Firstly, thanks so much for reading and enjoying Short Circuit. There is nothing more wonderful than knowing someone likes something I wrote.

You might be interested to learn that Short Circuit is actually part of a much larger world that I’ve been dabbling in since 2009. Back then I was the store manager of a busy video game store and had an awesome team. While we were all geeking out one day, I asked everyone what super power they would choose if they could – then I made every single one of their powers have a frustrating proviso.

I spent a month annoying staff telling them their character’s back story and story lines and even drew character sketches for a lot of them. Then I realised my drawing talent wasn’t really on par for doing a graphic novel (or several as the ever-expanding storyline was implying), so it just became something I played with every now and again while waiting to stumble across an artist.

When Crossed Genres put out a call for submissions for a superhero anthology I was excited to see the superheroes they were after were the sort I’d spent years tinkering with for that shelved project. I pulled down one who was versatile and had a back story that could stand well as a short story and tah-dah!

Here’s a link to my Original Sketch Gallery  on Deviantart, these aren’t the only pictures, but they’re the only ones I liked enough to put online. Alternatively here’s the Pinterest board collecting them. (The DA account has more info on the characters themselves though)

The Original Story

The story focuses on characters whose powers were less than people might hope for, but who work hard regardless. They are hired by a government department to take care of the mediocre villains the ‘real’ heroes deem not worth their time but who are too risky for a non-superpowered police force to tackle. They are codenamed ‘The Round-Ups’, but the ‘real’ heroes have a much nastier name for them: Sp’ed Force.

Through bad timing, anti-hero Sedative ends up joining the Round-ups as Beserker’s wrangler and she turns the group on it’s head – in good ways and bad!

 

If you’re an artist who might like to jump on board feel free to contact me as this is a project I am still passionate about, but think suits graphic novel form far better than standard written word.