Blog
Big Science Action!
The Art of Mike Becker
06/16/2024
So here's the timeline up until now:
We've always had an interest in showing what superheroes from the rest of the world should look like, but it's important that they don't just look like American heroes operating in other countries. They should represent the culture of the place they are from. Also, we're not looking to make ORIGINAL characters here. They should come from existing DC content.
This is why we made this blog post back in 2022, illustrating a team of heroes created for Grant Morrisons' Final Crisis that would have been PERFECT for our project, but for the fact that they were really created more as background elements for the story and never actually had stories of their own, so there wasn't much in the way of usable art. If we WERE going to adapt them to the DC Continuity Project, we would need to get some art of our own.
Well, in the past few months, people in our Discord server found and really latched onto the art of Mike Becker. He's shown a wonderful understanding of what makes superhero art great. He was contacted and immediately understood what it was we wanted to do with Big Science Action, so we put together a GoFundMe to commission all the art we'd need.
Well, here are the results. The GoFundMe is still active so we can fully compensate Mike for his fantastic work, but I just couldn't wait to share this with you guys!
We've always had an interest in showing what superheroes from the rest of the world should look like, but it's important that they don't just look like American heroes operating in other countries. They should represent the culture of the place they are from. Also, we're not looking to make ORIGINAL characters here. They should come from existing DC content.
This is why we made this blog post back in 2022, illustrating a team of heroes created for Grant Morrisons' Final Crisis that would have been PERFECT for our project, but for the fact that they were really created more as background elements for the story and never actually had stories of their own, so there wasn't much in the way of usable art. If we WERE going to adapt them to the DC Continuity Project, we would need to get some art of our own.
Well, in the past few months, people in our Discord server found and really latched onto the art of Mike Becker. He's shown a wonderful understanding of what makes superhero art great. He was contacted and immediately understood what it was we wanted to do with Big Science Action, so we put together a GoFundMe to commission all the art we'd need.
Well, here are the results. The GoFundMe is still active so we can fully compensate Mike for his fantastic work, but I just couldn't wait to share this with you guys!
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Big Science Action!
Morrison’s original concept for the “Justice League of Japan” as background for minor characters for Final Crisis. My approach was to take the original ideas and graft the archetypes onto them, playing with the Magnificent 7 JLA lineup for the heroic archetypes of the DCU and anime genre tropes. So we identified each genre the characters mirrored and which characters were probably already being pulled from.
For the most part I tried to stay in the bounds of the playground already established. Some of the ideas really came alive to me and made me excited. Some of the characters I think were thin to begin with and it felt like slapping something too heavy on brittle bones would break the idea and then I was just making a new character entirely. |
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Ultimon
"Tokusatsu Superman. Appropriately their big muscle is the Ultraman analogue, the giant super protector of Japan. Design wise I leaned all the way in to the Superman visual while trying to maintain the color arrangement of the original Ultimon sketch, and absorbing Ultraman himself a little more. I looked at a lot of work by TN Perkins, a character designer from Ben 10 who has always done these really cool fusion type characters.
- For the helmet, I kept the all-gold face, styled the forehead fin after Superman’s S curl, gave him those big bug eyes Ultraman and Ultramega have with his R/B color scheme, and a bold chin. I imagine him as incredibly stoic and noble. He’s this giant unknowable super giant so he is more mysterious and aloof than Superman, so no mouth necessary imo. - I maintained the white stripes with the blue look. Paired with the red cape, it really completed the Superman look and kind of made him look more DCU and foreward as the leader. That cape must be massive and super heavy. - I paired down the shoulder fins tremendously, I played with it in a few designs but I warped it into a logoistic U and changed the circular central “symbol?” that Ultimon had into the Superman pentagon. - I actually had a fully different version of Ultimon where I was trying to make him more of an Aquaman analogue! That looked cool too, and actually way more faithful to the original design bc he does kind of have all these fins on him." |
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I mean what can we possibly say about this one? This is literally the whole reason we went with Mike as the artist here; he has this fantastic fluency with the stylistic tropes at play here, which is exactly the language these characters were written in. I really hope people appreciate just how genius what he did here is.
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Most Excellent Superbat
"The shonnen super-fanboy. Superman and Batman are huge in Japan and Heino Okata has the means to make himself the best hero in the world. Believe it!
- The best thing about his original look is the really cool Superman logo negative space pattern. It’s so unique and really striking. I did play with a few helmet looks that looked cool but once I did this really charming sketch of him with Goku-@$$ hair that was Superman styled, I was like “Oh this is the guy!” - I think the across the chest Utility belt in the original design was an interesting twist… but ultimately just not all that visually appealing, disrupts the coolest part of his look, and is odd and clunky to draw. So that had to go. And so did the equally odd collar he wore. Adding the Batman-ish collar allowed for a much needed color balance between the blue and red, emphasized the Batman of his look (he is a Super BAT afterall) and led naturally into the scalloped batcape. - His pose was really the thing about my sketch that I fell in love with, seeing him as this really over-enthusiastic Naruto-lite wannabe made me really get the character." |
When I started talking to Mike he had a lot of ideas about the rest of the Super Young Team because they were playing with the visual elements of the classic Justice League so much, so I could tell he was excited to work with those ideas in Most Excellent Superbat. This is so exactly why this character works when elevated to Big Science Action, he's a mashup of iconic visuals that together make something else equally iconic.
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Moon Maiden
" Mahou Shoujo Moon Maiden: So this one is super cool to me. Because she’s kind of a DC character, but totally up to me to reimagine. Another erased from history superhero, the original Moon Maiden didn’t offer me much inspiration besides color scheme and MOON. Which obviously linked to Sailor Moon, and we had talked about needing a Magical Girl/Mahou Shoujo on the team to complete the biggest anime genre squad. In Morrison’s notes he mentioned but never designed a “Batman-Sailor Moon” so that’s who I made her.
- Not a lot of process to really elaborate on here because she really really manifested fully formed. - I did look at the Sailor Scouts, particularly Chibi Sailor Moon’s hairstyle and borrowed Tuxedo Mask’s domino mask. Otherwise the costume design is classic Magical Girl looking, shoulder flares, long gloves, skirt, and theme. Her hair is designed to look like both Bat-ears and Rabbit ears. Sailor Moon’s real name, Usagi, means rabbit which has a lot of connections to the moon in Japanese mythology. So the transition from Greek Goddess of the Moon (or whatever) to Japanese Goddess of the Moon was barely a step. - I played with a few different color arrangements but the scheme was pretty consistent. I almost did her entirely silver and violet but the gold accents and the blue made her a little more dynamic and a little more Batman. - Her logo is a night sky. Three little stars and the moon just made it a little less generic imo." |
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We mentioned way back in our original blog entry that Big Science Action seemed to be lacking a magic girl character, and figuring out how to bridge that gap was a big hurdle to clear before we decided to go ahead trying to adapt the team. I do specifically remember having the idea to adapt extremely minor one-off character Moon Maiden into our magic girl superhero, but she seemed a perfect fit. We didn't' give Mike any specific design directive here other than the name and the concept, and boy, was that ever the right move. Amazing.
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Cosmo Racer
"Astro Boy and Mega Man meet Silver Surfer. I actually really love his original look. It’s hilariously silly, very Jack Kirby (Silver Surfer, Black Racer, now this guy) but also genuinely sleek. So I didn’t change too much of him, just styled up the helmet really.
- I did make him much cuter. I gave him a Baymax from Big Hero 6 looking face to make him look a little more adorable and also more robo than alien. - If I were to do this one again, I may make him way chibi-er like Astroboy and Megaman. Maybe really lean into that direction? But otherwise I really enjoyed his silvery cosmic Silver Surfer look too much." |
I see exactly what he means! I love the whole concept of Cosmo Racer, including his silver surfer stylings, so I would really be torn about changing him to make him a little guy like Astro Boy or Mega Man... but that sounds so cool!
This is definitely the most complete of all the original characters, and in fact probably has the most usable art that already exists, but having our own version of him is so worth it. I love his new loveable robot face!
This is definitely the most complete of all the original characters, and in fact probably has the most usable art that already exists, but having our own version of him is so worth it. I love his new loveable robot face!
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Boss Bosozuko
"Nuclear Akira…? Boss Bosozuko I think I’m the most proud of drawing wise, but conceptually I would completely scratch this dude or revamp him conceptually. I think he’s the least electric of the original ideas, and someone must have agreed because even the one time Big Science Action does show up, they’ve replaced him with a successor called “Boss Bishonen” which is *hilarious* because that tells me immediately nobody working on that book had ever watched an anime or did any even half-baked research.
- Design wise, I added the cyclops goggles, stylized and revamped the jacket with some better looking color balance and added the green to accent all the orange and make him look more nuclear. |
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- The bike I wish I had something more profound to say, but I was just drawing from the classic Akira slide as reference and just played around with some shapes to make it look unique and futuristic. I am extremely proud of how it turned out
- Character wise, I think it’s the nuclear fire-elemental aspect I’m struggling with. It’s an odd outlier on the team. The green was a nice visual to bring to the lineup. But I would probably have stripped him of the fire and given him Akira’s psychic powers and leaned into the Bishonen trope. A broody psychic sad boy on the team would bring the emotional range to the team while he can fill a different roll. He’s also fast like Cosmo Racer with his superbike? Idk."
- Character wise, I think it’s the nuclear fire-elemental aspect I’m struggling with. It’s an odd outlier on the team. The green was a nice visual to bring to the lineup. But I would probably have stripped him of the fire and given him Akira’s psychic powers and leaned into the Bishonen trope. A broody psychic sad boy on the team would bring the emotional range to the team while he can fill a different roll. He’s also fast like Cosmo Racer with his superbike? Idk."
This is fascinating, because I actually am probably the MOST attracted to Boss Bosozuko from among the new Big Science Action characters. This might just be because I approach this stuff from a particular story perspective rather than as an artist, and being based on Akira kind of gives him some more elaborate narrative building blocks? I don't really know.
In any case... I challenge anyone to not immediately love everything about what Mike did here. This is a GORGEOUS character. He took what is admittedly something much more conceptual and gave him a whole visual language. This character is a PROTAGONIST.
In any case... I challenge anyone to not immediately love everything about what Mike did here. This is a GORGEOUS character. He took what is admittedly something much more conceptual and gave him a whole visual language. This character is a PROTAGONIST.
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Hammersuit Zero-X
"Murder Gundam with a spunky science girl inside. Easily the most difficult and conceptually thin. Big Science Action absolutely needs a mech hero, but the design for the original Hammersuit Zero X is so bulky, violent, and dull.
- I ended up staying pretty close to the original at some level. I made some things look cooler, tried to give it a “Zero” and “X” logo. I added these samurai style backblades to emphasize the X. - Color scheme was tough to figure out as well. The second appearance has it nearly all black but maybe blue? Ultimately anything looked good, but nothing really looked great so I went with this kind of super violent look to make it even sillier that there’s a child inside. - I think if I was to do this one again, I’d scrap everything about this except for Giant Robot concept. I think I didn’t have a clear Justice League analogue to graft onto the Gundam trope. And I would have just made him a full on Gundam or Voltron. More mecha-samurai and less… sharp thumb?" |
I see what Mike is saying here, but I also think that the tightrope of finding a way to make a Gundam look like it would work as a DC superhero might be the single most impressive piece of work he did. You could iterate and expand on this idea forever, but the real success here is finding the initial shape and design of the mech, and so subtly making it feel like something out of a Justice League comic.
So... What's next? We have outlines of these characters timelines, but I think that since this is one of the most collaborative new ideas we've included, I would love to see if you readers have specific ideas of specific stories these characters could be a part of. While we finish our current batch of updates, please send us your ideas so when we dive into Big Science Action in our next update, we can give them big, lush timelines full of all sorts of adventures.
Also, everyone head over to the GoFundMe so we can make sure Mike is taken care of. Also, everyone head over to his Social Media and give him some love!
So... What's next? We have outlines of these characters timelines, but I think that since this is one of the most collaborative new ideas we've included, I would love to see if you readers have specific ideas of specific stories these characters could be a part of. While we finish our current batch of updates, please send us your ideas so when we dive into Big Science Action in our next update, we can give them big, lush timelines full of all sorts of adventures.
Also, everyone head over to the GoFundMe so we can make sure Mike is taken care of. Also, everyone head over to his Social Media and give him some love!