Felicity
33 years ago - Felicity is born in the tribal lands of the planet Karna.
27 years ago - 6-year-old Felicity's home on Karna is overrun by Gordanian slavers. Her mother is sent to work in the fields.
20 years ago - 13-year-old Felicity's mother dies of exhaustion in the slave fields of Karna. She is sold as a slave and brought to the Gordanian planet Slagg, where with her natural talent and cunning she earns a relatively safe position as a dancer. She starts to learn the ins and outs of the occupation.
17 years ago - 16-year-old Felicity is instrumental in assisting the Omega Men in liberating Slagg from Gordanian control, freeing herself and her fellow slaves. She becomes their newest member, helping them continue the fight against the Gordanians.
7 years ago - 26-year-old Felicity & the Omega Men assist Dick Grayson as he ventures into the Vega system to free a kidnapped Koriand'r from her sister Komand'r. Assisting General Ph'yzzon's Tamaranian rebellion, they free Tamaran from the rule of the Gordanians, and capitalize on that victory to finally overthrow the Gordanian regime. She returns to her native planet of Karna, working in a spaceport as a dancer and bar owner.
3 years ago - 30-year-old Felicity meets Tigorr & Arisia Rrab, assisting them as they stop an organized crime ring from terrorizing her city. She and Tigorr have a passionate affair.
~ Just in case it wasn't immediately obvious from the artwork, this character is from a comic that was aimed at an older audience, so we dip into some content here that might be a little inappropriate for some readers.~
Felicity is a character with a very specific purpose, and I'm sure you can tell what that purpose is at a glance.
The Omega Men, as a book, had a very particular voice, one that mimicked the adult animated sci-fi of its era, and the inclusion of Felicity really speaks to that. She's a character that would be right at home in a Ralph Bakshi film. Given her role, we might normally have skipped her, but if we can manage to include her and adapt her in such a way that she's not quite as deliberately sexualized (despite the outfit), she'll go a really long way to capturing the particular vibe of the Omega Men for our own timeline. Hopefully we can walk the tightrope of depicting this character without making her too exploitive.
Felicity is a character with a very specific purpose, and I'm sure you can tell what that purpose is at a glance.
The Omega Men, as a book, had a very particular voice, one that mimicked the adult animated sci-fi of its era, and the inclusion of Felicity really speaks to that. She's a character that would be right at home in a Ralph Bakshi film. Given her role, we might normally have skipped her, but if we can manage to include her and adapt her in such a way that she's not quite as deliberately sexualized (despite the outfit), she'll go a really long way to capturing the particular vibe of the Omega Men for our own timeline. Hopefully we can walk the tightrope of depicting this character without making her too exploitive.
Felicity's Comic HistoryFelicity is technically mentioned in the first issue of Omega Men in 1983 when ,after a battle, Tigorr mentions that he's found a potential 'rutting mate'. She appears for the first time in issue # 4 pining for Tigorr with a note from writer Marv Wolfman that she might prove to be important later on.
She does continue to appear through the series, almost always as a lighthearted presence, an attempt to bring a voice of levity or kindness, and almost never as a combatant. She remains devoted to Tigorr for most of the series, even at one point sacrificing a lot of her own mind to help restore his. The character really seems to get rounded out in her own standalone issue, #32, a tale that actually seems like it would be very at home in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. Felicity was a victim of the Durlans in the Invasion! crossover event in 1988, but she did make another appearance in a very interesting 2006 Omega Men miniseries with art by British 2000 AD artist Henry Flint. Felicity returns here with the darkness-based powers of former Omega Men member Nimbus. |
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Our Felicity StoryThis is an interesting challenge, because part of the point of including this character is to capture some of that deliberate exploitative sexualized vibe so prominent in the animated sci fi the Omega Men was emulating... but we also really don't want to go as far. We're actually not going to have Tigorr in the early years of the Omega Men, so the whole idea of her being his 'rutting mate' (ew) is out. We're also making a few very specific wording choices in describing her backstory. Canonically she's described as a former 'harem slave', but I think we can make some choices here that make it clear she was actually not as much of a victim as that implies.
Moreover, since she's not just Tigorr's mate anymore, she gets to actually be a much more proactive part of the Omega Men. We deliberately make her a key part of the liberation of Slagg, making mention of her cunning. In the Omega Men comic she's always depicted as innocent almost to the point of being naive, and that's not exactly a wrong take, but we imagine that she could be that youthful character, the one that makes you feel like you need to protect her, but also still being surprisingly scrappy. In fact, there's a new character introduced in the Tom King Omega Men series called Scraps, a small, gun-wielding rogue character. That's the sort of vibe that I think would be a lot of fun from Felicity, capturing her youth and grace but also the surprising toughness. This is kind of a character that really needs to be written and depicted in the right way to avoid some of her built-in clichés, but there's a niche here that we really think she would fit well, and if she's done right I think she can do it without the more problematic parts of the character. |