EXPLOSION HIGH! “I don’t need your Earth pants!”
EXPLOSION HIGH! “Our survival rate is at an all time high of 40%!”
EXPLOSION HIGH! “This lesson description just says ‘Danger!’”
SO YOU WERE BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE [INSERT NAME OF ANIMAL HERE]…?
There are other super hero schools, but they don’t get it right. Some only teach mutants. This is wrong. Everyone, from the son of a god to a man bitten by a radioactive t-rex to an android from the future can learn at Explosion High.
Some super hero schools get the lesson plans wrong. Super-powered youths need to learn how to use their powers properly, understand the care and maintenance of a secret identity, to skulk in shadows, to properly defuse a bomb or climb inside the mind of the janitor.
Some super hero schools aren’t taught by a mad scientist and they are all obviously wrong. The Professor Explosion! method gives students a first hand experience of: bee attacks, imminent nuclear danger, dinosaur mascots gone awry, ill-thought-out crossovers and bear infiltration. These are all skills the heroes of tomorrow might need, and therefore 100% necessary at Explosion High!
MEET THE CLASSMATES
Each student is enlisted into a ‘super-team’ with five other classmates and expected to stay in a dorm with them. Whether they are a good fit with their team-mates, or in an arbitrary team against their will, students will have to use these ties to help survive in the school community. They will be judged against the performance of other super-teams.
Here are some students who you will meet in Explosion High!
- Kid Armour Junior: Sidekick to Kid Armour, himself the 30-year old kid sidekick to Mr Armour, and neither looks like they’ll retire or die any time soon. An expert with technology but outside of the armour he’s as squishy as your normal weak human, it looks like his mentors might have sent him here to be part of that 60% fatality rate.
- Trouble II: Trouble is the daughter of a little-known super-villain and vowed to avenge his death at the hands of a ‘grim and gritty’ super-hero. She took his identity and his Goggles of Mischief, but once caught by her mother, lied that she was going to become a super-hero. Now she’s been enrolled in Explosion High!
- Mercury: No, not Hermes. Hermes is the Greek pantheon, one over. Jupiter made Mercury a teenager, made him impatient, gave him a voice constantly on the verge of breaking, and has probably done a million other bad things to him. Jupiter is a dick.
- Ziratrar the Almighty: A prince from an alien world, Ziratrar has minor persuasive powers, but other than that only his being alien nobility has got him a place in Explosion High! He is (allegedly) better than you at everything.
- Dawn Tempest: A savage warrior woman from an ancient age. She ripped a crocodile in two and made it into an amusing mask. When she was five. Her people gave her up to the school for shiny objects, and forgot to teach her how to use modern technology.
- SkyShark: He’s half-man, half-shark, half-bird! A menace in the air and a danger in the sea! SkyShark! His gamerscore is better than yours and he wasn’t born with thumbs! SkyShark! He has the illest taste in hats and beer! SkyShark! His origin is so mysterious, even he’s got no idea what is was! SkyShark!
MEET THE FACULTY
- Professor Explosion!: The almost-certainly evil master of Explosion High! Had the exclamation mark legally added to his name.
- Ezra J Rexington III: The school mascot, a T-Rex. Freaks out the competition at football games. Allowed to roam the campus and surrounding woods.
- Mr Axemuscle, Dr The Eye, Mr Microbe, Mr Giantess, Mr Empath Demon, Mr Fistmann, Nurse Gorilla, The Zombie Pterodactyl Men and many more!
THE CAMPUS
Outside of the small, trendy Leafy Town is a door in the sky. The Awesome Door! It’s the way into wherever in space and time the campus is located. The world on the other side is a near-endless forest, populated with dinosaurs and monsters Professor Explosion! has created.
The school is divided into three buildings. The “E” contains the dorms, students are placed into teams of six who live together in a Fortress of Studiousness. The “H” is the main school building, containing the majority of the classrooms. The “!” is the gymnasium, combat arenas and the dot of the “!” contains a shielded gazebo Professor Explosion gives speeches from.
Being a school for over a thousand super-heroes, it has been designed to regenerate. It has also been given self-awareness and an ability to feel pain, but cannot express this fact. Professor Explosion! wishes he could remember why he did that.
LESSON PLAN
Each arc is divided into easily digestible pieces of 8-16 pages, released in one or two pages at a time. Each page should end in something funny or interesting, preferably both.
The first mini-arc, “Meet the Students” shows a glimpse of the first day (falling from a plane) and then 2 pages per character introducing them individually and why they’re at the school.
The second mini-arc, “Through the Awesome Door” has the students thrown at the school and their first assembly, where they meet Professor Explosion! and the deadly school mascot.
The third mini-arc will start to have one-off pages showing the rest of the school as well as the first lessons the cast must endure… I mean enjoy. Definitely enjoy.
From there, it could go anywhere! I know I want to use the devil as a student, the random horrors of each new lesson, a rival team, Enemy High, SkyShark’s nemesis, “AquaBird” and more! My hope is that an artist will be able to provide much more fun into the mix and inspire newer, more hideous storylines for the cast.
A close friend called this series, “The Cube meets Degrassi”, which is a nastier way of putting it than I could. My original concept was more Liberty Meadows meets Clone High meets NextWave meets the X-Men and a lot of stabbing. And sharks. And what my brother & I would do if given power, which we should evidently NEVER EVER have. I would so build a volcano lair if I was in charge of anything. So his was more obscure, but more to the point.
Faked Tales 