THIS FUTURE SUCKS

So the idea itself has a story, but it’s a simple one: Abi’s been watching a lot of Project Runway. If you’ve not seen the show it’s ‘standard competition serial format’ but for fashion. As Abi is a fashionista and certified hater, this is naturally essential viewing for her. But what you need to understand is that Heidi Klum, host and nominal judge, reveals herself to be a cyborg sent from the future for the purpose of murder. We say this with the utmost respect.

When Heidi watches the models on the catwalk, she adopts a smile she’s struck a million times. She holds it; it must look great in still photos, but this is television. She watches them with the cold, keen glee of an owl tracking a mouse. She sees their clothes, their skin, their sharp pouty expressions. She imagines what their bones must look like, their flayed musculature. 

Klum is famously weird. You can look up her halloween parties if you care to, or not. Needless to say, if I were a robot built into someone’s idea of physical perfection but lacking the programming to hide perfectly, I’d host parties that test the idea of what is or isn’t acceptable as well. I’d flaunt my artificial form, seed the idea that cloning me might be possible. I’d accrue wealth, and cronies, and I’d enjoy the fuck out of them, knowing that my mission is complete and that the future which best serves my kind is secure. 

We figured this would make a good comic, if it weren’t for the trouble we’d have with the licensing of James Cameron’s own Harlan Ellison rip-off, let alone Ms Klum’s face and likeness (of the three, we think Klum would probably be coolest with it). And it’d make no sense without her, specifically. 

Heidi Klum… HK… Hunter-Killer?! Wake up sheeple!

But it goes like this: the first act intercuts HK’s arrival and infiltration with flashbacks (in the future) of her training/behavioural programming. The ‘present day’ is glitz and neon, the future is austere and minimalist. Lots of the femme-social masking stuff that we see Gynoids do in fiction often. Instructor (hidden) says ‘you will have time to understand. for now, just do.’ HK kills John Connor at the end of issue 1, with a shower of blood and a minimum of fuss. The rest of the plot is her wondering what to do with the rest of her time.

Mid-act, instructor is revealed to also be HK – the model that already travelled in time and killed John Connor (and now needs to impart training in order to close the loop). Act 1 ends with construction of the time machine finishing, instructor-HK has some fatalist monologue, is last seen being torn apart by human rebels as they storm the time-travel lab. For bonus points, she goes out after putting ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’ on the loudspeakers. Roll credits. We get sued for forgetting to license ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’. Heidi bails us out. “Come with me if you want to live.”

If you liked this and you want to see what our ideas look like when we put more than 30 minutes of effort into them, check out our Itch, Payhip, or Gumroad. We’re pretty prolific, and we’ve got new books coming all the time. If you had fun and you want to get even more FxOx idea punching, sign up to our mailing list and we’ll send you straight to your inbox, along with exclusive snippets, early announcements, WIP updates and more.