Dr. Sterling Steele, D.D.S.

It began with a giant gorilla. In 1930 a team of researchers discovered a hidden island in the South Pacific. The United States government was looking for locations to build military bases in the area in the event of a war with China or Japan. Instead their research team discovered a Gigantopithecus Rex, the last of his kind. Standing 25 feet tall, the gorilla was massive with above average intelligence. It took 18 months for the army and the scientists to subdue and transport the creature to the United States. Just as they arrived at Pier 54 the beast flew into a rage, bursting from its restraints and rampaging across New York City, finally making its way to the top of the Empire State Building.

Deep in the heart of Africa the Action Dentist, Dr. Sterling Steele was helping the native tribes while searching for an ancient mine. Steele was gifted in many different areas; a classical pianist, an electrician and inventor, a trained nurse, philosopher and master of combat, but his main specialty was in dentistry. Many villains found themselves on the receiving end of the Doc's right hook, only to find upon regaining consciousness that their missing teeth had been replaced with fillings. Both Sterling's grandfather and his brother, his great uncle, Wolf and Death Larsen, exhibited very similar abilities as Steele during their years as sailors and pirates on the seas. Wolf Larsen's daughter, May, married Clark Steele who had a great intellect buy no unusual abilities.

During his youth the Doc had been exposed to an alien alloy by his father, an inventor himself. This reacted badly with the organic supplements Steele had been taking and together activated unknown genes within him. They caused his skin to take on the look and feel of organic metal. This earned Sterling the nickname "The Platinum Pugilist" among the criminals of New York City.

Returning to his office on the 88th floor of the Empire State Building, Steele was shocked to find a giant Gorilla had taken up residence just outside his window. Numerous attempts were made to dislodge the beast, from aerial attacks by legendary pilots such as Skyman, to artillery shells shot into the air nearby. Eventually Steele discovered the truth; the gorilla was quiet old and had a very specialized diet. Although the scientists had brought food from the island for the massive monster, they had not brought the bamboo birch it chewed on following its meals. They believed this birch was simply a habit or treat but the bamboo contained special painkillers that the giant gorilla needed to dull the pain it felt from its broken old teeth after every meal. Steele not only managed to subdue the beast, but he removed its massive cavities and managed to synthesize a cheaper, more affordable pain medicine for the old creature.

Sterling continued to have adventures up until the war, where he seemed to vanish somewhere in the Soviet Union. No one believes he is dead, but what did happen to him has been one of the world's greatest mysteries.

KING SPIDER Juan Saldana

Years ago when I was creating the cast of the Canadian Legion and the rest of the universe, many characters didn't make the cut, like Catman. Another was KING SPIDER.
Juan Saldana(whose name I just stole from an article on ethic diversity, thanks Zoe Saldana!)
http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N31/gallez.html

I wanted a character who had the power set of Spider-Man, without actually being a Spider-Man knock-off.

Juan was a simple family man in Guadalajara, Mexico. The son of farmers, Juan worked various jobs at the airport to support his wife and two children. But the neighborhood they lived in was far from safe, the people living there were not aware of the toxic chemicals being buried underneath their feet. Eventually Juan loses his entire family to different forms of cancer and tumors and he begins to investigate the strange waste trucks that drive through town every night. While investigating their lab, Juan is exposed to an artificially created strain of E.coli that had been modified with certain genes of the spider 'Nephila clavipes'. Juan grew very sick, his vision was shattered, making it impossible for him to see correctly. Strong spider-like silk began to secrete itself from his hands. His brother Michael, an engineer with MIT, after hearing about the death's of his family, flies the dying Juan to California where he is able to help his brother. Michael creates a helmet that realigns his brain functions, allowing him to see normally for hours at a time and gives him enhanced perception skills while wearing the helmet. With the ability to spin webbing and climb walls and with enhanced speed and skill, Juan takes to the streets, first to stop crime and later to gain revenge on the company responsible for the death of his family. And he only has two years to do it, the exposure to chemicals and radiation that killed his family has given him a life threatening brain tumor.

Jim Morrison

At four years old, Jim witnessed an accident on the highway. A truckload of Indians had flipped and Native Americans lay scattered across the road, bleeding. One of them had been crushed and was dead. the man's son stood over him, weeping, just a boy the same age as Jim. Jim believed he saw the spirits of the Indians as represented by a Black Shadow Man that day. The year was 1947.

Eighteen years later while living in Venice Beach, Miami, Jim was tripping on psychedelics when he encountered a woman from the Porposi, a race of amphibious mammals descended from the early dolphins. The encounter was his first glimpse at the multiverse and he wrote about the experience in a song entitled "Moonlight Drive".

Jim went on to form the highly successful band The Doors with a group of friends. It only took the band a few years to rise to superstar status, with Jim playing every part of the role of unpredictable rock star. While attending a party in New York he was introduced to a strange man named Archie. Archie gave him a book entitled The Fiction of Reality by Abraxas Ro. The book spoke about magic and the ability to bring fictional characters to life, as well as hide secrets and disappear into your own myths and stories. Jim was fascinated by the book; he had believed he'd created a fictional character, the Lizard King, an image he now wished to shed.

During a 1969 concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison attempted to use the mystical lessons of the book. He incited the crowd, taunting them to riot, weakening their will with anger and outbursts of violence. He had written the words "PENIS" on a piece of paper and at the right moment, he pretended to expose himself by removing the word from his pocket and flashing it to the crowd in the place where his genitals would be. The band finished the concert and boarded a plane for a vacation in Jamaica. Little did Morrison know that his spell worked better than he could have expected. Word began to spread that he had exposed himself at the concert, the story grew and grew until reaching the Dade County Police Department who filed an arrest warrant for indecent exposure. The controversy continued and Jim grew tired of it all. The band made music and did a few shows but everyone could feel that something had changed. Eventually Jim ended up in Paris, where everything would change. He recorded Orange County Suite with a few friends, feeling as if it was a goodbye song to his friends and family.

At the Rock & Roll Circus Nightclub in Paris Jim encountered the black shadow man, a mystical hero with strange abilities. He told Jim of the nature of magic and what the future held for him. Faced with the prospect of his own death, Jim Morrison chose to leave his life behind. One of the drug dealers in the club who was found dead in the bathroom was mystically changed to appear as a duplicate of Jim. They carried this man back to the Paris apartment Jim shared with Pamela Courson and as she slept, they placed the duplicate in the bathtub and Jim gave Pam a final kiss goodbye. The Crusader told Jim about Abraxas Ro, how the Mage had sealed magic away from the world until for 100 years at that in the 21st century, the spell would crumble and the world would change. Jim became the first of the New Scholars, men and women who studied the books of the past to find out the true nature of the universe. The doors of perception needed to be cleaned so that man could finally glimpse the infinite.

K-West

Without a doubt, K-West, (pronounced "quest") is the most popular painter of all time. Elton John said recently "I ran into Kanye in Honolulu last January. He’s a stone-cold genius. He’s like Ernie Barnes meets Salvador Dali."

A graduate of the American Academy of Art in Chicago, K-West followed in the footsteps of fellow AAA graduate Gil Elvgren and painted pin-up girls of African descent. The paintings were selling well but it was the portraits of rap stars that put him in the public eye. His TUPAC LAZARUS painting, as well as his self-portrait as a white man entitled WHITE ME, both sold for over $250,000 dollars, making him one of the most successful living painters of all time. His first brush with notoriety was during a fashion show in France. When a French reporter referred to him as "The Black Andy Warhol", Kanye shoved the reporter to the ground and said "Fuck Warhol." To follow up his distaste for Warhol's work, he created a piece called "Eight Biggies", featuring dead rapper Christoper Wallace, a silk screen printing that was merchandised on almost every product imaginable. It recently sold at auction for $25 million dollars. K-West has painted the walls of his mansion himself, with religious paintings that often depict him as Jesus or other popular Christian figures, including a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel on the roof of his living room, with God and Adam depicted as African Americans. His most recent controversy arose when he interrupted singer Taylor Swift at an awards show in order to promote his latest painting "Beyonce", a nude portrait of the famous singer.

Michael?

Canadian Legion Graphic Novel (FEB11 0725) $14.95 126 pgs

The World of the Legion

One of the things I wanted to do with the Legion was create a world that is much like our own, but different. Not just with superpowers, magic, and strange science, but also in the way pop culture developed. So I will begin with the King of Pop himself:

Michael Jackson



During a press tour for the release of OFF THE WALL, Michael ended up meeting a female singer named Tina Turner. Although she was 20 years older than Michael, he was fascinated with her. As their romance began to blossom over the next two months, Michael began to work on his THRILLER album. Unknown to Michael, Tina's former husband Ike was on the set, armed and looking for a confrontation. Even though Michael and Tina had met after her divorce to Ike, Ike still believed it was Michael Jackson's fault. While taking a break from filming on the set of the Thriller video, Ike cornered Michael in his trailer with a snub nosed revolver. While berating him verbally, Ike picked up a wooden stick in the trailer and began beating Michael with it. At that moment, Michael remembered his whippings from his father, Joe. He remembered all the abuse from his brothers over the years, the teasing and taunting. Something in him snapped and Michael roared like a lion, charging Ike and taking him down. Their fistfight spilled unto the lot of the Thriller video, with Michael and Ike wrestling each other back and throwing punches. There were only two lighting technicians that were present to what happened next and their story has always remained 'unofficial'. Ike went down behind a fake tree with Michael standing over him. They told police that Michael had lifted a tombstone prop and struck Ike repeatedly with it. Police arrived but defended Michael's actions as self-defense when they found the handgun.

Michael Jackson released the best selling album of all time, surrounded by controversy and with an older woman on his arm who was a bestselling singer in her own right. Suddenly the quiet, shy boy named Michael had a street reputation as a badboy, which sent the sales of an already spectacular album into the stratosphere.
Famed Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings was quoted as saying "His balls grew three sizes that day."

Michael and Tina eventually married and although scandal surrounded them on occasion, including his 1992 affair with Lisa Marie Presley, they remain happily married to this day. Jackson officially retired after his 2009 THIS IS IT tour, on which he suffered a mild heart attack. Many critics said it was due to the extra weight he had gained over the years, but Michael said afterwards "Somehow I believe it could have been much worse, I am lucky to be alive."

Cat-Man is done!

So if you read the blog a few months ago about designing new characters, you'll finally get to see the finished version!

The Original Crusader

Archie "Art" Masters was an astronomer and physicist working with Albert Einstein in the late 1930's. Art helped set up a home and research lab for Einstein when he fled Germany and went to the United States. Although shy and withdrawn, Art had a way with people. His father had owned a general store in Tennessee where he grew up and he had a charm that reflected his upbringing. After working with Einstein for many years, Art became a part of the Alsos Mission. He worked alongside baseball player Moe Berg in identifying and recruiting members of the German science community.

German scientist Werner Heisenberg was giving a speech in Switzerland that Berg was asked to attend. If Berg believed the Germans were close perfecting the atomic bomb, Berg was given orders to shoot Heisenberg. The Germans knew that Berg, Masters and others were trying to recruit physicists in Italy and decided to send the Americans a message. They did not want to go after a famous baseball player, but a nervous little scientist no one had ever heard of was fair game. They kidnapped Archie and took him to a remote Swiss farm. In the basement was a prototype particle accelerator, created by a Swiss scientist. In order to determine whether it worked and was safe to transport, the Nazi's figured they would fire the beam at Archie and if Switzerland wasn't reduced to a smoldering crater, they would return later and retrieve the particle accelerator.

Archie was electromagnetically charged then blasted with a highly focused beam of protons and gravitons. Each particle would server the bonds of the molecules in his body, essentially cutting him into the smallest pieces possible. The process took hours as Archie sat in the beam's path, slowly being deconstructed. At least that was the theory, but what actually happened is Archie found his body being phased through multiple dimensions at the same time. Every version of Archie on every alternate Earth that could possibly exist at any moment all found themselves in the path of the particle beam. Archie was able to live five variations of his life and death all at once. When the Nazi's returned, they found what resembled a tornado strike on the farm. Archie was fazing in and out of a strange "Fifth Dimension" and was unable to control the sudden power bursting from him. After tearing the Nazis apart he knew he had to distance himself from the rest of the world and headed for the Swiss Alps.

Archie spent the war years hiding in the mountains, working on understanding and controlling his new abilities. With his strange multi-dimensional Quantum Precognition, he found himself unable to sympathize or identify with the war. After all, when you can see all the possible outcomes, all leading to death and destruction, what difference would it make?

Art had always been curious about the supernatural and unexplained, it was part of the reason he became a scientist. His powers allowed him to search out mystical sources, places where life and death energy bent the laws of physics. Although this was a century of weak mystical energy, Art was still fascinated by the mysteries it offered. It never even occurred to him to return to his original life. Now calling himself the Crusader and wearing a pentacle on his chest, Art Masters became a ghost. Although science had given him amazing abilities it was in the realm of the mysterious that he made his home.

POWERS

The Crusader is capable of flight, superhuman strength, invulnerability to bullets, and electromagnetic pulse generation. He is also able to see numerous alternative variations of his life, allowing him to see and experience the consequences of his actions.