View from the Other Side: Ellis and Global Frequency - 2004-03-25 8:22 AM
A big selling point for comics recently seems to be that the concept has been optioned by a movie house. "Optioned" means the right of the producer to make a film based on what is usually a novel concept. Usually it involves the small payment of a a sum of cash, and expires after 3 years. It generally allows the producer to explore casting, finance etc. The writer is happy because he or she gets a small wad of cash for doing nothing. At the end of the day, though, there is no guarantee a film will be made out of it.
In his book come in Alone (previously discussed), Ellis makes a big deal out of some his his films being optioned. Maybe I'm just jealous (we're both 24 and I've got nothing optioned), but its really not such a huge thing - not compared to the actual production of the film.
Global Frequency is "optioned". It is a novel concept: 1000 people throughout the world can be called upon for special emergencies which governments can't or won't get involved in. These people all have special abilities, not in the superhero sense, but in terms of them being spies, computer hackers, MIT professors, sharpshooters, helicopter pilots, electromagnetic weapons experts, magicians, linguists, ex-Soviet scientists etc etc.
Ellis has set up a website:www.global frequency.org as part of the sales pitch for the book. Here is the text from the site:
Quote:
There are a thousand and one people on the Global Frequency.
A worldwide independent defense intelligence organization with a thousand and one agents, all over the world. Anyone you know might be with them. It's the world's little open secret. You could be sitting there watching the news and suddenly hear an unusual cellphone tone, and within moments you might see your neighbor leaving the house in a hurry, wearing a jacket or a shirt with the distinctive Global Frequency symbol... or, hell, your girlfriend might answer the phone, and then put on her Global Frequency badge and promise to explain later... for all you know, they have your file, and you'll be recruited next... anyone could be on the Global Frequency, and you'd never know until they got the call...
...from Aleph, central dispatcher for the Global Frequency, getting her orders from Miranda Zero, creator and operator of the organization. Not her real name, but the only one you're getting. Her real name and identity were erased from the world's records the moment she went into business for herself. Global Frequency is run on the cash she made doing bad things in the Nineties, and on the hush money paid her by the G-8 industrialized nations for...
...for what the Global Frequency does. Clearing up after the 20th Century. Keeping an eye on the bad mad things in the dark that the public never found out about. All the black projects, the mad science, the chilly encounters with the unknown, the Cold War traps... they're all sitting there like landmines. Eventually someone will trip over one of them. Global Frequency are there to catch them when they fall, and defuse the mines before they explode into mainstream consciousness and cause more pain and horror than they already have...
You can join the Global Frequency by signing up on for an e-mail account: something cool for the geeks who want to pretend they're part of a global speicl operations force, I guess. Out of curiosity I pressed the button "submit!" without entering my name, and got bumped to the Comic book Resources site =- they are fielding the e-mail software for Global Frequency, and the illusion was broken.
In the first tpb, Ellis uses this arcane collection of speiclists in a variety of scenarios, which as the book progresses become less and less superhero-y and more and more realistic. Here is the basic threats for each story, without giving away too much:
1. Soviet spy/teleporter linked to a nuclear weapon in Russia
2. USAF rogue cyborg in Nevada
3. SETI problem in San Francisco
4. on-line cult with hostages in Melbourne
5. mental disturbances in Norway
6. biological terrorists in London
Ellis winds it down into the sphere of the believable as he goes along. I think he realised the initial tone was wrong, and wanted to make it more believable.
Did I like it? I really liked the concept. I wasn't very fond of the execution. Judge for yourself. 6 out of 10.