Looking to the future looking to the past. You remember the publisher Com.X? Young turks from Britain responsible for Class War, Puncture, and Bazooka Jules showcasing the likes of Ben Oliver and Neil Googe. Not much been heard from them in the last year or so, though. In early 2003 I was asked by the company to take an idea and flesh it out into a proper script. After reading the treatment I thought there's just too much in here, two stories at least. I had visions of the film 'Batman and Robin' which introduced as many characters as it could to the detriment of everything else. Anyway I took out what I needed concentrated on shaping the protagonists and the cyberpunk/Victorian environment that had shaped them. The story was, and is, O:R:E, in three parts with a page count all told of 108 pages. Here it is in a nutshell:

The Man in the Iron Mask meets the British Empire meets Steampunk. Queen Victoria is a cyber-recluse and warring factions struggle to fill the political vacuum. Caught in the middle is James Abel, a man trapped in a prototype armoured suit fighting the forces of betrayal, murder, and of marauding psychotic cyborgs below the streets of Victorian London.

Scripts are all done but unfortunately the project hasn't moved any further. There was a search for an artist, but that fizzled out. Com.X is still around and I don't have any beef with them in as much as I was paid for the work done. But it would be damn nice to see the thing out there, who knows it could have made me a star! The story also serves as a personal marker, my son David turned two years at time of writing and I was discovering this little personality taking shape and coming through, the tying of the final strings of a bond of a lifetime. This is at the heart of O:R:E, the love a father has for his son.