ReBoot Think Up

**ReBoot Think Up** was a 2007 initiative by Rainmaker Entertainment and Zeros 2 Heroes to create a ReBoot web comic and to promote Zeros 2 Heroes as a crowdsourced comic publisher. It achieved one of these things!

## Premise

Five ReBoot comic ideas were put up, with fans able to give feedback (several of the pitches changed to reflect this). Fans were also given the chance to submit their own art and designs, with the potential to end up as an artist on the project, and their feedback helped decide which one of five ReBoot pitches won.

Zeros 2 Heroes's rather breathless promotion for it claimed:

"You’ve seen it before: a big entertainment company trying to squeeze out a few more ducats from a classic and much-beloved story. They tart it up, modernize it, stick in a hip new sidekick, then parade the “new and improved” production in front of the fans… who are suitably disgusted.

"Naturally, the production bombs and no one can seem to figure out why. But this time, it’s going to be different.

"Rainmaker Entertainment is bringing back ReBoot. And they want you – the fans – to help them get it right.

"Rainmaker wanted to start with a clean slate and approach the story with no preconceptions. They reached out to five undiscovered writers who were looking for their break. These writers were teamed up with Rainmaker’s in-house artists and producers and told to come up with five completely new takes on the ReBoot world.

"But only one idea will go into development. This is where you come in.

"Starting on July 26th, you’ll be able to read the stories, view the art and review every aspect of their pitch. And – if you’ve got what it takes – you can go head-to-head with the Rainmaker artists by submitting your own work.

"Which pitch will be the winner? That’s not up to some high-priced suit at Rainmaker… it’s up to you. So get in there: mix it up with the producers, talk it up with other fans, and get behind the team whose idea is the future of ReBoot."

## The pitches

The five pitches were:

* *ReBoot: Arrival*: "A new super-computer has emerged, which spells trouble for the User and Earth. Guardian Bob and company do battle with this new threat by traveling through a portal into an entirely alien system. The world of Mainframe just got a whole lot bigger."

* *Reboot: 2.0*: "The Serenity OS has installed and taken over Mainframe… an era of peace and order has been initialized. But at what cost?"

* *Reboot: The Last Guardian*: "In a Mainframe ruled by Megabyte only one person can free the sprites and binomes: Bit, the progeny of Bob, Dot and… Megabyte!?! You’ve got to check out this fresh from two up-and-coming female writers."

* *Reboot: Regenerated*: "Megabyte has obliterated Mainframe and left a rogue group of open-source sprites to re-assemble the code. What happens next is anyone’s guess. For hardcore fans, this story is packed with tech references in the vein of the original."

* *Reboot: The Last User*: "Fast-forward to the year 2104: humanity is faced with total annihilation. A virus named Look is called into service to save the day. It’s ReBoot as you’ve never seen it before: say hello to an entirely new cast of sprites!"

Fan feedback was mixed to negative for most of these. In particular, *2.0* came under fire for its major redesigns of how the characters looked and what their personalities were like in order to make its story work (in response to this, the *2.0* pitch altered to say the Serenity OS had transformed people as part of its scheme); and several fans took umbrage with Dot as Megabyte's unwilling wife in *The Last Guardian*.

The winning pitch was *ReBoot: Arrival*, later renamed *Code of Honour*), which promised to resolve the Hunt storyline. Rainmaker said it would monitor feedback for the webcomic but may not use it as the basis for the company's movie plans.

## Aftermath

The competition explicitly stated when *Arrival* won that "this is the next big step in seeing ReBoot back on screen" and Rainmaker were monitoring feedback for their film plans. Shortly after it won, it was announced that *Arrival* writer Jeffrey Campbell was pitching a ReBoot film idea to Rainmaker .

While *Code of Honour* did come out, it was cut down to three issues and has since disappeared off the internet. Rainmaker has made no reference to it since - and, in the end, ReBoot *did* come back in a tarted up form with hip people and paraded it to fans who were suitably disgusted.

## References

1. ↑ Template:Cite web
2. ↑ Template:Cite web
3. ↑ Reaching Out To Fans In A New Way (archive)
4. ↑ The pitches (wayback)
5. ↑ We Have A Winner
6. ↑ Template:Cite web
7. ↑ We Have A Winner
8. ↑ Archived FAQ
9. ↑ ReBoot Comic Writer Takes The Next Step