AMERICAN DARK AGE

AMERICAN DARK AGE
ONE: ANOTHER WORLD
By
Jean Michel
&
Megabrain
© 2009
PAGE ONE
Full page splash of our heroine, Katherine Brody (known as Brody) in
full armor (refer to image below) stabbing a guy in the face with her
longsword. Hells, yeah!
A very Red Sonja-y, Conan-ish moment. She's fighting on the rooftop
of a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, so you can see palm trees in
the background and it's a sunny day. The enemy she's fighting in this
panel and the panels proceeding it should be obscured as to keep their
identities and origins a mystery. In fact the enemy soldiers can
always be just out of the frame. The reveal is that she's fighting a
contingent of Japanese Samurai, but the reader won't know that until a
much later issue.
1 CAP: Hollywood, CA (Blocky sans serif. Maybe with some glitz)
1 BRODY CAP: HI, MY NAME IS KATHERINE BRODY.
(Brody Caps are always written by hand to look like an excerpt from a
journal)
PAGE TWO
1 Brody executing a totally sweet double flying chest kick like the
chick from Crouching Tiger below, whilst blocking a sword slash with
her longsword from an enemy behind her.
As I stated in the page one art description:
"The enemies she's fighting in this panel and the panels proceeding it
should be obscured as to keep their identities and origins a mystery.
In fact the enemy soldiers can always be just out of the frame." Kinda
like this:
1 BRODY CAP: A LOT OF YOU MAY BE ASKING YOURSELVES...
2 Front view of Brody slashing at an unseen enemy in front of her. Her
sword should be striking at about the height of disembowelment.
2 ..."HOW DOES A TWENTY FOUR YEAR OLD PUNK FROM MYRTLE CREEK, OREGON
FIND HERSELF DISEMBOWELING A MAN WITH A LONGSWORD ON THE ROOF OF JULIA
ROBERTS HOLLYWOOD MANSION?"
3 & 4 More fighty Brody action. Artists discretion on these pics
3 BRODY CAP: I GUESS IT ALL STARTED THE DAY OF THE BLACKOUT AS PEOPLE
ARE CALLING IT.
4 NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE WHAT CAUSED IT, BUT THERE ARE THEORIES AND
RUMORS.
PAGE THREE
1 Image of Brody standing on the rooftop post battle staring out at
the beautiful vista of Hollywood below. The landscape is dotted with
shanty towns and tent communities.
1 EVERYTHING FROM THE SUPER COLLIDER EXPERIMENT TO SOME SORT OF
ELECTROMAGNETIC SATALITE BUBBLE, WRAPPED AROUND THE EARTH BY THE
RUSSIANS.
2 Brody jumping down from the rooftop to the driveway below. There is
a helicopter crashed through the front of the house, and it has been
there for a long time. Ivy is overgrown on it.
2 OCCASSIONALLY YOU EVEN HEAR PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT MAGIC SPELLS GONE
WRONG. HEH! YEAH, RIGHT. WHAT I DO KNOW IS ON THAT DAY THERE WAS THIS
KIND OF SHUDDER OR RIPPLE THAT YOU COULD FEEL IN THE AIR.
3 Brody is walking down the street towards her team. A group of
soldiers armored as she is. They're a bit far off and obscured. The
street is cracked and broken with grass and weeds growing over a lot
of it. Somewhere in the bushes almost imperceptible, is a Siberian
Tiger.
3 THE KIND THAT MAKES GOOSE BUMPS POP UP ON YOUR ARMS.
PAGE FOUR
1 Image of the planet Earth filling half the page on the left with
some satellites in orbit and one large one in the foreground of the
page. You can clearly see the satellites are powered up and working.
You can also see a bit of the night side of the Earth and (if this
can be pulled off well) you can see lights here and there dotting the
landscape.
1 CAP: Five years ago.
1 BRODY CAP: ON THAT DAY…
PAGE FIVE
ART: A series of panels showing everyday activity happening in various
cities (artist discretion as to what cities to choose) around the
world, like:
1 people walking around on their cell phones,
1 BRODY CAP: …THERE WAS A MOMENT
2 soldiers on a battle field firing across to the the enemy. A grenade
is in mid air about to land in front of a young soldier who takes
cover with his hands over his head. There is also a chopper flying
overhead.
2 BRODY CAP: WHEN EVERYONE COULD HEAR
3 doctors in the operating room,
3 BRODY CAP: NO, EVERYONE COULD FEEL THE PLANET
4 people on airplanes,
4 BRODY CAP: BREATH IN DEEPLY.
5 a pervert in front of his computer
5 BRODY CAP: LIKE WHEN A SWIMMER
6 a busy street in a metropolitan city with a sidewalk café and such.
6 BRODY CAP: JUST BREAKS THE SURFACE OF THE WATER.
PAGE SIX
ART: We see those same people and cities from Page 5, but this time
1 the cell phones have gone dead
1 BRODY CAP: …AND THEN SHE EXHALED.
2 some of the soldiers are trying to fire their weapons to no avail
and others are examining their guns, looking confused. The young man
who had taken cover from the grenade tentatively lifts his head and
looks warily (almost comically) at the grenade sitting impotent in
front of his face. Just above their heads the chopper is about to
plummet in to them.
2 BRODY CAP: THE MOMENTS THAT FOLLOWED
3 and the hospitals
3 BRODY CAP: WERE FILLED WITH SIGHTS
4 and the airplanes
4 BRODY CAP: AND SOUNDS
5 and the computers
5 BRODY CAP: THAT YOU WOULD THINK WERE RESERVED FOR
6 and the busy street is chaos. You can see the wreckage of a plane
that took a nose dive in the middle of the street. The surrounding
shops and buildings are aflame, car wrecks everywhere. Chaos and
mayhem all around.
6 BRODY CAP: ONLY THE DARKEST CORNERS OF HELL…
PAGE SEVEN
1 The same image of the Earth from Page 1, only now all the lights are
out and the satellites in orbit appear to be dead.
1 BRODY CAP: BUT THEN AGAIN, ON THAT DAY, HELL WAS HERE.
1 BRODY CAP: BEFORE ALL THAT HAPPENED THOUGH, THERE WAS HEAVEN...
PAGE EIGHT & NINE
CAP: Myrtle Creek, Oregon, Two Weeks Earlier
ART:Double Page Spread of a band on stage playing in a dirty dive bar
akin to the intro scene of Dazzler in Ultimate X-Men #42 or Ultimate
X-Men TPB #8. The lead singer is our main character, Katherine Brody.
The song she’s singing goes something like this:
SONG BY- KATHERINE BRODY AND REALITY BOMB
I’M AN AMPLIFIED SERPENT IN MY BLACK ZIPPERED SKINS
AND EVERY NIGHT I SHED
I SHED
I SHED MY SKIN
I SHED MY SKIN FOR HIM, JUST FOR HIM
AND I SWALLOW HIM WHOLE
(Burst balloon with music notes)
Brody (who is nineteen years old in this scene) as she’s known by
everyone but her father, and her band Reality Bomb are a loose
interpretation of Brody Dalle and the Distillers(Refer to images
below for reference and if you wanna know what type of band they are
listen to the album Coral Fang) She’s got short, jet black hair,
but it’s shaved underneath so she has the option of gelling it to
a mohawk. She's wearing a black Crass t-shirt (maybe just a shirt
with their logo on it) Her left arm is fully sleeved in tattoos and
she has another on her right shoulder, another in the center of her
back and one on her calf. Not all of these tattoos need to been seen
in this shot. Just the tattoos on her left arm. She's skinny, but
not anorexic. Just skinny enough so that once she joins the military
there is a noticeable difference between her previous physique and her
battle ready body.
Good mohawk.
Crass logo.
Brody plays a Danelectro 4021 Hand Vibrato Electric Guitar from the
60's.
The bar is filled with a few punk rock kids with some occasional red
necks mixed in. Some listening and watching the band and the rest doin
various bar stuff. Again, artists discretion as to what people are
doing in the bar.
BRODY CAP: ...AND I WAS A GOD. ZEUS ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP HURLING BOLTS
OF ELECTRICAL MAYHEM DOWN ON TO THE MERE MORTALS WHO COULD ONLY HOPE
TO BE NEAR ME. MY VOICE THUNDERED AND RIPPED THE SKY. AND MY GUITAR...
BRODY CAP: ...MY GUITAR.
BRODY CAP: YOU EVER SEEN JIMI HENDRIX WHEN HE RAN HIS FINGERS ACROSS
HIS STRINGS? THE WAY HE HELD THAT FENDER AND WHIPPED IT AROUND LIKE HE
WAS MAKING MUSIC WITH HIS COCK OR DEE DEE RAMONE SHREDDING AWAY AT HIS
AXE AS IF THE ONLY WAY TO COAX A SOUND FROM IT WAS BY KILLING IT.
BRODY CAP: AND PETE TOWNSHEND OF COURSE, WRESTLING AND FIGHTING HIS
GIBSON LIKE IT WAS AN ELECTRIC EEL SQUEALING FOR FREEDOM.
A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS TO PLAY IT, A MILLION DIFFERENT SOUNDS TO
SQUEEZE FROM IT AND WHENEVER I WAS TEARING OR PEELING MY SONGS OUT OF
THAT CRAZY HUNK OF WOOD AND WIRE...
BRODY CAP: ...I WAS ALL POWERFUL. I WAS MIGHTY.
BRODY CAP: I WAS HAPPY.