Introduction

Hello to all that are reading this...



My name is Jason Padua and I am an odd fellow with a lot of ideas but rarely any follow through. My latest adventures are this blog and the company I would like to eventually grow from it.



I would like to start a comic book business that could possibly be a model for the industry going forward. I want to build a comic book company that is almost solely online. Readers would subscribe to the comic book cite and have access to online versions of the books. The books would still be hand drawn but rather than looking at reprinted versions of the artists rendering, you would see the actual drawings digitally scanned and posted. Instead of having to search comic book shops to find the issue that everyone else says is the corner stone of a character, this would be easily accessible with just a simple search.



Now this is only the very beginning of the process. The name is only a working model right now and is based on my children's names: Raven and Talon. I am what I think to be a decent writer but, I am definitely no artist, so I will soon be developing a web page and linking this blog to it. When I do I will be looking for artists to submit samples of their work and maybe become the first of my new venture. I have already started the first issue of the first character and would like to introduce you all to Gabriel Messenger:



Angel of War #1
Origins

(Opening frames: it is night time in an unknown city. The landscape is dark, but potted with lights from buildings all around. Flashes of lightning give the reader a glimpse at a very large and dark Gothic cathedral. There is a boy, seventeen years of age sitting on the edge of the building. The boy is scarred down the left of his face and has what appears to be a tattoo of angel wings on his shirtless back. He has long, curly, jet black hair, bright green eyes, and his skin is very pale. He is very muscular but still very thin and awkward. Lying nest to him is what appears to be some sort of weapon but the reader cannot see it fully.)


Gabriel Messenger (yellow narration): “You know it becomes apparent in every person’s life that they must analyze the events that have led them to where they are. When I stop to consider where I was a week ago to where I am now, it is amazing how much has changed in seven days versus the last seventeen years of my life. I guess to really understand though I have to go back farther than all of that…to the very day I was born.


(Second set of frames/Flashback: Inside of a hospital we see a woman giving birth. It is clear that she is in a lot of pain and having trouble. There are multiple people in the room, but no family or friends apparent. The woman is very young, approximately 18 years of age. As the frames progress the doctors are running in and out and she is giving birth. There is an extensive amount of blood as the woman appears to be hemorrhaging.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): My mother was only a child herself. She was no one special from what I know. Years of my asking questions of my grandmother have led me to understand that she was a beautiful girl who never felt understood. I guess no teenager feels understood, but that’s life. My mother had me when she was only 18 but died at the time of my birth. (Final frame shows a nurse holding a child and doctors circling the woman who is now unconscious.) Though I never knew her I miss her….


(Third set of frames/Flashback 2: Frames now show an older woman crying and holding a young child at a funeral. There are several people at the funeral, and they comfort her. The child is seen but is sleeping. The child is exceptionally pale, and while the other attendees are trying to comfort the old woman, they shy away from the baby.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I guess my grandmother could have blamed me for my mother’s death, but she never did, nor did she allow me to blame myself. She missed her as much as I did, though they did not talk for the last two years of my mother’s life. I think that hurt my grandmother most…that and the world’s aversion to me.



(Fourth set of frames/procession of flashback’s in single frame progression: First frame should depict a child about age three sitting on a stoop with an old woman watching over him. The child should be very disconnected from the world, while focusing on a small leather bound book.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I guess your wondering about my father…well so am I. My grandmother has no idea who he was. My mother lived in an apartment and my grandmother collected all of her things, but there was no mention of anyone who could be my father. She did have a journal she kept, but her last entries never seem to make sense to anyone.


(Second frame/Possibly third as well: The reader is looking over the shoulder of a ten year old boy, while he is at the play ground. All the other children can be seen playing but he is under a tree by himself, clearly avoided. If possible one of the pages should be seen with a woman’s writing on it; otherwise, entry could be depicted through narration.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I learned to read when I was three because of that journal. I had to know what my mother felt and thought so I could be close to her.



“June 7, 1991 Today I went to the park and watched the children play. He will be here soon and I will have no answers for him when he asks about his father. How do I tell a child about someone I never met? Maybe I will just tell him I was raped and that the man was never caught, or I could tell him that his father was someone I met one night and had a one night stand. Neither would give justice to who Gabriel will be, or answer the countless other questions he will have…but can I tell my little angel the truth, and if so when?”


(Next frame: Reader sees a young teen, approximately thirteen, reading the journal with a fast food bag beside him in the bed of a beat up pickup truck. He is shirtless and there are tattoos of angel wings on his back. A girl is in the truck with him. She is pretty, but it is hidden behind her hair and a pair of glasses. She has long black hair and bright blue eyes. There is a confidence about her, but her face should be intent on the back of the boy. She should be about a year older than he.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): Every time she wrote about me she would call me her angel. Then when I hit puberty my skin suddenly began to change and I received the wings on my back. The doctors call it some sort of darkening of a birthmark already there, but my grandmother says it is a gift from god. The girl sitting next to me is my only friend, Shekina Femet. She is beautiful, isn’t she? Too beautiful as a matter of fact, when we were kids the girls would make fun of her and the boys were too scared to talk to her. Eventually we became friends because no one else would be our friend.


(Next frame: The boy and girl are now sitting together in the boy’s bedroom. It is late at night and the room is lit by a single lamp. The boy is holding the girl who is crying into his shoulder. The boy appears to glow with a light. Shekina has bruises on her face and grab marks on her arms. Gabriel’s mother’s journal is lying on the bed.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): Too beautiful… her stepfather thought she was beautiful and more than one night she ended up spending with me to avoid being near him. It is amazing that she is as loving as she is. Her life has been worse than mine. Having no parents can’t be worse than having abusive ones.


Conversation bubbles in the frame:
Gabriel: I will kill him. I swear.
Shekina: No you won’t. You’re too good for that.
Gabriel: I love you.
Shekina: And I you.


(Next frame: Gabriel and Shekina are in a car driving together. They are laughing and listening to music. They are about sixteen or seventeen years old. There is a picture quality about it. It is clear that Gabriel is remembering this as a fond moment, but with a sense of finality.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): No we never dated. I think that would have been too much for either one of us. And no we aren’t “like brother and sister” that is just a ridiculous statement. We are soul mates, but my soul does not belong to me, and therefore I cannot give it to her.


(New set of frames: Reader is now taken back to the ledge in present time. Gabriel is now fingering the staff that was previously lying next to him. He is staring at it intently. There is writing on it, Hebrew in nature and a six pointed star on the top of it.)


Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): And now due to this (Gabriel raises his hand and reveals a scythe seven feet long with a blade five feet long. The blade is made of orichalcum giving it a bronze hue on an almost shining white metallic base. The handle is an Ashe wood excellently carved with writing inscribed on the handle of an unknown language.), she and I will never share those moments again. How can we with all that is changing? I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Well, it is hard to explain but let me first give you a bit of a history lesson.



Okay so feel free to comment on my writing, but please be kind. There are some religious undertones to this character, but no I am not going to focus all of our characters on that and it will not be the main focus of this company. I treat religion like any other folklore, abundant with excellent character building pieces.



Feel free to comment on what you think, particularly you comic book fans that would like to see something like this. For you collector type fans, if this takes off and my characters become popular I would then look to start printing special edition books in limited supply. This would both allow for collectors and non-collectors to have a chance to read the book in hand as we all grew up doing, but it would also be limited, so unlike where there are hundreds of thousands of copies printed of our favorite books now these would actually be worth something. (Though I make no assertions that I or my books will ever be that popular.)



This is also my first blog, so I ask that you be patient with me as I get used to using this. I will also probably use this to put some of my personal notes out there, and feel free to comment on those as well.



So thanks for reading and I hope you return,



JP