This post is intended to preface the next - which will be a book review of Stephen King’s Under The Dome - by way of declaring a conflict of interest: the synopsis for Under The Dome matches almost exactly the one I wrote four years ago for a comic book series called Month Of Sundays. Essentially, part of a small English town wakes up one Sunday morning to find that they are enclosed under a bizarre, impenetrable dome. The strength of the concept is that it practically generates its own stories - think of any couple or group of people, trap them in a smaller version of their usual world, and their stories almost suggest themselves. As a starting point for a comic series, this is as good as they get, for my money. That King has extrapolated many of the same story ideas as I’d had from the same concept illustrate this. As he has said, “It is the tale, not he who tells it.”

King has, according to the publicity, been working on his book for twenty five years and, although I’m a huge fan, I have no recollection of ever having read an interview with him mentioning the dome idea (back in the eighties, the book was called The Cannibals and was set in a high rise - it was abandoned for similarities with J. G. Ballard’s novel High Rise). King has recently been accused of stealing the concept of the town under a dome from the Simpsons Movie. Patricia Anthony’s novel Happy Policeman is also eerily similar in concept and - as I read that about ten years ago - is far more likely, if I’m honest, to have influenced the genesis of Month Of Sundays.

Ideas, it seems, are everywhere.

I was never able to find an artist for something with the scope of Month Of Sundays; at one point, Tim Keable considered taking it on as a break from West, but drawing two extended comic series seemed a bit much; as recently as last year I was talking to Peet Clack about it (and he was enthusiastic), but I felt it was too ambitious for me to attempt, so Peet and I are working on the smaller scale series The Whale House. In all honesty I’m not sure I could have written it; my back story was a hugely elaborate science fiction conceit that began to form a story of its own. One day, especially now I can see what King has done - and, more importantly, hasn’t done - with the idea, I’d like to attempt it. Ironically, many of the storytelling decisions in Under The Dome have given me ideas on how to improve Month Of Sundays. What was a depressing development when I saw the synopsis for King’s book has become a renewed interest in working my idea up into a viable comic series.

But, without an artist - or the urge to offer it to a publisher (particularly now that my white hot pitch line will be met with the withering response, “What, you mean like that Stephen King book?”) - Month Of Sundays will probably remain as a synopsis and a bunch of notes and character profiles in Scrivener, while I put my time and efforts into series that I have artists for.

One day, though…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 1:40 pm and is filed under The Meme, Science Fiction, Books, Angry Candy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.