TPG Week 139: Strong Starts

Steven Forbes | August 23, 2013

Welcome back, one and all, to another installment of The Proving Grounds! This week, we have a new Brave One in the person of Chad Handley. No jokes about where Chad is from, nor will I make jokes about his last name. This week sees outstanding Samantha Lebas in purple, I’m svelte in red, and we see what Chad does with

THEODICY ISSUE #2

“EVERYTHING THAT BEGINS TO EXIST HAS A CAUSE” PT 2 of 6″

INSIDE FRONT COVER QUOTE:

“God has provided enough light for those who wish to see, and enough darkness for those who don’t.” – Blaise Pascal

Page one

EXT. SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY

FULL PAGE SPLASH – Looking down at a dozen heavily-armed, elite soldiers, all wearing jet-black, ceramic body armor. Across their chest plates is the sinister, imposing corporate insignia of the SANCTION COLLECTION AGENCY.

Across the visors on all of their helmets is a visible digital counter, which will be explained shortly. All their visors display exactly the same time: 2:58. (Can we see their faces through the visors? What material are they made of?)

Dominating the frame, towering above the rank and file, straddling two armored TRANSPORT TANKS (one foot on each tank), and wearing the SPECIALIZED ARMOR of a Sanction Battalion Leader, is COMMANDER GRAVES.

He is calmly, matter-of-factly staring up at us through the viewfinder of a large, sinister-looking ROCKET LAUNCHER mounted on his shoulder. (Talking while aiming a rocket launcher? Isn’t he the boss? Wouldn’t he just be standing there giving orders from his perch? I want to see his whole face here. As a reader, I want to know who I am dealing with. Consider getting rid of the weapon, there is enough firepower here already. He never uses the rocket launcher, cut it.)

Graves

Attention(comma)delinquent account holders. We are the Sanction Collection Agency(add emphasis, either set the title off visually or put it in a separate balloon).

GrAVES (CONT’D)

This is an attempt to collect a debt.(I am picking knits, but it’s not an attempt. They are GOING to collect, one way or another. The language should reflect that.)

(Page Break)

(I am intrigued. You are building an interesting reality, introducing a conflict and using that conflict to tell us about this world. Strong start.)

We’ve got P1 on the books!

This page has something that most scripts that come through here don’t: a strong visual for the opening page. Most of the scripts that come through here treat the first few pages as a warmup, getting to the splash page, if there is one, in their own good time. This story is treating it like a James Brown song: a strong opening note. I like that.

What I’m not sold on is the visual of the guy straddling two tanks. When I think of a tank, like most of you, I think of the Sherman. (Not SherMER, SherMAN. One’s a fictitious high school in a great, great movie, the other is a WWII tank.)I’m not seeing a guy being able to easily straddle two tanks. Not unless he’s a giant. However, I could be wrong.

However, I like the effect of having the rocket launcher seemingly being pointed directly at me. That’s another strong visual.

What’s even better, though, is the dialogue. If you were to pick up this as the first issue, and see that there’s some guy with an army behind him, and he’s pointing a rocket launcher at you, and they’re all part of some sort of collection agency and they’re there to collect a debt… That’s intriguingly absurd! I’d be forced to read on, MacDuff!

Like I said, this is a strong opening page. Gets you right into the action.

PAGE TWO (I like a panel count here, not necessary, just something to consider)

1 – REVERSE looking over Graves’ head up towards an ordinary, suburban, two-story home. We can see a FRIGHTENED FAMILY huddled inside, peeking through the windows.(I think you need a little more detail here, even if you have described the family in another doc, we need to know exactly how many and what kind of people are at THIS window, so things will be consistent)

GRAVES (CONT’D)

Sanction is not your creditor. Sanction has been retained by your creditors in an attempt to bring your account current. (Again that pesky attempt word. They are going to bring the account current. They have tanks for christsake.)

2 – Close up of a frightened elderly man inside the house, looking down through a window.(Who is he? How is connected to the group? Which window? Does he have a weapon?)

GRAVES (O.S.) (CONT’D)

Sanction does not negotiate.

GRAVES (CONT’D)

We offer only one peaceful option:

3 – Close up of a horrified middle-aged woman. (Is she with the group, or alone? Where in the house is she?)

GRAVES (O.S.) (CONT’D)

The delinquent debtor surrenders herself to us within three minutes, without condition.

4 – Close up of a terrified young mother, pulling a scared young child close to her. (Need more detail here, how old? 15? 20? 40? How old is the child? Infant? Toddler? School age? Where are they in the house?)

GRAVES (O.S.) (CONT’D)

If the debtor refuses, and we are forced to extract her, we will kill everyone else on the premises. (Should the debtor refuse, we will be forced to extract her?)

5 – Close up of Graves, as he looks up at the family inside. The digital countdown display on his visor now reads “1:29.”

GRAVES (CONT’D)

Your three minutes began at the commencement of this statement. You have one minute, thirty seconds remaining.

(All right, so you could use a little more detail, but the story is moving along and remains engaging. Still liking this. You should have Graves give his name in this speech, just for the sake of clarity.)

P2, and things are going exactly as they should.

P1 starts with the close-up of the guy aiming a rocket launcher at us. That’s striking. He says something that seems absurd to us. That’s striking. That gets us to turn the page.

We turn the page, and what do we see? We see what he’s aiming at. That keeps the reader engaged.

Then we fall down just a tiny bit. We know there’s a family in the house, but we don’t know how old they are. That’s important for the artist to know. Most of these characters are more than likely going to be one-offs. I’m betting we don’t see most of them ever again, and because of that, the artist needs to know their approximate ages. Elderly is not an approximate age. I know some 65 year olds that are still very spry, while others are not. So, it depends on your vision of elderly.

If we knew who was in which window, that would make all the difference. That info should have been in panel 1, or at least giving that info in their respective panels.

My only gripe is that these panel descriptions are a bit light when it comes to actual information that is important to the artist.

PAGE THREE

1 – A Sanction RECON TROOPER is perched on the roof of a neighboring house, overlooking the scene.

GRAVES (O.S.) (CONT’D)

(over radio)

Good morning, Mr. Ford. What are we dealing with?

2 – Ford’s POV through INFRARED GOGGLES. We see HEAT SIGNATURES of the family inside the target home.

Several red-hot humanoid shapes holding blue-green handguns huddle around a large window near the front of the house.(How many? How many rooms can he see here? Electronics and lamps have heat signatures too. Does he see those?)

(Note: in the HUD of Ford’s visor, we can see the timer counting down through the next few panels.)(You’ll need to give the times then)

Ford (O.S.)

(over radio)

Ten civvies. Five armed. All huddled around the main window like they’re in a fucking Western.(I would have him acknowledge that he is speaking to Graves, just so we are sure.)

3 – An adult male heat signature approaches the shapely heat signature of a young woman.(What’s the body language like? We can’t see expressions so this is important. Does he place a hand on her shoulder, is she sitting on the bed with her face in her hands, or standing alert, ready to run?)

FORD (O.S.) (CONT’D)

(over radio)

Here we go. Runner’s in a bedroom on the southwest corner. Looks like she’s gonna be an earner.(When you introduce words that function differently in the context of your story, like ‘earner’ you may want to emphasize them)

4 – Close up, as the adult male heat signature hands the young woman’s heat signature a handgun.(Again, body language?)

Ford (O.S.) (CONT’D)

(over radio)

Whoops. Daddy just handed her a piece. (Separate balloons) Looks like he’s giving her the old “save one for yourself” speech.

5 – On Graves, on the ground now, prepping his weapons. The timer on his visor now reads 0:02.

Graves

Our reputation precedes us. (Separate balloons, consider ellipses instead of period) Hard light weapons only inside. No need to waste ammo. Sonic rounds on my mark.

GRAVES (CONT’D)

Mark.

6 – A line of Sanction soldiers OPEN FIRE. (What does ‘open fire’ mean here? Is that information in a different doc? You need to make sure your artist has a clear understanding of how this looks.)

(Note: their visors display the countdown, and all of their visors read 0:00.)

NO COPY

(The devil is in the details, for sure. Unless you have an artist lined up whom you trust to fill in the gaps, you’ll need to do so.)

P3, and we have something that’s a bit unusual: we have the reliance on color. Most comics use color as a crutch, because it has to be that way. That’s what American comic readers are used to seeing. However, if you take the color out of those stories, most of them still work.

Here, though, we have a difference. We have a page where color is necessary to help tell the story. Graytones wouldn’t cut it. It would be like trying to watch Predator in b/w. It can be done, but not to best effect.

The main problem with this page is the pacing of the dialogue. Most of the time, dialogue can be broken up into complete thoughts, with the balloons themselves acting as little pauses either between sentences or thoughts. That’s most of the time. There are other special cases, such as drawing things out for dramatic effect, where you can split a thought over two or more balloons.

The really great part about this dialogue, though, is that it is both crisp and clear. Chad is setting up his world, and I’m having no trouble at all in following along.

PAGE FOUR

1 – Inside the house, dozens of SONIC ROUNDS tear through the windows and the walls. Every projectile is surrounded by large concentric circles of SONIC WAVES.

Several of the family members are clipped by the rounds, but none fatally. (How many? Which ones? What does ‘being clipped’ look like? Why is no one fatally injured? Seems like at least one person would be.)

But all of them are dropping like stones from the incredible sonic assault. Their weapons fall forgotten from their hands as they desperately attempt to cover their ears.(We need to know who had weapons, what they were and how they are positioned. Also, what does the home interior look like? Where is the camera? Aerial shot? Straight on?)