Far Out There: the sad tale of Black Hole Invader Guy (Patreon)

Well now, this is aggravating. I wanted to do another one of those Forgotten/Abandoned Plot Idea blogs, but I can’t for the life of me find any of the associated art to use as a header image. I know I had some, it was a character that I drew SEVERAL design concepts of, but they all seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth. Or, more accurately, got lost in the middle of the fifty million folders of old sketches I’ve still got sitting in boxes around here. And I’m already running WAAAAY too behind schedule on Conventional Wisdom stuff to spend an entire day rooting through folders and flipping through old notebooks right now, so I’m afraid we’ll have to make do with that little bit of MS Paint sloppiness up there. 

Far Out There is full of weird recurring background detail to flesh out the universe of the comic, from suicidal mascot dolls to rock and roll bug girls to terrifying snack foods to whole fictional nations. It’s admittedly less interesting than the green-skinned bikini-wearing alien cartoon, but names like the Zichelidan Emperium and the Persean Confederation and the Black Hole Invaders have recurred quite a few times over the years to try and give things a sense of continuity. But would you believe that, at one point, that last one was supposed to be setting up a new character? A new MAIN character, to replace Trigger and Layla?

Okay, before that last bit freaks anybody out, lemme explain. Waaaay back when I first put the idea for Far Out There together, I based the whole structure of the cast on Doctor Who: Ichabod would be The Doctor, a central character who’s fundamentally unchanging, while Trigger and Layla would be the Companions, side characters to tag along to have things explained to them while having the sort of character developing subplots Ichabod couldn’t until they eventually leave. Now, before anyone says anything, I realize that’s a VERY inaccurate understanding of how Doctor Who works, I was still very new to the show at the time. The point is, even as I was first figuring out Layla and Trigger as characters, I was building in their exit strategy under the assumption that cast changes would be a fairly common thing. And fairly early on, around the time of the Mad Scientist Convention, I think, I figured I should get ahead of the curve and start working out who the next set of Companions should be.

The first “new” character, somewhat ironically, would be Tabitha. I could already tell I was onto something good with her, so I figured she’d make a few recurring appearances after the Mad Scientist Convention before being promoted to the Main Cast once Trigger and Layla departed. Like, she’d wind up stranded on The Exposition after some kind of freak experiment went wrong, and Ichabod would take pity on her and the kids and pay for them to stay for a while. The next new character, who again wasn’t actually “new” at all, would be Vengeance, though he would only be promoted to the main roster thanks to being caught in the middle of an ongoing plotline involving the one ACTUAL new character: a soldier in the Black Hole Invader army.

I really do wish I could track down one of the sketches I made of this guy, because it truly was one of those “a picture is worth a thousand words” situations. The Black Hole Invaders were conceived as the most stereotypically over the top, deliberately EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL band of scifi bad guys you ever saw. I mean, they’re named after the villains in the Mechagodzilla movies, how could they NOT be? The Invader costume was nothing but  silver foil and spikes and capes and all that good stuff. Actually, if I’m remembering correctly, I think my sketches were pretty much Blackfire from Teen Titans with a sort of Spaceman Spiff visor over the eyes. Hopefully I would have put a bit more of an original spin on the look if I’d pursued the character further, but even then it would have just been more Space Villain clichés on top of the current Space Villain clichés.

And it should go without saying that the Black Hole Invaders would be laughably ineffectual as villains (this IS Far Out There, after all). This guy would show up after the Invaders claimed The Exposition as a part of their empire and installed him as the governor of this new territory… by which I mean he would peacefully buy a ticket, all by his lonesome, then loudly proclaim that he’d taken over the place without ever actually doing anything to back those claims up. The closest this guy would ever get to actually doing anything villainous would be trying to recruit Vengeance to their cause. Cos, I mean, just LOOK at him, ya know? The red eye, the scar, the black cloak, the Sephiroth hair, the spooky black speech bubble voice, you just KNOW he’d make a great villain, right? Well, Tabitha would disagree, since at that point my understanding of her character didn’t extend very far beyond “evil mad scientists are bad”, and they’d engage in an epic battle over the fate of Vengeance’s soul. That is, they’d argue over whether or not being a bad guy is cool while Vengeance humorously slipped off and ignored the two.

As I write all this out, I’m already wondering how far I ever expected I could stretch this gag. This is basically just one scene, but I apparently figured I’d be able to rehash it over and over enough to justify the existence of an entire character.  A MAIN character. And make no mistake, there really wasn’t anything else to this guy. Heck, he didn’t even have a NAME beyond “Black Hole Invader Guy.” Granted, most of my characters don’t get names until the very last minute, because I suck at coming up with them. And admittedly, part of the joke was that this guys was supposed to be an anonymous mook, a single Stormtrooper trying to be the whole Empire all by his lonesome. But still, it’s just one joke. Once the Invader Zim-style “I’M NOT AS INTIMIDATING AS I THINK I AM!” gags wore off, I don’t know what else I expected this guy to contribute to the story. I guess MAYBE he could hatch plans for intergalactic domination that get entangled in Ichabod’s Nitpicking jobs the way Layla’s moneymaking schemes do, but then the question becomes why we’d need a new character to do what Layla was already doing. Any way I look at it, there’s just no way this dude would have worked as a member of the main cast.

Ironically, though, it wasn’t any of these problems that made me drop  Black Hole Invader Guy, it was actually Tabitha. Obviously, I didn’t wait for Trigger and Layla to be written out before promoting Tabitha to the main roster, so there’s that. But the bigger thing was that my understanding of Tabitha as a character has changed a LOT over the years, specifically thanks to her becoming more of a foil to Layla. As she got more cheerful and goofy as a counterbalance to Layla’s grumpiness, I gradually realized this wide-eyed space case would NEVER get into a drawn out argument with anybody other than her Dad. The whole “mad science is bad” angle, which had originally been her defining feature, had been relegated to a minor quirk floating in a sea of enthusiastic nerdiness. Part of that was just because we haven’t SEEN more mad scientist characters around for her react to, but regardless of the reason, if you don’t see a character trait for a while, it stops being an thing. If Tabitha were to suddenly have a relationship with another character founded on this notion now, regardless of how foundational it may have been in her early appearances, it would feel really unnatural. And since that character dynamic was all Black Hole Invader Guy ever really had going for him, taking that away pretty much removed any reason for min to exist.

Well, aside from the second-hand Invader Zim jokes, that is. I do still get a good laugh out of the loud, ineffectual wanna-be villain jokes, even if I don’t think they’re enough to build a new main character out of. That’s why the Black Hole Invaders keep getting mentioned every so often, I like the idea of the GROUP and still wanna get some use out of it. In particular, I like the more recent development that Ichabod has a claim to being their leader but doesn’t even care. There’s a lot of potential in that. So, technically speaking, there could very well be a guy from the Black Hole Invaders showing up in the future, but it still wouldn’t be “The Black Hole Invader Guy” I’d originally conceived.

And just in case anyone is still concerned at the thought of Trigger and Layla being written out in favor of other characters, here’s a bit of perspective: everything since Stilez first showed up on the ship in mid-2015 has been the pre-story build up to a new plot arc. That arc is only just now, BARELY managing to get itself started thanks to the arrival of the Short Pants Squad, and even then it could still be considered as build up. And when that new arc finally does being in earnest, I fully anticipate it being at LEAST twice as long as any of the previous arcs. That’s just going by the rough outline, BEFORE I inevitably start throwing in extra bits whenever I feel like it.  So, yeah, expect this next plot arc to take a while. But the best part? After all that stuff is finally wrapped up and done, however long it takes, there has to be at LEAST two more enture plot arcs (plus transitional material) before I can even BEGIN to set Trigger and Layla’s departure into motion.  So, basically, by the time Far Out There without Trigger and Layla becomes a serious possibility for us to face, we’ll all be in our 90s and the comic will be beamed directly into our brains via the Matrix. It’s not something to worry about right now.