Category: Creative

Shadows on (and off) the ‘Net

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Marc

The opening story, Into Darkness, is primarily concerned with what’s happening in “the Real” as the city expression goes. We’re presented with Force Command, which is the main route of interaction with the outside world, which is almost always only part of the Real. We’re also primarily concerned with the manifestation of the Netwights and how they are a constant presence in many areas of the city; most often on The Spill, which is the section of the city that didn’t fall relatively cleanly in concentric rings. That section collapsed entirely and left a path of rubble from the Rim all the way down to Tarterus, which is the seventh level and one of the key lynchpins of the ShadowNet, the city-wide network that forms “the Now.” Unlike the other two levels that form that tripod of ‘Net structure, the fifth with the Black Market and the third with the Rogue Corps, the nature of the ‘Net on Seven is less technical and more mystical, for lack of a better term. In some ways, it’s the very root of the ‘Net and some of the phenomena that appear on it. There are other forces at work on Tarterus and those elements shape the character of everything that comes into contact with it and them. Among them are things like Hakker and his Cyberrats (just cybernetically altered or something more?), the gangs like the Azurademons, the TarBabies, and the Psycho Derelicts, and the regular presence of the Tech Walkers, which are more present on this level and Six than anywhere else in the city.

As I mentioned before, the concept of the ShadowNet is rooted partially in William Gibson’s concept of cyberspace, but it was always intended to be more than that. Whether you’re online or not, you can regularly feel the presence of the ‘Net in the city. It’s both “online” in terms of being an electronic communication network, but also physically and psychically present within the city. If you’re “in tune” with it, then you can recognize its effect on the physical world. Rare, indeed, are those who can be effectively online in both the Real and the Now, but one of them, Satori, is a regular resident of Seven, which speaks to one of those dual identities that that level holds. And, of course, “dual nature” is one of the main elements of the ‘Net as a story element, which our first story will get into. The fact that we’re beginning at the top of the Spill and its endpoint is on Tarterus is another nice coincidence. It’s almost like I’ve had this thing mapped out in my head for 33 years. But that “feel” of the presence of the ‘Net is also evident if you happen to run into those denizens of the city which, like Satori, have a connection to the Real and the Now as part of their own dual nature. Those are the Netwights and the Jackwraiths.

The latter is the screen name I’ve had for some 40 years, going back to the earliest elements of the Internet in places like local BBSs and some more well-known nodes like The WELL (yes, just like the Ninth level. Inspiration comes from many places, but that wasn’t an intentional naming match.) Of course, back then it had to be “jackwrth” (8-character names) but I could type it out in full in messages and posts. The original idea was a take I had on Gibson’s work, wherein his characters had to jack in, mentally, to his network and basically fully upload their consciousness. My thought was: What would happen if you died while you were jacked in? You’d leave behind a ghost. Or a wraith. Hence, jackwraith, since I was terminally online back in the day. In old school D&D, two of the most feared types of undead were wraiths and wights, since the former would drain your strength until you just died from being near them and the latter, even worse, would drain you of experience levels; meaning that all the work you’d done to become an 8th-level fighter might be lost when a couple hits from a wight reduced you to a 6th-level fighter. So, it was natural that if I had jackwraiths in the Now, I’d also have netwights in the Real and the residents of the city would have to deal with them, no matter where they were in the two worlds. I have a story in the queue that involves the Iron Wizards and a programmer named Kahina that orbits that concepts about the wraiths/wights and what spawns them and why. But that’s probably a ways out.

Anyway, that’s a bit more background on one of the most important elements of the setting. It has a presence in this first story and the Tribunal’s version of it- TrinityNet -will be part of the second story. The Tech Walkers also have an exclusive network of their own down on the eighth level, the Wasteland, so there’s no place that isn’t connected to some version of the Now, even as close as the Wasteland is to The Well, which tends to restrict that kind of communication and presence, which is kind of a clue to the essential nature of that aspect to the city and its origin. But we’ll get into that at some point in the future, either through Jeff’s art or me rambling away in some other fashion. Next time, I might talk a bit more about Force Command or perhaps resume the survey down to Two, the Control Ring.

Plans for the moment

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Marc

When Jeff suggested that we try to get back into comics (him drawing and me writing), he immediately suggested the Dystopia material that I’ve been regaling you with in these first few posts. When he did that, he asked me to send him everything: the “bible”, the scripts, future story notes, and so on, as he hadn’t read any of it in years. What I also sent were a few short stories that I’d been writing in more recent years on the suggestion of my friend, Margot, that Jeff had never seen. Years ago, Margot had read the bible and a bit of the other material and reasoned that, if I couldn’t find an artist to do it in comic format, I should just write (or rewrite) the stories that I had and do everything in prose. That way, I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone to enable their seeing the light of day other than me. I’d become so fixated on the material in a visual sense that I’d never considered trying to change format and approach them from another angle. Some of that fixation remains, since we used to do everything in black-and-white at Fifth Panel because color printing was yet another expense that we (meaning: Jeff) couldn’t really afford. Consequently, I imagined almost every concept and character for Dystopia in black-and-white and that perspective remains to this day. Jeff has talked about adding color to the finished panels for the first story, which is based on one of those short stories that Margot suggested- written over a decade after the studio had ceased operation -and I find myself still imagining everything in black-and-white, such that adding color to anything feels foreign. I think Into Darkness could probably remain black-and-white, although I understand that adding color to it will attract more eyes and allow us to reveal some more details about things like the Netwights and so forth. The next story, though, will definitely benefit from a little chromatic accessorizing…

Into Darkness was intended as the opening segment of a serial novel. Even doing prose, I couldn’t escape the comic roots of the concept. What I wanted to do was a series of connected short stories- nine of them, in fact -that could stand on their own but still be a part of a continuing presentation; kind of a serial novel, with each segment taking place on one of the city’s nine levels. I realized in thinking about the whole concept that the later stories would more clearly be really long chapters in an actual novel, since the characters would be reflecting on previous events and interacting in a manner that involved that continuing story. But the first three or four or five could easily just be “days in the life of Dystopia” that spoke to one corner of the differing nature of each level. The central plot of the novel was an eruption by the Netwights/Jackwraiths in both the Real and the Now, respectively. You’ll see me regularly using that little catchphrase that is commonly wielded by the inhabitants of the city to talk about the outer world (the “real”) and the inner world (the ShadowNet or the “now.”) It was something I thought about when developing the concept of the city as I noticed how quickly news traveled on the then-nascent Internet, compared to the everyday world which still depended on newspapers, TV networks, and word-of-mouth. That phenomenon expanded beyond anything I was considering 30 years ago, such that, on today’s date that I’m writing this, the current president of the United States announced that he was not running for reelection not via press conference or delivering a letter to the New York Times, but on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. That was inconceivable 30 years ago. There was the real and today there is the now. The entities that are the wights and the wraiths exist in those domains, respectively, but they’re just one of the most outward examples of how intertwined those domains are, which is why the catchphrase exists.

All of that said, Into Darkness is about just one aspect of The Rim, which is Force Command. The previous post talked about a few others, so there are still many directions that we could go if we decided to venture back to the top level. It is, of course, also only the first half of that story and we will finish it, but we’re going to sail down to the second level for the second one: Midwife, aborted which is, again, one of those short stories of the serial novel but involves a concept that’s been with me from the very first imaginings of the setting, which is The Tribunal, the dominant presence on the second level, and the Midwife program, which is a key element of the Tribunal’s genetic purity efforts. I’ll do a post about level Two as I mentioned at the end of my post about The Rim, so I won’t go into too much detail here. But there’s no hiding the fact that one of my favorite concepts within the setting is that of the fanatical, fascist, ultra-religious, Kafkaesque Tribunal and its various manifestations, including its own network, known as TrinityNet. So we decided to switch off from completing the full story of Bradson and Frazier up on Point and figured we’d engage at least the first part of how that surge of wights and wraiths is impacting at least one of the other levels of the city. I’m not sure if we’ll follow through the entire plot of the novel just yet; mostly because I never finished it. I completed the first three stories (although there’s room for them to be expanded) and got about halfway through the fourth (Stake and the Knightshift on Four, key characters in that story, are among my favorites of the gangs that are everywhere in the city) before losing the flame for it. Now that Jeff and I are back at it, this may turn out to be the compelling factor in its completion; not least because it’s a solid look at every level of the city all the way down to the Well. (Just as an editorial aside, I’m still debating about constantly capitalizing the articles before proper names that are major elements, rather than personal names. In other words, I’m questioning whether I should keep writing things as “The Tribunal” or “the Tribunal.” It may just be a question of me saving one keystroke (e.g. not pressing Shift more than once when writing those names.))

I kind of detest doing survey work, which is what I feel like “introducing” people to the concept is. I don’t want to be writing a guidebook. I want to be writing stories. But the serial novel was intended to be both an introduction to the overall concept AND a solid story, so beginning where we do is a convenient opening, but I’m not really concerned about holding people’s hands on the way down, either. One of my all-time favorite comic writers is Howard Chaykin, who basically never stops to give people any kind of introduction to plot or setting or characters. He just dives right into whatever story he’s writing and assumes that you’ll catch up as he moves along. There are pros and cons to that approach (Howard has never really been a “hit” comic writer) but it’s always felt more “honest” to me and I want (need, really) this project to be compelling, rather than seem like a chore, since it will end up producing better material from my end if I’m enthusiastic about what I’m doing, rather than feeling like I’m writing yet another guidebook to all of the amusement parks in my head. I’m not trying to imply that Into Darkness isn’t compelling. On the contrary, I hope people find it to be a great springboard into everything else that we’re doing. But I just don’t want to feel, again, like I’m letting people in easy. There’s nothing easy here, in the real or the now. So, next time, level Two. Maybe.

Edge of the known world

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Marc

Dystopia was originally envisioned as a multi-genre project. Early in the lifetime of Fifth Panel, we didn’t have a ton of variety in our genres (e.g. it was still mainly superheroes), but there were at least some variations in approach, in that some characters were more sci-fi-oriented and others more horror-oriented and so forth. My original projects that I’d had in hand when Jeff and I met (Doomsayer and Therapy) were both more horror-oriented than your average superhero fare. While I’m not a huge horror fan (I tend to avoid horror films because most of them aren’t great sources of actual story, which is typically my pinnacle perspective on most forms of entertainment; in other words, tell me a good story, first and foremost), I’m a pretty sizable fan of things like H. P. Lovecraft and the weirder edges of horror like the film, Audition. So, I knew that was going to embody a fair amount of the work that I put into things, but not everyone in the studio was on that same page and I wanted to cover as much ground as possible and enable as many people to play in the playground as I could. The Rim ended up, appropriately, being the most distant of the environments from that superhero/adventure path; closest to “modern America” and yet one of the more chaotic levels of the city because of that exposure to the “outside world.” It’s honestly where I wanted to tell a modern Western story, if I could make it work.

The Magnificent 20: The greatest Westerns of all time | The Independent

The Western in modern media is filled with a variety of influences and perspectives; from the Wild West to a look back at the frontier society which somehow made things purer than they are today. Speaking of HPL, you can see that element in the stories of his friend, Robert E. Howard who presented his most famous hero (or, often, antihero in modern terminology) Conan the Barbarian as the embodiment of society in its less civilized and, thus, purer form. If only everyone would return to Conan’s direct, brutal, murderous, misogynistic, and simple ways, everything would be better(!) And that perspective is shared to some degree by one of the more prominent entities on the Rim, which is FedGov’s mercenary army: Force Command. The United States in the era of Dystopia is no longer so united and the nominal federal government is trying to enforce its rule at gunpoint, which has much less to do with enforcing or protecting the principles of any piece of sheepskin and more to do with the raw question of who gets to control the territory between the world’s two largest oceans. Unlike the former US Army, FC isn’t bound by any oath of duty. It’s just about enforcing FedGov’s will in the name of presumed pragmatism and everyone has accepted that. Its primary mission, just like the US Army of that same Wild West, late 19th-century period, is the “protection” of the local citizenry and the enforcement of federal (and often mercantile) interests. In that respect, the city of Dystopia is “the other” that was the native population in America of the 1800s that FC is here to contain and control.

But the Rim is basically a doorway and all doorways go both ways (or, at least, most of them do.) FC is there to protect the surrounding population from what might emerge from the Pit, but it’s also there to keep people from going into it. That’s one of the more contextual things about levels like Corporate City (level Three), which is still kind of operating like a “normal” American city would and is interested in trading with the outside world. But that’s a threat to FedGov’s power and is also seen as suspicious by many Americans, now trained to think of anyone inside as “the other” in the same way many modern Americans think of immigrants, i.e. they not like us. What I wanted the Rim to be was not only an almost-literal jumping off point into the weirdness that is the rest of the city, but also an example of the mix of cultures and influences that is any “borderland” of most nations throughout history and which most fictional settings don’t really examine at all or keep in weirdly accessible geographic locations, like Greyhawk’s Wild Coast. There’s a lot of traffic there, even if FC does try to control it and, for that matter, anyone trying to venture out of the city in the first place has to get past the Control Ring (level Two) and the Tribunal or venture up the Spill, with all of the hazards (moving and non-) that that entails, as we’ll see in our first story, Into Darkness.

But, again, a lot of people are interested in getting into the city, which means that there are a fair number of mercenary types aside from FC, like bodyguards, bounty hunters, and tour guides. One of my favorite characters is one that I’ve actually never scripted: Skip Tracer. He’s a bounty hunter who has slicked back, perfect blond hair, usually wears shades (even at night), and dresses in polo shirts, sweaters tied over his shoulders, with perfect loafers on his feet, and often an old school wooden tennis racket in his hand. Nothing really bothers Skip and his name and attire both reflect that. I have a story idea in mind for him that contrasts him with many of the other inhabitants of the Rim, like Jekyll and Hyde (two mercenaries, one of which is a Morlock, the other an exiled Texas Ranger) and groups like the Eden Community, the Deliverance Club led by the esteemed Jimmy “the Grin” Dallas, and the Burger Clown Commandos. If that sounds like kind of a panoply of directions and interests, that’s exactly the intent because that’s The Rim. Anyone could come drifting into town and the whole story might change, but there are an awful lot of good ones already there. I have a group of characters sitting around that are a pointed reference to the idea of a “Western”, called The Wild Bunch, but I’m not quite sure that that one has been in the oven long enough, even if it has been 30 years. It’s also been a lot of years since I seriously looked at them and asked myself the most important question: OK, but what’s the story?

The Eden Community (the Garden), on the other hand, is one of the most important locations in the city and plays an important role in the Odyssey story that I referenced in my last post. Epicurus and the Adept and Alastor and Original Synn are a quartet of philosophy and perspective that also have huge impact on the ShadowNet and how it operates. It’s not obvious, but it’s present and the smart traveler consults them before making any big decisions that involve the Now (and sometimes the Real, too.) Anyway, that’s the briefest of looks at the first level of the city. I might look at level Two next or I might jump around a bit. It’s a huge world and I don’t want everyone to wait until we can get out as many stories as we’d like to tell the whole picture, so I thought doing these as kind of a survey course might be helpful and mildly entertaining.

 

The grand vision

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Marc

Me being me and having new stories and characters springing into my head on an hourly basis, I immediately knew that just doing one book and calling it “Dystopia” wasn’t going to serve the situation. With a setting that was already crossing genres, I figured there had to be some kind of general direction for the stories we would all be telling but it was hard to contain them in just one anthology title. So, instead of one book, I imagined three: Dystopia: Chronicles, Dystopia: Gangwars, and Dystopia: Shadows on the ‘Net.

None of them were specifically tied to any one topic or area of interest, but Chronicles was intended to be more of the “general purpose” book. If anyone had a story that wasn’t centered around one of the gangs or action taking place on the ShadowNet, then it would probably be a Chronicles story. The first effort that Will and I made specifically targeted for the setting was one that involved The Mime, The Iron Wizards, and two of the lesser-known gangs on Eight: The Trolldiers and The Firewalkers. The main character for the tale was The Mime, who was a concept that I’d jotted down in the fabled notebook a while before Dystopia occurred to me. I wanted to try to tell a story that was a second-person perspective, in that the narrator wasn’t internal (first-person) or talking about the lead character (third-person) but was instead talking to them, such that all of the captions are as if I was personally responding to what was happening, as would normally be the case in first-person, exccept that The Mime, of course, doesn’t talk. So most of the “internal” dialogue was me, as the narrator, saying things to The Mime: “You know that this is happening because of who you are. You can’t allow it to proceed.” And so on. I thought it would be an interesting exercise and the character presents a good example of how there are very few “good guys” in the setting and what the internal thoughts of a “non-good guy” might be, since we so rarely were presented with that approach in fiction of the time (It’s much more common now; see Breaking Bad, etc.) Even the nominal “heroes” are just lighter shades of gray than the nominal “bad guys”, which is a lot closer to real life than the typical white hats/black hats approach that tends to dominate that superhero/adventure/horror story scene.

The “badder” guys in this case would be the Iron Wizards. The name is something that other people have used for various video games and TTRPGs that have robots and/or modern technology showing up in fantasy worlds. As the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote goes: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Case example.) I wanted Corporate City, the third level, to be high-tech as a matter of course. All of those companies were staying in the Pit because of the tech that they were able to glean from sources like the Tech Walkers or that they were able to develop themselves and didn’t want to abandon. But the Wizards would be a step above even that. That’s also why I named them all after classic magicians from history and literature (Faust, Crowley, Wen Pa-Yang, Cagliostro, and Plotinus) as kind of a double entendre to their own name. But beyond even that, the name “Iron Wizards” isn’t something they call themselves. Internally, they refer to themselves as “The Pentacle”, while the Wizards tag is something that’s been placed on them by the surronding community, almost like an epithet, but also because it’s more of a street name than anything that seems vaguely elegant like they’ve selected.

 

That “street” perspective was important for Gangwars because one of the dominant forces throughout the city would be the gangs that inhabit every level, in one fashion and to one degree or another. It’s no secret that humans tend to factionalize into groups that share either one’s identity or one’s outlook on life, if not both. The most relevant example in the modern era of the latter is political parties, which have often been simply well-connected (and well-funded) gangs that happen to inhabit conference rooms, rather than neighborhoods (and sometimes both!) But, as a long-time RPG player, I was also familiar with settings where people clustering around different identities often went beyond racial underpinnings and into perspectives that drove them to a purpose (my favorite was Gamma World.) It was that context that pushed me to create most of the gangs (and more than one viewing of Walter Hill’s The Warriors, as a kid.) A few of them are central aspects of major parts of the setting, like The Phalanx. A few of them are simply tied to the genre setting of their associated level, like Canis Majoris. And a few are just concepts that wandered into the notebook and I figured I’d use because it seemed like a good idea at the time, like the Posh Street Flaming Screamers. Almost everyone whom I’ve ever given a copy of the bible to has stated that the gangs are among their favorite aspects to the whole picture.

The opening story of Gangwars was going to be an examination of daily life on the sixth level, The War Zone, and the direct conflict between The Phalanx and Bloodpulse as the two most powerful gangs on that, the most war-ravaged of any of the levels of the city, as the name implies. I wanted it to be an example of not only how different groups of people can factionalize, but how even within those factions, there are often radical differences of how to proceed. The central argument between High Chief Gall and Mad Stallion about how to deal with the immediate crisis, plus the growing threat to the immaculately neutral Pit Crew (the remnants of the International Red Cross who remained in the city) seemed to be a great way to show varying perspectives on the central conflict that dominates a good portion of the setting as a whole. It also touches on the importance of The Phalanx and the presence of the Tech Walkers as a regular threat to life and limb and a lot more of the larger turmoil in the city, which is usually driven by the most petty of goals; yards of territory, akin to the Western Front of World War I. Most of Gangwars would be taking place in “the real”, as opposed to “the now” of the third book.

Shadows on the ‘Net was intimately connected to one of the main aspects of the setting as a whole: The ShadowNet, which is the city’s main network. In the early 90s, it was my version of William Gibson’s “cyberspace”, but which had connections beyond just the databases created by massive computers (and, of course, his also did in his first novel, Neuromancer.) The ShadowNet is, in many ways, what drives the city as the isolated enclave of technology, magic, and other strange forces in near-future America, Inc. There’s a connection to The Well, the deepest level of the city. The Black Market on Five only exists because of the presence of the ‘Net. Just like what the Internet would become for us in the real world, the ShadowNet enables the commerce, communication, and primary interaction of the entire community. You don’t have to be connected to the ‘Net to survive in Dystopia, but it’s a lot easier if you know your way around it. If it’s not obvious, I was completely enamored with Gibson’s work, which is why Dystopia still carries a lot of that “old school cyberpunk” influence. Having been on the early versions of the Internet since 1984, I knew that this was going to be at the forefront of science fiction writing for the foreseeable future, even if I didn’t imagine just how dominant it would later become in the real world so quickly. (Neither did Gibson, really, as one of the more notable technologically awkward moments in Neuromancer is how its characters are still using pay phones to communicate…)

Despite it being the “third” book, I probably wrote more script for Shadows than I did for either of the other stories, even if none of it ever got to the point of being drawn. The initial story was one that involved the Morgue Lords, the Hanged Man, the gang, Control/Alt/Delete, the corporation, Metascience, and the crimelord, Macabre. It was a bit more wide-ranging than the other two and that probably played into my thinking becoming ”bigger” in some ways with another story rooted in the ‘Net that grew into its own thing entirely and that was Dystopia: Odyssey. The Odyssey story is a fairly high concept piece of science fiction that tells a story that is integral to the setting as a whole, but which I also layered with a lot of modern socio-political perspective, which is something I try to do with most of the things I write, but don’t always pull off. Odyssey is about sex and misogyny and modern perceptions of masculinity and femininity and how many of those ideas are emphasized by the speed at which they’re realized and enhanced by the massive communication network that they become embodied on. Only later did I realize how true this was going to be when it comes to our own interaction with the World Wide Web. I ain’t no prophet, but it’s been funny for me to see some of this play out the way it has in the last 30 years and to say: “Yeah, that’s kinda what I meant when I wrote…” The ShadowNet is rooted on three of the levels of the city: the third, the fifth, and the seventh. The third and fifth I’ve mentioned already, but the seventh often goes under the radar with most readers, not standing out with features like the Rogue Corps and the Black Market. But the seventh may be the most important of them all, not only for its proximity to the Well, but also because of the regular presence of one of the most central characters in the setting, Hakker. But I’ll get into that some time later.

Anyway, that’s the history of the beginnings of Dystopia as an actual published venture. In the end, the only story that actually had artwork completed and published for it was the Chronicles one (and some pages later completed for Odyssey.) The rest of them remained ether, which is hopefully something we’ll get around to addressing here at some point in the not too distant future.