Bass: The Hell Savior (High School Art Project)
I was 10 or 11 when I first saw The Matrix on VHS and probably broke a VCR or two rewatching it over and over again for a couple of years. It's what you gotta do at the time when you have no friends and aren't trusted to be outside of the house too poor to get a DVD player: rewatch things on tape. Naturally, the movie and its sequels played a major impact on my imagination the same way Dragon Ball Z had prior; with elements of the two, Little Nicky (no, really), Resident Evil 4 and a myriad of other influences, I created the canon of Bass: The Hell Savior.
Bass: The Hell Savior was about Satan's revenge on the divine order. He had 8 children between his fall from grace as Lucifer and the present day; all but one were born from a succubus. His eighth child, Bass, was born from an angel. During the 1960's, Satan put his plan into motion; what that plan was, I don't remember, but Bass learned it would threaten the Eternal Flame of Hell and thus existence itself. Satan punishes Bass for his protests by exiling him to a cursed tomb or sarcophagus. Fast forward to the present day: a teen smitten with a girl online goes train-hopping in an effort to cross state lines to meet her. He somehow stumbles upon the place Bass was exiled to and now both souls inhabit the same body.
I made the mistake of letting some asshole I used to call a friend have creative control over the story I posted on several freewebs sites when that was still a thing. As a result, they were little more than incomplete prologues with jabs at kids we didn't like at the time wedged in. The last thing I ever did with the story I had in mind was made in Drawing class during my senior year at high school. Not only was it an A+ piece, it's one of the few things I'm glad I did, especially during my awful teenage years.
We were tasked to make a storyboard in 12 panels. Below is each panel with an explanation of what's going on, the whys behind it, a picture of the whole thing and my signature on the back (which I did a week before I posted this).
I hope you enjoy it. This is
Bass: The Hell Savior
Panel 2. The Grim Reaper takes a roundhouse kick to the skull from Bass. In the final throes of the canon, Bass and human teen based on myself has to battle through Hell to strike Satan before he does something; Satan employs Death as a guard.
Ignore the mold stains, please.
Panel 3. I forget the canonical reason why, but the servants of Satan and his seven children all take human forms wearing Matrix-y shit and are called Exiles. Holy water can kill them when a vital organ is splashed with it; it otherwise severely wounds other parts of the body similar to an acidic chemical burn. This is Exile 236 looking down at the injury he sustained trying to harm Bass's Human's crush in a church.
Panel 4. In addition to scarring them, holy water-- if it didn't kill them-- will give an Exile a soul. Exile 236, days after the church battle, gains one and subsequently helps Bass's cause. Shown here is 236 unloading a Mac 11 on two Exiles.
Panel 5. When I used to screw around on fanfiction dot net, I came upon the profile of a Gundam Wing/Sailor Moon crossfic author who had unfortunately lost her battle with cancer at the age of 14. I don't recall what her FF handle was exactly, but "Star" was a part of it. The character seen here is named Star in her honor and, embarrassing as it is to admit, the canon had the girl in question be cured of cancer by Bass. I don't know why, what purpose it served story-wise and I was 13 when I created the character.
Pictured is Star stopping bullets with the power Bass gave her.
Panel 6.
It's Bass pointing a gun at the camera. The idea behind this storyboard was little more than a trailer, which is pretty much all you can do with twelve panels.
Panel 7. Jesus Christ elbows Bass in the jaw. Yup, that's right. Jesus Christ is in this story.
Panel 8. Like Panel 6, a generic scene that depicts someone holding a gun to Bass's head with zero context. I'd be more proud of this particular panel had I not fucked up the trigger finger and the sword hilt.
Panel 9. It was because of the canon I had in mind that this was even allowed to be presented to the teacher, let alone be graded without her alerting faculty. In this scene, Satan (taking the form of Luis Sera from Resident Evil 4) stumbles upon a warning Bass set up for him in the form of Child One.
Panel 10. Another Matrix-y scene. Bass jumps from car towards his second-eldest brother, the third Child of Satan, who is atop a Ryder truck. Picture Tabu from Black Eyed Peas in a green trenchcoat; that's Child Three.
Panel 11. I said before that Dragon Ball Z and The Matrix Trilogy (in this case, Revolutions) were major influences on my imagination and it should show in this panel. Satan and Bass square off with all their might.
Final Panel. The demon Bass looks over the grave of the Human he possessed and sheds a tear. For some reason, the Human dies. Not seen here is the mouth of someone looking through the window upon the scene; that's supposed to be George W. Bush. Bass saves Bush from an assassination attempt for some reason.
One more thing I want to mention before I finish this great-as-hell post: Child Five was based on a contestant of Road Rules from MTV. I don't remember her name but I had a crush on her Angela Trimbur and that was all it took to be part of my stupid story back in my teen years. Additionally, there were generic concepts for Child One & Two, where One looked like the Nostalgia Critic if he were a bouncer and Two was a blonde woman that looks great in a trenchcoat & sunglasses. Four, Six and Seven were never really fleshed out beyond the fact that they were loyal to their father.
This is the entire thing.
This is my John Hancock.
Thanks for reading!
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