It’s pretty obvious that one of the key inspirations to Intrepid Force was the comic books I was reading at the time, and I lived in a great time for comics. Most of DC’s iconic characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) were products of the World War II era. With the exception of Captain America, most of Marvel’s superheroes (The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the Hulk, the Avengers, the X-Men) were products of the early 1960s. As old as my students think I am, I wasn’t around during either of those time periods, but I was around for some amazing reboots.
I was in the third grade when Dave Cockrum revitalized the Legion of Superheroes with new costumes and new creative energy. I loved the Legion. The combined superheroes with science fiction, they had cool costumes, and the girls were pretty. When I was in the fifth grade, Cockrum moved over to Marvel Comics and was part of a team that reinvented the X-Men, adding characters like Wolverine and Storm. I was in the ninth grade when Marv Wolfman and George Perez recreated the Teen Titans. Looking back, I’m sure it was DC’s response to what Marvel was doing with the X-Men. The Legion, X-Men, and Titans were all big teams with a lot of characters. That’s why Intrepid Force is a big team with a lot of characters. I copied from the best. Did I say copied? I mean, I was inspired by the best.
Admittedly, my earliest characters were often knock-offs of my favorite DC and Marvel characters, but over time they took on identities of their own. The Marvel and DC characters lived in metropolitan places like New York and Metropolis. Mine came from New Orleans and from a small Louisiana town I invented, so the flavor was bound to be different. Some of my characters were completely imaginary, but others were inspired by friends and family members. My international characters tended to be stereotypes in the early versions of the book, but they became more three dimensional when I met real people from exotic places like India.
As different as my characters and their universe are from the comics that inspired them, I’d still have liked to have seen how the artists of my favorite comics would have drawn them. Dave Cockrum died a few years ago, so we’ll never know how he might have done with them. (I realize I’m dreaming big to think he would have drawn them at all, but with a big enough Kickstarter campaign, who know? Right?) I was looking through my archives the other day, and I found a comic I started when I was in college. It was about the Intrepid Force meeting some of my favorite Marvel characters. They have a shuttle accident and come out in the Marvel universe. I only got three pages into it, and the art’s a little crude in spots, but I still thought you might like to see what I came up with.
