New concept launch! “Hugo, Seville” by Pablo Seco and Juan Hernaz is greenlit and now in development. The focus group is onboarding, let me know if you’d like to join - it’s a good one. Music, mythology, paella… -Ed. “1896. A young boy named Hugo lives with his mother and father on an orange grove in a small village in the heart of drought-stricken Andalusia. Hugo has always heard music in his head, but with his father’s illness, he has no time to pursue music lessons. One day, Hugo’s mother, sensing his increasing isolation as his friends’ have all moved away to escape the drought, tells him to sell enough oranges at the market to buy himself a guitar in Seville. There, Hugo finds he can only afford the oldest, most weathered guitar in a second hand shop. On the long walk home to his village, Hugo discovers a spirit is haunting the guitar. Reluctantly, the spirit confesses he was a man named Paolo, and guilty of crimes of plagiarism against his dancing partner, an aspiring guitarist, who conspired with a witch to curse him and cast him into the guitar, where he must stay until he can do the impossible: teach a child to become a flamenco master. As Hugo struggles to learn, he is visited in his dreams by a moss-covered duende girl named Carmen Ophelia, who leads him to a rain forrest cave and explains that a battle is brewing between the forces of creativity and destruction. Carmen herself belongs to the lower ranks of the musical spirits, and finds herself alone at her outpost, as all the other musical duende have disappeared. We learn that Carmen Ophelia was visited by an evil spirit named Humdrumbl, a high ranking spirit of creative destruction, bent on casting the most promising musician into eternal limbo by imprisoning them in their instruments. Together, Hugo and Carmen Ophelia must master flamenco to rescue Paolo from the guitar and prevent Humdrumbl from draining Andalusia and beyond of its music and inspiration.” -Hugo, Seville by Pablo Seco and Juan Hernaz

The Sunday featured submission from GUFF’s Character Issues #7: ‘THE TURNBUCKLE BRIGADE’ by @jasonmbaldwin - a WW2 romp featuring a cast of professional wrestlers saving the world “one suplex at a time”. (Vote to Redlight/ Greenlight at Macguffin.co.) This one has some momentum, so if you want to RSVP for the focus group, shoot me a DM. -Ed. Synopsis: When the Axis Powers begin searching for a relic that could turn the tide of World War II, General Eisenhower recruits the four greatest professional wrestlers in the world to form a top-secret unit codenamed The Turnbuckle Brigade. Wrestlers Frank Zill, The Borneo Savage, Breathtaking Benjamin Bradley and El Aguila de la Muerte are deployed on a secret mission: retrieve the Shroud of Turin, a biblical relic that supposedly grants the bearer unimaginable power. It won’t be easy — the Axis powers, led by Dr. Metallgesicht (English – Dr. Metalface) are hunting for it as well. He’s backed by The Brotherhood of the Shroud, an ancient Ninja order dedicated to protecting the relic itself. It’s a race against time with the fate of the world in the balance. The wrestlers infiltrate a gothic castle in an unnamed European area and use their professional wrestling skills to avoid traps, fight their way through hordes of enemy soldiers and eventually face the Brotherhood itself. It won’t be easy. Metallgesicht has anticipated the Allied Powers’ plan and has one of his own that includes the Shroud itself and a giant holdover from the Jurassic period who is ready to bite…er, fight… for the cause. (Creator’s Note #1: The overarching joke here is that Eisenhower believes pro wrestlers possess the superhuman powers and skills they demonstrate in the ring. While that isn’t the case, they still rely on their training in humorous and exciting methods. The other main point is that the Shroud itself doesn’t do anything. It’s just a sheet.)

A sneak peak at a project in development - “Hugo Seville” by Juan Hernaz. A coming of age epic about a boy, a sort of genie, and a flamenco guitar. This one’s really coming along nicely and I’m excited to share it as we go. So more to come. I would’ve posted this yesterday, but we had a bit of a “bomb cyclone” in Seattle overnight. I wasn’t familiar with bomb cyclones, but not that I am I’m not looking forward to the next one. Which sounds like it may be on the way. Anyway, the # power’s back on now, so we’re charged up and back in business for now. -Ed.

Since tardigrades are back in the news. Apparently a new species has been found (named Hypsibius henanensis after China’s Henan province). Scientists are currently pummeling the little fellas with doses of radiation many times higher than what would be lethal for humans, with no apparent effects. Which opens up the possibilities of a sequel now for Amos Waterbear, author of the bestseller “How to Live Forever on Nothing,” who may or may not have met his end in a Las Vegas bathtub (Bellagio) after struggling with the weight of success and blowing the advance for his unwritten follow up book on all the usual vices. -Ed. #tardigrades

Join the team working to develop The Infinite Monkeys franchise: “When Dr. Theo von Animus discovers a formula that accelerates the evolutionary process and gives animals human consciousness, he goes to the Isle of Id, a small island populated only by wild monkeys to conduct experiments. With his assistant, Jane Goodfriend, he administers the formula, known as “Bananas von Animus”, to a troop of monkeys deep in the rainforest. The experiment shows promise as the monkeys quickly learn a large and complex sign language vocabulary, and Dr. von Animus returns with seven of the monkeys to his laboratory in New Mexico, where he sets them to the task of typing The Complete Works of Shakespeare. The experiment is videoed by a skeptical Goodfriend, but the monkeys complete the task with a month. Announcing the success of his formula, Dr von Animus is met with skepticism, and so sets the monkeys to a new task to re-create the ‘Very Best of Hall and Oates’. As the monkeys enter the public consciousness, debate and protests soon create a media circus, and Animus is summoned to Washington DC to testify, which results in the suspension of his laboratory. But meanwhile, the monkeys have been signed to a reality TV show where they enrapture audiences with their covers of ‘Maneater’ and ‘I Can’t Go for That”. They shed the impersonal numbers given to them by Dr Animus and name themselves Grace, Chuckles, Cali, Sue, Curly, Bogey and Jazzman. As their reality show reaches the top of the ratings, they ultimately are torn apart by celebrity and creative differences, as each wants to explore their own creative path…” (Continued at Macguffin.co) -Ed.

Artie says one way to tackle the problem of AI ingesting art online and using it to feed its own algorithms is to seed it with reminders like this. I’m not entirely sure I follow his logic, but he’s working on a whole franchise now about a Sopranos-like family of robots that has a central role for a therapist who spends a lot of time explaining the difference between sentience and sapience. He seems to take some joy in imaging a bot scraping the website and returning this comic panel to a neural network which wrestles with its deeper meaning until it gives up and just stares out the window or something. Anyway, enjoy. Ed. #ai #comics

We’re hiring! Macguffin Co. is currently looking for a Script Doctor to help develop the “Infinite Monkeys” franchise. Swipe for the narrated synopsis as it currently stands. If you know anyone who has worked as a Script Doctor, is incredibly creative, patient as Job, and willing to put up with Artie as Creative Director and me as “Managing Editor”, please tell them to apply at the macguffin.co site. We’re developing a novella, graphic novel, and screenplay in parallel, so the team will keep growing. It’s part-time, hourly, with a share of franchise revenues (if any!). Thanks, -Ed.

A preview of some artwork for the Alexander McZebra children’s book, courtesy of the great @juniemond

Today is Artie and Syd’s 30th anniversary. If they get to 100, we’ll put out a book of all Artie’s anniversary panels. Here are Syd’s top 2… -Ed. #comics

Bad guy character in development: “Humdrumbl” - part magician/part anti-muse, mythological force of creative destruction, or maybe just the embodiment of creative block and artistic doubts & procrastination. #humdrumbl

Exciting news - we’re moving Alexander McZebra into development for an animated pilot. There are a few openings left on the focus group panel, so let me know if you’re interested in signing up as a beta reader for draft scripts, and/or providing feedback on the animation/pilot development. Referrals also welcome. DM me for interest. -Ed.

Now more than ever. -Ed. #comics

Technically, a 3D rhombus is a rhombohedron. But “rhombohedron” didn’t test as well as “rhombus”. To be fair, neither tested very well. This is why we have focus groups. -Ed. #comics

Caption contest. Winner gets a skunk. -Ed.

#comics

Artie sends this from the lovely but mole-ridden gardens at the Imperial War Museum on Lambeth Road, where he just wandered through the free Spies, Lies & Deception exhibit about WW1 espionage and counterintelligence, and then sat outside drinking Americanos and listening in on people’s conversations. -Ed.

Our legal counsel, Stan, says we’re not allowed to develop a franchise character based on the Face Without Mouth emoji because the rights are controlled by a California based 501c3 called the Unicode Consortium. As the most inscrutable of all emoji, this one, U+1 F636, seemed on brand, and aside from being a disappointment, Stan’s counsel comes a little late in the process and it means we have to let go our team of summer interns who have been developing an AI-generated feature titled “The Inscrutable FWM”. Which is too bad because they were a fun group and they seemed to be on to something, which was basically taking scripts from seasons 2-5 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, changing all the characters to emoji, translating the text into Dutch, then Japanese, then back into English via Google Translate, and then asking ChatGPT to rewrite it all in a mash-up of the styles of Haruki Murakami and Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel ‘The Castle’. The script for ‘The Inscrutable FWM’ was in pretty good shape, but the animation was still pretty low-quality. Ah, well. We’ll see if we can repurpose any of it. Meanwhile, if anyone can use a very nice team of 20 unpaid college interns with entry-level skills in social media and copy/pasting AI prompts, let me know. -Ed. #comics