scouter · limited-series · draft
Time Traveler
Volume One
13 issues · 245 pages · 847 panels
The most powerful thing in the universe only works when you stop protecting yourself from it.
Mike and Laura (and Simon),
Thank you so much for taking the time to check out our work! Scouter is a 13-issue series about a two-piece rock band that learns to time-travel by playing power chords through a forbidden green guitar. It is a hero's-journey adventure with the philosophical seriousness of Star Trek: TNG and the kinetic, comedic, enemies-become-friends energy of the Dragon Ball Z manga. The story tracks a thirteen-song concept album of the same name by the real-world band Scouter (Brady Davis, Danny Pappageorge). Each issue shares a title and story arc with one track on the album, and will be released together as one work.
I'm a big fan of Madman, Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns, and Moonage Daydreams (Moonage Daydream is my favorite Bowie song), Batman: Dark Age, the Batman: Audio Adventures covers (especially the Dali Clocks on issue 5), and X-Statix — one of the first comics I read as a kid. I also love X-Cellent. Anyway, for Scouter I had Sheldon Moldoff in mind, Lost in Space, your Superman: Space Age — striking, simple, clean, time/space adventures.
Would be an honor to work with you on the book/series, and at the very least commissioning an album cover would be amazing. You would be a great match for this project. The scripts are very much rough drafts and we're very open to any and all input. Thanks for your time, I'm a big fan.
Best, Brady
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Issues
Issue 1 · The Ordinary World
BROKEN HEARTED
Establish the world, establish the brothers, establish the band. End on the first real piece of music the reader hears in this comic — a hand-built power chord struck in a garage by two kids who have decided to commit a crime together every week. The reader should finish this issue wanting to live in that garage.
Issue 2 · The Call to Adventure
AIN'T EVEN TRYING
The discovery issue. The trap door, the case, the green guitar, the first portal. Pace this one slow at the start (boxes, dust, mom's silence) so the back half can detonate. The portal sequence in the back half is the first "Cosmic Allred" register in the book — give it the full op-art, color-hold, panel-busting treatment.
Issue 3 · Refusal of the Call
DEJA VU
The short, claustrophobic issue. Jesse trying to put the lid back on a thing that won't let itself be lidded. The refusal is the spine — every page is a small act of refusal that fails just a little. Pace this one like a hangover. The reader should finish it impatient for Issue 4, which is exactly when Dad shows up.
Issue 4 · Meeting the Mentor
TIME TRAVELER
The hologram issue. Cosmic Allred register dominates the back two-thirds — this is where the visual identity of the time-jump book is established. The dad appearance should read as both deeply emotional and structurally explanatory; treat the scene like Obi-Wan in the desert, but with frequency-displacement physics standing in for the Force. Jesse's arc beat here is: he refuses, then he is given a piece of information he cannot refuse.
Issue 5 · Crossing the Threshold
WHERE THE COLD WIND BLOWS
The threshold issue. Short, tight, gut-punching. The Simulated Guitar — Jesse's hand-built Frankenstein from Issue 1 — gets burned out by the green guitar going online. The reader has to feel the loss of the Simulated Guitar in the same breath as the awakening of the green one. Mom's goodbye is the second-to-last beat; the chord is the last. End the issue mid-strike. The portal opens at the bottom of the last page and we don't see what's on the other side until Issue 6.
Issue 6 · Tests and Enemies
DON'T RECKON WITH SNAKES
The chase issue. First DeciBot encounter on the page. The Dom show is the bait; the alley pursuit is the hook; the motel hide-out is the rest. End on the brothers realizing they're stuck in 1966 with no USB connection back to the Amp-Sim Box that opened the door. (They have the USB; they don't have a machine to plug it into.) Romantic register for The Dom; Brutal register for the DeciBot pursuit; cut-to-Brutal hard when the chase begins.
Issue 7 · Allies
WITHOUT RAIN
The hangout issue. The school issue. The romance issue. The cool issue. Jesse learns blues. Dev learns the kit. Dev and Sunny fall in love. The DeciBot is offscreen for the entire issue — present only as a slow narrative pressure. This is the issue Mike will love drawing more than any other in the book; let him cook. Eleven days in a warehouse. Music and friends and food and arguments. The brothers transform here. End on the morning of day eleven, with the Amp-Sim Mark IV finished on the bench. The DeciBot arrives at the freight door on the last page.
Issue 8 · Approach the Inmost Cave
WASTING TIME
The detour issue. Aiming for 2220, landing in 2026 — Las Vegas, the year the green guitar was built. The whole back half of the issue is the band's first real audience: a 2026 garage show. Mike, the 2026 chapter is where you get to draw a modern show — phones up, beer cans, sweaty crowd, Brooklyn-in-Vegas indie scene. The reader's reward for surviving the 1960s NYC immersion is seeing Scouter conquer a room that looks like their own. End on the moment they realize they've been spotted, but don't reveal the spotter until Issue 9 page 1.
Issue 9 · The Ordeal
AUTOMATED
The fight issue. The break-the-guitar issue. The supreme ordeal. Jesse smashes the green guitar over the DeciBot's head and the three of them get sucked into a vortex together. End on the brothers arriving in a place they don't recognize — but Jesse's father's house should be visible behind them, framed so the reader can read it before Jesse and Dev do. Issue 10 opens with them turning around.
Mike — the smash is a single-page splash. Build to it. The reader should feel like a Greek hero broke their sword on the dragon.
Issue 10 · The Reward (Seizing the Sword)
AIN'T NO STOPPING
The breath-out issue. The brothers and their father finally in the same room — but in a 2260 that has already healed. Tour-of-the-new-world structure. Mike, this issue is the inverse of Issue 1 — the same Vegas, the same year, but full of sound. Find ways to visually rhyme back to Issue 1's empty street and silent kitchen and let the rhymes hit hard. End on Alex handing Jesse a new green guitar. The hand-off is the seizing of the sword.
Issue 11 · The Road Back
CATCH YA ON THE WAY DOWN
The short, breathless issue. The brothers in the tunnel, intercepted by a DeciCorp recovery signal mid-jump and rerouted. The opening half is the brothers' last moment of joy — laughing inside the portal, expecting to land on the lawn at Vargas Drive — and the second half is the wrongness creeping in as they realize the destination isn't right. End in the cold dark of the warehouse, with Jesse and Dev disoriented and a single shoe-click in the dark from the Operative who is about to monologue them.
This issue is short on purpose — the road back is the bridge between the high of Issue 10 and the final test of Issue 12. Mike, treat it like a connecting tissue issue. Lean kinetic, lean tense. End on a single light coming on in a black warehouse.
Issue 12 · Resurrection (Final Test)
MONEY BACK
The villain-monologue issue. The escape issue. The volume-to-11 issue. The Operative is the best speaker in the book; let them cook. Their monologue should walk the reader to the edge of believing them — Jesse should waver — and Dev should be the one who keeps cooking the plan in silence behind Jesse's worry. End with the chord that opens the portal home and a single panel of Jesse and Dev, mid-tunnel, looking forward to the room that has been waiting for them.
This is the longest issue. Pace the monologue with constant cross-cutting to Dev's invisible preparation — sticks repositioning, USB in pocket, Amp Box cable mapped in his head. The reader should figure out the plan three pages before Jesse does. The Operative never figures it out at all.
Issue 13 · Return with Elixir
TROUBLES ARE BEHIND YOU
The show issue. The finale. The book the whole series has been pointing at since the very first silent street. Mike — push every register at once and let the songs be the comic. Most of this issue is the show itself, rendered as music: each song a sequence of pages, the crowd response as the second main character, the city itself transforming visibly across the night.
The arc is: first song breaks the Grid. Middle of show, news spreads, more people arrive. Operative shows up — not to fight, but to listen. Jesse stops armoring up; plays the last song open. The Spire lights go out. The album ends. The book ends. End on a quiet panel: Marisol at dawn, the salvage yard cleared, a kid in the distance carrying a guitar case the size of themselves toward the bus stop.
This is the longest issue. Earn the length. Don't rush the songs.