Soul, Pages 1-4 (of 4)

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

We’re back at the funeral of Jerome. Now we’re at the cemetery as the casket is being lowered into the ground, and we can see Sonny, Adam Hemingway, Etta Hemingway, Tobias O’Brien, the Duke, even the ten year old girl and her father (off in the distance, naturally), and somewhere near those two, another ten year old, a black girl named Sam Lane...fighting a grown man. This is a large panel that’s nearly the whole page.

Panel 2

A close-up of Adam Hemingway looking, annoyed, in the direction of Sam Lane’s activities.

Panel 3

A hand is being placed on Sam’s shoulder as she looks at it, even though she continues fighting the grown man.

SAM LANE: What the...?

PAGE TWO

Panel 1

The man Sam was fighting runs off.

Panel 2

Sam angrily turning her full attention to, as it turns out, Sonny.

SAM LANE: Now look what you did!

SAM LANE: He’s getting away!

Panel 3

Sonny crouching down to Sam’s level, a look of utter compassion on his face.

SONNY: I see that. 

SONNY: I saw what he was doing, how you stopped him.

SONNY: I was over there. Attending a very important funeral.

SONNY: What’s your name?

Panel 4

A close-up of a doubtful, wary Sam.

Panel 5

Pulling back to see both of them again.

SAM LANE: Sam. 

SAM LANE: Sam Lane.

PAGE THREE

Panel 1

Sonny and Sam are walking through the cemetery now.

SONNY: What’s your story, Sam Lane?

SAM LANE: Orphan. 

SAM LANE: That bum was disrespecting my parents’ grave.

SAM LANE: But you already knew that.

SONNY: I did.

Panel 2

Sonny and Sam sitting in a diner, same day, same clothes. Sam eats hungrily.

SONNY: You held yourself well out there.

SAM LANE: You know how it is.

SAM LANE: Have to.

SONNY: And you seem like a nice kid.

SAM LANE: Thanks.

Panel 3

Same clothes, same day. Now they’re walking down a busy Hun City sidewalk. If it begins to seem like a parallel with the HUN CITY page, that’s probably not a coincidence.

SONNY: Listen, I’m probably stepping well outside the line, but have you ever heard of the Ferryman?

SAM LANE: Sure.

SAM LANE: Where I’m from, everyone has.

SAM LANE: Pretty inescapable.

SAM LANE: Between you an’ me, actually fought him, once.

SAM LANE: Held my own.

Panel 4

Same day, same clothes. Now they’re in the park.

SONNY: You’re an incredible person, Sam Lane.

SAM LANE: Thanks.

SONNY: Sorry, here we’ve been talking all day, and I haven’t introduced myself.

SONNY: Ny name’s Sonny.

SAM LANE: And you want to offer me a job.

SONNY: And impertinent.

Panel 5

Close-up of Sonny.

SONNY: Just like I was.

SONNY: Listen, maybe I have no business doing this...

SONNY: No, I really don’t...

SONNY: He’s gonna be pissed.

PAGE FOUR

Panel 1

Sam standing, same clothes, same day, in front of a scowling Hemingway, now dressed casually, indicating that it is in fact later that day.

Panel 2

Same panel. Hemingway is struggling for words in this moment.

Panel 3

Same panel.

HEMINGWAY: He told you.

HEMINGWAY: He told you everything.

Panel 4

Same panel.

SAM LANE: Well, probably not everything.

SAM LANE: I still have no idea whose funeral that was.

SAM LANE: Sorry for, ah, disrupting it.

Panel 5

Same panel.

HEMINGWAY: You didn’t.

HEMINGWAY: A very important person.

Panel 6

Same panel

SAM LANE: I saw you stare daggers, Mister Hemingway.

HEMINGWAY: Young girl.

HEMINGWAY: You have no idea.

Panel 7

Same panel.

SAM LANE: Oh, I think I do.

Panel 8

Same panel.

Panel 9

Same panel, except now Sam has a huge smile on her face.

HEMINGWAY: This is only the beginning, you understand.

SAM LANE: Sure.

END

Court Jester, Page 1 (of 1)

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

A grizzly corpse stuffed in a barrel.

CAPTION: Accounts of the Ferryman’s activities tend to be greatly exaggerated.

CAPTION: His “battles with the Court Jester,” for instance.

CAPTION: Tabloid fodder.

CAPTION: Court Jester remains unidentified. Uncaught. At large. A serial killer. His capture, let alone many, wish-fulfillment. His handiwork, the stuff of urban legend. Nightmares, really.

CAPTION: Known only, besides the trail of bodies, by the letters he invariably addresses to the mayor of Hun City...

Panel 2

Hacked up remains in a grave partially uncovered.

CAPTION: “Dear Mayor...”

CAPTION: “I had a vision the other day, of a city filled with dancing people.”

CAPTION: “One could argue, corpses don’t dance, but I say that guy would be no fun at a party.”

Panel 3

A body soaked in blood, stabbed to death in an alley.

CAPTION: “Dear Mayor...”

CAPTION: “We live in a society that has lost its grip on reality.”

CAPTION: “Can I really be blamed for wanting to help things feel just a little more real?”

Panel 4

A corpse with its eyes having been removed.

CAPTION: “Dear Mayor...”

CAPTION: “Every time your laws close in on my activities, I have to find creative new ways to become harder to see...”

Panel 5

A corpse in a crude facsimile of the Ferryman’s costume.

CAPTION: “Dear Mayor...”

CAPTION: “I know he’s not your fault, but could you please do something about the Ferryman?”

CAPTION: “It’s just, he’s always threatening to cramp my style.”

CAPTION: “What I’m saying is, he’s inconvenient.”

CAPTION: “And even if he ends up stopping me, at some point you’re gonna have to stop him, too.”

CAPTION: “Either way, the story remains the same.”

CAPTION: “Yours as a faithful servant,”

CAPTION: “Court Jester”

END

Hun City, Page 1 (of 1)

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

A crowded city sidewalk during the day. No specific person being pointed out but in the mix is our narrator, a ten year old girl, of Mexican descent, holding her father’s hand. This is, to be clear, a wide shot, so we won’t know, unless everyone’s paying attention, who we’re following until the last panel.

CAPTION: Hun City is like any other city, probably.

CAPTION: I guess what makes it stand out is what my dad calls the urban legend, the Ferryman.

Panel 2

Now we’re in a park, and somewhere in evidence is the same father and daughter. Same rules: a wide shot.

CAPTION: My dad likes to make a game of figuring out, in the newspaper, the articles that would feature the Ferryman, as he says, “ if they were being honest.”

Panel 3

Now we’re in a restaurant, where again, the father and daughter are in the mix, but it’s a wide shot.

CAPTION: He says, “polite society doesn’t talk about such things.”

CAPTION; I guess school doesn’t count as “polite society” because we talk about the Ferryman all the time.

Panel 4

A subway car, with father and daughter, wide shot.

CAPTION: It’s kind of exciting to know the Ferryman is out there.

CAPTION: I mean, I have no idea what he actually does, except my dad says he gets in a lot of fights, and that that’s probably a bad example.

CAPTION: But, you know.

Panel 5

Walking away from the reader, off in the distance, on a sidewalk at nighttime, our father and daughter, holding hands.

CAPTION: I guess the Ferryman has a partner, a boy, about my age?

CAPTION: The story goes, he’s kind of cute.

CAPTION: Of course, nobody knows, and I guess there’s been a bunch of them, but that’s the story.

CAPTION: Maybe someday I’ll find out for sure.

The Duke, Page 1 (of 1)

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

Our man Duke, grizzled old police commissioner, shaved head, a toothpick in his mouth, standing on a dark street covered in police tape, alone. For the moment, just outside the taped off area.

CAPTION: The damndest thing is that every one of them thinks I don’t know anything about it.

CAPTION: That all I do is condone the activity.

CAPTION: That I don’t know exactly who each one of them is.

Panel 2

Duke uses a pen to lift the police tape aside so he can duck underneath and have a look.

CAPTION: As he always is, the Ferryman was here first, and last. Make the mayhem, make the ID, mop up the clues my boys missed.

CAPTION: The Ferryman, otherwise known as Adam Hemingway, scion of Nicholas Hemingway, the great entrepreneur.

Panel 3

Duke crouches to look closer.

CAPTION: Then comes Harlot, more chasing the Ferryman than justice. 

CAPTION: Harlot, otherwise known as Henrietta “Etta”Hemingway, sister of Nicholas.

Panel 4

Duke uses his pen again to lift garbage that has blown onto the scene, finding bullet casings underneath.

CAPTION: And finally the new guy, Bandit, last on the scene, preserving the body, apparently, from those who still meant it harm. Leaving evidence unremarked until now.

CAPTION: Bandit, otherwise known as the second Soul, Ferryman’s partner, formerly a black youth, Tobias O’Brien. Previously presumed dead. One-time ward of Adam Hemingway.

Panel 5

Duke jotting notes in a pad for later reference.

CAPTION: The Duke’s journal. Worth little. Maybe. For now.

CAPTION: But at some point, there will have to be a reckoning.

CAPTION: Between this very strange family? The law?

CAPTION: Or with me?

END

Bandit, Page 1 (of 1)

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

Sunset with the back of a figure in a blue mask and brown trench coat.

CAPTION: There was a time. Long ago.

CAPTION: When I worked alongside the Ferryman.

CAPTION: But then I died.

Panel 2

Bandit has turned his head around to face the reader, seemingly.

CAPTION: That was twenty years ago.

CAPTION: Twenty long years.

CAPTION: I have nothing but a gap in my memory, between then and now.

Panel 3

Pulling out we see Bandit in the middle of a city street, and confronting him a pack of thugs. He is pulling guns out from under his trench coat.

CAPTION: Nothing but a gap, and pain.

CAPTION: Pain that won’t go away.

Panel 4

In case there’s any doubt, Bandit is going full Red Hood, shooting lethal bullets at his targets.

CAPTION: I’m not here for him.

CAPTION: I could less about the Ferryman.

Panel 5

Bandit standing in a street full of corpses.

CAPTION: Me, I’ve got other fish to fry.

CAPTION: I may have a lot of questions, but that won’t stand in the way of the new purpose in my life.

CAPTION: Finally, my own.

CAPTION: Or something very much like it...

END

Harlot, Page 2 (of 2)

PAGE TWO

Panel 1

Johnny Brisk, long, stringy wannabe rockstar hair, shooting Hemingway Senior & wife, with the young Hemingway watching, in the subway. With them is another woman, Hemingway Senior’s younger sister, shielding the young Hemingway.

CAPTION: I made a crucial mistake.

CAPTION: I saved his life, but I did nothing to protect my brother.

CAPTION: And I will never forgive myself.

Panel 2

Johnny Brisk, decades later, stringy hair thinning, in court, Harlot in her civilian role as DA Etta Hemingway, prosecuting.

CAPTION: Johnny Brisk, having his day in court.

CAPTION: Again.

CAPTION: Appeals are weak justice. But in my private life as DA Etta Hemingway, the Harlot is poised to strike.

CAPTION: Especially him.

Panel 3

Johnny Brisk breaking out of prison.

CAPTION: And when he fails legally, he tries it the other way.

CAPTION: Even worthless lives possess a sense of self-preservation.

CAPTION: Especially Brisk.  Especially knowing his fate.

Panel 4

Harlot seducing Johnny Brisk in an alley.

CAPTION: And the role I chose for myself, the role that makes all men weak, I will use even for him.

CAPTION: Especially for him.

CAPTION: For one night.

CAPTION: For the night, and the lives, he took away forever...

Panel 5

Etta watches alongside Hemingway as Johnny Brisk is executed by lethal injection. Hemingway is the same age we saw him last page. They are not seated together. Etta is watching Hemingway, not Brisk.

CAPTION: I failed my nephew once. 

CAPTION: He will never accept me as an aunt.

CAPTION: As family.

CAPTION: Or in his war on crime.

CAPTION: But I will always be there for him.

END

Harlot, Page 1

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

We see Harlot, who seems like the archetypal comic book superheroine, like a masked hooker, crouching in the shadows of a subway as busy travelers move about their business.

CAPTION: The Ferryman patrols these tunnels.

CAPTION: But I was here before him.

Panel 2

Still in the shadows, Harlot has removed her mask. She’s spotted a well-dressed man surrounded by an entourage of assistants: Hemingway, as he appears in DEAD BUTLERS. This takes place in the aftermath of that story.

CAPTION: I was here when it all began.

Panel 3

Harlot is slipping on an overcoat to hide her costume when she spots an assassin pulling a gun out of his pocket at the periphery of the crowd around Hemingway.

CAPTION: I should have stopped it.

CAPTION: God knows.

Panel 4

Even in his civilian mode, Hemingway doesn’t hesitate to take action. He’s knocking the gun out of the assassin’s hand as Harlot retreats back into the shadows.

CAPTION: He didn’t deserve to become such a hard man.

Panel 5

Harlot has vanished into the shadows except her eyes. Comic book magic. Hemingway is grasping the assassin by the collar, clearly demanding answers.

CAPTION: Poor Hemingway.

CAPTION: My nephew.