The Encyclopaedia Titannica

Above is the original title I wanted for my TNT guidebook back in high school. It was a massive project which required a lot of drawing, writing, printing and pasting up. Back then, all I had was an old Apple IIc, a dot matrix printer, a cutter, scotch tape and fixative spray.

My very good friend, Chris Bernardo, drew many great illustrations for this project. I created his hero, CAPTAIN CHRIS, for a major storyline in the future.

Here's the front page he drew for THE TITANNICA. Notice my crude paste up job of the masthead. That's old school, baby!


And the full kick-ass cover! Click to enlarge. Woohoo, Chris did a bang-up job on this!

A Brief History of TNT

So, The Noble Titans were off and running with action-packed adventures. Pow! Blam! Zonk!

Flash forward to the early 2000's. In the throes of a mid-life crisis, I thought it'd be fun to revive my old TNT. With modern computer tools, I thought my creations would leap off the pages in living color! But then I realized - I never bothered to assign colors to TNT! D-OH!!!!!!

So, with the super-expensive, mega-powerful graphic application called MS PAINT, I lovingly colored my Noble Titans the way I always envisioned them to be. So, voila!!!


Pretty snazzy! I guess I patterned Cosmic Carlo after the Superman archetype; and the color yellow just seemed "right" on the gut-level. Not too much thinking done here, folks!

I loved Wildfire's costume from "The Legion of Superheroes" so much that I blatantly ripped it off for my own Ultra Ian costume.

For Astro Alfie - hmmm, I always envisioned his costume as mainly green.

The Debut of T.N.T. - The Noble Titans

Here's a little dirty secret of mine I want to confess.

I used to draw superhero comics when I was around 13 years old. I dreamed up hundreds and hundreds of mainstream superheroes with names like Dynamite Man, Faultline and Downpour. But for my comics, I made superheroes based on my elementary school friends.

Back in Grade 6, my two closest friends were Carlo Singson and Alfie Wee Sit. Since I was a huge fan of old school superheroics, I drew the three of us up in generic costumes complete with three-quarter face masks (like Captain America), trunks, capes and a huge-ass letter on our chests. Our heroes were cleverly named Super Carlo, Super Alfie and Super Ian. I wanted a powerful, explosive team name, thus was born..... T.N.T - THE NOBLE TITANS!

Yes, I realized much much later that "The" is an article which is very awkward when used in an acronym. But hey, in my young naive mind, I thought this was groundbreaking stuff!

I was prolific in churning out comics; thanks to a lot of resource material - like the adventures of Mighty Mouse, Thunder Agents, and Solar:Man of the Atom - I used for....uhh.....er, "inspiration." (koff koff, RIPOFF!!!, koff)

Shortly, my TNT evolved. To make repeated drawings easier, we shed some of the capes and wore Power Ranger-style helmets with visors. I attempted to adopt alliterative code names, thus our names became COSMIC CARLO, ASTRO ALFIE and... (hold your comments please) ULTRA IAN!!!

Our supporting cast grew. Classmates we liked became fellow guest heroes, while friends we liked to tease became villains. Some fine examples: ROCKHEAD RONAN, TORPEDO TURKEY, LAMBERT THE LOUSY, and DING OF THE DEVILS. (Damn, what was I smoking back then?)

Anyway, this is basically what TNT looked like for most of the run. Note the deliberate absence of any kind of shading. I didn't have the patience or art material to fill in empty spaces. Kilometrico ballpens didn't grow on trees back then.
(Left to right: Cosmic Carlo, Ultra Ian, Astro Alfie)

Iron Man Finished Pieces

Damn, look at these babies!!!!!

From my crappy drawings, to these beauties Irwin whipped up!

Design 1

Design 2: The Barbeque Grill

Iron Man Design Contest

I wanted to join Project:Rooftop.com's design contest for Iron Man. My good friend, Irwin Fernandez, mercifully agreed to refine and color my designs. Here's the first design I sent him:


"Preeetty snazzy", I thought. But I also wanted to submit a more fun, tongue-in-cheek design.

So, with a heart full of mirth, I sent the following design to Irwin. He promptly threw the design back at my face saying, "I'm not wasting my time on that fugly barbeque grill!" He was referring to this....
(Sigh) Tough crowd. Back to the drawing board I went to spruce up ol' Grilly. I approached Irwin with the following revised design - I turned my head away to avoid the inevitable paper projectile. Thankfully, he was in a generous mood that day. Whew.

Tune in next time to see how the final pieces of these two turned out.....

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