Back on track? Pitch #4 The Demon.
Yeah I haven't been around much to do more pitches. Excuses, Excuses....
The list of suggested pitches.
So where did we leave off? Oh! Jack Kirby's The Demon! As suggested by the ever clever spirk4life
This character isn't really broke, so there isn't much to fix. You just have to stop all the attempts to muck around with him in recent years. Forget the crap going on in DC "Hell", forget the quasi-humor series from the 90's. Go with the core of the character, but add a twist that is missing from DC these days by making it an honest horror title.
For those that need some background: The Demon is Etrigan, a rhyming hellspawn bound to human Jason Blood. As the Demon, Etrigan is super-powerful, magical, and can shoot the very fires of Hell itself from his mouth. Blood has lived for hundreds of years since the time of the mythical Camelot with the curse of preventing Etrigan from being totally loosed upon the world. Jason Blood has the ability to use human magic and is slightly telepathic.
Since Blood is an occult investigator/psychic. I'd probably play this up with having people know him for this. If he was a true person, Blood would have written a few books by now. We live in a world where night vision bullshit ghost shows and books about magic and the occult are on all over, so a real expert would have some bit of cult fame. He is no reality ghost hunter though, he is the guy you call when the shit has finally hit the fan. When even the Catholic priests are too scared to get involved. You know, the crap John Constantine used to do before the shuffled him off to the Vertigo retirement home.
The Demon is the force that Blood has to use to get rid of these problems. A deadly tool much akin to a crowbar to the head of the forces of darkness. He is a big hulking frightening beast who enjoys his job of dining on the things that go bump in the night. It gives him freedom and release from his imprisonment. He is also always trying to make a play to be free from the curse of being bonded to Blood, which gives us plenty of potential for subplots.
I want each and every time he transforms into Etrigan to look painful too. I don't want it to be consistent either. Sometimes he might bulge and break and "Hulk out". Other times his skin might tear and rip off like a Jason Blood suit. There are at least two awesome visuals I have in mind where Etrigan comes out of Jason Blood's mouth. I want the change to be as horrifying as any element in the book.
My pitch is for a regular series set in the DC Universe. It should have the feel of an old school horror book, like Swamp Thing and Phantom Stranger, but with enough edge to give that Steve Niles guy a run for his money. Horror comics are not just for adults and don't all need to be thrown into the Vertighetto. (I was reading Clive Barker, Stephen King, and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing in my early teens, so I know this genre has a teen appeal). I want to skirt that fine line, where people are going "Why the fuck is this not a Vertigo book?"
Going back to Alan Moore and using his "American Gothic" storyline in Swamp Thing as inspiration, the early issues will explore Blood/Etrigan going up against spirits, disturbances, ghosts, and demons from all over the globe, where you can do some unique strip mining of the myths and ghost stories of other cultures. Later on, I would build up subplots that slowly reintroduce Klarion, Morgan Le Fay, and some of the supporting cast of past Demon series (and making sure we are on the same page with the post Final Crisis versions of them). The only outright reference to the more humorous 90's take on the character will be in Etrigan's morbid gallows humor.
I hope writing rhyming dialogue does not break my brain. It could be enough to drive one insane.
My dream artist for the book would be Nat Jones. Has he ever done a DC book? Probably not. But he would be perfect for this one.
As always, my past pitches can be seen HERE.
Up neXt: Generation X
The list of suggested pitches.
So where did we leave off? Oh! Jack Kirby's The Demon! As suggested by the ever clever spirk4life
This character isn't really broke, so there isn't much to fix. You just have to stop all the attempts to muck around with him in recent years. Forget the crap going on in DC "Hell", forget the quasi-humor series from the 90's. Go with the core of the character, but add a twist that is missing from DC these days by making it an honest horror title.
For those that need some background: The Demon is Etrigan, a rhyming hellspawn bound to human Jason Blood. As the Demon, Etrigan is super-powerful, magical, and can shoot the very fires of Hell itself from his mouth. Blood has lived for hundreds of years since the time of the mythical Camelot with the curse of preventing Etrigan from being totally loosed upon the world. Jason Blood has the ability to use human magic and is slightly telepathic.
Since Blood is an occult investigator/psychic. I'd probably play this up with having people know him for this. If he was a true person, Blood would have written a few books by now. We live in a world where night vision bullshit ghost shows and books about magic and the occult are on all over, so a real expert would have some bit of cult fame. He is no reality ghost hunter though, he is the guy you call when the shit has finally hit the fan. When even the Catholic priests are too scared to get involved. You know, the crap John Constantine used to do before the shuffled him off to the Vertigo retirement home.
The Demon is the force that Blood has to use to get rid of these problems. A deadly tool much akin to a crowbar to the head of the forces of darkness. He is a big hulking frightening beast who enjoys his job of dining on the things that go bump in the night. It gives him freedom and release from his imprisonment. He is also always trying to make a play to be free from the curse of being bonded to Blood, which gives us plenty of potential for subplots.
I want each and every time he transforms into Etrigan to look painful too. I don't want it to be consistent either. Sometimes he might bulge and break and "Hulk out". Other times his skin might tear and rip off like a Jason Blood suit. There are at least two awesome visuals I have in mind where Etrigan comes out of Jason Blood's mouth. I want the change to be as horrifying as any element in the book.
My pitch is for a regular series set in the DC Universe. It should have the feel of an old school horror book, like Swamp Thing and Phantom Stranger, but with enough edge to give that Steve Niles guy a run for his money. Horror comics are not just for adults and don't all need to be thrown into the Vertighetto. (I was reading Clive Barker, Stephen King, and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing in my early teens, so I know this genre has a teen appeal). I want to skirt that fine line, where people are going "Why the fuck is this not a Vertigo book?"
Going back to Alan Moore and using his "American Gothic" storyline in Swamp Thing as inspiration, the early issues will explore Blood/Etrigan going up against spirits, disturbances, ghosts, and demons from all over the globe, where you can do some unique strip mining of the myths and ghost stories of other cultures. Later on, I would build up subplots that slowly reintroduce Klarion, Morgan Le Fay, and some of the supporting cast of past Demon series (and making sure we are on the same page with the post Final Crisis versions of them). The only outright reference to the more humorous 90's take on the character will be in Etrigan's morbid gallows humor.
I hope writing rhyming dialogue does not break my brain. It could be enough to drive one insane.
My dream artist for the book would be Nat Jones. Has he ever done a DC book? Probably not. But he would be perfect for this one.
As always, my past pitches can be seen HERE.
Up neXt: Generation X