Brawl Plot Outline

As with Fast Friends, my next step is to take the loose breakdown and turn it into a more organized plot outline.  Again, if I stopped here, this would be very similar to the Marvel Method of creating a comic.  I really could begin illustrating it at this point, but turning the outline into a full script was a better fit for me.

Brawl: a road to god knows adventure!

1. Page One: The story opens with a close-up on a crayon sketch.  Big simple shapes of a hulking super-villain type guy.  We pull back a bit to see a hand holding the crayon.  And then back a bit more to see Li’l Marie concentrating hard, brow creased and tongue out at the side of her mouth as she focuses all of her attention on the drawing in front of her.  We then go to an establishing shot to clearly show her in the kitchen, sitting at the kitchen table with her legs dangling over the tiled floor.  Actually, a bird’s eye shot might work even better.  She’s wearing PJs (with a simple pattern on them).  Her Mom is in the background, doing dishes, as she tells her daughter, “It’s almost bedtime, sweetie.” Marie replies with, “aw, Mom…I’m not really tired.”

2. Page Two: Her Mom, looking plump but healthy (far healthier then we’ll see in road) smiles at her daughter, “Uh-uh.  You can stay up for a bit longer and then I wanna see you in your bedroom.  I’m going to go and watch some TV and I’ll come tuck you in about 20 minutes.  That means teeth brushed and everything, young lady.”  Marie, not really paying attention, says a quick “ok, ok…”  What I want to show is her getting tired as we go forward in the next few panels.  So maybe the same shot three or four times.  The first shows her being fairly perky, working on her drawing.  The next shows her chin in hand as she continues to draw.  The next shows her starting to slump over, eyes very droopy.  Then maybe a close-up on the drawing again, this time with her hand relaxed beside it and a crayon a few inches away.  I could show the same thing with her feet.  So fairly active in the first panel (maybe wrapped around the front legs of the chair), and then both legs and feet just hanging limply above the floor.

3. Page Three: This is a splash page that doubles as the credit page.  It also needs to be a bit dreamlike.  I can do that with the credits as well (maybe a fluffy effect around everything).  Bruiser, the big brawler that Marie was drawing, is standing on a typical city street, holding a ‘no parking’ sign high over his head.  Good, dramatic shot with lots of wreckage around him – he’s been hard at work!  Smashed up cars and building windows in the background, smoke rising from them.  And no one else in sight.  Low Horizon Line might work best.  One option would be to have everything that nears the edges of the page “fade out” into sketchiness.  No hard lines at this point to try and suggest a dreamlike state.  I may need to look at some Little Nemo in Slumberland to get the idea.

4. Page Four: A distant shot of Li’l Marie floating on a cloud, still wearing the same PJs as the first two pages.  We cut to a shot of her crouching on the cloud with Bruiser and the wreckage a good distance below her.  The “camera” could be a bit over head (so we’re watching Marie watching Bruiser). She leaps off the cloud, spins in the air, and lands on her feet – this could be done like the Puck cover on Alpha Flight #5.  Maybe a longish panel.  She stands in an heroic contra postal pose (maybe a low HL), hands clenched in fists, and shouts “hey, you!”

5. Page Five: Bruiser looks down on her with lips sneering in contempt.  Next panel has him roaring at her (bent over, mouth wide open) with Marie in the foreground.  Her hair moves as the wind from his massive lungs hits her.  Next panel is her holding her nose with her left hand while she waves away his aroma with her right as she says, “Stop smashing stuff.”  The last panel should be a profile shot of them staring at one another.  I need a shot of the two of them in profile to really get a sense of the differences in scale between the two.  

6. Page Six: Bruiser clocks her with a huge upper cut that lifts Marie and sends her flying into a wall across the street.  She lays there for a second, eyes closed.  Then we cut to a close-up on her eyes, glaring.  She then stands back up, hunched over, with a furious look on her face.  Maybe one sleeve of her jammies is torn.  “Right, then.”  Cut to a stunned look on Bruiser’s face and then a shot of Li’l Marie sprinting right at the camera.

7. Page Seven: She hits him with a roundhouse punch that sends him flying into a car.  Next panel shows him dazed (and perhaps cartoony dazed would work here.  So ellipsical speedlines and little birds or bells).  That expression turns to shock as he looks down.  The girl is picking him up over her head.  Maybe a close up on her fingers as she gets ready to chuck him.  Then a huge follow-through as she throws him into the sky.  We see him getting smaller and smaller before he disappears behind skyscrapers.

8. Page Eight:  She wipes the “dust” off her hands, sits down on the ground and leans against a mail box or something, and conks out.  We pull back from her and then cut back to reality, with Li’l Marie sleeping on top of her drawings, her head on top of folded arms.  We zoom in and see that she’s smiling.