Preface To Neon: The Periodic Table

This is something I was about to write: "When I was a kid, I was a huge comic nerd."  But really, I'm still a huge comic nerd.  I don't read comics regularly these days, & don't buy new ones, but if someone suggests something to me, or I am reminded of something, I'll grab back issues or digital issues & waste an afternoon re-reading them.  For example, I recently finished the Netflix Punisher series & it's taken all my power not to go back & read Garth Ennis' run on the comic.  Fortunately I have had other things to do or I'd have been in the middle of sixty issues by now.

How do comics relate to the subject of neon?  Just wait!

In tenth grade or so, I went to my first comics convention, & I met some folks there who published a fanzine in nearby Richardson.  This led to me meeting a bunch of people who were as nutty about comics as I was.  (It was also the first time I'd met anyone who was fiercely loyal to a comics company.  I tended to like whatever I liked.  That kind of baffled people who thought the other big one - whether Marvel or DC depending on your choice - was nothing but bad & also evil.)

& in those days, I really wanted to write comics.  I wanted to do that fundamentally because I couldn't draw well, or else I would've wanted to write & draw comics.  The trouble was, I had never really written a comic before.  Or anything, really.  Maybe dumb poems that were trying to be funny.  Some song parodies like Weird Al Yankovic.  But if I started a comic - & I did start dozens of them - I never really finished it & I never really got around to such things as "plot" or "story."

What I loved doing was coming up with a concept.  Most of my concepts were incredibly derivative, a space agent who was a lot like Han Solo, a mystic master who was basically Dr. Strange.  When I met the folks in Richardson who were comics nerds like me - if there were any in my high school, I never met them - & surely they would've known me, I wore comic tee shirts & buttons! - a couple of them claimed to be artists & agreed to collaborate with me on something.

That was exciting!  The trouble was, my ideas were not - shall we say - traditional.  & this is where we come to neon.

For the longest time, there have been characters who have "elemental" powers.  There's Metamorpho, also known as "The Element Man."  There's Element Lad from the Legion Of Super-Heroes.  There's the various robots in the Metal Men.  & that's just from DC Comics!  In the 1960s!

But I was aware there were lots & lots of different elements - I loved poring over the Periodic Table.  Just look at all these damn elements (image from Wikipedia)!

I thought, wouldn't it be weird, fun, & challenging to have a superteam called "The Elements" that had, like, 118 members?  A large number of them (in my estimation) would just be metals who were super-strong.  A few of them would be mainly gases.  Some of them - the radioactive ones last of the table - might only exist for seconds at a time.

What shenanigans would they get up to?  Why would they be fighting crime?  What had happened to make them that way?

Unfortunately, I never got past the concept, because the comics nerd who was an artist who wanted to collaborate with me threw up his hands at having to design 118 different characters.  Also, he thought it was stupid.  & I never really revisited the concept.

For the record, he also hated my other idea: Animal/Vegetable/Mineral-Man.  His powers were - oh, never mind.