[META] Coincidence?

[Martin Phipps]

Superfreaks Season 3 #'s 11-12 had the detectives investigating the
case of a murderer who picked his victims according to who posted
inflamatory remarks and/or spam on usenet message boards.  The
detectives lured in the killer by posting their own inflamatory
remarks and spam on message boards and waited for him to show up.  The
killer fought back and was fatally shot.

A month ago, CSI New York had the detectives investigating the case of
a contract killer who picked her clients online according to who sent
out inflamatory remarks.  The detectives lured the killer by sending
out their own inflamatory messages and waited for her to contact
them.  They arranged a time to meet but she got suspicious and ran.
The detectives followed, she fought back and she was fatally shot.

Superfreaks Season 3 #12 was posted on January 9th of this year,  That
was during the writer's strike.  This CSI New York came out a month
ago.  It was part of a new crop of episodes that was written after the
writer's strike.  We know for a fact that the script for this episode
had not been written prior to the writer's strike because if it had
been it would have been filmed during the writer's strike and not
after.

There are a few differences.  First of all, my killer had mutant
powers and theirs was merely highly skilled.  Second, their killer was
contacting her clients online and was making a living this way: she
was not motivated by a desire to kill people who post inflamatory
remarks.  Finally, my killer was using usenet and their killer was
using msn messaging.  As usenet is searchable and msn messaging is not
(and is, in fact, supposed to be private), they had to have their
killer use a spyware program that would infect people's computers and
have it send her a message whenever the user would type key words like
"dead", "kill" or "hate".  It would make sense if they had started
with something simple like usenet and then moved to msn messager
because viewers would be more familiar with msn messager and spyware
than with usenet.  Otherwise, the two stories play out in the exact
same way.

This has happened to me before,  Back when I first started writing LNH
stories, I created a character named Julie and had her be Deja Dude's
girlfriend.  She was Chinese.  They eventually broke up.  Julie moved
on when she met Philip Martin, a man who looked exactly like Deja
Dude.

Within a year, the TV show Friends introduced a new character also
named Julie.  She became Ross' girlfriend.  She was Chinese.  They
eventually broke up.  Julie moved on when she met Russ, a man who
looked exactly like Ross.

Eerie, isn't it?

Oh and in an old rec.arts.comics.xbooks thread I suggested that they
could do a new series with new students based out of Massechusetts
Academy with Emma Frost as the headmistress.  A few years later,
Generation X came out.

Do you ever get the feeling somebody might be out there reading your
posts and not telling you?

Martin