Writing Murder in Gotham
As stated before, I created this display with no intention of crafting a story or taking on a serialized project. The first shots I took were basically just test shots with Batman and Commissioner Gordon standing over a corpse. Why that particular grouping? I have no idea other than I had recently unearthed long boxed up McFarlane X-Files figures and they were still handy with a cool looking corpse.
So when looking over those shots on my computer screen, the question of “well, who did it?” just started screaming out to me. I still didn’t have a story, but now I had a lingering thought of one gnawing at me. I next shot Two-Face, because on that particular day on one of the forums I visited, someone went on a rant how the Tim Sale Long Halloween Two-Face figure sucks, which I disagree with and happen to think it’s a really nice figure. So I wanted to post a few shots of ol’ Harvey Dent in my new backdrop looking all cool and moody. Then that gnawing story thought jumped out...“What about photographing all of Batman’s villains and make a simple, no text needed, ‘Who done it?’ mystery?”
Yeah...about that not needing text or dialogue
At first the individual villain photograph series did not have their own mini story sequences...I started that with the Joker in part 2, which was just a simple sequence:
Pic 1 Joker over corpse
Pic 2 Batlight shines on Joker
Pic 3 Joker looks up
Pic 4 Car headlights approach Joker in alley
It was really more of an order to present the photos opposed to storytelling.
(Later, I went back to the Scarecrow series and added and modified the pics to give it a little bit of a story sequence involving him using his fear gas)
I did not have an ending or even a ‘who did it’ till I shot the Penguin/Killer Croc and Riddler series. And at that point, it was The Question. No twists. The graphitti quote “Who Watches the Watchmen?” in latin was originally just part of the back ground, but since it came out so prominent in all of the photos, I figured I better make it part of the story. And since the Watchmen’s Rorschach was based off the Question, why not make it all tie together?
So yeah, the Question did it. moving along...
Mentally, I had dialogue for the Penguin with Killer Croc series, but I did not want to use it for two reasons: First, at that point, I didn’t want to use dialogue at all to tell the story. Second, since these villain sequences were all Batman’s mental hypotheticals, I figured dialogue would confuse the fact, especially since he didn’t do it and the murder didn’t play out that way.
Presented here is the original intended dialogue for the Penguin sequence:
Pic 1: Penguin muttering “Croc better have a good reason to be dragging me to this god forsaken alley in the middle of the night...Gah! Some baffoon defaced my campaign posters!”
Pic 2: Croc - “I took care of him just like you said boss, I figu...what’s that?”
Pic 3: Penguin - “Nothing...Just a passing car, you Nit Wit...”
Pic 4: Penguin - “...Which is exactly why I should not be here nor should I be seen with you OR WITH A CORPSE!!!”
Pic 5: Penguin- “You know I can’t be connected to this! I’m a legitimate Mayoral Candidate!”
Pic 6: Croc - “But Boss...”
Penguin- “Don’t ‘But Boss’ me you idiot! Just get rid of the body and never put me in this kind of situation again! Understand? I don’t care how, make it go away!”
Pic 7: munch!
ooooo...exciting huh? No, not really since my pacing was really off. But it is my first sign that the Mayor race will play into the storyline somehow. Even if at that point I didn’t know how myself.
So as I’m going through about half of the villains, I realize two more things:
1) I need to start eliminating suspects or stating why they are not the murderer.
2) I better come up with a good reason why The Question did it, so maybe I better figure out who the victim actually is.
And then I realize, text and dialogue are going to be a necessity and Part 9 (and a full script) was created. By this point I knew I could not justify any reason for The Question to be a murderer and still be considered a hero character. I didn’t want to just write him out and I knew the wall graphitti had to point to him.
At this point the script ran 18 parts total.
And the ending sucked.
All I had for after part 9 was more hypothetical sequences, with the Question featured in one, and an ending which while pointed to Q, was SURPRISE, he didn’t do it.
Lame.
Oh, and the viewers wouldn’t be able to play armchair detective, or even have a chance to guess before hand. And to me, thanks to years of watching Scooby Doo, that’s just a lousy way to tell a mystery. There has to be forshadowing, and the viewers have to be able to participate and possibly solve the case before the hero does.
So I started working the mayor campaign angle more, the Riddler’s involvement, the twist of the Question taking the blame, and having the real murderer be Jason Todd. I really developed their motives and eveything was falling nicely into place.
At this point dialogue was going to become more prominent and the script was expanded to 21 parts. I should also mention, that I tried to have my wife be my editor, but she absolutely hates the way I write dialogue and she didn’t want to read the scripts, then re-read the story when the photographic element was crafted. She no longer had advance story knowledge and didn’t read the chapters till they were posted online. As far as she knew beforehand was that the Question did it, so She was quite surprised when Batman debunked his BS confession.
I knew I wanted to craft cliffhangers keeping character’s identities hidden, yet give hints, so then the trench coat conspiracy was brought into play. I’ll get more into this when we discuss the custom figures, but since I had already ruled out Hush and Jim Gordon from being suspects in part 9, let me keep bringing up Bullock as a red herring and keep throwing hints at the Question. This way, when we got to the first “let’s reveal who is in the shadows”, guesses would be made for Q, Bullock, and Jason Todd, but no one would be sure and left second guessing.
I wrote the Question’s character as kind of an amalgamation of the way he was presented on the JLU cartoon, how he appeared in the Question mini series by Rick Veitch and how he was in Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood. In fact a lot of plot comes from elements in Cry for Blood and Jason’s master plan was lifted from the “War Games” crossover event (which I really disliked and thought was poorly executed, but the “consolidate the bad guys under one boss” plan was solid.)
Part 21 was going to feature way too much information, so it was expanded out into 3 parts. Murder in Gotham was going to end with after the reveal that it was Jason Todd, Batman shows up and says “This ends Here and now!” A close up of his face and close up of Jason’s face. The end. After all, we all know Batman is going to win. We already found out who the murderer was, anything else would be just extra and I didn’t think I could pull off DC Direct figures fighting one another without looking silly, so no actual fight needed.
Here is a look at one of my script pages and notice how my hand written notes made a 9 photo sequence expanded to a 12 picture series (the 4 digit numbers are the last four digits my camera assigns the picture it’s taken. I usually take a lot of photos to be able to have choices when editing...I’ll get much more into this when we discuss the photography aspect of MiG)
Part 23 was going to simply be an epilogue retelling the story straight forward for anyone who missed a twist or plot point. But I had built the final conflict up too much, and everyone on all of the forums I presented Murder in Gotham on were hyped up to see Batman vs Jason Todd, and I knew I had to deliver something. So Part 23 expanded and inflated. And, oh by the way, I’m going to have to create a new set, The Batcave. :/ Sometime I wish I could keep it simple. I presented the elements of the actual fight as flashbacks, this way it looked cool and artistic, and more importantly, I could get away with not showing it in a complete blow by blow linear fashion.
I know next time I do one of these, it’s getting scripted right from the start, and I’m not going to present it till it’s solid. I should probably mention that I think I have a Question tale starting to gnaw on that same spot that spawned Murder in Gotham...so we’ll see what happens with that.
Next up, I’ll talk about photographing Murder in Gotham.