Script Frenzy: The Project Explained

I mentioned yesterday that I'm trying to write a comic book script to prepare for Script Frenzy. I'm doing this partly because I've always wanted to and, until I took a closer look at the rules, was thinking about doing a graphic novel in June. And partly because comics are nearly as visual a medium as film and I think that's something I need to work on if I'm going to write a successful script.

I also mentioned that, like any good comic fan, I've long wanted to write a comic book. And I've got plenty of ideas kicking around just waiting for the opportunity. Like anything I do, they're involved, convoluted, and probably way too much effort involved for the meager returns. I've got enough material, I think, to populate several universes by now because, for me, most of the fun lays in building not exploring these fictional worlds. Although, like most comic fans, most of those ideas are by and large, crap (Because the trick in good comics isn't in the ideas, it's in the craft. And I have absolutely no idea about that because I don't have the experience.).

The comic I want to write is really just a part of a much larger story I'd eventually like to get around to telling, if I could ever make sense of it. Since it involves a cast of thousands, literally, and spans decades, I doubt I'll ever iron everything out enough for it all to make sense – I can set up lots of interesting things but getting them successfully resolves is much harder – if only in my head, let alone settling down long enough to put it all down in writing. Where, of course, the beautiful ideas that float around my head like fiery butterflies never seem to come out as amazing as I envisioned them.

It's really, if you're going to reduce it down to the basic level, Sausaletus Rex's “mutants done right”. Because it's about what happens when a bunch of ordinary people start to develop weird and fantastic powers. Powers that give them the opportunity, if not the inclination to reshape their world. Because, unlike the common take that, say, the X-Men are a metaphor about race or sexuality, I' d view it as a metaphor for growing up. It's about responsibility, about accepting it and dealing with it and what happens when you're handed it and realize that there's no one smarter, stronger, older, wiser, or experienced to turn to, it's in your hands. In other words, being an adult. And handing people these awesome powers the world has never seen before, powers that make them feared and envied, would serve as a way of dealing with that in a 4-Color, solve your problems by punching them way.

That would be the overriding theme. Although, as you can imagine for such a moving epic there'd be plenty of interwoven threads and motifs. The actual plot starts with a single person (A girl at the moment. It's been a boy, at times, depending on how I'm feeling) who, while away at summer camp, stumbles across a mysterious alien device.

What it is wouldn't be made clear right away but it would be, essentially, an alien probe, one of a vast number sent out across the universe to gather and collect data by an extremely advanced civilization. Not an alien civilization in the Star Trek, “people with funny stuff on their noses” way but more like the unfathomably, unknowably other of Lem or Clarke. So far advanced that the technology of the probe is nothing we could currently understand. The aliens would consider them no more important than we would a satellite but, to us, they'd be extraordinarily advanced, artificially intelligent computers capable of analyzing, recording, and even manipulating forces we've never even dreamed of. They've seeded the universe with these probes for some purpose which I might or might not ever get around to detailing. But, for some reason, the probe the young girl uncovers is damaged and, in an attempt to repair itself, it somehow bonds with her.

The probes are intelligent, in a strange, inhuman machine way but in an attempt to record the girl (Or to reboot its core programming. Again, this is the sort of detail I'd need to work out.), this probe would develop a consciousness. A conscience. And the young girl would be able to, if not control, then direct it.

This being a comic book and the girl being the decent sort, the first thing she thinks to do with is to help people and fight crime. Back in her hometown, it quickly becomes a sensation and the early part of the story would follow those characters trying to figure the unexplained events saving lives and stopping disasters. The probe would, by this time, have adopted a human form, mimicking that of the girl which would possess what amounts to telekinesis (There'd be some kind of psuedo-scientific explanation because, after all, it's all derived from the fantastic alien technology.). I'm a little weary of making yet another Superman pastiche, but that's effectively what it would be – just as an incredibly alien machine intelligence being driven by a little girl (So, I guess, it's more like Captain Marvel. But I mean, the malfunctioning probe would display the standard tropes of super-strength, super-speed, invulnerability, and flight. I'd really play up the TK, though, in order to set it apart.). As it was slowly unveiled and sighted publically more and more, the girl would eventually take to dressing it up as a superhero.

At the same time, other superpowered individuals would begin to crop up. I don't think I'd ever explicitly state it, preferring to leave the characters room to come up with their own – conflicting, of course – explanations but, for my own purposes, the malfunctioning alien probe would be sending out some kind of strange radiation which, in the hands of a sentient creature, is capable of rewritting reality. With humans, or at least a select handful, it tends to alter them according to their innermost desires or fantasies or even just subconscious whims. And it's those people who'd start to take up the spandex tights. There'd be a handful, at first, some who'd be very public, some who'd try to stay hidden, including a government sponsored, military hero, a fame-hungry failed actor using their powers to become a wealthy star, a juvenile teleporter with a penchant for pulling “Punk'd” style pranks, and more.

Some good, some bad, but the conflicts between them would drive the plot for a while. And they'd accept the malfunctioning probe as just another empowered human. However, the government wouldn't. In fact, they'd know early on that the probe was something alien and dangerous. And they'd take steps to control and eventually contain what they, somewhat correctly, view as the beginning of an alien invasion. They end up basically outlawing the superpowered (The tensions would be simmering in the background for a while but shoved to the forefront thanks to some blunders and revelations – like how one of the high profile superhumans is, in fact, an elementary school age kid able to transform into various superpower forms. It sounds a lot like Captain Marvel, again, but I'd hopefully be able to carve out something distinctive. But also because all the superpowered people would be cropping up in America, in the girl's hometome, to be precise, and that would be ratcheting up international tensions and making the U.S. government increasingly paranoid.) individuals and rounding them up for imprisonment, study, or service like the military sponsored hero. That's when the shadowy government agency that's been hounding the superhumans for a while – they'll have been charged with defending the nation from alien threats, perhaps – reveals their secret weapon: a superhuman of their own. A young girl, let's call her the Agent, whose bruising strength tears through the other superphumans as they're rounded up.

Eventually the superheroes will punch their way out of that mess with the shocking revelation that the Agent isn't actually a superhuman. She's not actually a human at all. She's another alien probe (This would be the point in the story where the whole probe thing would become, if not public, but common knowledge. I just don't know if I'd have doled it out to the readers or not.). One of several that's been unearthed over the years and experimented on. They'd somehow caused one of the probes to undergo a transformation not unlike the malfunctioning one (Although not bonded to anyone) giving it a human appearance which the scientists have been raising as human and training as a secret government operative. Not knowing she was an alien probe the Agent didn't have access to the full powers of the malfunctioning probe. The two meet up and the malfunctioning probe is able to overwrite the programming of the government's probe with its own (Or something. Again, I know the main plot points but the details of getting from point 1A to point 1B are where things fall apart.), creating, in effect, a duplicate of itself.

Things calm down with the secret agency discredited, the anti-superpowered laws repealed, and everyone trying to go back to normal, with the young girl from camp that started the whole thing originally in control of not one but two alien probes. But, eventually, the Agent's original personality asserts itself. Only with the knowledge that she's not actually human but but something alien. And incredibly powerful. Feeling abused and abandoned by the scientists, by the government, by the girl, by her sister probe, she sets out for revenge.

And that's where the story I want to tell picks up. Because it would be all about the Agent preparing and launching an attack not just on those who've wronged her but humanity itself (There'd be, perhaps, some foreshadowing that not being damaged, she'd uncovered some of the probes original programming which would be a lot more sinister than originally thought, perhaps.). Because it's a section that shouldn't be very talky yet filled with a lot of ominous portent and Akira style destruction.

Um, yes, so just explaining the backstory of what I'm planning took longer than I expected. I kinda ran out of steam there at the end, in case you can't tell. The scary part would be that what I'm calling the Agent here (In case it's not obvious, I suck at names and they're usually the last thing I add to a work. I just don't think in proper nouns. So, I know exactly which character I'm talking about, I just don't have a good name for her/it.) attacking is only the climax of the first, say, third of this story. They story would go on to have the Agent decimate the superhumans before being stopped and apparently killed by the original malfunctioning probe which would depart for parts unknown. Some time later, a second “generation” of superhumans, much larger than the first, would crop up (Ostensibly, in mind at least, because of the fall out from the battle with the Agent.) eventually prompting a return to harsh government regulation. They'd be absolutely terrified of another attack by the aliens and seek out the malfunctioning probe. Then eventually break up into various camps which would each try to have their own next “generation” of superhumans. More stuff happens, they save the world a few times, until they're finally eliminated by humans and I do some cosmic, time and plot warping stuff to make “sense” of it all.

Like I said, way complicated. Which is why I'm going to focus on just that one particular slice of the story where the Agent's making her plans and committing to her initial attack. I'm not sure just how many pages it's going to cover. I don't think I can string it out into a full issue or 22 pages worth and I might just go for a smaller, more Brittish 8 page, serial kind of thing. Or I might just not care about page count at all and just take however long I think it'll take to tell. Hopefully, we'll get around to that tomorrow but I think I've said enough for tonight.