Forging Steele
Filed under Writing Journal on April 11, 2008
Tagged: Longarm, superheroes, webcomics
This week marks one month since I stopped my subscription to the City of Heroes MMO. (I also realized that this month marks the four year anniversary of this blog!) I’ll admit I’ve been tempted a few times to reactivate the account and log in. It’s not that I miss the gameplay, so much as I miss the characters. Many of the superheroes I played in the game were versions of superheroes I created twenty-some years ago. They have detailed origins and defeated villains in classic stories jotted down in old notebooks. I even came across some horrendous sketches I did of them during the move.
Foremost among these superheroes is Longarm. He patrolled Paragon City as Officer Longarm, a super-strong, invulnerable, technology-based tanker who reached Security Level 40 before I quit. He began his career as Sergeant Steele, however.
Names haven’t been the only changes Longarm has experienced. His origin has fluctuated between simple, cybernetic prosthetics to a brain transplant into a robotic body, a la Robocop.
The great thing about being a writer is that Longarm continues to exist outside the confines of a game. I still have those old notebooks full of story ideas, but I’m not content with simply waxing nostalgic. I’ve been outlining story arcs and writing scripts for Longarm comics since July of last year, as well as developing a business plan for launching a superhero-based webcomic. After Eternal Warlords launches this summer, I’m going to start the search for an artistic team (penciller, inker, colorist or some combination of the three). As Longarm likes to say, “It’s time for some police brutality.”
Villains, beware! You can’t escape the long arm of the law.
