page 1 [right]
int. treehouse: closeup on locket w/ cameo, hand, pen on journal, face in mirror
I'm dying, my dear.
Finally.
My experiments have served me well.
One hundred years old.
pages 2, 3 [left, right]
ext./int. treehouse: comedy/tragedy reflection, closeup face, calendar, clock, watch
A full century.
But still, a failure.
Still I age.
Still I die a bit each day.
Each minute.
Each... second.
page 4 [left]
tracking treehouse: pile of books, lab equipment, hypodermic, chessboard, black queen
I've tried everything.
A century of searching.
Cheating death.
No. Beating Death.
Beating her at her own game.
page 5 [right]
int./ext. treehouse: labs, slabs, dissections, bones, tombstones, graveyard
I haven't tried switching bodies in a while.
It won't help.
Another rotting corpse, falling apart.
Wasting away.
Into nothingness.
Dead again.
page 6 [left]
ext./int. mausoleum, sees self in cracked, stained, tarnished, web-choked mirror in tomb
Only one person qualified to do it.
Only me, myself.
Victor von Frankenstein.
And of course, the creature.
The creature could do it.
page 7 [right]
int: treehouse: Victrix with instruments, books, bow, bicycle, walking stick, journal, mirror
Whatever the creature is, it is an expert surgeon.
Just like me.
It understood intuitively.
Like teaching myself.
Recovering a lost skill.
Riding a bicycle again, after twenty years.
Like learning to walk again, after a stroke.
It already knew: What I knew.
It only had to be reminded.
pages 8, 9 [left, right] in Victor's mind
double-spread above horizontal panels, adventure map/underground cave
But the creature... it's lost!
Gone off in search of Hyperborea.
The hidden world inside our own.
Could I find it?
Would it work with me?
It would never work for me.
It would curse me for disturbing its solitude.
Its reverie.
Its slumber-time in the underworld.
page 10 [left]
ext. treehouse: another gravesite, opened, Victrix in doorway of treehouse
And now, a new protege.
Very promising, my love.
But she's just... not me, like before.
Like me.
But not... just like me.
page 11 [right]
back inside, portrait of Victrix, shrine of portraits, storeroom of bodies
A daughter? Not a double.
A twin? A sister?
Soon, she'll help me start anew.
Afresh.
Again.
Arisen.
pages 12, 13 [left, right]
ext. treehouse: Victor reviews his recent monstrous successes, megaflora & megafauna*
And I have my new creatures.
Fabulous beasts.
Reborn wonders.
Soon everyone will see.
See the prodigy I've always been.
A hundred years old today.
A slow bloomer, my sweet.
But I will have my day.
pages 14, 15 [left, right]
ext. treehouse: giant flying patchwork sea serpent cosmic monster archon kaiju rampant
And soon.
Oh, my dearest, departed, lost Elizabeth. (he looks down at the skull in his hand)
So very, very soon.
Motifs: locket, cameo, pocket watch, calendar, painting, portrait, photograph, sketch, journal, gravestone, medical bag, clock, unfinished meals, unread books, abandoned experiments, incomplete journal entries, open graves, partial dissections, barely begun renovations of treehouse, unfinished rooms, carpentry and construction abandoned, laboratories, surgeries, studies and studios, trays of instruments, trays of lunches, tea forgotten, pipe awaiting, patchwork monsters, reanimated creatures, piles of bodies, stacks of skulls, tables covered with bones, obsession with death, decay, time, mortality, etc.
Key:
Page [left/right] shots
*like Superman at Fortress of Solitude zoo?
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