Sunday, October 3, 2010

History of the Harryverse. (Part 2)

History of the Harryverse.

Reality version...

1977-1980-

As soon as I could hold a crayon the whole thing started.
Earliest character I can remember was "Jellybean Man".

Later on, as a goof, I absorbed him into "the P Team".

I think there was also "Garbage Man", a guy who transformed into a heap of garbage.
....dunno what the point to that power was...

1981-1982-

The random characters continued, Superstar pops up, as well as "the S Team", a team of guys with crappy powers that they're named after that all start with S, followed shortly after by about 5 other crappy lettered teams.

1983-1985-

My playtime down the wood road starts, gets retroactively cartooned, and titled "Galaxy Gaurdian", later forgotten, dug back up, incorporated into the Harryverse.
In hindsight, was the subliminal inspiration for the Harryverse to start with.

The Glob is created as a team-up comic with my then friend, Sean.

His guys were the Laserballs, lead by the Sun Beast.

Blowing up the Sun Beast became an important event for Superstar/Glob, so, I was kinda stuck having to incorporate that into continuity later.

Little queasy using Sean's guys, even if just in retro-flashbacks, but he made a knockoff Superstar, so, it balances, I guess....

All the crappy lettered teams merge into "the P Team", (the P is for power).
P Team absorbs all my old characters back to Jellybean Man.
Any new random character I come up with goes into P Team, it sort of becomes my "Justice League Unlimited", title, and what I work on when I'm not doing Glob strips with Sean.

Near the end of '85, I start coming up with my own transformers, because dammit, they weren't churning out the ideas for stuff like toasters, hair dryers, and pizza ovens like they are now.

I transformer-ize everything I can think of.
I turn out to be pretty good at imagining/drawing the transformations, eventually able to skip right to the converted robot on the first sketch of the character.

When I had enough of these guys gathered up, I figured screw it, Transformers don't deserve them, I'll call 'em "Roboton Defenders", and make my own little continuity around 'em.

1986-

More Roboton, more Glob, less P Team.

1987-1988-

Robotons fizzle out.
P Team just winked out.
The transition to Sweetser.
I pick up Glob and Superstar more or less where they left off.

I evolved Glob into a monster like the Hulk, or Savage Dragon, with claws and fangs.

In hindsight, Glob was a shapeshifter, like his form would make a difference....

I think the Superior Seven started to coalesce by then.

1989-

Harry begins as little written stories.
I was supposed to journal about my feelings.
Did Harrys instead.
Fuck the system, man.

Superior Seven truly takes shape.

Shreikh (didn't name them for ages, they were just these neat looking alien monsters) and the Roborg show up in their own little bubble, but I hooked 'em up in Superior Seven continuity later.

'88 & '89 I really pounded out the strips.
Lotta story covered in those.

The end of Sweetser, transitioned to high school, Superior Seven came to a dead stop.

1990-1993-

Started up Harry again as one-off strips in study hall, and it snowballed from there.

Superior-Seven-verse characters popped up along the way, converting it to the Harryverse.

Also, did lots of random filler comedy skit stuff, that got bottled up as "adventures in bad taste". Some of those are up on this blog in the "good old days", section.

1994-

Did a universe reboot to slough off all the messy continuity.

Particularly the Sean-verse stuff.
Heh heh...

1995-1997-

Mostly compiling of stuff into Harry album books.

Retroactively wrote all of the pre-history stuff into continuity, and wove it into one story even if I had to use timewarps to do it.

Retroactively killed off hero teams that fizzled out with elements of their own stories so it could have been plausible.
Y'know, for closure.

With the completion of all that, I was up to 7 volumes of Harryverse junk.

1998-2000-

Retold the whole pre-history deal through the eyes of a new character, Cache Ballard, to compress the story down to about 60 pages, then killed off Cache Ballard.

Incorporated the Cache Ballard stuff into a more concise 2 volume "best of Harry Hembock", compilation.

I use this set as my resource now.

By the millennium, I had transitioned over to internet stuff, wrote a little scene for my own edification of Harry rebooting the timeline again, did a 3rd volume with printed out Heck/Torrent/Krazyfool/NLHH stuff, along with with that as the bookend.
(BTW, threw a Cache Ballard reference into Torrent Too).

Lost track of paper volumes after that.

2001-present-

J-world, TrekBBS, WF, Shmegalamonga.

Harry Hembock: Dark Designs.

Rewrote the outline of the pre-history stuff from '97 as "history of the Harryverse (part 1)".

Wrote this one.


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