All about The Regulators: Hell On Earth: Part One and Part Two
What;s it all about? Now this is an interesting question, a very broad one that could be asking for a variety of answers. The way I see it, we must be asking for a description, yes, but I think the question is also asking for a history, and perhaps a bit of analysis. What was I thinking when I wrote the two books that tell the story, Hell On Earth?
Okay, a brief description: Hell On Earth is the story of nine vigilantes with unique powers and abilities who come together out of need. Yeah, that's pretty vague. Need for what? You start out with three who are stirred to action to react to situations in which someone is in danger or under threat of death. The reaction of these three, the Sentinel, Silver Bison and Madame Orage is very harsh and extreme and as a result, the antagonists are killed. Thunderbolt and Silver Streak appear in the same manner, then having knowledge of these events and being thrust into a similar situation two young women who also have abilities react, and are placed under arrest for murders they didn't commit. These two take on the names Lady Mysteria and Lady Pyra.
Pyara and Mysteria appear after the main antagonist is introduced and he is responsible for their coming out of the closet so to speak. At this point the federal government has assigned an FBI agent the task of putting a stop to the vigilantes activities and arrest warrants are issued that state dead or alive under the conditions. The agent assigned decides that there is no alive condition and only dead is acceptable. But by now the main antagonist has his own agenda in full swing, which is the destruction of life as we know it on Earth, You now have the government hunting vigilantes and vigilantes hunting a sadistic monster while fighting off the government and dealing with a lot of distraction activities by still more criminally minded antagonists.
In the end it is an all out slug fest against crime and corruption and all about preventing Armageddon, of fighting and winning the big zombie apocalypse game, a game in which the government right down to the supreme leader is involved.
So, there we have thee generic or very aesthetic description of what these two books are all about. But that does not tell the story by any means. The most important thing about Hell On Earth is that the nine main protagonists are actual real people. I know, that makes no sense because everyone knows real people do not have super powers so I must be out of my tree when I say that. Now the thing to do is back up to the very beginning and fully explain how there came to be Regulators and the first two book set.
I finished Hell On Earth and got the story published on April 1st, 2014, but the project started in late 2010, and it was not at my desk but at a job in a little roadside diner called Rezac's Cafe just outside of Weston, Nebraska. I got a job there as a dishwasher and long story short, I met five people, Darren Kuncl, Stephanie Polacek, Heather Malina, Thomas Jackson and Allie Wonka. Crazy on crazy, we soon discovered that we all had an interest in the world of comic book heroes. Allie even had a picture of herself as a little kid in a Batgirl costume.
During our first year of working together Darren and Steph and I started wearing super hero tee shirts to work, and exchanging comic book hero memorabilia between us. Then one morning Stephanie came to work and out of left field said, "we should have our own comic book." I was like, wow, here is someone who thinks like I do and so I said yeah, lets do it even though I had no idea how we were going to make it happen. I draw a little, so does Daren and his brother Nathan, Heather and Steph too but not good enough to produce a comic book. Then I thought of digital photos and Photo Shop software and took some pictures and suddenly one evening we were assembled on Facebook talking about an action picture of us as DC Comics' Justice League with Darren as Superman, Stephanie as Wonder Woman, Heather as the Flash, Allie as Batgirl, Tom as Aquaman and me, I was Green Lantern. But we also added another person from Rezac's, Sadie Leigh Van Norman, now Sadie Micek, and she became Hawkgirl.
It didn't take long to put together a 32 page comic that was extremely B-Rated, which wasn't necessarily what we wanted to have in the beginning but it was fun and we all liked it.. That led to the start of a second comic and a third and 3 more covers in all but the idea started falling apart at the same time and the project became a doomed dream. This was, however not before Natasha Hibler who I helped raise from a pup joined the team. And after her I was in Rezac's one Sunday for breakfast and a new employee, Tom Kavan walked up and said, "so you're the famous Doug." I then directed Stephanie to recruit him and he was dubbed E-Man abd Natasha, the Black Canary. Why we still recruited members was crazy considering we were winding down the comic book idea, but we were getting to be almost like a family, very close as friends. But we were not the Regulators yet, or a real team as you would think of if you went to see, for instance, an Avengers movie, but there was something there that was special.
As a means of trying to save the comic book idea and turn the project into one that could possibly make us some money I suggested the idea that we create our own team of heroes and do some comic book work with that team instead of another company's team. Now I want to place a lot of emphasis on that word "team" because it is extremely important here. We started going out to dinner together, to movies, spending time coloring at work in an assortment of coloring books and engaging in other non-business-like activities that could have gotten us all fired. Squirt gun wars were one of those activities, and of course taking photos to use in our comic work.
To move us along on some original work I put together hand out packets that included a super hero template that was drawn over and colored in with a character look design, a background history page, and a list of photos we needed to shoot in order to create heroes at work on pages. For a team name, that came from Darren who came to work one morning talking about a movie he saw the night before, Young Guns. I went home that day with Regulators on my mind and the name just seemed to resonate, couldn't get it out and next day I walked in and said "how about this."
So, now this is where that notion that Regulators are real people comes from. We filled out the character development packets, each of us and created characters but they were just two dimensional beings at that point. We then went to work walking around in the characters to give them personalities, sort of like role playing. But the thing is, the personalities of the characters are exactly who we are. We invented our own team concept and identity by being these characters out in real life situations in public, in movie theaters, restaurants, bars, and on the street and at work. Our interactions as fictional characters then are the same as what we have in real life. Therefore the characters you meet in Hell On Earth are what you get if you run into us up close and personal in a bar and grill.
The sad thing is a Regulators comic book never happened but then I turned to something I already had going, a love of writing and the dream of becoming a published author. And here was something fully developed that I could work with, an idea that I was excited about and committed to hanging on to. I started writing in 2011 and each day at work I got ideas from working and being around my teammates, especially Darren and I scribbled pockets full of notes each day with ideas for the story.
Hell On Earth did not start out dark and gritty, as it is in finished form. The idea of the main protagonist came from Darren, and that is what brought about the type of story, the general theme of what we wanted to do came from. Out of the blue one morning he tossed the name Halloween Jack out there, something he had cooked up a lot of years earlier but I changed the spelling and I thought long and hard how this clown-like character could be something more evil than anything ever, something sadistic and horrific in nature and in his actions.
Honestly, as I wrote the story I fell in love with Jack, he was so perfect. He was brutal, could easily have been named Satan instead. He was cruel and playing with his persona gave me the opportunity to see something I have wanted forever, that being a confrontation with someone like the movie monster types such as Fred Krueger or Michael Meyers up against someone like Batman or Wolverine when the innocent victims are helplessly face to face with the monster. I always wanted that opportunity for heroes to save the day instead of conceding victory to a monster.
My favorite moment in the story while I was writing it occurs in a very small town in Nebraska called Swedeburg. This one moment is the defining moment in terms of dark as it applies to a scary villain. I wrote this part of the story one night late just before Halloween in 2013 and the harvest moon was bright outside and the streets of town had a spooky wind blowing through them carrying leaves around. The focus of attention in the story during this eve is a family of five, mom and dad and three small children and Jack hs sent a warning that he is going to feast on the corpses of this family. Three Regulators are dispatched to keep them safe until transportation arrives to carry them to safety, and you can look at them as Thomas Jackson, Tom Kavan and Natasha Hibler, or as Silver Streak, Warhawk and Blackout respectively, which is who I chose for that situation.
While Blackout and Streak searched the house for the family I had Warhawk overhead in a Regulators aircraft watching the streets. The scene plays out with the family found but Warhawk spotting an old black 50's panel truck entering Swedeburg and moving on the streets in the general direction of the house. Blackout moves outside the house near the street just in case it is Jack approaching while Silver Streak stays in the house with the family. The panel truck turns down the street, Blackout stands ready, then freezes when the truck slowly pulls even with her and she sees Jack for the first time, and is paralyzed by fear.
A basic description of Jack begins with hair that is a greenish brown and looks like living vegetation that is alive on his head, but not like flowers but more like weeds in a state of dying and decay. Then you give him skin that is a ruddy brown color and opening in places, wrinkled with a snotty puss escaping through openings. His teeth are a rotted brownish yellow, his breath the odor of decaying flesh and those eyes, they are like burning embers. His voice is a rough, scratchy hiss, perhaps a steam escaping death rattle. Them imagining a voice like that when the owner laughs, or when he is in the middle of an angry rant.
So, Warhawk puts his Viper aircraft down in the street three blocks away and walks out into the street, like in the old west cowboy picture for the big shootout and for a minute I thought the story could come to an end right there instead of as I had it planned for much later. When Blackout froze and she stuttered into her com-link that it was Jack Silver Streak radioed home that they needed backup right now while Warhawk was standing in the path of the panel truck, bow and explosive arrow at the ready.
At that point I really thought I was going to prematurely write the ending different from what I had planned. There was a chill in my apartment and I felt the hair on my neck standing up and I had to turn and look behind me because I literally thought Jack could be standing there. Down the street Warhawk waited and when the truck was within a block he let fly his arrow and it went through the windshield and exploded. he then he emptied his revolver into the truck, holstered and stormed up to the truck with his sawed off shotgun aimed at the driver and shouted a very profane demand for the driver to get out of the truck. At the same moment Silver Bison and Madame Orage arrived on the scene, Orage overhead and Bison at the truck.
Bison then ripped the drivers side door off its hinges and tossed it aside and discovered that it wasn't Jack at all, but someone wearing a mask and pretending to be Jack. The driver was of course dead from Warhawks assault. I sat there at my desk, heart pounding and wondering what was going to happen next, seriously. The transport vehicles drove up next and with a Regulators escort carried the family away to safety. Now this is where I showed the side of Jack that makes him so special to me.
He actually was in the truck, in the back compartment and after everyone left he pushed the rear door open and threw a tantrum, jumping up and down, kicking at the ground and screaming profanity. Then he walked away into the night. I needed to do something childish with my sadistic monster to show how warped his mind was and I was very pleased with the result, and the story was still continuing on.
Possibly my most favorite character is Lady Mysteria who as a sorceress seemed like a weak link at times, but several times she brought tears to my eyes, especially at the end when one of Jacks minions, well, that would be giving something away that is best left untold just in case we haven't read the story yet. But then there is one point when she has decided she does not want to be a part of the team after she almost gets an innocent bystander killed and she falls while dragging her bags down a dirt road ina rain storm, and there is a scene at Prague, Nebraska where she has gone to aid the town as a part of Jack's army descends upon it, In this scene she uses a spell to conjure help for a farm girl and the girl's brothers who are way over matched by hundreds of Jack's army of the damned. The help she summons was classic I thought, as it was the ghost of George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
By this time in the writing of the story, Sadie had already moved on in life and was no longer a part of Regulators and it left an empty spot in my heart, which I think contributed to the tearful moments in the story.
The ending of the story, a lot of tears on that because as I have said, sometimes heroes die and stopping Jack is a costly thing but in attempting to write a story that is the most heroic effort I could imagine death had to be a partner in the writing. I wanted something that would hit people hard, like a slap across the face and make them remember how human, how warm and caring the vigilantes are from beginning to end, that they laughed, lived and loved, sacrificed, and were very human.
Once the books were published and I was holding copies of them in my hands it was the most incredible feeling, unbelievable moment ever because that one moment represented the that final accomplishment after a lifetime of dreaming. I was interviewed by the editor of the loacl paper, the Wahoo Newspaper and made it on page three. People recognized me at work and at the BP gas stop across gthe highway from work as the writer in the newspaper and the loacls went crazy over what I may have or may not have written about the people in this area and about where I worked and the people I worked with, like they were almost afraid of what I said, and there were those who were congratulatory of the accomplishment.
Then I was interviewed for an online news source called The Inquisitr and made the front page on a day when President Obama was on the same front page. The picture that went with the story included myself and my fellow Regulators, Darren, Stephanie and Heather. I discovered that the readership of the Inquisitr is 1.5 million people and I just swelled up inside and thought I would burst. It was incredible, the ride that our comic book experiment brought about. All of the attention hasn't translated into a lot of dollars, not yet but Regulators is just in a fledgling stage and I honestly believe that someday Hell On Earth will find its way onto film and people will sit in theaters and watch our story told by actors in a way that will draw the attention of millions of people.
Money is nice, but I am a story teller because I enjoy it. I enjoy that people hang on what my imagination creates. That is what makes storytelling worth the time and effort.
She said, "we should have our own comic book" and BOOOOOM, here we are with something bigger.
What;s it all about? Now this is an interesting question, a very broad one that could be asking for a variety of answers. The way I see it, we must be asking for a description, yes, but I think the question is also asking for a history, and perhaps a bit of analysis. What was I thinking when I wrote the two books that tell the story, Hell On Earth?
Okay, a brief description: Hell On Earth is the story of nine vigilantes with unique powers and abilities who come together out of need. Yeah, that's pretty vague. Need for what? You start out with three who are stirred to action to react to situations in which someone is in danger or under threat of death. The reaction of these three, the Sentinel, Silver Bison and Madame Orage is very harsh and extreme and as a result, the antagonists are killed. Thunderbolt and Silver Streak appear in the same manner, then having knowledge of these events and being thrust into a similar situation two young women who also have abilities react, and are placed under arrest for murders they didn't commit. These two take on the names Lady Mysteria and Lady Pyra.
Pyara and Mysteria appear after the main antagonist is introduced and he is responsible for their coming out of the closet so to speak. At this point the federal government has assigned an FBI agent the task of putting a stop to the vigilantes activities and arrest warrants are issued that state dead or alive under the conditions. The agent assigned decides that there is no alive condition and only dead is acceptable. But by now the main antagonist has his own agenda in full swing, which is the destruction of life as we know it on Earth, You now have the government hunting vigilantes and vigilantes hunting a sadistic monster while fighting off the government and dealing with a lot of distraction activities by still more criminally minded antagonists.
In the end it is an all out slug fest against crime and corruption and all about preventing Armageddon, of fighting and winning the big zombie apocalypse game, a game in which the government right down to the supreme leader is involved.
So, there we have thee generic or very aesthetic description of what these two books are all about. But that does not tell the story by any means. The most important thing about Hell On Earth is that the nine main protagonists are actual real people. I know, that makes no sense because everyone knows real people do not have super powers so I must be out of my tree when I say that. Now the thing to do is back up to the very beginning and fully explain how there came to be Regulators and the first two book set.
I finished Hell On Earth and got the story published on April 1st, 2014, but the project started in late 2010, and it was not at my desk but at a job in a little roadside diner called Rezac's Cafe just outside of Weston, Nebraska. I got a job there as a dishwasher and long story short, I met five people, Darren Kuncl, Stephanie Polacek, Heather Malina, Thomas Jackson and Allie Wonka. Crazy on crazy, we soon discovered that we all had an interest in the world of comic book heroes. Allie even had a picture of herself as a little kid in a Batgirl costume.
During our first year of working together Darren and Steph and I started wearing super hero tee shirts to work, and exchanging comic book hero memorabilia between us. Then one morning Stephanie came to work and out of left field said, "we should have our own comic book." I was like, wow, here is someone who thinks like I do and so I said yeah, lets do it even though I had no idea how we were going to make it happen. I draw a little, so does Daren and his brother Nathan, Heather and Steph too but not good enough to produce a comic book. Then I thought of digital photos and Photo Shop software and took some pictures and suddenly one evening we were assembled on Facebook talking about an action picture of us as DC Comics' Justice League with Darren as Superman, Stephanie as Wonder Woman, Heather as the Flash, Allie as Batgirl, Tom as Aquaman and me, I was Green Lantern. But we also added another person from Rezac's, Sadie Leigh Van Norman, now Sadie Micek, and she became Hawkgirl.
It didn't take long to put together a 32 page comic that was extremely B-Rated, which wasn't necessarily what we wanted to have in the beginning but it was fun and we all liked it.. That led to the start of a second comic and a third and 3 more covers in all but the idea started falling apart at the same time and the project became a doomed dream. This was, however not before Natasha Hibler who I helped raise from a pup joined the team. And after her I was in Rezac's one Sunday for breakfast and a new employee, Tom Kavan walked up and said, "so you're the famous Doug." I then directed Stephanie to recruit him and he was dubbed E-Man abd Natasha, the Black Canary. Why we still recruited members was crazy considering we were winding down the comic book idea, but we were getting to be almost like a family, very close as friends. But we were not the Regulators yet, or a real team as you would think of if you went to see, for instance, an Avengers movie, but there was something there that was special.
As a means of trying to save the comic book idea and turn the project into one that could possibly make us some money I suggested the idea that we create our own team of heroes and do some comic book work with that team instead of another company's team. Now I want to place a lot of emphasis on that word "team" because it is extremely important here. We started going out to dinner together, to movies, spending time coloring at work in an assortment of coloring books and engaging in other non-business-like activities that could have gotten us all fired. Squirt gun wars were one of those activities, and of course taking photos to use in our comic work.
To move us along on some original work I put together hand out packets that included a super hero template that was drawn over and colored in with a character look design, a background history page, and a list of photos we needed to shoot in order to create heroes at work on pages. For a team name, that came from Darren who came to work one morning talking about a movie he saw the night before, Young Guns. I went home that day with Regulators on my mind and the name just seemed to resonate, couldn't get it out and next day I walked in and said "how about this."
So, now this is where that notion that Regulators are real people comes from. We filled out the character development packets, each of us and created characters but they were just two dimensional beings at that point. We then went to work walking around in the characters to give them personalities, sort of like role playing. But the thing is, the personalities of the characters are exactly who we are. We invented our own team concept and identity by being these characters out in real life situations in public, in movie theaters, restaurants, bars, and on the street and at work. Our interactions as fictional characters then are the same as what we have in real life. Therefore the characters you meet in Hell On Earth are what you get if you run into us up close and personal in a bar and grill.
The sad thing is a Regulators comic book never happened but then I turned to something I already had going, a love of writing and the dream of becoming a published author. And here was something fully developed that I could work with, an idea that I was excited about and committed to hanging on to. I started writing in 2011 and each day at work I got ideas from working and being around my teammates, especially Darren and I scribbled pockets full of notes each day with ideas for the story.
Hell On Earth did not start out dark and gritty, as it is in finished form. The idea of the main protagonist came from Darren, and that is what brought about the type of story, the general theme of what we wanted to do came from. Out of the blue one morning he tossed the name Halloween Jack out there, something he had cooked up a lot of years earlier but I changed the spelling and I thought long and hard how this clown-like character could be something more evil than anything ever, something sadistic and horrific in nature and in his actions.
Honestly, as I wrote the story I fell in love with Jack, he was so perfect. He was brutal, could easily have been named Satan instead. He was cruel and playing with his persona gave me the opportunity to see something I have wanted forever, that being a confrontation with someone like the movie monster types such as Fred Krueger or Michael Meyers up against someone like Batman or Wolverine when the innocent victims are helplessly face to face with the monster. I always wanted that opportunity for heroes to save the day instead of conceding victory to a monster.
My favorite moment in the story while I was writing it occurs in a very small town in Nebraska called Swedeburg. This one moment is the defining moment in terms of dark as it applies to a scary villain. I wrote this part of the story one night late just before Halloween in 2013 and the harvest moon was bright outside and the streets of town had a spooky wind blowing through them carrying leaves around. The focus of attention in the story during this eve is a family of five, mom and dad and three small children and Jack hs sent a warning that he is going to feast on the corpses of this family. Three Regulators are dispatched to keep them safe until transportation arrives to carry them to safety, and you can look at them as Thomas Jackson, Tom Kavan and Natasha Hibler, or as Silver Streak, Warhawk and Blackout respectively, which is who I chose for that situation.
While Blackout and Streak searched the house for the family I had Warhawk overhead in a Regulators aircraft watching the streets. The scene plays out with the family found but Warhawk spotting an old black 50's panel truck entering Swedeburg and moving on the streets in the general direction of the house. Blackout moves outside the house near the street just in case it is Jack approaching while Silver Streak stays in the house with the family. The panel truck turns down the street, Blackout stands ready, then freezes when the truck slowly pulls even with her and she sees Jack for the first time, and is paralyzed by fear.
A basic description of Jack begins with hair that is a greenish brown and looks like living vegetation that is alive on his head, but not like flowers but more like weeds in a state of dying and decay. Then you give him skin that is a ruddy brown color and opening in places, wrinkled with a snotty puss escaping through openings. His teeth are a rotted brownish yellow, his breath the odor of decaying flesh and those eyes, they are like burning embers. His voice is a rough, scratchy hiss, perhaps a steam escaping death rattle. Them imagining a voice like that when the owner laughs, or when he is in the middle of an angry rant.
So, Warhawk puts his Viper aircraft down in the street three blocks away and walks out into the street, like in the old west cowboy picture for the big shootout and for a minute I thought the story could come to an end right there instead of as I had it planned for much later. When Blackout froze and she stuttered into her com-link that it was Jack Silver Streak radioed home that they needed backup right now while Warhawk was standing in the path of the panel truck, bow and explosive arrow at the ready.
At that point I really thought I was going to prematurely write the ending different from what I had planned. There was a chill in my apartment and I felt the hair on my neck standing up and I had to turn and look behind me because I literally thought Jack could be standing there. Down the street Warhawk waited and when the truck was within a block he let fly his arrow and it went through the windshield and exploded. he then he emptied his revolver into the truck, holstered and stormed up to the truck with his sawed off shotgun aimed at the driver and shouted a very profane demand for the driver to get out of the truck. At the same moment Silver Bison and Madame Orage arrived on the scene, Orage overhead and Bison at the truck.
Bison then ripped the drivers side door off its hinges and tossed it aside and discovered that it wasn't Jack at all, but someone wearing a mask and pretending to be Jack. The driver was of course dead from Warhawks assault. I sat there at my desk, heart pounding and wondering what was going to happen next, seriously. The transport vehicles drove up next and with a Regulators escort carried the family away to safety. Now this is where I showed the side of Jack that makes him so special to me.
He actually was in the truck, in the back compartment and after everyone left he pushed the rear door open and threw a tantrum, jumping up and down, kicking at the ground and screaming profanity. Then he walked away into the night. I needed to do something childish with my sadistic monster to show how warped his mind was and I was very pleased with the result, and the story was still continuing on.
Possibly my most favorite character is Lady Mysteria who as a sorceress seemed like a weak link at times, but several times she brought tears to my eyes, especially at the end when one of Jacks minions, well, that would be giving something away that is best left untold just in case we haven't read the story yet. But then there is one point when she has decided she does not want to be a part of the team after she almost gets an innocent bystander killed and she falls while dragging her bags down a dirt road ina rain storm, and there is a scene at Prague, Nebraska where she has gone to aid the town as a part of Jack's army descends upon it, In this scene she uses a spell to conjure help for a farm girl and the girl's brothers who are way over matched by hundreds of Jack's army of the damned. The help she summons was classic I thought, as it was the ghost of George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
By this time in the writing of the story, Sadie had already moved on in life and was no longer a part of Regulators and it left an empty spot in my heart, which I think contributed to the tearful moments in the story.
The ending of the story, a lot of tears on that because as I have said, sometimes heroes die and stopping Jack is a costly thing but in attempting to write a story that is the most heroic effort I could imagine death had to be a partner in the writing. I wanted something that would hit people hard, like a slap across the face and make them remember how human, how warm and caring the vigilantes are from beginning to end, that they laughed, lived and loved, sacrificed, and were very human.
Once the books were published and I was holding copies of them in my hands it was the most incredible feeling, unbelievable moment ever because that one moment represented the that final accomplishment after a lifetime of dreaming. I was interviewed by the editor of the loacl paper, the Wahoo Newspaper and made it on page three. People recognized me at work and at the BP gas stop across gthe highway from work as the writer in the newspaper and the loacls went crazy over what I may have or may not have written about the people in this area and about where I worked and the people I worked with, like they were almost afraid of what I said, and there were those who were congratulatory of the accomplishment.
Then I was interviewed for an online news source called The Inquisitr and made the front page on a day when President Obama was on the same front page. The picture that went with the story included myself and my fellow Regulators, Darren, Stephanie and Heather. I discovered that the readership of the Inquisitr is 1.5 million people and I just swelled up inside and thought I would burst. It was incredible, the ride that our comic book experiment brought about. All of the attention hasn't translated into a lot of dollars, not yet but Regulators is just in a fledgling stage and I honestly believe that someday Hell On Earth will find its way onto film and people will sit in theaters and watch our story told by actors in a way that will draw the attention of millions of people.
Money is nice, but I am a story teller because I enjoy it. I enjoy that people hang on what my imagination creates. That is what makes storytelling worth the time and effort.
She said, "we should have our own comic book" and BOOOOOM, here we are with something bigger.