7 Comments

I remember reading these first Protostar pages sometime ago somewhere ago. I think it was a preview? I definitely recall the "Call me Protostar" bit pretty vividly. Definitely a sense of teenage edge (which I'm not gonna pretend that I'm not and can never be into that sort of thing; I can appreciate youths with a sense of edge), but I also think that's cool and can be warranted, depending on context and how it plays out. He's also shown a lot more mellow and youth-filled in those second pages (makes for a good balance to said edge), which I actually don't remember reading until now.

Well, Mr. Ray-Anthony Height, you've just hyped me up to another of your original works! So thank you! :D

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Thank so much! People seemed to really like Protostar and this was out way before Midnight Tiger. Proto was very early 20s. So he could still appeal to teens and young adults. Not sure yet what age he’ll appear the next time we see him.

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You're welcome! And thanks for the reply!

I wasn't aware that Proto debuted before Midnight Tiger. Midnight Tiger is, I think, your first work I really knew of. (For the longest, and still by and large today, I was never really the kind of reader and viewer who followed and connect creatives and creative teams to the works I enjoyed. I'm more cognizant of this now, though.) Being early 2000's makes sense, as Derek/Protostar has that late 90's-to-early 2000's feel in artstyle aesthetic that I still love to this day. Truth be told, I'm very much for that 90's art aesthetic, both when it's with and without the edge. (I'm at a point in my life where I eye-roll at 90's artstyle and aesthetics' casual derision.) That new-millennium-transitional-period artstyle works really well for youth superheroes, in my opinion.

Last but not least, with all that said, I'd be down for whatever age Protostar re-debuts at. I think he'd work just as well as a middle school-aged teen hero, as he seemed to as an older high school-aged/young traditional-college-aged teen hero.

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You know? I just realized when randomly re-reading this a year later that when you said "Proto was very early 20s", you meant Proto's age, not the aesthetics of the year(s) he was made.

I feel silly now.

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Your panel layouts and splash pages are really cool!

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Thanks, Devin! Though it's pretty old work I think there is still some cool things to like about it :)

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You’re welcome! Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of stuff to appreciate there regardless of how old it is. :)

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