Rejected Pitches: COLA WARZ (2025)
Comic production has been down the last few year's because I keep getting opportunities to pitch to animation studios. Here is the first in a series of REJECTED PITCHES as I clear the decks to make more comics: Your loss Warner Bros. Discovery. COLA WARZ - rejected science-fiction animation mini-series from a little over a year ago. What if instead of advancements in artificial intelligence (A.I.), civilization was being rapidly reshaped by advancements in artificial flavors (A.F.).
The year is 2026. A series of breakthroughs in synthetic beverage ingredients have resulted in cola flavors so precisely calibrated that everyone on earth has sworn allegiance to the crisp, refreshing taste of either Quasar or Bop Pop Cola. New formulas are so tasty that within weeks, each company has amassed enough market share and cult-like brand allegiance to supplant all other corporations, governments, and religion. Reality is warping in the image of the rival soda companies.
Honestly, not the proudest of this because I wrote it with the idea that it would be what they’re looking for rather than what I wanted to make… since 12 of those got rejected. Glad to have that impulse out of my system. #rejectedpitches #cokezero
Episode 1: Bopstation Alpha
Bop Pop Cola Industries has established an orbital command center for monitoring cola-related activities around the globe. Team Quasar is sent to gather intel and disrupt the station’s opening ceremonies.
Sodaversal taste influencer and high ranking Council of Pop Relations member, Lady Miss Cache, detects Team Quasar having stowed away in the crates that contained Bop Pop flavored novelty cakes made to look like greasy clumps of human hair. She watches their activities from a security station, sending Bop Poperative lackeys, including her mischievous, shape-shifting, genetically cola-infused pet monkey Chaz, to counter their attempted disruptions while live streaming up-to-the-second celebrity gossip, and Bop Pop mandated cola news.
Team Quasar gets flustered but ultimately has the last laugh having swapped out the cakes that look like greasy clumps of human hair for actual greasy clumps of human hair. Popstation Alpha personnel proceed to consume greasy hair at their party after unceremoniously launching the Team Quasar infiltrators back to earth in a Bop Pop can shaped escape pod… which is nearly shutdown by Quasar forces upon reentry.
Episode 2: Nut Hunt
Rumors of a naturally occurring nut with flavors that rival recent synthetic advancements prompts a race between Team Quasar and Team Bop Pop to colonize… er, find and secure a sample for study.
Our team arrives in the remote region. It turns out to be a trap set by natural-flavor-terrorist organization The Unsweetened, and their charismatic pitcher-shaped leader, Naturally Decaffeinated Unsweetened Tea Man. They are posing as locals to divert resources from the Quasar and Bop Pop mega-cults.
The Bop Pop expedition force’s (specializing in pairing dope beats with cola flavor variants to get this party started right) intravenous use of Bop Pop syrup is becoming an issue. The Unsweetened can’t get out of their own way and their movement implodes just as the Bop Pop street team habit gets the better of him and he physically mutate into weird blobs.
Team Quasar finds the nuts and they taste like… dirt and nuts. No one cares.
Episode 3: Suds
Quasar Cola Laboratories is set to unveil a line of cola infused food items to replace all other food, including cheeses and meats. The Bop Pop Cola hive mind determines this is a threat to the balance of things and seeks to sabotage the initiative by replacing the food additives with the cola-infused personal grooming products (like Quasar Cologne and Quasar Four-in-One Shampoo-Body Wash-Hair Mousse-Floor Wax).
90’s Bop Pop clown mascot, Flibberty-Jibbit, has overcome his sorted past and is brought back into the fold. Equipped with carbonation cartridges that allow him to inflate his rubber clown suit and float around in an entertaining manner, he floats into the Quasar Lab’s air duct system to pull off the switch.
The grooming product additives elicit bizarre reactions from test subjects including hallucinations. Further, the bizarre reactions are contagious, spreading to the Quasar loyal populace who vow revenge in the escalating… Cola Warz.
