Day 6 and Counting

DEFIANT

PANEL 1 The interior of a space ship that is equal parts Jack Kirby and HR Giger (lots of abstract shapes and polka dot clouds of energy but with disturbingly organic textures as if the Xenomorphs infested Marvel's Asgard). Doors in the walls with bars and numbers on them should suggest a prison or ship's brig. Defiant stands with her back to the wall, ready with a gun that looks like something straight out of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon. She's hiding around the corner from a prowling trio of goons. They are dressed from head to toe in red and black checkered environmental suits with helmets that look like World War I era gas masks. Defiant is a gorgeous blonde that looks like she stepped out of a Frazetta painting. She's got blue skin and some very intricate abstract tattoo work down the left side of her body. Her costume leaves very little to the imagination.

PANEL 2 Defiant rounds the corner giving the reader a very good view of her shapely posterior and vaporizes goons with a wild spray of laser fire.

SFX ZAP, ZZAP, ZZAPP

PANEL 3 Cut to the inside of cell. Princess Arda, leader of the Resistance, is chained to the wall. She looks up as the door whisks open to reveal Arda.

ARDA Defiant!

DEFIANT I'm here to rescue you princess.

DIALOG(OP) Kevin?

PANEL 4 Close-up of Arda and Defiant. Their bodies are tantalizingly close to each other. Arda is leaning towards Defiant, eyes closed. It should look like she's about to kiss Defiant. Defiant has turned toward the reader her face...well defiant.

DEFIANT Not now dammit!

ARDA My hero...

PANEL 5 Cut to a modern suburban bedroom. The walls are covered with video game and heavy metal posters(one of which features a very large, angry looking tiger). Kevin, Defiant's alter ego, sits in front of a computer with his head turned towards the right of the panel. Kevin, by the way, is a spiky haired blonde fourteen year old boy, with peach fuzz facial hair, an earring and lots of zits. He has the same annoyed look on his face worn by Defiant in the previous panel.

HIS MOM(OP) I thought I told you to take out the garbage!

KEVIN But garbage day isn't until tomorrow!

MOM (OP) NOW!

5 down 25 to go.

THE LATIN WAR

Panel 1 A small group of homeless Trojans long battered by travel with no possessions "but their swords and their boats" come at last after their long wandering to the good land of Italy and are thankful to be there. They are men very much in the classical mode though poor. Aeneas, their leader stands to the fore and surveys the wilderness. His power and charisma are apparent despite his poverty and the trials he has endured. He is tall, strong, and handsome: the son of the goddess Venus.

CAPTION After many travels and tragedies Aeneas, son of Venus, led the remnants of Troy to the land of Laurentum.

Panel 2 A great hall within a settlement of the Latin natives of the land. The Latins should be contrasted with the Trojans, and should look more like what we would consider barbarians. Their leader Latinus sits on a throne made of wood, leather and animal bone (a pair of elk antlers flairs out like wings) and looks disturbed as a messenger recounts news of the arrival of the strangers.

CAPTION When Latinus, king of the native people, learned of the Trojan's arrival he was concerned.

Panel 3 A battle. The Trojans fight in an organized, regimented fashion much like the Romans who will be their descendants. The Latins fight in a howling mob. Both Latinus and Aeneas are prominent on their respective sides urging their men on and directing the battle.

CAPTION The Latins made war on the Trojans seeking to drive them back into the sea. For three days the battle raged.

Panel 4 Aeneas stands over the fallen Latinus ready to thrust his sword into the King's throat. Latinus raises his hand in a gesture for mercy.

CAPTION At the last it was Aeneas' victory over the king that ended the fight. Latinus sued for mercy and offered his daughter to seal the pact.

PANEL 5 A prosperous but still crude settlement that incorporates both classical and barbarian elements. We can see the two cultures merging together as Latins and Trojans mingle, marry, and trade.

CAPTION The Trojans and the Latins became one people and built together Lavinium and for a short time Aeneas knew peace.

Day 4 of 30

LULLABY

Panel 1 Interior, a wooden cabin. Light pours in through an open window. Bill is loading a break action shotgun. He's in his forties, with balding hair, a thick beard and dark circles under his eyes. His clothes are rumpled and stained with sweat.

CAPTION Some things you wish never happened. I wish you'd never been bitten. That's regret.

Panel 2 Close-up on the gun as Bill closes the action. We can see that this is a gun that's been well used.

CAPTION Some things you don't want to do before you do them. I don't want to put you out of your misery.

Panel 3 Close-up on Bill's face as he wipes the back of his hand across his nose. There is sadness in his eyes.

CAPTION That's doubt.

Panel 4 Bill walks across an icy field toward the barn. The snow makes the scene look at once serene and dead. Bills back is to us, his shoulders slumped under the weight of what he's about to do.

CAPTION You were the best Buddy: loving, fearless, and sweet. You weren't here nearly long enough and now it's time to put you to sleep.

Panel 5. Bill aims his the shotgun at the thing in the barn: his three year old son Bill JR (Buddy). The boy is a zombie and is feeding on the remains of a rat. Buddy's back is to Bill and he is looking directly at the reader. The barrel of the gun is pointed directly at the back of Buddy's head but Bill's face is turned away.

CAPTION Goodnight son.

Day 3 of 30

PANIC

PANEL 1 We're inside a bunker deep below ground. The walls are bare concrete. Light is from florescent bulbs overhead. One of two survivors, John, sits on a bench attached to a wall scribbling away in a notepad when a noise off panel distracts him he looks up and to his right. He's dark haired in his early thirties with about three weeks of beard on his face.

CAP 23 three days after the event. Simon and I pass the time trying to figure out what happened: war, plague, zombies...

CAP It's gotta be zombies.

SFX Creeeek

JOHN ?

PANEL 2 John stares aghast as Becky, a Rastafarian chick in her early twenties enters the bunker through a door way, smiles and waves. Pale sunlight shines down from above onto the floor. Simon rushes in from the bathroom pulling up his pants. He looks similar to John but with lighter hair, and an anger management problem.

BECKY Hello!

SIMON What the $#!% ?

PANEL 3 Becky stands there looking around while ignoring the two men. John is to her left glaring at her, arms across his chest. Simon screams and points at her.

BECKY Nice place you got here.

JOHN The locked door wasn't meant as an invitation.

BECKY I figured while I was picking it.

SIMON @#$%ing fix it!

PANEL 4 Close-up on Becky as she shrugs and rolls her eyes.

BECKY Sorry chum. Don't think I could if I wanted to. Tiny screws. Biiig screwdriver.


BECKY Dunno why you're hiding. The apocalypse was sort of a bust. Everything's fine.

PANEL 5 Simon and John look at each other. John still has his arms across his chest and looks snide. Simon looks sheepish and apologetic. Becky has wandered off frame into the bathroom.

JOHN Told you we should have brought a radio.

BECKY(OP) Wow were you drinking out of the toilet ?

SIMON Pizza's on me.

Day 2 of 30

Today, a classic Greek myth...and I break the five panels rule.

PANDORA

Panel 1. The wilderness. People clad in skins and furs frolic around a bonfire waving torches in the air. Their faces are full of ecstasy and joy.

CAPTION The gift of fire had freed man from darkness. It was a golden age on earth.

Panel 2. Olympus. The gods stand in a circle around a naked Pandora, the epitome of classical beauty. She's covering herself with her arms and her eyes are downcast, her face demure, almost sad.

CAPTION Enraged Jupiter decided to punish him with another gift: the gift of beauty without restraint.

Panel 3. Mercury presents Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Epimetheus is totally smitten with the girl. Pandora gazes into his eyes lovingly. Mercury is smiling at the terrible joke. Only Prometheus who stands off to the side looks suspicious.

CAPTION Blinded by lust Epimetheus ignored his brother's foresight and accepted Pandora, gave her free reign of his home, forbidding only one thing.

Panel 4. Close-up on the infamous box, more of an urn in this iteration. The sides are decorated with paintings of all manner of grotesque sins. The top is sealed with red wax that drips down the side like blood. Pandora's hands hover over it.

CAPTION Epimetheus possessed the jar in which Cronus had bound all the evils that plagued man: diseases of the body and sins of the soul.

Panel 5. Pandora opens the urn and a tide of hideous evil pours out of it. The look on Pandora's face is one of horror.

CAPTION In her foolish curiosity Pandora opened it and unleashed hell upon man.

Panel 6. The wilderness again. Man now fights man with weapons of iron, the forest is denuded by greed and a few unfortunates stagger around infected with plague. Everywhere fire burns out of control.

CAPTION The golden age was over. Thanks to Pandora man had learned that fire can also burn.

30 Days, 30 Pages

So instead of trying and failing at National Novel Writing month AGAIN I'm going to attempt to tell 30 complete stories in thirty days. Most will probably suck but what the hey my non professional rep can take it. I'm posting the first one here.

CHEAT

PANEL 1 We are in a drafty chamber, the upper room of a crumbling tower on the edge of the wilderness. We can see through a window that the light is fading outside. The room is already full of shadows. Loki, a young man in his late twenties, already balding dressed in rumpled wizard's robes stands over an unlit candle making arcane looking gestures. The look on his face is one of frustration. The candle itself is conspicuously unlit. On the table surrounding the candle are various implements of the wizard's trade: alembics, tarot cards, an athame, and a very large book. Loki speaks a few nonsense incantations represented on the page by mystical looking squiggles.


PANEL 2 Close-up on the still unlit candle. Loki's hand hovers a few inches above the wick. His fingers are twisted in such a way as to control the magical energies. More gibberish comes out of his mouth (off panel) with an exclamation at the end.

PANEL 3 Close-up on Loki's face as an idea of such astonishing simplicity hits him (the proverbial "a ha!" moment).

PANEL 4 Close-up on Loki's hand as he flips open a zippo
cigarette lighter and makes fire.

PANEL 5 It is now fully dark. We can a see a full moon through the window outside. Loki is seated in a chair with his feet up on the table reading from the book while the candle burns (it's about half gone) at this point. Loki is smiling.

Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero

As someone who has been involved in "the Games Workshop hobby" for many years I know Dan Abnett as the writer of some of the best gaming fiction available so naturally I was curious to see what Triumff, his first original novel, had to offer.

The story is set on an alternate Earth in which Elizabeth XXX rules an Anglo-Spanish unity forged when Elizabeth I married Spain's King Phillip. And there's magick, rediscovered by no less a personage than Leonardo Da Vinci. The year is 2010 but for all that technology has advanced it might as well be the late sixteenth century. A plot is afoot and the only one who can save Queen and country is Sir Rupert Triumff, lately returned from his discovery of Australia.

If you're an Abnett fan looking for something along the lines of Eisenhorn or Gaunt's Ghosts you'll be more than a little surprised by the tone, which is somewhere south of Pratchett. Don't expect any rigorous historical extrapolation either. For all that he uses four centuries of world history Abnett might as well have set the book in the reign of Elizabeth I. There are some truly god awful puns (I almost put the book down when the Swiss Army Rapier showed up) but there are quite a few laugh out loud funny bits.

On the plus side the book moves at a decent pace and is very hard to put down once you're into it. The setting is well realized if a bit silly, and the author's affection for and knowledge of Elizabethan England is apparent on every page. There are some interesting literary experiments as well. The narration is mostly third person but shifts into first when the narrator is actually present for events giving the whole book an air of unreliable omniscience that I don't think has ever been used before. The plot is nicely tied up in the end but at the same time the setting is big enough for further stories.

Secret Project

So last night I had a dream. It was so mega awesome that I had to start work on a secret project right away. All I will say for now is that it's a comic and it's epic. Nothing more concrete until the first draft is done!

It's Done!

I came home last night to find the final page waiting in my e-mail. The story is done and it looks spectacular! Gavin and inker Nick Justus really pulled it off. We're talking about what we want to do next (something modern) and hopefully we'll get paid next time.

Thoughts on Writing

Cut and pasted from a reply I made to a thread on MillarWorld.

Read all you can. Don't just read comics but novels, short stories, newspapers...anything and everything in all genres. Don't just focus on super heroes or sci-fi fantasy but westerns, romance, crime, history. You won't like everything but it will all go to make you a better writer with more depth of knowledge.

Start talking to artists. Take art classes in your high school even if you can't draw because this will help you understand your artists. It will also expand your vocabulary of visual terms which will be invaluable when describing things in your scripts. You might want to PM Elliott Balson. He's an artist at about the same stage in his career who might be willing to illustrate some of your scripts for the practice (once he finishes work on his entry for our anthology).

Learn to take criticism. No one will respect you if you can't and it does help. And if an editor rejects you with any actual criticism at all (as opposed to a form letter that just says 'sorry') this is a good thing. The editor thinks you have potential and is trying to encourage you.

Listen to writers talk about writing. Type in just about any writer's name on YouTube and you'll get bunches of videos some of which might be valuable especially this from Alan Moore.

Learn to spell, or at least spell check, and develop a decent sense of grammar. You don't have to be an English teacher but no one will take you seriously if you can't tell the difference between : and ; or there and their.

Last but not least always remember that "talent" is crap. "Talent" is something people make up to explain why they fail. What separates a writer from a reader is nothing more than will: the will to sit down at the keys for lonely, unproductive hours hacking away at something that refuses to work, and then submit it for criticism and scorn from everyone. And then the will to do it all again when it is rejected. I highly recommend that if a writer needs a job while breaking in he should go into sales because it toughens you up to rejection like nothing else.

If you want to write, write. And good luck!

The Coolest Thing I've Seen All Week

Saw some of the first roughs for the story this evening and they look even better than the ones in my head. And tomorrow I see the first sonogram of my unborn child. Hopefully that will be as successful.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I'm still waiting to hear whether or not there need to be any final edits made to my entry in Fist Full of Comics, but while I've do that I've started working on another project. It's the first of five or six issues in a super hero story that will ultimately be about action and consequence. This is the second pass I've made at this story. The first was good but I quickly lost my way trying to follow the first twenty two pages with a second. No artist for this one yet. Going to wait to finish the writing before finding someone.

Final Draft...I Hope

After coming home and futzing around for a bit I tightened up the dialogue in the script and sent it off to editor and artist. Hopefully both will be pleased and I can count this one done and move on to something else. I've many other ideas to work on.

And so does the Artist!

Just heard from Gavin and he likes the script as well. He also has some concerns about the dialogue so today when I get home I'll be tightening that up. He's working on character designs so hopefully I'll be able to see something soon. Looking forward to it.

Well My Editor Likes It....

He did suggest a couple of changes but I agree with him on the first and the second points out something I need to clarify more than change.

Now I just need to hope the artist likes it...

Another Day, Another Draft

After spending most of my free time yesterday procrastinating, I finished a second draft of my script and sent it off to the editor of Fistful of Comics. Unfortunately my artist still hasn't gotten back to me with his comments... but I still have time to do a third and final draft and see how that works.

The second draft is stronger than the first. I'm starting to actually be happy with the story as a whole. Can't wait to see it actually drawn.

It is accomplished!

So this is my new blog. I just started it today to take full advantage of Fist Full of Comics, the comic book anthology being put together by some very talented people over at Millarworld, (the official forums of Kick Ass writer Mark Millar, who is in no way associated with the anthology).

If you've known me for a while and you're wondering why the hell I give a shit, (beyond random geekery) it's because I've been given four pages to try my hand at writing a story. It's a big deal because over 150 people made pitches and some of them were pretty good so it's certainly a very thrilling thing. Hopefully the story will pass editorial mustard and the whole thing will come together.

I don't want to say too much about the story in question other than:

1) it's four pages, 2) it's done (at least the first draft) and 3) it's fantasy.

The script is currently in the hands of my collaborator the talented Mr Gavin Smith (you can check out his art here).