The Rise Of The Regulators

[RegsLeader]

I have this thing of starting a discussion of comic book heroes with "In a Fair Fight..." because its natural to want to argue that Marvel is better than DC Comics, or vice versa. I am a huge fan of both. Marve's Avengers on the movie screen was trend setting and as far as I am concerned, totally changed the face of action/adventure movies and how they are made. Do I think Marvel's Avengers for that reason are better than DC's Justice League? No, DC has the older, more established and iconic characters, and in a fair fight the Justice League has the greater fire power.

It is a pretty simple argument, one or the other, but in my thinking its an incomplete argument because I think there is a third team that should be considered.

This third team is called The Regulators, but they have a serious handicap in that they do not appear in a comic book and have not appeared on the big, or small screens. They are nine characters from a novel, a two book set titled The Regulators: Hell On Earth. Can a team that isn't aided by visual means to influence the thoughts of an audience in a way that makes them competitive against long established heroes who are highly visible in various media forms? Its hard to say when The Regulators require that a reader have an imagination that can draw characters of the story off the pages and make them real. It isn't enough to say that readers thus far think so, not when the number of readers is dwarfed by a lengthy history belonging to both DC Comics and Marvel.

I will issue a challenge to anyone and everyone to read The Regulators: Hell On earth, Parts One and Two and tell me they can't hold their own in a fight that includes the two business heavy weights!
Team 2a.jpg

[SilverZeal]

A VERY suprising lack of diversity buddy....no asians(males not asiaphilia fantasy type females), Arabs, Native Americans, Blaks, etc.

[RegsLeader]

Did it take me a long time to come back to this. With work in progress on the next book there has been some changes in the lineup and it was always intended that we would add someone called Shadow warrior who is Asian. I'm thinking that in the earliest days of Marvel and DC Comics they were no more diverse. The Regulator characters are all based on real people, that is where the personalities come from and I don't think any of my people will allow me to paint them red, brown, black, yellow or green, but I understand your point/

[CharlesM]

It reminds me of HeroMachine poses.

[TroubleWithTrebles]

Why are they all in the same pose, btw? It screams "app" and makes it - ala precepts of advertising psycology - feel less than pro and, frankly, a bit "penny pinching".

[RegsLeader]

Yeah, I use Hero Machine. Why do I use Hero Machine, because I'm not an artist and have had a lot of trouble finding an artist to do the art work for me. At the age of retirement and on a minimum wage salary until retirement money starts coming I can't afford a lot of professional services. You do what you can when you are starting out with something like this, unless you know people personally who are willing to help you. In another year I expect to have art work to match the two book set I just published and susequent sequels that are actually in the works.

[RegsLeader]

The Regulators characters are all in the same pose because I used the inline program HeroMachine because I am not an artist and have not found one I can afford to do actual real artwork so far. You can't hire what you can't find and can't afford so if you see penny pinching, yeah, its there. Am I the first author to go that route, no, and am I stuck with this, no, its a growth process and as sales of the books grow and other income kicks in yeah, HeroMachine will be phased out and a real artist will do whatever artwork I need to go with the books as I write them.