FAMILYMAN: Preview
FAMILYMAN is a comedy series that chronicles the home life of Sun City’s favorite superhero, THE I-CON as he struggles to nurture his marriage to LAKEISHA CAGE, a hot-headed vigilante turned stay-at-home mom, and raise their two boys all while continuing to save the world.
The Origin Story
On a bright and starry night, in a metropolis nicknamed Sun City, KENNY CAGE, a 25-year-old moderately handsome “All-American” black dude, stands on the rooftop of a skyscraper lost in the eyes of his lady love LAKEISHA WINTERS, a 29-year-old one in a million African-American beauty. The moon perfectly illuminates our couple, setting the mood for an evening neither will ever forget. My God. Kenny can’t take his eyes off of Lakeisha. But Lakeisha is focused intently on what’s beneath them.
Kenny gazes up at the sky breaking his mental fantasy and the silence with a loving sigh, “That’s some moon up there tonight, isn’t it? It’s like an everlasting spirit-ball dancing on a bed of clouds. I think the universe is trying to tell us something La-La.”
Lakeisha still won’t look up, “What?”
Kenny turns and notices that she wasn’t paying attention to a word he said. “I said it’s a beautiful full — ”
“I heard you. Could you please pay attention to what you’re doing down here?”
Kenny scoffs, “What… this?”
We pull back to reveal that Kenny is fiddling with the exposed wires of a control panel that’s attached to an extremely large missile. From the neck down Kenny wears a bio-mechanical armor that is a cross between the Ironman suit and Venom’s symbiote. Lakeisha, on the other hand, is dressed like every sultry, cat-burglarizing villainess you had posters of as a child.
Kenny’s confidence continues, “I got this.”
Lakeisha’s does not, “Then get it already!”
Kenny accepts the challenge. He exhales through a few more wire snips, “It… is… gotten…!”
The lights on the missile’s CPU flicker off. Kenny spins around figuratively raising the roof in celebration. When he turns back to Lakeisha he annoyingly picks up right where he left off, “Now about that moon… ”
Suddenly, the missile rumbles back to life and rising into firing position. The CPU comes back online in its default mode and voices, “Miss-ile launch in thir-ty seconds.”
Lakeisha facepalms with experience. She realizes that it’s now up to her to stop this missile, “Alright, screw this.” She walks away from Kenny to another spot on the roof where an unconscious and tied up REGGIE JACKSON lies. Reggie looks like a 50 Cent version of Lobo. Lakeisha slaps him repeatedly across the face, “Reggie! Wake up! What’s the code, Reggie?!?”
Reggie, also known as the notorious super-villain DANGER comes to groggy as hell, “I told you to call me Danger. And I ain’t tellin’ you no code until you agree to talk to me!”
Lakeisha ignores his bargain, “you’ll tell me the code or I’ll make sure you never talk to anyone, ever again.”
Trying another approach, Reggie softens his tone, “I miss you, Diamond. And Tyler.”
Lakeisha punches Reggie in the face, “I told you to call me Lakeisha. Now, what’s the code!”
Reggie ignores her again, “I just wanna talk. I even brought Tyler that puppy he wanted.”
Lakeisha thinks about punching Reggie again, but turns to see what he’s talking about instead. She sees a green sack lying next to the missile. Taking the hint, I-Con opens the sack and a Labrador Retriever puppy sits up wagging its tail and shaking the bag from side to side. It is a cute puppy, but still… Lakeisha punches Reggie in the face anyway, “We have nothing to talk about.”
Finally pissed off, the real Reggie comes out, “Well I say we do!?! So unless you’d rather die wit’ this whole damn city than spend five minutes wit’ me, tell me we can go somewhere ’n’ talk.”
Lakeisha pauses. Thinks about it.
“Miss-ile launch in five… four…” the computer continues. Kenny waits by the control panel desperate for the code. However, Lakeisha just shrugs her shoulders and crosses her arms with no cares left to give as the computer counts down to zero and launches the missile.
Kenny is floored, “Really?”
The last hope, Kenny wills his bio-suit’s mask to form over his face and leaps into the air propelled by jetpack boosters embedded in the traps of his armor and the souls of his boots. He heads straight for the missile.
Lakeisha is suddenly worried, “I-Con wait!”
Reggie smirks, “Look at ’em. He’d rather die for dis city than live fo’ you.”
Lakeisha scowls at Reggie but can’t manifest a comeback. With no other outlet for her frustration, she punches Reggie back unconscious. When Lakeisha turns back to Kenny —
BOOM!
— He’s blasted out of the sky and comes crashing down onto the roof, rolling to a stop just a few feet in front of her. Lakeisha rushes to Kenny’s side, “I-Con! Are you okay?”
Kenny coughs to let her know he’s alive. It’s all the strength he can muster at the moment. Relieved, Lakeisha allows her anger to creep back to the surface, “That was really stupid!”
Kenny rolls onto his back and retracts his mask so that Lakeisha can see his face and his victorious smile, “Yea. But it worked.”
Lakeisha hammer-fists his chest. She’s not amused, “Just hold still so I can check your injuries.”
“Owww,” Kenny grunts. “You tryna check ’em or cause ‘em?”
“Shut up,” Lakeisha commands. She then glides her hand over the top of Kenny’s body. The aura around her hand glows to indicate that she’s feeling him for internal damage.
Kenny laughs at how cute Lakeisha is when she’s worried about him, “You still haven’t grasped the concept of ‘indestructible armor’ have you?”
“I said shut up. And sit still!” she orders.
Kenny does as he’s told. He sees that Lakeisha isn’t for the games today. While Kenny waits for Lakeisha to do her thing he takes a deep look at her and changes the subject, “this isn’t exactly the date I had in mind for us tonight.”
Kenny looks up at the explosion residue drifting through the sky. A red cloud of chemicals was left behind and it’s kind of shaped like a heart. Kenny gets an idea, “But this might work.”
Kenny gestures toward the fog, “Doesn’t that cloud of smoke look kinda… romantic?”
Lakeisha turns to look. She’s unimpressed, “It looks like poisonous nerve gas.”
Kenny looks again. He shakes his head no, “Not if you see it the way I see it.”
Lakeisha finishes scanning Kenny’s upper body and moves to his legs without entertaining Kenny’s ramblings. Yet Kenny persists, “You once told me that full moons were good omens, didn’t you? Well, I think you were right.”
Kenny goes to stand up and Lakeisha stops him, “Wait, I’m not finished checking you out.”
A naughty grin materializes on Kenny’s face, “It’s cool, you’ll have plenty of time to check me out later.”
Lakeisha rolls her eyes and backs away from him throwing her hands up in surrender, “Okay… You’re fine.”
They both stand up. The “sort of” heart-shaped red cloud of nerve gas hangs behind them creating a picturesque snapshot. Suddenly, the aura around Lakeisha’s super sensitive ears glows. She can hear Kenny’s heartbeat dramatically speed-up, “Your heart is pounding! Did you breath in any of that gas?!?”
Kenny drops to one knee without warning. Lakeisha drops with him, “Ken — I mean, I-Con! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing this won’t fix,” Kenny nonchalantly reaches into an organically sealed pocket in his armor.
“Yes! You have an antidote!?!” inquires a hopeful Lakeisha.
“I do,” Kenny pulls a ring box out of his pocket and opens it. “It’s you La-La.”
Lakeisha is speechless.
Kenny seizes the moment, “Lakeisha Winters, I probably saved thousands of people protecting Sun City, but you are the only one who has ever dared to save me.”
Lakeisha is bashfully guilt-ridden, “Uh, no I didn’t. I tried to kill you. For years.”
The moment’s sudden awkward turn does not stop Kenny, “Yea, you definitely did. But you saved me the minute you told me you loved me.”
Kenny pauses to build up some nerve. Lakeisha’s glowing ears can hear his heart race even faster. Still, Kenny persists, “So I have to ask you La-La… will you save me for the rest of my life?”
The way Lakeisha hears it, Kenny’s heart is about to burst out of his chest. Yet she blushes, finally realizing what’s going on with his pulse, “Are you really that unsure of my answer?”
Kenny smiles. That’s all the confirmation he needed, “Well you aren’t exactly the most predictable woman in the world.”
It’s Lakeisha’s turn to wear the devilish grin, “I am if you know me long enough.”
“I can’t wait to,” is all Kenny can add. They embrace in a kiss as the red cloud of nerve gas dissipates and sprinkles down onto the city behind them.
Lakeisha pulls away first, “Oh my god, are you sure we’re ready for this?”
Kenny fires off with the utmost confidence, “Of course! It’s marriage, not the apocalypse. Which, by the way, I’ve faced twice already and I have to tell ya… I don’t really see what all the hype is about.”
Lakeisha gives Kenny his laugh then realizes something else, “Uh, speaking of which, you do know that your little romantic cloud of smoke really is poisonous nerve gas, right?”
Kenny’s eyes go wide, “Oh right…” He turns to see the red cloud floating through the streets below and then shifts back to Lakeisha masking his embarrassment, “ahh… I’ll be right back.”
Kenny releases Lakeisha, closes his mask over his face again and gets ready to leap off the edge of the building. But before he goes, he stops and reopens his mask, “Just to be clear… that was a ‘yes’ right?”
I guess he does need actual confirmation after all.
Lakeisha smiles, “Yes, You big dummy. Now go save our city!”
Kenny cheeses like the biggest, goofiest kid in the world, tosses Lakeisha the ring box and closes his mask one last time before his boosters blast him over the edge of the building and down onto the city.
The Intro…
We pick back up with Kenny as he walks down a fancy banquet hallway, mentally willing the I-Con’s armored symbiote to retract into seven quarter-sized freckles on his back. When he’s done only a thin layer of bio-skin, resembling a tight black athletic shirt, remains. His bottoms are a normal set of black combat pants paired with thin ninja-like shoes made to fit comfortably underneath the I-Con armor.
“It’s time to put on the last suit I’ll ever wear.”
Kenny approaches a Batman-esque mannequin, only instead of a superhero costume, it’s draped in an even more important suit: his wedding tux. Kenny gets dressed the George-Clooney-Batman way.
First, he straps on his red cumber bun —
“I shall walk through the kitchen and the shadows of tantrums. I will fear no chores.”
— Then he straightens his shiny cufflinks —
“A man barely alive, she has rebuilt me. She had the resources to make me stronger. Faster. Better. Now…”
— Then he ties a knot in his spotless shoes and finishes by tightening his tie —
“Matrimony has a new face.”
— We cut to the inside of a ballroom just as the front doors are kicked open and Kenny lands in the classic superhero pose, only he’s decked out in full groom attire instead.
“Time to put in this work.”
All of Kenny and Lakeisha’s guests turn to look at him. Lakeisha, her 7-year-old son TYLER JACKSON and LEMON, the Labrador puppy from the roof, are all waiting at the altar.
“When Kenny Cage emerges from here today, forever more, he shall be known primarily as…”
Click here to READ the incredible first chapter in the FAMILYMAN series!
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And don’t forget, the FAMILYMAN saga continues right here with book #1 on New Year’s Day!
Artist links:
Kenya Washington — (k-ton.deviantart.com/gallery)
Chiara Mazzone Colonna — (https://www.behance.net/ChiaraMazzoneColonna)