That time I bought Cyberfrog

So the truly knowledgable fans of comic minutiae among you may recall that prior to being the ultra-successful artist of projects like Flash: Rebirth, Ethan Van Sciver kicked off his career at the ripe old age of 19 by creating a magical character named CyberFrog. He looked like this:

Skip ahead to February of 2007 and I, Ben Morse, am out to dinner following one of the days at New York Comic Con with Ethan and several others, including none other than Rickey Purdin. As it usually did, talk eventually turned to CyberFrog and I was stuck with a genius idea: since Ethan didn't have any plans for the character, why not hand him over to an enterprising creator such as myself who could take that cyberball and run with it?

I used my not inconsiderable powers of negotiation and convinced Ethan to sell me the rights to CyberFrog for a cool $1 American. Rags Morales was on hand to act as our official witness and we drew up the deal of a lifetime...
Naturally I was so excited that I ran out ASAP and posted the following press release, complete with Rickey's dynamic redesign of the character, to Comic Bloc:

Cyberfrog-mania continues to sweep the comic book world!

High Five Comics ("Where we high five comics instead of slapping them down") is pleased to announce the creative team of CYBERFROG: REBIRTH, the revolutionary mini-series that will retcon all the crappy stuff Ethan Van Sciver did and launch Cyberfrog into an exciting new world of action and excitement:

Superstar artist Rickey Purdin (Wizard: Diary) and unknown writer TJ Dietsch ("I did an essay in my linguistics class on R. Crumb's work and then another essay that compared the characterization of LOEG characters from the comics and their original novels")!

High Five hopes to release an interview with the CYBERFROG: REBIRTH team later this afternoon if they have time, but until then, feast your eyes on this exclusive first look at the NEW Cyberfrog courtesy of Rickey Purdin:
I also added the following amendment:

I'm no longer using the inner capitalization when writing "Cyberfrog." It reeks of the 90s and this property, for me, is not about dwelling in the past, but about looking forward and realizing the full, brilliant potential of the epic story of a cybernetically-enhanced frog that Ethan Van Sciver created when he was 19.

So here we are, over two years later, and sadly no Cyberfrog product from High Five Comics ever materialized. I've been asked the same question time and again: what happened?

What can I say? We were just a bunch of kids with big dreams and big ideas, maybe too big. Life happened.

And after a year of us not doing anything, I realized the back of the napkin said Ethan got the rights back.

The moral of the story is that if you are a successful comic book creator reading this blog and have a character you created as a teenager and are not currently using, please sell it to Rickey, TJ and myself. We have totally learned our lesson.

Thank you.

The Secret Origin of Miss Martian

I know that some of you are aware of this fact, but for those who don't know perhaps the coolest bit of comic book trivia about my life, there is indeed a Teen Titan named after my fiancee.

In 2006 after attending Wizard World Los Angles, Megan (my aforementioned intended), her friend Ashleigh and myself remained in the City of Angels for a couple more days on vacation. One night, we met up with Geoff Johns for an evening of sushi and Sapporo (the latter for me and Geoff) on him (he makes Hollywood money and I was 24, folks, no shame on my part). After Geoff and I overcame our disappointment over the fact that they never served us the Superman Roll we ordered, he told us a bit about his upcoming plans for Teen Titans, Megan's favorite comic (really the only one she read) at the time. Geoff mentioned that he was trying to come up with new characters for both the One Year Later roster and for what eventually became Titans West, and that he wanted to do more legacy characters for heroes and villains who didn't actually have any yet.

Perhaps it was the Japanese beer that fueled Geoff and my creativity as we noted that Ashleigh's last name was "Catsos" and thus there should really be a Catgirl (she ended up being cutting room floor material), but I've got to give full credit to him for realizing if you put Megan's first name and my last name together (as we're planning to do in under a month and a half), you got an alliterative identity in the classic tradition of Clark Kent, Peter Parker, John Jones, Matt Murdock, etc. Not only that, Geoff already had a character in mind who was going to have a double-M name to begin with.

And that's how Miss Martian got her civilian identity of Megan Morse (or M'gann M'orzz if you're from Mars).

Truthfully, we weren't sure if Geoff would remember his promise from that dinner, even though he had already put Megan in one issue of JSA the year before as an Air Force pilot who gets hit on by Hal Jordan (the best I did was score a cameo as a zombie who gets decapitated by one of Mr. Terrific's T-Spheres in an earlier JSA). Lo and behold though, Teen Titans #37 rolled around and there was Megan in all her Martian glory. Both Geoff and Miss Martian's co-creator, artist Tony Daniel, claimed around that time that her visual appearance was based at least a little bit on Megan, but I'm pretty sure they were just humoring her. It was definitely tough for me to keep the secret Geoff told me that she was going to end up being a White Martian from Megan so that when she went all monster form at the end of Teen Titans #40 I could watch her freak out, but I did.

So needless to say, even though Megan doesn't read Teen Titans regularly anymore, she always wants to know how "her" character is doing and always gets a smile out of reading her name being "spoken" by Wonder Girl or Kid Devil (and she just loved that issue where future Miss Martian made out with that dreamy Robin). We also both live in constant fear that the character will get killed off at some point, but with my old Wizard bud Brian Cunningham currently at the editorial helm of Teen Titans, I'm sure we have nothing to worry about...or everything to worry about.

Following in the footsteps of me and my Nova sketchbook, a couple years back Megan began her own sketchbook featuring Miss Martian. I need to scan in the entries from Todd Nauck, Bill Willingham and others, but I do have this gorgeous piece that Ethan Van Sciver did for the inside cover handy.
It's totally classic and awesome EVS, from the meticulous detail to the pronounced horror vibe (and as more than one person has pointed out to me, it's almost certainly not a coincidence that Ethan drew those aliens in the background in perfect position to see up Miss Martian's skirt). Megan couldn't have asked for a much better opener to her book as it definitely screams to whoever is drawing in there "You better live up to this benchmark," which Ethan said was his goal from the start.

Megan also bought the uncolored very first appearance of Miss Martian off Teen Titans inker Marlo Alquiza a couple years ago for me on my birthday (so she essentially got me a picture of her for my birthday, but that's my girl) and it hangs proudly framed on our wall.

The moral of the story: get Geoff Johns drunk enough and you too could have your very own Teen Titan (provided your name is alliterative)!