Third row, far left, is the writer Lee Barnett, and directly under him is Paul Graham Raven of Futurismic and Velcro-City.

To join in this week, take a self-portrait and send it to warrenellis @ gmail.com.

(5)

To this day, people still bug me about seeing script, even though I’ve released loads into the wild over the years (Google is your friend). So today I’ll show you a snippet of stuff. The formatting from script to web doesn’t retain — I use Courier New for description and Times New Roman for dialogue, a trick I think I learned from Kurt Busiek, and the dialogue is separated from the speaker by tab spaces, which I took from John Wagner, rather than as it appears here. But it gives you a rough idea. And in comics, format is less important than content — there is no single way to format scripts, as there is in (say) screenwriting.

* * * * *

PAGE ONE

Pic 1
Let me start with a strip of dead white space across the top of the page, just deep enough to contain a Twitter send. Twitter is a phone service that’s big in San Francisco right now – attached to this will be a shot of what a Twitter send looks like. The photo space will have a shot of HISAKO’s face, and her Twitter name will be XgirlA.

TWITTER-SHOT
XgirlA: srsly, I need a better x-name. Magical Armor Girl X?

Pic 2
GOLDEN GATE PARK, at dawn: BISON sleep on the grass under a broad-branched tree. LOGAN sleeps stretched out on one of the branches — like a leopard on the African veldt, one arm dangling down. This is the big pic on the page.

DISPLAY LETT
GHOST BOX

Pic 3
The MARIN HEADLAND, at dawn: fog rolling in off the Bay. And HENRY, standing with a large mug of coffee (handle adapted for his paws), collar on his jacket turned up as the mug steams and he looks out over the early-morning bay towards the Golden Gate Bridge. On profile, maybe? Go wide with these images, push them out to bleed at both sides of the page.

HENRY (SINGING)
BLUES AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT THE EASY GOIN’ HEART DISEASE,

HENRY (SINGING)
BROTHER STOP YOUR MOANIN’

PAGE TWO

Pic 1
And then pull back, to show him outside one of the entrances to the Marin bunker system they’re now apparently all living in (this is what I get for saying "put them in a fucking bunker, then" to Nick and Axel) — and him turning away from the view towards the open door of the entrance.

HENRY (SINGING)
BLUES CAN’T MAKE YOU WARMER IF YOU’RE BOUND TO FREEZE

HENRY (SINGING)
SISTER STOP YOUR GROANIN’

Pic 2
CUT TO: in near-darkness, in tight close-up, a man screaming as another man’s fingers punch through his neck and throat, FIRE crackling around the punctures, blood everywhere. We can’t see the killer’s face.

SCREAMING MAN
UUAAAAA

KILLER
YOU DESERVE IT. DON’T YOU? NOD YOUR HEAD OR IT’S GOING TO HURT A LOT WORSE BEFORE YOU GO, YOU FILTHY, DISGUSTING FAKE –

Pic 3
CUT TO: Henry walking through the corridors of the bunker (bare concrete floors?). Aerial view…

HENRY (SINGING)
WHY DON’T YOU RISE AND SHINE

HENRY (SINGING)
TAKE DEM BLUES RIGHT OFF YOUR MIND

Pic 4
…zooming out in a CUT-AWAY that shows the corridor Henry’s in, Henry reducing to a little blue dot, as the layout of a whole chunk of the Headlands base is revealed – a maze of corridors, hangars, storage areas, operational centers…

VOICE (NO TAIL)
DR McCOY, ARE YOU SINGING AGAIN?

PAGE THREE

Pic 1
HISAKO is poking her head around the corner of the corridor. She does not look impressed.

HENRY
I AM INDEED.

HISAKO
AND WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT THE SINGING?

HENRY
YOU SAID YOU’D WAIT UNTIL I WAS ASLEEP AND THEN SHAVE JAPANESE OBSCENITIES INTO MY FUR.

Pic 2
Hisako, in pyjamas and immense fluffy slippers that look like monster feet, stomps out to face an amused Henry.

HISAKO
AND?

HENRY
AND I FIND I NEED NO MORE THAN TWO HOURS SLEEP A NIGHT. ALSO, I AM BLESSED WITH INCISORS THAT COULD SNICK OFF YOUR LITTLE HEAD. WHY ARE YOU AWAKE, HISAKO?

HISAKO
OH, I COULDN’T SLEEP. I NEED A NEW X-NAME.

HENRY
THIS AGAIN?

Pic 3
He puts his arm around her shoulders, and she leans her head into his side as they walk. She really is tired, and miserable.

HISAKO
LOGAN KEEPS MAKING FUN OF “ARMOR.” I’M REALLY TIRED, DR McCOY.

HENRY
WE’LL GET YOU SOME COFFEE. AMD YOU REALLY MUSTN’T PAY ATTENTION TO LOGAN.

HISAKO
HE SAYS THAT IF MY NAME’S “ARMOR” THEN HIS NAME IS “CLAWS” AND MS FROST’S NAME IS “BRAIN” AND MS ROGUE’S NAME IS “SUCK.”

HENRY
YES. WELL.

Pic 4
CUT TO: the Golden Gate Bridge from another angle, through the broad window of a hotel room very high up in central San Francisco, as dawn light beams through the glass…

FROM OFF
OUCH.

###

(4)

To join in this week, take a self-portrait and send it to warrenellis @ gmail.com.

(3)

To join in this week, take a self-portrait and send it to warrenellis @
gmail.com.

(2)

And we’re off:

That’s R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties in the bottom right hand corner.

To join in this week, take a self-portrait and send it to warrenellis @ gmail.com.

(1)

This week, interleaved between the usual crap, I’m going to post collections of self-portraits of the readers of this site — something I do annually, and am currently overdue on. I figure that if I make it a whole-week thing, I’ll actually be able to post all the ones I’m sent. I live in hope, anyway.

Take a self-portrait and email it to warrenellis @ gmail.com.

1. sparkles, 2. it’s a little choppy out there, 3. guild inn – wall, 4. DSC09480, 5. 0718081421.jpg, 6. 0720080001.jpg

• BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Zimbabwe introduces Z$100bn note
  Zimbabwe is to introduce a bank-note worth Z$100bn in response to rampant inflation – but the note will barely cover the cost of a loaf of bread.
  (tags: crime pol)
• Ellen Rogers
  (tags: photography)

• good night scum #
• It is evening. Who will sit on my glowing digital lap to have terrible bedtime stories oozed into the shivering canals of their net.bodies? #
• I may be the only person in the Western world with no interest at all in going to see the Batman film. I am a cultural leper. #
• “Cultural leper” is actually a good metaphor for “comics writer” – shunned by normal people, but leaving little bits of myself everywhere. #
• Mostly in your food. #
• Besides, I still think Batman should cut people’s nipples off. #
• On Batman and nipples: http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=767 #

• good morning scum #

Saturday Night Open Mic is up, over at my internet church. Say hello.

Okay, so this was a kid’s tv show. A Gerry Anderson production, hence the puppets. But I think it underscores the basically creepy nature of children’s fantasy tv in the UK. Not as out-and-out fucking strange as, say, THE CHANGES or SKY. But, really, without any context — or, hell, even with it — the intro to JOE 90 is still kind of nervous-making. I didn’t particularly like this show even as a kid. There was something essentially Wrong about it. Stick a kid with fucked-up eyes in a huge spinning machine with pulsating lights while computers ooze magnetic tape like worms. The machine he’s in, by the way, is called The Big Rat. Which is also kind of Wrong.

I realised how little that old British sf tv has still penetrated beyond our borders (and probably a couple of generations) when I made Joss Whedon look at the credits sequence for JOE 90 and got a WTF? from him. So, while I’m waiting for my forebrain to spool up this afternoon, I thought I’d YouTube a bit and collect up some stuff that some of you may never have seen (and some of you will get hideous flashbacks off):

THE TOMORROW PEOPLE:

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT:

BLAKE’S SEVEN:

SAPPHIRE AND STEEL:

DOOMWATCH:

• Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer
  This is fucking incredible: rediscovered Delia Derbyshire tapes reveal her as being 40 years ahead of her time in sonic experiments.
  (tags: music)

• so tired cannot see hate everything going to pub #
• And Now A Message from FREAKANGELS: http://www.freakangels.com/?p=46 #
• The internets are very quiet today. You are all hiding from me. I can tell. Perverts. #
• Of course, with such quiet, I can just turn off the net and have a nap. (Finally cleared the last of the lungplague, but it left me tired) #
• Slept. Still tired. On the other hand, I’m still not going to San Diego next week. Ha ha ha hahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAAA cough #
• Love opening Twitter to see all my comics-making friends working themselves to death. Makes me feel better about working myself to death. #
• @BrianReed there are Marvel people on Twitter? Quick, stamp on them before they breed! #
• Obama would amuse me if he pointed out that the commander in chief probably shouldn’t be the guy who let himself get caught by the enemy. #
• “My war expertise is eating rats & getting cornholed by water snakes in a flooded paddy field for five years, but here’s the plan, boys…” #
• And yes, @dogsoldier , hope is not a plan — but it sure seems to bring the cash in, don’t it? #
• @bremxjones How can you put your penis in someone who doesn’t hate Kula Shaker? That’s like fucking a Nazi. #

I just threw some of Juan Jose Ryp’s pencilled pages up at Whitechapel. Here’s one, in smaller size — the others are over here, all in larger size.

NO HERO #1 is published in September. (Avatar released the #0 issue, containing the crucial first chapter, ahead of BLACK SUMMER #7, which ships next week.)

…FREAKANGELS.

• Vegas Or Valhalla
  Stevie Gray finally makes an online home for her writing.
  (tags: peopleiknow)
• Sanny Shop
  My friend Sanny’s new clothes shop
  (tags: peopleiknow)