Purple Monster

I have been pondering where to actually start the story for the comic book – I could push it further and further back say to the rise of the ‘Elves’ civilization or to it fall but I think that at this stage I do still want to keep the Punk central to the proceedings. So do I start with her in a tank of ambiotic fluid?

I think not actually – I think I want to start with her going about her normal say as a hybrid in the land of the Elves being the minority and the things that entails but with the intrigue of something more. Her not knowing that she was made etc… I am also wondering weather to bring in the computer architect at this point – he is someone I have been toying with in my head – should he somehow still be alive? Should he have ever actually met the Punk etc…

I need to think carefully about the pacing of the piece though which will establish exactly how it starts!

Well I have been doing alot of reading up on comic books and graphic novels – firstly what do they mean the target audience is male between 18-30? Most of the comic book consumers I know are female :/ Even the publishing side of things seems to assume you are male :/

I know there are target audiences/demographics and I’m aware that if you are trying to be ‘commercial’ you go for these but this is quiet frankly CRAP business sense – you’re going for a flooded market – your trying to sell something that is a commodity – something that is churned out by the bucket load by well established giants like Marvel. Well if that’s what your aiming for good luck – but that is not what I am aiming for.

I am writing the Punk novel and now the comic parts of it for people well… like me. I suppose that would be geeky, action loving erm… girls? Though I hope guys will like it as well. Also I’m 29 I am almost out of the comic book demographic (if I were male) but do people really loose interest in comics magically when they hit 30?

My husband seems to have read more Graphic Novels in this his 30th year than I have ever seen in the past (mainly as I inherited a load and finially got round to unpacking them and putting them on a shelf!). Maybe people were embarrassed to be seen at 50 walking into a comic book shop, maybe the fact they tend to be hidden away meant that people like me didn’t want to wonder they by ourselves even in full daylight but things have changed – there is this thing called the INTERNET and lo!

You can order things and have them posted nice and neat without being caught by your boss buying a copy of Buffy when your a 45 year old project manager. My local even does this delivery malarky.

So dangerous as it seems I’m going to ignore the demographic thing and go for the sort of thing I want to see – who knows maybe this is a new untapped though to be fair probably niche market.

Ok so I had a radical rethink and came to the conclusion that the Punks WHOLE LIFE would make an interesting comic series that could be sold as the normal comic magizine type things or almalogmated into larger collections to make a ‘graphic novel’. This is a bit scary as I still have many unanswered questions about the Punks origin.

The other thing is do I start it at the fall of the Empires, or at the fall of Babel or at some other juncture?

But apart form those questions and the general arg! I changed my plan PANIC! feeling I think this approach could be very good for the NaNo-novel as well. The Punk novels start in the middle with slices of the past laid in where as something that just chronicals the whole story from start to finish could be very interesting. The two approaches provide completely different story dynamics too.

Well it looks like this is what I’m doing so just some fine tuning needed :/

Well I did have a plan but it was built on a foundation of assumption i.e. that a comic book script was basically a storyboard – this is not the case :/

You have to describe each panel etc… which means I have to story board the whole thing and then write the script from that – meaning it is twice as much work :/

The other issue is thinking about the length – I don’t think Project Fire Storm will be more than say the 20 pages of story – it may be more once I get going but even if I add in The Actimen Cull that would be another like 20 pages. They are about the right length for a comic I suppose :/

So I may need to throw in some more stories.

So it is the first day of Script Frenzy and I realise I know like nothing about how to write a comic book script – well I realised this last week actually and spent sometime going over threads on the Screnzy Forum.

I discovered many things such as the fact that often it isn’t the artist who writes the story – this one is a bit beyond me as I can not really divid the two aspects up! Then there is the idea of what a comic is verses, Graphic Novel – according to the industry inturpritation I am constructing a graphic novel but though I am on the threads on the forum for my own working through ideas I will continue to think of it as a comic.

And there is the other rub – comics would be about 20 pages long as apposed to the 120 odd for a graphic novel. Well I was going to do Project Fire Storm but to be honest I’m not sure how much space that is going to take up so maybe I should look at adding in the Actimen Cull or something like that :/

I have very specific ideas of what a comic is and what a graphic novel is – however these are my interpretations and there are many if not most that would break these rules. Never the less they are what creates the boundaries I want to work within.

Comic books to me involve pages split up into panels where the story is acted out in pictures with a few words here and there, speech in bubbles and the like. Graphic novels on the other hand have on or two sides of writing to one large and often less cartoony type of drawing/painting. Often with diagram type pictures acting as boarders or back drops.

I don’t care what size the book is or weather it is hard or soft cover or a magizine type construction it is the size of the pictures to page ratio and weather there is writing within that picture denoting the story.

Of course many books may incorporate both styles – I would tend to put these more at the comic book end ie comic style with one or two full page spread pictures showing scenes in mass detail.

I do want to cover both types book within my Punk project but for ScriptFrenzy I am sticking to the comic book form as I feel it will serve the fast pace easier.

I take part in a little weekly challenge – the idea is to produce a piece of flash fiction (less than 1000 words) and share it with people on Twitter under the hash tag FridayFlash. Anyway I have been writing several things that are based in the Punks world and are important to the future history of our planet (if that makes sense!). One of these is a precurser to Project Fire Storm and explains why the cops are in such a bad way it is called the Actimen Cull and can be read here.

I have decided to take part in the sister project to NaNoWriMo and that is Script Frenzy – a 100 page script written in it’s entirety during April!

However I was already considering parts of the Punk’s story as graphic novel and comic book type stuff so that is what I am going for. I am turning a past event that has only been mentioned as an aside in the Punks story so far and turn it into a comic book script.

I have been musing over comic book or graphic novel and I think this particular story the fast action and sort of but kicking aspect are more the sort of thing suited to a comic book.

Of course the too types can be mixed and matched but I have my own likes and dislikes and the way I view the comic books and what a graphic novel should be are very specific.

In case you were wondering it is going to be Project Fire Storm – I am itching to get started and have a sketch book set aside though have noticed I’m running low on my thin black fine liners – I seem to keep using them up :/

In our near future and the Punks recent past there were a series of incidents that lead to the global corporations gaining power one of these was Project Fire Storm which blantantly was organised and paid for by a conglomerate of mega business.

The technology used in project fire storm was cutting edge and perhapse just a little bit advanced for the human race.

The event itself lay nations in ruin and resulted in a new world order where the corp rules. The idea was to take out all opposition to the gathering, utilisation and wasting of resources for a healthy cash flow. The opposition to such things would be Environmentalists in this case the main vocal group were called the Green Anachists and the Punk was an active member. Ironically the other group to oppose such things tended to be governments and their various enforcement bodies such as the police and army. Hit the other infustractures of society such as the fire departments and over load the hospitals and you get social collapse, doomsday and anachy.

Fire Storm officially is reported as a terrorist action by the evnvironmentalists but as their casulties were so high it seems remarkably unlikely to anyone who actually thinks about things.

With bucy-tubes (nano-tech made from the third polymorph of carbon – the type initially found in meteorites) woven into the fabric of all the uniforms of the police, army, fire department and so on – globally. To make sure that everyone was affected the uniforms full of the nanotech were being issued for upto five years before the event – some think upto ten.

A little corporate logo button associated with designer lable type clothing which due to privatisation would be expected from uniforms. There was a chemical in tubes which on contact with air exploded – the logo button was a reciever which broke the tubes when it recieved the correct signal.

This happened on a global scale whilst the protest was in progress – the protest itself was global, the biosphere was in danger of a rapid collapse – enough to be noticed by the layman. Panic of global air supplies running out due to lack of trees had spread in the global concouseness.

Most of the protesters where injured by the exploding policemen and soliders or the panicked stampede that resulted from it.

The hospitals especially in places like the Uk just could not cope – they were on their last legs anyway – the corporations stepped in and saved the day with untested medical supplies and procedures. Most of these worked better than they thought but one or two had devastating effects – none of this was ever investigated outside of the corporations and most of it was never actually reported.

Many of the families and friends of the service people where hurt in what was termed the cross blast. Policemen often had a couple of uniforms which would have been at home in wardrobes or in the laundary. The Punk herself was caught as her partners uniform exploded in the washing machine. She was not at the protest as he would have lost his job if she was thought to still be active within the environmental group. The police had to be very careful due to the state they were in after the Actimen Cull which had occured only 25 yrs before and had lead to an all out state of pen pushing war with the global businesses.

She had been working as a scientist but companies kept getting around the important things and she had lost heart – activism seemed a good alternative but ultamatly that too failed.

Injured and in the hospital but recovering fast she got to see all the injured pouring into the ill equiped hospitals. Recovering she did some investigation as she had to bury her partner. The whole thing stunk to high heaven but part of it desturbed her more than anything and that was that different factions who would never work together had apparently done so without realising it. There was the taste of consiracy theory in the air and she was as always right.

The ancient race that had made her had its own terrorists and they spent much time trying to get humans to whip themselves out. Project Fire Storm was helped along by the appearance of certain tech that involved optronics and techniques more specific to glass making than what we would concider technical.

Having uncovered the larger trueth and almost getting herself killed Alicia a.k.a. the Punk finds she has to change her identity sooner than she had been planing.

This was an old film with the old style quiet sound and lots of people as extras it was basically the story of Sir Walter Raleigh – i found the film a bit confusing to begin with but once I had sorted the characters out it was ok.

The premiss is that he is trying to get his ships for exploration of the New World but the Queen has the hots for him so keeps him at court and bans him from seeing any of the maids in waiting. Of course he falls in love and thinking he is to be killed – sleeps with and then ‘marries’ one of the maids. He is then however basically given his ship.

The maid is being sent to France but is pregnant, neither the Queen nor Sir Walter know this but a messenger passes on the gossip not knowing that he is speaking to the baby’s father. Anyway they plan to run away on the ship together to the New World but they get caught – they are going to be executed and then the Queen changes her mind as she was made an orphan by such means. So they end up sailing off to the New World together after all.

This fits perfectly with the sort of thing the Punk would go ballistic about – men are always leaving her to go and have kids and she blames them and loves them still. Now all I have to do is find out if it is remotely true! I haven’t yet come across any of this in the history books I’ve been reading :/