ghost beef
It is time for a round table on creativity! Please enjoy your tea and ignore the bindings about your ankles. The spikes are there strictly for your protection.
I have exposited before that I like to let my ideas get good and fermented before converting them into strip form, and it is true. The genesis of Pissy, Red, Mechanical was actually a movie parody strip I wrote up like six months ago. The trigger was the release of promo media crap for the movie One Missed Call, whose concept – spooky voice mails – instantly struck me as so dingnuts stupid I had to take it to the next level, for this is how I roll, like a sausage wrapped in the thick pancake of played-out cliches. The script, which’ll never run, went:
THE RINGTONE OF DOOM
Jane’s Ghost: Nuts! I’ve been serial killed!
Jane’s Ghost: Rock! I’m see through and fulla spookiness
Jane’s Ghost: Weeeooooo! I’m like that Ringu chick.
Jane’s Ghost: Ya know, I should probably, like, warn that guy’s future victims with messages of their impending deaths or some shit.
Jane’s Ghost: I’ll use technology!
Sara, in car. Her cell: Bulululululu
Text Message: OMG WTF SHT SHT SHT
Text Message: NO WAI I M N TRBL
And so on. Deciding it wasn’t really ready to go, I left it in the vat. But I don’t forget about it. Because I, for one, am a patient motherfucker, like my name was Cedric Daniels. And finally, about a month ago, during a script-writing grind, I come up with the cell-phone-as-angry-red robot angle (most internet-famously here of course, but also referencing this video-game guy ; it’s kind of a mini-trope) and that’s what I needed to bring the strip home. Once upon a time, I mainly drew cartoons to throw elbows. Now, I’m more interested in the machinery of it, and any thrown elbowlike forms are pure collateral unless they hit Republicans. Anyway if I wanted to bring drama it ain’t like there aren’t hundreds and hundreds of fatter more deserving and stinky targets in print and web alike, right?
PART THE SECOND
So the Monday after, I flip around and read this Diesel Sweeties installment, which – because it’s fun, reality? who cares – I choose to interpret as a very passive-aggressive counter-elbow. “Sweeet,” thinks I, though in truth I am not particularly impressed to hear Red Robot parroting the conventional wisdom of international forum dickheads, I mean, he’s the house shit-wrecker, wouldn’t he be more like “I AM the apocalypse, bitch”? I dunno. Not my place really. But I figured two could play at the passive-aggressive imaginary riposte game, and used that strip to generate Cynical Girl. This my friends is the process at work.
As a dude with years of cynicism experience I would like to note that while Jane’s lines about “you aren’t special, just an ordinary person (like everyone else)” and “it makes you feel special to be scared of the apocalypse” are not authorially endorsed on account of actually being kind of stupid, that bit about having slave labor convince Westerners that there are still little kids inside of them is some stone cold shit I can’t even keep looking at much. Can’t blame Sara for the waterworks there to be honest.
All that said, there will not be any subsequent ripostes or subliminal ghost beefs with anyone anytime in the near future however – I have two months of scripts written, which’ll take me past the 2-year anniversary, and as longtime readers may remember that is the Traditional Time For Change around here and old scripts will not be valid. But in the interests of furthering drama, I would like to gently direct Red Robot to the original masters of shit-wrecking, as I gently back away and look up Iago’s monologues. Who says I don’t think of the audience?
ALSO A BIG MEDIA PSA
If you are not a total geek for superhero comics, as I personally am not, the little dealie after the credits to Iron Man is in fact totally & completely missable. The more you know!