A "Phobia History" in progress...

[The Dispatcher]

.1 everything
has a beginning--


FIRST OF ALL, this isn’t a “new” manuscript.
This is a retyping of the ORIGINAL SPITFIRE MANUSCRIPT originally written by Dave Brown and Jace Toal. It is for all intensive purposes, the cheesiest piece of horse shit I’ve ever been privy to. But, while that may very much be the case, one cannot deny the importance of this particular work.

The story of “Spitfire” begins during the seventh grade school year, in 1988. Enter two kids: one an unrepentant slacker. The other the winner of the district Spelling Bee. Jace Toal and Dave Brown sat one in front of the other in Mr. Kratz’s Study Hall, and it is here where Spitfire began.

Jace dreamed of being a comic artist. He had, for several years at this point, been drawing his own comics on folded over paper stapled in the middle. A entire comic company’s line-up for the diversity of titles. Super Eraser, his first ever work, was soon followed by Armed & Dangerous, Crazy J, Cyborg Avengers. The last of these for that time period, was a comic called “SPIT FIRE”.

Jace had been creating character’s based upon himself, and those friend’s that he was close to (or in some cases wished he was close to). The SPIT FIRE comic featured a split cast of good-guy versus bad-guys. For the Good, there was Jason, the Spit Fire teams fearless leader. Kammie, his loyal & loving girl who’s steady job in the book was to be kidnapped and subjected to torture, making Jason infuriated and made his rescue attempts that much more heartfelt and vengeful. Robbie and Tina made up the other pair of the book. This was the first ever time that these character’s appeared and the last, as Jace was soon to lose touch with both of the friends they were based upon.

[The Dispatcher]

It was during one fateful afternoon in Mrs. Palmer’s classroom, where both Jace and Dave happened to be stuck-- unable to attend their class’s school trip to a filming of Double Dare the game show. Jace, not intending on doing a single scrap of schoolwork, spent the afternoon screwing around with sketches and ideas, and somehow convinced Dave to write a comic book with him, using a handwritten note.

It was something like this:

Hi David, would you be interested in writing a comic book with me?
Check the box with your answer, and pass this note back to me.

O Yes.
O No, you fucking pathetic piece of crap!
O Yes, you fucking pathetic piece of crap!

Jace Toal


Dave chose option three, and the two began to re-create the comic book SPIT FIRE. The first change that Dave brought about was the name. “Spit Fire” wasn’t correct-- SPITFIRE was a single word, and so the first of many MANY changes went through. Robbie & Tina were unceremoniously dropped from the title, being useless character’s anyway, and enter the “Dave” character, as well as an early Matt McAllister clone named Shawn Slayer (who was actually loosely based upon one of our classmates.)

The original script was handwritten on anything the two could come across. First on sheets of plain white paper, then on a tablet of yellow legal paper. They wrote it, taking turns, continuing the story from where the last person left off. They would discuss the story over the telephone, and during lunchtimes. The majority of the work was actually completed during several regular sleep-overs they would have-- their pens and pencils powered by Jolt cola and Vivarin pills.

The story featured characters who were more closely based on themselves than the current versions. This was true right up to the last names of the cast. Jace Toal, heroic main character. Dave Brown, loyal best friend.

The character’s, as depicted in the manuscript you are about to read, were special gifted teens, who were recruited by President George Bush Sr. to go after an extremely well-funded group of Satan Worshippers lead by their enigmatic leader, the Darklord! Is that realistic or what!? The best part is that the three guy character’s were 17 and Kammie was 16. Obviously it is perfectly legal for the President to recruit and send off to war!

As the handwritten script was the two decided that they should remove their own last names from the characters. Dave had a brief layover as Dave Brunt before becoming Dave Kelley (Now changed to Kelly). The TV series of War of the Worlds was on at this time, so Jace pilfered the Blackwood name from the show’s main character Harrison Blackwood; Thus, Jace Blackwood was born. Kammie became Kammie Trepp (Though neither of the creators remember where the hell that name came from)-- and the foundation of the PhobiaVerse was layed.

Dave Brown took it upon himself to type up the manuscript and do the edits.