Well, there's been a lot of talk about ReBoot, lately, between the web-comic that is being made and the movies that are underway by Rainmaker. I just thought I would blog about this, as I'm not seeing any concern raised over what are hasty decisions on Rainmaker's part.

Don't get me wrong, I love ReBoot, and would love nothing more than for it's return in one animated form or another, but, from what I know of the situation, this is all wrong. I was so excited when I heard of the initiative to bring ReBoot back, first by letting a fan-picked team create a comic, perhaps to raise excitement about ReBoot and draw in new fans, and then by what is apparently a movie trilogy. Now here's where it all goes horribly, horribly awry...

There is no Gavin Blair, Ian Pearson, or Phil Mitchell! (or John Grace, though I'm not sure if he was even involved in season 4) That’s right, as far as I know, there has been no contact between Rainmaker and the Creators of ReBoot, the writers, directors, and overall MAKERS of the whole series. Mind you, I'm not on the inside or anything, and am going on what I've heard, but if I'm wrong about this, then treat this all as hypothetically speaking.

Now I'm sure we all are aware that our own Jeff Campbell-Prof Whizzywig, the writer of Team Arrival's Reboot: Code of Honour,has even done a pitch for Rainmaker. With all due respect, this is not the man to continue the series. I'll get to more on that later, however. This would be all fine and dandy if everyone previously involved in ReBoot was no longer with us, and in that case Jeff is definitely a fine choice to evolve the series, but they're fine as far as I know, and I'm some of them, if not all would be interested in this opportunity.

The series is fine in their hands. ReBoot would be nothing without those four individuals. They always offered something new two the series. Whenever you thought it was maybe finished, after it going off the air for a year or so, BAM! They gave us a new season full of fresh new, Reboot. They've done perhaps unorthodox things, like sending Bob away, aging Enzo and AndrAIa and it seems, everything in season 4. These all turned out to become just exactly what the fans loved about the series. (I know season 4 would have too, if the rug had not been pulled out from under their feet...besides I loved every minute of it, including My Two Bobs. Trojan horse Megabyte was awesome.) ReBoot went from an episodic child-centric cartoon, to a dark and immensely intriguing epic, and kept on going from there. Don't you think we owe the people that did this just a little?

Now I know that since the "conclusion: of ReBoot these guys left Mainframe, and since THEN Rainmaker acquired Mainframe, but the fact that the first people they called when Rainmaker decided to resurrect the series, WASN'T Gavin or Ian, just tells me that there is no way this can go right. I think especially Gavin would be able two undertake this project. (Not sure if Ian is interested or not) At the FanExpo, Gavin talked about how he'd be willing to come back if he was wanted, (though this could be in reference to the Expo, itself, and not the ReBoot production) but regardless, he goes on to say that "we got the show back" and to go onto Zeros2Heroes and start bugging them. Now, would you be this excited if your wonderful work, that you've been working on for like 7 years, that has evolved into a massive phenomena, was being reopened, but you weren't allowed to work on it 'cause you didn't own the rights, and you just got to sit back and watch it all go to hell? This isn't fair to Mr. Blair

Now, some may argue that ReBoot failed because of Gavin and the others, they just ran out of steam and kind of crapped out. This is not the case. Season 4 was meant to be just as epic as the previous one, but a sad series of cut-backs, lack of interest by the networks, etc., led to the season falling from 16 episodes, to 12, to the 8-episode/2 movie, thing that we've seen. Believe me when I say that it was supposed to be better then it was. There was going to be a conclusion; elaboration on Megabyte's ominous "hunt", and now the great Tony Jay is no longer with us, and we'll have to settle for his cryptic speech, his last words as Megabyte for any sort of closure. But, voice or no voice for MB, Gavin and Ian have or at least HAD a plan for the conclusion to the biggest cliff hanger in the history of forever, and would really just be sick and twisted not to let THAT at the very least, see the light of day. Please, Rainmaker, reach out salutations to the writers of ReBoot that we know and trust. Let them, if interested, make a movie to end ReBoot as THEY envisioned. You even said that the trilogy could very well be made of a stand-alone movie and a two-parter. After that, I think a fresh, new story would be awesome, perhaps even with the cooperation of Gavin and Ian, overseeing it or something.

The point is, this is not the time to try and reinvent ReBoot or pass the future off on new writers, the old ones have just as much integrity as ever, and as they've proven before, they can add new twists to it, and I'm sure could make the series appeal to today's audience. It's only been 7 years. The biggest complaint I've heard from ReBoot fans is that it was never concluded. The Comic, Code of Honour cannot be treated as a quick answer to this much-needed conclusion, to be followed by completely new ReBoot stories in the movies. I'm sorry, Jeff, I've got nothing but respect for you, and I realize you have your career to think of, but although I will read the comic, I can't treat it as canon, as I'm sure many people agree on, and the same goes for any movie, whether it be written by you, or anyone else who has not brought the series up from it's humble beginnings. The comic, as I saw it, was just a process in the revival of ReBoot, to raise enthusiasm and new fans for the series. "Wow, a professionally-made ReBoot comic! That's cool-can't wait for them to make those movies, so I can see how they’re gonna end that big cliff-hanger!" The comic and any movie that does not have the cooperation of Gavin, Ian, Phil, or John, is nothing more then a well-done fanfic, that happens to be endorsed my the company that bought out the company that used to make ReBoot. I know a LOT of people thinks this as well.

Rainmaker, all I ask is that you contact these guys, and at least give them a chance. Let them pitch THEIR ideas. Who better then the guys who've been doing it all along. It's only fair, and I think it's the only way this venture will become successful. Come to think of it, Whizzy mentioned something about other pitches being made by "very established writers" I guess a guy can hope that those are Gavin and Ian, though I doubt it...

Anyways, if anyone actually read this, thanks a lot! Even if you just skimmed it!

Naruto

Well, the boys and girls at Z2H have seen fit to create a blog specifically for the new ReBoot comic book. We'll be doing all of our updates here from now on: rebootcomic.zeros2heroes.com

So head on over! There's an update there already.

Professor WhizzyWig

Writer of ReBoot: Arrival 

I've reached a point in the ReBoot comic outline where I must deal with Welman Matrix:

This is the best picture I could find. Remember him? He's Dot's father who became a Null who got installed in a robot who got zombified by Megabyte at the end of 408.

What are your opinions on where this character should go? I have my opinions, but let's hear yours first. Go nuts! 

Professor WhizzyWig

Writer of ReBoot: Arrival 

Prof WhizzyWig here. There have been a couple cool updates that ya'll should be made aware of regarding the ReBoot comic book. Check it.

First off, I'm definitely in the market for a new title for the ReBoot comic book. Several have been suggested but I'm not totally sold yet. That said, the first book will definitely (for now) be named Paradigms Lost. That was Slackbot's suggestion and I really liked it. I'm terrible at naming stuff so suggest away!

Smartens (our designer) and I met with Julian Lawrence (the editor hired by Z2H) last friday and we discussed the role of the artists and who will be doing what. We decided that a test page was necessary to determine each artist' s primary skills. Afterwards, we'll nail down what each artist will be doing. That meant I needed to churn out a page of script, which I did over the weekend, and passed around this morning. I'll probably post it later for everyone to check out.

Meanwhile, I've written a full page-by-page outline of book 1, and a short summary of book 2. I'm expecting that this story might need about 6 books to be told properly. I haven't outlined the rest of the books yet but I have it in point form in my notebook, so don't get attached to that number just yet. Tonight I begin writing the actual first book. Woot!

Meanwhile, many of you have been asking about the cookies I promised to send out for all those nice chappies that entered my Awesome and Another Awesome contests. Turns out that sending food to other countries is either impossibly expensive or simply impossible depending on where you live. Smartens and I are coming up with something better... something that might have value later on if you know what I mean.

ChiefZero has informed us that he intends to create a separate website for the Arrival team to blog and post material regarding the creation process of the comic. That's all I know about that right now, but stay tuned (as if you wouldn't).

I think that's it for now. Oh yeah - smartens and I are collaborating on a "marketing guide" for you guys to use to promote your CCN entries. It's a mish-mash of things we did during the ReBoot contest. It should be, um, rather interesting. Look for that next week, I think.

Professor WhizzyWig

Writer of ReBoot: Arrival

I thought I should try and do some stuff on the computer since  I havn't done any yet. I took the Avatar that I did and gave him a update.

I want to do another one but I'm not sure who to do next. Either Enzo, Matrix or lens. Anyway hope you like it.

enzo

I've spent the last four days doing absolutely nothing but writing the ReBoot comic book (oh, and drinking coffee, tea, chocolate milk and eating melons, toast, scrambled eggs, and crackers) and phew - I need a break. Time for an update!

WARNING!!! INCOMING SPOILERS!!!

On days 1-3, I wrote a huge pile of notes. My notebook is now hugely full of... uh... notes. I spent a lot of time detailing arcs for the characters I thought needed complex arcs: Gnosis, Bob, Enzo, Matrix, Lens, Vector, and Ether. Here's a selection of primary arc-need describers I wrote.

Gnosis wants to become as powerful as a User so that it can become a Sprite.

Enzo wants to prove to himself and to his keytool that he has the heart of a Guardian.

Lens wants to redeem himself for taking part in the Codemasters' treachery.

So you can see that the story is already developing. After I got these done, I hit the computer to start nailing in the outline. Here's a short snippet of the outline for book 1, which I have tentatively named Paradigms Lost after Slackbot's awesome suggestion.

Both Bob and Turbo receive a private message to meet "someone" in a secret location. They go and meet the Codemasters: Lens; his servant, Ether; the High Codemaster; and his retinue of warriors. They explain to Bob and Turbo that they've invented a firmware upgrade called Gnosis that, when installed in the Supercomputer, will render it immune to viruses and that can be expanded to shield all other systems on the Net. The update has the power to corrupt viral code. Bob and Turbo agree to try it.

Unbeknownst to them, a Spyware Fly has observed this event, relaying video back to Megabyte.

See! I got the Fly in there! Oh, and I have decided to officially suggest this comic series be named ReBoot: Ascension. It just seems right. I will table that tomorrow morning when I meet with our new editor.

Professor WhizzyWig

Writer of Reboot: Arrival

Hey everyone. This is Professor Whizzywig. Time for a REAL ReBoot update.

On Friday, ChiefZero called in On-FireWire, smartens, and myself (the writer) for the inaugural ReBoot comic production meeting. There, many of my questions were answered. Here's what I learned:

The initial comic will be a web-comic, presented here on Z2H. They really want to do a full printed version but they're waiting to see what kind of readership the comic gets. If enough people read it, they'll print it and distribute it.

The first 22 pages will be a "volume one", and further volumes will follow so long as readership levels are maintained. They've left it up to me to determine how many volumes the GNOSIS story will require.

The comic will be updated in pieces rather than be dumped on the site in one giant chunk. That means the entire 1st volume may take a month or more to be presented fully. This is good because it means the audience will grow over time. It also means thatI need to write the comic in a series of modular 2-5 page scenes. Should be interesting...

Our editor will work with smartens to determine how the artists will work together. Smartens himself will do the cover, but all other work will be done by the 4 selected fan artists: endian, Ale Aragon, Enzo, and divineroseboot.

The editor is a man named Julian Lawrence, a respected comic professional and teacher in Vancouver. I haven't met him yet, but we're having another meeting this week sometime. I'm not yet sure what his involvement will be in the story.

Today, I begin working on the story... finally! In a few minutes, I'm going to review the pitch, create a basic outline of all the mandatory events, figure out how many comic volumes are required to tell the story, create a real outline, and then... then I actually get to write. Wish me luck!

Oh... and we still need a new name for the comic since Arrival doesn't really work any more. I'm open to suggestions.

Professor WhizzyWig

Yo. Professor WhizzyWig here, back from my week off. Really, it was pretty easy to take a vacation since ReBoot posts have almost completely stopped since last Sunday. Good - my eyes were traumatized from all the reading.

For the duration of the comic creation process, I will be doing regular blog posts. The other creators will likely as well, though I'm not sure how exactly. I think having everyone blog under Arrival_Producer doesn't make much sense. Here's the update for this week:

There's no update. Everyone was taking a week off, it seems. We have a meeting planned for this week where, I hope, everything will be explained in detail. After that, I'll do a full post with all the new info.

For the moment, know that I haven't started the new script. I'm holding off until Rainmaker and I (and the team in general) nail down the parameters of the project (e.g., length of comic; episodic updates versus one-shot upload; number of volumes; manner of presentation; page shape; etc.). No writing can truly begin until everything is agreed upon. Frankly, I have no idea how our winning pitch idea could possibly fit into a single 22 page script, so that will be discussed.

For all you writing geeks, I most certainly will be using Storyview to outline the comic and then Final Draft to write the script. I'm not usually into gimmicky writing software, but Storyview is simply too awesome and Final Draft is the standard screenwriting software.

Though I'll be using a standard screenwriting format (in a customized comic style I invented for a different project called Clan Yamori, which I need to show you guys) I will likely be writing the script as a "letter" to the artists, so I'll be speaking to them directly (like Gaiman does in his scripts). Leaving things "open to interpretation" sounds good, but it rarely works. I'm going to be very specific about what the artists need to be doing in each panel. That's my plan, at least.

And that's all I have to say for the moment.

I just came back from Dragon*Con, which is, I believe, the second largest multifandom con in the US.  I went with a fellow ReBoot fan, and for 4 days we stayed in the hotel, went to panels, bought stuff, walked around in costume, posed for pictures, collected autographs, fell in love with Vic Migniola (but didn't learn how to spell his name), haunted the con suite, and generally escaped from Real Life to act like total nerds for a while.  It was glorious.

On a conference call with Rainmaker and Z2H about a month ago I suggested putting out flyers for the ReBoot Revival at the con.  People scour the grab-me tables for stuff that might interest them, so why not use that for ReBoot and Z2H?  Well, that never happened (siiigh) but I did wear my icon and ReBoot shirt, and pimp the revival to anyone who commented on them.  Most fans were stunned and then thrilled to hear about ReBoot coming back.  Only a few already knew about Z2H, the webcomic, etc.  So, I spread the word, emphasizing that for it to succeed the fans would have to actively support it.

I went to a webcomics panel.  I would have anyway, but this year I had the idea of mentioning Z2H, and how ReBoot was being brought back first as a Webcomic, showing how The Big Guys were realizing how popular webcomics are.  Well, the opportunity didn't present itself, as there were ten panelists, and literally all there was time for was the intros and then five, count them five all-panelist questions.  Ah well.  Maybe next year, of the ReBoot webcomic is there, we can represent.  HINT HINT.

By the way, if you were there on Friday or Saturday night and saw someone walking around  in Frank N. Furter drag, that was me.

In my recent post I mentioned ladybard's fanfic the "Daemon Conflict." In it Bob and Matrix get infected and to make a long story short turn into monster version of themselves.

  I finally found the picture of Matrix as Valadare which is done by the artist Water Mist.

I agree with you guys that Enzo should look like his old self, but I think there should be a feral look to him. Maybe as an avatar he should look something like Valadare but toned down.

What do you guys think?

I don't know if this is still true but according to Prof W, no one has really captured Avatar Enzo in art.  Somehow I started to remember ladybard's story the Daemon Conflict, where Bob and Matrix get infected but instead of becoming cult members they became monsters.

Has anyone read this fanfic? The  point is I remember  a picture of Matrix as Veladare and how feral he looked.  I think that Enzo as an Avatar should be drawn in a similar way, or at least in essence. 

I don't know but I remember liking ladybard's version of Daemon Conflict than the actual version.