The End Comic Book Kickstarter Update - Artist Spotlight: Stefano Cardoselli & Ava Berman

Please see the recent Kickstarter Updates for preview art of The End from artist Stefano Cardoselli (Update #1) and Ava Berman (Update #3). I have also updated a new prize, a comic Ava and I work on together currently, as an add-on or stand-alone prize.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1945380719/the-end-4-and-5

I handed out around 200 or more Kickstarter flyers at AwesomeCon. We shall see if these have proven helpful.

The End Comic Book Kickstarter Update - Artist Spotlight: Brad Bowersox, Rand Arrington, & Wu-Gene Hong.

See my Kickstarter Updates to see samples of the art these artists have created for The End from artists Brad Bowersox (Update #4), Rand Arrington (Update #5), and Wu-Gene Hong (Update #6).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1945380719/the-end-4-and-5/posts

Brad's story is a short tale about a man who tries to make up for his past deeds. In Rand's story, Lester has been neglecting his wife for a promotion at work, but when he finds out the wold is going to end, he is determined to make his way home and spend the rest of his time with her. Then, in Wu-Gene's tale, I have posted the first 3 pages, so give it a look.

Why I Should Write For Hollywood - My Superman Movie (with Conduit)

      Superman. Back in high school I read his adventures right as he died. Yes, I read the Death of Superman with millions of other people. However, unlike most, I stuck around the comics for almost 2 more years after he returned. Most of the stories were pretty bland, causing me to give up the title. However, one particular villain and story stood out and has remained in my head as an essential Superman villain – Conduit (created by Dan Jurgens), who I think would be the perfect Movie Villain (this is the only middle/high school notes I made that I believe would still work today regarding my ‘Hollywood’ column).

      Unfortunately, Conduit appeared in 2 stories, but they were both rather long and really, really good. He is THE perfect movie screen villain to counter Superman. Why? He is someone Superman can’t get close to due to his kryptonite body and energy-draining metal tentacles (he can take Superman’s punch because they are only normal punches to him). He was Clark Kent’s athletic rival in school, and was always 2nd place and has an inferiority complex. And, he knows Superman’s secret identity and has a close and jealous relationship with him, making the stakes more personal and dramatic between the two. Beside, regardless of who it is, the villain always has to get personal in movies, and here the work is already done for you.

      The only Superman movies I had seen at the time were Superman II and the comics adaptation of Superman IV, so let’s head back to that time period and check out my old notes for the way MY Superman movie should have gone down.

First, Conduit’s comic back story.

      Kenny Braverman’s parents were giving birth to him on the side of the road because their car crashed on the way to the hospital. Meanwhile, Superman’s spaceship (carrying baby Kal-El/Superman/Clark Kent) landed at the same time. It emitted radiation that, while unharmful to normal people, WAS harmful to human beings that were not fully developed (aka Baby Kenny Braverman).

      Despite his handicap of radiation poisoning, he became an accomplished athlete, but it wasn’t good enough for his father, who only wanted him to be the best, and constantly wanted him to be like Clark Kent, who was the best in academics and sports (and who always beat Kenny at sports). Scenes of Clark and Kenny at high school are interspliced along with Kenny’s thoughts about how jealous he was at Clark, despite the fact they were also friends.

      Kenny gives himself up at experimentation to help his failing condition, and develops kryptonite based powers. On his first mission, he is thwarted by Clark Kent doing journalism somehow (it’s been a long time since I read this). His anger seething, he plots to escape his government experimenters and kill Clark Kent once and for all.

      Years later, Superman fights the villain Conduit at the same time Kenny is traveling in Metropolis. At the end, Superman discovers who he is. In the 2nd storyline, Clark’s family house explodes, as Conduit has discovered who he is, his parents and Lois are presumed dead, and a Superman with nothing to lose and on the run has to fight his desire for revenge that conflicts with everything he believes about justice.

Now, my movie version.

      The main villain would be Brainiac. Why? Because he hadn’t been in a movie and I didn’t know anything about him in 1994. Kenny Braverman trying to kill Clark Kent would be the subplot of the movie, trying to kill him and frequently finding him gone, interspliced with scenes of Kenny and Clark becoming friends from Clarks point of view (basically everything I summed up above) then slowly revealing Kenny’s resentment, and Clark just assuming he moved on to other friends. As Conduit, Kenny and Superman have one brief fight halfway through the film. Conduit escapes because he isn’t interested in fighting him, he only wants to find and kill Clark Kent, and Superman can’t see who it is because kryptonite blocks his x-ray vision (whatever, this is MY movie universe). If he found out it was Kenny now, it would interfere with his struggle for the main movie plot.

      At the end, Braniac is defeated, and Lois and Clark have a wedding at Clark’s family home. But then, someone blows up his home with his parent’s inside, creating a cliffhanger that leads into the 2nd movie.

      And yes, I wrote an entire outline about the subplot, but didn’t write anything about the ‘main’ movie plot, because what I was really trying to write was the 2nd Superman movie in my two-part series and make it serialized.

      So, in Superman 2: Superman finds the burnt bodies of two people (but doesn’t realize that they are fakes). Kenny has kidnapped his parent’s because he needs someone to vent to throughout the movie, but also because he wants to keep Superman in check with hostages. A distraught Clark gets a message to meet and he runs away as Superman. Here, Conduit reveals he is Kenny, and he and Superman fight, setting the stage for the rest of the movie about what the villain wants. Also, we see the flashback sequences from the first movie, only now they are in Kenny’s point of view, which dramatically changes the way Clark (and the audience) thought about them. Superman tires to reason with him, and we get home events about Kenny’s verbal abuse (he’s not a physical abuser) that Clark never knew about. He asks Kenny why he never told him anything, and that he was his friend and would have helped him, but Kenny is beyond reason or listening, and says he lured him in the open for one reason, to kill Lois. And says ‘Clark has everything, and I want to take it all away’. Lois is almost killed, but escapes.

      Using the remains of Braniac from the first movie, Conduit is able to interface and take over his systems and robots to scout for Lois, who goes into hiding. She should appear throughout trying to contact Superman, and investigate the Government (and call up her contacts) who gave Kenny his powers so she can find a weakness for Superman to exploit. It also gives Superman things he can destroy and fight throughout the movie (that get harder and harder as the movie goes on, as shown why below).

      After the 1st battle against Conduit, Superman feels weakened, and then comes to a realization that he can’t use one of his powers anymore, and that the more he fights Conduit, the less powerful he becomes. Conduit is trying to weaken him until he becomes just a ‘normal, worthless man like I used to be’ and then kill him. This also gives the movie heightened drama, as Superman slowly loses his powers, while Conduit gets harder and harder to beat with each confrontation. There should only be 4 confrontations MAX so the audience doesn’t get bored.

      Eventually Lois gives Superman the info he needs to defeat Conduit, but he sees an explosion behind her on the video monitor and assumes she died. Angry, at the lost of his parents and Lois, Superman is determined to kill Conduit, but as he fights him for the final time, he has flashbacks to his parent’s raising him as an honest, good, and moral individual; especially since he has so much power.

      Finally, he defeats Conduit, and refuses to kill him, because that’s not who he is. He would be betraying his parents, Lois, and himself.

      I never actually wrote Conduit’s final outcome. Would he vow revenge? Would he die of his own devices like in the comic storyline? Or maybe he finds redemption and accepts Superman and Clark as his friend somehow and lets his parent’s go as a last act of good will? Who knows why I never wrote this final part. Also, I didn’t seem to write any notes about doing anything useful with his parent’s and Kenny’s scenes talking to them. Way to write effective stories there 12 year old Shawn).

      Also, after this battle, Superman finds he will never be as powerful as he once once was because he was exposed to so much kryptonite in such a short time, but he will adjust, for he is still committed to fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

      DC made a serious mistake in never bringing this character back from the dead. In my mind, Conduit is the quintessential Superman villain.

My "The End" Comic Book Kickstarter

Please check out my Kickstarter for my comic book series, The End: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1945380719/the-end-4-and-5?ref=live

If the world was going to end in one week, how would you spend your last seven days alive?

The link above contains a short video with tons of art from the series as well as more info on how you can help.

Why I Should Write For Hollywood: Detective Beowulf (Outline)

      Ok, so almost all of these posts for Why I Should Write For Hollywood are bad ideas from high school, but this is one I created in grad school. And I think it could really work as a movie, just take out all the magic and supernatural elements. Whoa…put down the blade fanboy. Now I know most people think ‘mainstreaming’ something is removing the interesting parts, but hear me out.

I want to turn audible history’s first superman…

Into this.

      When in high school, I loved the Beowulf story. While at grad school I was always trying to write new ideas, but one of those wasn’t new at all; it was a retelling of the Beowulf story as if Beowulf was a celebrity detective, and altering the story to fit into a traditional 3 act structure so all 3 stories connected instead of being 3 separate stories.

      Now, here is the initial concept in one page from my old discontinued Microsoft Works file from 2004.

Detective Beowulf Concept

      A mighty celebrity detective (who has cameras follow him everywhere) is sent to stop the serial killer known as The Beast (Grendal). Beowulf boasts how easy it is for him to track anyone. The mayor holds a feast for him since the detective that has never lost a case is coming to help him. He tricks Grendal into attacking the mayor’s house, and rather than cuff him, finds Grendal’s arms too big for regular cuffs. Beowulf fights him and takes his arm, but The Beast gets away. Though he is not caught, they know Grendal will never return, but his mother does, and she brings a lawsuit against Detective Beowulf for the violence against her son.

      In the courtroom, it look like Grendal’s mother will win against the physical infliction that killed her boy, citing Beowulf used entrapment and didn’t attempt to arrest him and had intentions to kill her son. Later, Beowulf finds letters that show the mother actually taught her son how to kill, and finds a letter of The Beast, thanking her mother for traching him the thrill of killing others. Using this evidence, as well as a gun he found in her house that matched what Grendal had used to kill a few people on occasion. (However, Grendal wouldn’t use a gun, and what would the mother need it for, think so the gun can be the sword, or should the letters be the sword?) Grendal’s mother pounces at Beowulf and tries to cut him with a knife. Holding the evidence gun in his hand, it goes off and kills her.

      On the night of Beowulf’s retirement, the rising major crime kingpin has one of his front businesses robbed by a thief, and he declares war in the streets to find him. (This Kingpin also killed Beowulfs brother and was never brought to justice for it; thereby making an emotional investment in the story, and give Beuwolf some regret at not ever being able to take him down). Beowulf then leads a batch of new cops and detectives and trains them in crime prevention (some paid off by the kingpin which eventually leave or turn on him). He has a meeting with the kingpin at the beginning and is poisoned by him unknowingly. He kills the kingpin near the end of the story, but not before the kingpin tells him he poisoned him with a slow poison, that now takes effect. Now, many rival would be crime bosses will try to fill his position. With the death of their greatest officer, the city is left open for a giant crime wave/gang war.

      That is just the outline. I actually wrote the first chapter, as this was originally an idea for a book in my (I forgot) class, and I will put it up here when I am done with this blog series.

Murphy's Media Memories - Transformers: Battle For Earth (Kid's Book)

Murphy's Media Memories returns. Now, I will be making sure to get 8 episodes out each year, preferably every March through October, with any Top 10 lists or small bonus episodes in-between.

Now, see my gateway into the Transformers Universe, a children's book from 1984 that does a horrible job of connecting text to art, in what should be an important factor in a picture book. I do a brief run-down of all the Transformer characters in the TV show to show you just how off the book is when it comes to it's characters. Also, I look at the 2nd Marvel Hardcover book to see just what my younger self missed out on.

Why I Should Write For Hollywood: Marvel's Cloak & Dagger

While reading Spider-Man comics, I came across the duo of Cloak & Dagger. Though I never came across their comic adventures, like Deathlok, I thought that this was one of Marvel's properties that could make the easiest transition to film. Below are my 2 (yes, 2!) Cloak & Dagger movie ideas from high school.

Cloak (Tyrone Johnson) is a teenage runaway with a speech impediment, who ran away when he felt guilty that his impediment prevented him from warning someone of danger that led to their death. Dagger (Tandy Bowen) had a neglectful mom and ran away from home as well. They initially meet each other, learn to survive on the streets together, but then become involved with a shady 'friend' who kidnaps and experiments on them with drugs. Said drugs at first kills them, then gives them powers.

Cloak found he had access to a dark dimension that increase his hunger for...souls? lives? The Darkness in men's hearts? Ok, that probably needs clarification for an audience. Anyway, Dagger's presence of intense light-powers she gained prevents him from acting on his impulses, so now he actually needs Dagger to survive. Dagger has the potential to explode with too much light over time, and Cloak can use his darkness to absorb it, preventing her from hurting people around her. However, Dagger does not need him as much as Cloak needs her, but helps him anyway because they are friends. This is where an interesting dynamic could be explored in a 2nd movie, especially a sequel where he develops an unrequited love for her (like in the comics), but in doing so might push her away.

The theme of drug-addiction should not be dumbed down. Cloak represents a drug-addict that needs help, and Dagger is the friend that tries to put him on the path of recovery and control. In fact, Dagger can not only shoot light-daggers that attack people, but they also remove physical and mental additions in drug users, which Cloak would, over the course of the movie, become really angry about since he doesn't have such an easy solution to all his problems.

Also, you can't do this movie without showing a family facing drug addition that Dagger helps them overcome and become a family again. Not just superheros punching each other here.

I always imagined a movie would be very simple; you see how their home like sucks, they run away, meet each other, become friends, then get experimented on, are thoughts to be dead, only to rise up with new powers that work well in tandem together, though only Cloak needs Daggers powers to remain in check. You have a dynamic where only one of them needs the other, which would be very interesting to work with, especially if Dagger contemplates turning home.

In the first movie (yes, 1 of 2), they should be friends only. And this isn't because Tyron is black and Tandy is white, but because they would need to be established as putting faith and trust in each other first to work together and have revenge on the drug dealers that killed. In addition, every movie is about a guy and a girl falling in love, and they originally start off as friends in the comic, so do that in the movie, which NEVER HAPPENS in Hollywood movies when there is a guy and girl character. Also, they should attempt to travel together to their parent's home and try to live a normal life, but find they cannot with their powers.

Also, I don't know any villains they fight, but it should also be a teen run-away (the one that betrayed them) who became the drug dealer that experimented on them but has developed a huge cartel and empire through it. He then uses the experimental drug on himself to become some villain and fight them at the end, Tyrone wants to kill him, and Dagger has to talk him down from his darkness.

In a 2nd movie, you could have Tyron start to develop feelings for Tandy, but she does not return them. In fact, she could start to meet a fellow superhero and fall in love with him, and also learn to control her powers without Cloak, leading Cloak to feel hopeless and alone, and attempt to give more into the darkness. Maybe even evolve his powers somewhat to reflect an ex-drug user who relapse. Dagger, of course, will feel guilty, but Cloak will have to learn that he can't always rely on her for everything and bring her down with him all the time. In fact, her lover at the time should be slightly accepting of Cloak, but also a little jealous of how much Cloak needs her to survive. Drama! I don't have more than the first act for this film in my head, though.

So that is my high school Cloak & Dagger movies (before the year 2000)

Recently, in a Spider-Man crossover, Cloak and Dagger switched powers. That would make for an interesting premise, but you would need the foundation of a regular move )or 2!) for it to work. Also, Cloak and Dagger were supposed to have each other;'s powers in the first place, which made them previously weaker, so now, with Cloak having light power, and Dagger with Darkness, they are more powerful, but also more addictive, and now Dagger would need Cloak's help with the darkness that threatens to want her to consume people's...souls (or whatever it is his powers do; ok...it's not very well established what it is, which is necessary for a film to work). Unfortunately, since this happened in the comics 2 years ago, Cloak & Dagger have yet to be seen anywhere to see how they deal with this new development.