Character Intro #1: Behind the Scenes
Okay, so I've finally written my first real installment for my Character Profile and Storyline series. Now, I want to offer up some inside information concerning some of the details that I've chosen to use.
I grew up learning how to read and draw from comic books. I couldn't get enough of them. I was a loyal DC Comics kid and read as many of them as I could get my hands on. I'd imitate the styles of my favorite artists as I continued to evolve my figure drawing skills. I was absolutely certain that one day I'd become a comic book artist. Somewhere along the way, I replaced that dream with one that held less risk and more security, teaching art. However, in my heart, I will always dream of being a comic book artist.
Enough about me for now, let's move on to my behind the scenes glimpse at things that this post is about. First and foremost is the use of the name Daniel Garrett. For comic book fans, this is a direct homage to the secret identity of the original Blue Beetle. Now, don't get me wrong, this particular character isn't an all-time favorite of mine, but the character that inherited the mantle of the Blue Beetle from Daniel Garrett was and remains near and dear to my heart. When I originally conceived these characters, I wanted to create a sort of next generation group of heroes that would always be sort of perpetually set in the near future, not a thousand years into the future like one of my favorite comic books (the Legion of Super-Heroes) but somewhere closer, just over the horizon. But I had no intention of having these characters in any other universe other than the DC Universe of heroes, so I set about finding a way to plug them in. I thought about the character of Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle and how maybe he could be like a mentor to the children of Daniel Garrett, a character that in continuity had never been married or sired children. That could easily be retroactively placed into continuity, or retconned as comic book fans are accustomed to calling it. Comic book writers do that sort of thing all the time to further their stories.
I had already created a character named Alan Christopher (a reversal of my first and middle names) and another character Constance Garrett that I had originally created after a friend of mine named Connie Harrell. Why not make them siblings? Perfect. And so was born, Alan Christopher Garrett and Constance Garrett (whose name was later changed to Caitlin simply because I thought the name was younger sounding and there was a woman that belonged to the church I attended named Katherine "Kate" Hall who passed away during the time I was conceiving these characters. I always thought she was such a neat lady and so I settled on Caitlin "Cait" Garrett as the name for Alan's kid sister. Daniel "Dan" Garrett was conceived later. I actually had created a character whose codename was Dusty and whose secret identity was Daniel Doohan. I believe he was Australian, because at that point I had decided to start making my characters have an international kind of background. I think Doohan was the name of an Australian tennis player that sort of resembled how I had envisioned the character of Dusty as looking at the time. But that was a long time ago and I could possibly be misremembering details. It's inconsequential really considering that as the characters themselves evolved I decided that the characters Dan and Caitlin had such an interesting kind of symmetry that they'd actually make better sense as twins. The fact that the character's name was Daniel already made me think that it tied him to the Daniel Garrett character that already existed. But why would a parent name their second-born son after his father instead of the first-born? That's when I decided that to provide some conflict between the brothers, the oldest son would have known his father and the twins would have not been born until AFTER their father's death. This would explain why Daniel was named for his father instead of Alan and might create a bit of friction between the two, especially considering the character of Alan was always trying to live up to this ideal that he felt his father would have had for him, and Daniel would be sort of the character that just always seemed to fall short. This was the dichotomy that began to really interest me and suddenly I began to relate to BOTH of these characters in a very personal way. Alan became the kind of man I always wished I could be and Dan became the character that just seemed to be much more like the kind of man I actually saw myself as being. The friction that they felt I would take from the friction that existed between my own younger brother and myself which, just as in this story, is a five year gap of time. However, as also evidenced by the evolution of my brother's and my relationship, I intended to show over time that these two characters truly loved each other and despite their squabbling and petty bickering, they always had each other's back. And Caitlin, she would simply become the kid sister I always thought would've been cool to have had.
The next couple characters introduced in this first installment were also based upon friends of mine. Chad Andrew Walker Winston went through a couple permutations before I settled on his current state. Chad has always been a name I have liked. As a kid, one of the few male cousins my age that I occasionally got to hang out with is named Chad Ruhl. I always thought he looked cool. He had really light blond hair and always seemed to be smiling. Another Chad that I encountered all too briefly was Chad Walker. He was the nephew of long-time friends of my parents and he and I hung out at a 4th of July party one summer eons ago. He was younger than me, but the closest person to being my age and was a really cool kid. He had this spark about him and you just knew he was gonna go places. Two weeks later, we found out that Chad had been diagnosed with Leukemia. I was stunned because he had been the epitome of health when we were playing volleyball and running around and stuff. Chad put up a pretty strong fight, but just as he was getting better, he suddenly took a turn for the worse. The Make A Wish Foundation granted him his wish to meet Chuck Norris and I can't help but wonder if that might have been where Walker, Texas Ranger got its name. The last time I saw him, he'd become very bloated from the steroid treatments and he was a shell of his former self. I couldn't detect the slightest hint of the spark that I had seen in him that one 4th of July. So I knew that I would name one of my characters after him and thus provide him with literary immortality, such that it was. Both of the first two Chad's had blond hair, so I originally envisioned this character as having blond hair and blue eyes. Then, the third Chad came along. Chad Kuyper is one of my closest and dearest friends. His friendship has had such a profound impact on my life that I couldn't not incorporate him into one of my characters. And in incorporating CK, I altered the look of the character to more closely resemble him because to be honest, Chad Winston just worked better visually with dark hair, although the blue eyes stayed. The Andrew comes from one of my friends from high school, Andrew Shrack, who helped me conceive of a major detail about this character that I'll delve into in a later installment. I kept the Walker name in there for a couple different reasons. First, I thought having the second middle name sort of gave the character a more upper crust sound to him and thus decided that Walker would be his mother's maiden name. Plus, Jeff Walker was a good friend of mine (no relation to Chad Walker) and this way he could be represented to a degree too. The name Winston just sounds more like a stately political last name and sounded good with the others. Chad Andrew Walker Winston, it's a mouthful for sure but just gives the character one more thing to rail against.
Kevin Michael Cannon is named for three other friends of mine; Kevin Westin, Mike Reynolds and Jim Cannon. Jim was my closest friend in high school and probably is responsible for helping keep me sane. growing up in a tiny rural town can be stifling to say the least, but he helped me realize that there were other creative individuals out there in the world and that I needed to seek them out. Cannon was just the perfect name for this character as you will see in later installments. This character was also the first non-white character I created. I grew up in an all-white setting so, my exposure to cultures and individuals that were different was limited at best until I got to college. To me, this character was very important. I wanted to create a character who was seen for just that, his character and not for the color of his skin. I wanted to pay tribute to the friends I had made who were black and who didn't act like the stereotypical thugs and ganstas that are so prevalent in today's pop culture. That is just one facet of African American culture, it doesn't define African Americans as a whole. However, I wanted to respect this character and his ethnicity. I definitely didn't want him to be written like a black guy that acted white. This character ushered in the diversity in some of the other characters that would follow. Hopefully when these characters are fully fleshed out and the stories I have for them have been told, those who read about them will remember them more for the type of character they are, rather than define them solely on their ethnic background.
Okay, so there are some of the behind the scenes details into my decision making process with regard to the creation of my characters. I hope that the process I took makes logical sense.
I grew up learning how to read and draw from comic books. I couldn't get enough of them. I was a loyal DC Comics kid and read as many of them as I could get my hands on. I'd imitate the styles of my favorite artists as I continued to evolve my figure drawing skills. I was absolutely certain that one day I'd become a comic book artist. Somewhere along the way, I replaced that dream with one that held less risk and more security, teaching art. However, in my heart, I will always dream of being a comic book artist.
Enough about me for now, let's move on to my behind the scenes glimpse at things that this post is about. First and foremost is the use of the name Daniel Garrett. For comic book fans, this is a direct homage to the secret identity of the original Blue Beetle. Now, don't get me wrong, this particular character isn't an all-time favorite of mine, but the character that inherited the mantle of the Blue Beetle from Daniel Garrett was and remains near and dear to my heart. When I originally conceived these characters, I wanted to create a sort of next generation group of heroes that would always be sort of perpetually set in the near future, not a thousand years into the future like one of my favorite comic books (the Legion of Super-Heroes) but somewhere closer, just over the horizon. But I had no intention of having these characters in any other universe other than the DC Universe of heroes, so I set about finding a way to plug them in. I thought about the character of Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle and how maybe he could be like a mentor to the children of Daniel Garrett, a character that in continuity had never been married or sired children. That could easily be retroactively placed into continuity, or retconned as comic book fans are accustomed to calling it. Comic book writers do that sort of thing all the time to further their stories.
I had already created a character named Alan Christopher (a reversal of my first and middle names) and another character Constance Garrett that I had originally created after a friend of mine named Connie Harrell. Why not make them siblings? Perfect. And so was born, Alan Christopher Garrett and Constance Garrett (whose name was later changed to Caitlin simply because I thought the name was younger sounding and there was a woman that belonged to the church I attended named Katherine "Kate" Hall who passed away during the time I was conceiving these characters. I always thought she was such a neat lady and so I settled on Caitlin "Cait" Garrett as the name for Alan's kid sister. Daniel "Dan" Garrett was conceived later. I actually had created a character whose codename was Dusty and whose secret identity was Daniel Doohan. I believe he was Australian, because at that point I had decided to start making my characters have an international kind of background. I think Doohan was the name of an Australian tennis player that sort of resembled how I had envisioned the character of Dusty as looking at the time. But that was a long time ago and I could possibly be misremembering details. It's inconsequential really considering that as the characters themselves evolved I decided that the characters Dan and Caitlin had such an interesting kind of symmetry that they'd actually make better sense as twins. The fact that the character's name was Daniel already made me think that it tied him to the Daniel Garrett character that already existed. But why would a parent name their second-born son after his father instead of the first-born? That's when I decided that to provide some conflict between the brothers, the oldest son would have known his father and the twins would have not been born until AFTER their father's death. This would explain why Daniel was named for his father instead of Alan and might create a bit of friction between the two, especially considering the character of Alan was always trying to live up to this ideal that he felt his father would have had for him, and Daniel would be sort of the character that just always seemed to fall short. This was the dichotomy that began to really interest me and suddenly I began to relate to BOTH of these characters in a very personal way. Alan became the kind of man I always wished I could be and Dan became the character that just seemed to be much more like the kind of man I actually saw myself as being. The friction that they felt I would take from the friction that existed between my own younger brother and myself which, just as in this story, is a five year gap of time. However, as also evidenced by the evolution of my brother's and my relationship, I intended to show over time that these two characters truly loved each other and despite their squabbling and petty bickering, they always had each other's back. And Caitlin, she would simply become the kid sister I always thought would've been cool to have had.
The next couple characters introduced in this first installment were also based upon friends of mine. Chad Andrew Walker Winston went through a couple permutations before I settled on his current state. Chad has always been a name I have liked. As a kid, one of the few male cousins my age that I occasionally got to hang out with is named Chad Ruhl. I always thought he looked cool. He had really light blond hair and always seemed to be smiling. Another Chad that I encountered all too briefly was Chad Walker. He was the nephew of long-time friends of my parents and he and I hung out at a 4th of July party one summer eons ago. He was younger than me, but the closest person to being my age and was a really cool kid. He had this spark about him and you just knew he was gonna go places. Two weeks later, we found out that Chad had been diagnosed with Leukemia. I was stunned because he had been the epitome of health when we were playing volleyball and running around and stuff. Chad put up a pretty strong fight, but just as he was getting better, he suddenly took a turn for the worse. The Make A Wish Foundation granted him his wish to meet Chuck Norris and I can't help but wonder if that might have been where Walker, Texas Ranger got its name. The last time I saw him, he'd become very bloated from the steroid treatments and he was a shell of his former self. I couldn't detect the slightest hint of the spark that I had seen in him that one 4th of July. So I knew that I would name one of my characters after him and thus provide him with literary immortality, such that it was. Both of the first two Chad's had blond hair, so I originally envisioned this character as having blond hair and blue eyes. Then, the third Chad came along. Chad Kuyper is one of my closest and dearest friends. His friendship has had such a profound impact on my life that I couldn't not incorporate him into one of my characters. And in incorporating CK, I altered the look of the character to more closely resemble him because to be honest, Chad Winston just worked better visually with dark hair, although the blue eyes stayed. The Andrew comes from one of my friends from high school, Andrew Shrack, who helped me conceive of a major detail about this character that I'll delve into in a later installment. I kept the Walker name in there for a couple different reasons. First, I thought having the second middle name sort of gave the character a more upper crust sound to him and thus decided that Walker would be his mother's maiden name. Plus, Jeff Walker was a good friend of mine (no relation to Chad Walker) and this way he could be represented to a degree too. The name Winston just sounds more like a stately political last name and sounded good with the others. Chad Andrew Walker Winston, it's a mouthful for sure but just gives the character one more thing to rail against.
Kevin Michael Cannon is named for three other friends of mine; Kevin Westin, Mike Reynolds and Jim Cannon. Jim was my closest friend in high school and probably is responsible for helping keep me sane. growing up in a tiny rural town can be stifling to say the least, but he helped me realize that there were other creative individuals out there in the world and that I needed to seek them out. Cannon was just the perfect name for this character as you will see in later installments. This character was also the first non-white character I created. I grew up in an all-white setting so, my exposure to cultures and individuals that were different was limited at best until I got to college. To me, this character was very important. I wanted to create a character who was seen for just that, his character and not for the color of his skin. I wanted to pay tribute to the friends I had made who were black and who didn't act like the stereotypical thugs and ganstas that are so prevalent in today's pop culture. That is just one facet of African American culture, it doesn't define African Americans as a whole. However, I wanted to respect this character and his ethnicity. I definitely didn't want him to be written like a black guy that acted white. This character ushered in the diversity in some of the other characters that would follow. Hopefully when these characters are fully fleshed out and the stories I have for them have been told, those who read about them will remember them more for the type of character they are, rather than define them solely on their ethnic background.
Okay, so there are some of the behind the scenes details into my decision making process with regard to the creation of my characters. I hope that the process I took makes logical sense.
posted by Chris at 6:38 PM
2 Comments:
Chris, this was so interesting. I love how authors come up with names for their characters, and it was great to read such a detailed history for every name. :) Chad Walker's story is amazing. Thanks for your words, too...glad I could contribute to this interesting world you're creating. :) I'll keep reading!
Cool stuff, Chris. Looks like you've really thought this stuff out. And it's great that you're writing this all down. I love insights in to people's creativity.
Thanks!
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