The 4th Grade

You might be expecting a continuation of the evolution of the “Ninja-Spider” character, but to be realistic, the changes didn’t come that quickly and so in this grade, I’ll be talking about something else. But still about my characters.

Now, you’re probably as tired as I am (maybe not?) in referring to my characters as…my characters. Well, collectively, there were once known simply as “The Guardians”. I’m sure that name’s been used many times and it’s really not that uncommon of a name in the world of heroes and comic books. Even so, I felt it sounded kinda nifty and so I was stuck with it for several years. As a matter of fact, it’s still being used by me today, but not at the same level of importance as before.

Anyway, as mentioned in the previous grade, I didn’t have a single female character within “The Guardians” universe for quite a significant period. There was a very practical reason for this. And it’s definitely not because I was a sexist. I’m never one. I truly believe the women in comic books are as important as their male counterparts. I mean, really…women are usually portrayed as stronger, more powerful and more capable of coping with bizarre, inhuman and cosmical powers. They tend to have more fleshed out emotions than the superheroes and they can really turn a losing battle into a winning one.

So, kudos to the babes–I mean sex symbols–I mean…*deep breath* superheroines. The world of comic books would be a boring one without them.

Back to my reason, which is very simply because I couldn’t draw a beautiful woman for nuts. I just couldn’t. Well, I could…but with reference. And even then, I either made’em too small, or their forearms too skinny or their heads disproportionate to their bodysizes. And I won’t mention about the boobs. Let’s just say, if they were real, then a lotta plastic surgeons gonna get sued. Too many problems and that’s why I figured it’ll just spare me the constant headaches by not including them anywhere within “The Guardians” universe. I tried convincing myself that a female figure would’ve ruined the badass personality of my main character anyway. Just to be clear, this was the time I was still sketching my own characters.

So my universe was filled with lonely muscle-bound men whose only topics of conversation would’ve been about fighting the bad guys, why they became superheroes, where’s the coolest place to chill and, uh…fart jokes?

Seriously, that world was just too depressing. It was unrealistic. I mean, of course there would be women in that world, but no direct contact with them? Nobody in the family’s a girl? No girlfriend problems? No crazy moodswings? A guy’s life would not be complete without these interesting (and a lotta times annoying) scenarios.

My problems didn’t last long though, ’cause when I least expected it, my good friend, Ali, offered to sketch for me “The Guardians” universe.

The friendly rivalry ended. The true partnership had begun.

The 3rd Grade

As soon as I put a scar on “Ninja-Spider”, he looked better. Way better. Of course, I went through like three to four redesigns on his cosutme as well, but the scar was basically the turning point. There was just something about the scar that made him more believable. And let’s face it, scars do make a man seem tougher, more seasoned and behind every scar, there’s an interesting story to be told (actually, this last point still didn’t occur to me at that time, but I just include it anyway).

So there he was, with a brand new scar over his left eye. But see, all this while, when I’m talking about his scar, I bet a lot of you thought I was talking about a scar over his real left eye. Well, it wasn’t. I simply put it over the left eye of his mask. Don’t get me wrong. It still looked good. But it was like Spider-Man’s big bug eye with a stitch over it. It wasn’t on the alter-ego of “Ninja-Spider” and there was a good reason for that: I hadn’t come up with a reason as to why this alter-ego should have a big mark over his left eye.

I tried to. But all the scenarios seemed very awkward to me. They were either too forced or too fake. Even for sixteen-year-old. And I know I just had to fix this problem about the main character or else all the other characters are gonna suffer. At this point, I probably had about fifty over characters, comprising of heroes and villains (none of’em female – I’ll get to that at a later grade), and all of which were created to somehow complement the main character’s personality and background. But that’s exactly where the root of the problem lied – “Ninja-Spider” still didn’t have a solid personality and background.

Up to this point, I’ve only made him from bits and pieces of those superheroes I’ve grown up idolizing. What I’m about to put down is the general idea of the “Ninja-Spider” character and I think those of you who know superheroes well would get an idea which character elements were present within him. So get this:

“Ninja-Spider” was otherwise known as Matt Franklin. He was the son of Richard Franklin, a billionaire who owned and ran an MNC called Franklin Enterprises that was based in Philadelphia. Matt attended a public high school despite his social status, but he was able to take care of himself because before this, he spent some ten years in Japan and studied the ancient art of Ninjitsu. (Okay, I’m gonna skip right to the interesting bit.) He’s supposed to be a special individual meant to protect mankind. His father knew this and that’s why prepared Matt for his destiny. Richard even built a huge underground facility, secret of course, which can only be accessed by him, when the time comes for Matt to answer the call of duty. Blah, blah, blah…somehow he got exposed to some radiation during an explosion when a saboteur tried to take out his father at an opening of a new genetics facility. There were some spiders present, for some reason, so Matt got spider powers. His father died. The saboteur escaped to become his arch-enemy later (the terrifying “Dr. Wicked”). Here comes the best part -> Because he was supposed to be dead and the media reported it that way, Matt traveled to New York City and, despite not changing his name, was able to start a new life without people even noticing he was once the son of a billionaire.

And so, the tale of the “Ninja-Spider” began from there.

The whole premise of that backstory was too identical to several already existing superheroes and it just bothered me that no matter how much I tried to make him look different costume-wise, people would still be able to connect the dots and spot him as a big ripoff. And most importantly, his character was rather flat. The whole rich kid thing…it worked for Batman, but not everybody can be rich.

Not this guy.

I knew my character had to be really rough and tough. He had to be a dirty player. He had to be willing to kill when the situation calls for it. And his life had to suck ten times worse than Spider-Man and Batman combined. My character would have to go through heaps of shit dumped onto him and still able to climb out of it so that he’ll get some payback and still be the savior of mankind.

My character had to be really special.

The 2nd Grade

During the “First Age”, I was mostly concerned about having a lotta characters, coming up with the coolest costumes and the most bizarre combinations of uber-super-duper powers my characters could possess. But hey, I was between 12-14 then. I was contented with the mere look of my characters and as long as some people said they appeared cool, I figured my characters were complete.

But come 1999, I was exposed to the now-classic RPG game called Final Fantasy VII. I’m so glad that I was part of the action back then. ‘Cause now, I can proudly proclaim to be part of a massive cult of followers who participated in one of the most engaging, imaginative and emotional epic adventures ever told in gaming history. (Plus, I’m very proud to announce that I raised the Chocobos up ’till the Gold one and went on to that round island in the far north-east, got the Knights of the Round Table summon, and then went on to defeat both Emerald and Ruby Weapons; can you dig that?!)

Anyway, fanboy self-praising aside, playing Final Fantasy VII changed me a lot and it was all thanks to the many moving elements that game had. From its music, dialogue, character backstories and those touching moments like when Cloud promised Tifa that he’ll be there whenever she called for him or when Cloud gently let go of Aerith’s lifeless body. The idea that Midgar was a rotting city hugely contributed to my perception of the world. How all those people suffered and nobody actually bothered…

I changed a lot. A lot of friends noticed and told me this. I didn’t tell them why exactly. I actually didn’t notice it myself back then. Probably because I was so engrossed and a lot of stuff went through my head even when I wasn’t playing the game. I looked at my characters one day in ‘99 and I thought I should involve those heavy themes into my stories. I really wanted that. And so, I looked through each and every one of the characters that I had and tried to invent a more…realistic, darker sort of background. I didn’t get too dark ’cause I was still a kid and so, a little light here and there couldn’t be helped. The first to get the dark treatment was none other than the main man himself – “Ninja-Spider”.

During the “First Age”, N-S wore these metallic shoulder pads, had a cranium plate that could shoot a thick beam of laser on the right side of his head and he seemed pretty dorkish. Really. He didn’t look scary or fearsome at all for a ninja. Or a spider. And his primary color was blue… Blue?! What the hell kind of ninja wears blue? If you still can’t imagine it, he simply looks like Spider-Man in inversed colors, but with a sword and those “groovy” gears I mentioned above. Yeah…didn’t work.

So what did I do to him?

For starters, I put a scar over his left eye.

The 1st Grade

Back in 1996, I had a new classmate by the name of Muhammad Ali. We were 12 at the time and were in our PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination) year. Two years prior to this, I was the only Malay guy in the “top” class. The following year, another Malay guy popped up, but I didn’t really warm up to him. So Ali was transferred from one of those “ruffian” crowds. Needless to say, there were a lot of differences between us.

It didn’t go smoothly the first few months. We kept getting into petty, childish squabbles. We were 12. But none of’em were malicious or anything. Just boyish rivalry, I guess. Soon enough, thanks to the famous Spider-Man: The Animated Series, which premiered that year, we discovered we had something in common. It turned out that both Ali and I were fascinated by the world of comic books. At that time, the only comic books in my house were from my dad’s era – those old-school 45-cent-worth Batman, Classic Avengers and Uncanny X-Men titles and they weren’t even properly collected. Ali regularly brought to school his set of comic books that were more up to date. Most of’em were about our favorite wall-crawler – The Amazing Spider-Man.

We were so hardcore about Spidey that each of us started to create our own version of him. Ali had his called “Crawler”, while mine was cheesily dubbed “Ninja-Spider” (I know, I know…I was a kid). Before long, villains for our heroes started popping up like overnight mushrooms and we’d be comparing each other’s set of characters, always trying to up the other and convince that one was better than the other. It was in the name of healthy competition. I remember Ali even drew one sketch where his Crawler kicked Ninja-Spider a la Spider-Man-Superboy battle during DC vs Marvel’s final issue.

Speaking of drawing, Ali was always the better one at it. I was just beginning to try drawing these complex comic books characters. Once, I kept drawing Spidey’s face with straight criss-cross lines that his mask looked like a barbecue grill. Yep, that bad. But eventually, I got the hang of drawing Spidey. Still, not as good as Ali. I was more of the creator and that’s why my set of heroes and villains expanded much faster and with more detailed backgrounds. I just loved the feeling of creating characters, giving them personalities, social lives and interactive scenarios. If I remember correctly, my first set of characters was “Ninja-Spider”, “Poisonoid” (clone of the former), “Dr. Wicked” (arch-enemy of N-S), “Ratbag” (rat-stegosaurus hybrid…I know; where the fuck did that come from?) and the very, very cheesy “Wickedroids” (I’m laughing as I’m writing this).

Well, there were other more characters during the first six years. Much more! To the extent that I had to create an index list just so I could keep track of each and every one of’em. And it started from there. I began typing and I loved typing this stuff out. And before I knew it, I was typing out more documents about my characters, revising them, their abilities and their backgrounds.

The “First Age” of my creation was at its end. As I moved into my upper secondary years (‘99-2000), the “Second Age” was beginning to take shape. Man, was that an exciting phase…

The 0th Grade

I know it sounds cliche, and I’m sure those of you who’ve visited hundreds of blogs before mine…I’m sure several of them bloggers said they had no intention of blogging and they thought the idea of blogging is stupid ’cause you’re basically telling millions of strangers what the fuck happened in your miserable little life.

How exciting…

Well, I am one of those miserable, darn suckers who finally turned to blogging after much convincing from my friend and myself. But before any of you make any assumptions, lemme hold the brakes here and clarify some stuff. This ain’t a personal blog. Well…not entirely. There will be some bits about my personal life, but all in the nature of referencing or simply blowing off some steam. Either way, it’s my freakin’ business to put what I wanna put.But in all seriousness, this blog is more about trying to put forward my journey in trying to achieve a very big dream of mine: to launch my very own comic book label

That’s right. It almost sounds impossible, especially in a piss-ass country like mine (that’s Singapore, in case you’re wondering), where the comic book industry is practically non-existent. But hey…this is something I’ve been wanting to do since I was 12 and by God, it’d be a damn waste to just throw it all away because some people think it’s a stupid idea or a crazy idea or a bullshit idea or whatever…the bottom line is, I ain’t giving up, I’m gonna keep doing it and when I do succeed, I don’t even need to make sure those doubters will come kissing my ass ’cause they’ll have their lips so far up my unblemished butt-cheeks before I could even say, “I told you so, ASSHOLES!”