Wishing

INTERFACE: A BOY AND HIS ’BOT - A Marvel Mangaverse Proposal

By Jamie S. Rich

FORMAT: Four-issue series, with the possibility of more?

FOCUS: Take Neon Genesis Evangelion-style mecha stories and place them in a context similar to shoujo manga (like Revolutionary Girl Utena and the ubiquitous Sailor Moon). Art-wise, we would want some of the softer, cuter lines of shoujo, but the artist would also need to handle the whacked-out mech that the Bot characters visuals will require.

Open on Doug, age 5 (1994 or thereabouts). It’s late at night, and the young boy is in his pajamas. He is peeking through a crack in his bedroom door, listening to his dad argue with some Russians. They are speaking in Russian, which he can, of course, understand—since, unbeknownst to anyone at this point, Doug’s mutant power is the ability to speak and understand any language.

Douglas is the son of Ivor Ramsey, an industrialist who has developed technology for both public and military use. His most notorious developments, as far as the general populace is concerned, are rooted in rumor—but in reality, are very real. Essentially, Ramses Corp. acquired salvaged material from a UFO crash site. This included a sample of an organic, sentient metal, that Ramsey “grew” into the creature we will come to know as Bot. The existence of this technology, once leaked through the underground and intelligence channels, obviously became a highly sought-after item by various government and independent political organizations. The Russians want the living metal Ivor Ramsey has developed in order to put their country back on the map. They are threatening Mr. Ramsey. Then they notice Douglas listening and go ballistic. His dad says, “Please, he’s five. He doesn’t speak Russian.” Mr. Ramsey puts Doug to bed, and as he does, Doug says to him, in Russian, “Daddy, are those men going to hurt you?” Ivor is, of course, shocked (again, no one knows that Doug has these powers, and wouldn’t you freak if your five-year-old suddenly spoke to you in another language?). We see Ivor in the light in the doorway, breathless and afraid. He closes the door. Darkness.

Fast forward 8 years (present day). 13-year-old Doug is transferring to a new school—the Tezuka Academy of Massachusetts. He is a total priss blonde rich boy. His perfect appearance really makes him stand apart (think the ultra dreamy boy from countless shoujo titles). At this point, Ivor is believed to have died in a mysterious lab explosion—most likely connected to the technology he is harboring. He has become somewhat of an infamous figure, and rumor and innuendo suggests he is not dead at all, and is alive and well somewhere, still inventing. This myth (which is actually true) dogs Doug, who never really knew his father before the old man was taken away from him. This has lead to a lonely and isolated childhood, in which Doug has often disappeared into fantasy. He dreams of being a superhero—particularly an X-Men. Of course, his powers totally suck, and he knows it. It’s the perfect adolescent dilemma—I am a loser, but I wouldn’t be if I was a superhero…oh, wait, I am a superhero, but I am still a loser coz my powers are no good!

Appearance-wise, Doug is a bit foppish. He is a really pretty young man, with bright blonde hair. His private school uniform—black shorts, black suit jacket, white shirt, skinny tie—which he keeps immaculate, gives him a Little Lord Fauntleroy look (contrasted by the school bullies, who in true bully fashion don’t button their coats, keep their ties loose, etc.).

On the first day of school, the teacher has Doug introduce himself to the class. He tells everyone he wants to be an X-Man when he grows up. The kids laugh. The teacher tells him that this isn’t a proper goal for a young man of his standing. Doug is ashamed and embarrassed. He takes his seat, red-faced. We see Rachel Moonstar looking on. (She looks handsome in her uniform, too, which is exactly like the boys’. She should be alluring in both her normal and hero guise.) Rachel is secretly a costumed hero named Mirage, and the sister of the mangaverse X-men’s Moonstar. Rachel is also an outcast, seeing as this is a pretty white school and she is of Native American descent. She tries to befriend Doug, but it always seems to go wrong. Little does Doug know that she is also Mirage, the strange heroine who always seems to be around when he and Bot get in trouble (think of this as a reverse on the Tuxedo Mask character in Sailor Moon). Mirage’s costume should be something elegant, functional, and mysterious, if at all possible. Maybe something a little like Zorro, with her identity simply hidden by a blindfold with two eyeholes. Her power is her ability to conjure very real 3-D images of people’s worst fears, and as these images are made of pure energy, they also have the power to attack (imagine cool CLAMP-style illustrations).

On the playground, three bullies descend on Doug. One kid, a bruiser named Todd Flaherty, is the ringleader, and the meanest one. He said he knows who Doug’s dad is and accuses him of being an anti-American spy. This gets Doug going and he lunges at Todd. Of course, the kid gets his ass handed to him by the bullies, until Rachel steps in and gets the boys off him. This doesn’t sit well with Doug, though. I mean, how is it going to help that he needs girls to fight his battles for him?

Doug heads home. He is despondent. He imagines himself as an X-Man, battling some nasty alien in the middle of outer space. Likely, we would also have something here where we see him use his translating abilities, maybe on a computer or something. Not sure. Possibly something that would also show us—via a newspaper or a TV or whatever—a news report about “The Mirage” (Rachel), a mysterious do-gooder who has been spotted around town. This will be one challenge of the series—finding extra opportunities to actually introduce Doug’s mutant abilities. Possibly a scene within the first issue where Doug sees some html code that someone is working on and is immediately able to tell what the web page will look like.

When Doug gets home, he finds a package on his front step. It’s addressed to him, and it says Private – For Your Eyes Only. Except it’s written in Japanese. (Again, to see Doug’s abilities, we show it in one panel in kanji, and in the next, in English.) Doug sneaks the package into his room. Inside is the Bot housing device—essentially, a big, round jewel mounted on an ornamental metal base. It is on an elastic band, and when Doug slips it on his hand, there is a great bust of light and the jewel becomes one with him—the band disappears, the jewel is now fused onto the back of Doug’s hand. Also, Bot appears for the first time—initially bouncing across the room like a big rubber ball, and eventually landing in a crouching position in front of Doug, looking like the character will in its regular form. They stare at each other. Doug is totally in awe. (Ultimately, it will be revealed that Ivor arranged for this delivery, as a hopes of protecting his son.)

Bot is essentially an alien being made of living metal. At this point, the character doesn’t really know who he is or why he was sent to earth long ago. He lives inside the jewel, and can come and go at Dogu’s will. We can devise an elaborate pose for Doug for when he wants to release his buddy. Maybe something like holding up his left hand near his face, with the jewel facing out, and grabbing his wrist with his right—and then Bot popping out in a great burst of light. Essentially, with the housing device now fused with Doug, he and Bot are one.

Outside of the jewel, Bot is able to take on any shape. This is the power of the living metal. It can shift and change color and basically, Bot is an extremely powerful morph. But, he is also a bit whacky, and never quite serious or even within the realm of sane reality. Also, Bot only speaks in an alien language—so only Doug can understand him. Ideally, some kind of cool font could be designed for him and Doug when they are speaking to one another in that language, and possibly we can even have a gobbledygook font for when people are eavesdropping on them—essentially, a visual representation of what the rest of the word would hear when they speak. (There is also plenty of backstory to Bot for future plotlines, including the fact that Bot is really a girl, and that she was sent away by a political faction on her home planet for her protection, as her father, the Magus, wants to kill her because he won’t have a girl inherit the throne.)

Cut to: a secret Russian surveillance station. They realize that Bot has been activated, and it’s time to move.

The villains for this series are members of an underground faction of the KGB looking to restore the Soviet Union to its former power. Eventually, though, we will discover that deep in their organization, there are ties to Bot’s home world, and the aliens that want Bot dead. Again, if future stories are to be told, we will get into that connection, and how the KGB is willing to aid the aliens in exchange for them giving Russia the whole of Earth.

There is now a strange black car parked outside of Doug’s house, with two mysterious men inside. The Russians are watching.

Inside the house, Doug and Bot are in Doug’s bedroom. He has been up all night playing with his new friend, who he is making go through all sorts of permutations. Stuff like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, a motor scooter, a lion, and finally, Colossus. (We can either have Doug point the character out on a poster on his wall, or really, just ignore such trivial things as why Bot knows so much about pop culture. J ) This is when it really dawns on Doug that he now has the key to all his dreams. Of course, this would be the moment his mom knocks on his door to send him to school. Doug panics a little, not knowing what to do with Bot. Bot turns himself into Doug and demonstrates a gesture where Doug holds out his hand and tells him, “And then Bot is sucked away.” Doug mimics this, and sure enough, it works. The medallion also mysteriously disappears…leaving Doug to wonder, did this really happen? And where did the package come from? (For the purposes of secrecy, the Bot jewel only appears when Doug wills it.)

At school, things are no better than they were the day before (and if Doug knew those two agents were tailing him, well, imagine how crappy that’d be.) Gym class is awful. They are playing football, and somehow, Doug manages to catch a pass. He runs down the field, and though Todd is coming for him, Dough is surprised to find he dodged the bully—only to get clothes-lined in the neck by Todd’s outstretched arm. Much worse, the hulking coach tells him, “Ramsey, suck it up. You got some speed and some skills, don’t be a wuss.”

After, a bruised and sad Doug walks from the locker room and runs into Rachel. She asks if he wants to have lunch with her, and he’s really rude. He ditches her and heads to the field behind the school. There, he tries to make the medallion reappear, but can’t figure out how. Frustrated and defeated, he holds his hand by his mouth, in something akin to the pose described in the synopsis. There is a crackle of electricity and the medallion is back. Bot appears. Only he is sluggish and a bit out of sorts. Doug kept him up all night, and he says he’s hungry.

It’s then that some Russian agents in mech suits descend upon them. The boys scatter. Doug manages to get out of the way, but the tired Bot barely has any fight in him, and it looks like the agents will subdue him. One of the agents removes a face shield from his mask, revealing the human inside in an attempt to reason with the creature. Suddenly, a mechanized dragon-type monster appears between Bot and his attackers. This is one of Rachel’s (now in her Mirage guise) illusions—so it’s actually an electrical being that appears to be 3-D. It looks part like a mythological dragon, part like a futuristic monster, and it gives off stray bolts of energy. Everyone freaks out. Mirage appears on the roof of the building near them, and declares something heroic—while also being a little shocked that Doug is somehow involved in this.

The agents attempt to make a run for it, but one of them gets caught in Bot’s grasp. He slowly begins to drain him of energy, a metallic virus spreading over the agent’s mech body like ice. (Bot takes energy from other objects to recharge his own batteries, but the object is usually drained of all life and left behind as a weird metallic/crystalline echo of itself. These remnants are extremely fragile and shatter easily—and perhaps one day, if Bot and Doug become famous, there will be a collector’s market for him (future story line fun!).) Doug stops him, afraid he will kill the man inside. Bot doesn’t understand, says he needs the “buzzy food.” Rachel also steps in, saying that with the man alive, he can tell them who the attackers are. When he hears that, the agent weakly activates a deadly gas inside his suit and kills himself.

Doug turns to Rachel, and asks her, “Well, if we can’t know who he is, maybe we can know who you are.” Rather than answer, Mirage bails. Meanwhile, the mysterious men in the sedan report back to base that the acquisition is a failure.

Doug is in his bedroom again. He is wearing a dark suit and has on a masquerade mask. He is wondering what to do to protect his identity. He’s already been spotted by this Mirage person, and he knows if he is going to be a real superhero, he has to protect his identity. Bot doesn’t understand why he can’t just make himself look like someone else. He morphs into different people—Todd, the agent who gassed himself, Keanu Reeves from The Matrix (or something like him), and then, Ivor Ramsey. This totally wigs Doug out. He tries to get answers out of the robot, who morphs halfway back to normal, but stops there. Doug sucks him back into the medallion.

A secret meeting back at KGB headquarters reveals they want to alter their plan. A straight attack isn’t working. They need to attempt a more personal route. (Perhaps we can have them talk to their leader, which could be a very strange figure, like the villain in Battle of the Planets or something? I would like to leave this open for input, in case you’d like me to work someone from the Marvel universe into this.)

At school, Doug is getting his books knocked out of his hands by the usual suspects. Rachel is watching, and can’t understand why someone like him, with the secret he has, actually puts up with that crap. Another girl is also watching, and she makes a comment about how cute and sensitive Doug is. Turns out, he’s a bit of a heartthrob amongst the female students, which actually makes Rachel a little jealous. Doug is eventually saved by a teacher, who gives the bullies detention.

Todd and his cronies leave the scene of the hazing and are pissed off that Doug got them in trouble. They pass the coach’s office, who calls Todd in. He offers him a chance to get back at Doug once and for all. (The coach is a KGB plant.)

Doug runs into Rachel after school. She is still smarting with jealousy, and he is kind of rude to her. She decides to follow him as Mirage and see what his deal is.

Todd is injected with some nasty serum, which causes him to transform into a terrible behemoth. (Think a really cool transformation, a la Tetsuo in Akira crossed with one of the nasties from any number of demon rape anime. The Juggernaut on planet-sized steroids. (Speaking of Juggernaut…if there’s a Marvel villain you think we should incorporate into here, I’m all ears…)). Todd is instructed to get the medallion, and if need be, just rip Doug’s hand off. Todd starts smashing things Hulk-style, and Doug manages to avoid the rubble to a degree, but never enough to get breathing space to release Bot. Mirage comes out of the shadows and causes the distraction he needs; however, she hangs back, saying, “Now you can handle this beast yourself.”

Here, Bot goes into defensive mode, and he encapsulates Doug with his body, making a classic giant robot suit for Doug to fight in. They take Todd down, with the final stroke being Bot basically sucking off some of Todd’s rampant kinetic energy (leaving him with one half of his body metallic, making him an even cooler villain next time!). Unfortunately, this is too much energy for Bot to handle. He expands to a huge size, with all sorts of stray bolts of electricity shooting off him. Bot expels Doug from his body, afraid he will hurt him. He also starts babbling incoherently.

The finale. Bot is on a rampage. He is like an electronic Godzilla, smashing things and stumbling through town. Mirage attempts to stop him with an illusion of his greatest fear—which turns out to be a distorted, massive image of his father, Magus. This causes the creature to crumble in a heap of tears. Doug comforts him, and the exhausted Bot asks to be returned to his “home.” Once Doug does this, he starts to thank Mirage for saving him once again, but she is already gone. He looks for Todd’s mutated body, as well, but he is also gone.

Back at Russian headquarters, it’s hitting the fan that they failed again. Here, maybe, we can reveal a little more about the overall plot of these characters. They want Bot for two reasons—to please the aliens and to also learn once and for all if Ivor is alive (they believe Bot knows). While it won’t really have a payoff here, it does leave things open. The scene ends with the leader demanding that they not fail this time.

In school, Doug sits at his desk, drawing a picture of Mirage. He has no idea it is Rachel, who is sitting in the row next to him, the girl he despises. (And if only he knew she was related to one of the X-Men!) We cut to her, dreamily watching him. She has written his name a million times on her notebook. The coach lurks outside the door. He unleashes a tiny robot stink beetle and it crawls into the middle of the classroom. Rachel sees it as it stops and tilts its ass in the air and lets out a stinky gas. All the kids start to run around, hacking, coughing, and passing out. Rachel quickly rushes Doug out the door, before herself succumbing. (In the gas and confusion, he doesn’t really see who has done it.) Unfortunately, she shoves him right into the way of the coach. The coach’s muscles expand and he turns into a giant bruiser—not all deformed like Todd, but like one of those typical bald, badass kung-fu villains like in Kamui or the Peacock King. His shirt splits off, and he has a big tattoo on his chest (maybe a symbol of the new KGB?). Blades pop out of his arms, looking like some sort of deadly wings. He has nun-chucks and enters a kung-fu pose. He tells Doug he wants Bot, that Doug’s father has deprived the Russian people of what they require long enough. This startles Doug. How is his dad involved? The coach responds, “The same way you will soon be involved—as a corpse, dead between my fingers.”

Doug now fights with a new resolve. He and Bot work together to defeat the coach—this time not as a giant robot, but fused into a ninja warrior, fighting with a sword. (Thus, we’ve established that we can screw around with just about any manga genre, yes?) Plus, really, they’ve had hardly any help from Mirage, and they’ve done it all on their own—an important, breakthrough moment for the character. And between the gas and the delayed reaction of the rest of the school, no one ends up seeing its Doug doing the fighting. (Clever!)

The series ends with Doug contemplating what has happened. He stares at the medallion on his hand and is convinced his father sent it to him. But for what purpose? And who is the mysterious Mirage? But rather than dwell, he releases Bot, celebrating that now he can be like his idols, the X-Men. Once more Bot forms a Mospeada like mech suit, and they rocket off into the night.

rewrite soundtrack: New Order “60 Miles An Hour,” Robbie Williams “Somethin’ Stupid,” The Orb Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld