A project so new that I'm not 100% sure what the title is going to be!

I've got five projects that have artists attached and actually working on them. Problem with doing workblogs on them is that the updating would so sporadic as to make blogging about them individually pretty pointless.

But I've got a new thing that's pushed itself to the front of the writing line, so I thought maybe I'd take a stab at working at something on the public stage.

I was working on something else, and the term Blackheart Valentine popped into my head. It's jotted down in my notes for another prohect, and a character to go with the name almost immediately popped into my head.

A mad frentic harlequinn, somebody ludicrous enough to actually call themselves Blackheart Valentine.

Unfortunately, Marvel already has a character named Blackheart, and a quick google shows me there's at least one song with the phrase in the lyrics.

So I may not end up with the name that inspired the character. Ah well.

The idea that came with it was, more or less, what if the Joker was a hero?

What if a city desperately needed a Batman, and what they got was a man who had made chaos his religion. Yeah, I could do something with that.

The basic plot came up pretty easy - Lunatic versus horribly corrupt city. It got me to thinking, though, that crazy is maybe just a point of view. Maybe if the sane is so terrible, that being nuts becomes something very much like sanity.

I wondered what kind of effect he could have dropped into the right environment. And then I wondered....

What if he didn't actually exist?

EDITED: 12 Aug 2008 by JUSTINJORDAN

That's....scarily similar to what I'm doing.

"Then you can also have copycats, groupies, people who worship and cement the idea of the ever elusive "hero". The batman type who works in the shadows, but is rarely, if ever, seen."

Yes! There will be a Blackheart Valentine seen, but the overall question is whether any of these people are the real thing or are they just copycats, or whether people have even seen him at all.

"Or focus on that one kid who doesn't believe the hype and how he collects data to prove Blackheart Valentine does not exist."

What I'm thinking, and I'll expand on this in the next post, is that the POV character is someone who knows, absolutely, that BV doesn't really exist.

Because she created him.

The question I'm working at the edges of is what does it mean to exist? Even though BV began as a hoax, if there's someone out there doing what he does, and every one believes in him, is he real?

Not surprisingly, there's stuff in there about religion and cults that I want to touch on. And figures like Paul Bunyan and such.

EDITED: 28 Apr 2008 by JIMME_ROBINSON

"but perhaps she might start believing her own hype?"

That's what I'm thinking - the throughline of the story being her coming to believe something she knows is false. Or rather, she begins to doubt what she knows to be true.

"The only concern I have is how long will the reader hang in?"

Me too. I've got a basic idea of how the story should go, and I know what I want to do, but jamming it all into a comic that's actual readable and interesting - well, that's going to be tricky.

I've been infatuated lately with Jonathan Hickman's comics and the kind of 'wall of sound' incredibly dense information thing they've got going on, and I want to do something like that with this.

"You could say this a superhero meets The Wire."

Oh, I like that. I was planning on the three points of view of the the story being the press (in the form of the BV creator), and the police and the criminals.

But The Wire...

Ohhhhhhhh.....

"V FORVENDETTA (the movie, I'm afraid)"

This is actually a concern; I'm hoping where I end up somewhere different, but I had the thought that I was veering into that territory. I'll just have to see what shakes out.

"ou seem to have a good sense of plot twists."

Thanks. Yeah, I need to pace it out. There are elements that, while cool, I don't know are going to make it in. There's a whole bit I was considering with what amount to a supervillain coming to town to see about BV, and what I'm thinking of I like, but I'm not sure it'll fit.

The villain in question being a small humble well dressed man called The Librarian who happens to be a near superhuman killing machine. I was thinking of an angle where BV is likened to someone like The Shadow, a rogue member of a murder cult who was cultivated bizarre abilkties, and the Librarian is par tof that, but as I think about it, I don't know that I'm going to use it.

The Greek Chorus

"The Greek chorus (choros) is believed to have grown out of the Greek dithyrambs and tragikon drama in tragic plays of the ancient Greek theatre. The chorus offers a variety of background and summary information to help the audience follow the performance. It comments on main themes, and shows how an ideal audience might react to the drama. It also represents the general populace in any particular story. In many ancient Greek plays, the chorus"

From Wikipedia.

I like the idea of a chorus commenting and illuminating the main themes. One of the things that the arrival of Web 2.0 has given is, for good or ill, is society where our actions are recorded and commented on. Pick a subject, any subject, and you can google and get the world's largest chorus chiming back at you.

The Dark Knight Returns, in my estimation, used this quite a bit. I'm not sure if Miller was intentionally aping the old greek chorus on simply commenting on the nature of the media, but the talking head interjection served the same purpose, to add dimensions and comment on the meat of the story.

And just to through in another of comic's greatest works to make me seem like even more of a pompous ass, Watchmen used the epistolary sections and some of the minor secondary characters for much the same purpose.

Since one of the main themes of BV is perception and what is real, I'm thinking I'm going to take a stab at using the chorus idea. I'm not going to use blogs or that kind of thing, that sort of zeitgeist mugging never seems to turn out well. It's like putting Rob Schneider in as comic relief.

The chorus will show different interpretations, different theories, different angles on the reality of what is going on. Some of them will be pieces of information that may or may not explain things.

(For example, BV has apparently supernatural powers. What I might include is a pared down primer on how stage magicians could achieve what he does.)

But I think that having pieces of the story told from various points of view, sometimes conflicting, with bits of commentary from the people that are around, to straight up chorus following Blackheart around and talking about what he does.

That last one is risky, but given the nature of the character, I think I can swing it. Along with the song and dance theme.

You maybe wondering why I'm talking about all this crap as opposed to things like plot and character. Well, it's because I'm trying to do something from a different angle. All of this kind of stuff will affect how the plot will unfold. I do have a basic idea of how the plot will go.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of six issues for this, because it gives me a nice big swath of space to stretch. And it's a length I'm comfortable with.

The whole story can best be summed up with one phrase:

"Who is Blackheart Valentine?"

Each issue will explore an aspect of that, and a different section of the protagonist's relationship with her 'creation'. Basically, every issue will posit (yeesh, did I justsay posit) an answer to the question of "Who is Blackheart Valentine?"

Something like:

1. Urban Legend

2. Lie

3. Madman

4. Collective Unconscious

5. Hero

6. Myth

(Not final, just the idea.)

As far as the plot goes, the basic bit is this: Blackheart Valentine, whatever he is, has the goal of bringing down the entire criminal and corrupt enterprise that keeps the city running. The protagonist, and for fuck's sake, let's give her a name - Chandra, becomes entangled in the conflict when people who care, both good and bad, track the BV effect back to her.

Hrrm. Rambly. Sorry, just getting my thoughts down and organised.

Disumbrationism.

* For those who don't feel like reading an external link: after getting mad about his wife's realistic still lifes meeting a cold reception from an art exhibition jury, Paul Jordan Smith felt like spoofing modern art, so he gave himself a faux-Slavic name, dressed his hair to look like a brooding Emo artist, painted a sloppy, nonsensical picture of a woman holding a banana over her head, made up some pretentious crap about "the shattering of the bonds of womanhood", and claimed he was the founder of the Disumbrationist school of art. But much to his surprise, instead of being mocked and laughed at (which was his actual intention), he was actually praised as an innovative artistic genius! Some time later, after his Kayfabe actually started gaining real followers, he eventually revealed his ruse and lectured everyone about the declining tastes of the artistic community.

It's a great name. So: Valentine Blackheart. OR Valentine Blackhart(e). OR civilian name: Valentin Blackhart(e).

C'mawwwn. Keep it.

Believe it or not, I haven't forgotten this. I've just been waaaaay too busy to give it the thought and work it needs.

On the bummer side, two of my long gestating pet projects have been beaten to the punch by Hollywood.

On one hand, it irritates me that stuff I've been working on for the last two years will now, if I go on with them, be viewed as ripping off movies and television shows.

On the other hand, it does look like my instincts and sensibilities are commercial enough. So there's that.