quote:
Potential Lad is being a bit of a dick, isn't he? 8) What happened to him?
A highly improbable time-travelling accident to which no self-respecting science fiction writer would have signed his name (see the second series). The Potential Lad from the first series is now living about a year in the past, before he ever became Potential Lad, and his past counterpart has arrived in the present and had all this superhero business thrust upon him. He's the same person, genetically speaking, but he has no experience with crimefighting and no desire to start, and only stays at the Retro-cave because he can't go home (see latest series).
What happened over the course of the missing year to change that angry, angst-ridden teenager into an idealistic super-sidekick? Why doesn't the Potential Lad who was sent into the past simply show up at the Retro-cave in the present to sort things out? These questions and more will all be answered if I ever decide to write a series about them.
Potential Lad is actually my favorite character here. If I make another series, I'd like to have him figure more prominently in it. But I don't know whether I want to keep the current sarcastic and unwilling Potential Lad (more opportunities for derogatory humor), or to somehow bring back the original starry-eyed sidekick (more opportunities for satire of Golden Age comics, not that I've ever read any). I guess I could do both, but the limit of two characters per panel kind of makes that difficult.
You can tell the two Potential Lads apart by the color of their sweatshirts. The angsty one wears blue. I'd like to pretend that I was already planning for the future when I chose a character that was available in two sets of clothing, but in fact it was a happy accident.