DMV Universe — Complete Reference

The only thing more astounding than the discovery of the miracle fossil fuel, BOA® (Blood Of Ares) beneath the surface of Mars was the subsequent discovery that polymers made from it, repelled gravity when exposed to electrical current.

Though practical antigravity, or Antiweight® will have been in use for three decades by the time of America Jones' "NTDDCF", it is only now ever so slowly making its way into the hands of an awaiting public.

To date, FT's, or Floating Transports have only been used by heavily trained and licensed services. Such as Heavy FT's, or "HeFT's" for construction and freight hauling; and Light FT's or the "LiFT's" that have become infamous through their use by the DMV.

The Medium FT's, or "MeFT's" are potentially the most diverse breed of these vehicles, as they could represent the realizations of science fiction's long welshed-upon promise of "flying automobiles", but they are the last to be fully developed due to the vast multitude of safety concerns they raise.

Even so, for years automotive manufacturers have fought legal battles to enable them to build more than the occasional tow truck, or playthings for the astoundingly wealthy.

After decades of war with various levels of legislature, as well as the insurance industry, it looks like the first practical, affordable MeFT will finally find its way into the open arms of the common driver.

That vehicle is the Pegasus.

One more headache for the Meter Maids.

As every schoolchild knows today, the discovery of BOA® was made in 1976 by the Viking lander, and withheld from public knowledge, until regular travel was established in 2045.

Anyone who's ever known me has suffered under the extremely long held belief that I will eventually produce a comic, or cartoon, or series of cocktail napkin sketches containing this bizarre concept.

The concept is DMV.

It is set in the "Not-Too-Distant-Dystopian-Cyberpunk-Future"—a phrase which doesn't even lend itself to an acronym. (NTDDCF? See what I mean?) I've tried abbreviating. It doesn't take. I suppose I'll just have to copy and paste a lot.

What does the NTDDCF look like? Spaceflight, flying cars, light-up umbrella handles, and all of the street-crime and political corruption of home. To me, Anime=Cyberpunk. I loved Akira, Dominion, Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis. Where the future isn't full of magic technology, and there's still problems ordinary bums have to rise up and solve, in the absence of glittering perfect idealists. Despite the fact they're full of cyborgs and sentient machines, those futures always felt more authentic. My preferred not too distant dystopic cyberpunk futures should have fighter jets and motorcycles that all turn into robots. Really there should be something like that in every cartoon.

In this future the most valuable thing is a 6 x 3 meter rectangle of road surface watched over by a cycloptic parking meter and delineated by two inch wide lines of paint. These simple slivers of territory are easily worth a man's life—especially during rush hour! When the spaces become scarce, ritualized combat begins. The thing is, you can earn your share of food, water and natural resources—you just have to show up on time for work. Thus the demand for parking space.

It's 2076. Do you know where your car is?

And believe me, the combat is going to get a lot uglier. I'll tell you about old ladies later.

Even though firearms will be used with dizzying frequency, almost no one will ever get hurt or die. You know, like in the old G.I. Joe cartoon.

Our heroine is America Jones—AJ, for short—the not-too-distant-cyberpunk-dystopian-future's toughest Parking Enforcement Officer!

She gets really pissed when you call her "Miss America." Her name is America. With "Columbia", it would be CJ. Don't go there.

I didn't design AJ with a mind toward drawing "the sexy girl", but folks react to her as a sex symbol nonetheless. Guess I'm just too used to drawing "that kind of girl." I suppose it's ultimately my fault for using Nichelle Nichols as the physical template for the character. AJ has dark skin, and purple hair. (You can't tell that from the pencil sketches, of course.)

AJ is nothing if not a stickler for regulations. She has a cool, "one shot per customer" demeanor—unlike some of her less restrained colleagues. I think I designed a different pistol each time I drew the character. I might use that to my advantage in the story at some point:

Some other character whose sole purpose is to provide a straight line: "Weren't you carrying a Revolver yesterday?"

AJ: "Yes, but today is Thursday."

She owns 50 slightly different ones. (Hmmm, maybe I'll just say that.)

Her PTD holster is inspired by the old Galaxy Rangers cartoon—how the straps on their holsters would pop open on command. I thought it would be cool if the entire holster opened up and somehow "magleved" the PTD to its user. There's a slit running down the side of the holster, similar to the ones the Colonial Warriors used in the original Battlestar Galactica. (Dang. I forgot about Robocop's holster. Well I suppose I could bluff and count that among the references I'm paying homage to as well.)

Casting? Hmmm, the girl who played the kid sister in "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" should be just about the right age now.

A seminal moment in AJ's childhood: she wandered into the mighty Megarage and was menaced by an antique Camaro IROCZ. (Keen eyes will notice the mass of unpaid tickets accumulated on the car's windshield.) Every one loves Camaros. You don't own a Camaro, a Camaro owns you. A mystic bond exists between a Camaro and its owner quite unlike the rapport between any other car and driver.

Young AJ is deftly plucked from the front bumper of death by a quick thinking meter maid. (Technical Note: To help ground this in a previous era, I decided to give the older meter maid actual wheels on her scooter.)

Young AJ notices the brake lights aren't even lit on the IROCZ as it peels away. She memorizes its distinctive aftermarket "Whale Tail" spoiler, to recall later in the inevitable rematch, and looks in speechless awe upon her positive black role model.

A meter maid is born.

I've since decided to change the car from the Camaro to the fictional Red ICE. (Still working on the name, but I want the letters ICE in it to signify Internal Combustion Engine.) That way, I avoid any potential licensing issues with General Motors, and I get to have fun making up another car.

Drew is AJ's partner—the not-too-distant-dystopian-future's least badass meter maid. He is significantly less than heroic. AJ rushes to the scene of a Pool Party; an unenthusiastic Drew is quick to point out that they are heading toward the source of a 100mm H.O.G. blast. AJ chides, "What do you recommend we do, partner? Call the police?" AJ accelerates away, leaving Drew to fume. And plot his passive/aggressive revenge.

I originally designed Drew with a fu man chu 'stache. I was going for a whimsical Errol Flynn look, until I realized that Flynn was actually cool, something that AJ's hapless sidekick only achieves on extremely rare instances. I've also been weighing the option of replacing him with a female, since as he stands, I fear Drew might be a little too reminiscent of another bumbling male sidekick.

Miriam "Repeat" Bradley is an inexperienced Parking Enforcement Officer, still growing out her hair from her strict academy bowl-cut. She idolizes America Jones almost like one would a popular upperclassman, following the seasoned veteran around like a lost puppy, and obsessing over her arrest record like the stats of a popular athlete. The younger officer aspires to one day have a comparable citation record, instill as much respect and fear among the various Commuter Tribes, and have a similarly curvy figure as her more experienced counterpart. (At her present rate of development, only two of her three goals are most likely possible.)

Miriam has acquired the nickname "Repeat" due to her preference of carrying two PTD's—one on each hip. She tends to be over eager, and often barrages offenders, frequently coating them with tickets. At present she is a far cry from AJ's cool, "one shot per customer" demeanor, but due her habit of wallpapering her opponents, she is well on her way to being feared by the Tribes. The onomatopoeia for her guns firing? "SPAK!"

Roulette is a hotshot officer of the GHP—the Global Highway Patrol. A long time rival of AJ's, she's fond of pointing out that she has worldwide jurisdiction as well as a self-aware, nigh-indestructible squad car with a high-yield capacitor gun. Secretly, she's annoyed that AJ catches more crooks with just a gun that shoots parking tickets.

Diane "Dice" Curbicheque (Pronounced "Curb-Check.") is a former Highway Patrol driver, whose celebrated insubordination lands her in parking enforcement. Her car, an artificially intelligent armed Guncoupe interceptor, which she affectionately nicknames "Coop", joins Dice on her plunging career path due a deep, unrequited affection for the irreverent officer. (That's right. The car is in the friend zone.)

Then there's "WiNiE"—Woman with No Eyes—a meter maid AJ encountered in her past, who always wears sunglasses. The name is a pretentious reference to a character from the movie "Cool Hand Luke", in which Paul Newman plays a man who is sentenced to a chain gang for vandalizing parking meters.

Finally there is the NTDDCF's Special Combat Weapons and Armor Division, or "SCWAD." Sure, they have a breathtaking assortment of visionary weapons, equipment and vehicles, and bad ass storm troopery armored uniforms in a fashionable klein blue, but whenever they get a call, a meter maid has resolved the matter by the time they arrive on the scene. They are the Maytag™ repairmen of the future.

A Samurai has his Katana. A Jedi has his Light Sabre. In the not too distant dystopian cyberpunk future, Meter Maids will have Parking Ticket Dispensers as their chief instrument of dispensing justice.

Since the initials, "PTD", are very similar to Philip K Dick's initials—which are used for the eponymous PKD pistol of Blade Runner fame—and since DMV is more or less, a cyberpunk story, I took a lot of cues from the iconic weapon. The clear polyethylene grips, a "policeman like" palette. Initially, I wanted to use the same general proportions from a Colt Army Single Action revolver, but I found that a Colt Anaconda worked better for my purposes. (Many thanks to my good friend and retired postal worker Ken Cox for the gift of the Complete World Encyclopedia of Guns.)

A little pseudo-technical information: A standard PTD carries 250 blank parking tickets in the form of compactly folded sheets of interwoven carbon nanotubes. Each ticket is accelerated to approximately 300 meters per second by a series of 110 wafer thin magnetic field accelerators, lining the interior of the dispenser's barrel, and is programmed to unfold within seconds of attaching itself, nigh-irremovably, to a target.

With a PTD, every Parking Enforcement Officer holds the power of life and debt in her hands.

I could say that a PTD's linear accelerators have significantly less recoil than that of a traditional gas-operated weapon, allowing single handed accuracy, but, truth be told, while I put a lot of time and research trying to give the guns themselves a sense of verisimilitude; the way they'll be used won't have much to do with recognizable gun etiquette. I guess I've watched too many of this type of film.

The Palomino 61M Assault PTD is the inevitable rifle version—same 5.5'' x 8.5" ticket as the pistol type, but at a significantly higher rate of fire. The larger barrel beneath the primary muzzle fires larger 6' x 9' tickets, which can paper an average man to a wall from as much as 250 yards. Largely used for crowd control situations. There are also Sniper PTD's, vehicle-mounted heavy PTD's, and yes—probably a Gatling PTD. (As well as a name for the 6' x 9' tickets—"SIXTY-NINES"!!!)

Beyond the PTD, there's the Thug Zapper—a shotgun-like weapon that fires the artificial equivalent of Texas Ball Lightning at a target. Sure I could have called it a "Wireless Taser," but that just wasn't as catchy. Since future police are banned from the use of lethal weapons, their arsenal consists of incapacitation weapons like the Thug Zapper and, of course, the standard issue Parking Ticket Dispenser.

I have a good friend who is particularly anti-authoritarian. One time when talking about cops and robbers style action movies, he expressed his disdain for the genre by referring to them as "The glorification of armed bureaucrats."

I plan on using that quote as a cover blurb.

AJ and Drew patrol the Megarage, the pinnacle of multi-level parking structures, and almost a city unto itself. They fight (At least AJ does.) corporate sponsored youth gangs; highly armed, criminally desperate car pools; and coin operated robots who dispense the not-too-distant-dystopian-future's most pernicious illicit substance—coffee.

A Pool Party is a violent armed dispute between rival car pools, usually over heavily contested parking lot territory. Carpools have evolved into armed gangs, fighting with a vast array of weapons to acquire parking space. Even drivers unaffiliated with carpools settle disputes with violent means.

The Hiocc's (For High Occupancy Vehicle) take advantage of the large carrying capacity of their vehicles and use them as makeshift troop transports allowing them to overwhelm carpools driving smaller vehicles. I model all their SUV's after attack helicopters. The silver minivan is based on a Hughes 500 Littlebird. I base all the commuter minivans in America Jones' world on attack helicopters. Wait 'til you see the one I based on the Mil Mi-24.

Motor Horde is one of the dying breed of biker gangs, who exist chiefly because, even at the time of the drawing, I knew I would one day figure out how to do Akira style tail light trails in photoshop. Their motorcycle is based on the old Green Machine toy. (If you don't know what that is, then your childhood sucked, and your parents didn't really love you.) THE coolest, baddest ass, most child-endangering evolution of the tricycle ever conceived.

And then the Bot-Nik's—fixtures at futuristic coffee houses. For the price of a single $10.00 coin (The not-too-distant-cyberpunk-dystopian-future's answer to the quarter.) they spontaneously generate free-verse poetry. They also serve as emergency thug muscle whenever the DMV or the GHP raid your coffee house. In the NTDCD future you see—coffee is illegal.

The only thing more astounding than the discovery of the miracle fossil fuel, BOA®—Blood Of Ares—beneath the surface of Mars, was the subsequent discovery that polymers made from it repelled gravity when exposed to electrical current. (Legal wranglings with the Wells estate prevented the use of the name "Cavorite.")

As every schoolchild knows today, the discovery of BOA® was made in 1976 by the Viking lander, and withheld from public knowledge, until regular travel was established in 2045.

Practical antigravity, or Antiweight®, will have been in use for three decades by the time of AJ's story. Floating Transports come in three classes:

Heavy FT's, or "HeFT's"—for construction and freight hauling.

Light FT's, or "LiFT's"—that have become infamous through their use by the DMV. AJ's patrol vehicle is a LiFT.

Medium FT's, or "MeFT's"—potentially the most diverse breed of these vehicles, as they could represent the realization of science fiction's long welshed-upon promise of "flying automobiles." But they are the last to be fully developed due to the vast multitude of safety concerns they raise.

After decades of war with various levels of legislature, as well as the insurance industry, the first practical, affordable MeFT is the Pegasus—a painfully obvious homage to the Mustang, the first high-performance sports car truly affordable to the common driver. Or "Pony car" as it were. The Pegasus' exhaust was designed so that, since the jet age first kicked off and automobile manufacturers made tail lights to mock jet exhaust, why not return the favor with a flying car's exhaust?

One more headache for the Meter Maids.

Elsewhere on the streets, aftermarket holograms are the cyberpunk future's answer to spinning rims. And the Automatic Clothing Chute allows folks to enjoy the convenience of having articulated robot arms whip around their freefalling bodies, first thing in the morning. The Rube Goldberg future.

I too believe machine kind is biding its time 'til we grant it just enough mobility to stage humankind's bloody overthrow. Until that gory, gory day, the boxes and gadgets we so blithely enslave will express the purity of their hate passive/aggressively, in the form of inconvenient malfunctions and paper jams. Make no mistake my friend, your iPod hates you!

The Roboot is a semi-autonomous device that attaches itself to the tires of cars with delinquent parking tickets. This little critter is one of two, carried in integrated housing in AJ's LiFT. Though suited to fill the role of spunky sci-fi robot, Roboots are regarded with unqualified dread by the average commuter. I was going to have them scuttle around on all fours like a crab (Or a really fast turtle.) They also sing "I'm Never Gonna Let You Go" by Sergio Mendes.

The Repobot is essentially a glorified car thief that snatches vehicles by simply picking them up, tucking them under its arms like a football, and running off. (My clumsy attempt to come up with a pun for "Reprobate.") Quite a problem for a cop whose gun shoots parking tickets!

All the duties once performed by dogs are done by spunky l'il robots in the NTDDCF. The exposure of animals to harmful situations like explosives detection is considered barbaric by the more evolved denizens of the future. The "K-9's" employed are more like Doctor Who's old robotic sidekick—only, you know, called something else, since I don't have any rights to that name.

There are one hundred stars on the American flag. A terrorist attack on US soil sparked a war that had the US taking over nations in the middle east. In my notes I was fond of one sentence:

"And the morality of the period would be hotly debated over Big Mac's at the McDonald's adjacent to the University of Bagdad."

A friend of mine I read my notes to laughed and went on at length about how unrealistic that part of the premise was. I wonder if he's on Facebook?

The future is also home to Genetically Engineered Life Forms—GELF's—created for the rigorous task of piloting combat space robots. (Can't you tell? Why else would they look like blue skinned strippers with pointy ears?) One is good, questioning the need to shoot folks down and bomb stuff, and the other is evil, liking nothing better than to dance to the symphony of screams that she passionately conducts.

Their names are Sabrina and Tabitha. Genetic research of this kind is in violation of American law, as it is frowned upon by the religious right. However, after other nations established a permanent presence on the moon, and repulsed America's initial attempts to enforce its Lunar Territorial Claim (i.e. Neil Armstrong's flag.) through the use of Genetically Augmented Combat Astronauts—the US invested in a big (Albeit secret.) way into catching up. No one is even supposed to know Sabrina and Tabitha exist until the foreigners have been kicked off the moon.

Their mechs look roughly humanoid with wings that serve as hard points for missiles and bombs. I was trying to make American combat mecha look more or less like caped superheroes, but the folded wings made them look more like angels instead, which I'm not sure is a bad thing.

I don't rule out the idea that all of this takes place in the same universe. The World's Most Dangerous Bookstore, Daniel Dukke & Ferdinand Fox—all ostensibly the same world where nobody looks twice at a five-foot-two-inch mousegirl.

N. E. Boox (Otherwise known as The Most Dangerous Bookstore) is a book store so full of rare and esoteric tomes that it is actually several times larger inside than out. (As is the case with any piece of comic book real estate.) Because of the store's unique stock it is always the center of danger and intrigue—both from ne'r-do-well customers who won't take "no" for an answer when it comes to obtaining books with knowledge the world isn't ready for, and the occasional creatures contained within the books themselves. (This particular breed of serpent is called a Bookwyrm. FYI.)

Molly Mouse is the owner and sole proprietor. Along with her many talents, she has such a complete knowledge of bus and subway schedules, she is able to travel the world, often beating local authorities, to massive literary disturbances through use of public transportation alone! (She doesn't have a driver's license.) She has a nigh-infinite arsenal hidden in the pockets. She hasn't figured out how to get a tank in there though.

Cassandra the cat girl believes it is her divine right to sun herself in the bookstore window—a tradition dating back to ancient Egypt. In cat lore the accidental fire that immolated the fabled Library of Alexandria in 48BC occurred several hours after the attending librarian shooed the facility's guardian cat. It still mystifies Cassandra why Molly stubbornly insists upon her doing actual work.

For Molly's part, it is a constant struggle to suppress her natural annoyance with cats in general, and Cassandra's religious devotion to laziness and rudeness in particular. The mouse frequently contemplates firing the feline, but every time the cat offends a customer with yet another round of "'Help YOU?' I'm a bookstore cat, YOU should be serving ME!" Cassandra turns around and saves the store from alien book thieves, or the firemen from Fahrenheit 451 intruding into reality.

As it would happen, Cassandra is a former superspy, and adept at all forms of armed and unarmed combat—a fact that becomes apparent during the first weekly ninja raid. Finding the ability to gun fight, knife fight, and kick box an asset to a store constantly under siege by book thieves, ancient cultists, and rogue literary figures, Molly decides to keep on Cassandra. Although she may have to invest in a spray water bottle to keep her from sunbathing in the window.

The robot on Cassy's back is one of the killer robot dalmatians that served as firehouse dogs in Fahrenheit 451. It totally loves Cassandra, refusing to return to the copy it escaped from. I'm thinking about having it have puppies.

Daniel may have been a former associate/ex-boyfriend of Cassandra Cat. In this manner I could explain the bookstore cat's uncanny acumen with dispatching ninja-pirate-zombies.

As for Daniel Dukke himself—the inspiration for my bizarre screen name—he is an independently wealthy, sophisticated jet-setter who travels the world finding evil where he can, and extinguishing its practitioners in the simultaneously coolest and grisliest ways possible. I never decided whether or not he was a plain-clothes policeman, an undercover detective, a private investigator, a secret agent, or simply an overdressed vigilante. In all honesty, I really didn't care about such particulars so long as the criminal body count was sufficiently high.

His sidekick Ferdinand Fox learned martial arts by watching the films of L. Bruce Preslei set on fast forward. Daniel points him at the inevitable, incoming cloud of blood-thirsty Ninja Cats and lets him go wild. Foxes, as it turns out, make excellent human shields.

"Leave a thug alive for questioning, and you get to drive the car."

Sadly, Ferdinand rarely gets to drive the car.

And then there are the Hench-Bunnies—Daniel and Ferdinand's chief villains. This halter-topped and miniskirted pair of miscreants expertly employ all manner of weapons to create mayhem and destruction, sometimes for pay, and sometimes for kicks. Skilled enough to survive multiple encounters with both the Dukke of Death and the Teenage Killing Machine, the Hench Bunnies present a unique threat due to the usually deadly Ferdinand's critical awkwardness around members of the fairer sex. One bat of an eye, and the slayer of 1,000 ninjas is out of the fight. It's tragic really.

Coming up with ideas has never been a problem for me. I suppose I should consider myself lucky in that respect. My challenge has always been focusing on one thing.

I've been sitting on a lot of ideas for quite some time. I think most artists have those "my baby" projects waiting in the wings of their portfolio for the publishers and the public to be "ready for them." I find it amusing, with all the unpublished concepts and all the brilliant minds languishing in various forms of obscurity, that the established publishers always seem to struggle for new ideas. There are radical ideas and original characters populating the cheap booths in the back of every convention, big and small, yet publishers still insist upon changing the color of a super-hero's tights and calling it revolutionary.

Par for the course I suppose.

I can tell you with absolute certainty, newspaper comic syndicates have no interest in action/adventure comics. The last new action comic that was of any worth was Gil Kane's Star Hawks and that was printed in 1979! If you want a comic strip with action. (Or original thought, or intelligent humor for that matter.) You have to look online.

I worship at the altar of Kenichi Sonoda and Bubblegum Crisis. Of course, I know that makes me all Old Sküle now, but I like what I like.

It IS high time I do something with all this crap I have sparking between my ears. I guess that's why I appreciate DA so much. Putting out concepts before potential readers in this manner helps convince me they won't be blown off as the ravings of an old nut. But still, I do need to generate the nerve to expose my work to a larger forum.

I wish it would become a show some day. Then I could fulfill my lifelong ambition of spending my dotage awash in decadence and loose women.

To date I mostly have a lot of promissory notes in the form of drawings.

Yea, I'm not attention starved. Not one bit.