My nephew’s birthday is in a few days, so I’m giving him the gift of his own comic book characters. Yeah, yeah, that sounds cheap, but he tells me his ideas and I surreptitiously (however difficult one may believe it is to sneak around a six-year old) pass them along to Benjamin Ruth. Like Static Electra, Ben has made these vague ideas (sometimes we only had names) into comic reality. Take Toxic Waste Band, for example: Agent Orange (lead vocals/guitar), Ben Zyne (bass), Auntie Arsenic (drums), Madame Mercury (tamborine), and Acetone (keyboard and backup vocals) rob people blind by day and rock them deaf by night.

The third and final gift to my nephew is going to be the brother and sister magnetic cryptologist team, North and South Decoders! They are actually my creations (if you saw Giants in Those Days, my first real superhero story, you understand how much I love punny names), but think Dominic will have fun with them all the same.

I can’t wait to see what my nephew thinks of his gifts!

While looking at the cover of my copy of Giants in Those Days, specifically Miss Dawna, my nephew came up with the idea that her light power should evolve into an electricity-based power and her new name would be Static Elektra (which I thought was pretty clever)! And she would be evil because the good guys abandoned her (seems reasonable). Of course, I had to ask the ultra-talented Benjamin Ruth to come up with an appropriately good-stomping costume. And this is she:

Dominic now owns a character, and I hope it gets him to draw more and make up stories. When he becomes famous, he’ll owe Ben a HUGE royalty check.