Whilst working on another piece called Broken Hearted there was a thread on here about titles and how they work, or don’t, with the Amazon search engine. Given Broken Hearted as a title is likely to drown me in more Mills & Boon than anyone can rightfully expect to survive in a dozen lifetimes, I started playing with alternatives. The piss poor, and likely worse, Heartless immediately came to mind but was quickly discarded for obvious reasons. It did flip one of those random switches in my head though and two images popped out. The first was a samurai style warrior who had to remove his heart, which he gave to his love, in order to do what needed to be done. The second image was the first page of the first issue, no clue how they fitted together or even if it would work but you know, fuck it, it looked good in my head. So I wrote the first page and a bit down, using placeholder panel descriptions and it came out looking like this (the demons became the Collectors later):
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Heartless #1 D1
Page 1
All page width panels
1
Establishing shot. Over head view of a night scene in a large oriental city (think Tokyo) with neon lights and sky scrapers. There’s something wrong with the picture though, black smudges (our demons) – like speed blurs – are visible across rooftops, looking in windows etc
[no dialogue]
2
Closer in on some of the lower rooftops and residential buildings, we see a large, shadowy demon with red eyes as it’s halfway through a section of wall close to the roof of a flat-topped building with fire escape. It’s stopped as the left side of its ‘body’ is already through the wall, looking straight back at us. [describe building in detail!]
[no dialogue]
3
Same shot but pull it back so we can see what the demon is staring at. The demon is pulling its left side back out of the wall because we’re looking at the back of a small, lean man in flowing oriental robes (lots of red with dragon designs and gold filigree) with a long, narrow sword in a plain, dark wood scabbard. Tajitsu!. The hilt is giving off a red glow/aura. [detail!]
[no dialogue]
4
Taj reaches back with his right hand and grabs the sword handle. The world around him has now changed drastically. All the real world objects – buildings, wires, billboards etc have faded and crazy things intermingle, overlay and work around them. There are dragons in the sky, ancient buildings in the gaps between the real ones, the roof Taj stands on is now a neatly cropped field full of bamboo trees and although the building is visible, it is faint and there is ivy crawling all over it with a four armed monkey hanging off the fire escape, which has become a red tree. This is our dream world merged with reality thanks to the Dragon’s Dream (the sword – shitty name?). The demon has lost its black shape and is now clearly defined. [Work out what demons look like, not homogenous but characteristically similar.]
[no dialogue]
5
The demon charges, a silent terror (side on shot showing that Tajitsu hasn’t moved yet, despite the size and speed of the demon, which clearly towers over Taj.)
[no dialogue]
Page 2
1
As the demon body falls to the floor, sprouting a vivid red ‘blood’ from having been chopped to pieces, Taj remains in exactly the same position as the last panel of the previous page, except a small section of the sword blade is visible in the scabbard and is dripping blood, with splashes over the nearest bamboo stalk/tree - research! He is that damn fast.
[no dialogue]
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Over the course of the following week absolutely loads of details came to me about who the samurai warrior was, his journey and why on earth would he take his heart out. It started with a dream.
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