Juvenilia

One of my dumbest acts as a mid-teen (I estimate 15) was to burn all the superhero comics I'd drawn between 11 and 14 on a bonfire at Tom Rowley's house. I remember his dad, an artist and designer, being genuinely aghast when he heard what I'd done. At the time I thought of it as a cleansing fire as I moved towards the work of pure genius, away from the embarrassment of those faltering steps into becoming the new Jim Lee. Little did I realise that the greatest embarrassment would be the immolation of my early stories.

I wish I could read them now. I had a great creative formula for my early superhero comics, cooked up in the primordial ooze of 1988-1991. I would create my own incredible original characters, who were men, then use lady members of the X-Men to fill the feminine quotient of the line-up. Then I would name the team something very powerful.

Then, as now, I was not blessed with the most visual imagination, but pure enthusiasm drove me through, completing issues that were sometimes up to 11 pages long - not including the cover! Unconcerned with coherent plot or structure, I would work panel to panel, searching for meaning where others dared not.

In conversation with my friend Marc Ellerby today, I brought to mind my most consistent team. They were called, wait for it, PSYCHO FORCE. I must add here that their mission was to defeat psychopaths. They weren't psychopaths. Which in retrospect is like a top doctor calling themselves "Plague Man" but here we are. 

As previously explained, there is no visual record of Psycho Force, but my teenage muscle memory is always accessible. So I have drawn the characters for you today. Not the characters who were just the ladies from X-Men. Those characters are well established. I do not need to draw them here.

HERE WE GO

KABOOM! WHAT WAS THAT? Was it the arrival of the GREATEST AND BEST DESIGNED CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME? I think it was and you witnessed it, my fine friend. Let me take you through the squad.

(I'm thinking now, and I think they might also have been called, at one time, PSEUDO FORCE - but I don't think I knew exactly what "pseudo" meant. And in fairness, Pseudo Force doesn't really mean anything. Unlike Psycho Force!!!!)

FLIGHT was like a ninja, but his costume was white, and you could see at least some of his face. He had swords, which he would brandish. I don't remember ever drawing him having a physical fight with anybody. None of these characters ever had a physical fight. I could not draw an altercation.

SKYFOX could fly and shoot energy bolts out of his hands. This precluded the need for a physical fight. I have drawn his hair exactly as it appeared in 1989.

FIGMENT could visualise his thoughts through that box thing on the side of his head and manifest them. Were they holograms? This character was made up by a friend, and I coöpted him after we fell out. He has yet to come after me for this breach of his copyright. 

(The friend was so much better at drawing existing characters and effortlessly making up new ones that I think he could, in retrospect, have been a little more pleasant to me. But you can't be too hard on an 11 year-old for having a bad personality. If you'd had to pick which of us would have made it in comics, you wouldn't have picked me. But then, perhaps having a career in comics is the dumber choice. I'd be astonished if he's not incredibly rich now.)

THE BULLET was a bruiser who was fired out of a cannon. He's a slightly later addition, which you can tell because he actually has some kind of concept attached to him. I think I used him very briefly in Bobbins.

INCREDIBLE, RIGHT? Did they have a base? Probably!? Were they a government funded agency? Sure, possibly! Who were their enemies? I have no recollection! I think they spent most of their time trying to "get off" (I didn't know what this meant either) with the X-Men ladies.

I've tried to remember other characters, but I can't. That's it. That's Psycho Force. The greatest force of all time. I burned them on a bonfire.

PS I also drew Marc Ellerby as an incredible early 90s version of himself. The end.