Publisher’s Pens and Points
I
’ve been drawing, writing and thinking comics my entire life. My adolescent world was one of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It was given to me by movies, television, comic books and magazines. There were robots, rogues, heroes, heels, villains and vixens. At first, it was all the usual stuff as I tried to emulate my favorite artists and create similar stories. I started with a solo adventurer and then created a pair of protagonists and eventually a team. I wanted to cover everything! A team of female danger girls, a cadre of robot warriors, giant robots stomping across the galaxy and a
host of gods with human flaws. I never realized I was more of a storyteller than an artist or illustrator. I saw music as a perfect avenue for sharing epic stories. As the rap artist Dynamics Plus, I sought to push the lyrical boundary and combine dense wordplay with a fantastic narrative full of adventure. C.H.A.O.S. Legion is the multi-album project that allowed me to use words and rhythm to give you a comic book over beats.
Force of Six, The Annihilators I began to create characters and teams and wanted to have them populate an open world, one - where
anything could happen. I had so many influences and interests that I needed a diverse universe to hold all these cultures, themes and motifs. How can I depict a long gone era, strikingly familiar worlds and futuristic flights of fancy on the far fringe of an unknown galaxy? I needed a Dynamic Universe, I needed an Annihilator Universe, where past, present and future mix into a cosmic kaleidoscope of colorful characters conducting courageous capers. As individuals, the Annihilators represented gateway characters for
the themes I wanted to use. Jin ko Ahsaguri (kojin the Death Mask) had a Chinese mother and Japanese father. That would be expressed in all things future-East. Rex Avery was my wild west experience. He is the lawman of a futurefrontier. LunStar-G is the poster girl for every hormonal dump and Alexi Alito (Agility) was every frustration and angst allowed to vent. As I matured, so did the vision of who the Annihilators were. I went back and rethought my childish notions and allowed them to grow over time. There was a natural progression and changing of my outlook and attitude, so much so that I eventually hated the Annihilators and sought to replace them with a more cohesive and homogenous team and thus began the Force Six Series where I created numerous teams that would follow after the Annihilators “retired�. The original Annihilators continued to develop in my mind. I wondered if I could explain why Agility was the best fighter by giving him a unique back story that added an incredible skill-set into his origin. And so, Agility was the retired champion. Jinko became the middle child and found himself in the middle of a family dispute that turns into an all out war. Jackie,
with her posh and robot-loving culture would have ties back to the Robot Wars and the creation of Robotica (not the Battlestrux Robotica). LunStar-G must be addressed and become more than how she’s dressed.
Outcasts that outlast
I allowed the low periods to become part of their story. I imagined what they would do
once retired, once their deedsgood and bad faded into obscurity. I began to write from the perspective of a fractured team, where only certain members stayed in contact and they operated without guides or direction. There were deaths to mourn and pieces to put back together. There was a team to put back together. There was a final act and arc for every character, a final triumph and resolution which added up to closure for my superhero ambitions. I was finally able to bury them (literally) and move on. Always in the back of my mind was the nagging feeling that I never did enough with Force Six, The Annihilators. So here we are, more than a decade later, reworking some of my earliest ideas and reimaging Team Annihilator. For me, it’s a humbling experience to see my childhood passion filtered through adult sensibilities. Enjoy the work of a child, reworked by an adult mind- many years later. -Drew Spence, creator of
Force Six, The Annihilators