Sometimes in life the best things that happen are the ones that don't... or at least they don't happen at first. This is very much the case for Alice and the Invaders From Wonderland.
Last month my wife Syd and I attended ReGeneration Who. Our very first Doctor Who convention in Baltimore. At 41 years of age, I had never been to a Doctor Who convention. Don't judge me! Unlike myself, my wife didn't grow up a fan of the show. She's a fan of Harry Potter. We've both rubbed on of each other. She's come to enjoy Who and I've come to enjoy Potter. I really loved the movie Fantastic Beasts.
And for my first experience in the Doctor Who convention scene, this one was amazing!! More on that some other time.
But it gave me an opportunity to actually meet in person Paul Magrs. An author I have been in contact with since perhaps the Myspace days... maybe before that. I also got to meet George Mann. Another amazingly talented author who has worked in both Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes as well as his own series of novels.
 |
| From left to right: Myself, Syd, Paul Magrs and George Mann |
Before I get too far off subject. One of the things discussed at the panels held for the writers is to never publish your first draft. There are those strange incidents where a first draft ends up being the published draft. But it isn't always a good idea.
Which leads me right back to Alice.
 |
| The first sketch I did for what would be Alice and the Invaders From Wonderland |
Alice and the Invaders From Wonderland (as it would be eventually called) started it's life as a couple of sketches I did for a local steampunk show. My wife and I were preparing for the show and while I was getting a few sketches ready to sell, she very innocently said "I'm surprised you don't have more steampunk versions of Alice in Wonderland". This surprised me too. Alice seemed like the perfect grounds for a steampunk reimagining.
After the show I was looking at the images I did again (they didn't sell) and I began to think of a story to go behind it. So maybe a day or so later I began to write Alice: Adventuress in Wonderland. The original story was pretty quick. Maybe topping off at 45 pages intended on being a one-shot.
Going back to the discussion on first drafts, it's definitely for the best that this version didn't get published back in 2013. It's got good bones. However, it resolves itself too quickly and you never really get a sense of danger or Alice has any real challenge.
It wasn't really until I started working with Paul Loudon that the script started to take shape and go in a direction I never really thought of. I became familiar with Paul's work on DeviantArt. We developed a really great rapport over the past few years. We're both fairly close in age and grew up in that era of weekday afternoon and Saturday morning cartoons. I admit. As crude the animation was with a lot of those cartoons, I really miss there being new cartoons on the non-cable channels.
From the word go Paul was the artist I had in mind for Alice. I felt it was one of those projects that needed a different set of eyes artistically. I was very pleased with what Paul came up with from the character sketches I sent him.
It was Paul who actually suggested the title Alice and the Invaders From Wonderland. Primarily because he pointed out the story hardly takes place in Wonderland. I was very quick to agree. And I thought it was a WONDERful title.
This is one of the nice things about a collaboration. You find that there are details you might have missed when working a project on your own. This project has very much become a team effort in ever way. When it comes to ideas, I'm very easy to get on with.
Some of the characters were revised since the inital script. In particular the Red and White Queen.
 |
| Red and White Queen respectively to the right |
I had originally intended the two to be unwilling "pawns" to the overbearing Queen of Hearts. Which I honestly never liked from the beginning. I thought it might be more fun to have them as a pair of petty, jealous, vain and preening Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton type of people.
I'm not entirely sure how many people are aware the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen are not the same person. True the Red Queen is sort of the surrogate for the Queen of Hearts in Through the Looking Glass. However, they are two entirely different characters. The Queen of Hearts is based on playing cards whereas the Red Queen is a chess motif.
I never cared for Anne Hathaway's Glinda the Good Witch of the North portrayal from the Tim Burton film. Nothing against Miss Hathaway as a actress, mind you. The character itself is a bit vague in the book. So I decided to go in a far less "benevolent" direction with the character.
Since 2013 the story itself has gone through many upon many revisions and I have expanded the story quite a bit from the initial one shot. A great deal of that was due to when I was developing the project for television I found that the script itself could be broken down episodically with the storyline of the script being basically the arc for "season one".
This has given Alice and her friends more obstacles and challenges to face. So it's not nearly as easy to get to the resolve. Which every story needs. I mean. If the resolve is simple then what's the point?
Most, if not all, of the drafts have survived in one form or another. My workspace on Celtx is a mess of various drafts. As time has gone on I've cherry picked each of the drafts for ideas I liked in one but didn't use in an other version. This includes the television treatments of the story.
I continue to develop Alice for television. Either live-action or animated.
Over the past four years the project had to be temporarily shelved a couple times with Paul becoming a Dad and Syd and I becoming home owners in the past year.
But the time was ripe to begin work on Alice again. And I can thank ReGeneration Who in Baltimore for that. Having a drink with Paul Magrs and George Mann after one of their panels inspired me to message Paul Loudon when I was up in my hotel room and see if he was up to getting Alice started again.
The stars must have been in alightment because he was ready again. This time we plan on developing it as a 12 part maxi-series and are in the process of creating pages for submission.
Another change to the story is the beginning. Originally it was going to be a quick recap of 10 year old Alice's travels through Wonderland. But quite frankly I think everyone knows the story of Alice in Wonderland. It's like how many times do we need a film that goes into Batman or Spider-Man's origin. One of the high marks of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film is having the Batman already established as the winged vigilante and we don't make the connection he's Bruce Wayne until several scenes later. We all know Batman's Bruce Wayne. But a long origin at the beginning would have not been as effective.
I decided to take a similar approach with the first issue of Alice. That and Paul had plotted out this amazing action sequence (as seen above) so it suddenly occured to me that's the way it should begin. While it would be explained how it all came to pass in the issue. I didn't want to do it in a way that would bore the reader.
So dear readers, as I sit here writing all this while sipping on my second cup of coffee I begin work scripting issue eight as well as beginning to plot out "season two" of Alice once I have finished with the "season one"
And I promise you. Alice's strangest adventures are yet to come...
