Serious about comics

Dozens of randomly snipped items from newspapers, magazines, and Internet print-outs were scattered across the table in Jorge Vega's Brockton ranch-style home. All were things he had saved for inspiration. Two stood out: a picture of Bob Marley and an image of a fruit-eating bat.

Using those, Vega last winter wove a rich narrative tale in comic book form. The resulting "Gunplay" has garnered more success than Vega, a teacher by trade, ever imagined. It will hit newsstands in March. Beyond that, a movie deal is possible.

"Gunplay" is about a haunted Buffalo Soldier - the name given in the 1860s to the black regiments in the US Army who helped fight the Indian wars, and the title of one of Marley's hit songs. A cursed gun forces the soldier in the comic book to kill someone every day to avoid excruciating pain, much like a vampire must suck blood to survive. Along the way, he befriends a 14-year-old boy who slowly evolves into the soldier's moral compass in deciding who should live or die - and how to spare the innocent in the process.

The comic book's moral sweep takes in issues ranging from mercy killing to the moral underpinnings of war.

It was the first publishing deal for the 32-year-old Brockton resident, who has been trying to break into comic book writing for 11 years. He secured it through an online comic book competition last month that brought him to the attention of Platinum Studios, which controls one of the largest independent libraries of comic book char acters and brought "Men in Black" to the big screen.

"Jorge Vega impressed us with 'Gunplay' and clearly won over the worldwide comic book community as well," said Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, chairman of Platinum Studios, in a statement.

Says Vega, "This is a dream come true for me. . . . You only see these things happen to people on TV."

A surging interest in comic book stories has spurred such box office smashes as the "X-Men" trilogy and the "Fantastic Four," as well as last year's NBC surprise hit "Heroes," which chronicles the lives of everyday people who suddenly discover they have supernatural powers.

"Comic books are the closest thing America has to mythology. It's like our own Greek Pantheon," said Vega, a computer network technician and part-time health teacher at the private Park School in Brookline.

"But comic book characters are almost more recognizable than Greek gods," he added. "People know the stories behind the superheroes, what they can and can't do. Knowing I can add a character to that Pantheon is pretty amazing. You can't go back and add a god to the Greek Pantheon."

Vega hopes to build upon that American mythology - dominated over the decades by the likes of Batman, Spiderman, and Wonder Woman - by focusing on a super human who never dons a cape or tights when fighting evil.

Vega's dream of becoming a comic book writer almost fell through. His effort stalled two years ago when his daughter, Joli, then 2, developed a rare form of eye cancer; one of her eyes had to be replaced with a prosthetic one.

Her health improved, and Vega and his wife, Liza, decided in January that he could have one more year to pursue his comic book dream before focusing on the realities of bolstering the family income. (They have a second daughter, Jada, who is 15 months.) It was then that Vega went to a spare room in their Brockton home and poured the paper clippings, stored in an old video game box, onto a table.

Vega didn't immediately come up with the comic book concept. The images floated in the back of his head for weeks, slowly merging to create a setting - the Wild West of the late 1870s - and the characters of Abner Meeks, the Calvary-outfitted soldier who owns the cursed gun, and the 14-year-old boy who comes to direct his use of it. The idea of a cursed gun sprang out of an excerpt he clipped from the US Marine Corps Rifleman's Creed, which describes a Marine's relation to his rifle as a duty, a life.

As a story line took shape - the 14-year-old boy would scout out a town ahead of the Buffalo Soldier's arrival to identify candidates for death - Vega attended a comic book conference in April in Pittsburgh, where he learned of the online comic book competition.

Fortunately for Vega, who writes but doesn't draw, he came across an illustrator, Dominic Vivona, at the conference. The two hit it off, and collaborated via the Internet. Vega, a theater major and physics minor at Connecticut College, writes the script for his comic book like a screenplay, describing vivid images and movement around the dialogue.

The Comic Book Challenge, sponsored by Platinum Studios and AT&T, selected Vega as one of 50 contestants to pitch their ideas in the San Diego area in front of a panel of three judges, including a producer of the animated movie "Shrek."

The judges whittled the field to 10, and voting by the general public over the Internet began in late July, narrowing the field to three. Then comic book fans had one more chance at the vote - much like fans of the TV show "American Idol" - to decide the winner. Across the country, millions of votes were cast.

Michael Goldfine, head of development and production for AT&T Entertainment, said the Buffalo Soldier appeared to resonate with the judges and the fans because he was an antihero, a moral man conflicted by a cursed gun.

They also connected with Vega, he said. In addition to broadcasting the comic book pitches, AT&T also aired "confessionals" from the writers, revealing stuff about their background and what makes them tick. And Vega is a talkative guy, telling folks he bought his first comic book, "The Incredible Hulk," as an 11-year-old kid growing up in Queens, N.Y.

"I think you saw him as this guy with a passion, who is willing to work his butt off to make this a great comic," said Goldfine, a former writer, producer and director of the United Kingdom version of "American Idol."

"I think it all comes down to people loving great storytelling," he later said. "With a comic book, if it's done right, it's great writing. It's people in extraordinary circumstances doing extraordinary things."

If the comic book becomes a strong seller, it could lead to a movie or television deal, Goldfine said.

That could go a long way in boosting family income.

"It is," says Vega, "a pretty epic trip."

James Vaznis can be reached at Jvaznis@globe.com.