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Fraught Treatments

So far I've been publishing these one-off chapters in chronological order, but today because of reasons I'm skipping ahead.

Will and Sydney are now partners, and Sydney is wanting to share more and more things with him -- mostly, though, she wants him to share his stuff with her. Caleb's mask, for instance: She'd love to put it on. You guys voted to let her, but let's find out what happens when he turns her down: "No One Wants a Creepy Girlfriend"  (public) + "No One Wants a Creepy Girlfriend"  (interactive).

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Yesterday was another one-treatment day. I knew it was going to be, because it was a story with no precedent in the IRL animated series. It features a villain not adapted to that series, attempting a crime unlike any in the series, and Peter Parker's got new stuff to do. So, I had to do all the work myself.

I've hit two unexpected challenges while working on these treatments. The first is that Peter Parker is turning out to be a much more active character than I had been prepared for. I am much more familiar with the various DC animated series, particularly the Batman series from the 90s, and when you go back to look at them you'll notice that most of the heroes—Batman in particular—are mostly reactive, in that they don't have any goals except to react to whatever the villain is up to. That actually puts the DC heroes into the role of an antagonist, if an antagonist is the one who is supposed to slow and trip up the guy who is actively pursuing a plan.

But Peter Parker typically has his own agendas and plans, and he's got needs and goals besides "stop any bad guys that happen along." In crafting a Spider-Man story, then, you typically don't want to open with him on patrol; he should be confronting some problem that has nothing to do with the villain du jour. That's hard enough—coming up with stuff that Peter wants to do and would be doing if only The Scorpion or The Lizard would leave him alone—but the story also has to juggle his need to finish his own story with his need to stop the villain from finishing his own. The two agendas—Peter's and the villain's—should also be related thematically in some way, which adds a third dimension to the puzzle's difficulty.

So it's hard, and I'm really not sure I'm pulling it all off, particularly as these are only treatments, not finished scripts, let alone produced episodes.

Luckily, the second unexpected challenge is a much less fraught one: I keep wanting to type "Robin" instead of "Peter" or "Spider-Man" when banging out these treatments.

I suppose that's another tacit admission that I'm much more a DC Animated guy than a Marvel Animated guy.