THE PITCH: 25 loglines for posible comic book series

Oni Press, The Pitch,

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By now, most of you who have arrived here, being comic book fans, know that Oni Press will soon start accepting unsolicited submissions. They will review material for two months starting May 1, then close the submissions window for two months — lather, rinse, repeat.

My plan is to send in three or four pitches every open period until they either publish something, or ask me to please stop.

Per the submission guidelines, applications are to include a logline, a one-page synopsis, a 3-5 page outline, and a sample script of between eight and 20 pages. I’ve begun by writing 25 loglines, listed below. Some are from patches of novels and short stories I’ve tinkered with over the years, others are comic book pitches I’ve played with, recrafted to de-emphasize the super-her aspect, as that's not really Oni's thing. A couple are brand new. My plan is to pitch each submission as a three-issue limited series, unless noted otherwise below.

What I’m asking of you is to help me choose which ones to work on for my first batch of submissions. Which 3-4 pitches below would you be most interested in reading as in Oni comic book? Please let me know in the comments section, or my emailing me at duke.harrington@gmail.com.

NOTE: The explanatory notes with some of the loglines below would likely be incorporated into the series synopsis portion of the submission, but are included here for clarity and added points of information to help you make your selections.

1. BIG CHIEF BOMAZEEN

Four young men still traumatized by the decade-old murder of a friend, killed for divulging his sexuality, return to the now-closed Boy Scout camp where the grizzly deed happened, hoping to re-open it in his honor, only to learn too late that he wasn't the only one of the group who was gay . . . and that one of them was the murderer.

Note: The name of the series comes from an actual closed scouting camp, named for an 18^th century Abanaki chief who waged a bloody war of revenge upon the white settlers of central Maine. The murderer above — who, it turns out, has been a busy little hate-killer over the past 10 years in an effort to suppress the fear that he enjoyed his friend's advances, right up until killing him for it — has adopted Bomazeen’s image and motifs in the commission of his killings.

2. CRABAPPLE COVE

A once radical doctor who has grown ultra-conservative in his retirement years starts to resent the liberal element that has overrun his small coastal town — replacing bars with yoga studios, bowling alleys with rock-climbing gyms, and protesting the traditional lobstering industry as cruelty to animals — and, so, resolves to drive them out in the cruelest manner possible.

NOTE: This is an old idea I had for a tv series about the retirement life of M*A*S*H’s Dr. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, a dramedy about a fishing village that gleefully cheats all tourists and drunks (it says so on the sign leading into town), rewritten to add in a definite Stephen King vibe.

3. CONOTOCARIUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF YOUNG GEORGE WASHINGTON.

The story of how an awkward second son with no prospects began down the path to becoming father of his county by first blundering into a wilderness he did not understand and, in his blind ambition, inadvertently starting the first true world war. Divided into three books of three issues each: "Book I: Monongahela," "Book II: Fort Necessity," and "Book III: Braddock's Road."

NOTE: Conotocarius, meaning “town-taker,” was the Iroquois name for Washington, based on his use of surveying equipment, the appearance and use of which the natives always saw as the first step in depriving them of their lands.

4. THE DANGER PATROL

A neighborhood watch group made up of four inner city boys, all fatherless and distrustful of authority, but with an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong due to a steady diet of comic books, uncover a long-standing ring of pedophile cops kept quiet by a conspiracy of city officials, and risk becoming victims themselves while trying to bring the crimes to light with the help of a mysterious mentor who may be more than he seems.

NOTE: This is my Dingbats of Danger Street pitch, rejiggered to minimize the super-hero angle — i.e. what would it be like to grow up idolizing super-heroes in a world where super-heroes are real? — and instead focus on the crime angle by way of Kirby’s original take on the Dead End Kids. The mentor, loosely modeled on DC founder Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, would run a comics store forever on the verge of bankruptcy, from which he would lead several Scout-like “Boy Commando” groups. In addition to the Danger Patrol, there would be the rich kids, or “green team,” of Dropsie Patrol, and the never-seen but much-feared Chinatown kids of Yangtze Patrol, among others. The pedophile cop angle is drawn from stories I'm currently working on at The Sentry. 

5. DEAD MAN SWITCH

When the town drunk of a small New England village gets elected town father — because too many people thought it’d be a hoot to vote for him when he had the temerity to put his name on the ballot — he elects to turn over a new leaf by sobering up, but also, more importantly, by publicizing an open secret about the abandoned railroad line through town, bringing him into deadly conflict with the snowmobile club that’s considered the trail its own for 70 years.

NOTE: A dead man’s switch is an old train control that keeps the locomotive moving until the engineer let’s go. It’s a metaphor for the town drunk’s political activities, as well as for his desire, once he learns he’s dying of scirosis of the liver, to switch his ways and do one good thing for his town, even if it’s a thing none of the townspeople particularly want to do.

6. DEAD PRESIDENTS

When a giant entertainment conglomerate receives a court order stopping its plans to replace the life-like animatronic units in its Hall of Presidents exhibit with living clones, five of the founding fathers escape their gestation chambers before they can be destroyed. So, what would you do if you were a dead president on the run in a country two centuries after you created it? That's right — ROAD TRIP!

NOTE: This one’s been percolating in my brain for a long time. In fact, I had the title in mind years before the 1995 movie of the same name. In it, the presidents would attempt to come to terms with how far their country has advanced, and yet how much it has diverged, from the land they envisioned.

7. FLASHBACK

Charlie Whiston has always been possessed of strong feelings of déjà vu, but when he’s recruited into the CIA with an offer to pay off his crushing student debt, he learns a truth about himself — that in moments of extreme duress he can rewind time by as much as 15 seconds. Thus, the feeling he’d barely dodged that speeding car once before is actually a quickly-fading memory from a divergent timeline, in which it did hit and would have killed him, had he not, by reflex, triggered a flashback. It’s a useful if nerve-wracking power to have, in part because it only works when he’s about to die. For that reason, Charlie is only going through the motions as a black ops spy, at least until a beautiful Iranian girl convinces him he’s the sole hope to prevent World War III, which started 20 seconds ago.

NOTE: In the alternate world where I hit the Powerball, as I’ve so often dreamed, I buy up the Krofft, Continuity, Nemo and Ditko characters and, among other series, publish a team book called The Originals (yes, I was having this Walter Mittey moment years before the tv series of the same name). The group would consist of Electra-Woman, Megalith, Ms Mystic, Silver Streak, Armor (renamed), Sea Wolf, Mr. A, and new character Terrorbyte. Meanwhile, a Teen Titans-like group called The New Originals would have included Dynagirl, Wildboy, Scarlet Streak, Toyboy, Cap’n Eli, and new characters Flashback and Zephyr. Flashback is little changed here other than to give him a full story arc, as opposed to an open-ended status.

  

           

8. FROM AWAY

When a Canadian oil conglomerate announces plans to begin shipment of tar sands oil, the small Maine city at the other end of the pipeline becomes ground zero in an international battle over the product often derided as “the dirtiest fuel on the planet.” The proposal touches off a municipal melee that sets neighbor against neighbor in a battle over working waterfront jobs vs. the environment, with both sides willing to resort to any means necessary in order to secure their respective visions for the city.

NOTE: This story is based on three years of newspaper reporting I’ve done in South Portland, Maine. The title derives from a pejorative in the Pine Tree State for residents born elsewhere and reflects the fact that while SoPo natives fight one another over the pipeline proposal, few of the key players on either the corporate oil or environmental activist sides, not to mention the tar sands product itself, are actually from the Maine, much less South Portland.

9. GREAT FROG
When the drummer for power pop band Great Frog gets caught crossing back across the U.S. border with a bag of heroin stuck down his pants, his entire group is given an uncomfortable option: Continue to tour as undercover agents deputized by the DEA to prove where their manager, Mr. Neptune, is getting the drugs he distributes at their shows, or go down with all evidence pointing to them as the dealers. It's a choice that tests the loyalty of the bandmates — to each other, to Neptune, to their fans, and, in some cases, to the smack.

NOTE: This is from what would have been — again, if DC accepted unsolicited submissions — a New 52 pitch for the old Teen Titans, first developed about a year into the big DC relaunch, with Donna Troy as lead singer, Wally West on lead guitar, Garth on bass, Lilith on keyboards, Roy Harper (eventually revealed as a clone of the one paling around with Jason Todd, or visa versa) on drums, and Gnarrk as roadie. Naturally, the best way to sum up the tone of this series would be Breaking Titans.



10. THE H.I.T. SQUAD

With the war on terror firmly into its second decade and a new wave of attacks anticipated, a public backlash against domestic military operations forces the government to instead recruit special agents to act as covert Homeland Integrity Tacticians. But why is the U.S. government so focused on hiring operatives with such an abiding distrust of government, and who is the mysterious Madame A who calls the shots?

NOTE: This one began life years ago as a pitch never sent to DC, because they don’t accept unsolicited submissions, for use of its Steve Ditko stable of characters, in part because I’m a fan, if not absolute practitioner of objectivist thought, and felt his views deserve more than the ridicule they so often attract in the comics press. So, although the concept has strayed somewhat from super-hero to special ops, expect characters not dissimilar to Hawk and Dove, The Creeper, The Question, Odd Man, Shade the Changing Man, and The Stalker.

11. LEAST TRAVELED

A man who has become a local legend as “The North Pond Hermit,” living with zero human contact for more than 30 years while surviving, in part, by raiding seasonal cabins and camps around a northern Maine lake, must readapt to society, in and out of prison, including the unexpected fanbase his extreme libertarian manifesto has created among millennial admirers.

NOTE: A fictionalized version of the real North Pond Hermit.

12. MARKET SQUARE

A man whose teenage daughter was recently shot and killed by a hunter in her own back yard struggles to control his emotions, as well as confusion over which side he should now be on, when he becomes embroiled in a municipal fight over development rights in a small Maine town just beginning to adopt zoning rules.

NOTE: A fictionalized account of events I covered and people I met while working as a reporter in the Oxford Hills region of Western Maine.

13. THE McRUFFLIN GROUP

A satirical look at Washington politics as commented on by the anamorphic characters who roam the city streets, generally creating havoc wherever they go while their owners work under the capital dome. Featuring John McRufflin (a great dane, Type A), Jacques LeHound (a dismissive old hound dog), Pat (a pugnacious, derby wearing bulldog), Mor-Ton (an oft-confused, nearsighted skottie), Freddie (his best friend, a fast-talking beetle), Eleanor (a refined Aristocat suffering from guilt pangs of "white privilege"), and Clarance (a black, bootstrapping alleycat).

NOTE: Drawn from a comic strip idea I had years and years ago based on the McLaughlin Group.

14. THE MIGHTY MIGHTY NEZINSCOT AND OTHER TALES OF YANKEE WOE

A series of short tales tracing the history of a small Maine town, from its settling by a group that included a British solider who escaped custody and fled north following his participation in the Boston Massacre, through the loss of an entire generation of young men in the Civil War; from the rise of a river-based mill economy to the slow outsourcing of jobs and shuttering of stores, with all stories tied in some way to the glorified stream though the town’s center known as the Nezinscot River.

NOTE: A comic book adaptation of a book of short stories I’ve started but not yet finished. Think of it as Will Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue graphic novel transported from an urban city street in New York to a rural village river in Maine.

15. MOLLYOCKET’S GOLD

A pair of young girls infatuated with the legend of an Indian princess who hid a cache of gold from colonists make up a story about finding a piece of the treasure, fueling a gold rush that overruns their small town and sets their fathers on a deadly conflict.

NOTE: Based on the real legend of Molly Ocket in West Paris, Maine, to include a study of that town’s Finnish immigrant community mixed with recent conflicts surrounding Indian place names and school mascots.

16. THE PARALLEL MAN

Have you even wondered what might've happened if you’d joined the military right out of high school instead of entering directly into the workforce? Or, what if you had studied hard enough to earn the scholarship that could've got you into college? What if you had left the house five minutes earlier and missed that accident, if you hadn’t broken up with your first love, or if you’d told another you loved her, too, just when she needed to hear it most? Logan Cavenaugh doesn’t need to wonder. That’s because he's able to access all memories and abilities he would  have developed from any choice he might have made in life, along any alternate timeline, anywhere in the multiverse. It’s a pretty handy power to have, or at least it would be, if all his other selves weren’t trying to kill him.

NOTE: This was an idea and title I began years ago, and I can’t tell you how pissed I was a few months ago when I saw a comic solicited with this title in the small press section of the Diamond Previews catalog. So, this’d probably need a different title if developed.

17. 72 VIRGINS

A cynical vice cop tracks the seemingly random murder of a prostitute from an abandoned water tunnel located beneath a Brooklyn comic book store all the way to the White House, where an unpopular Vice President has launched a false flag attack he sees as his only hope of securing his party's nomination for the big chair. To stop the jihadists hired to blow up the borough's water supply from getting their heavenly reward of 72 virgins, each, the cop grudgingly accepts the over-eager aid of the comic shop patrons who, let's face it, are probably all virgins themselves.

18. THE SUMPTER SOLUTION

When the governor of Maine meets with a group of hard-core constitutionalists with whom he is sympathetic, the local media derides the so-called Sovereign Citizens as right-wing hate mongers with ties to domestic terrorists. The abuse becomes so bad the group — comprised largely of cranky old white dudes — forms a militia, submits a “remonstrance” to the state legislature, and congregates on public land in the north woods, deciding the time has come to separate this area from its state and the union as the new country of Norumbega.

NOTE: Imagines the Aroostook Watchmen, in the news about a year ago, as evolving into the actual terrorists many in the Maine media made them out to be. I'm imagining this as a sort of Branch Davidian standoff led by an Apple Dumpling Gang faction of the Tea Party.

19. SWAMP DONKEY

A semi-successful novelist whose wife is dying of a terminal disease moves to a small Maine town where he joins the volunteer fire department. Appalled to see it still run like it’s 1950 — "And people around here would prefer 1850," he notes — he attempts to take control of something in his life he can fix by modernizing its operations, only to realize the locals are opposed, sometimes violently, to their world becoming more sophisticated than they can keep up with.

NOTE: The title is another name for a moose, an indication that, like the traditional Maine Yankee the story depicts, it is an evolutionary dead end whose time on this planet is almost over.

20. TERRORBYTE

The conspiracy website christlikeproductions.com has recently Kickstarted a field team to investigate TEOTWAWKI reports from across the globe. On constant patrol for any doomsday scenario, they prevent some, debunk others, and leave still more as unsolved mysteries. But what the team doesn’t know is that their leader is really the holographic projection of a teenage girl afflicted with mast cell activation syndrome. Literally allergic to everything, this girl-in-the-bubble-cum-computer genius desperately wants to uncover the one real doom that will destroy the world and end her pain.

NOTE: This one combines ideas I had for a Doom Patrol pitch with the Terrobyte character mentioned in the note to the Flashback logline, above.

21. TOKE RATE

When a casino opened in the foothills of Western Vermont, its owners promised an economic boom that never came, leaving Alan Metcalf bankrupt, unable to repay the loan he took out to open the outdoor shop he expected would serve an influx of tourists. What came instead was grey-haired grippers with no interest in physical activity beyond constant pulling of slot machine levers and, bereft of options, Metcalf enters dealer school at the casino with one goal in mind — to learn everything he needs to know to rob it of every cent it has.

NOTE: In between newspaper gigs I entered dealer school at the local casino. I flunked out. This is my revenge.

22. TROPHY GIRL

Laurie isn't a girl who wants to become a stock car driver. And what if she was? Even at the small track she frequents in rural New Hampshire, that's hardly a novelty. No, Laurie is unique because she used to be Larry, the stock car driver who wanted to be a girl, and that's what's causing her quite a bit of conflict, both on track and off.

NOTE: This started as a book about a pretty girl with low self-esteem, passed around the drivers at the local race track (hence the take on "trophy wife"), who finally get up the gumption to compete with them at their own game. I gave it a new twist long before Bruce Jenner started to dominate the news cycle, but his recent revelation certainly give this a timely spin.

23. VICE AND VIRTUE

A biography of Aaron Burr, from his childhood and Revolutionary War exploits, to his post-war political maneuverings, fatal encounter with Alexander Hamilton, and ill-advised Mexican adventure. It’s the story of a man caught between two times, too tied to traditional colonial society to ever be a true peer to his revolutionary contemporaries, yet too much of a modernist to fit in with their still parochial and prejudicial views.

NOTE: Like Conotocarius, above, split into three books of three issues, each — "Book I: The Plains of Abraham," "Book II: The Plains of Weehawken," and "Book III: The Plains of Bastrop."

24. THE WEARY CLUB

A newspaper reporter working on a fluff piece about the 75^th anniversary of a social club famously “about nothing,” comes to learn it really is about something — protecting the secret to immortality discovered by one of its founding members, and the remaining founders, still young and vital, after having killed their compatriot and destroyed his work, will stop at nothing to protect the world from his overpopulation pill.

NOTE: Based on the real Weary Club of Norway, Maine. This adaptation of a novel I never finished incorporates a number of historical figures, including newspaper publisher Fred Sanborn (the actual club founder), artist Vivian Akers, fiddler Mellie Dunham, mineralogist George Howe, photographer Minnie Libby, and writer/doctor C. A. Stephens, who really did have a laboratory set up where he researched a cure for death.

25. WESSEREUNSETTE BLUE

A career waiter in the midst of a mid-life crisis returns to his hometown in hopes of hitting a karmic reset button, only to become the prime suspect in a serial killing when relatives of his old high school girlfriends start turning up dead.

NOTE: This is actually the novel I am currently working on. Lake Wesserunsette is the setting for the former resort where much of the action takes place.

26. THE YOUNG H.E.R.O.E.S.

By the year 2958 humans have colonized every planet, dwarf planet, moon, large asteroid, artificial world, and sizable Oort cloud object in the solar system. But mankind has yet to master faster-than-light travel, leading to a system that is filled to its brim and roiling at the edge of war over resources and religion. When the Confederated Planets creates a youth version of its Hazardous Environment Rescue Operations and Emergency Services crew, will these teenage representatives from 247 cultures prove to be the symbol of interplanetary cooperation officials hope, or the flashpoint that starts the first Worlds War?

NOTE: This is essentially my Legion of Super-Heroes revival pitch, adapted to make the group more of a 30^th century Explorers unit, such as the ones associated with present day fire departments, and less a Science Police offshoot, although some super-powers will still apply tanks to genetic modifications done to allow humans to live on various otherwise inhospitable worlds.

So, there you have it. If a few of these jump out to you as stories you'd actually like to read, please let me know. Who knows, if a full submission passes muster with the Oni editors, you just might see one of the above on the shelves of your local comics shop.