AMA: What's in a name?

Q.: What's the inspiration you use when creating a new character? Follow up: how do you go about naming them and creating a color scheme for them?

A.:  That first question is a little difficult to answer, because new characters get created for any number of reasons. Some are created for a specific situation — like a plot point that a story requires. Others are created to play a certain role in the overall storyline of Evil Inc that gets told over the course of several years.  To be honest with you, the character's super power is actually one of the last things I decide on, when I'm introducing a new character to Evil Inc. Their personality and their physical appearance is way more important.

Here's an excellent example...

This guy — Octo Lad — was created on the fly. I realized I needed an extra person in the locker room as I was pencilling the scene. And since all of the other characters were humanoid, I figured it would be nice to add a non-humanoid mutant to the mix. So I free-associated my way to Octo Lad.

As I was inking him, I started thinking about the character, and an entire scene developed in my mind. The next thing I knew, my mutant one-shot with a throwaway character was a three-page arc.

Happens all the time.

What's in a name?

Naming? That's a different story all together. I tend to obsess about names, and over the years, I've done really well with some and not-so-great with others. Here's some details behind the naming of some Evil Inc characters:

• Captain Heroic: It's really difficult to carve out space in the crowded arena of superhero names — especially for a generic, all-purpose hero. I decided to draw some inspiration from one of my favorite movies, Johnny Dangerously. Where Johnny's name was an adverb, I decided Cap's name would be an adjective.
• Miss Match: When I was first creating the concepts for Evil Inc, I knew I'd want my central hero to have a romantic entanglement with a supervillain. Any such relationship would certainly be a mismatched pair, and in a lightning strike of pure inspiration, Miss Match was created.
• Wingman: I like this name choice. He is, figuratively speaking, Cap's "wing man" when it comes to relationships. And, of course, he is literally a winged man. His costume design is based on both DC's Hawk Man and Marvel's Falcon.
• Desdemona: Desi's name was chosen purely for the word "demon" that's hidden inside.
• Lightning Lady: There's not a lot of story behind her name. She was originally created to be a throwaway character in my first comic strip, "Greystone Inn." She ended up sticking around. Several years ago, a person walked up to my booth at a comic convention claiming that held the copyright on the name "Lightning Lady," and he advised me to change the name of my character. I advised him against holding his breath. You can copyright an image, but not a name. And his image of Lightning Lady was nowhere near my rendition. 
• Iron Dragon: This one I'm not so happy with, and, to be honest, I came very close to changing his name during the reboot. The name is based on the nickname that was given to early trains — "iron horses."
• Phenomenal Lass: Perhaps the name that I labored over the longest. I knew I wanted to create a Power Girl-type character. If you still don't get the inside joke behind the name, say it out loud.
• Psy-Chick: That's a play on the word "psychic."
• Count Spurlock: In "Nosferatu," the name of the vampire was Count Orlock. I liked the way "lock" felt in a two syllable word — like the Morlocks of H.G. Welles — so I finally landed on Spurlock.
• Dr. Muskiday: That's a play on words. "Muscidae" is the family name that includes the species known as houseflies.
• Giant Tess: This one's pretty direct: "Giantess."
• Spectre R&D: I can't tell you yet, but I built that word deliberately, and it has absolutely nothing to do with James Bond.
• The Giggler: Obviously a riff on the Joker, but "giggler" also delightfully close to "jiggler" and that plays directly into my juvenile sense of humor.
• Catnip: Speaking of my juvenile sense of humor, although catnip is an herb that behavioral effects on cats, the plant was the secondary consideration in choosing a name for this particularly busty character. Also, some trivia: Catnip was the second character to be introduced in "Evil Inc After Dark" before appearing in "Evil Inc." The first was Mister Hypno, but he appeared briefly in the opening scene of the newly rebooted "Evil Inc," and hasn't been head from since.
• Amazing Amazon: That's the Evil Inc version of Wonder Woman, obviously, but why is she blue? Keep reading.
• Mister Invincible: There's no real story here — other than I like all of the short i-sounds.
• Sobek-Ra: Taken directly from Egyptian mythology. The origin of his name in Egyptian, is debated among scholars, but many believe that it is derived from a causative of the verb "to impregnate."
• Thea Rhutman: No real story here. Her name had to be close to a supervillain name (The Ratman) so Dr. Whoosh could mistakenly hire her.
• Micro-Mind: Like it said in his introductory period, his powers work like a microphone is hooked up to your mind... Micro-Mind. As he said... "All the good names are taken."
• Coach : Remember the coach that Miss Match took Grimm to? Coach Colasanto was his name. Ernie "Coach" Pantusso was the name of a fictional bartender on TV's "Cheers." The actor's name was Nicholas Colasanto.
• DeShawn Prentice: The young, inexperienced middle-manager who runs Justice Inc (formerly the Legion of Justice) is DeShawn Prentice. Prentice, as in "apprentice."
• Rhum: Captain's Scar's first mate is Rhum — as in, "ho-ho-ho and a bottle of ___."
• Mr. USA: The name for this character (introduced in EiAD #13) is pulled directly from the another tragically underappreciated cinematic masterwork, "Cannonball Run." Dom Delousie says "Captain USA" in the movie, but you get the picture. I came thisclose to basing the costume on that design as well, but cooler heads prevailed.
• Tauros: The superhero who was asked to enter into a cuckolding scene with Fireworx and her husband was — literally — the "bull" in that situation. Incidentally, in a flashback, Fireworx was reminded of the team of young heroes she was once a member of — The Age-of-Legal Consent Titans.
• Arabella Harker: The Monster Hunter in EiAD #24 shares a surname with Jonathan Harker, a central character in Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Her nubile assistant is Fukumi, and yes, that's my juvenile sense of humor once again.

I know I skipped some others — like Elastic Man and Dr. Whoosh — but their naming was pretty straight-forward.

Color commentary

I have a philosophy, when it comes to creative collaboration: Choose your collaborators carefully, and give them room to do what they do best. As a result, I rarely give notes to any of the colorists I've worked with — most notably Ed Ryzowski and Alex Heberling. I want my colorists to feel complete freedom when they work on a piece for me. I want them to become invested in the work. So, unless there's a very specific requirement, it's absolutely routine for me to send Alex a note like this one...

Remember the original, pre-reboot Desdemona — with green hair? Or Amazing Amazon's first full-color appearance in all of her cyan-skinned glory? Those were both the result of Ed Ryzowski's imagination. In the case of AA, I ended up writing an origin story for her that placed her in an aquatic tribe of amazons. (That origin may change completely in the new Evil Inc, however, so stay 'tooned.)

If you remember some of my early attempts at coloring EiAD (before I worked up the courage to ask Alex to do it), you'll plainly see that good coloring is not in my skillset. So I'm thrilled to give a professional like Alex a blank slate and let them do what they do so well.