(NOT-)FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: My proposal synopsis for a (very) rare successful pitch!

In a quite belated attempt to notify Patrons that, for once, published work of mine is (or was) out on those Local Comics Store shelves (or wherever), thought I'd seize the opportunity to briefly discuss a one-shot story I wrote and laid out for Marvel!

October 30 saw the release of the event tie-in story Venom War: Fantastic Four, written by me with sweet art by Joey Vazquez and pretty colors by Guru eFX.

Note that the issue also boasted a variant cover by the great Walt Simonson, which was highly relevant as my story kinda-sorta contained references to his classic Fantastic Four run:

If you like, you can check out this positive review that also gives a good overview of the narrative.

Here are the Work Stages on my favorite page from the 30-page story, starting with my two-color thumbnail:

...and artist Joey Vazquez's inks:

I really enjoyed Joey's artwork for this issue, with his facial drawings being my favorite part; bit of a pleasing Mike Wieringo feel to his expressively cartoony approach, IMHO. 

Next up, the excellent-as-always colors by the studio Guru eFX:

Now, this Venom War: Fantastic Four one-shot wasn't a "cold pitch" as such, given that editor Jordan White already had me in mind to handle this wacky li'l "side story" branching off from the main Venom War event (which, BTW, you don't have to know anything about to follow and, I hope, enjoy the issue's narrative).

I did, however, have to work up a brief synopsis of what I had in mind before starting work on the script and layouts, which I'll now paste in here; hold off on reading the following ramble, howeva, if you want SPOILER-free enjoyment of the issue.

FF/VENOM/DOOM/KANG NOTES

My basic concept is that both Doom and Kang would be too busy, well, Doom-ing and Conquering to have enough free time to plot out all their insanely complex and convoluted supervillainous schemes on their own. So, the two uberbaddies have devised very different approaches to carrying out all the industrial-scale scheming necessary for their respective brands of epic supervillainy.

Doom has assembled an elite cadre of his most cognitively advanced Doombots and set them to working up schemes 24/7/365, sleeplessly pacing to and fro on a single floor of Castle Doom en masse as they feverishly compete to brainstorm up brilliant schemes that their creator might deem “truly Doomworthy”; note that this would, of course, include the scheme that “Doom Himself” enacts in Venom War. Note also that, to resolve their often vicious disputes, the “Schemebots” have taken to sneaking down and using Doom’s famed Time Platform to visit alternate timelines and test out their manifold schemes’ degrees of viability. Chronoshenanigans ensue, needless to say! [Note: I had to cut out this subplot due to pagecount limitations.]

Kang, by contrast, has set up a single “Kangself” to carry out the bulk of his even more elaborate and complicated “chronoscheming”; we’ll call this Kang “He Who Schemes,” as an oblique reference to “He Who Remains.” This entity of purest intellectualism lounges in a Chronopolis suite and spends all his time (ha ha!) crafting endless, mindbogglingly multifaceted schemes to be enacted by other Conquering Kangs. Ah, but such is the pleasure that He Who Schemes takes in his beautiful, elegant, refined plans that he’s become disenchanted with how clumsily they’re carried out by the other Kangs, whom he views as uncaring, unrefined philistines. So, in a clear case of “if you want something done right, do it yourself,” he’s calved off an army of time-advanced copies of himself to better develop and enact his most beautiful schemes—such as, say, the one reaching fruition during Venom War.

He Who Schemes and his Kangself operatives use the rather unique tactic of “weaponized timeloops”—that is, they’ve figured out how to seize a branching alternate timeline and loop it back on itself on a brief but endlessly repeating timespan. This is where the Fantastic Four comes in, for during one of their long-ago jaunts in the famous Time Sled (either “Rosebud I” or “Rosebud II”), a He Who Schemes operative hijacked the chronovehicle in midflight (or whatever you’d call it) and trapped an alt-timeline version of that FF in a minute-long timeloop that’s been repeating ever since, while the original FF went on to their established adventures. As we’ll see, He Who Schemes has spawned thousands if not millions of similar abbreviated timeloops involving Marvel superhumans, which he can access as unwitting assets when his brilliant schemes require. (More on how this works in battle shortly.) [Note: Ehh, I wound up limiting this concept quite a bit due, once again, to pagecount limitations.]

In this case, He Who Schemes taps the timelooped FF to use as a weapon against Doom’s own (Schemebot-derived!) plans, given that he knows full well that ol’ Victor (in any form) cannot cogitate with perfect rationality whenever the hated “Richards” is involved. Ah, but the FF will eventually be able to turn the tables on both (or, I suppose, “all of”) their supervillainous foes because, go figure, Reed was able to perceive that they’ve been trapped in a one-minute timeloop for years now, and cleverly developed a series of badass “Big Ideas” to foil Kang et al. when the opportunity presented itself.

Note that this will involve some arguably non-canonical uses of Mr. Fantastic’s power set, from Reed manipulating his vocal cords to perfectly imitate Victor Von Doom’s voiceprint (and defeat Castle Doom/ Schemebot security) to a much more bizarre and disturbing riff in which he stretches and warps his own brain tissues to match Kang’s security “neurosignature” and gain access to He Who Schemes’ timeloop controls; however, I believe this can be justified by making it clear that this is a timelooped version of Reed with years of (repeating) time to explore his powers in new and innovative ways. Moreover, this is truly a “one-shot” version of the FF with no ties to ongoing continuity, as they will cease to exist once their own imprisoning timeloop closes at the story’s end; of course, this gives me a chance for a wee bit of tearjerkery as our heroes confront the episode’s final outcome. [Note: Nope, no tearjerkery in the final version, which ends on an optimistic note worthy of the FF, who were after all my favorite characters from reading Marvel titles as a wee child.]

Question that just occurred to me: Will it be a problem to refer to that previous Time Sled iteration of the FF, with different uniforms and the like? Hope not, but I should definitely check on that. [Note: Nope, wasn't a problem.]

Side note: I should clarify that He Who Schemes and his spun-off Kangself operatives further deploy truncated timeloops as tactical weapons by—using the FF as an example—going back in time to find an example of the Human Torch using his devastating Nova Flame, excerpting that fraction-of-a-second power usage into an endlessly repeating “action chronoloop,” then opening a temporal window out of that loop so Johnny’s fiery blast can be unleashed at will by a Kangself in battle. Even wackier, He Who Schemes can “spam” such windows en masse, such as creating a First of the North Star-style rapidfire flurry of dozens of Ben’s timelooped “Clobberin’ Time” punches to use against the Ever-Lovin, Blue-Eyed Thing himself! No need to worry about why other Kangs don’t use this tactic, though, given that we can say that only He Who Schemes arrived at this clever approach after eons of endless scheming and brainstorming that no other Kangselves were able to carry out.

To wrap up the story, Reed ends up defeating Doom’s Schemebots and He Who Schemes by bridging their “lairs” and trapping both sets of schemers together in an endless, five-second timeloop of imminent (and infinite) conflict. Cue the never-ending supervill-on-supervill action!

So, that’s my basic concept for the Doom/Kang/FF end of things. The remaining narrative challenge, though, is how this would interface with the actual Venom War plot elements of Venomized hosts and symbiotes; I’ll need to query you folks further re: where/how you want me to start off those elements and where you want me to leave ‘em, as right now I’m operating off only a line or two from the War synopsis. [Note: Nope, wasn't a problem.]

I'll close things out with some of my page roughs in "quad thumbnail" format:

Such "thumbs" are by no means an efficient or remotely cost-effective use of my limited worktime, but such was the complexity of the narrative that I felt like I had to do so; luckily, artist Joey Vazquez was cool with working from 'em.

And here's the "quad" that the Work Stages excerpt above was derived from:

Despite the event tie-in challenges, I quite enjoyed writing this one-shot and would love to write more comics for other artists to draw; alas, I never get a chance to pitch on anything other than one-offs for Marvel or DC (or any other company, for that matter). Oh, well.

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?

UPDATE: Might be a look at the next art-test story for The Chaste and the Chained, in which I might have stumbled across a digital workflow breakthrough. (I did say "might," though.)