Shadowgirls

This is what WAS going to be the cover for it

There’s many of you who might not find this blog entry to be all that interesting or entertaining, but there’s a few of you out there who might find this utterly fascinating, and insightful to this comic’s origins. I was going to write up about my thoughts about comic book movies and why they sometimes work and sometimes don’t work, and then I realized I’ve talked about other comic books a little too much lately, but not enough about our comic. I was going through some archives and I stumbled across an early script I had wrote years ago. More specifically, this was the final attempt I made at writing Shadowgirls, before approaching D.Rod at Wizard world ‘05. There are a few of you who might be interested in the actual early production stages, so I uploaded a Rich Text Format document of that script that you can download to read HERE.

Now long time readers might remember me talking about the various versions and changes that the book had went through over the years. Some of those details have been lost now, with the various site moves, but it’s not like I can’t retell the history if interested. But what made this one interesting, is that these are pretty much the same characters, and pretty much what were to be the templates that D.Rod would work from. But there’s some seriously noticeable stuff that’s NOT there. There is no Jack, and Christmas isn’t even mentioned by name in the comic’s strip. (In fact, I remember, all I had for her was her name and nothing more. The Esoteric Order of Dagon was not the villains. It did not take place in Innsmouth, as it took place farther up north in a town in Maine called Castle Crown. Charon worked in a small hardware store, and is afraid of the dark, hence the title, Nyctophobia. (Which means fear of the dark.)

L to R: LeAnne, Colonel Darcrows, Charon and Becka

What I found interesting though was the script’s character LeAnne, who starts off as Mistletoe’s friend, but I had planned by the end of the story she would become Becka’s best friend. They’re both 16 year old girls, who’s hung out with the wrong crowd, and befriended Becka, who’s names started with the letter ‘L’ and both had pig tails. This was completely coincidental! And the McKay girls… Those characters were pretty finalized. Whatever voice you imagine coming out of their mouths currently, it’s there too. But there are differences to be sure. Charon’s not the lovable lush, with ‘occasionally loose morals’ we’ve come to love, and Becka’s far from the quiet reserved girl. (She actually has quite the temper.)

A couple of things about this script before you start reading. It was meant to be a B&W comic, as my coloring skills were so slow and underutilized, I wasn’t even considering color. This script writing was exactly at the time I had changed the name from Shadowgirl to Shadowgirls. (The first name is still in the file title!) Charon was still the only one to transform into the shadowform, but it was a primal creature that Becka had control over. Like a Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing, but Charon’s just trapped in there. The Shadowgirl was literally a different being. (But none of that shows up in the comic script here, so don‘t worry about it.) This was only meant to last three or four issues. If there was future stories, I hadn’t thought of them. When this script is over… There is no second script. I had hit a blank and didn’t know where to go from there. Which was of course for the best, as that’s when D.Rod hopped on board and turned it into the comic we love today.

No, he's not Becka's father either.

Also one more thing… This is as raw as a script gets. There’s no editing to it, and my grammatical errors will be totally noticeable. So be forgiving please. I did end up learning from my mistakes over the last five years, as I really hoped the ‘I am Providence’ story showed.

So I hope you all enjoy the wayback peek here. This is a different Shadowgirls then we all know. If you have any questions, just ask.