Ridiculous Opinions #274
Since I refuse to write about the crap show that is politics in the United States, I am going to write about things that I am working on right now. Aside from being a teacher of high school children in the realm of film, I am a writer and artist and I am constantly working on THINGS that really have no point. But art is about reconciling the world around you and that is what I am currently doing…trying to reconcile the world around me.
All of the following things are in various states of completion. Some may never see the light of day. Some may see the light of day and everyone will ignore it. It’s just the way of the world.
Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: The Last Infinity Stone. Last May, I got the idea that I should rewrite the last Avengers movie. I didn’t much care for Avengers: Endgame, and I had my own ideas in regard to what should be done with it. When Tracey and I saw it, we drove home that night talking about everything that we would have done differently.
Well, in September, I started writing MY version of the movie, which eventually turned into TWO movies. Honestly, they’re a lot of fun, and it’s both wonderful and sad that these two films that I worked on will never see the light of day. I was born to write super-hero films and will never get the opportunity. Oh, well. The whole of these movies is written with the notion that Disney bought 20th Century Fox before Endgame.
If you’d like to read them…well…here they are!
Avengers: The Last Infinity Stone
Why did I do this? Why does anyone do anything really? I did it because it brought me joy. Though no one of importance will read these films, I had a wonderful time writing them. So be it!
Betty Bueller’s Day Off - This is a project that I started this week as a writing exercise. Hollywood loves sequels, and for some incredibly stupid reason, Hollywood loves making sequels to films that are decades old. In my idea journal this week, I thought, What’s a really stupid idea for a sequel? What’s the least likely sequel that could be made?
Well, I thought of it.
I decided that I was going to write a sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s ludicrous to think that you could write a Ferris Bueller movie with Matthew Broderick, though. No one wants to see a guy in his sixties cavorting about town as he takes a day off work (which would be the initial reaction of someone who was tasked with writing the film). That’s dumb.
So, I invented Betty Bueller, who is Ferris & Sloane’s daughter (Sloane being the Mia Sara character).
And I didn’t want it to be about Betty skipping school like her father. So I turned it into a heist film. Betty is a perfectionist who is obsessed with getting into a good university, but when she receives a conditional acceptance into her school, she decides to ensure that she will get into the school by creating an elaborate heist to steal the exams from the school before she takes them.
Basically, it’s a comedy about high school students engaging in theft. And to be honest, there are some themes inside it that deal with some very real issues that students in this day and age are facing when it comes to university. The movie could work as either a sequel to Ferris Bueller or something entirely on its own. I’ll decide that when I finish it.
The bottom line is that it will combine two of my favorite genres: high school comedies and heist movies. I may finish it. I may not. We will see.
The Anti-Gravity Kid - I picked up a graphic novel the other day on a whim. I had heard good things about a comic called Mister Miracle, which in usual comic book fashion, rejuvenated a character from the 70s…a super-hero who is an escape artist and is one of Jack Kirby’s New Gods. It’s a pretty silly concept (his alter-ego is named Scott Free), so I thought it might be a fun read.
Lo and behold, in the first chapter, Mister Miracle is lying on the floor of his bathroom, where he has just tried to commit suicide.
Jesus Christ.
For years, I have loathed the notion that comics are for adults. Whether it’s any of the Zach Snyder movies or The Boys or whatever, the notion that these man-children have insisted that the stupid characters that they grew up with should grow up alongside them is an awful idea. Really awful. Comics are for kids and the reason the whole industry is dying is because the men who read them as kids are now writing them as adults.
Rather than continually bitch about it (as I did above), I thought, I should just make my own line of comics.
So, I decided that I would.
The first character that I created is named The Anti-Gravity Kid. I decided that I wasn’t going to explain absolutely everything that happened. You would just have to accept it. The main character is named Mark Milhouse and he’s a fifteen-year old high school student with a crush on the girl he grew up with and a lame social life. One night, while coming home from a party, Mark sees a meteor fall into the field beside him. It looks cool, so he takes it home with him.
Lo and behold, Mark gets powers.
I wanted to make the powers a little bit different, so Mark’s skill is that he can “cancel” the gravity of anything around him. He can make a car light as a feather, float it into the air, and push it so that it crashes into a wall. He, too, can float. But that’s it. He can just float. So he ends up attaching a stupid fan to his back so he can fly.
It’s all fun and games, with Mark trying to deal with his powers and being a teenager at the same time. It’s funny and it’s light and it’s made for kids.
I’m currently writing the first issue and desperately trying to do something new with a conventional idea. The overall concept is that I will create my own little universe of super-heroes, and as I was writing The Anti-Gravity Kid, I realized that I had already started this universe. I have an unpublished novel called, My Dad, The Super-Hero that is sitting on my computer, about a teenage girl who, after her father dies, realizes that he was a super-hero. But the key with this novel is that if you flip the book over, you will read the exact same story from another teenager’s point of view that may change your perception of the first story you read.
That novel is complete. I just haven’t published it yet. But I realized that that novel might just be set in the same universe as The Anti-Gravity Kid. Thus, I have created my very own Justice League without even realizing it.
Because I don’t know anyone who is really all that keen to draw The Anti-Gravity Kid for me, I’m just going to do it myself, bad art be damned. We’ll see how it turns out.
The King is Dead - Yes, I’m still plowing away at my sci-fi novel. It was a project that I started with great enthusiasm, but like all novels that I write, it has turned into a slog. I like the story. I’ve weaved it together well. It’s incredibly complex, with tons of races, planets, characters, and general intrigue, so whenever I go back to it, I have to consult my notes to make sure that I know who is who and what is what.
Right now, I’m at around 85,000 words, with no ending in sight. That’s not good. But it is something that I will finish, no matter what. There’s no deadline and there’s no real reason to finish, but you know me. This is just how I roll. I’m going to continue working through it and when it gets done, it will get done.
Maurice the Beaver - Yes, I’m still plugging away with Maurice. I think I’m at about issue #857, but I’m not sure. My goal with Maurice has always been to get to 1000 strips and quit. I will definitely reach 1000 strips, but I don’t know if I will quit. I enjoy writing Maurice.
However, I have slowly narrowed down my publication platforms. Maurice was originally published on Instagram and Twitter. I deleted Twitter a long while ago, and deleted Instagram a couple of weeks ago. Right now, I publish solely on Reddit and Bluesky. It’s kind of gross that so many artists over the years have been giving their work away for free, but that’s the way it is, I guess.
Unless, of course, someone thinks of another idea, which I did…
The Sunday Comics Collective - A couple of years ago, I joined an invite-only Discord group of artists. It’s a place for us to compare notes, gripe about injustices, and relate to others in similar situations. It was here that I came up with a good idea that will be launching soon…Stay tuned…
I have other things that I’m working on. I’ve written a comic called Fellowship Team 6 that may have something brewing. I’m trying to learn how to digitally sculpt with ZBrush. I want to make a couple of short films and have some good plans to do that. Four Frontiers, my comic with the UAE-based company called Sandstorm is finished, art and all. I don’t know when/if it will be coming out. I played my first official Dungeons and Dragons game the other night. Oh, and I started running again on a regular basis.
Why do I do all of these things? It’s a question I have answered in this newsletter before: Because I want to. Life is short, kiddos. There’s so much to be done. I don’t want to be a passive observer of the world. I want to be an active observer of the world. I want to make things, not for riches and fame, but because it’s fun. Writing an Avengers movie and a sequel to Ferris Bueller? Those will go nowhere. But I’m enjoying doing it, so why not?
Indeed. Why not?
