PicoBlog

Hello everyone, it’s publication week here and Justice Warriors is out!

This puppy is 168 pages of eye-popping comics and satire collecting issues 1-6 plus a backup story I made just for this collection. Grab a copy from your local store, Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from me if you are in the US.

This week, I appeared on the writing podcast Ledger with my collaborator Ben Clarkson. I had great time talking about the writing of Justice Warriors and how to make a comic about the violent enforcement of property law boundless fun. The host, Austin Wilson, asked some great, probing questions and it was nice to finally start talking about the full story we created with someone who thought about it deeply.

Last week, I was on the podcast Chapo Trap House, again with Ben Clarkson, to discuss Demolition Man. The beloved 1993 film pits violent, 20th century barbarians Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes against each other in a non-violent future where you can’t have sex and cussing violates the Verbal Morality Statute. To make matters worse, John Spartan (Stallone) can’t figure out how to wipe his own ass. Bleak indeed. That appearance is on a premium episode, so it’s only available to their Patreon subscribers.

The one thing I didn’t get a chance to talk about on the pod was my idea for a Demolition Man sequel. I wrote up some ideas years ago after a rewatch and went so far as to do a little digging about who could grants me the rights for a comic. Unsurprisingly, it was a dead end, but I now present my short pitch for the sequel here for your amusement.

A few things about it first: the original cut of the film resolves the plot line of Spartan’s adult daughter being alive in the future. It turns out she was one of the underground Scraps he meets while visiting Edgar Friendly (Dennis Leary) and several scenes featuring her were cut from the film. (These and other scenes remain in the movie novelization which, yes, I own.)

In fact, the entire subplot of the Scraps needing food in this supposedly perfect future that is controlled by a single corporation, and the social-engineering Mayor’s plan to exterminate them, was outright abandoned two thirds in so John Spartan and Simon Phoenix could fight for no reason beyond their 90s grudge match. This is my attempt to thaw out those more political ideas from deep freeze, while preserving the charm of the world and the fact that John Spartan is an action oaf.

Demolition Man 2

We pick up where we left off after the events of Demolition Man. John Spartan and Lenina Huxley live as police (and romantic partners who have physical sex) in a peaceful, oddly politically correct future, still being fined for cussing but working to bridge the divide with the underground Scraps by arranging for food drops so they aren’t in conflict with San Angeles. Spartan’s daughter, Sally Spartan-Martin, is among the Scraps, while their chain-smoking leader Edgar Friendly is requesting cancer drugs.

Frustrated with Spartan’s endless expenditures on food and penchant for sex, Chief Earle fires him, secretly at the behest of Taco Drone (renamed for legal purposes) and Spartan fearfully contemplates a life and career beyond punching things.

Run by a ruthless Boss Lady CEO, Taco Drone is seeking to maintain its fully-automated monopoly on all food distribution won during the Franchise Wars. She orders the production of Simon Phoenix clones, programming them with martial arts skills and giving them AI-generated memories of past battles with Spartan.

The Phoenix clones take over the LAPD, slaughtering a shocked Chief Earle, and reintroduce lethal force and cussing, but for police only. Scraps are rounded up en masse, with Huxley and Sally Spartan fleeing while a defiant Edgar Friendly rants about the freedoms of the 90s to his dying breath. John Spartan is captured and set to be killed on Simon Says Die, a new livestream for public trials and executions launched in partnership with Taco Drone. The public, raised on compliance, starts to like and subscribe to state violence.

Now, Lenina Huxley, Sally Spartan, and a discarded Phoenix clone whose mind is filled with every movie and television show from the 20th century must free John Spartan and fight for a future free from corporate control, re-legalize sex, and finally figure out how to use the three seashells.

I have actually written much more than this and have a very solid idea for how the whole thing would play out, but I don’t want to spoil it because I’ve considered—it’s a long shot, but it has been discussed—creating an off-brand parody comic of all this with Mattie Lubchansky called CRYO COP.

Who knows? The future can be anything we want it to be.

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