Letter 44 - Ike Says No - P. A. Nolte

1/ Dwight D. Eisenhower charges through a hallway.  Behind him are two heavy doors that have just slammed shut.  To his left and right, trailing slightly behind, are a handful of older men in appropriate business and/or military dress.  There are also two low-level officers.  One of them speaks.

Caption: 1954.

Caption: Muroc, California.

Knapp: Do you think that was wise, sir?  If the others come.  Or are already here.  What they are offering--

Eisenhower: Tell me...

2/ Eisenhower has stopped in his tracks and swung around, nearly causing a head-on collision with Knapp.  His face is calm and collected, but has raised a clenched fist.

Eisenhower: Do you SLEEP well at night, Knapp?

3/ Knapp steadies his glasses.

Knapp: Y-yes, sir?

4/ Eisenhower continues to march through the nondescript halls of the base.  The others have followed suit, but have all shifted to the opposite side of Eisenhower than Knapp

Eisenhower: Well, I don't.

5/ Eisenhower has stopped again.  This time, he is about to exit what must be an outer door of the facility.  It is just being cracked open by one of the other men.

Eisenhower: And I will not LAY DOWN arms so that someone-- or someTHING else might wield them FOR me.

Eisenhower: I will not be DEFENDED at the cost of mw OWN DEFENSE.

6/ Knapp watches the door slam shut.  Eisenhower is gone.  The rest of the men all filed out behind him.  Knapp is alone.  Over his shoulder, far in the background, the double doors begin to glow.

Letter 44 - Slick Operator - Perry Kent

This prompt reminded me of a little activist kerfuffle that happened in the Pacific Northwest some months ago involving kayactivists.

Panel 1

Interior, day, the oval office. A slick looking man in a suit passes the President of the United States a stack of photographs, though they aren't very distinct. The President of the United States of America sits at his desk. On the desk in front of the president is a file folder with a “TOP SECRET” on it. The slick man has a brief case on the floor next to him.

1. SLICK MAN: Mr. President, I'm here to talk about the activists in kayaks that are currently delaying the Slick Oil mining vessel.

Panel 2

The President flips through the photographs as he replies to the slick man.

2. PRESIDENT: Yes, I heard. We will deploy the Coast Guard to protect the mission.

Panel 3

The slick man pulls another bundle of papers from a brief case.

3. SLICK MAN: Thank you. But I came to talk about the PR problems our company is suffering due to the appearance of doing exploratory oil mining.

Panel 4

The President slams the papers down on the desk angrily. The slick man looks surprised by the outburst.

4. PRESIDENT: We contracted Slick Oil to retrieve the alien artifacts found in the arctic under the guise of exploratory oil mining. Go. Retrieve. Return. With all the risks and liabilities associated.

Panel 5

The slick man slides his papers back into his briefcase.

5. PRESIDENT (OP): And if Slick Oil tries anything funny, you'll find out just many three letter agencies we can shove down your throat.

6. SLICK MAN: Yes, Mr. President.

-END-

Letter 44 – Letter 45 – MK Stangeland Jr.

(5 Panels)

Panel 1: Image of a hand-written letter, being held by an unseen individual.

WRITING (1): If you are reading this, congratulations on your survival.

WRITING (2): I can only hope that this letter finds it way to those that come after, but it is with that same hope that I write this final letter, even as…

Panel 2: An unidentifiable man, clothed in a survival environmental suit, holds the letter and is looking at it. The paper – and several others like it – are held at an awkward angle, suggesting he doesn’t quite know what he’s looking at.

RAJOR: (Off-Panel) Carlin! What are you looking at?

Panel 3: CARLIN shows the papers to RAJOR, a larger man dressed much the same way he is.

CARLIN: I am not sure. Can you read this?

RAJOR (1): It is of the old script.

RAJOR (2): No one reads the old script anymore.

Panel 4: RAJOR discards the papers from CARLIN’s hands.

CARLIN: What if it is important?

RAJOR: Nonsense. There is nothing of importance here.

Panel 5: Long shot, showing the two wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland that could easily have once been WASHINGTON, DC. Now, however, it’s a barely habitable graveyard of ruins. Nearby is a small caravan of men and women dressed much like CARLIN and RAJOR.

The letter lies on the ground in the foreground.

RAJOR: The only thing of importance anymore is survival.

LETTER (1): Stemphen Blades

LETTER (2): 44^th President of the United States of America

(END PAGE)

Letter 44 - North of the Border - Grant McLaughlin

Lettering note: This page is made up of multiple different letters written by different people (the Canadian Prime Minister previous to the one in each panel).  Ideally, the handwritten lettering of the captions boxes would be different in each instance to help demarcate the different writers.

Also, I apologize that this script is a lot of inside baseball, but Canadian politics is kind of what I do, so I hope you can forgive me indulging myself slightly.

1 - 1873.  Alexander Mackenzie, Canada's second Prime Minister, sits in his office in the West Block building of Parliament Hill, holding a letter in his hand.  An envelope with a hand-written "2" lies on his desk in the foreground.

CAPTION (SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD) (1): I will not lie.  I did not think you would defeat me.

CAPTION (SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD) (2): But now that you have attained the premiership, there is a terrible truth I must pass on to you.

2 - 1896.  Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's seventh Prime Minister, sits at his desk in the House of Commons.  He is the only one there, the lights are low, and he reads a letter.  He cocks one eyebrow at the contents he reads, holding the entire missive and envelope in his hands (the hand-written "6" might be partially visible on the envelope.

CAPTION (SIR CHARLES TUPPER) (1): Within our land's depths are creatures of a truly hellish aspect that thirst only for death and destruction.

CAPTION (SIR CHARLES TUPPER) (2): I know you will find this news difficult to believe.

3 - 1921.  William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's tenth Prime Minister, sits at a briefing by departmental officials.  Some wear military uniforms, others civilian attire.  Many charts, maps, and photos sit spread out on the table.  Their specific contents are not necessarily clear, but everyone wears serious expressions.  An envelope with a hand-written "9" may be visible among the documents.

CAPTION (ARTHUR MEIGHEN) (1): But the relevant ministries will have abundant proof to show you the truth of this threat.

CAPTION (ARTHUR MEIGHEN) (2): Not only to our country

CAPTION (ARTHUR MEIGHEN) (3): But to the world.

4 - 1963.  Lester B. Pearson, Canada's fourteenth Prime Minister, looks terrified as Mounties try to barricade a door, shadowy and dark creatures only partially visible as they try to get past.

CAPTION (JOHN DIEFENBAKER) (1): Past administrations have done everything in their power to hold these dark forces at bay.

CAPTION (JOHN DIEFENBAKER) (2): It is a thankless task, for the nation cannot know the dangers living beneath their feet.

5 - 1993.  Jean Chrétien, Canada's twentieth Prime Minister, stands outside in the snow, watching a military exercise of advanced military vehicles digging into the ground.

CAPTION (BRIAN MULRONEY): But the monsters must be held back and I'm sorry to say that the task now falls to you.

6 - 2006. Stephen Harper, Canada's twenty-second Prime Minister, stands in a secret weapons facility, looking on at even more advanced technologies being put together.

CAPTION (PAUL MARTIN): Good luck.

7 - President Blades sits in a briefing with his allies from China and France (perhaps their representatives are on video screens, with their country marked below).  Blade

BLADES (1): Canada?

BLADES (2): Why would we want them in this alliance?  I want countries who are useful.

Letter 44: "The Under War Diary"--David Press.

PAGE ONE.

1.1: We’re going to open on PRESIDENT BLADES, in half-tier thumbnail panel, laying down the scene. He’s in a bunker-like place; surrounded on all sides by metal. His hair has been white since Issue 24, but now it’s shaved down to a buzz-cut. There’s considerable scruff around his sharp Roman-chin. He’s also not dressed in a suit—he’s in a t-shirt and jeans. He looks like he’s been running; his face is covered in sweat.

BLADES:              They said we would only be down here for ten years.

1.2: Taking up the rest of the first tier—a shot on Blades’s face.

BLADES:              Well, clearly, they made a rough estimate.

1.3: Wide shot of the UNDERGROUND bunker Blades is in. It’s an old missile silo and throughout we see people bustling around in uniforms. The bunker is kind of like District 13 in the Hunger Games books, because people are all wearing the same uniform.

CAPTION [TIME/LOCATION]:  The White Bunker. 2030. Ten years after the World War 3 cease fire.

CAPTION [BLADES]:    “It’s been ten years since they came to take six hundred of us and end the planet.

1.4: We can see the CHANDELIER—the massive structure that the Builder’s built hovering in the space just past the Moon [reference: /wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Letter-44-4.webp]—pointing at the Earth. Its turbines are charged up and it’s firing a thin laser at the Earth.

CAPTION [Blades]:    "It was unannounced."

1.5: A thinner panel, but still taking up the rest of the page of Manhattan expanding in a great big globe of light.

NO DIALOGUE.

Why Letter 44?

I love political science fiction. Transmetropolitan, Battlestar Galactica--William Gibson’s work—any science fiction that seems like it might happen five minutes from now.

That’s why I dig Letter 44—the Oni Press series written by Charles Soule and drawn by . It’s about the 44^th President of the United States, Stephen Blades, who finds out on his inauguration day that there are aliens in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Blades reads the letter from his predecessor, Francis Carroll, claiming that the reason there were a housing bubble, a recession, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was that there was something being built in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Carroll justified the reason for the build-up was to finance a one-way trip up to the belt headed by a civilian/military astronaut task force to see what the “Builders” are up to.

I’ll spare you rest of the summary, but I love this series. It’s probably one of my favorite creator-owned series running. I’ve been devouring Soule’s work over the course of the last two years and he’s been a pretty big inspiration to me to start putting my best foot forward when it comes to writing comics. He’s one of the reasons why I’m here at Thought Balloons, so thanks for having me. Soule’s tagline for the series is “House of Cards meets 2001.”

And while I don’t expect you to use the characters from the series if you’re not familiar with the book, I was thinking it would be a good use of our collective creative muscles to turn our eye towards that logline and interpret and create our own West Wing, or House of Cards, or The Thick of It meets 2001, Alien, or melon-farming Interstellar, (which I just saw last week and oh god. To say the least, I prefer this series.)

As always feel free to leave a comment with your take on the series and have fun with it!