Okay, I didn’t expect Juneteenth to become a holiday virtually overnight, so this wasn’t planned in advance. But I just happened to be working on Pitchgiving (rather than the novel I’m currently posting because I have a complicated relationship with what most people classicaly term productivity), and the one that I got caught in and poured a lot more time, love and effort into feels appropriate. I’m moving it to number 1, and posting it now. Just know, that when September 17th rolls around, you already got your first present under the Thanksgiving tree, because this is it (so expect the second on the 24th):
Intro:
I think Pitchmas 2020 only went okay. There are really 2
reasons, the first being that pitching 10 episodes of a show is a lot more
work, which either led to extra-long pitches (lead-time permitting) or corner-cutting,
with what feel to me like somewhat mixed results. The second is I started
before the debut of WandaVision or WinterFalcon or LokiLoki, so I made the
assumption that the shows would be, er, shows, in the more traditional sense, and
not miniseries, or perhaps better understood as slightly extended movies-
always designed to feed directly back into the movies themselves, which means
some of my concepts don’t fit as well as I’d have liked them to (Sentry,
though, still feels like a high point, to me- since it was written later and
got to adjust accordingly- and was always a more tightly plotted/planned story,
thanks largely to Paul Jenkins’ original).
But for those reasons I’ll probably stick to movies this year. And yes, the plan is to start with Pitchgiving, and roll right into Pitchmas. For both, I think we’ll keep around the same basic ruleset of no sequels to existing properties, though I can pitch a story for something that’s been announced but for which I know no story details. The exception I’m rolling with is I can pitch sequels to my own pitches half the time, and that’s the plan: a 50/50 split of sequel pitches and new property pitches. This could be interesting, since between what Marvel and DC have already tapped and what I’ve previously pitched, we’re going to start scraping the bottom of the barrel at some point. But if need be, I can always change the rules.
Milestones
Okay, so some of you may not know this, because it’s
relatively obscure comics ephemera. But there is a Black Superman, and a Black
Iron Man, both running around the DC Universe (along with a kinda-sorta Black
Spider-Man). And I’m not talking about Steel or the Superman from Multiversity
(or Spider-Boy in blackface, either- I don’t think that’s a thing that happened,
but even if it had, not what I’m talking about). I’m talking about Milestone Comics.
It was created in the 90s as an Own Voices type of deal for comics. In the
early stages It involved Christopher Priest, but it was Dwayne McDuffie who got
it past the finish line. Those of us who were kids (or kids at heart) in the
early 2000s will know its biggest cultural contribution to date: the Static
Shock cartoon. DC has already green lit a Static movie; I hope they make it,
because even in the wake of Black Panther, I think Black audiences deserve
still more representation, and I think the Milestone brand in particular is still
relatively unknown enough that there’s more room at the margins to make harder
points; it’s possible Disney would balk at BP marching with Black Lives Matter,
but it’s honestly expected that the Milestone heroes would be there. Milestone
was also ahead of its time (in some ways ahead of our current time, too) in
other ways, with better LGBT representation than most franchises today. Some
may, likewise, view this as a cheat; Milestone isn’t owned by DC (at least as
far as I know), but licensed to them, and at a minimum doesn’t fit people’s
conception of what the DC Universe proper is. But that’s kind of the point, and
they were recently reintroduced back into the comics universe, so I’m counting
it.
The first hurdle we hit, though, is the name, maybe names, plural. The universe was called the Dakotaverse, for the fictional city of Dakota that functioned as their home turf. In general I’m against fake cities, especially when an existing city will do nicely, and this one seems easy. We make it Detroit, set the dial somewhere between modern, post-white-flight Detroit and RoboCop Detroit, and it’s basically if Wakanda had been in charge of rebuilding New York after the Chitauri attack in the first Avengers movie- making it a big black-majority city with some renown, wealth and reach.
The next stumbling block isn’t so simple. The big team in Milestone was known only as Heroes. Not only has NBC subsequently snapped up that name, but it was generic and bland to begin with- not a name you can market a $200 million hero flick on the back of. At present, I think the strongest idea I have is just calling the team Milestone- because it is one, an all-Black superhero team, especially one built by Black creators- it makes sense both within their world and within ours. We could even go a step further, have it not just be a Milestone, but because the fictional universe contains a pastiche of all kinds of Black characters from Marvel and DC, you could even have Milestone refer to the fact that it was the first hero team, period, back in the 70s, when a teenaged Black Lightning (no need to use Buck Lightning, since this is set in the DCU proper and he’s, you know, around), a Luke Cage homage (Buck Wild, Mercenary Man), Buck Goliath (I’m… not sure why so many of these just replace Black with Buck… ), a Captain America pastiche we probably can’t call Patriot anymore (I imagine Marvel have been keeping up on their trademark for the Young Avenger- especially with him recently having debuted in the Captain Samerica show)… and I’m not sure whether or not calling his Falcon-alike “Jim Crow” is going to fly today, no pun intended. But that, fighting alongside our Black Superman (who was thankfully not named Buck Superman) ,could cement them as the Pre-Justice League premier superheroes of the DCU (once the Justice Society disbanded after half of its members disappeared, for those who think I have no sense of my own continuity)… they were just more localized and less well known.
And then there’s Icon. Look, it’s probably the strongest of
the names I’ve complained about, and I even get why having a Black Superman in
’93 was legitimately iconic… but it’s still a little on the nose, and not
my favorite name. Hardware fairs better, for me, and Static as a name actually
does feel pretty iconic to me (even if, next to Black Lightning, I’d expect
Static’s powerset to be more limited, possibly just to cling, and maybe the
occasional annoying zap- which is not really the case). I’m also uncertain
about the name “Bang Babies” for their metahumans… I feel like back in ’93 it
wouldn’t have read as oddly dated or a slogan you’d see on a NAMBLA shirt, but
we can replace with a more generic term like metahuman, transhuman, superhuman,
mutant, or whatever if need be; but your mileage may vary on all of these names,
and I hope this all reads as one creative gently but lovingly ribbing others,
cause the folks behind these properties have a lot more cred than I do, and
deservedly so.
And the usual caveat, as I start, here, is that I’m white,
and am just doing the synopsis for funsies; any Milestone movie should
absolutely be written, directed and to the greatest extent possible shot and
performed by Black creators, who have an intuitive experience of the Black
experience that no amount of research or empathy could give me (though I’d be
happy to consult or help in some degree, if anyone were interested); the one
exception to that might be Tarantino being a possibility to direct; I think
even in that scenario, the optimal outcome would be he and Spike Lee
co-directing. They might kill each other, but they’d turn in a hell of a movie
(and thirty years from now the making of doc would be better than that).
And before I go further, a caveat: DC are supposedly making
a Static Shock movie. But… they were supposedly making a Cyborg movie. And
while I buy that someday that Flash movie will get made, I’d put about even
money right now on it taking so long Grant Gustin will be age appropriate to
play their version of Jay Garrick. Both for the uninitiated and because it’s a
slightly more interesting story, I’m assuming it gets folded into our movie,
here- not because I wish the Static movie ill, but because I wanted to play with
all the toys, damnit, and folding Static’s origin in made sense to me.
We’d start with Icon, named Arnus, in the 1800s. He’s an
alien, traveling in a starliner that malfunctions, and he crashes into a cotton
field in the American South. His lifepod scans an enslaved woman named Miriam,
and alters his physiology to look like her. She raises him as her own son, and
he grows up as a slave; he was quickly discovered to be personally
unpunishable- not a one of the hands could manage to break the boy’s skin no
matter how long they flailed him- and his spirit was even more unbreakable.
They threatened Miriam, and the other slaves, which served to keep him
malleable for a time. Early in his teenage years, however, he realized how
great their fear of him was- and engineered a revolt, and saw his adoptive
mother and the other slaves safely along the Underground Railroad.
He spent the years of the Civil War and after continuing his
work aiding freed and escaped slaves, after which he retired to a relatively
reclusive manor in Michigan. He played the stocks, and when necessary did
labor, reasoning he would some day use human technology to fix his craft and
return home- but even by the 2010s we were still far behind the tech he needed.
But that’s why he takes an interest in young Curtis Metcalf, perhaps the
brightest young man of his age. He seeks to mentor Metcalf, and provide for his
education.
Here we shift perspectives, to follow Curtis as a boy,
scraping gum off of desks and tables; we assuming he’s an overly polite young
man, until he catches sight of a big for his age kid chase a frailer student
into the boy’s bathroom. He crams the remaining already-been-chewed gum into an
invention that envelopes the bully in a thick, pinkish sludge that prevents him
from moving. The bullied kid and Curtis run in opposite directions, Curtis
running home. We lace in his mother speaking about the opportunity this
represents for her son, how thankful she is that his gifts can be nurtured,
maybe a little guilt about how she couldn’t afford the tutors or fancy school
she knew would help him, not on a lowly teacher’s salary (she doesn’t mention
it, but her husband is a doctor, but at a poor community clinic, barely making
enough to pay off his med school debt), and is in the process of profusely
thanking the man sitting on her couch when Curt arrives, surprised. We are,
too, because it isn’t Arnus, it’s Edwin Alva, a white man who looks enough like
Edison (genial, but definitely evil) for people to get the message (though some
white people will get to it later). He smiles, and explains that he’s going to
see to it Curt gets the leg up he didn’t- that he’s going to remove ten years
of hard labor to get him where he was always going to end up, inventing better
ways for man to thrive.
We follow Edwin outside of the Metcalf home, where he meets
Arnus who was clearly about to make his approach, living under the name
Augustus Freeman IV (he was also I-III, over the years). Edwin tells him that
the boy is his- his genius, his inventions- all of it, and not-too-subtly
threatens to out Arnus as something other than human. He also leans, hard, into
calling him “Free Man.”
We follow a deflated Arnus home, where he continues to
monitor Curt growing up. He doesn’t feel he has a free hand, though at one
point he does try to intervene, managing a few minutes with the 15 year old
college graduate at his graduation to tell him he should understand Alva has
his own machinations. Curt isn’t surprised, but trusts some old dude who jumps
out at him in a green trenchcoat even less.
More years pass, and we see Arnus in his study, becoming more and more disillusioned. As dust gathers in his home, webs in the windows, it’s clear he’s interacting with humanity less and less in his depression. Suddenly, the webbed-over window is lit by a flashlight, that smashes its way inside. A hand juts through the pane, and unlocks the window. It belongs to one of a handful of youths, but the only one we really focus on is the one called Rocket. She’s pretty, and sounds more worldly than the others. She’s also the one that Arnus catches, inadvertently demonstrating his superpowers. Her friends run, but she’s intrigued by this powered recluse. She asks why he doesn’t use his power to help people- their people, to set an example. Now… Icon was originally very much in the Bill Cosby, respectability politics mold; I’m probably not the right person to make the call, but personally, I’d update him, as someone who tried, but failed, that not only did he hero in the 70s with the other previous generation of Milestones, but he’s been trying for nearly 200 years. Past a point, he couldn’t handle pulling cats out of trees but not being able to stop police from beating Black people to death on the street. I think we could split the difference by having him state that their people don’t need an example, they need a lighter load. She could still respond to that with something like, “It’s easy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can fly.”
We return to Curt, who is now an adult, and is working on a
new kind of tear gas. His lab partner protests, that the specs the police have
asked for require a dose of their proprietary irritant ten times that level-
which Curt protests, because even double the current dose has been shown to
have mutagenic and carcinogenic properties in testing- that as it stands it can
only be used by domestic police because its use in war would be against
international law. Alva bursts in, and fires Curt’s partner, saying they were
hired to get Curt on the same page, and clearly can’t do that, so security
escort him out. Alva then asks how the exoskeleton is coming along.
Curt says they’ve made some progress, but expresses
reservations; the police are already heavily militarized, and its had
devastating effects, especially in Black communities. Alva doesn’t seem moved,
and turns to leave, at which point Curt asks about his proposal- that he helped
Alva build this company, that a full 25% of profits are directly attributable
to his patents and discoveries, and he would like to benefit accordingly. Alva
is savage, explaining that he isn’t a partner or a protégé, but an employee,
one who signed a contract, one that Alva is willing to enforce in court, if
need be, that deals with patents, royalties and all other compensatory forms,
and prohibits any productive work for any company in any capacity related to
his work at Alva industries, or the education it provided for him.” Curt
protests, that between the breadth of his education and his multi-disciplinary
work for Alva, there’s nothing he could do elsewhere (someone else would
have to weigh in whether or not he should go the extra step and say, he’s
“practically a slave”); Alva makes a joke about never using him to work on food
extracts, and that being an exciting field- that he’d even put in a good word
with Wilcox for him, laughing as he leaves.
And here’s where we meet Virgil. He’s a geeky 15-year old
more into comics and nerd-stuff than anything else. He wakes up early, with his
friend still asleep in his room as he plays with his Legos. His mom ducks her
head in, and says they need to be getting dressed, that breakfast is ready and
the bus will be here in a few minutes. Virgil and Rick discuss going back to
school after a fun weekend hanging out; Virgil’s not terribly keen, because
he’s being bullied. We watch as the two boys chase after the bus with
juice-boxes and toast in hand as they run.
After school, we witness Virgil get bullied. Rick stands by,
unable to help, because his bully, Francis, is flanked by two other gang
members, wearing similar colors to help hammer home the point. Francis wants to
stay and continue to beat on Virgil, but the others convince him they have to
go, that they’re making plans for the Big Bang tonight.
Later on, Virgil, with Rick talking through how he wished
they could get the bully alone, is tapping away at the internet trying to find
out information on dark portions of the web to find out about the Big Bang. He
clicks one link and up pops an adult site, which is immediately blocked by
their internet settings. His mom yells in from the other room, wanting to know
if he’s looking at something he shouldn’t. He hollers back that he was just
trying to research on the Big Bang. After a pause, she tells him to be careful
which links he clicks on for that.
We cut to another screen, but this one’s different, littered
in icons, dissertations, spreadsheets, science. We see Curt’s reflection in the
monitor. He’s opening and closing documents and spreadsheets at a fast clip,
but from it we can gather that he’s doing research on his boss, Edwin Alva, and
finding out he’s both incredibly dirty and untouchable. I’d say this
might be a good moment to inject Arnus back into the story. Curt is surprised
he’s there, that he got past Alva’s security. It takes him a moment to place
Arnus, before he calls him the flasher from his graduation. Arnus stuffily
protests that it was just a trenchcoat, that he had on a full three piece
underneath, just like he’s wearing now (I think, in his civilian guise, he
wears a green trenchcoat over a red three-piece suit, similarly if more mutedly
colored to his costume).
Arnus relates all he knows about Alva- that he’s
dirty, that he’s even tried, at various times, to leak information to the
press, to prosecutors. But Alva’s too well-connected. He’s bribed everyone in
the state, and his defense contracts are so central to the Defense Department
that there’s no way they’d let anyone jail their golden goose. Curt mutters
that he’s the goose bitterly. Arnus tells him he didn’t come to tell
Curt to give up hope- he came to provide it. He has a plan, to hurt Alva’s
legitimate and shadow organizations strategically; he just knows that he needs
an inside man, someone with access who can help him navigate the portions he
can’t see from outside. Curt smiles, saying he wants a “man inside the
machine,” and says he came to the right guy, hitting a button that pops out the
exoskeleton he’s been working on. Curt falls back into it, and it seals around
him. Arnus may not be impressed, but it’s still the closest anyone’s come to
the kind of tech his people had in a couple hundred years, so he’s intrigued.
Rocket walks into the room. She’s got her own costume, now,
as well as some flying tech she rigged from Arnus’ craft. Icon confirms she’s
with him, and Rocket confirms she adapted his tech to her needs on her own, but
his suit “Looks neat, too.”
We cut to the underground meeting of one of the gangs. I’m
picturing the Foot Clan from the first Ninja Turtles movie, because that’s the
era this stuff took place in, but if we could shift the relatively realistic
feel of that to a modern context we’re probably set. Francis, essentially a
peon, listens intently to their leader talk about what’s really just a street
brawl amongst a couple gangs; big, in terms of numbers, but he’s discouraging
most of them from bringing guns or anything that might impact people’s parole,
that this is about a public display of power- sticking a knife in someone’s
ribs is a private display- you don’t do that in front of witnesses. Someone
cast in shadow arrives, and the leader tells his boys to all scram.
And here’s where we thicken up the plot a bit. Alva meets
with the head of one of the gangs. He uses the youth gangs basically as a minor
league- he’s always looking for talent, and implies that he’s had his eye on
the gang leader for some time, that he views this Big (gang) Bang [yeah, this
might be another name from the 90s we have to change] as their All Star Game,
that he’ll be watching for his own draft. After the gang leader leaves, he asks
his assistant if the new irritant will be ready for tomorrow. The assistant
says that Metcalf fixed all the technical issues, the only remaining issue was
the irritant cocktail, and that they’ve already increased it to the requested
levels. Alva asks what the LD-50 is on the compound, and is told it’s five
times greater than current levels. Alva tells him to ‘only’ triple it, then;
that there’s bound to be more Black Lives Matter protests, and other police
departments will be watching to see how effective their new irritant is- and he
wants to give them a fireworks show.
The next day at school, Virgil stops Francis from bullying a
different kid, inadvertently getting his attention. Virgil’s saved from a
particularly bad beating by a rival gang member. Virgil asks him about
the Big Bang, and he tells Virgil if he’s thinking about hopping off the
sidelines, he’ll have a shot at Francis- and that his two cronies will have
their hands full- that he can guarantee. Rick pantomimes for him not to,
but Virgil says he’ll think about it.
After school, Rick tries to convince Virgil not to go,
playing the pity card, that Virgil only just started warming up to him, and it
took years– he doesn’t have that kind of time to break in another new
best friend before high school ends. “Your confidence in me it’s, frankly it’s
just embarrassing,” Virgil deadpans. Virgil tells Rick, when he threatens to
stay with him the rest of the day, that he won’t go. Rick cops to the fact that
he’s got a dentist appointment, so it was a bad bluff, but he appreciates it,
really. He’ll sleep better- and that if Virgil wants to come over after his
appointment, they can game or something. Virgil tells him he’s got a lot of
homework, a big paper due. Rick eyes him, but decides to trust him.
We cut to later, as lines are being drawn. One of the gang
leaders chugs a beer, crumples it and throws the empty into the street between
them, says something to the effect of they might as well get things started. The
Big Bang lights off. During the fighting, Virgil is able to isolate Francis and
get in a few good licks, before the cops arrive. They barely hesitate before
showering the place in tear gas. I imagine we pop into a police helicopter for
a moment, where the officer weighs whether or not it violates the safety
instructions to fire a second cannister into the smoke, and decides to, anyway.
We cut away as Icon tells them the plan, that he, Rocket and
Hardware will start out the evening at three different locations, starting
havoc, setting charges, destroying caches; while coordinated, they’re also
coordinating to leave open the possibility of accidents or industrial sabotage-
at least as long as possible.
We cut back to the Big Bang as the sun starts to set. The
cops go into the smoke with riot gear and gas masks, thinking that’ll protect
them. They walk into a Cronenbergian body horror exhibition, with several of
the gang members mutating in real time before their eyes. We spend a few
minutes with the cops, who freak out and just start shooting everyone they see,
until the first of them says he thinks there’s something wrong with his mask,
reaches up and realizes the gas has eaten through the plastic shield of his
mask. He collapses to the ground and starts convulsing, and one of the cops
shoots him. I think from here the exposed cops retreat out of the gas; the other
cops refuse to let them rejoin their line, so they form a second ring within
it, to keep the gang members in the smoke.
Icon finishes destroying the conveyance of both legs of a
smuggling handoff, and cocks his head, smiling as he hears an approaching
siren. He turns, as Hardware lands relatively quietly behind him. Hardware
informs him of the news- a riot breaking out amongst two rival gangs, with the
cops on the scene shooting. Icon calls Rocket over the radio, and she says she
heard, “And he was so worried your old ass wouldn’t know how to work a radio,
he schlepped over to you.”
The three heroes fly to the scene of the riot. At first
they’re horrified, as the cops just outright murder injured gang members- most
of them underaged kids. Then they see one of the shot gang members get back up
and tear the cop who shot him in half. They spring into action, Icon telling
them to stem the loss of life- all life. He tells them to handle the
gangs- that he’ll move the cops back- the last thing a situation this complex
needs is cowboys shooting blindly into the smoke.
It’s Rocket that finds Virgil and shakes him awake. He was
passed out beside Francis. He says he doesn’t feel good, but says he should be
able to walk. “I was less worried about you walking than who was going to carry
your unconscious cuddle buddy,” she says, nudging Francis with her foot. A cop
pops out of the smoke, too close for Rocket to respond. Virgil, instinctively,
puts up his hands, tearing a manhole cover out of the street and shunting it
between Rocket and the policeman’s shotgun as he fires. The cop cocks his head,
before Rocket punches him. Rocket and Virgil exchange names, and as their
guards are down, Francis, now the powered F-Stop, jumps up. Virgil again puts
out his hand, and the manhole cover smacks Francis, putting him back on the
ground. Rocket asks Virgil if he’s good, but doesn’t wait for confirmation as
she disappears through the smoke. Virgil continues to play with the manhole
cover, sending it flying left, then sending it flying right, but too far, where
he looses control of it and we hear it clang into someone, who groans. Virgil
glances around, before saying, “He did it,” and pointing at the unconscious
Francis.
We cut to a couple of bangers who came armed. “Pigs are
armored,” one of them says. The other says that means it’s open season on
bacon. They start shooting into the smoke in the direction of the police line.
Hardware walks into their hail of gunfire, bullets pinging off his armor. He reaches
forward and grabs their guns, crushing them, then grabs them, and pulls them
into the smoke.
Icon floats in the air above the gas. A policeman in the
helicopter he’s been trying to shoo away fires off a burst of bullets that
bounce off of him. Icon glares. “You okay?” Virgil, who’s awkwardly floating on
his manhole cover, asks. He’s about 80%
of the way there to being Static at this point (design-wise; he tore the bottom
half of Francis’ t-shirt to make himself a mask, even). Icon says it kind of
tickles… but he’s not sure how to get them to shove off without knocking their
helicopter out of the sky- which could be dangerous. Static says he’ll give it
a try. He magnetically bends the barrel of the gun that moments before was used
on Icon, then gestures for them to shove off. The pilot doesn’t hesitate.
Icon smiles at him, then wonders if he has any thoughts
about breaking the police line. He asks Icon if he really just asked him to
“Fuck the police?” Icon says he’s certain he didn’t use those words, but he
would appreciate the help- nonlethal, of course. Static looks up the block, and
notices their cars are all in pretty close proximity to some street lights. He
relates that his physics teacher told him that electricity and magnetism are
just different names for the same phenomenon, so he might have an idea. He
claws his hands across the air, and the metal lightposts warp enough to shatter
their bulbs, ever so slightly angling their exposed wiring towards the cops.
Then electricity leaps from the lights, burning the paint off the cars. The
cops who had been holding the line behind the cars run; without them keeping
the exposed cops in a smaller circle, they too, flee.
I think at some point in the fighting I would cameo a
lesbian couple, who eventually hero under the names Donner and Blitzen but for
now run a coffee shop on the nearby corner, and were caught in the gas as it
wafted through. Donner is a big blonde German powerhouse, and Blitzen is a
Japanese speedster. It’s more a cameo, though it probably wouldn’t hurt to cast
them now and just assume they’ll get more play in the sequel, but they help
keep the bangers contained and pedestrians/passersby safe. Probably they stop
and pose at the end of the fight, with the other heroes.
Between Static and Icon, the cops get the message, and
leave. Hardware says the equipment in his suit has analyzed the gas, and
confirms it was the compound he was working with, but at a much greater
concentration; he confirms that it’s relatively harmless in lower doses. Icon
does a couple of quick fly-bys to suck the gas away with him, cutting its
concentration to safe levels. Static helps by plonking the blades off the
helicopter he grounded and using them as a big fan.
Most of the remaining gang members, no longer feeling hidden
by the gas, and even with powers don’t want to fight heroes. Maybe the gang
leaders and their respective entourages do, with Virgil having to help take
down the one who he was quasi-friendly with. The cops try to come back, looking
for payback, after getting chased off. The heroes stand between them and the
captured gang members to prevent a bloodbath, until live TV crews are on the
scene (or maybe enough of a crowd gathered filming with camera phones is a
better modernization).
Alva blames the issue with the gas on the police adding a
radioactive isotope to help them track people from the ‘riot.’ Because of his
wealth and reach, the media largely go along with it, and the stink stays off
him. But privately, he’s pissed. He lost millions, and his contacts in
organized crime all saw how much egg he took in the face. But that’s fine… he’s
pretty sure he knows at least one person he can make pay.
He stampedes into Curt’s lab the next day, flanked by
security personal in a flying V. He accuses Curt of misusing company property,
and says he’s already been in contact with his lawyers about suing him for any
damage done to the exoskeleton prototype. Curt acts surprised, and says he has
no idea what he’s talking about- he’s been working in the lab all night. He pulls
up the security feed, which does, indeed, show him hard at work. Alva demands
to have the footage authenticated, and storms out.
Curt talks to Arnus and Rocket over lunch in the park, all
of them in their civilian clothes. Curt explains that he’s never really trusted
Alva, always figured there would come a day when he was going to have to go
against him, and need some cover. First project he undertook working for him
was worming inside his security system, and capturing enough archival footage
he’d have just about any kind of loop he’d need. Didn’t hurt that he had been
working a lot of late nights, after his proposal for a royalty sharing
agreement- he figured he was demonstrating value, that he had a dozen
ten-million-dollar ideas he’d planned to give up to show his own good will.
Rocket asks if they’re better ways to kill people, or things that might do
somebody some real good? Curt tells her that most any idea can be used to hurt
people, or help them, if you’re clever enough, but that these ideas are some of
his most clever- he thinks he could change the world, so long as Alva doesn’t
stop him from putting these patents out into the world. Arnus tells him he’s
got the resources to make sure they go public and stay public… that
maybe he’s been thinking too small, about only helping himself, when the best
way to help everyone up is to lift everyone up. He and Rocket exchange a
knowing glance.
I think we shoot to credits, just the cast, real quick, then
do an early credits scene, Rick confronting Virgil. Virgil thinks he’s in for
it. He’s already had an ass-chewing from his mom, because he’s bruised up and
obviously been fighting. And he just doesn’t have it in him- he could have died
and he knows he was an idiot and- Rick latches onto him like a scared baby
koala, and tells him how scared he was. He saw the fighting and that the cops
were there on the news and Rick just knew that Virgil was there, and he
wouldn’t pick up his phone and- we pull back, and Rick realizes they’re
floating a few inches off the ground. He lets go of Virgil, and drops. Virgil
tells him that the gas the cops used changed him. He can manipulate metal and
electricity. He wants to use what he’s got to do good, and he’s been thinking
names. We’ll throw out some others, either jokes or references.
“Lightning Lad?”
“What is it the 50s? Black Lightning?”
“What is it, the 70s? Also, I think there’s a guy.”
“Magnet-o. Mag-neat-o?”
“What is it, the 80s? Plus Disney has very scary lawyers.”
“Maybe we ditch the call and response. What is it, the 90s?”
They both turn to camera and stare for a fraction of a second too long. We’ll
do some fast-cuts now to burn through a few more.
“E-Diddy?”
“Electric Boogaloo?”
“Racists ruined that one,” Virgil says.
“Man, racists ruin everything,” Rick says, and Virgil
shakes his head in agreement. “Electro?”
“Marvel did it.”
“Electra.”
“Feminine. Also, Marvel did it.”
“Man, what didn’t Marvel do.”
“A Black superteam,” Virgil says.
Virgil pauses. “How about Static?”
“Like cling? Like if this is about the hug… I don’t like the
term needy, but I was scared for you. I thought maybe I’d never even see you
again.”
“No,” Virgil insists. “Static.”
“Like what you give your mom?”
“Like what I’ll give to cops, and bangers, and whoever else needs it.”
Editorial note: You may have noticed I’m capitalizing Black when it refers to the cultural identity, but not white. On grammar grounds I couldn’t make the switch; I agree that white shouldn’t be capitalized because it’s not a monolithic cultural identity, and I think Black is the same (I just don’t think my high school gym teacher from Compton’s experience was anything like Barack Obama’s, just as as an example). However, after the 2020 election, when Black voters pulled our collective asses out of the fire, again, I decided that grammar wasn’t the only metric to judge this by. I’m capitalizing Black as a sign of respect for people our country has repeatedly harmed, but who have repeatedly fought to save us from our worst selves. Mistakes may happen along the way, of course- grammar me and socially-conscious me aren’t always working in tandem. I’m uncertain about my back catalog… it’s a pain largely inflicted on my editors and formatters if I try to change that, too, but I am considering it, as well.
