Tag: Comics

Anatomy of a Character: Lexa-Blue

So, the name came to me long before the character actually did. I just wrote it down somewhere and meant to come back to it at some point, because I thought it sounded cool.

Then, around the time I was writing the very first draft of what eventually became Soul’s Blood, I got into a comic called, of all things, Atari Force. It was one of those marketing deals between big companies, but it ended up being fun Space Opera, and far better than I expected. There was a character in the series named Dart, a mercenary of prodigious skill and coolness. As the novel idea developed, Lexa-Blue became character in that mold.
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The second element of who she became was the scar on her eye, replacing the facial tattoos that Dart had. This piece came from the Legion of Super-Heroes, another far future comic that I loved. At one point, Keith Giffen did an arc called Five Years Later. In it, after a time jump, we saw that much of what had been familiar had been shattered. One of the characters, Shrinking Violet, had been injured in a war between her world and the planet of one of her best friends from the Legion, Cosmic Boy. She was left with the scar bisecting her eye. Another element fell into place.
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The final piece for me was an actress I liked back then, one who had made her career in daytime and night time soaps, as well as in miniseries, which were big at the time. Her name is Terri Garber and there was something I really liked about her. She went from good girl to vixen, and then seemed to have found her niche as the conniving bad girl. She had an interesting mix of vulnerability, humour, and smartass that resonated with me and, at the time, felt like the energy I wanted the character to have.
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So, Lexa-Blue became a combination of Dart’s competence and formidable fighting skills, with a scar and black artificial eye, with the cropped, dark haired personality that I could imagine Terri Garber portraying. And she just grew from there. With a healthy dose of my own snark and smart mouth for good measure.

“You’re on the Global Frequency.”

Global Frequency is a killer limited series written by Warren Ellis, with each issue drawn by a different artist. Miranda Zero runs a shadowy organization of people with special talents. Each has a super high tech phone and if it rings, they will be greeted with “You’re on the Global Frequency” and there will be some threat that must be stopped. And the receiver of that phone call has the special skills needed to deal with it.

The only regular characters are Zero herself and her operator, Aleph, who contacts the various recruits and coordinates the organization’s efforts. As such, you never know what, if any of the other characters are going to make it to the end of the story, which makes for a gripping read. Having a different artist on each issue keeps the look, feel, and mood of the stories fresh with each story, and Ellis crafts a series of exciting technothrillers about cutting edge threats.

I highly recommend this series. It’s intense and can get dark and violent at times, but it’s an enthralling read. There was even a pilot made back in 2005, starring Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero (which may have been one of the most inspired casting choices ever!) but, alas, it was never picked up.

Learn more about this excellent series:
Wikipedia
Goodreads