UnknownFate25's [EXTRAS]

[JAOH] Fun Facts #1

Contains spoilers for Just An Ordinary Henchman. Recommended to be caught up with the story before reading.

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Fun Fact 1 - The Title

The title Just An Ordinary Henchman was a temporary title in case I thought of something better. When announcing in the thank you chapter at the end of TSOS I knew I wanted to also drop the name for a teaser, but I still wasn't sure what the name was going to be.

Well, I thought up of Just An Ordinary Henchman, and basically thought "this will do for now". If you go back to that thank you chapter I even stated the name wasn't finalized, and that was due to how quickly I made it.

I actually ended up really liking and so I stuck to it.

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Fun Fact 2 - The Protagonist's Name

Jason James wasn't the original name of our protagonist. I don't remember exactly what it was now, but it ended up changing after I decided I was going to keep JAOH as the title.

For some reason I felt more fitting to use a J name for the story to match the abbreviation of JAOH. The name that ended up getting chosen was Jason, though Jay was the biggest other contender. And of course, the last name became James in order to keep that clean and simple alliteration that is commonly seen in comic heroes.

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Fun Fact 3 - Creating Sophie

When I was creating basic ideas for characters, I wanted both a maid character and a robot character. I had yet to do a character that was either, which had led me to wanting to create characters of those type.

The problem was I already had so many ideas that I wouldn't be able to fit all of them. This led to me combining the two ideas, and thus Sophie, our favorite robot maid, was created.

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Fun Fact 4 - Prototype Stellar

Before JAOH had a name, back when I was first getting ideas, Stellar was much different from now, in both design and power.

She was still going to be the Superman based superhero, but was going to be called Phoenix with the twist of having wings made of fire. Her hair was also going to be shorter and brown instead of the longer blonde.

While I liked the idea, I always felt there was something missing. Reading "The Hero Became Obsessed With The Villain" gave me inspiration for the character I wanted Stellar to be, and in turn I also found new inspiration for her design.

I formatted her closer to Superman, but with the difference that she's actually a human. I then based her story arc and character around a hero of justice falling for the archenemy villain.

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Fun Fact 5 - Scrapped Superhero Stories

Before the plan for JAOH I knew I wanted to make a superhero story, but I wasn't exactly sure what I would do. There were quite a few ideas thrown around, one of which was one of the three options that my readers could vote for when I was deciding what story to write.

It was going to be called "From Zero To Hero", featuring an originally grunt protagonist. However instead of climbing up the ranks as a villain, the story was going to kick off with his encounter with a hero leading to becoming said hero's apprentice/sidekick.

That story didn't end up winning, as the story that won that vote was actually The Son Of Snakes.

Once that story ended I finally got back to making a superhero story, but this time with a new idea. And thus, Just An Ordinary Henchman's first idea was born.

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Fun Fact 6 - Sophie's Sisters

Sophie's two sisters were never originally going to appear in the story. I hadn't even thought about them as an idea until I saw a large amount of comments curious about them, wondering if they would come into play at some point.

That then gave me the inspiration to use them as antagonists, which led to me creating their characters and incorporating them, introducing them to the story in Issue #40.

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Fun Fact 7 - Jason's Mask

Originally Jason was going to wear a gas mask, which would both be something a grunt would wear while also being damn cool. That idea was scrapped when Twisted's protagonist (good story and one of JAOH's inspirations) donned the gas mask.

With that in mind I settled on the ski mask, which is definitely supervillain grunt vibes, and it worked really well.

As for Jason's future mask, I won't give the spoiler as to what it is here for those who haven't gotten that far, but there were a few different ideas thrown around. One of them was a plague doctor mask and having Jason go for a plague doctor theme, but that idea was eventually scrapped for the one I settled on.

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Fun Fact 8 - The Cover

While most of my covers were made using Photopea, Just An Ordinary Henchman is my first story that has a cover made using Illustrator.

It's also my first cover that doesn't have a central character as the main part of the cover. MOB has Ken on it, TSOS has Nikolas, MONSTER has Jackson, and TSI has one of the girls.

JAOH's cover is of mostly Champion City, but a character can actually be spotted in the cover. While it's supposed to be Jason, it's a small person sitting on one of the buildings with no definable characteristics, so it can technically be any character you'd like.

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Fun Fact 9 - Eleanor's Arc

While Eleanor is inspired by a multitude of characters such as Harley Quinn, Cruella, Shiori Novella, Neo, and more, her arc was actually inspired by a character different to these.

Her arc was inspired by Weiss Schnee, or to be more specific, the song themed after her called "This Life Is Mine".

This was the song that would ultimately bring me the idea of Eleanor's backstory and the arc she goes through.

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Fun Fact 10 - Scrapped Character

One of the very first characters I created for JAOH, around the same time as Prototype Stellar, was a superhero by the moniker of Balance.

Sound a little familiar?

While not appearing in the story, this hero has been mentioned at least twice, in Issues #16 and #70.

The idea behind this character was that her power was "Perfect Balance". This allowed her to balance perfectly on anything, no matter how crazy the surface was. So she could basically wall run and do other cool tricks.

I'm not really sure why I never used her, other than the fact that I had chosen six characters to be the main girls and she wasn't one of them.