feel like I didn't get to send the summer off in as rad of a fashion as I intended, and I did finish the following character before Monday, so . . . what the hey. Let's consider this the official last character of the summer! Fingers crossed it doesn't disappoint. So, everybody give it up for Xanna Scardust!
      It takes an intense soul to spend their whole life fiercely guarding a henge. That much is known. But before we get into why exactly that fact is pivotal to this post, let's discuss some slighty lesser-known info: fairies exist in the JC-Verse. Honestly, compared to all the other weird crud the JC-Verse contains, (see literally any other character I've made), tiny gals with wings are actually really orthodox. But nonetheless, fairies have spent centuries trying to hide themselves from JC-Earth's humans, and they've been pretty great at it thus far--but there's one other commodity they've been trying to conceal almost more religiously than themselves. Hint: it's a henge. *cue gasps* Specifically Fizban's Henge, an ancient circle of stones covered with incantations, ranging from ones that trigger simple spells to ones that activate--surprise surprise--mystic runes. And every generation, a group of fittingly intense young fairies are picked out to be the sacred guards of Fizban's Henge, on behalf of the fairy community. But one of those bodyguards has stood out as particularly hardcore to the max. And that, ladies and gents . . . is Xanna Freakin' Scardust. Having trained herself extensivley in fluttering-based hand-to-hand combat and in the darkling practice of shadowmelding, the impassioned punk pixie practically raised herself on the path to become the perfect guard of the Henge. The perfect social butterfly, that can be debated. But hey, pick your battles. Armed with a variety of dangerous pixie dust concoctions and an unwavering sense of ambition and honor, Xanna protects the Hedge's secrets with unmatched dedication--and even as more and more of her fellow guards have been quitting the gig, that dedication still remains. (I think this post will go out to all you starving artists out there currently stuck in a rutt. If Xanna Scardust can stay motivated and achieve her freaking goals, so can you. SO. CAN. YOU.)

JACOB'S CHARACTERZ! FANART REDESIGN: THE JOKER

     Alrighty, the previously-teased fairy-related character is about to go into the "outlining-in-pen" stage. But in the meantime, I have finished a new piece of DC fanart that I feel is just about snazzy enough to warrant me showing you guys. So, ladies and gents, I give you the JC-brand iteration of the Joker! Portrayed by non-other-than former Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston, by the way. I don't think he reached his full "unnaturally pale adversary of a caped superhero" potential in Thor 2: Asgardian Boogalo, and he definitely has the grin for it. So, enjoy!

("Poster Edges" variant)

("Film Grain" variant)

(No-filter variant)

#258: Warlock (Stanley Zerko)

     I want to apologize ahead of time for the overall, how you say, occult quality of the following character. I'll just go ahead and put that rad son of a virgin down there on stakeout, for all the religious guys and gals out there. You know, to misdirect them bad vibes. Now, without further ado ... Warlock! A bit of secret JC-Verse history for you. *ahem* An extremely long time ago, JC-Earth was

scattered with thousands upon millions of powerful runes, each imbeded with a mystic and often deadly incantation. Who knows who put these runes there in the first place (demons, aliens, a ridiculously overzealous group of wizard tag artists), but tons of non-human groups over the years have utilized them for varying purposes. Humans, however . . . have basically been blind-as-bats to their existence. That is, until one single human wasn't. And that human just so happened to be certifiably insane. (10 points to the universe for more good, old-fashioned cruel irony.) Having earned himself a stay at the Talia Teecas State Bedlam for the Unhinged, Stanley Zerko had experienced so many dark, borderline-demonic visions over the years that, for all we know, he could've been seeing the runes all along. But what we know for sure is that on August 2nd of 2015, at precisely 10:26 am, he woke up with the ability to activate them. And with that, crud hit the fan. Deeming himself Warlock, the madman magus used the incantations to bust out of Teecas State, leaving a flurry of destruction in his wake and fleeing in the frenzy. He was eventually tracked down and placed in a high-security prison by U.N.D.E.R.O.O., but that didn't stop the tale of his rampage from spreading--or from inspiring a gaggle of scientific minds and certified loons alike to research runology in hopes of copying him. I reckon it would probably be best if we just leave those runes to the fairies. (More on that with my next character. Bum . . . bum . . . BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.)

(Credit to the classic Golden Age Joker for inspiring the general art style I drew this fellow in.)

#257: Ulysses: Unscrupulous Spore and Undisputed King of Crime

     Look alive, folks. We are slowly and steadily aproaching the aforementioned bitter end of my summer vacation, and I've got approximately 10 days left to not waste. So, let's keep the locomotive of productivity a-going with my new character: Ulysses! If there's one thing the Batman movies have shown me over the years besides this, it's that criminals can be very easily manipulated via their gullible fears of cweepy cweatures that go bump in the night. Much like small children, but with thicker New Yorker accents. However, just as this weakness of theirs can be utilized for good, it can also be used to spook them into doing your equally criminal bidding--and few are a better example of this than our pal below. One of the few remaining specimen of a prehistoric species of alphaspore, the being who calls himself Ulysses spent a million-or-so years self-evolving to a level of human intelligence. (Think how Pokemon do it, but with way less Hollywood pizzazz.) After intimidating a group of thugs into building him a mechsuit to mold him into the necessary human shape (human intellect is nothing if you're still a lumpy pile of cells, mind you), he spent the next decade scaring his way to the top of the criminal underworld. Now, Ulysses is the unchallenged commander of JC-Earth's collective thugs, thieves and otherwise unprincipled hoodlums for hire--and with most of law enforcement convinced he's some sort of silly urban legend, he's poised to stick around for quite a while. (He's basically Jabba the Hutt if he managed to squeeze himself into Krang's robot bod.)

(He didn't choose the Thug Life, the Thug Life chose--oh, well, yeah, he did kinda choose the Thug Life, didn't he? Nevermind then. Hindsight's 20/20, I guess.)

#256: The Marthálans

     Being primarily homeschooled for most of my life has had some downsides, but whatever few there have been are completely made up for by not having to participate in the Cha Cha Slide and/or Cupid Shuffle at every school dance. Thank you, universe, for sparing me from such torment. Anyway, time for some new characters. Ladies and gentlemortals, I happily present to you, the Superians! If any of you have stuck with me and my madness since early 2015, you might remember that the JC-Verse harbors its very own version of the infamous submerged location of Atlantis, currently acting as home to a surprisingly advanced class of merpeople. But long before all that jazz, it did sink. And the story of how that came about is worth retelling. As it turns out, the island nation wasn't even originally called Atlantis. No, the place was originally named Marthálas, and in 300 b.c. the original, unaquatic folks that lived there received hands-down the best early Christmas gift ever given: a whole minesworth of Quantum Crystals, ripe for the picking. Upon acquiring a Quantum Crystal, one receives abilites that (if honed) could make a Greek God tremble, and for whatever reason the powers-that-be decided to test the people of Marthálas to see if humans were worthy of those abilities. And as you can probably gather, the answer to that query was a whopping no. With all the power in the world and then some coursing through their collective veins, the Marthálans grew twice as power-hungry as they already were to begin with. Fighting raged among every social class now level in supernatural might, and before they could even launch their planned attack on the mortals of Greece, their society was an utter wreck. Needless to say, the P.T.B. decided that maybe humans weren't exactly ready to get jiggy with the Quantum Crystals yet, and down went an unsalvageable Marthálas into the depths of the ocean blue. Bum deal, huh? Maybe one day the forces beyond will give the ordinary citizens of the JC-Verse a second whack at it, and the Crystals will rear their ethereal heads once more. But until then, the all-knowing power provided to said citizens by interweb search engines will have to suffice. As it does for us.

(Two members of Marthálan royalty battling it out the old fashion way: with searing hand-blasts of otherworldy radiation.)