I write a superhero story site at AsylumReRaiders.com. The premise is that on 9/11 a second-world dictatorship sponsored terrorists to taint a new energy drink with a mutagenic poison; it interacted with a person's gene structure to determine what symptoms it caused so no two people were affected the same way. Millions of people drink it the day it is released, 0.0001% survive, all of them mutated. PRESTO! the origin of superheroes - and yes, that's been done before. One of the characters there is Robyn - not Robin. I wanted to do something original-ish. I'm tired of orphans; orphans have been done to death - Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Kal El, Cara El, Tony Stark, Peter Parker,... the list never ends! So young Rachael survives drinking the energy drink and soon realizes that she is no longer just a good intramural athlete, she is a phenomenal intramural athlete. The media carry the news about all the aftermath of the millions of deaths, the discovery of the terrorists, and the appearance of the mutants that survived. Some of them have useful powers and make themselves assets to the community, others use powers for their own personal gain. Many take on flamboyant costumes, some of them even copy known comic-book characters. The press tell of one in particular who does not make a spectacle of him-(her-?)self all the time. This one prefers to be unseen. Several cases of known - I'm sorry, alleged - criminals report they were attacked and beaten up in by someone they never saw while they were committing crimes - I'm sorry, allegedly committing crimes. Eventually someone in the press suggests that maybe it's Batman right out of the comics, Of course that's crazy, nobody could actually be the Batman, but there are a lot similarities. When Rachael hears of this, she wonders if it's really true. Could there be some mysterious man out there, prowling the night, beating up bad-guys, protecting everyone. "OH!" she thinks, "How ROMANTIC!" Long story short, she puts her athleticism to use, investigates, and eventually sees him in action! It's TRUE! He IS real! She is inspired and creates her own version of Robyn, spelled with a "y" instead. So now we have a healthy, normal looking, well adjusted teen aged girl from a successful home with parents that are still married who's motivating problem is now that she's a super, she no longer fits in. She has to hold back to avoid causing suspicion while having to constantly drill to improve her abilities so she can maybe one day meet this Batman and become his partner! OK, I told you all of that so I could tell you this: while working on her costume through several evolutions, I think I finally have it down. While learning how to do transparencies, displacements, and bumps, I made her a bat logo shaped mask to emulate the object of her fascination. In the process I realized Robyn needs to remain Robyn and not become Batgroupiegirl. The illustration above (bottom right) proves my point! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The stories are located here: AsylumReRaiders