Office Comedy Week Part V: Abandoned Concepts

I feel pity. Oh so much pity. It’s a pity how shitty I feeeeeel.

Okay, that’s enough singing from me. You can’t hear me, but my laptop can and it ain’t happy. Although with that said, perhaps I should write musicals. For god’s sake I could pretty much vomit and create something both deeper and more melodic than the average musical. God Bless America and its low standards. Anyway, you may wonder why I feel pity. Or feel shitty. Todaaaay. There’s a lot of reasons, actually, including my job status, the situation in Japan, and how, although I actually have some small amount of free time these days every time I sit down to write I realize someone else has already done it better. Or they’ve done it worse, but they did it first.

I remember years ago when I invented Atheistsmas. Complete with its own history, celebrations, and even terminology (such as an Atheistsmas statistical anomaly) only to be told by a friend that I must have been ripping off Festivus. Damn you, Seinfeld. You’re not even funny.

Ironically, one of the things that has brought me the most joy, The Tick, single handedly killed several concepts I had in the works when I first saw the live action series about eight months ago. Here’s a few examples.

Terror on the 20th Floor-
A 1st person narrative where the speaker is never named or described, and is left to be imagined as a regular Joe Everyman (not to be confused with a character whose name is actually Joe Everyman). He’s the odd man out in HR and Facilities, which is to say- he’s a man. In HR. Being in his position he comes to learn that many of his coworkers aren’t what they seem. Andy Mark Deux, CPA is secretly a robot. Richard, the sales rep is a werewolf. And the main’s first ever new hire turns out to be an alien. It’s actually pretty funny. At least in concept. Can you imagine? He invites his new hire to dinner to “tell her about the company” but she moves too fast for him and before he knows it he has to claim in desperation that Earth customs dictate no probing until the second date. Each chapter was planned as a self contained story with the intention of spoofing trends in paranormal and horror (and to a lesser extent, Sci-fi and fantasy). I was maybe half way through the first story when I got stuck. Andy had to subdue Richard with his Rocket Fist (a reference to Japanese robot shows, specifically Mazinger Z) when it was starting to look a little too stupid. That’s when I started to watch The Tick. For encouragement, I guess. Like minds. Inspiration. And by the end of the first episode, The Tick had Doc Brown teaching us the lesson of Metcalf (He wanted to be a superhero, and now he needs a machine… to poop!), a soviet android programmed to assassinate Jimmy Carter, and Apocalypse Cow shooting fire from her teets. How the hell was I supposed to compete with that? And being a book, I couldn’t use visual stunts. Arrrghle barghle.

Wave of the Future-
The greatest heroes of all time. Awesome Guy. Captain Obvious and his sidekick, 20/20Hindsight. Speedy Guillermo. Psychedelic Lightshow. Aqualung. And the ever popular Wonder Lass (occasionally referred to by chauvinistic pigs as Wonder Bra). This story has nothing to do with them, but rather their Graduate Assistants, known collectively as the Wave of the Future. They are:

Danger Tongue- Apart from being fairly charming (particularly where older women are concerned) he has no powers of any kind and despite being team leader, he insists that he gets no respect. No respect at all. Hence the name Danger Tongue. Mostly he gives statements to the press and is sent to commandeer civilian vehicles, cut people in line and do other little dirty tasks for more important heroes.

The Airy Punster- who has found a way to turn levity into levitation.

Lens Flare- Whose “powers” are all edited in during post production thanks to her 1337 photoshop skillz.

Lok Smith- Secret son of Will, rumored to be the result of a government project in Eugenics, and their resident stealth and infiltration expert.

Together they battle against the world’s greatest fiend- Subsidius, the family farmer whose evil organization is funded by YOUR TAXES.

I think you can see why I dropped this one. Maybe as a one shot graphic novel, except I can’t draw, don’t know many who can, and graphic novels are crazy hard to sell. Also because I’m into novels and short stories. And also because best case scenario, one day I’d be signing copies at a convention and Ben Edlund would come over and say “You just wish you were me.” And he’d be totally right.