Playtime: Traditional/Modern mashup
Inspired by the popularity of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a comics publisher with Hollywood connections (aren't they all) has asked you to pitch a mashup of the historic/classic and... well, it doesn't have to be horror; any popular genre will do: western, sci-fi, fantasy, sex comedy, explosion fest, superhero, etc. Take a historical figure or a novel in the public domain, and fuse something onto it that will get people who hate period costume dramas to pull out their credit cards. Bonus points if the title is a bad pun. Extra credit if you manage to post it from San Diego. (Cash prize if you get it picked up at San Diego.) The usual rules (there are no usual rules) apply.
Comments
Peter Rabbit: Exorcist
King Arthur and the Cannibals of the Round Table
Miss Havisham/pip ~how She taught him his place
War of the Worlds and Werewolves
Raggedy Anna Karenina
All's Quiet on the Martian Front
A Farewell to Margaritaville
Uncle Tom's Casino
@Owen_Jones thankee, it was a bit of fun.
That's how he pitched it to the networks anyway.
(I seriously considered writing this mashup, once upon a time...Conrad's prose is only a half-step out of sync with Lovecraft's, as it is.)
Being the Strange Adventures of a League of Extraordinary Castaways
OK, so it's Alice in Wonderland, right? Except that it's set on an island, see? (I read on Facebook that islands are popular.) But she's not alone on the island. She's one of seven castaways from diverse backgrounds, who must learn to work together to solve the bizarre mysteries of Wonder-Island. The cast are:
- Gilligan (set adrift by the passengers of the Minnow)
- Robinson Crusoe (Friday gets introduced later)
- Wendy Darling (Peter Pan's "mother")
- Alice (of Wonderland and Looking-Glass fame)
- Richard and Emmeline Lestrange (of the Blue Lagoon)
- Chuck Noland (and his volleyball Wilson)
Slightly NSFW (boobies):I considered including the Swiss Family Robinson, but there were too many of them, plus the repeated use of the name "Robinson" would have strained credibility. Ditto, the Space Family Robinson. (Sorry, Robot.) Zlatan tried to suggest a bunch of characters including someone named "Sawyer", but I don't think he understood that I was looking for characters who'd been on island, not just on a boat or raft.
What I'd really like to see is Lord of the Flies as a reality TV series, in which a bunch of British kids are really and truly left alone on an island with nothing but hidden cameras to watch them. Do it in international waters, and just see the authorities try to get the "child endangerment" charges to stick!
*) Not too heavy to do, but too heavy to get away with. Also, probably illegal in Germany.
Do it Quest!
While I agree that nothing should be above satire, as a commercial venture Anne Frankenstein would open me up to all sorts of attacks and even possible lawsuits of various flavours before even considering trying to find a publisher willing to take the risk.
If I still do it, it'll likely be a short gag strip of a handful of pages as a mini to sell at cons or similar to keep it low profile enough to avoid all that instead of the 60+ page one shot I originally sketched out.
I wish I'd come up with that.
If I ever pick it up again I don't want anyone thinking I've ripped them off so it might be best to not say what you'd do with it here. I realise that a number of the elements are pretty obvious, but I don't want to have additional reasons not to follow through on a good idea.
~R
On the other hand, without the obvious joke of the title, people are going to legit think you're seriously doing a story about an Anne Frank type who snaps and starts building patchwork flesh golems.