Concepts

On this page, you will find numerous concept pieces for various story ideas that I either developed for a time and gave up on, or never fully developed at all.

HERO

Hero was a story that I began developing some time in the mid to late 90s. The concept came to me when I thought about what it would take to become a REAL superhero. Obviously, all of my characters had powers, so I wanted to strip it back to basics. What would it look like for someone to attempt to be a hero in the Diamond Universe? And since I was grounding everything, I decided to have the antagonists be a racist street gang that’s been terrorizing whatever neighborhood he lived in. I began work on a film idea that would have been the origin of the hero, which would have led into a series that was another project that I started and abandoned. I think this is why writer’s rooms exist.

Credits and title. Our story begins on the streets of Manhattan. A sex worker is walking down the sidewalk, hustling for her next trick. She eventually walks by a dark alley where a voice calls out to her. It offers her cash and then drags her into the alley. When the sex worker asks what he wants, he says he just wants to kill her. Meanwhile, across the city, a man sits in his home reading the newspaper. A act no one has performed in years now. His son, Sven, enters the room, looking to chat. But as they attempt to have a chat, the phone rings. The father answers and is soon headed out the door, as he is a police detective and a body has been found in an alley across town. The detective asks his son what he needed, but Sven tells him it was nothing. Detective Alan Matthews arrives on the scene and touches base with his partner, Buddy. Buddy gives Alan all of the details he has gathered so far. The victim was Brenda Rhoades, early 20s, killed with a small blade that cut her open from the top of her chest to the bottom of her right breast. No signs of theft or rape, leading them to suspect pure murderous intent. This is confirmed even further with the discovery of a gang insignia drawn with blood on a nearby wall.

Detective Matthews tells Buddy to run a check through the system to identify the logo. The next morning, Sven gets up and greets his mother. He asks about his dad with his mother confirming he didn’t return home form last night. Sven mentions hanging out with his friend later that night. At the police station, Buddy comes up with nothing on the logo, so Detective Matthews tells him to start checking with other stations in hopes of tracking down where this group came from. Meanwhile, Sven runs into his friend Charlie at school. It seems Sven was looking to ask his father to borrow his car. But Charlie tells him that they’ll still have fun regardless. Back at the station, Buddy found a lead. The gang is known as the Vice Lords, and they travel from city to city causing chaos and carnage. Four names were also pulled from the investigation that seem to be the ring leaders of the gang, each with their own proclivities. Detective Matthews orders more police on the streets to catch these criminals. Later that day, Detective Matthews returns home. He asks about Sven, and realizes he probably wanted to borrow the car. Worried about his son and his friend, Detective Matthews heads back out to find them. Meanwhile, Sven and Charlie are walking down the sidewalk when they are accosted by the Vice Lords. The Vice Lords make insinuations about Sven and Charlie which Charlie throws right back at them. The one named Grim is ordered to hurt Charlie by the leader Diablo, but not kill him. So, a knife is jabbed into Charlie’s left shoulder.

I figured I may want to take this moment to discuss the villains. When I was a teenager, I had heard the term “Vice Lords” somewhere, and thought it made for a cool gang name. Little did I know, it was, in fact, a real group. It seems the more formal Almighty Vice Lord Nation are an organized crime syndicate with roots in Chicago that evolved from a late 1950s street gang into a multi-state organization with a rigid hierarchy and constitution. So, if you are a member of this group and you happen to stumble upon this page, I don’t know nothing!

Honestly, the characters I created for this gang were meant to be a bit over the top. I mean one of the guys is named Adolph Stalin and he’s a neo-Nazi. Talk about being “on the nose”. I will say that two of the names are taken from two assholes I knew in my day.

Sven is elbowed in the face by Grim. Diablo orders Slash to torture Charlie. So, Slash slices his kneecaps. Charlies asks why they are torturing them. Diablo responds because they have nothing else to do. As Sven regains consciousness, he witnesses Diablo shooting Charlie in the head. At that moment, police sirens could be heard, so the Vice Lords leave. Sven then passes out. Later, Alan is attempting to get Sven to identify his attackers. Buddy shows Sven the pictures of the ring leaders, and he identifies each one of them but singles out Diablo as Charlie’s murderer. This revelation catches Buddy and Alan off-guard leading them to speculate why all of them are in New York. Buddy offers up satanic ritual as a possibility, leading Sven to ask what they are even talking about. Alan tells his son to go home and forget about tonight. Sven states that he will never forget tonight, and the men who killed Charlie should be brought to justice. Buddy assure him they are working on it, but Sven’s anger causes him to threaten to take care of it himself. Alan shuts that talk down immediately and makes an officer take him home. The next day, Sven visits Charlie’s grave. I guess they had a speedy service. Sven leaves depressed and walks home. He wanders by an old novelty shop where he sees a superhero costume in the window. He suddenly gets an idea. Later, he is trying on the costume he purchased from the novelty shop, but realizes he needs a mask. So, he decides to make one using the costume’s cape.

Sven crafts a full-face mask with wide-eye holes, so he can see. He then grabs a sleeveless hoodie to complete the look. Sven decides to sneak out in costume to see if his idea is worth it. In the city, a bodega is being robbed at gunpoint. A brick comes flying through the windows, striking the gunman in the head knocking him unconscious. Sven enters the store to apologize for the window, which is greeted with thanks from the store owner. Sven is caught up in his adrenaline rush that he goes in search of another crime. Since rape is an epidemic in this universe, Sven comes across an attempted rape. He strikes the guy in the face with a rock and then kicks him in between the legs. The victim thanks Sven and heads off. Sven decides to pickpocket the crook and steals two guns and two thousand dollars. He heads home in excitement, coming up with plans for the cash. He then comes to his senses and remembers why he chose to go out into the streets to fight crime in the first place. He then decides to call himself Vengeance (misspelled in the comic) as a reminder of why he is in this. He then realizes he needs to find a way to get bullets for the guns he took. He reaches out to some guy at his school for a fake ID. After receiving it, Sven heads to Guns-n-Stuff in hopes of finding bullets for the guns he stole.

The store owner gets suspicious when Sven doesn’t know the model gun he is carrying, so he asks for an ID which Sven provides. After inspecting it, the store owner asks how many rounds he needs. Sven tells him to tell him a price and he’ll tell him the amount. Clearly, he bought a massive amount as the shop owner seemed extremely pleased as Sven left. That night, Sven decides he’s going to track down the guys that killed Charlie, but he needs his dad’s files to get some information. As he goes to retrieve them, Alan appears as he heads to bed. Sven tells him good night, and then goes after the files. He decides to go after Patch first. In the city, Patch has kidnapped three men to punish them for what he perceives as their crimes. One man is black. One man is Jewish. And the other man is gay. Each man is being persecuted for their truths. Vengeance appears to stop Patch from harming them. But Patch orders him dead, so his goons open fire. Vengeance shoots out the goons’ kneecaps and then turns to Patch. Patch grabs his fist and knocks Vengeance back…

I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish this story. Mainly because it was shaping up to be one of my longest and most detailed film project. By page 18, Vengeance is just starting to hunt down the Vice Lords, meaning he still had three more encounters to deal with. I’m almost positive that Vengeance was going to lose this fight to Patch. Basically showing that much like in the comic series Kick-Ass, you can’t just expect to stop crime by putting on a costume. I was really doing my best to keep this story grounded, which might be why I lost track of the narrative. I’m very tempted to finish this story. However, there would be a few changes I would make to serve the story better.

This “film” project was meant to serve as an origin story that would have led into a series following the adventures of Sven attempting to clean up the streets of New York. He would have eventually gained partners in his crusade, all while trying to avoid his father who had branded him public enemy #1. I thought it would make for a fun dynamic.

Another aspect of this concept that came about was the touch of fantasy that started to grow in my head. The fantasy was that I could eventually be like that guy in the comic. I made a costume and carried it around in a book bag and everything. I even told a handful of people who probably thought I was a lunatic. But, in my heart, it didn’t register as a joke. I really wished I could be a superhero and help people when the moment arose. I still do, even though I know it’s not feasible. Guess it’s a good thing that I never had an actual encounter with a criminal, or this whole website could be non-existent.

THE HUMAN CHIPMUNKS

Where to begin… When I was a kid, my best friend, Jamin Sponaugle, and I would make a face to each other. A very specific face…

It would typically be at something we found to be…silly, goofy, lame, or something that just felt like it warranted it. Very loose rules. Sometimes we would randomly look in the other person’s direction as if we had something to say and then make the face, just to illicit a laugh from the other person. It was pure goofiness and it was our thing. I remember this picture taken of me, Jamin, and a bunch of our friends at his house for a sleepover. And in this picture, Jamin practically photobombed it with that face, looking off into space which made it twice as funny to me.

Usually when I watch a movie or TV show about close friends, I feel envious because it always comes off like these friends had the greatest memories and adventures together. It feels like a right of passage for a kid, and something I feel like I missed out on. But as a reflect on this silly face, that IS one of those memories. It’s something that is specific to us that we did together. I feel like time has made me forget these moments. So what does any of this have to do with a comic?

While we may have made these faces to each other, we also started drawing the face as well. It could just be two dots for eyes and the mouth, and it was enough. But since my child brain liked to continually add more comic book ideas to my plate, I started to consider an idea that could utilize these silly characters. From the outset, I never had any ideas to create a narrative structure around these characters. I just wanted to have fun with them. It was also around this time that I had discovered Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, an American sketch comedy television program that ran for six seasons from 1968 to 1973 on NBC. This introduced me to a new form of radical comedy that I never knew existed.

The “rapid fire” element of the show inspired the idea to create a variety show in comic book form featuring these odd-faced people. I guess I should have taken more inspiration from MAD Magazine, since that’s what I was essentially trying to do. However, I quickly ran into a problem. What would I call this “show”? Along with this silly face, we also began saying “boo” and “doog” to accompany it. Why? Beats the hell out of me. So, these became the catchphrases for the characters. Unfortunately, they didn’t lend themselves to a solid title. So, I asked myself the question, “what kind of face is ‘the face’?” Somehow, I landed on chipmunks and came up with the title, The Human Chipmunks Variety Show.

The Human Chipmunk Variety Show! #1
The human chipmunks are back! From where, I’m not sure. Macho Munk introduces the first short: The Human Chipmunks. Macho Munk finishes 1000 curls with giant barbells. Meanwhile, an evil chipmunk witch plots her revenge. Using magic, she creates Robo-Doog and sends him to kill the Human Chipmunks. Later, Chip sees the robot. Macho throws a barbell at Robo-Doog, but he catches it. So, he follows up with a punch to the head, which causes it to spin around wildly. Once he recovers, Robo-Doog reveals he’s been punched stupid and is now one of them! Macho then throws a stick of dynamite into the witch’s castle. Robo-Doog gives her some strong choice words to tie it all up. The End. The next three panel are ripped straight from *Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In*. Next is a mural showing the evolution of chipmunks, which leads to a ridiculous punchline. After that is The Adventures of Superdoog. Superdoog is flying around when he spots a criminal. He attempts to stop him but flies past him and into a wall. He then tries to drop an anvil onto the crook’s head by burning the rope with his heat vision. The anvil doesn’t fall until Superdoog stands under it.

Superdoog pushes the anvil off of himself and onto a nearby civilian. He punches the crook directly into jail, and then turns his attention to the civilian. Superdoog accidentally kicks the anvil into the civilian’s face. The End. After Macho Munk’s unoriginal poem, he move on to the Chipmunk Flash, who runs fast into a boulder. Next is Batmunk. Apparently, superhero parodies was all I could come up with. Bruce Pain introduces the skit of Batmunk being incredibly incompetent. He eventually encounters the Smoker, a villain who smokes or something. If you want to waste your time reading it, go ahead. I don’t have it in me to describe it.

While this may not have been created during my more refined artistic days, I can tell I wasn’t feeling the vibe of this series since the art looks rushed. Additionally, the material could be funnier. It seems that I just made the heroes incompetent but with the ability to fail upwards. I don’t know who I was writing this for, because even I don’t find it funny. Let’s see if the second episode yields better results.

The episode begins with an introduction for Dave Munk. Dave then introduces comedian Rodney Doogerfield. The next two panels are just direct Rodney Dangerfield jokes. We then cut to the first skit, Sparky the Unlucky Pup. Sparky attempts to catch a cat. The cat gets behind Sparky and attacks him with a branding iron. Sparky gets really angry, so the cat pours acid onto Sparky, removing all of his hair. The cat then hits Sparky across the head with a shovel, which spins Sparky around and causes him to fall face first into a bed of spikes, poking out both eyes. Sparky wanders around aimlessly towards a cliff. The cat drains the lake down below before Sparky falls into the dry bed below. The End. We then cut to a quickie, and then on to Masterpiece Chipmunk Theatre. Tonight’s performance is “A Fight That Goes Nowhere.” Two men complain back and forth that the other person has wronged them until a random woman comes up to stop their bickering.

The woman slaps both individuals and and attempts to shut down the argument, but it just starts another. The End. The Chipmunk Flash rushes by before his own skit even starts, which leads into his own skit where he avoids two trees but then smashes into another tree. The End. And finally, X-Munks! They’re all here but not named (thank god). The Professor tries to retrieve a penny from the ground, and falls out of his wheelchair. He then asks the X-Munks to help. So, the Cyclops one blasts the floor under the Professor, sending him upwards where he grabs a pipe. The Wolverine one cuts the section of pipe that the Professor was hanging on to. The Gambit one throws a charged card down below him, sending him back up again where the Beast one catches him. The Professor is then thrown towards a wall, where he is pinned up by the Archangel one. But then Magnedoog shows up to capture the Professor. So, the team fights him off and saves the day. The End.

I remember Sparky being another character I was attempting to build. While I cannot remember the exact reason I came up with him, I’m sure it was in response to The Itchy & Scratchy Show on The Simpsons. Those skits were dementedly funny to me, and I thought I could write that too. The Masterpiece Theatre skit felt like the biggest attempt to be original, and even the X-Munks idea was somewhat different. Ultimately, I don’t think I was ready to write comedy.

I say that because looking back on this idea almost feels like a precursor to another project of mine, The Adventures of Stick Figure Man. With that series, I went beyond just parody. The heroes weren’t incompetent. They were just put in crazier situations. Plus, most of the Human Chipmunks humor comes off more visual than spoken, which is why I don’t think it works as a comic.

One-sheet for a proposed film adaptation of The Human Chipmunks

But at some point, I did consider a serious film adaptation of the material. You might wonder how exactly you can force a serious adaptation of THIS material. Well, based on the synopsis, five popular college students are transformed into the Human Chipmunks and are forced to deal with ridicule and hatred. Basically, it would have been a film to address bigotry, but I’m very glad I didn’t attempt to write this at that time. Something tells me it would have read incredibly tone deaf.

3 FATES

The basic premise of 3 Fates came from the idea of a superhero family that passes on abilities and identities throughout the generations via a ring. Hopefully, I can break this down without it being complicated. There are three heroes: Speed Demon, Power Lord and Father Mind. Each hero is related. Father Mind is the parent of Power Lord and grandparent of Speed Demon. When Father Mind dies, Power Lord will become Father Mind and Speed Demon will become Power Lord. The oldest child of the NEW Power Lord will be tapped to become the NEW Speed Demon. Got it?

Utilizing a very clever tagline, I gave this idea plenty of thought. What would that conversation be when your father and grandfather come to you and ask you to be a superhero? It tweaks the idea of a parent trying to keep their kids away from it. Here, it must be embraced. I even considered that embracing it wasn’t about tradition, but very much about the powers themselves. Without an heir, the powers would dissipate and the trio would be no more. That thought process led to another idea…

Considering this family had clearly been passing these powers along for generations, I thought it could be fun to explore the first three Fates. It would be told as a flashback to Speed Demon by Power Lord as Father Mind lies on his deathbed. Power Lord is concerned about the lack of a third member and the time it would take for there to be another, seeing as how Speed Demon is still in high school. I’m sure there was a timetable for all of this. Possibly something I hadn’t quite thought through yet. In any case, while discussing the story of the first three, it becomes apparent that the original three were not related at all and perhaps their power hierarchy isn’t family dependent. This would lead to an exploration into why it became this way.

Since I love a good trilogy, I couldn’t very well leave the plot threads dangling. In the concept art, I mention a new threat emerging but I’m almost positive I planned for it to be the return of the evil threat last seen in the past. Furthermore, I mention this threat must be helped with the help of a new partner but never specify would had been tapped. At least it’s a woman, right? I was the world’s worst at inclusivity. Not that I was racist or sexist as a kid. Rather that I was creating characters that I related to. Plus, I never felt like I drew women all that well or drew people of color properly. They always looked racist to me, even though I was attempting to not do that. This got off topic… point is, they find a new member who’s probably not related.

While I never wrote anything down beyond a tagline line and some barebones plot synopses, I do enjoy thinking about this idea. I feel it could be a fun family superhero story that could center around estrangement. Plus, I do enjoy drawing these characters every now and then. The idea of character variations has always intrigued me for some reason.

A number of sketches playing around with different ideas as well as a reconsideration of the idea, featuring Stephen, Jamin and a third friend being given an artifact that imbues them with power. This was probably tossed around before or around the time I began working on *Heaven, Hell and the Planet Earth*, a proposed remake of *Stephen’s Wacky Maze*.

THE OUTCASTS

During the summer of 1997, I was fortunate to have some great friends and pretty decent memories to accompany them. Since cell phones weren’t what they are today, my friends and I resorted to CB radio communication when we were all hanging out together in town. And since such radio chatter was usually accompanied by clever nicknames, we all adopted a moniker that fit who we were. As weird as it might seem to a normal mind, this was superhero stuff to me. Because of that, I wrote stories about fictional adventures I wished we could have had. Bad guys, car chases, finding love… it’s all there. That’s pretty much the first story of The Outcasts.

Opening page of a planned remake of the Outcasts

In The Outcasts 2: The Return of Shades, we see that Shades had moved on from those times in his life only to be brought back in by the return of the bad guy from the last story, looking for payback. The story got a bit dark. Maybe a bit too dark for something that came off more like an action comedy. The third idea, The Outcasts III: Greatest American Heroes, would see the group going on a road trip to help Shades, who’s caught up in his own problems. While the story was at least half-written, I worked out a soundtrack for this film idea and knew exactly where each song would go.

Once I’d tapped out the trilogy, I thought about the future. Seeing as how I’d recently become a father; I began wondering about our kids and who they would be. What would happen if these two generations collided? Seemed like a fun idea. Beyond that, I conceptualized so many other ideas like a series of the Outcasts with a different lead, another where they are babies and yet another where they are superheroes. I even thought how cool it could be having the Outcasts meet the Destructors. Shades meeting “S” is like seeing two parts of myself collide.

These were nothing more than fantasy takes on reality that I still ponder from time to time. There could be a good movie in there somewhere. Just not sure how original it would be.

CLANDESTINE

Clandestine was an idea developed by me and a former acquaintance, Stephen Foster. He and I had worked on several short films together, but our first brainstorming session produced this project. It simply began as an idea about a homeless man who finds a tattered costume in the trash, puts it on and decides to fight crime. At first, it seemed that the costume was meant to play a bigger role in the narrative, but that idea was quickly abandoned.

Soon, we began to focus on the homeless man’s mental state. Perhaps he was combating amnesia, had a whole life he didn’t remember, perhaps a special ops agent. The list went on, full of possibilities. We wanted our hero (or anti-hero) John Doe to be a formidable threat. A threat against who was the next question which led us to a criminal underworld, filled with gangsters, family heads, and kingpins. Clandestine, which was the name of the city, was meant to be a criminal’s paradise. Once John starts taking out the men of Blaine Ashton, the local crime family boss, the hunt begins for John.

One element we were adamant about was we wanted to ensure that our protagonist and antagonist had no connections. Nothing was going to be revealed where they learned they were brothers or something. It was about two opposing forces, both of which were a bit crazy. An outline for the first story was written, as was the art for most of the first issue. This was the first comic idea I thought I might see in print. But like most things I’m involved in creating, I do all the heavy lifting. This usually means when I have no time to focus on it, the idea will fall by the wayside. And it did. That said, I did work in plans to incorporate the characters into other stories into the larger universe, sticking with most of the ideas and adjusting them to work within that world. Since this was an original idea crafted by myself and another, it felt disingenuous to force him into my comic universe. But now, he’s a welcome addition.

Like everything else, there’s a great idea here. It just needs some work to be great.

GOMIRAH

Gomirah (or G.o.M.i.R.a.H. if you wanna get technical) was me wanting to create my own Godzilla movies. I’m not sure what I wasn’t getting from those films that these ideas would rectify. From the concept art alone, it seemed to be a take on the “Zilla” design (aka U.S. Godzilla from 1998) but giving him powers. Something that particular version was severely lacking in. At the time, I believed Godzilla would never see the U.S. shores again, at least not using modern technology. It’s amazing that Japan is one of the world’s most advanced technological countries, yet their CG feel years behind the U.S. At least, I felt that way before seeing Godzilla Minus One. Anyway, I created a main lizard, a bit of backstory (genetic modifications or something), and monsters for it to fight.

This isn’t a concept I see myself exploring at any point in the future, considering Legendary has built their own Monsterverse. But if they are looking for new kaiju, perhaps I can give them some inspiration.

STORIES FROM HELL

When I came across this piece while searching through my old notebooks, I had completely forgotten about it. Stories From Hell was meant to be my version of Tales From the Crypt. At this point in time, the HBO series of the same name was quite popular, so naturally, I wanted to copy it. The format was the same where a host would introduce some horrific tale. Instead of the Cryptkeeper, I had the Hellraiser, a very original character. As far as stories, I attempted to write one original story and adapt another from a book of scary stories I had. Eventually, I abandoned the idea so hard that I made sure to write “cancelled” across the title.

The text says that the first story was written by Jamin Sponaugle, but I have to call bullshit on that. He may have come up with a basic idea, but I never remember ever receiving any form of a script. I think I was just trying to credit other people because I was tired of seeing just my name on everything. The second story was going to be adapted from an old book that I owned called More Tales for the Midnight Hour. It feels like that should have been an easy task since the story was written. But I still had to storyboard which is probably where I lost focus. The story was pretty good though.