Overall Presentation

The main dialogue and settings will be carried through to the story, with internal monologues as needed being adapted into “thought balloons”, in a way that a film adaptation would have to reduce to a voice over taking up time and breaking the flow. However the omnipresent backstory & history that is peppered throughout the series, to acclimatize the reader to the science fiction setting and its technology, will be adapted in a style reminiscent of the cutaways from the Hitchhikers Guide TV series, as a way to separate it out from the main narrative. In world this would be driven by the “implants” that characters would have in their heads to allow for mission critical and setting specific intelligence to be accessible. Visually there will be a stylistic framing device, allowing for distinction from story points.

Visually, the style that will be utilized, largely due to the abilities of the writer/adapter (me), will be a cartoony minimalist style. Rough character style can be seen in accompanying files. The presentation will be attempting to create passable environments, with details and flourishes in places to offset the limitations of the style, integrated with the obviously slightly more cartoony actors. Page layout will not be inherently dynamic, instead utilizing the 9 panel grid utilized in various published comics, allowing for occasional modification as action dictates.

For examples and thoughts on this layout design, check out THIS WRITE-UP, as it pertains to mainstream comics.

The overall character design is detailed in a later section, but it is a simple style to fit my artistic abilities, while allowing for expressive faces as the focus, also allowing maximum customization to allow for each character to stand out. The idea being that named characters, would be designed with a focus on individual personality, while any background characters would be able to be depicted as a generic period appropriate people.

For specific characters, we run into an attachment issue. By story conceit, the main characters are frequently sent back on missions to specifically stand in for, or pose as, existing people. To that end the use of detailed and much advanced surgical techniques are used, with the benefit that in the periods explored this concept would be unthinkable, and thus less suspicion cast on the agent. However this means that as characters, they would only be appearing as “themselves” in prologue/epilogue situations, thus limiting the time the reader gets to connect with “them” vs their covers. My current thinking is to approach this in a work-around similar to that used by Quantum Leap, in that we the audience perceive the true “character”, with the occasional glance in a mirror or such to reveal. While other actors in the story perceive the adjusted persona that they have taken on. Thus allowing for the reader to maintain a connection to the characters they have to follow, but hopefully not breaking the story immersion.