The Book of Masks Homepage

What I'm Working On Now

Besides today's BoM chapter—

Interactive: "Avalanche Girl" 
Public: "Avalanche Girl" 

—I've got a bonus for anyone who has been casting a curious eye at my Spider-Man project: "S02E12 "The Master Planner"" 

To briefly backstory the project:

DisneyXD produced (and still produces???) an animated Spider-Man show, called (with a dull lack of wit) Marvel's Spider-Man. Thirty-odd episodes into it, they began an adaption of the comic books' Superior Spider-Man storyline, the one where Dr. Octopus body-swapped with Spider-Man. I heard about this before it started airing, I it gave me the notion of writing my own adaptation of that storyline, to see what I could learn by comparing my efforts with those of the pros.

The adaptation has long-since aired, but I haven't watched it yet. My ambitions had gotten very big in the meantime—I wound up reimagining the series almost from the ground up—and I exhausted myself a couple of times while trying to fulfill them. The results (thus far) of that reimagination are in my portfolio here: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" 

After finishing off the last batch of BoM commissions, I decided to return to this fanfic to do some more work on it. I had already written everything up to the point where the Superior Spider-Man launches, and was just waiting for a break in BoM to throw myself into outlining and writing the 13-episode arc itself.

Well, since returning to the project I've got that arc outlined, at least in enough detail that I can start outlining and writing the scripts. And yesterday, after two days of work, I wrote a first draft of the first script in the arc: "A Day in the Life," I'm calling it.

But that's not the bonus I'm publishing today.

"A Day in the Life" is Episode 14 in my version of Spider-Man's Season Two, and I suspended the publication of my own treatments with Episode 11. I don't want to publish Episode 14 until I've got some additional scripts written. But to mark the occasion, I am publishing Episode 12. Episode 13 (also already written) will follow in a week or two. Then, at after I've got a number of new scripts in the backlog and I'm comfortable that I won't have to make extensive revisions to them, I plan to start publishing the actual Superior Spider-Man arc.

The new entry comes with two important caveats. The first is that it is almost entirely unoriginal, being a very close transcription of the IRL-series episode "Brain Drain" by Jacob Semahn. The second is that it is written in the form of a script.

I hope the script format isn't too troublesome to readers. I tried to upload a Word document in script format, but the WdC machines wouldn't preserve the format, so I had to improvise. In writing this script, I have done my best to minimize action description and camera work, which is the most tedious part of a script, and the part that the writer should concern himself with the least. The idea is to get across the story: Who does what and why do they do it? Actual choreography is for the director to handle.

To get up to speed on what is going on, it is best to start with "S02E02 "Between an Ock and a Hard Place""  and read forward, though the story has roots extending all the way back to the very start of the series. But Episode 12 is the first where the Superior Spider-Man first heaves into view, as Doctor Octopus makes reveals himself and makes his first overt move against Spider-Man.