It was between 1999 and 2000 that the idea first came to me, albiet accidentally. 

I was just getting into comics, and thought it might be a cool idea to start my own! But there was a problem...all the good super powers were taken. I thought and thought, but I couldn't think of anything worthwhile as a super power, and came to the conclusion that it was pointless to even bother since I wouldn't be able to do anything new! (I've since discovered that I was just being defeatist, but that's a story for another day.)

One night, after pondering all day about unique super powers, I had a dream, in this dream, I was a super hero, I would fly around fighting crime, but with a twist! When I flew into a wall, I would turn 180degrees! I was "The 180Degree Man", and thus, a legend was born. 

In my dream, this of course all made sense, and the power, although ridiculous, was being put to good use! I forgot about it for a while, only mentioning the dream in passing as a joke, until roughly late 2003 when somehow, it all came back. I can't remember how it came about, but a friend (David Battersby) and I were discussing the same concept of crap super powers, and I mentioned
The 180Degree Man. 

It wasn't long before our humour kicked in, and his own avatar was born, in the guise of Incontinence-Man. Soon, I was giving random friends their own ridiculous super hero. It was around this time that The Bus (Robert Colquhoun) was born, and even our lecturers obvious obsession with coffee grew into Dr. Java (The Bus and Dr. Java will appear soon as villains).

But again, the idea fizzled out, until the launch of HotSquirrelz in March 2005. During this time, Dave Law seemed to be constantly looking for web comic ideas. He discussed an idea he had wherein he (as the main character in the HotSquirrelz comic) would constantly need to keep his hunger at bay for fear of unleashing his deadly inner demon...a 200ft giant robot named "Mega Mecha Dave" (or, Mega Mech Me). 

It was another prime example of ridiculous (but useful in a way) super powers. The 180Degree Man was of course, brought up in this conversation, and Dave (loving the idea) soon got to work on including my character in his webcomic (see HotSquirrelz Comic19). Before long, there was talks of a super hero team within the HotSquirrelz world (see HotSquirrelz Comic22), and the idea would eventually evolve. I featured the The 180Degree Man character myself also in a guest comic (see HotSquirrelz GuestComic3) although I apologise for how terrible it looks! 

Fast forward to August where our very own Jonathan Gibbons was given a guest stint on HotSquirrelz. His story arc, entitled Previous Adventures (see HotSquirrelz Previous Adventures 1 2 3 and 4) had 2 members of S4 (the superhero team featured in earlier HotSquirrelz comics) hunting down a missing 180Degree Man. The 2 members were; the previously established (but tragically killed off on his first appearance) Biff Kid, and a new character, the beloved BigStrong. 

Afterwards, our characters were again, forgotten about. Shoved to the back of our mind, only remembered breifly when Need A Hand handyman services decided to use BigStrong as their logo.

2007 eventually rolled around, and I got sick of not having my own webcomic. It had been years since our characters were seen, and my ideas on the characters had evolved so much that they barely resembeled their past selves. Knowing I wasn't the greatest writer, I asked Jonathan to provide the scripts, and I would work on the art. It seemed like a perfect match-up! We just needed an idea, and that's where SPHERE came in! 

I wanted to do a superhero team definitely and I figured our ideas were a fairly unique take on the concept. These superheroes would be the back-end of the powers. They wouldn't be able to shoot lasers from their eyes or move things with their mind. They would be granted useless powers and struggle to use these powers effectively to fight the ominous threat of bad people with the same ridiculous level of powers! Their personalities would clash with their powers. Their super-strength would be rendered useless by random muscle ticks, or food lovers crippled with incontinence! 

Trouble is, there was too many males, and not enough female involvement! I figured I needed some eye candy, and also a sidekick of sorts. I eventually settled on Towelette as the eye candy, but I couldn't think of anything for our sidekick. But then it hit me...a Side Kick is a type of kick! Why can't our sidekick be only able to do a Side Kick? It was just the idea I was looking for! Again, with her demeaning status of "sidekick", I thought it would be ironic that she is actually the best and most intelligent character...and better yet, at 8years old, it was even funnier! 

It's been a lazy few months since all of this. The characters are getting more refined, and I'm getting better at doing it! But the birth of Cut the Heroics is finally here! 

I hope you're enjoying it!