This is something that I’ve been mulling over for awhile ever since I started drafting the 2002 story arc. The first Variables arc (that I have yet to finish) is very Ameri-centric in nature and can easily be picked up by any English-speaking person and read without difficulty.

But that’s not what Variables is about, really. When I started drafting the concept with my friend Nick back in 2008, it was about placing super-humans in the real world and fitting them into realistic situations and actual events that happened. It also wouldn’t be confined to North America, as so many stories of this kind tend to be. These people appear all over the world; it simply wouldn’t be plausible to focus only on the ones who reside in the ol’ US of A. Plus, a lot of really interesting shit happens all over the world. It would be a shame not to touch on past events and situations that an English-speaking reader may not know about.

Which leads me to the 2002 story arc that takes place in Athens, Greece. When I drafted the Karter Floros character, he didn’t have a home. I originally planned him to be in Europe but wasn’t sure where his character would be a logical fit. I considered Austria but there’s no blasted crime or real social unrest in the country. I also considered Germany and while social unrest is a little more prominent, it still wasn’t a good fit. So I started reading up on the former Soviet Bloc nations and almost placed him in the Czech Republic before it occurred to me that Greece was a no-brainer option. So I went back to the drawing board (not literally) and started researching more about Greece’s modern history, 1960-present. It was a literal goldmine of oppressive governments, social unrest, economic instability, and events that perfectly fit how I envisioned the Karter Floros character. I began writing the character into events, organizations, and movements that molded the already-established personality of the character. It was exactly what I wanted when the character first popped into my head.

But then I started to see a problem emerge. Nobody knows a god damned thing about Grecian history. In the story, I deal with the school protests of 1991 (a real event), the conversion from the Drachma to the Euro (which, as many of you may know, has led to quite disastrous results for the nation), PASOK (a prominent political movement in Greece for quite some time), and 17 November, a long-running terrorist organization that caused quite a fuss for the Greek government for almost three decades. All of these things created the Karter character as he is today but outside of news fanatics or Greek citizens, they probably don’t resonate with many people.

So how much can be expected of a reader? Do I continue down this path of relative obscurity, playing up events that don’t reside in the public consciousness or do I stick to more tried-and-true events and countries, forcing the comic to stick to mainstream western countries such as Canada, the US, England, and France? It’s not an easy decision to make, especially because I find the situations in these other countries so much more fascinating than the beaten-to-death tropes found in more publicized western nations. As I said earlier, the 2002 arc is just the beginning. Another story I will touch on is about the post-Soviet orphans of Moscow, many of whom eek out a life living in the sewer system. It’s a classic Lord of the Flies situation with a real-world side to it. Another story involves the devastating poverty of Papau New Guinea and how one man with extraordinary abilities could take advantage of the situation. It’s not as if I’ll be ignoring North America, though. What will probably be the most written-about character in the universe is American, as are several other peripheral characters.

Anyway, I’m kind of rambling at this point. This is something I will have to keep in mind as I draft future stories. I just wonder if I’m passing up a mainstream audience by not spoon-feeding them information and possibly challenging them to read up on world events just to understand everything that is happening in Variables. Is that too much to ask from a comic book audience? I’d like to think not but I don’t really know for certain. It’s not as if Variables is the most high-brow form of entertainment around (I mean, it is a comic book) but I’d like to think that’s it’s not Superman, either.

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