Bobo's Revenge

PAGE ONE (five panels)

 

Panel 1. A crow, in the middle of a dirt and gravel tract, pecks at something dark and glistening. Reflected in its eyes: Sunset over a bucolic, vine-covered countryside. In the distance a skeletal chateau dominates a hill.

 

SFX.

Peck. Peck-peck-peck.

 

Panel 2. A man on a moped, dust and exhaust trailing behind it, lumbers from the shadows along the tract.

 

SFX.

Putt. Putt. Putt. Putt.

 

Panel 3. The crow, startled, flies off, wheeling above the bucolic countryside, the skeletal chateau. The moped runs over the dark, glistening thing.

 

SFX.

Splat.

 

Panel 4. The moped putters toward the chateau’s cast-iron archway and the inner courtyard. The crow follows.

 

Panel 5. The crow lands in front of a bright, barred, ground-level window, peers inside. Reflected in the bird’s eyes is what seems to be, incongruously, an operating room. Hounds, from the courtyard, wail.

 

HOUNDS (op):

Ha-ha-hooowww! Ha-ha-hooowww! Ha-ha-hooowww!

 

 

PAGE TWO (six panels)

 

Panel 1. A mad scientist’s mad laboratory. One wall is lined with gleaming operating tools, another is packed with vials of elixirs, jars of dubious salves and unguents, drying herbs and ingredients. Along another are cages containing cats and kittens, sad eyed and afraid. Madame Musette, a gaunt, elderly woman, a blend of Frankenstein’s bride and Cruella de Vil, in a tight, bloodstained, greenish surgical outfit, black gloves, and welding goggles, is hunched over a glistening, though dented and abused, metal operating table. In the background a crow peers in a window.

 

SFX:

Va-zzzzz! Va-zzzzz! Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz.

 

Panel 2. Bone dust and burnt fur smokes around Madame Musette’s gaunt face. Reflected in her goggles is what she’s operating on—a small, unconscious, black kitten—Bobo. He’s splayed across the operating table. Red shackles hold him down. Hovering over him, a hand-held, blood stained, circular saw. It slows to a stop. Blood drips from its teeth.

 

Panel 3. Madame Musette tosses the saw onto a nearby table cluttered with stained instruments.

 

Madame Musette:

When will we meet again? When the hurly burly be done? In the lighting, wind, and rain? Yes, yes, yes!

 

Panel 4. She sweeps up a staple gun and a large syringe filled with a glowing-red liquid.

 

Panel 5. [from overhead] In maniacal jubilation, she thrusts the instruments toward the ceiling. In the background: Bobo splayed; kittens frightened; the amused crow.

 

Madame Musette:

Now let us staple today and tomorrow together!

 

Panel 6. Madame Musette hunches into her work. Dust and smoke billows and roils over her quivering shoulders.

 

Panel 7: The poor cats and kittens in their cages cringe into the shadows.

 

SFX:

Phit. Phit. Phit.

 

SFX:

Thack. Thack. Thack.