Dirty Work After the Apocalypse
Kicking off my followup to AMALA, since I don't yet know if we'll be able to do more right away. Right now it's just a concept, as with the holidays, I haven't had the chance to sit down and work on it. My hope is to find an available, reliable artist who can do noir, the supernatural, aliens, and a hard-boiled protagonist.
He doesn't want to save the world. He doesn't want to drive out the world's evil. He's not even interested in restoring the human race. He's a detective. Bounty hunter, more like. And the only one rational enough and good enough to hunt down the worst of the worst, no matter how far up it leads.
I got a pretty good track record of landing my projects at publishers, so I feel pretty confident that I can take said artist to the dance, so to speak.
The concept is this:
The apocalypse and an alien invasion happen at the same time. One human detective is left in a chaotic world of monsters.
The longer concept is this:
It's the End Times. The demons have risen up to rule the earth for a thousand years ... and then an equally vicious race of aliens invade, on a manifest destiny to colonize the planet. The plane is laid waste, the human race is exterminated, and the earth is then carved up into organized criminal factions; some strictly barbaric alien, some strictly sinister demon, and some an eclectic mix. Only there's one human they forgot about.
He doesn't want to save the world. He doesn't want to drive out the world's evil. He's not even interested in restoring the human race. He's a detective. Bounty hunter, more like. And the only one rational enough and good enough to hunt down the worst of the worst, no matter how far up it leads.
Whatcha think so far?
Comments
How are the Aliens and Demons different and how do they interact (aside from killing each other?) Did the Demons try to save the humans? After all, they needed someone to torture. And what happens after a 1000 years when JC returns? In truth, the Apocalypse concepts just brings so much baggage with it, including alternative millennial interpretations that I'd be hesitant...
But the bare bones concept of an underdog bounty hunter hired by competing factions of monsters to take out the other side's toughest customers is a solid one. If the hero has one special ability that allows him to defeat the world's worst, and he doesn't much care what happens to him, or around him, well, the competition for his services could make for some mighty twisted plotting.
Why not forget the apocalypse angle and make it two races of alien invaders? And all our last human wants is to escape to the stars and a mythical planet of human explorers, ala BSG.
Unless there's an underlying element that really distorts the notion of what a detective is in the piece, or what sort of bounty is being obtained, you're immediately driving into well worn ruts.
The demons rose up and started ... eating. Dying by the millions, humanity offered little resistance, until the aliens invaded. We looked to them as our saviors, then looked again. Barbaric slavers expected soft humans but ran up against supernatural evil.
Planetwide destruction, and us caught in the middle. We died even faster.
I'm untouchable. And I do their dirty work, the stuff nobody else wants to do. It's blood money at the hands of billions. But hey, it's a living.
Right now a real nasty alien chieftain is negotiating Chicago with a demon lord. They want to co-rule. Yeah, that'll happen. Ogra is paying me a million to be sure Brikken dies, but it has to look like an accident.
I lead three lives. I'm a demon. I'm an alien. And least important of all ... I'm myself.
Until I lose who I am. It won't be long.
What was I before?
Boss of a Hollywood "creature shop?"
Woody Allen once said "Others want to achieve immortality through their work. I'd rather achieve it through not dying."
I got there, Mr. Allen.
It took me a year to learn their two languages. If I hadn't been adept...
Currency. The aliens brought their with them - pictures of their emperor - but the demons had to make new. After all, human money is as common as scrap paper if there aren't any people to spend it.
It's got pictures of dead people on it. Wonderful.
Why do you do this?
So I don't die.
Aren't you kinda ruining the good name of the human race?
Who gives a fuck?
Are you going to get off planet?
Maybe.
Ever meet a sympathetic alien / demon?
Kids in the former case. All the demons seem equally sinister to me.
Luckily the demons found me first. They speak Earth languages, of course. Mostly heavily accented English. It took me a year to start to learn the alien language.
What do I want? To not die. Billions are gone. I'd rather live out my life fully and not be slaughtered and disemboweled.
Maybe there's a few others like me who escaped the killing fields using their ingenuity.
I think I've learned enough of the language. I've perfected this alien costume. Whatcha think? Got a synthesizer voicebox and everything so I don't have to worry about my accent.
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The first 5 pages of the story, the pitch pages, would center on a demon who sneaks up on an alien lieutenant, shoots him in the head, arranges the scene to look like an accident, then disappears in the crowd. We catch up to him at a huge barricaded mansion in Hollywood where it's revealed that he's actually human.
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