Sweet Four-Color Vengeance

After long hours of thought, this is the only scenario I could come up with which can possibly justify the current attitude towards comics of the DC Editorial Team when one takes both Identity Crisis and the Countdown books into account:

INT. DARK SUBURBAN HOME - MIDNIGHT - MANY YEARS AGO

The DC EDITORIAL TEAM, age 5, awakens from a restless slumber. Strange noises have disturbed him. Thumb in his mouth, he takes his blankie and wanders into the dark second-floor hallway of his home.

REVEAL

DC Ed's FATHER, pantless, bloody, sprawled on the landing . He thrashes, gurgling, a shard of the shattered, smiling FAMILY PORTRAIT jammed into his jugular. He would crawl for help, but he has been beaten with his own severed leg.

DC ED
Aaaaahhhhh!

FATHER
guuuuurrgglllllee!

His arterial spray splashes DC Ed right in the face.

DC ED
AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Father
guuurrgle-bubble-gurgle

The DC Editorial Team rushes downstairs.

INT. DINING ROOM

DC Ed enters to discover

HIS MOM

dressed as a French Maid, but wearing full clown make-up, having rough sex on the dining room table with

SILVER AGE COMICS,

who is in leather chaps and a Madonna bustier, both of them drunk and laughing maniacally.

DC ED'S MOM
Say it again!

SILVER AGE COMICS
There's no Santa Claus!

DC ED
AAGAGHHAHAGGGAGAAHHHHHHAAAGGGGGGAAAHHHH!

... later, sitting on the curb, a blanket wrapped around him by a kindly paramedic, the DC Editorial Team watches his house and his entire family destroyed in the inferno ignited when Silver Age Comics set his beloved Golden Retriever, Barky, on fire.

...

Given that, I understand what's going on.

Short of that -- you got me.

It's Like Scribbling on a CAVE WALL

And to think I used to download porn at these speeds.

Light blogging, as I'm on the dial-up doing family stuff -- and Blogger's been tetchy lately even at DSL speeds. Will get off the humor and politics to do a couple stright writing days, soon, though. In the meantime, run over to DISC/ontent where our pal has done a great post on D2DVD scripts, 90% of which is good advice for every other kind of screenwriting, too.

St. Peter's Bad-ass-ica

Giblets for Pope! Release the Doves!

Oh, you’ll hear plenty of arguments for replacing this Pope with just another dumb ol’ regular Pope, or a super-efficient Robopope, or the unearthly tidal pull of the Moon Pope. All lies and dross! Only Giblets can complete the circle. Only Giblets can drag mankind to salvation as Pope Giblets the First! Behold the new Gibletsian papacy!

For this, I would watch PBS again.

Go swamp his servers. Go reward the funny. Finally, a parody of the Ken Burns style of documentary that doesn't suck.

"Most people don't realize, in 1957 -- if you were black, and you were an astronaut ...

... you were out of work."

Here at the The Old Negro Space Program.

TGC #436: I Love Lucy -- Issue Zero!

John: ... I think their friendship makes sense. It's not like it's Ricky Ricardo and Fred Mertz hanging out together.
Tyrone: Did they ever explain that, by the way?
John: No, although I understood why Ethel and Lucy spent so much time together. Ethel always had an agenda. If you look at the episodes, although it seems Lucy is the prime motivator of most plots, you can see Ethel planting the idea in her head, Iago-like.
Tyrone: Ethel, let us also note, was often genuinely funny. Acerbically so --
John: Yeah, that wit didn't match her current surroundings. It seemed to me Ethel probably had a really interesting backstory we never saw.
Tyrone: Such as?
John: I don't know ... Ethel was a stripper working a mercenary bar in Central America, maybe an opium den/whorehouse in the Phillipines. Marrying Fred was her ticket out and to respectability. Hence her street smarts and sass.
Tyrone: (beat) Are you pitching the "Ethel Mertz Working a Donkey Show in Tijuana" backstory?
John: It fits. It also, naturally, leads to some sexual experimentation on Lucy's part --
Tyrone: Stop talking now.
John: AGAIN explaining just why this attractive, confused younger woman was spending all day every day with a more confident older woman --
Tyrone: But, my friend, that still doesn't explain the Ricky/Fred thing.
John: Hmm. Well, that backstory's even cooler, since Ricky did flee Cuba. Maybe Fred was Merchant Marine --
Tyrone: No, CIA. Fred was CIA in Cuba, pre-Castro.
John: I think it would have still been OSS, but nice. Fred gets Ricky out of Cuba when Ricky was a child, forming a Batman-and-Robin like bond between them.
Tyrone: Does Ethel know?
John: Good question. But it would be really cool if the only person who didn't know about all this was Lucy.
Tyrone: You know where this inevitably leads.
John: No.
Tyrone: "I Love Lucy" fanfic.
John: Sweet Jesus no.

( ... four hours later ...)*

Tyrone: Hey, sorry to bother you, but I had a question on that script.
John: No problem.
Tyrone: (beat) You were writing the "I Love Lucy" fan fiction, weren't you?
John: I just got to the part where Fred hit Batista in the face with a pipe wrench, grabbed the ten year old boy and swam out to the waiting Navy Destroyer!
Tyrone: "From now on, I call you ... Ricky."
John: Sweet. I'm using that.
Tyrone: Please. Get help.


*God as my witness, absolutely true.