GEN¹³ (a fan film by Chris .R. Notarile)

CHECK OUT OUR MERCH: Gen¹³ members Caitlin Fairchild and Roxy Spaulding try to come to grips with the revelation that they have the same father. But their moment of reflection is interrupted when they cross paths with Sublime & Copycat from the rival team DV8. A WORD FROM CHRIS The decision to make this fan film was literally to prove that I could. Gen¹³, for the uninitiated, was a post-grunge comic from the 90’s featuring a very angsty superhero team. In 2000, an animated movie was made, but for reasons unknown was never released. Then over the years, the title exchanged hands. First originating with Image comics, Gen¹³ eventually went to Wildstorm, then finally settled with DC comics. Growing up, I was always fond of the comics, specifically the Adam Warren one off’s- Magical Drama Queen Roxy, and Grunge : The Movie. I decided to make a Gen¹³ fan film after discussing potential roles for Kelli Kickham. After working with her as Blossom in my recent Powerpuff Girls short, I felt that playing Caitlin would be a very natural evolution for her. Once we agreed to do Gen¹³, I was presented with the daunting task of becoming an expert on the subject matter. As I have discussed in the past, never write a story if you haven’t done your homework on the subject matter. I began my research with reading up on the bios of Cat & Roxy. They were always my favorite members of the team, so I decided to put the focus on them. I discovered that at some point, the two discovered they were sisters. That aspect intrigued me, so I decided to investigate. I found the 2000 animated feature on Youtube and watched it. But there was nothing that really helped my desired story. However, it did give me insight to Cat & Roxy’s personalities. It was virtually impossible to find the exact issue in which both girls discovered they were related, but thanks to the help of my friend, and fellow comic geek, Gary Choi, I was able to learn the exact issue number, and read it. I used the comic as a rough outline of what I wanted, but since I didn’t have the budget to recreated what happened within the actual panels of the story, I needed to take some creative license. So I set my story adjacent to the events within the book, which is how most of my fan films function. Going in, I wanted to have a physical conflict between Cat and a super villain, so with a little more research, I landed on Sublime and Copycat from DV8. Their story about leaving their team and trying to go legit aligned perfectly the Gen¹³ drama. Filming, for the most part, was pretty easy. 75% of the movie was shot in one day on location in San Pedro, CA. Unfortunately, Kelsey Ketting, who played Copycat, was diagnosed with Covid one week before filming. And because scheduling was so difficult, I was forced to film without her, and having Lindsey Bean be her stand in on set. Ironically, Kelsey got a negative test result the day we shot, and thus, we met up to film all her scenes a day later. But thanks to the magic of editing, you’d never really know. The opening sequence involving Sublime’s lighter is actually a plot point from the comics, and had it not been for Julia Weaver doing her own research on the character, I would never have thought to include it. All in all, Gen¹³ is a fun, emotional look into a solid story from a great 90’s comic, and I had a lot of fun making it.