PLAY>
A DIGITAL ADVENTURE

FORMAT>
PLAY is envisaged as a unique cross-platform comic book that strives to bridge the gap between print and on-line media and provide as rich a digital experience as possible. As such, the format of this proposal is split between a print edition, with three issues of sixty four pages each - in traditional comic book prestige format that can be reprinted as a graphic novel - and a downloadable, on-line/e-comic version with expanded digital content. In discussing these dual formats reference will also be made to current trends in the traditional comic book industry, the rapidly developing bookshop-graphic novel market, and the vast potential of the nascent digital comics medium.

PRINT EDITION>
>The print media format for PLAY> is envisaged as a three issue prestige format limited series, and/or as a self contained graphic novel aimed at the increasingly popular graphic novel market. As the subtitle indicates, PLAY> is a ‘digital adventure’ in that the finished art will showcase a range of digital production techniques (inc. Photoshop and Macromedia Flash) that supplement the finished art and give the reader an experience of the digital world and an altered state, without having to access the Internet. Unlike previous digitally enhanced comics, though, this is not simply a gimmick but an integral part of the storytelling process and the thematic content of the story. As the synopsis indicates, PLAY> is very much concerned with the visual iconography and spirit of the Internet and applying it to a future world setting, keeping the popular ‘cyber’ edged themes of computers and technology and integrating them into a hard edged, visual, character driven narrative.

>Certain sequences in PLAY> lend themselves readily to being digitally manipulated or fully digitally rendered. However, it is not designed to be completely computer animated, but use traditional comic book art with digital enhancements and supplements in the backgrounds and as special effects as required by the narrative. Digital rendering is becoming quite frequent already in mainstream comics for special effects, coloring and lettering, but PLAY seeks to go further and experiment with these digital tools to see what the storytelling effect is on an extended scale. As Scott McCloud says in Reinventing Comics , “The ability to play with the new tools, to learn them from the inside, is our best hope of understanding them” (pg.145). As such, Adobe’s Photoshop program will be essential to explore the effect on narrative of continually changing, morphing, special effect filters like GAUSSIAN BLUR, TWIRL, RIPPLE, SHEAR, MEZZOTINT, POINTILLIZE, DIFFUSE, EMBOSS, CHROME, etc. Each scene will be worked out in conjuction with the FX designers, who will play a role as essential as the penciller or inker, to ensure PLAY> is a showcase for these digital effects, and ensure they are streamlined into serving the narrative, not upstaging it. These same effects can then be taken to their full potential in a digital medium where the panel acts as a window or screen and real animation and movement can be delivered from the flat print panels. GRAPHIC NOVEL> The recent success of the graphic novel format outside the traditional comic book audience is also worth considering with a repackaging of PLAY> in print format. There is a huge market audience for PLAY> that draws upon comics, science fiction, technology and computer audiences that would definitely be interested in such a novel ‘digital comic’ if they can find it in their normal distribution channels, i.e., bookshops, outside the closed comic bookshop direct market. New York based book publisher Pantheon
Books went into an unprecedented second printing of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware in only two months. A New York Times article (Nov 10 ‘00) said, "there are more than 20,000 copies in print, a hefty run for even a traditional first novel." A beachead has been established for graphic novels outside the traditional superhero genre, as well as increased favourable coverage of graphic novels in mainstream magazines including Time, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone. With the built in media attention PLAY> will generate, this can be parlayed into a successful long term print product in the bookstores, targeting the larger mainstream audience.

DIGITAL EDITION>
>From my own research into the rapidly burgeoning e-books industry I have noticed some recent market trends that support the idea of a fully on-line/CD-ROM /‘e-graphic novel’ . The imminent ubiquity of hand held e-book devices is also worth examining when looking at the potential markets for an e-comic like PLAY>, especially considering there aren’t a lot of existing products out there to satisfy the market’s desire for content. The New York Times reported Nov 6 2000 that a new format for reading e-books on electronic devices, this one aimed at the millions of PALM-style organizers already in the handsof consumers would soon be available. "When the software becomes available early next year, millions of consumers will be equipped for the first time with the necessary equipment to buy and read electronic books for a pocket-size device...” Microsoft have also bought out their own e-book reader as well as a few other versions like the Palm Pilot, which are moving to color screens and will help fuel the imminent e-book (and e-comic) explosion, and PLAY> is primed to sell as content to this developing market and reach beyond the traditional comic book audience to the mainstream technology market.

>E-books and e-comics have the potential to explore the new digital medium and upgrade reading from print to screen, making the artform viable in the 21st Century. "E-books are not just another imprint," said Bob Bolic, vice president and director of new business development from McGraw-Hill. "They represent a new literacy." ...With built-in dictionaries, search, bookmarking, highlighting, annotating capabilities and multi media enhancements, e-books can improve upon, rather than merely emulate, print books... The real excitement of e-books will begin when e-books are fully embedded in the Web," Bolic said. But before e-books can succeed, publishers must provide consumers with desirable content.” (http://www.wirednews.com/news/culture/0,1284,40607-2,00.html) The same goes for e-comics, and the digital structure and iconocgraphy of the future setting of PLAY> make it the perfect story to take advantage of the multimedia enhancements evailable in a digital edition, moreso than a traditional comic not structured for a digital environment.

>For instance, ARComics (www.arcomics.com) was launched November 12th, 2000) with the intent to sell digital comics worldwide, and has already had media coverage outside traditional comics media to help it attract the larger digital audience. Keith Rivers, of ARComics, has said “that while comics may have declined in the print world, readers haven't disappeared. They're just part of a larger community now -- and that community is on the Net.” (http://www.wirednews.com/news/culture/0,1284,40607-2,00.html) While a bit of PR by a fledging company is nothing substantial, he does have a very valid point. There are more readers out there and the general public is ‘hot’ for anything digital and technologically progressive. Marvel has launched it’s CD-ROM comics line and DC Comics on it’s home page, Dark Horse Comics and many other companies are providing downloadable ‘trailers’ or ‘e-comics’ with brief animated shorts or their print counterparts. A fully downloadable or CD-ROM type format e-comic like PLAY> would extend the appeal of non-superhero fans – ie a wider digital youth audience, available for purchase in the GLOBAL marketplace.

DIGITAL EFFECTS>
> Web based advertising techniques and stylistic iconography are an integral part of the look of the comic, and a digital edition can be reproduced for maximum narrative effect. For instance: the Data.NET™ updates that litter the narrative can be animated as pop up webvert boxes, as can extra text and supplementary narrative. The CR-ROM style of non-linear information accessed through ‘clicking on’ a visual object could also be employed to give extra details and expand the interractivity of the reading experience without crossing the boundaries of the comic book medium. All the traditional two dimensional elements of the comic page, in fact, have the opportunity to be upgraded in the four dimensional digital medium of the screen. Lettering, for example, is used on the web not just for immediate visual communication but as a portal to other ‘pages’ or screens through ‘Hyperlinks’. This avenue could be explored in PLAY> by having text/Hyperlinks to real world sites, companies, products and technology sites that are used in the future setting to increase that interconnectivity with the real world and explore the boundaries of digital media.

>As a basic model for what the on-line comic could look like I have tentatively modelled it’s format after the example on the DC Comics and Dark Horse homepages with their ‘e-comics’ trailers and some of the insights from Reinventing Comics. In my opinion, the idea of the comic book as a sequential art form must be preserved in the digital world, where the page or panel reproduced on a screen is not a static entity, but more like a window, where, as Scott McCloud says in Reinventing Comics , “ space is replaced by time”. The current digital comics trend (witness StanLee.com and Dark Horse comics’ animated Star Wars comic, as well as the Lobo and Gotham Girls ‘Webisodes’ on the Warner Bros. homepage) seems to be not only to animate the individual panels with Macromedia Flash, creating a moving cartoon effect, but to add sound and other effects that transcend what comics are all about. In current media circles this is called “push and pull media”, and these Web comics are pushing their content on the reader/viewer.

>Print comics, I believe is not as passive a medium as it first appears, but a “pull” media where the reader is actively interracting with the comic and controlling the experience. What I feel these new ‘web comics’ with full sound and motion do is render the reader/viewer into a passive role where they have no control over what they are reading/watching. Print comics, on the other hand, give the reader the option of moving from panel to panel at their own pace, to go back and forth, turn the page, even stop reading altogether - that is, readers have control over the the flow of the reading experience.

>With Macromedia Flash animation the art can be smoothly directed and opens up a whole new avenues for storytelling using the screen as a window metaphor. The panning across the panel and zooming in effect created by Macromedia Flash software creates a transition of time within the space of each individual panel. The way speech balloons and captions - an essential ingredient in comics iconography - comes and goes over the same panel over time opens up possibilities of extended scripting (no longer limited by how many words fit in each panel) and narrative tweaks while still keeping the most essential facet of comics: the panel. Giving readers control over the movement from panel to panel via a click through cursor is an excellent way of retaining the essential interractive, “pull” nature of print comics that I would want to see replicated for PLAY>. However, extra effects could be introduced within the individual panel now that it acts as a window over time within its space. For instance: Instead of merely lettering comics digitally, word balloons and caption boxes can change size and shape and be animated themselves, adding visual texture and bringing the lettering itself into the animated scope of the digital comic while retaining lettering instead of sound. This would be extremely effective in PLAY> to help communicate the emotional nuances of the characters. Moreover, it meshes with the faux advertising /pop-up webverts iconocraphy which uses the same pop-up then disappearing motion of the panel/window/screen.

>The ‘dissolve’ effect transition between panels must retain the “pull” interraction with a reader. I would suggest adding a box that the reader has to click on to turn the ‘page’ and initiate the dissolve themselves. Actually, part of the iconography for PLAY> involves the notion of panel borders and using that space constructively, and in this case the ‘next page’ button could effectively be expanded to a full control pad with motion buttons allowing the reader to go forwards, backwards, stop, pause, reload, etc, etc as they desire. Again, due to the intrinsic digital nature of PLAY’s narrative, such a control pad would be a streamlined and integral part of the meta-story.

>The Adobe Macromedia Flash software that is so popular in animating static panel to panel art would be the essential tool in the digital version of PLAY>, animating the backgrounds and characters from the print version. This also gives the print reader an incitement to purchase the digital version to see the expanded digital content. The aim of the print version is to replicate as much as possible the altered state of their ‘digital adventure’ through a ‘digital experience’. In a moving, animated edition the panels that are morphed and altered with Photoshop effects can then become proper animated backgrounds that further the narrative altered state, perhaps even going as far as creating a mood and tone that affects the reader/viewer. This type of experimental ‘direction’ was one of the reasons for the success of the Blair Witch Project and ‘Reality TV’ shows and could be used stylistically for great effect in PLAY> to connect with the new, computer literate and media savvy youth market because it brings interractive elements of computer games to a static medium.

PLAY> SYNOPSIS

GAME ONE> LIFE IN THE FAST LANE (64 pages)

>Welcome to the future.

> A hi-tek 'Corptopia' where ubiquitous computing embedded in every device has trickled down to humans and their nervous systems, where everything and everyone is permanently on-line all the time, connected to the global Data.NETS. It's an automated, sterile society where most things are catered for by the CORPZ, the corporations which provide them with everything, and in return they control their lives. All citizens are tagged and live in corporate HIVEZ, where everything's freeware if you don't mind feedbacking ads and being an eternal test market. In this global village everything is a product, even your ideas. Especially your ideas. Now what happens if you want to do something that isn't downloadable and safe and controlled? What if you want to go off-line and run wild in the real world, where the genetically altered and bio-tek krashers live? Do you want to PLAY>?

>We open with a series of cityscape shots of this future digital world and the HIVEscrapers where the on-liners live sealed away working for the Corpz. Heavy digital advertising scapes and data-text overlays introduce us to a world of post-human integration with it's technology. Panning across the city and down to a low-rez building we're introduced to Blublu, a smart graffiti artist and our unreliable narrator who's krashed from his HIVE and is hanging round with a krasher krew called TOY DEATH. They're part of the off-liner street gang culture with dark cyber gothic overtones, where bio-alterations are all the rage, like tattoos for this generation. One by one we're introduced to them in their grimy squat, surrounded by toys and refuse, from Blu's POV following the smart graffiti as it moves around the walls. They've all been trepanned - drilled through the fontanelle region of the skull to increase the oxygen flow to the brain and get permanently high. Snarx, a lizard like genefashioned kid, Skatch, a skin-merchant leasing his skin to grow hair on it for transplants, and 704, a steroid abusive muscle boy with tek implants are all sitting around getting stoned.

>Blu's only twelve and this is his initiation into the gang - he's about to be trepanned, too, by the Golum, the eerie, white albino leader of their krew. He's got pale skin, red hair, an elfin face and this Tekno-Victorian look going with a smart fashioned black bodysuit on underneath a leopard skin bio-tek laced jacket. Chain smoking, as always, his Ginkoette herbal smart smokes, Golum gets the Lazer-Drill and begins the operation, strapping Blu into a cyber chair. He's a terminator seed, bred in an illegal gene sweatshop and enhanced with tinkered dna, but he's burning out. He's like Dolly the sheep: his telomases age. This is going to be his last PLAY and he's going to teach Blu the rules of the game as they go - that there ARE NO RULES. All he wants to do is have fun.

>Blu's head is being shaved as the other members of Toy Death lounge about watching the smart graffiti move about and chase other tags on the grimy squat walls. Golum takes the razor and finishes shaving Blu's head. They talk - Blu's nervous. He asks about the CHIPZ they're going to procure later from their patron-dealer, Nemo. He's never done CHIPZ before. Dont worry - its just like learning to breathe, Golum says. The drill penetrates the skull in a gorey scene and blood spurts forth, and Blu's world explodes... From here on in it's all PLAY, yah? This is where we start to explore the digital effects over an extended narrative scale. In an altered state of mind and now part of the gang, they all go off hunting into the night with their Lazer-Tag toys in search of some fun...

>Blu 's buzzing from his trepanning and some light Photoshop BLUR and WARP effects can convey this from his POV. Snarx is the tracker and he takes them bounding across the rooftops of the Central Zone, looking for some prey. We see how the off-liners live and how bio-tek alterations have changed everyone, how they've become the new Third World. They find a rich, elderly CORPZ woman cutting through a back alley in her bio-tek Ambient Walker sapient Mek travel device and attack her, whooping it up like cowboys and indians with lasertag bows n arrows and weapons as we cut back and forth from Blu's elevated state to the horror of what's really happening. The Ambient Walker goes down as they swarm over it, her safety air bag and electrical discharge going off. It stuns most of Toy Death except Blu and Golum whom he warned, and kills Skatch. Enraged, Snarx, whose rubbery crocodile skin protected him, rips into the airbag and drags her from the Mek and begins assaulting her.

>Golum steps in to protect the merchandise - they're going to carve her Mek parts out to sell them on the black market. To complete his initiation Blu has to carve her bio-tek eye but he can't do it. It's all too real, to raw for a freshly drilled HIVE boy like him. Golum's got the knife up to his face and is pushing him to break through and take that step, be a PLAYer but he can't do it, he's too scared. And right about then the monitoring I-Spy Satellites that watch everything, feeding it all onto the Data.NETS, send a FLAW , private law enforcement agent to the scene of the crime. FLAWS are half human-machines animated by the Data.NETS like hardware, and she takes down 704 and Snarx and relays the live action footage to the .NETS for passive consumption as REALITY FEEDZ for pay-per view viewers. Everything's a product in this world. Lots of heavy data-text overlays and visual web iconography accompany the FLAW and her POV like the desktop of a computer. Golum and Blu manage to escape and take their stolen tek to Nemo, Toy Death's Fagin like patron-dealer. He operates out of the back of a legal VR dreamparlour on the edge of the Central Zone, with immersants in VR haptic suits. There's legal VR in parlours but it's watered down and controls what you can and can't do; NEMO sells these blackmarket computer CHIPZ on the side to jack you in to this blackmarket Dreamnet he's got running. It's algorithms have engineered a viral code that transmits itself as information straight to the synapses. There's a huge blackmarket selling the new bio-tek replacement body parts, new designer chemicals and cyber plug-ons. Golum has to play a game of paper, rock, sissors with Nemo's two bio-remotes, Mongo and Mongo, deadly bio-engineered flying chimps that act as his sensory eyes and ears as he takes them for scanning to rid them off the nanos that Flaw seeded them with. And then they're brought in to meet Nemo..

> He's a mean, senile old coot, who's reverted to a childhood love of toys and games, which he surrounds himself with in his ornate Victorian waiting parlour full of toys. He's 123 and he's the one who's brought back the Victorian look. Nemos extending his life through bio-tek implants and replacement parts and selling them on the black market for longevity drugs. They're making him senile. He and Golum talk business as Blu wanders around looking at all the cool junk everywhere. Nemo reprimands Blu for playing with one of his toys, the hyperball, then plays with it himself as his monkeys take the bio-tek eye and feed it to the fishes, who strip it of flesh to see the bio-tek eye underneath. Nemo begins smoking a CHIP - he puts it in his laser chillum and smokes it like a crystalline rainbow smoke, up into his lungs and over his eyes, and he's there. Lost in the PLAY.

> It makes everything fun. Glittering streaks and subtle mood distortions. Gross hallucinations, dreamy quality to everything whilst still lucid and in full control.The PLAY is algorithmic bred bioware that replicates the genetic structure of DMT. It causes the DMT centres of the brain to spontaneously secrete the dreaming, the imagination. The PLAY, they call it. Short bursts of it are like VR that lasts up to 15 minutes before burning out, that overlay the area you're in according to whatever you imagine - but that's the key. You have to keep it pure or it turns into a fearfest. And whatever you believe to be true becomes true...
Which is when Golum strikes and throws his smart cane with the laser tip at Nemo’s cyborg eye. His chakra points light up one by one like firecrackers as he self combusts. Golum's running round manic, giggling, almost in shock. Then he's running round grabbing CHIPZ and batting off the monkeys which are flying round, screeching as everything catches fire, jacking Blu and himself into this new altered state. They're laughing, frantic, running through the flames with all the booty they can carry, right at us... living life in the fast lane like there's no tomorrow and only the now to live...

>End Game One.

GAME TWO> IDEAS ON! (64 pages)

>We open with a deep computer generated PLAY> scape, like an evolving glyph like field of icons and ideas, everything melting into other shapes in a webpage like design. Blu's high on CHIPZ and creating the reality/visual field around him as his ideas become real. As he pulls out of it we see he's in a park, on a spinning wheel on his back with Golum, going round and round and everything's melting together until he's sick and vomits.

>The credits roll and come alive like old 50's style cartoon credits in movies as the PLAY> manifests on the outside and everything goes computer rendered. You can't tell what's real and what's not in there. It's like a CG Sueussian landscape shifting and morphing according to their whims, overlaying the reality field that was there before. Blu's tryp creates the scape for them to inhabit because he has the freshest levels of DMT. It's very kid like at first. Dreamland. ABCs. Cuddly toy morphs. This opening scene is our first taste of real VR like cartoon/ psychedelic PLAY special effects warping the reality of the narrative, making it all FUN, overlaying the real world' with whatever they imagine. Golum and Blu are loafing in the future park on a sunny Sunday afternoon, taking BIO-CHIPZ as smartsuited people stroll through the park and stare at them, walking their cloned miniature Wolly Mammoths. It's a future BIO-Park in a domed enclosure.

>Golum's teaching Blu how to roll cigarettes as they watch the clouds morph and talk about the PLAY> and how to control it, animating things that they think of. Kids are running round everywhere with faerie wings on, skylarking and pulling faces and sliding down old tin slides and across monkey bars as they look on, talking about the GAME and what the PLAY> means. Golum's clone body is worse off; it's deteriorating cell by cell like a cancer virus manifesting in the body, restructuring the dna as it goes. The final gestation process takes about 24 hours. This is Golum's last PLAY, it's revealed here - he's dying and the first rules are there are no rules. He's grabbed as many chips as he can from Nemos place, and heaps of other stuff, and is doing what no one would ever expect, he's going to run. And Blu's going with him. A little girl comes up and she can see the ideas they're creating from the PLAY>, too, they're on the same frequency. Golum creates a CG cartoon creature and they all begin chasing each other round up over the slide and into the FUN. The Virtual Nanny sets the BIO-Park's nano-guard dogs on Golum and he's fighting the machine-animals off as everything melts again from Blu's POV and peaks in a one page PLAY> scape under a tree.

>Feeling sick, Blu gets up and leaves the park, opening a door in the hologram wall and revealing the illusion of it being outside and a normal park. It's inside a holo-dome inside a giant MEGAMALL, dozens of stories high and miles long, a HIVE enclave shopping area of the future. Here we see inside their world, the world Blu krashed from. Dozens of hologram smartsuited people are looking on in this heavy datascaped region, holo advertising surrounding them everwhere like pop-up ads on the Web, icons and text and stock market figures splashed across the bodies of the people in their websuits, always on line and here hosting corporate ads and being living advertisments themselves. The holo ads en masse are mixing into the PLAY> scapes as Golum bounces out into the MEGAMALL still fighting off the robo-dogs, and Blu begins to 'drown-load' in inphomation, in a commercial riptide.

>They're both being monitored by I-Spy satellites as everything is, and their faces biometrically scanned and processed through the Central Data Banks. As they sit down on a sapient bench, animated with intelligence like all the tek of the day, they interface with the Data.NETS and decide what they're going to do. Golum wants to go to an old-skool amusement park by the sea and take more CHIPZ. The bench has ID-ed them and called the security drones in, the HAPPY HAPPY DROID DROIDS, lumbering robot bouncers. Golum cuts loose and slices and dices the DROIDS with his RUDE MEKANIKAL lazer-cane, destroys them in a shower of metal and sparks and a beserker fury. They leave the MEGAMALL in chaos with people running round screaming and the MALL targeting them with pop-up ads and heavy datascape overlays.

>Cut to travelling through the Central Zone, as we see the future underclass on the streets and what life's like in their world, like a cross between the Third World and the bio-altered poor that act as a testbed for the CORPZ bio-tek experiments. It's open slather advertising and selling down here, too, with a cyber Bazaar feel to the markets and the food stalls as they wander around. Blu's entranced by the holo pornography ads down here that dominate the datascapes, as Golum leads them to some contacts of his: the Pineapple Grrls. They're six cute ass bio-aletered Indonesian schoolgirls with puppy dog faces and hands, machetes in them as they slice up nano-box pineapples to sell to the crowds. Blu's introduced to PHAT ANNIE, the cigar chomping leader of this krew, who agrees to wipe their trails from the Data.Banks and get BLU some new ID. As she wipes his E-TAGZ she warns them that the LAUGHING SKULL POSSE are on their tail.

>Golum leads them to a row of hoverbikes past the Bio-Tek baksheesh boys selling bio-grown body parts and new senses. As they're trying to steal a sapient hoverbike, a 1940s style double seater called HARD LEIZURE with a sadomasochistic personality, the LAUGHING SKULL POSSE attack. They've got this cyber skeleton- clown theme going and are real hardkore tuffs. They know Golum - he owes them for some NEUROWARE they sharewared him and they don't like people who don't pay their debts, no sir. There's going to be bloodshed. Very violent. All of their Skull crew are Mek-augmented like 704 was, but they're connected in a Local Area Network (LAN) Intranet, into a gestalt HIVE mind. They think and act as one and can shift round consciousness from one to another, so the mime can talk through them. Golum talks to ALPHA, their cyber-mime front man, as the rest of the Laughing Skulls blend from the shadows.

> Blu's shitting himself, one of the Skulls is holding a gun up to his head and threatening to blow his brains out. Golum bribes them with the PLAY CHIPZ, and as they pause to scan them he headbutts the Skull threatening Blublu and sends him reeling back - the facial-circuitry-tattoos imprinting on Golum and allowing him to cut into their Network frequency with some illegal pirate NEUROWARE - a FLIPSWITCH. They're all cut into the PLAY> as he jacks in, chipping hardcore and we're cutting between the cartoon exaggerated PLAY>scape that they're seeing for this whole issue and the grim reality. Because they haven't been trepanned they're out of control with it and the alley walls and the bike's coming alive, everything's twisted and dark and attacking them. Golum's wrested a gun from them and he fires it off as Blu revs the hoverbike up and they take OFF in a double page splash .

>They head out going the wrong way into one way traffic for a breakneck joyride of the future, weaving between transparent electric cars and other hovercraft inside transparent road tunnels with holo adverts along the sides. FrogMek jumping exoskeltons are speeding by, hopping along in packs, one person mini-car-frog like machines that go sideways in traffic, hop skip and jump around them like inside a giant pinball machine. Blu's having the time of his life as he discovers he's partially on-line with Golum in his head talking to him across their shared Intranet LAN. Suddenly FLAW appears and tries to smash into their hovercraft as warning holos flare and their virtual Miranda rights are read. They drag each other off and battle as they race along in traffic, Blu's driving the sapient hovercycle and Golum's juggling objects from the Play as the IDEAS come together in a splash page modelled after the Cat in the Hat and Dr.Seuss. Golum's in a bathtub in the speeding hoverbike being chased by Flaw, manifesting things at her - we're seeing these cartoon like distortions of reality as their PLAY> . Their hovercraft is bouncing off buildings with their gel bag force fields, getting data point overlays as they go like in a computer game, all from the kids POV. Blu swerves to miss a frog mek and Flaw misses them with her snare net, she's snagged by the granny on her FROGMEK as she nets it and is pulled off her hoverbike and along the ground like a runaway horse dragging her along. She bounces and hits the ground and sparks fly, her cyborg body parts are shining through, scrapping along the ground she's like a string of christmas lights going off.

>Blu's lost the program and is not sure what's real and what's not as everything accelerates and melts and there's a wall coming up is it real of a figment of the PLAY> They finally crash in a cartoon like black hole, coming through the other side to a payway junction where all roads meet, overlooking the sea. Together, chipping hard, Golum and Blu walk off into the sunrise like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, into the ideas manifesting all round. And there at the edge of the coast Blu sees the FUNWORKZ national heritage amusment park for the first time, a scary looking funpark with a giant clown's head entrance and roller coaster round the outside rim, ferris wheel and the like. The END of the LINE.

>End Game Two

GAME three> END OF THE LINE (64 pages)

>Issue #3 is basically one extended action sequence as the whole issue is in 'real time'. We start with a deep seascape with schools of fish with holo-ads on their skin against an underwater pier, all seen through a screen like filter. Golum and Blu are looking at the SEAWALLS, rolling video-feed screens thirty feet high that protect the coastline from the rising sea levels caused by global warming. They're lying back on the end of the pier before the wall starts, smoking Gingoettes and dressed as pirates, coming down from the PLAY> with a few stray creatures of the ID still about. Golum's singing as they get up and leave the beach, cut through the electric fence and the sweep of motion detectors they've busted through, holo-fish still trailing about them as they reach the concrete esplanade surrounded by transparent habit trail like tubes linking all the walkways up. They're surrounded by other citizens waiting for the traffic to stop, opposite the FUNKWORKZ.

>It's a Nineteenth Century Coney Island type amusement park with a crowd gathered out front, smartsuited HIVE drones and other off-liners all mixed together. Golum's sick, rapidly deteriorating as the CHIPZ are burning him out, and is knocked over by little hover skate punks, Blu helping him to his feet. Because it's a national heritage space it's a .NETS free zone with no neuroware telecommunications going on, all the advert holos short circuit as they go through the clown mouth entrance. They chip in again with some of their last CHIPZ and the PLAY> starts to transform the inside of the fun fair into a hyperreal, computer animated CG landscape. Blu gets some visi-floss - animated video fairyfloss and they eat it while they walk round looking at all the rides, the PLAY> still morphing everything as we try to simulate an altered state through the continually shifting backgrounds. They get on the ferris wheel and rise up over the crowd, reality distorting into a BRYCE 3D like beautiful dreamscape against the futuristic city backdrop.

>They're being watched by the I-Spys, of course, they see everything, and we tune into the REALITY FEED footage of the GAME in progress with updates on them as players. FLAW is on her way... Golum and Blu are peaking on the CHIPZ as they wander through the old style games hall, everything animated and morphed by the PLAY> from panel to panel. Past the whack the gopher game and the strongman test, to the Laughing Clowns game. The clown heads are moving left and right and changing, becoming animated by the PLAY> as the attendant hands them the balls. As they play Golum's freaking out, everything's turning into a real fearfest, it's because he's dying, he's imprinting his fears onto the PLAY>. Everything starts spiralling out of control and this is reflected in the panel borders fragmenting as Blu looks on and Golum pulls out the gun and shoots the attendant... Blu runs as Golum goes into a crazed rage, shooting at the clowns heads and going on a mad rampage, lost it in the PLAY>. He chases Blu through the Hall of Mirrors, in which he starts to see Nemo's reflection over the top of his own... Then Golum's on the ground, vomiting out the PLAY> like a junk sickness. It's becoming real. It's Nemo. He uploaded his consciousness to the Golum, he's pulling all the strings as he makes Golum do a sad, broken dance while he sings. With Nemo now fully in control, he starts warping the PLAY to him physically, shaping a nightmare spider-Mek like body with elongated claws and deformed body. He's also hacking into everyone's frequency and projecting the fearfest, causing a terror induced riot. People are down on the ground whimpering, shielding the children, everybody screaming.

>Blu runs! He's pushing through the crowd, everything still nightmare warping around him, onto the dogem car area. He's running through the dodgems hurtling towards him as the misshapen Nemo spider creature skittles after him, claws scrapping the electric nets above them. Nemo kills another attendant on one of the dogem cars as he advances on Blu, insect like. Blu makes it to the Ghost Train and pushes through the Devil faced doors and disappears deep in the darkened tunnel. Nemo's tracking him down there with their Intranet LAN file sharing, dragging it out like a cat and mouse. He's toying with him. Blu jumps into the carriage of a smartsuited couple ahead of him on the tracks and begs them for help, but Nemo comes up and kills them, distorting everything with his control of the PLAY>. Nemo captures Blu and his spider form is morphing and melting around Blu as he tries to choke him to death...

>Blu's saved by FLAW who shoots Golum with her wrist blaster in a dramatic entrance, surrounded by floating holo icons and I-spys filming everything for the live REALITY FEEDZ. She's got open mek wounds and sparking cyborg body bits, looking real damaged from the car chase at the end of issue #2. She's tracking with infrared and extended computer senses as we follow her and Golum as they clash in the tunnels. They're both hyperfast and enhanced, one through genetic technology and the other through machine tek, the flesh and the machine. Flaw lashes out with her full tek capabilities, letting rip the flamethrowers as Nemo skittles up the wall, partially caught and burning. He lures her to a pirate themed enclosure where he smashes in her SENSE.NET and slashes her mek throat, sparks flaring and cut cables leaking fluid. He forces her hard into the wall as all her warning icons flare with system errors. Nemo's about to pounce on her and chop her head off with PLAY> created sycthes when she dodges and grabs him in a leglock and twists, breaks his neck.

>It doesn't stop him. Nemo overrides her computer system with the FLIPSWITCH neuroware and shorts her out with an EMP grenade. He advances on Blu, neck on a horrible angle, his Golum body almost totally broken, and pulls back the bio-tek nodule where Golum is trepaned. From it the CROM CRUCH, a silver worm like sapient backup device wriggles out and onto Nemo's finger. He puts it to Blu's face and it crawls up his nose, blood spurting and eyes open in fear as it starts hacking Blu's SENSE.NET and his encryption keys. Nemos trying to hack through his firewalls and nest his personality matrix in Blu, digitally possess him. And at the heart of the abyss, deep down in the Ghost Train tunnels when Blu's at his lowest, they're transported INTO the PLAY> into the ideas he's thinking, into the ideaspace dimension of the imagination itself. Fully rendered CG cartoon Suessian lanscapes of the ID here, the datascaped source code of the PLAY> itself.

>Blu's falling through this bizarre, hyperreal ideaspace until he hits the deck of an old galleon pirate ship CG created from the PLAY>. Skeleton Nemos dressed as pirates attack. Its a swirling wonderworld in there where Golum's fighting Nemo for control of the PLAY>. Blu has to learn to control his fears, fighting the pirate Nemos and the inhabitants of ideaspace, too, preying mantis like insect creatures that are feeding off their fears. They're draining the broken body of Golum tied to the ship's steering wheel, who Blu rescues by overcoming his fears and not listening to Nemo, by believing in himself. He has an idea of his own and he drags Golum out over the pirate plank, walking out into a morphing CG PLAY>scape of imagery and getting the dying Golum to activate his FLIPSWITCH one final time to snag Nemo's neuroprint. Nemos screaming as he's whisked away like a genie in a bottle, back into Golum's dying body and the PLAY> warps to Blu's imagination, reveals itself to him in it's pure form, a CHROME filter morphing ideaspace where the natives trade in ideas. Ideas themselves are alive and sentient, crossbonding with humans as hosts. Golum's warning Blu not to buy anything as the meme creatures melt out of the backgrounds with some full on animated CG effects in this sequence. They're all talking in a hieroglyph visual language, in ideas themselves as Blu bonds with IDEAS from the PLAY> virus, with algorithms that are the code of the AI viral lifeform, downloading their source code into his browser, bonding to his neuroware. He regurgitates a visual icon-idea like they have shown him how to, his own idea of the PLAY> as is becomes REAL through him and he starts to come down rapidly to the normal reality.

>Golum's dying, Nemo trapped within him as Blu drags his body to an old merry-go-round that's golden and sparkling caught in mid motion. Golum asks Blu to shoot him to put him out of his pain and he does. Golum dies in Blu's arms, fully absorbed into the PLAY. Blu has matured and realized he doesn't need Golum or the CHIPZ, but that he does value the PLAY>er in him that he's never let out growing up in this cyber-dystopia, he's broken the mold thanks to Golum and he can't go back. The staggering remnants of FLAW approach, animated by the .NETS, her human half dead, and tries to take Blu back to the HIVE. The PLAY> is a dangerous VR likedrug, she explains, it turns people mad, like Golum. He was the one with the Nemo fixation. Nemo was a digital perpatrator, riding his consciousness for years, experiencing what his players did. But Nemo is dead, he died in the fire, and the chips have been turning Golum mad, it's all been his fears. Blu's not listening to anyone, he's wise to the Game. He shoots her and runs off into the Program, a completely morphic/ CG BRYCEscape, some synthesis of the PLAY> and reality, the IDEA of it's bonded to him now. He's free.

>GAME OVER

CHARACTER PROFILES>


GOLUM
>Golum’s a chaos attractor like the Cat in the Hat, a cocky Krasher off-line kid in this future ‘Corptopia’ with his sapient tek RUDE MEKANICAL cane and top hat and leopard skin scrambler coat, grunge looks. Big Monster Bootz. He’s got white albino skin and red hair, with an eerie Marilyn Manson like aura of androgyny and post-humanness about him. Golum’s been taking the PLAY> CHIPZ too long and he really believes this whole worlds just a bloody GAME. He knows he’s right and he’s going to give it his ALL to break through, to win, and to have a good time whilst doing it. He lives too hard - but there’s no other way to experience it all, because he’s dying. He’s a fastbred terminator seed bred in the gene-labs and owned by a Corporation, one of the marvels of bio-technology, a post-human clone with a shortened lifespan. He’s been sold to Nemo, it’s later revealed, he too, is a product.
>He speaks in a weird pidgin English type phutro-ese - all the krasher kidsdo, they speak like advertisments, all abbreviated and short attention spanned. He’s hyperactive to the max, in overdrive, always wanting to be in the moment, in the now, a falling star burning brightly in the night and trying to squeeze as much as he can from each moment before it all goes bust. He’s up to no good because that’s where the fun is and his motivation is fun - always, no matter what the cost. Since he’s been trepanned he thinks like a kid does, no adult worries to weigh him down - just the fun stuff, thanks. He’s athletic yet lazy as hell, chainsmoking away his quirky I-Ching cigarettes. Always with a cigarette in his mouth or lighting one or putting one out. He’s a well known identity on the streets of the Central Zone where all the off-liner krasher gangs hang out, he’s made deals with the best of them and is owed favors all over, as well as debts. He’s cheeky like a monkey that will always bite the hand that feeds him and you’ll love every moment of it till the teeth sink in. You either love him or you hate him - there’s no in-between, and he loves a good enemy as much as a friend.
>He shines with the unexpected.

BLUBLU >Everything’s narrated by Blublu and it’s an unreliable narration. He’s 12 years old and always looks like a street tough little cyber-sweetie, ears sticking out, hiding from the world behind his tough facade. Blublu’s covered from head to toe in UV blue bio-dye to protect him from the sun, but that’s his ‘tagger’ name on the streets when he’s smart graffiti-ing. He’s also a bit odd and blue feeling, hence his name. He’s krashed - run away from his corporate sponsored HIVE home where everything is provided and automated and sterile because he wants something more, he can feel there’s more to life than the world he’s been sold. He’s never been of-line before or lived outside the HIVEZ. He’s got to learn to survive and think for himself.
>He’s always scratching his head puzzled like, shuffling his feet around, looking down at the ground, his body language all shy and acting tough at the same time. The trepanning operation has left a permanent hole in his skull at the top thats visible with his shaved head. Theres a biotek nodule there for easy CHIP insertion, the chips like large crystals.
>Blu’s at an impressionable age and he worships Golum like an older brother figure, loves him dearly, perhaps too much. It’s like he’s being eclipsed by Golum and his personality is taking over. He’s into the street scene with him, on his CHIPs etc going off, into the PLAY>>> living life in the fast lane and starting to grow up. He’s the romantic and the dreamer and the one who still wants to believe in MAGIC, needs to believe in something bigger than them all.

NEMO
>He’s the CHIP dealer for the off-line on his block with all the TOYZ. He’s at least 120 years old, has extended his life through tek. The name is loosely based on Little Nemo in Slumberland and he may look like him - always in pyjamas, fluffy rabbit shoes. He’s had numerous replacement parts rewired into him as well as artifical prostethics. He’s wearing a classic pyjamas look but all over smartsuited Star Trek like slumberwear, with kirbydotz and pockets all over like the current combat/cargopockets look. It’s SENSEWEAR that monitors his health. He looks eight hundred and fifteen years old, always minutely etched age lines all over his face and liver spots, his face threaded with nano sheeting all over it like a sparse layer of circuitry that’s keeping him together. Perfect little boy eyes, except they’re orange from his chipping and trapped in a hundred plus year old body.
>Hes a nasty piece of work - he bought Golum from the CORPS, he was a defective early model that burns out young, by 16. Nobody wanted a genecrasher, except Nemo. The WIZ. Procurer of lost and found memorabilia. They think and dream at such hyperfast speeds that they can handle the PLAY, it’s perfect for them. Nemo made it, it came to him as an idea. He coded the algorithm for it. He’s hooked up to them in his den. Wires spilling out the back of his head. His morphing BedMek chair that turns into a spider-chair, panel by panel morphing shape as he moves around. He’s been time sharing Golum’s consciousness, possessing him when he takes the PLAY. That’s why Golum wants to kill him. He wants his last play to be clean, without him in there with him watching, that’s all he’s done at first.
>Nemo is in fact possessing Golum just like the previous Golum body that Golum kills at the end of *1. He’s gone through many Golum’s - he’s an identity vampire, he burns out bodies and moves onto the next by projecting his digitized consciousness from player to player.
TOY DEATH >Are a Neo-punk tekno graffiti-Krasher Krew that Golum leads and Blu joins. Theyre always wearing fine fashion’d cyber clothes and playing with old toys -rollerskates, skateboards, kangarooo shoes, playing WHANGO in carparks and flying kites, along the way hacking and slashing whatever they need to survive off-line. They’re a teen gang up for it all - computer crimes, grafitti, vandalism, assault, pirate CHIP taking, boarding, bagging, phreakin, cracking, hacking, whacking... and they trade all their illegal gains to NEMO for more CHIPZ. They’ve all been trepanned - drilled through their head to increase the oxygen flow to their brains - and act like kids at play, but nasty, too.

>SNARX Snarx’s skin has been gene fashioned to have scales all over like a crocodile, thick chunky scales that protect him from the heat and also injury. He’s also got a split forked tongue and reptile eyes, all done cosmetically. He’s tall, sitting with his knees up, with the posture and body language of a basketball player, and is wearing an alien head/Jolly Roger skull bandana around his head, loose fitting pants, a black t-shirt with the slogan ‘No Fear’ on it and no shoes.

>704 704’s big and tall and dumb hillbilly looking, but menacing, too. Dark skinned about 15. He’s got a lot of cyber extensions running along his spine and up his neck , with exoskeleton MEK gloves with brass knuckles holding a bong, lighting it with the other glove’s finger lighter. It’s motors are moving his fingers by themselves, its remote controlled and does all the work. He’s got an almost shaved head with symbols shaved in, or the numbers 704 in large green lcd font on his forehead. He looks mean and dumb looking, massively ripped muscles from 704, the synthetic bio-chip growth hormone that he’s hooked on.

>SKATCH Skatch’s short, under five foot tall and covered in hair of all different types in patches with shaved areas prominent. He’s wearing phutro grey Calvin Kleins with little side pockets on the boxers, like a DNB fashion tweak, a plasticy look to them. He’s in brand logo sandals and not much else because of the heat and his fur- he’s a SKIN merchant, grows hair for money, sells his skin time to bio-leasers. Skatch is growing dna hair patterns, he’s a factory for Yak fur, authentic, he sells it on the street. He’s got a long smooth bone that looks more like a sharks tooth through his nose and an indigenous, angry primitive look. He’s pretty urban feral and dusty looking, like he hasn’t showered in a very long time. Also lots of piercings all over his face and stretched ears, maybe on close ups of his hands we can see metal rod and barbell implants under the skin. He’s about 14, and even though he’s young and small he looks nasty and dangerous.

F L A W
>She’s a half human/organic, half machine computer symbiosis. A ruthless BOUNTY HUNTER/private law enforcement agent of the future who tracks wildchilds like Golum and Blu for profit and relays all the footage to the Data.NETS™ as ‘REALITY FEEDZ’ for immediate consumption by the passive viewers at home. She’s outfitted with full cyborg body modifications and weapons and has integrated Internet/Sense.NET™ visuals that overlay her POV like the desktop of a computer screen. She is, in fact, completely automated by the Data.NETS™ like a piece of hardware, and her function is to explore the human-machine symbiosis with technology through what’s been done to her body and mind. She rides a sapient hypercycle linked to her with implant teknology, everything’s computer enhanced data overlays from her POV. She’s an early causualty of military bio-tek cyborg experiments.