Swing and a Miss - What's wrong with this pitch?

Holy central casting!
It's Batman IV, but with monsters.

I think you could improve it by adding even more characters. The studio would agree with you. It would be a huge mistake to omit a character or plot element that may be the tipping point in terms of audience interest.

It's all about risk-aversion trumping cohesiveness.

Also-- variant covers!!!

We'll be richer than God.

M.W'S FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER was the first comparison to come up, the other is WEIRD WAR'S
CREATURE COMMANDOS (DC, goes way back, with Frankenstein, Warewolf, Mummy and Dracula fighting Nazis during WWII)
It was fun to play around with, setting them at a different time, place and situations. Nothing really memorable though.

I'm just wodering when do Literary Characters fall under public domain?( Allan Moore utilized them very well in LOEG.) Would Universal Studios have an issue with using these characters?

Would it matter if we feel nothing for these characters...
"Xtina's sacrifice"
Does it mean anything to the reader?
Is this just an exercise in FUN, escapism?

Thinking outloud...gotta sleep.

GarSeeYa!!!

<Hey, Andrew, we're still pals, right?>

I can't tell if you're joking or not, here, but in case you're actually worried, we're totally cool.

<In all honesty, I have no idea if this pitch would be accepted. Depends on the publisher.>

Well, it didn't get past the gatekeeper at Platinum, which really surprised me, as it seemed like something that would be right up their alley.

The reasoning on that one was two-fold--first, the editor wasn't keen on the idea of something that heavily referenced other material, even material I'd think most people would be at least tangentially aware of, like the Universal monsters. Secondly, his read on the plot was that it was too close to that of an old, old HBO MOW called CAST A DEADLY SPELL, which featured a detective named H. Philip Lovecraft, in a 1950's LA powered by magic, on a case to find the Necronomicon. He actually sent me a video copy of the film, and I think that connecting the two is a stretch, but hey, he's the editor, and I'm not about to go over his head to get something approved--if I did, I'd have to work with him on it, and working with someone on a project they don't like is No Fun.

Shortly after I pitched it to Platinum I became aware of Frankenstein Mobster, then that awful Van Helsing film came out, then there was John Byrne's You Go Ghoul (Female Frankenstein monster, vampire, and mummy as Charlie's Angels, basically), then I heard about, but still haven't been able to find, someone casting the Universal monsters as cops, and that was basically it for this one, didn't bother pitching it anywhere else.

Which is a shame, because, regardless of the merits of the pitch, I'm convinced it would've been a hoot to write. Once in awhile I toy with going with a similar set-up, but replacing the Universal Monsters with a human cop or three...the thing that really appealed to me about it was really cops dealing with supernatural events like they're no different from a bank robbery or some other conventional situation. In the word doc version of the pitch, the line about Cthulhu trying to take over the world again, the "again" is in italics--demons threatening mankind with cosmic horror is just another day at the office...

Ah, well. Maybe when HBO asks me to pitch them a series idea...

>To me the description tries to cover too many bases and reads like an HBO series (most of which do fairly well, so there you go) in which an ensemble cast engages in genre-based ensemble plots in the hopes that one character or thread catches the audience's attention.<

I don't think I've really seen that many HBO shows, but I think I could live with having created one... The ensemble nature really was something I did want to push, not in the hopes that one character would break out, but because I don't think the monster element holds together unless you have all three of the Universal Monsters (I know they had the mummy, too, but for some reason, it never actually crossed over with Frankenstein, Drac, or the Wolfman, at least not according the documentary on the DVD collection Tiina and I got as "research" for our wedding), or there's some other connection between the monster protags--they're all vampires, for instance. Yes, the initial story arc (if it got picked up, I did see it as having franchise potential) happens to be Xtina's, but in terms of character I'd want all three of them to get pretty much equal time to shine.

Actually, in my ideal world, the book would've worked more like Law and Order--characters that are interesting but whose job is the focus, rather than a character arc. But it's very hard to pitch anything that doesn't have a character learning a Very Important Lesson these days (at least to Platinum, who are always looking as much or more at Hollywood as they are at the comic market.)

Blah, blah, blah...so much stuff, but so little time and space. The Curse of The Pitch.

< Add some sexual overtones and you are go for liftoff!>

Some sort of sexual tension definitely would've come into play (I've got some notes of how it worked lying around somewhere, but can't be arsed to try and dig them up right now), but it didn't seem germane to the story, or even the set-up. Relevant in terms of selling the concept is probably a different story, but once you've locked something like that in at the pitch stage, you're stuck with it--Steven Grant once said something to the effect that when you pitch something, you want to give just enough for someone to pick it up, while leaving things as open as possible, so when the script comes in, the editor/publisher can't go, "This is great, but where's this story element you had in your pitch that turned out not to work in the story once you actually started putting it together?"

> Playmakers, Six Feet Under, Queer as Folk, Sex and the City... the list of these sorts of shows is long and getting longer. <

Out of all of those, I've only ever seen the first season of SFU and ten minutes of one episode of Sex...What's Playmakers, I've never even HEARD of that one?

>Ever wonder where comics writers go to die? Television. Luxurious casket, though...<

Worked for Gerry Conway. Though more and more it feels like traffic's flowing the other way, with television and film folks are coming to comics (Whedon, Heinberg, Smith, Rodnioff...Loeb's gone back and forth since he started, so he doesn't really count...). At San Diego last year, someone said the easiest way to break into writing comics is to develop a cult television show or film first...

<I generally prefer that the primary focus be made very clear, though if it was my $10k I might be willing to forward you an advance to see what you do with the concept, because I know that you are a good writer. Does that happen in comics?>

It does happen, but not often enough. At least not to me.

The sun's now starting to beam directly in the window of my office, and it's going to get worse, so I'm going to cut this post off while I can still see what's on my monitor. Thanks for the notes/thoughts/comments--I'll certainly be keeping them in mind ("Focus, Foley, focus, d**nit!") when I start work on my next pitch.

Grammar and punctuation aside, the pitch felt like you revealed TOO much. And what you did reveal, felt like this weird blur of information and characters, without any depth to them.

"Recurring zombie outbreaks lead the Squad to believe Lovecrafts".. woah woah woah. Elder Gods? Earth Plane? (Since when is the Earth considered a "plane" of existence, anyways?).

Then, onto Cthulu. Again, wha? Mentally deficient inbred hicks? When did they do that? What are you talking about? 2000 year old mummy? And he taught Frankenstien? What?

And he has Xtina's soul?

The information is just spilling out here, and we haven't even wrapped up the pitch.

You're telling the story, not the pitch FOR the story.

Just my thoughts.