This is a very old concept of mine. The idea came from my love of the comic-book series THE AUTHORITY as originally written by Warren Ellis and then followed up by Mark Millar. I wanted to do a comic-book series featuring a team of mega-powerful superheroes. A group who would routinely face Extinction Level Events, not just the typical comic-book supervillains. And who are more powerful than actual GODS?

So I’d develop a mixed team of Gods from the Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Norse pantheons. This is why this submission is under both my superheroes and public domain categories, since these are pre-existing characters.

From the Greco-Roman myths I’ve got ATHENA, EROS, and HEPHAESTUS.
As the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare, Athena is the natural team leader. Like Wonder Woman on steroids. Eros, being a version of Cupid, I took the traditional Western appearance and portrayed him as a winged archer. Like Green Arrow, who can also fly. His quiver never runs out, so he has an infinite supply of arrows which can pierce through any known substance and he never misses. I also put him in a blind fold because he’s the God of Love and “love is blind.” With his God-like senses he doesn’t need to “see.”
And Hephaestus is the team technician, he devises and builds all of their high-tech equipment.

From Egyptian myths I’ve got HORUS and BASTET.
Horus the mighty sky-god, also known as Heru (see: Superheru). If Athena’s this team’s Wonder Woman Horus is Superman. Bastet the cat-goddess was basically the Wolverine of the group. Gotta have your bad-ass clawed character, right?

And from Norse mythology I took MAGNI and SKADI. I admit at the time I knew very little about Norse mythology. Unlike the other mythologies I hadn’t read much about them, at least not outside of comics. So thus my knowledge was limited to the Marvel Comics version of Thor, but I didn’t want to use him. So I did a little research and found Thor’s son Magni (who also has a brother named Modi, but I don’t need him), who was said to be even stronger than his father and could also wield his infamous hammer, Mjolnir. So he was the perfect “strong man” of the team. Skadi is the Goddess of the hunter and winter she’s…well, cool enough for me.

So there was the team. Originally I called them The Avatars, and I don’t recall why. Nor do I recall when I came up with The Mythicals instead, but that’s a better name.

The original premise was that The Mythicals appeared on Earth on 9/11 (I told you this was an old concept of mine). They appeared in the sky above the World Trade Center just before the second plane hit. The stopped it and saved everyone, making quite a public debut. This naturally made them worldwide heroes. They then set up a high-tech HQ on top of Mount Olympus, from which they monitor threats around the world.

One thing I was intending to leave open, at least for a while, was whether or not they actually were the Gods that they said they were, or if there was some other explanation for who they are and how they got their powers.

The above image I commissioned from KEITH HOWELL and I later commissioned this image from CELINA HERNANDEZ: