|
|
|
|
Vertigo
Winter’s Edge 1998 (comic script)
PAGE
1 Tight close up on the face of King Mob as the new model Gideon Stargrave, concentrate on the eyes and an ear as he adjusts his oval shades with the chrome trim. The lenses are liquid crystal and we can see tiny blinking red readout information in reverse. Were seeing this image as it is reflected in a mirror. Stargraves pausing at the door, turning to check the angle of his shades in the glass.
Exterior. Stargrave emerges from his front door onto the stairs. In
foreground, throngs of teenage girls and boys scream and yell. Stargrave
stands on the steps and throws his arms wide, embracing the world.
He’s emerging from some glam, old expensive house
in Brighton. Stargrave passes between the pleading, wailing throng of gorgeous girls in supersexy clothes - the 90s is 60s look of today mutated GIRL:
“GIDEON!” One
gorgeous creature breaks free of the thong - long tanned legs, white socks,
short skirt, bunches - the whole St. Trinian’s Baby
Spice paedophile dream. She’s
pleading with Stargrave, pulling open her blazer to reveal girlish breasts under
a starched school
blouse etc. Eyes wide and Bambified, mouth a pink O.
Stargrave’s heading past her to his car, barely acknowledging this
outrageously perfect New Lad fantasy girl.
The
schoolie’s kneeling in foreground, perfect legs, perfect bum under pleats,
head back, throwing wide her arms. Her whole body yearning hopelessly in the
direction of Stargrave’s departing mirrored Lamborghini.
Girls and boys chase the car, scream and throw bouquets and knickers and
jockstraps etc.
Full
page title pic. Gideon Stargrave in supercool Bond- esque pose with his glass
sound pistol, as seen on the cover of THE INVISIBLES #17.
He’s wearing the crushed velvet 60s frock coat with a highwayman
collar, bald head, LCD shades, PVC
poloneck and trousers (we’re seeing him from the thighs up, I'd guess but
when we see his feet, he’s wearing big Bunker
boots – big ridged sole, silver flashes, anklelength).
Frock coat buttoned up. Behind him is a Union Jack with the colours
reversed- white is black, blue is red, red is blue.
What I’m after here, Phil, is some kind of grasping at the look and
style of what our current cultural zeitgeist could mutate Into
over the next year or so - after the baggy hippy 90s, I see a return to
tightness, out of the fetish underground onto the dancefloor with tight jackets,
tight trousers, corsets, all in super-sharp focus.
A hint of working class bovver boy done good, took
a few drugs, made some wedge, info-literate etc.
The punk babies of 1980 rebelling against the hippy kids of 1970.
Trying here to capture what might be before anyone else thinks of it.
Hinting at the next thing, the next fashion, the next attitude, the next
type of comic book. I want the
whole thing to be text heavy, with random captions and non- sequitur speech
balloons everywhere. Anything you
want to do artwise to enhance the feeling of post-post-modernity or pre-futurity
is
fine by me, Philip. I want it to be
glossily fucked looking, the supercool pop bullshit of the day after tomorrow. More now than
now. Make it like a song, like a psychedelic punk single.
Define the look of the post-rave generation before they do. Make
the page like a tarot card from some alternate reality – ‘THE ASSASSIN’.
No bother. This story takes place shortly ‘after’
the last page of THE INVISIBLES Volume 3: 1. Stargrave’s
reflective sports car – registration KAR 120C races down the seafront at
Brighton. Kids fuck in the streets, which have become cracked and weed-strewn.
A skeleton in a weathered police uniform hangs from a lamp-post twisting
lazily in the
midsummer heat. In background, the
old pavilion at the end of the pier is gone, replaced by a vast Adamski flying
saucer in Victorian style steel and glass.
Big advertising hoarding has a pitiful Rwandan refugee with malnutrition
and crawling flies and soulful pleading eyes, she holds out two begging bowls -
the text reads ‘HELLO BOYS’. Graffiti somewhere reads ‘MI
MUM TUK 2 MENY E’ Car
interior. Stargrave’s driving, drinking from bottle of Evian Animal Water.
Beside him, on the passenger seat, a substantial blob
of what looks like liquid mercury or chrome floating in zero-G, is beginning to
form itself into a girl shape. Bubbles fill the car, pumped out by a hidden soap
dispenser.
Cut
to an ad for pornoplasm - an office scene.
The fat boss in his suit looks efficient and on the job as he taps onto a
keypad. Which
is connected to the head of the blonde superbimbo who’s on her knees lowering
her head into his lap. Meanwhile,
the tough-
looking power-dressed ladyboss type is on a mobile phone, connected by wire to
the head of a naked, oiled superstud who is behind her, squeezing her breasts,
nuzzling her neck dryhumping her pencil-skirted bum as she makes an important
business call. The lighting and production values give the image a TV ad gloss. Cut
back to a shot of the pornoplasm girl fully formed on the passenger seat - she
looks a bit like that bird out of Republica, shiny
and perfect as a video image. She’s
posing perfectly. We men want to
fuck her. We cannot help ourselves.
Following the car as it heads over the downs towards distant London. Summer twilight sky. The faint edge of a dome visible
Longshot. Stargrave arrives outside Buckingham Palace.
He and his Pornoplasm doll get out as a footman-guy opens the car door
and makes a cap-doffing gesture. The
set-up’s like a film premiere, with the public behind fences, cheering and
waving differently coloured Union Jacks. A
red carpet rolled through the gates. Flashbulbs
flashing. BALLOON:
‘WERE THOSE REAL WORDS? OR JUST THE INCREDIBLE FEAT OF MIMICRY THAT’S MADE A
WISCONSIN FAMILY
DOG AN OVERNIGHT SUPERSTAR? HINT:
BET ON FIDO! BACK AFTER THESE FRAGRANT POETIC JEWELS FROM THE BHAGAVAD GITA...’ Fairly
close up on Stargrave with the pornoplasm girl on his arm, smiling and waving at
the crowd. She’s sullen as a
supermodel, catwalking it up the red carpet.
Perfect cheekbones. Perfect
everything but with a hint of it not being real somehow. Too perfect.
Big
pic. Longshot across the hall - Stargrave and the plasm entering
the party area in background. It’s
like the ultimate dream party – the
one you always want to go to but never quite find.
Everyone is there, pop stars, policemen smoking joints - helmets, shirts,
ties, jackets,
shoes and socks. No trousers. They’re dancing with dishevelled girl guides on E. A C of E
deacon has a Catholic nun up against
the wall in a passionate clinch, hands pulling at one another’s cassocks. Some dodgy-looking geezers showing Alice in Wonderland how to
use a crack pipe. Number 6 from
‘The Prisoner’ talking to Alex from ‘A Clockwork Orange’. People in 20’s clothes,
mods, punks, dandies, fetishists. People
dancing, drinking, talking, laughing, kissing, going mad.
Whatever. Coloured lights. Big popart images of Brit shit - like Geri Spice and the
sinking of the Belgrano ‘Gotcha!’ from The Sun.
Peter Stringfellow with
his latest flame, a six year old girl with one of those ‘BOY TOY’ t-shirts
mums make kids wear. It looks like
a party on Mount Olympus. The former Princess Diana half-naked in a Go-Go Girl cage,
anorexic, starving, reaching out through the bar for help. No-one’s
interested. Naked politicians dance
in other cages and so too do go-go girls. Ultimate glamor, ultimate decadence. World gone topsy-turvy.
Go crazy. Stargrave
mingles, chatting for a moment to Carl Jung who’s chained up in a chrome
bondage frame, while a stormtrooper girl with
scraped-back hair and severe expression tightens his restraints and pins
crocodile clips and electrical wires to his nipples.Jung grins.
The plasm follows dutifully. The
place is filled with beautiful and exotic pornoplasm companions, exchanging
glances, as
though planning a revolution. BALLOON: ‘BE
LIKE HIM! JOIN THE ARMY, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!’ Longshot.
Stargrave’s sister Genevieve – part 60’s Shrimpton girl, part Pammy babe,
emerges from a crowd of identical copies of
herself to greet Stargrave. BALLOON: ‘ ...NEUROVISION SONG CONTEST WINNER,
SZANDOR L-DOPA FROM NEO-BELGIQUE, PERFORMING HIS HIT ‘BEFORE THE WHEEL, WERE
THERE REVOLUTIONS?’. LATER,
SZANDOR WILL BE TELLING US ALL ABOUT THE MAN HE KILLED WITH A DART, FAIR AND
SQUARE.’ Stargrave’s
talking to Genevieve but she’s all over the place, as she turns, her body
morphs and drags. She changes shape, from the 60's girl vibe to upper middle
class lady - young English rose, blooming with hormones and ready cash and the
security of a husband who works at Christie’s or in the City, commuting to a
thatched house in the home counties.
...As,
hands clasped, sobbing with housewifely joy, she tearfully announces the
nativity. Genevieve
suddenly reverts to her sexy self, smiling a devilish, wicked smile as she
produces an egg that’s a little bigger than a rugby ball and matt black.
She holds the spooky object out towards us. Longshot
across the hall as a huge Union Jack descends, draping down behind an
old-fashioned but kinda Giger-ish big pram. The
flag is pink and white and red. People
applaud and pop champagne bottles. Fu
Man Groove - a preposterous combination of
the Goldie/Tricky/Skunk Anansie type with Peter Sellers doing a goateed Chinaman
- sings and poses with a bunch of weird-lookin’ young girls and boys, like the Sour Grapes Bunch for the 21st
Century. It’s lit and stage-managed like the Brit Awards. Somewhere in the
audience, we see the Archbishop of Canterbury - his robes have a plunging
neckline to show off his incredible cleavage and hints of the frilly lacing
around his Wonderbra and he has one of those gay clone moustaches - greeting
three men in lab coats. One has a
stoppered test tube, one has an animal cage with white mice in and the last
carries a television set. Genevieve
solemnly follows the egg as its carried on a huge ornate teaspoon by an adorable
little boy and girl in Kate Greenaway costumes. The children have their legs
tied together as in an egg and spoon race.
Gideon strolls along, drink in hand. People cheer.
Genevieve
close up. Supersexy, supercool.
The
egg sits balefully in the pram, propped up with pillows.
Stargrave and Genevieve are just behind, bending down, almost head
to head. He looks at the egg with a
faint smile, her eyes shift to check him out.
She’s grinning and licking her perfect lips devilishly,
sexy, making horns at the side of her head.
Pull
back as the Stargraves’ are joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He lays a pudgy hand on Stargrave’s shoulder.
The
Archbishop and the boffins lean in to look at the egg.
The boffins display their gifts, seeming a little awkward, the way cerebral
and uptight people get around children. On
the gift TV screen we see the image of that little Vietnamese girl being napalmed. Stargrave’s in background.
Stargrave shrugs, mock humility, as everyone claps and laughs, urging him on to speak. People pat his back. Genevieve smiles
Big
vertical pic. Stargrave’s a small
figure doing a Hitlerian Gesture in front of a vast blow-up of Geri Spice in her
famous Union
Jack-dress pose. The impression to
give is that he’s just completing some outrageous Nuremberg-style speech.
Royal
wedding type shot as Genevieve poses in a chair, long legs arranged artfully,
wicked smirk to the camera, cradling her egg-child in her lap as she faces us
with a sexy, challenging stare. Stargrave
stands behind her, hand on the chair. Stargrave
and the plasm walk into foreground. She
walks at his side - her hair and her shape changes over the next panel or two as
she morphs into a version of herself which looks more like Ragged Robin from THE
INVISIBLES. Red curls cascading.
She casts
a secretive glance at Stargrave as they walk.
She seems more self-aware than a machine should.
In background, we can see
a ‘Communion’ grey alien shivering against the wall, hugging its thin and
pathetic body. It’s made
ridiculous by a pair of businessman’s
socks held up by sock suspenders. Drunk
partygoers stand around the humiliated ET, pointing and laughing. The
Prisoner can be seen, running like fuck across the background, chased by a big
white bouncing Rover sphere. An old
woman, blue-rinsed
tory type is spraypainting ‘F**K THE LORD!
TRY SUICIDE, LET’S BE DEAD!’ Following
Stargrave as he walks out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Off in background, against the skyline, projected 3-D
images of Bond girls, slo-mo dancing between buildings, stepping over roofs like
glamorous giant ghosts. News helicopters chatter through the summer night sky.
The streets are thronged with millions upon millions of people. We’re
behind and above Stargrave as he stands looking down into the sea of faces.
Balloons rise. Flashbulbs
begin to pop everywhere.
Stargrave holds his arms wide. The
plasm, beside him. BALLOON:
“SAITH THE LORD, “THE POINT IS THIS: WE’ RE ON THE HOLODECK!
THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLODECK AND WE ARE BEING PLAYED...” Stargrave’s
faint Buddha smile like the smile of Malcolm McDowell at the end of ‘Lucky
Man’ - his face bleaching out, charring into white in the atomic sun of
popping flashbulbs.
|
|
Contact webmaster at grant-morrison dot com with questions or comments about this web site.
|
