Blast From The Past

Well I was looking through some old stuff here and there, and I found old sketches of some Star Crossed Galaxy characters before we were Star Crossed Galaxy. I believe the original title was either Dead Planet or Black Planet. I don't remember which, just that it was a designation for a planet that is completely devoid of all resources and life sustaining capabilities. It had (and still has) relevance at the time. Later the title changed to Oracle, then Oracle Crusade, then Star Crossed, and finally, Star Crossed Galaxy. These were drawn by me in 2007. I drew up Cull, Paige and Taurus.

Cull was originally named Dermont Cull. After that he was Jedidiah Cull and lastly (and thankfully) Joseph Cull. I remember he was originally both a Captain and a grease monkey. He would build robots and things like that. He had a robot pet named ROC. Later, certain traits were taken from Cull and ROC and put into a new character. More on that guy later. Another little known fact about Cull is that he was at one point germaphobic and racist. You see, his racism was a bi-product of his germaphobia, blaming alien diseases for the start of The Great Plague. I cut this in favor of a more noble protagonist. In the end, Cull's new found nobility was way too much and he came off as a idealistic white knight, which wasn't working. I rewrote him yet again to combine the best of both worlds. Cynical, yet courageous. That's the way Cull needs to be.

Paige was supposed to be a tough Sarah Conner type character, with a huge emphasis on the bitchy side. I wanted to create a strong female character, but at the end of the day, I realized bitch does not equal strong. I rewrote the character to be a bit more normal and cute. Her strength comes from her military training, not her attitude. Paige went from being a hyper bitch that can kick your ass, to the girl next door that can kick your ass. Which one do you like better?

Taurus was initially designed to be the big dumb muscle, and to those who have read issue 1, you might think that hasn't changed. In truth, Taurus is quite a bit different, and the character smiling in the first issue is proof of that. Taurus was the broody jerk who used to be a soldier for an army that doesn't exist anymore. I realized he was just Canderous Ordo from KOTOR and the character got a personality makeover. At one point, he was going to be black, but I opted against that. I thought the big black guy with a big fricking gun was a bit of a stereotype and wanted to go in a different direction.

There was also a fourth character that I never sketched out. He was the older mentor of Cull who was basically a space samurai. He carried a sword and was deeply spiritual. He also lost his eye sight which was why Cull took over as Captain. As cool of a character as that was, I felt swords were pushing the realm of belief enough in the sci-fi story, and the blindness was just adding to it. I split the character in two and gave birth to Sabas, the aging mentor of Cull, and Dee'arra the sword wielding ninja girl. Blindness removed for good measure.

Its funny looking back at where Star Crossed Galaxy started and where it is today. The initial story line was much darker, more cynical and, in my opinion, lacked heart and likability. It was a story about a bunch of ass holes jumping from planet to planet righting wrongs. Why would ass holes right wrongs? Wouldn't they make things wrong? Now its a much more fun and lighthearted story. Not that the story isn't dark, or can't be dark. Its just less silly dark and more good story with both dark and light.