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PAGE TWO and THREE

1 CITY STREET - CONTINUOUS

First panel spread across both pages horizontally, about half a vertical page. We look from over the shoulder of some ninjas who stand on a fire escape and look down on four super-humans who stand with their backs to each other. They are surrounded at this street intersection by The Hand who cover every rooftop, stairway, fire escape, and approach them from all four directions on the street.
The super-humans are a WOMAN OF FIRE (looking like a female Human Torch), a GIANT MAN (not the character Giant Man, just a really big guy, like Juggernaut without the armor), a SPEEDSTER (The Flash, Quicksilver, you know) whose power is not apparent in this panel, and a man with smoking blueish-white GLOWING EYES.

NARRATION
And our prey hasn’t the slightest hope of survival.

2 CITY STREET - CONTINUOUS

Grip leaps head-first off of a balcony at the four super-humans. We watch from behind him and can see the Woman of Fire look up at him in fear.

NARRATION
We are genin- the lowest rank of ninja.

3 CITY STREET - CONTINUOUS

We see Grip from the front now: as he continues to dive, a beam of fire catches the edge of his head wrapping on his left side, scorching it.

NARRATION
We serve The Beast without question.

NARRATION
We do as ordered without hesitation.

4 CITY STREET - CONTINUOUS

From this point until otherwise noted Grip can be differentiated from the other ninja by the fact that he only has the usual ninja head wrapping covering the right half of his face, its charred ends flapping as the left half has been burned away.
Grip, now with both feet on the ground, dodges to one side as the Woman of Fire unleashes another beam of flame which hits a ninja behind Grip square in the chest and bursts through the other side of him.

NARRATION
We die without fear or remorse.

5 CITY STREET - CONTINUOUS

Grip swings his sword in one elegant, powerful, and lightning-quick stroke, slicing the Woman of Fire diagonally across her chest. Blood and fire trail behind his sword, defining the arc of its path.

NARRATION
Our sword strikes down the first of our foes and we feel satisfaction, but no joy.

NARRATION
The Hand is the ultimate contentment and we have moved beyond the need for emotion.

6 CITY STREET - CONTINUOUS

Close up of Grip’s emotionless face.

NARRATION
We yearn only to fulfill our mission.

NARRATION
When we fail, we die.

NARRATION
When we succeed, we live in a state completely liberated from desire.

 

 

 

It was explained to me that the reason you can't send editors at the big companies a story using characters you invented is that so many characters and stories are so similar that they could have something just like yours already in the works, and then they get sued because you think they stole it from you.

However, I needed some characters with super-powers that I could kill off in this story and I couldn't exactly kill off Wolverine and expect Marvel's editors to be impressed with my story writing abilities.

So, you will see in my description of these four super-powered persons that The Hand battles that I am careful to describe them in terms of existing characters so that I couldn't sue Marvel even if I wanted to because I'm basically stating in the script that my character ideas came from characters they own.