Hashtag Blessed

No lie, I am one of the luckiest dudes in the world. As I've been working on Stalwart, I've been going through my drawings and notes and older materials, and I realize that the superhero world that 12-year-old me wished I had is here. It's the setting and the characters and the stories - and the game - I was always hoping to find. And, while it is not entirely original, it is still its own unique thing; I think of it like the Incredibles - it's all familiar and based in stuff you already know a lot about, but it's also entirely its own thing. 

I cannot believe how lucky I am to have this fully realized world that I just get to play around in and make stories for and generate cool stuff to go with. And, now, I have (almost) a game that fully aligns with it. I LOVE Stalwart Age - but Stalwart is better. It's more playable. It's more intuitive. It's cleaner and faster and more internally consistent. 

And as I was doing dishes, I realized that, while Stalwart Age was about Doc, this game is really about his daughter. Yes, he's a character in this world still, and probably its most famous one, but the character whose story seems more salient at the moment is his daughter Skye. She belongs on the cover, so I'm putting her there.

I also had this cool comic script pop to mind. I'll just describe it here, but I'll write the issue soon enough. It is after Doc goes on a mission to save his daughter from the Null Zone (I still haven't written these issues - I am waiting for the big piece I'm missing that pulls it all together to emerge. I'm getting closer...).

Anyway, this story takes place six weeks after she is successfully brought home. One of the long-term consquences is that both she and Mikah age dramatically due to exposure to the unstable energies of the Null Zone. So, Doc has just learned he has a daughter and rescued her - and now she is leaving for college.

The whole issue would be the letter she writes to her father about how, even though he needs time with her, she needs time to figure out who she is in this world. It's this somber meditation on fatherhood (because I'm a sucker for that - my daughter is turning 16 in a few weeks, and I'm starting to feel the pull of fate inexorably drawing her into her adult life). So the whole thing is Doc going around, doing maintenance on the Beetle, sewing his costume, and getting his boots ready for the next mission. Meanwhile, Mikah hangs up his costume for the last time and moves into Mr. Silver's old office, which is his now. Meanwhile, the text of the letter underscores everything. The last images are the three setting off into their new roles - Mikah starting a new file, Doc going on his first solo mission in a long time, and Skye hovering over the skyline of the new city she will be living in - San Helios, on the west coast of the Americas.