When I was brainstorming my little knock-off Marvel universe, I wanted to include the licensed 80s comics as well. That meant GI Joe. Which was basically SHIELD. And that didn't quite work in my world, but they would work as part of The Organization™. Which was a great fit for my original superhero team I made when I was twelve. They traveled between the real world and a fantasy world just like this new organization. So I welcomed back the Argonauts. 

The Argonauts started as you would expect, with my self-insert OC. Originally named Firestorm, he traveled between videogame worlds with an arsenal of videogame tools. Because I was twelve and it was the early nineties. I quickly replaced the tools with pyrokinesis, and renamed him Flare. His new origin still started off with force field powers as a nod to his earlier incarnation. The idea was that he lost the force field macguffin before developing pyrokinesis.

The Argonauts started as a group of five real-world adventurers traveling a fantasy world. They were led by Atalanta, and included Flare, as well as Sonic (known as Falconer at the time), Frost, and Roc. Poor Roc did not make the cut for this modern incarnation, but he's around somewhere. Frost was not originally a fat bear. This design was from a modern-day superhero who I retroactively decided was the same guy as the one on the Argonauts.

I quickly came up with the idea that Flare was lost in the multiverse (losing his force field macguffin in the process). I drew some terrible covers of the six-issue limited series detailing this journey, ending with Flare being stranded in the Marvel Universe. The Argonauts show up at the end to fight him (or so the cover claims. And covers never lie).

At this point, four more members had been added. Goliath, Fairy (Thumbelina), Morningstar (yes that was always their name), and Tome. These four represented characters native to the fantasy world, and still do. Morningstar was originally a basic elf, but I redesigned them to fit the Gemfarers version of the fantasy world, and to look more edgy.

Flare really was stuck in the Marvel Universe, which meant he needed his own superteam. Psi Force was led by Flare, and included a number of characters who would stick around in various forms for decades. These characters ended up in an epic crossover with the Argonauts, chronicled in a series of illustrations where they were captured by monsters and scattered across the fantasy world.

There were other characters, like Tempest, who I mentioned in another blog post, and a half-werewolf prince. And of course, Flare would go on to hang around the Marvel Universe, butting into various events.

Eventually, I rebooted the characters back into their own continuity, paring them down into a group of six: Flare, Amalgam and Glitch from Psi Force, Atalanta (Now called Artemis and using a moon them), Roc, and a new character named Alchemy.. This group ended up being the base for many attempts at comics over my adult career.

Now the original gang is back in Around Bear Corner, although it's just Flare, Sonic, and Frost, now a retired throuple, living on the same floor as the main characters. I do plan on having a chapter that focuses on them, with the rest of the gang being mentioned.