Phantom Force

A Tempest on the Chess Board

In addition to the main trailers (one widescreen, one for TikTok), I made very specific trailers for the three heavyweight characters in Threat Quotient.

Tales of the Earthbound has no supervillains per se. All the superheroes in my brand-new pantheon consider themselves to be on the right side of history. Most are either on the side of the Globalist Left or the Dissident Right. Just as in real life, a person is either the hero or victim of their own life narrative, and those opposed to them are the bad guys.

In a better world, the reader would decide for themselves who the heroes and villains are. But you and I both know the leftists will reject this book without even reading it as soon as they realize I’m not pushing their obligatory narratives. They’ll call me a Nazi and do their worst to virtually burn (cancel) this first graphic novel in the series. They will pre-decide that the writer is the villain.

My street-level cyber-vigilantes, who have no superpowers but who have a particular set of skills and some impressive tech, are portrayed such that 20-40 years ago, readers who vote for either political party could have identified with them.

The trailer above is the one I really like. When I considered music I might use for the rough cut, I thought the long instrumental break at the end of CCR’s cover of “Suzie Q” might have the right vibe. Boy, was I right. That late ‘60s rowdy psychedelic swamp rock was just perfect.

Looking back, maybe I should have commissioned some techno, or another genre to get the spooky, ominous sound that would fit the vibe. Instead, I commissioned some musicians to try to come up with something in the same genre. I think I blundered. Trying to get Millennial musicians from Uruguay to do what came naturally to drug-addled hippie Boomers was just not a realistic expectation. I’m really tempted to upload the “Suzie Q” cut despite a possible copyright hit.

Nevertheless, here it is. I’ll let you decide which is better:

Conventional wisdom dictates that trailers should only be 30 seconds to 1:30 long. To which I respond:

• Part of the length comes from showing off some of the Virtual Pulp titles there at the beginning.

• I’m already editing shorter versions of the trailers—I might even shorten the main TikTok trailer.

• The runtime is not terribly important when Youtube is rather vigilantly nuking my view count and hiding these videos from folks who might otherwise watch and like, on a level playing field.

Don’t forget to back the Kickstarter!