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A (RARE) SUCCESSFUL PITCH #1, pt.2: The adventure (belatedly) continues!
🕑 Added 2022-06-17 14:00:10 +0000 UTCOn this particular Friday, I'm taking a week off from posting roughs and scripts from 2017's failed project Empowered and the Mask City Meltdown to revisit a supposedly continuing feature last addressed in a post on April 27 (ouch): Namely, a successful pitch for my 2000-2001 run of writing and occasionally drawing an 18-issue run on Wildstorm/DC's superhero title Gen13!
Cutting & pasting from our earlier installment:
So, about a month ago, I stumbled across a bunch of old Word documents for a series of mostly unsuccessful proposals which could be featured on future Failed-Project Fridays. I then put up a poll for the Bigger Spenders of the $10 & $20 Patron tiers, querying those extra-generous folks as to which defunct pitch they'd like to see posted first.
Ah, but at the end of the poll I tacked on a voting option for a rare successful pitch of mine—namely, the 2000-2001 run of Wildstorm's superteam book Gen13 (issues #60-77) which I wrote and occasionally drew. And lo, the Big Spending Patrons chose that that option as their favorite by a wide margin, with the pitch doc for the defunct crossover Dirty Pair/Gen13: Jupiter Brain coming in as a distant second. (That old proposal and others from the poll will appear here eventually, likely after I've finished the serialization of script and layouts for the similarly defunct miniseries Empowered and the Mask City Meltdown.)
Note, however, that the actual Word doc for this pitch is inaccessible, no doubt lost in a botched hard drive migration of yore, so I had to scan a set of printouts of the Gen13 pitch for your reading pleasure.
Note also that the Gen13 image that leads off the gallery above mainly focuses on previous miniseries Grunge! the Movie and Magical Drama Queen Roxy, but the piece does feature a few cameos from characters that appeared in the #60-77 run.
Anyhoo, next in the image gallery above are my synopses for two different big, sprawling plotlines that the run would've been building up to; neither happened, alas, because the book got cancelled due to low sales. However, Wildstorm quite generously gave me a final few issues to wrap everything up, which led to the emotionally charged, "Everybody Dies" arc of "This Is How the Story Ends," which wound up being quite important to future projects as I first developed my taste for tearjerkery.
Note that, even after the years that have elapsed since, the concept behind the first proposed plotline remains unused in American comics so far as I am aware. As I hope to revisit said concept in a standalone superhero title or possibly in future Empowered volumes, I've censored it for your future entertainment value:
The rest of the scanned pages above cover my takes on the individual Gen13 teammates. Keep in mind, kind Patrons, that I wrote this proposal over 22 g-d years ago in a rather different creative climate, so brace yourselves for once au courant concepts and descriptive approaches that have been rendered tiresome or cliched or unfashionable or, let's face it, problematic over the intervening decades. (Especially a few of the bits in the Sarah Rainmaker description, as I recall.)
Anyhoo, after serialization of Mask City Meltdown wraps up in June, I'll post the last bunch of pages from this pitch, which feature a series of "odds & ends" story fragments, most of which I wound up using (IIRC) in the series.
NEXT FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: Stand by for the final two installments of the aforementioned Empowered and the Mask City Meltdown, including a conclusive riff that wound up tying into a key story element of Empowered vol. 12.
NEXT UP ON THIS HERE PATREON: Stand by for a quickie weekend bonus post, as I just stumbled across an unusual piece of artwork that kinda connects to this very post—including one of the very rare occasions that I've ever drawn thong underwear. Gasp!
Comments
Burninator
Not sure about format, eh? Does this mean Empowered: The Musical is a live option? More seriously, I wonder what that might look like, especially given that I believe you told me once that traditional "floppy" issues weren't practical in the present market. Some sort of subscription-based Webtoon type thing? Mini volumes in some sort of trade format or format similar to what newspaper comic strips sometimes get released in with like 80-120 pages? Chick-tract style pamphlets left on random buses?
Adam Warren
In an indirect manner, yes!
Adam Warren
Well, future EMP "stories," at least. I'm far from sure what format those might take, so "volumes" might be a bit of a stretch.
KranberriJam
Oh, so I can blame this for the reason my heart still breaks every time I see Hannah, got it.
Burninator
Does "or possibly in future empowered volumes" confirm that there will be future volumes post-12? I had been under the impression that 12 might well be the end of the line.
JKurt
I always enjoy these text posts. Also, "or possibly in future Empowered volumes" 👀
