)In March 2000, Lana Morris came up with the fiendishly clever idea of pulling
an April Fool's day prank on the TG community, and I had the privilege of being
in on the gag. The scheme involved convincing everyone that an X-Files book
had been written in which Mulder and Scully switch bodies. To this end, Lana
approached Paul Pichette to design a cover for the book, and I helped out with
the synopsis and the delivery of the joke. (Which basically involved playing
dumb and spreading disinformation...two skills I have in abundance. )
I wasn't sure if Paul would finish his graphic in time, so I created my own cover image just in case. As it turns out, he finished in plenty of time, leaving us with two potential covers. We used Paul's graphic (which personally I like a lot better) and the synopsis created by Lana and myself.
I had always planned to put my graphic up here even if it wasn't used, figuring that it's not unlike a lot of the other modified cover images I have on the site. But I figured it would be also fun to also show Paul's graphic (which I'm posting with his permission) and include a little extra "inside information" for those who were curious.
Finally, I should point out that since Lana was kind enough to also post my
image on her site after the hoax was unveiled, it's possible that many of you
may have already seen all this. However, I wanted to give the images a more
permanent home, so I'm presenting them here for posterity's sake.
(Click on images for larger versions)
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Paul's Cover |
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My Cover |
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR...
POINT OF VIEW
Following a trail of grisly and unexplained murders across the midwest, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully discover an entity capable of exchanging its consciousness with those of its victims. The agents' efforts to stop the creature become further confounded when an encounter causes them to become trapped in each other�s bodies.
For the first time, Scully and Mulder are finally engaged in an intimate way, a way that neither of them could ever have imagined! Forced to see things from a new point of view, can they overcome the distractions of their own predicament to stop the evil presence that threatens so many lives?
After the prank was sprung, Paul posted this message to Lana's message board indicating some fun stuff he had incorporated into his graphic:
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Just for the record, there were three things in the picture that were ment to tip people off.
Hope everyone enjoyed the fun If anyone is interested the imagary I used was to imply a mix of science and supernatural. The basic idea was they go hunting a killer whos victims have their hearts removed like in an Aztec ritual. But when they track down the killer, they find alot of hightech equipment. The equipment switches their bodies. Or does it, Scully believes they are still hooked up to the machine and in a virtual reality. Mulder has slightly more exotic idea as to whats going on. Even more disturbing is that they may both be correct, it all depends on your Point Of View. |
(And in case you're wondering, I didn't really have any particular "tells" in my image, as Paul had in his. However, many of graphic components were taken from the cover of a trade paperback that collected a bunch of the X-Files comic books.)