 |
| Logo by Ali |
I remember everything. The way she leaned into me, whispering something about how we could just go away together..the three of us..Me, Her, and all that money. The scent of gardenias in spring teases my nostrils still and the haunting image of her glistening apple red lips coming closer to mine creeps around my memory lingering like bittersweet almonds. Her auburn hair rolling about her tarnished angel’s face framed the last time I ever saw her before her mouth melted like angry lightning into mine. I remember all of it. I even remember the way the bullet felt as it carved its way viciously, a concussive scalpel slicing through my gut and lodging somewhere in the wall behind me.
I remember dying. Being dead. No longer breathing. No more heartbeats. Nothing.
But if that’s all true, what in the hell am I doing sitting here behind this battered desk?!
Thus begins THE DAYS I DIED. The speaker above, Redmond “Red” Graves, a 1930s cop who rose from the uniform into plainclothes meteorically and fell just as quickly six months into being a detective. Why? Graves was booted off the force of the big city because of ‘extreme brutality’ which meant, being the 1930s, that Graves would get his man every time or die trying and most of those he got were closer to dying than he ever got. After being ejected from the force, Graves opened a one man Private Investigator firm and his reputation brought him his first client. An auburn haired beauty named Lenora Shaw. His first client would also end up being the woman who killed him. Well, the one who killed him the first time anyway.
THE DAYS I DIED follow Graves as he wakes up in a PI’s dingy office after dying..and he did indeed die. He gets up, looks around, looks in a mirror, and notices two things. First, it isn’t his dingy office. Secondly, the face in the mirror isn’t his, either. The premise is that Graves for some reason woke up in the body of a PI who was killed and his body disposed of where no one would ever find it. Now in a whole, unharmed body, Graves has to figure out what happened, but before he can, there’s a knock on the office door. It’s Lenora Shaw, the woman who killed Red Graves.
What happens at this point is Graves has to solve the killing of the PI he now inhabits and in turn uncovers things about what led to his own death that make it a mystery as well, things that may go back to his savage days as a uniformed cop, or even farther back to the days he watched his street fighter father work his way up through the ranks to the ring.
Now, this tale could end right here, Graves could solve both cases and meet his maker peacefully. But if I ever have the time to write this, what will likely happen is that Graves will solve the other PI’s murder and be oh so close to solving his own, then get killed again. Then what? You guessed it…he wakes up in another hero’s body…maybe not a PI, could be a soldier, a vigilante working the streets, a well heeled scientist adventurer type…whatever, but it will always be a hero and one who has died. Graves could go on for years, getting so close to solving his own case, and yet never quite making the bar. Also, these stories could see Graves assuming the life of one of these other men for years at a time before going on to the next one. It could also be that the people Graves inhabits could be in different years…first it could be in 1938, where the story starts, then it could be back in 1918…or even farther back…but each story, regardless of the year its placed in has to offer some clue to Graves’ case..that’s the tether.
This idea is of course the intellectual property of Tommy Hancock and therefore copyrighted 2011, but if you’re interested in helping me flesh this out and get it out to the masses, drop me a line at allpulp@yahoo.com. I’m holding onto it, but wouldn’t mind someone else writing some of the tales of THE DAYS I DIED.
Long-time Dick Tracy aficionado Joe Staton will be taking the classic Dick Tracy newspaper strip following the retirement of long-time artist Dick Locher after March 13.
Award-winning actor Anthony LaPaglia returns to his villainous roots as the voice of Lex Luthor in All-Star Superman, the highly anticipated 10th entry in the ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies coming February 22, 2011 from Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Home Video.
