In November of 2003, I was asked by George Panella to join his
paysite for webmanga, but at the time I was against moving over Flipside.
My plan was to make Flipside the most popular comic on the net, and the
$100 a month I could make at a paysite didn't in my mind justify losing most
of my audience.
So, I decided to create another comic for the paysite. This way I could
have the best of both worlds, but as it turned out the stress of doing two
comics at once just wasn't worth it, and I quit Lotte prematurely.
Lotte vs The Dead was supposed to be a mocking superhero comic
combined with a gory over-the-top zombie movie. The lead character
Lotte is a rebellious young superheroine who resents her father for
forcing her into a cheesy alter-ego "Hyper Girl." She is constantly ridiculed
by the other superheroes for her "non hero-like image", Lotte being a girl who
wears leather, chain-smokes, curses, rides a harley, and watches horror
movies while making out with her boyfriend.
Unfortunetly, I never finished this comic, so readers were left hanging.
I probably will never be able to finish this comic myself, and if I did, I would
probably want to redraw it from scratch as I am not satisfied with what's
done.
In case you are curious, here's a description of the plot that would have
followed: Lotte goes out to fight crime as her father told her to do, but her
resentment towards him is at an all time high. She is forced to fighta cheesy,
moronic showboating super-villian. (I hadn't thought of his name yet) Just
as she is about to catch him, a bomb goes off sending Lotte flying into the
storefront window of the Death Penalty gunshop.
Her body smashes into a wall, and as she comes to her senses she realizes
to her horror that she has completely crushed the body of an innocent person,
leaving her sitting in a bloody pile of organs. At that moment, a gun that was
sitting on a shelf falls into her lap. She takes it and approaches the supervillian,
enraged as she blames him for making her kill an innocent person. As was
suggested by her earlier conversation with her father, (that part I drew) she
takes the law into her own hands and executes the supervillian, riddling his body
with bulletholes. But not the head...
As it turns out, this is no ordinary gun. It is cursed. The body of the supervillian
awakens in the morgue and starts a chain reaction of killing (typical zombie movie
stuff, except that the zombie retains his former super powers and can use mind-
control on it's victims, this leads to scenes with nurses leaning over to expose thier
necks against thier will to the flesh eating zombie.) Meanwhile, Mr Perfect (Lotte's
dad) finds out about Lotte's little execution and tracks her down. The two of them fight,
and Lotte barely manages to subdue him.
Details after this are a bit sketchy in my mind, but esentially what would happen
is that all of the superheroes you saw earlier would be turned into zombies, as well as
all of the supervillians you had yet to see, and Lotte would be forced to fight them all.
This would culminate of course in a showdown between Lotte and her superzombie
dad.
Yes, it's a very silly comic, in the tradition of the silly zombie movies that I love.
And of course, it goes without saying that superheroes are pretty silly as well,
no matter how pretentiously brooding they may try to be. I am not a big fan of
superheroes and this comic only intends to mock them mercilessly. The big theme
of the comic, however, was a very simple message about living up to your
parent's/peers expectations vs. being yourself.
In retrospect a lot of people would have probably hated this comic, but I think it
would have worked. But regardless, I've learned an important lesson... it's best
to focus all your creative energy into one thing. If you try to take on too much,
both of your projects will suffer.
If anyone likes the direction this comic was going in and wants to draw the rest
(or redraw it from scratch) contact me because I would love to work with you.
This comic was hosted at www.wirepop.com, a good manga-oriented
paysite which I recommend, despite the fact that I'm no longer there. Check it out!
And if you're a Lotte fan and somehow haven't yet read Flipside, get started on
The Current Story right away!
Want to email me? Click here.