[MV] The Super Wizard From Space #25: To Hell And Hell And Hell And Hell And Hell And Back Again, Part 1

Andrew Perron pwerdna at gmail.com
Mon Dec 12 12:18:08 PST 2011


On Thu, 8 Dec 2011 17:31:34 +0000 (UTC), Wil Alambre wrote:

> Sharp super-lightening split across a sick dry sky as a lone yellow cab
> pulled up in front of a long abandoned university. Treadless tires
> crunched on neglected cobblestones that had not yet lost the fight
> against the invading wild grass that used to be a pristine lawn. The car
> rolled up to the main entrance of the windowless structure. The
> brickwork crumbling, the roof collapsing, the aggressive truffula trees
> and vines simultaneously pulling and pushing against it.

Huh.  A modern-day-Earth-ish setting, suddenly!  With added Lorax!

> They were of every size and shape, from old musty tomes to ragged tossed
> pamphlets. They were stacked madly against the walls, on the floor,
> leaning crazily against themselves, in many cases the only things
> keeping the rotting walls up. The deeper he went, the more there were.
> Layers upon layers of them, until the remains of the university were
> completely obscured by them, leaving only a claustrophobic cavern of
> books.

Mmmmmmmmmmm. <3

> He paused at one that lay open and saw the pages were blank. Flipping
> through it, he found all the pages that way. He randomly chose another
> book, he discovered the same thing. Blank pages. Every book, every page,
> and not a single word on any of them.

Awwwwwwwww. ;.;

> He felt the presence. All around him. In the dark somewhere, leaking out
> from conceptual places, slipping between the thin angles of splayed open
> spines. 
> 
> They say some ideas have a momentum, that some stories have a life of
> their own. They seem to forget that life is usually an ugly, brutal
> thing. They never warn you about the malevolence it can have.

Eeeeesh.  It's an interesting perspective to take.
 
> "A thousand different civilizations. Their acculturation, their
> edification, their vocabularies, now mine! Mine alone! A symbiotic
> component of the Secret Living Language!"

Gasp!!

> "Pfft! A little late for that." He held up his hands, his gloves fairly
> clear in the growing light. "I only wanted one other person to find this
> place, and he doesn't even have to talk to me to do it."
> 
> The light grew brighter, the source coming from behind and above. The
> piles started to shiver, loose pages fluttered in a lifting breeze.
> There was a rising heat in the air, a crackling spark in the long
> dryness.
> 
> "...you see, his star-instruments alert him the moment I gain access to
> this mortal realm."

I love plans like this.  It's not the coming together of twenty-five
interlocking parts, it's something that was a done deal from the moment you
walked in.  Plausible and satisfying.

> "Last we met, You and your kind were victims of your own convoluted
> manipulations," said the wizard flatly, his fists searing brightly with
> star-power.
> 
> "Caught in my own trap, you mean," the Devil said, spitting out a bloody
> tooth. "Call it what it is. I've had too much of a wordy day already."
> 
> "Why have you come back?"
> 
> The Devil chortled, "Isn't is obvious? I'm here because you need me!"

Ooooooh.  Dun-dun-dunnnnnn.

> The main problem with making most of this up as you go is that when 
> you eventually do get around to setting up an ongoing plot, you find
> that you've already sabotaged it.

Oh, yes, I do know that one,

> I'm okay with that sort of loose scripting because that was one of the
> "rules" I set for this series when I started it. I try not to take it 
> too seriously, neither the material nor the process. Its a learning 
> experience and I have to be willing to make mistakes.

Indeed!

> With the return of a fan-favorite character (okay, maybe just one of
> *my* favorite characters), I decided to put a little more effort. I
> did some light research and made some more purposeful choices in
> scenes and descriptions... the piles blank books for example, a nod to
> the classic scene of the monster's cave full of the picked-clean bones
> of its meals.

Mmmmmmm.  Nice and creepy.

> I am expecting this series to run four issues total. Maybe five? I want
> to get better at judging this sort of thing.

You mean this arc, right?

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, 'cause this series should run for
however the heck long you want.


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