Tuesday, January 09, 2007

You asked for it

Crikey, that title sounds a bit threatening, doesn't it? Don't worry - I'm not going to have you knee-capped just yet (we'll save that for your reactions...).

So here it is - the premise for a new comic book series I came up with. Now, please bear in mind that this is merely a prologue to what the series would be, and as such not too much really happens. Think of it as the pre-credits teaser at the beginning of a TV show. Also, as this is usually the sort of thing I only share with Grum, it might be a bit rough around the edges and not as descriptive as a piece of prose normally would be, or probably should be.

So having bigged it up so much, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you The Prologue of 'Grenwald the Great'.

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Grenwald woke early on the day he would die. With some assistance from two nurses he first ate a little breakfast, then bathed in a half full, lukewarm bath.
At around nine-thirty, some two and a half hours after his fitful sleep ended, he asked an orderly to push him to his small desk, the one by the window where the morning sun streamed in, where his vintage typewriter waited for him, a blank sheet of paper already inserted in it.
Grenwald stared at the empty page for several minutes, as if he were waiting for the words he had put off writing for so long to appear as if by magic. Suffice to say, they did not, so he laid his hands, misshapen through arthritis, on the keys.
He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and began, with a little effort, to type.
It was immediately after he had typed the last letter of his title – Grenwald the Great: An Autobiography – that the first spasm of overwhelming pain raced through his body.
He did not know where to put his hands – on his chest, or clasp them to the edge of the desk, as if squeezing it might ease the inhuman ferocity of the pain. He gasped for breath, but none came; instead, he heard himself utter a short, sharp squeak. Any other time he might have found the noise amusing.
Strange, thought Grenwald the Great as he began to loose consciousness, that in this, his dying moments, he felt more alive than he had in years…

Grenwald was found, by coincidence, just a few minutes after suffering the immense coronary that would ultimately claim his life, by a young orderly barely out of her teens, pushing a cart loaded with jugs of water and a variety of fruit juices. Knocking gently on the door and entering without waiting to be invited, the inexperienced young girl was ill prepared to deal with what she found. Panicking, she turned on her heel and ran down the hallway shrieking loudly – an effective, if somewhat unprofessional means of raising the alarm.

Grenwald’s body – or rather Grenwald, as their remained at this point in time a small flicker of life within the withered old body – was quickly transferred to the medical ward of the care home, and placed on a cold, sterile bed with an uncomfortably firm mattress. There, Doctors Billingsley and Kellan began to do their utmost to bring him back to life.

And it was at this time, as he lay there surrounded by masked figures plunging all manner of needles and tubes into his tired old body, that Grenwald’s remarkable life, the life he had struggled for years to capture on paper, began to flash before his eyes…

13 comments:

Tara said...

Well I can picture this guy in my mind, especially the twisted, arthritic hands and the environment that he's in. Good start!

Inexplicable DeVice said...

My imagination isn't running as much as splitting up and screaming off to the horizon in jet planes - Broom's too slow - with ideas of where this could go.

Count me in as hooked.

Hmmm... Smenita's back. Gah!

And again...

And again...

Sigh... Fourth time...

Right! Copy and paste time!



Gah! Galactica's about to start!

Well. BSG has started...

skillz said...

wtf is this smenita business all about? glitch in the matrix?

Anyway, like it so far.

Does Grenwald have green skin?

Tim said...

Tara - well that's part of the job done if you can picture the character. He's really gnarled!

Inexplicable Device - Hurrah! This could go in any direction - basically I've tried to set it up so that ANY sort of story could be told - an Indiana Jones-style tale, a sci-fi epic - all using the same character.

I got smenita too... is Blogger broken? Is it a latino word for man jam?

Skillz - I think it is a glitch in the matrix; sadly I still don't know kung-fu.

No, he doesn't have green skin. He is not Yoda.

Tara said...

I kept getting "smenita" too. Pretty name for a girl.

Dinah said...

Hooked! In my mind, Dr. Kellan is so evil.

Devine Dora said...

There better be some evil somebody in this story. I love having someone to hate...real or otherwise.

You know I'm hooked Tim - so before the whip comes out, you better write/post some more....

Miss Smuggersham said...

I really like it - it's actually really interesting, and I can see the characters very clearly.

I'd like to see what your illustrator mate comes up with, and compare it with what I have imagined....

I'm seeing lots of hospital greens and whites, and very sterile and washed out sort of an environment.

Grenwald has those really sticky outy veins under his translucent skin. Well, that's my head vision, anyway.

I like the humour of the startled drinks lady - I hope you can keep up the balance of humour with the sadness of the story.

Tim said...

Tara - Smenita kept coming up a lot, hey? I think it's gone now though - my last WV was dipdix, which actually sounded quite offensive...

Dinah - Really? He's not intended to be! Maybe there's a spinoff there...?

Dora - There will be evil-a-plenty! I've sketched out some ideas for potential storylines within the 'life-flashing-before-his-eyes' framework, so I might post some of those... Hey! Maybe you guys could vote on which one I should write up first!!

My intention is that this really is the end of the guy's life, and is actually just a set-up to flash back to his incredible life so we can tell any sort of story - a romance, action-adventure, horror... all using the same character, but in his prime.

T-Bird - I think Grum's swirling some ideas around his brain at the moment... he's eager to do some drawin'!

Your head vision is pretty close to mine - the idea is that he's lived this amazing life (that many people actually don't believe) and then winds up in this mundane place that only serves to remind him that time waits for no man. I've been intrigued for a long time by the premise of 'what happens after the story is over' - sort of like the Ewoks having to clean up the day after their mega party at the end of Return of the Jedi.

Dinah said...

In the first X-Men, when they were in the statue of liberty fighting over good and evil, I couldn't stop thinking about the person who was going to have to come in on Monday and clean up the broken glass.

Assuming good won, that was.

Miss Smuggersham said...

Oh my God!! Me too! I have always wondered what they did with all those artefacts of the Empire... like the trooper helmets - were they fashioned into little Ewok bowls? What happened to all the Imperial walkers that got blowed all up?

Awesome concept. Is Grenwald like "The Cleaner" from La Femme Nikita, or is he the Bruce Willis blow 'em up guy who makes mess for the cleaners?

Oooh, I am even more intrigued now!

jt said...

I was just recently told about your blog, and I'm glad... nice writing! Your premise makes me want more. Very captivating.
And any blog post that starts with the word, 'crikey' is pretty darn cool.
~Julie

Tim said...

Dinah - Exactly! Notice that none of the X-Men have the cleaning mutation...

T-Bird - These are questions we need answered! Someone email George Lucas!!

Glad you like the concept! Grenwald is an adventurer whose life has been full of adventure, intrigue, excitement, and mystery. He's our hero!

Julie - Hello! Thanks for your kind words, I'm blushing slightly now! As for the 'crikey'... well, I'm saving 'gosh' for a super-special post!