Camelorum Adventures

Camelorum Adventures (formerly known by the working title of Dramedy Sour Power Hour) is a proposed potential cartoon series, a collaboration of ideas with Dozerfleet Comics involving characters owned by DeviantArt users Prodigal Gamer and Anir-Brokenear. It is designed with the intent of being similar to Animaniacs, Superjail!, and similar shows on Adult Swim and Cartoon Network - but with an emphasis on somewhat-family-friendly humor and highly-improbable situations. It was first proposed in April of 2015, around the same time as Sodality: Vindication.

While Vindication focuses on superhero drama with a prison episode arc for some of the heroes but has various bits of comedy thrown in; Dramedy Sour Power Hour chooses to emphasize comedy - while only occasionally alluding to drama (or making light of it.)

Plot
The central story revolves around Carly Rancine, a young woman in her 20s who awakes inside the Camelorum Correctional prison facility one day with no memory of how she got there or why. Nobody else seems to know what she did or why she's there either, but the staff decide to hold her until they can get some answers. Her cranky attitude suggests she might be trouble on the outside, further convincing the staff that they need to keep her hidden away until further notice. Little does she know that the evil space alien Xiboruty has hidden a battery inside of her, which he desires to eventually use to power a doomsday device of his.

As she is put in a holding cell to be processed along with the new inmates, she discovers that most of the inmates at Camelorum are not serious criminal offenders, but rather the "criminally clumsy." She is immediately introduced to Barry Navoz, who inadvertently set off a Rube Goldberg contraption that - via quirk of fate - destroyed a billionaire's car. Also in the holding cell is Janet "the Glob" Joblin, who fell through 5 stories of a building and had abilities not fully understood. Candace Dixon Mason is in prison after she was assaulted by Xiboruty and gained the power to turn anyone into a June bug - or a fruit. After accidentally turning a mall cop into a lime, Candace was arrested and was dubbed "Lemon Witch" by the news media. Emily Barnes is revealed to be in because of a party she was at with Jenny Jane and Jenny Kay. The three of them got in a car while drunk, and crashed into a city fountain. That fountain just happened to feature on it a statue of someone related to the judge, who consequently threw the book at the three girls - literally.

Carly discovers that her co-ed chain gang will also include Katrina Cantina and Melinda Rotinda - captured for graffiti art. Also captured are Joe and Annie, amateur sleuths whose van was raided on drug suspicions. Their dog - and two of their friends - were eaten by a mysterious creature dubbed "Tobey the Toilet Monster," thus putting an end to Team "Flooby-Don't." In addition is Gwen, who tries to warn everyone of what not to say lest they get sued. While Carly considers her new friends mostly harmless, there are some others at Camelorum deemed troublesome. Beatrice Index and Luin Kim, for example, keep plotting to take over the world. Several times, they escape and nearly succeed - only for quirks of fate to spell ruin and send them back to Camelorum. They also want to find a way to get a refrigerator in their cell, as Luin believes she deserves "Norwegian treatment." Phil is accused of stealing the Mauve Puma diamond, although he believes a mysterious thief named "Hada Taca" is responsible. It is later revealed that Hada Taca was working for the actual Mauve Puma, who is sent to Camelorum and Phil is exonerated. However, the Mauve Puma ties Phil's leg to a plane when no one is looking and he is sent flying to his doom "soaring to new heights." Due to the Puma getting to wear his regular clothes and keep his cane, by seducing guards, none of the other inmates trust him.

As the inmates try to survive their various crazy community service assignments, a supervillain in the background having a rivalry with Luin, dubbed "the Spatula," continuously launches his own diabolical schemes to take over Dromedary Heights. He does so with the assistance of his bumbling henchmen Beat-Drop and Eurodance, the former a whale and the latter an ostrich. Their plans are foiled repeatedly by the 20s Altered Judo Iguanas, who befriend a news reporter named June O'Reilly. However, the constant battles land June in Camelorum after she is blamed for leveling a building to the ground. (It was actually the Spatula's fault.)

June does her best to learn everything about the other inmates, while the Iguanas secretly plot to rescue her from Camelorum. As if all this didn't make life in Dromedary Heights exciting enough, Jackie Regg escapes after another female inmate abuses her one time too many. Jackie runs away to join a circus, where her desperation to avoid recapture leads to her learning every clowning trick in the book and being reincarnated as "Laney the Laughable."

When Xiboruty comes to collect his battery from Carly, he captures her - along with the Iguanas, June, Jenny J, Jenny K, and Emily. He murders about 68 other inmates for laughs, destroys Luin's refrigerator, and attacks Barry. Barry survives, and becomes Ion Boy. Lightning Hobo recruits him and Lemon Witch - along with Janet and Laney - to become the Camelry and save Dromedary Heights from Xiboruty. Jenny J and Jenny K escape captivity and become the "Jen in Black" to give the Camelry some backup, inadvertently freeing the Iguanas as well. With Xiboruty defeated, the Iguanas and June escape. Lemon Witch is pardoned for her crimes, and is allowed to go to college and become a nutritionist. She remains in contact with the other inmates via mail - and with Lightning Hobo in case they ever need the Camelry to re-assemble. Barry and Janet are sent back to Camelorum, along with the Jens and Carly and Emily. Carly continues to look for ways to get answers about her past - and to leave Camelorum for good. Although, she does want to see her new friends regain their freedom as well.

Characters
While many characters come and go, there are a few that are recurrent throughout:

Camelry=

These inmates become superheroes when Camelorum Correctional is attacked by Xiboruty the Alien, who tries to harvest Carly as a battery. They were recruited by a homeless man with lightning powers, known only as the "Lightning Hobo."


 * Lightning Hobo: The Camelry's field leader. A homeless man with lightning powers, he becomes a guardian of the city at night from forces police can't quite touch.  And he also wants a new bike.  He draws inspiration from Hobo with a Shotgun, though he states he will never be that gory.


 * Jackie Regg / Laney the Laughable: A convict originally created by Barefoot-Inmate at DeviantArt. Tired of the constant abuse she was getting from another female prisoner, she escaped and joined a circus, adopting a clown persona.  She used this new persona to avoid capture, and even became a weird sort of hero in and of herself.


 * Candace Mason / "Lemon Witch": An auburn-haired victim of Xiboruty the Alien, who can now somehow turn random individuals into bugs - or fruit. The news dubbed her "Lemon Witch," and she is unsure how to handle this new identity.  She is all the same captured by SWAT and sent to Camelorum after she loses control of her powers in a shopping mall and turns a mall cop into a lime.  She features here.


 * Barry Navoz / Ion Boy: A very nervous male inmate, who has a crush on Carly. Features here.  Carly seems oblivious to his attractions at first.  He gets upgraded to Ion Boy after an encounter with Xiboruty, whom he later joins the Camelry to stop.  He is in Camelorum for having accidentally set off a Rube Goldberg contraption, which destroyed a billionaire's car.


 * Janet "the Glob" Joblin: Unable to call herself "the Blob" because that's already taken, Glob is hard to move once she plants her feet. However, this is not unexploitable.  As seen here in "Ball Game."  Little is known about Janet, except that she's on one of the soccer teams at Camelorum.

Jen in Black=

These two Prodigal-Gamer originals are finely-attuned to detecting and warning others about alien activity. Unfortunately, nobody believes them until it's too late. Both of them get a hero upgrade after they escape from Xiboruty and steal some of his weaponry to fight back at him with, becoming obvious spoofs of the Men in Black. They were originally at Camelorum serving time for destroying a fountain in a drunk driving incident.


 * Jenny Jane: A Prodigal-Gamer original character, and one of the first to be mentioned as a resident at Camelorum Correctional. An athlete at heart.


 * Jenny Kay: The other Jenny. Less athletic, she feels she must live up to being a convict, and follows the Get Hard philosophy.  Which the other prisoners find bizarre.

Regular inmates=


 * Carly Rancine: Sometimes called "Carly Rancid" by the others, she woke up inside the Camelorum Correctional having absolutely no idea how she got there - or why she was being held. She holds a chip on her shoulder for the fact that nobody will explain anything to her, and why she's not allowed to have a lawyer.  She senses a conspiracy, but finds neither the warden nor the guards nor any of the inmates to be of any help.  Instead, she plays observer to events and hopes amidst the insanity to piece together something that might resemble a cohesive narrative.  She was created by BulldozerIvan over some confusion regarding Emily and some other characters, as not all commission artists working for Prodigal-Gamer could agree on a single look for most of his characters.  Her most prominent scene so far is here.


 * Phil Funzel: A bumbling young man who is mistakenly believed to be a master thief, and has been accused of stealing the Mauve Puma diamond. Nobody can prove it, but he's so far the only suspect.  When the associate prosecutor tries to interrogate him, he inadvertently tricks her into saying things for which she can get sued, leading to no small amount of resentment between them.  He is eventually acquitted when it is discovered that Hada Taca stole the Mauve Puma diamond - at behest of the actual Mauve Puma.  Phil's enjoyment of his freedom is short-lived, however, when he is assassinated by the Mauve Puma.


 * Emily Barnes: A Prodigal-Gamer original character, and subject of a majority of commissioned art on DeviantArt. While there is some debate about the nature of her sentence, it's agreed upon that she began life as a spoiled child and then fell on the wrong side of the law.  She is often seen on the chain gangs, or hanging out with Carly.  They share a bond as two of the few sane women at the facility.  Originally a brunette, she has been more recently portrayed as blonde to distinguish herself from Carly.  Like Carly, she is also one of the few women who take anything seriously.  She has varied greatly both in hair color, and in physique.  No two artists seem to agree on how hard the staff at Camelorum works her either.


 * Beatrice Index: Originally envisioned by Prodigal-Gamer and drawn by numerous artists, she was first given a name by BulldozerIvan in "Street Sweeping Team" by AnirBrokenear. She is tall, pink-haired, happy-go-lucky, clueless, dim-witted, loving, helpful, mentally unstable, and prone to bad luck.  She is inspired heavily by Pinky from Pinky and the Brain, and has a similar relationship with Luin to Pinky's with Brain.  Prodigal has stated his approval of this name for her on a few occasions, even eventually canonizing it.  She considers Luin to be the only one who has ever taken her under-wing, and is completely devoted to helping Luin with her insane world domination schemes.  She wandered around one day and got lost in the very building where Luin was conducting an experiment.  A superhero interfered with Luin's scheme and ruined it, causing the device to fail and destroy the building.  Beatrice protected Luin from some falling debris, saving both their lives in the long run.  However, Beatrice was then accused of being an accomplice to Luin's schemes and was sent to Camelorum along with Luin.  She enjoys cheap jokes, zany schemes, and soccer.


 * Luin Kim: A short woman who graduated from college at an early age. She strangely speaks a dialect of English highly improbable for someone of South Korean origin, and has a really high IQ.  All the same, her father's impossible standards drive her insane, leading to her urge for world domination to prove herself worthy of his respect - or just to see if she can do it.  Her one major failure leads to her being sent with Beatrice to Camelorum, where she somehow still gets a hold of the necessary materials to continue her zany world domination schemes from behind bars.  Egotistical and neurotic, she is quick to insult - often via sarcasm - anyone whose statements she deems idiotic.  She has a lot more patience for Beatrice than the other inmates, however.  She shares a rivalry with a supervillain known as the Spatula, who often tries to steal her inventions to aid his own plans for world conquest.  She is also highly resentful that her cell doesn't come with a refrigerator.  However, her plans to get one are constantly foiled.  Not by security, but by bizarre happenstance.


 * Bonnie Boddiny: Also nicknamed "Gummi Bear" by the other inmates. She tried inventing her own version of Flubber, after ignoring the advice of a coworker.  That coworker was later arrested over questionable logistics with an unrelated sale.  Bonnie herself tried her formula, and then accidentally bounced 80 feet high and landed on a prized poodle, killing it instantly.  Rita Rigatoni starts keeping her company, as they can talk through the heating vents and play "telephone."  Bonnie considers Rita to be slightly insane, though they do like to tell Dr. Seuss jokes to irritate the guards.


 * Rita Rigatoni: A slightly crazy woman who communicates via the heating vent system with Bonnie. She is in for having defended herself with a corkscrew, killing her attacker.  She claims her name is appropriate, as she's "one twisted noodle."


 * Alice Bloney: Also known as Alice "Baloney," due to her love of baloney sandwiches. Sometimes also called "Alice in Blunderland."  She once accidentally fed a ferret a piece of explosive material, when grabbing that instead of kibble and having no clue why those two items would be kept close to each other for her to confuse.  As a result, Alice has been the target of frequent, awkward elevator rides.


 * Katrina Cantina: An emotionally unstable graffiti artist, who gets in trouble for painting a picture of Deathstroke on a wall. The judge irritates her by mistakenly accusing her of drawing Spider-Man.  Katrina was first given a name here, in a piece by the artist Shases dubbed "On Trial."


 * Melinda Rotinda: Katrina's frustrated partner-in-crime.

20s Altered Judo Iguanas-related=

Blatant parodies / knock-offs of the 1987 Ninja Turtles. Two of the women at Camelorum were sent there after a failed attempt to commit corporate espionage on the building belonging to the science firm believed to have created the Iguanas. All the same, the Iguanas live in a museum storage basement and protect the town that hosts Camelorum from the evil Spatula and his minions - while eating calzones and having fun with June O'Reilly. They occasionally factor into the plot, but usually make background cameos. First mentioned in "Street-Sweeping Team," they get their own limelight spot here. Prodigal has described the Iguanas as "creepy," but that they contrast well with the "really cute" June.
 * Wycliffe: Named after the Protestant reformer John Wycliffe, this Iguana likes to wear brown. He is the de facto leader in field operations for his team of judo brothers, though he often states the obvious.  He is a blatant knock-off of Leonardo.


 * Huss: Often wearing gray shirts, Huss is named after the Protestant reformer John Huss. He makes it his business to understand the logistical flow of everything in the city, and then advises Wycliffe accordingly.  He cannot fix machines like Donatello, but he does understand where they'd most likely be put to use.


 * Calvin: Named after John Calvin, this Iguana is the skeptic of the group who second-guesses what the others say and tries to factor Murphy's Law into the equation whenever possible. In spite being fatalistic, he is completely devoted to the success of his brothers.  He usually is wearing yellow.  He is the closest analog to Raphael.


 * Zwingli: Named after Ulrich Zwingli, this Iguana is the clown of the group. He is usually wearing white, and is the first to call for more calzones.  This is in reference to Michelangelo's love of pizza.


 * Shrapnel: A giant, blue-feathered cockatoo who is an obvious parody of Splinter from Ninja Turtles. He makes very rare appearances, usually letting the Iguanas figure things out for themselves.


 * June O'Reilly: A reporter who was assigned to do a series of stories on the chain gang. However, she gets in trouble herself after she and the Iguanas fail to stop the Spatula from destroying a building.  She winds up inside Camelorum with them and Shrapnel, although they do escape and continually plot to rescue her somehow.


 * Spatula: An obvious Shredder knock-off who considers Luin his biggest rival for the rank of top supervillain. When the Iguanas are unable to foil his schemes, dumb luck usually does the trick.  That, or his incompetent henchmen.  He is often said to be "flipping" things.


 * Beat-Drop: A man partially turned into a whale by the same company that made the Iguanas. His name is a reference to dubstep, and he is otherwise a knock-off of Bebop.  He rarely ever factors into the main plot.


 * Eurodance: Beat-Drop's ostrich-like partner-in-crime, and also a henchman for Spatula. Similarly, he seldom factors into the main plot, and is often referenced in the background as a running gag.  He tends to dress in a "metro" style, and is otherwise based off Rocksteady.

Flooby-Don't Gang=

Seldom-appearing knock-offs of the Scooby-Doo team. They solved mysteries in the Inquiry Device, up until it was impounded.


 * Flooby-Don't: Much like Drumstick, Flooby is a mix of a German shepherd and a poodle. He was last seen being eaten by Tobey the Toilet Monster, who comes out of toilets and attacks random victims.  He is presumed dead, but appears in flashbacks for running gag purposes.


 * Ted Bones: A Fred knock-off, presumed dead via Tobey.


 * Tammany Edwards: A Daphne knock-off, also presumed dead via Tobey.


 * Joe Hammerstein: A Shaggy knock-off, who is extremely paranoid about everything. He is deathly afraid of Tobey the Toilet Monster coming to eat him as well, though the guards think he's insane.  Based on a reinterpretation of this scene.


 * Annie Tudinous: A crazy-prepared pharmacist-turned-vigilante-private-detective, and also the Velma analog. She has invented medicines for conditions that the Camelorum staff does not know exist yet, though police think it's just random drugs when they first raid the Inquiry Device.  She is being held on drug charges, and is anything but impressed.  It is her medicine cabinet that gets Joe in trouble as well.


 * Tobey the Toilet Monster: A monster that crawls out of toilets and eats random victims. He is believed to have murdered half the Flooby-Don't team.  Authorities occasionally search toilets, in case he pops out of one.  He begins the series still at large.

Other=
 * Ms. Gholash "the Ghoulish": A frightful old woman with a softspoken voice who maintains a haunted house. While kind in and of herself, she seems mostly oblivious to the evil lurking in her home.  Several of the chain gang girls have vanished in past years while attempting to help out around her house, where they hear a little girl in the attic and then go to investigate - never to come back.  Emily personally thinks Gholash is the Devil, and is terrified of that house.  A few have threatened to call the SCP Foundation on Ms. Gholash and her house.


 * Simon Sattlebry: One of the male guards working at Camelorum, who seems to be clueless to a lot of the insanity happening in and around the facility.

Characters and inspirations
Most work in the series proposal currently consists of commissioned sketches and humorous captions, along with suggestions on direction to take the series in. According to Prodigal-Gamer, most of his characters were inspired "by a dream" involving his wife Jen, that somehow turned into an idea for a series about early-20-something female convicts and a chain gang that finds itself on numerous whacky adventures.

As time went by, Prodigal asked other artists to do commissions of some of his ideas, claiming to have very little artistic talent in and of himself. In April of 2015, the Dozerfleet founder discovered some of these commissioned art pieces while doing research for Sodality: Vindication. He left several humorous captions on the images, reinterpreting them from their base presentations to re-frame the situations as revolving around silly setups which harkened back to classic cartoons. Animaniacs proved a major source of inspiration behind this; and the effect recursively resulted in Keet Kabo being given a "New York" accent inspired by that of Slappy Squirrel.

It didn't take long before the captions seemed to bear a sort of subtle hint at continuity, in spite Prodigal's claim to have never taken the time to make his vision "completely cohesive." A lot of this had to do with Anir's repeated depiction of a duo of female inmates in which one was tall with pink hair and the other was of obvious Asian descent. These two were quickly canonized by both BulldozerIvan and Prodigal-Gamer as "Beatrice and Luin," and were seen as a sort of homage / parody of Pinky and the Brain. Luin's deadpan snark is a virtual carbon copy thereof, though Beatrice substitutes "narf" with "derp."

Several panels of commissioned art were unclear as to whether the second blonde being seen with Jenny J were Emily, Jenny K, or a third character. Other panels featured a brunette as Emily, leading to further confusion. This resulted in Carly and Annie being created out of the confusion, with one being compared to Ermac due to the confusion that brought about her existence and the other being made a parody of Velma. Alice Bloney was also made out of confusion about Emily's appearance, as it was often unclear who was in the elevator during several "She was Bad"-esque elevator scenes done by various artists. In versions involving Emily, it was being drunk and disorderly that got her in trouble. In Alice versions, it had to do with accidentally blowing up a ferret.

As the series' "continuity" began to form based around jokes, several additional characters were made specifically to support these jokes. There was a subplot in which a female reporter from the local news tried to do a special on the chain gang at Camelorum, only to ironically end up in some sort of trouble and be sent to Camelorum herself. She wound up being named "June O'Reilly," a spoof on both Bill O'Reily and April O'Neil. To further drive home the point, she was shown to have befriended the "20s Altered Judo Iguanas" and their mentor: a cockatoo named Shrapnel. While the Iguanas remained background characters, they were shown to battle a Shredder spoof named "Spatula," as well as his henchmen "Beat-Drop" and "Eurodance." Beat-Drop was a reference to dubstep, as well as an obvious reference to Bebop. Eurodance the Ostrich replaced Rocksteady, as classic rock and disco had been replaced with dubstep and European dance mixes.

Candace Mason is another character that began based on confusion over Emily's appearance, but which led to the legend of the "Lemon Witch" after some Monty Python references were made in some captions. As Lemon Witch, she was redone into almost a parody of Marvel's Scarlet Witch. She and a few others at Camelorum would become a team of heroes called the Camelry in "Camelry, Assemble!" - a spoof image done to take the silliness up a factor. Barry Navoz - who is easily confused with Joe and Phil and the three may have at one point been the same character - gets upgraded into "Ion Boy" after a Loki fill-in dubbed Xiboruty attacks Camelorum and kidnaps several inmates. This was in reference to the "Ion Man" joke in Ukinojoe's Irod Bad 2 video on YouTube.

Janet Joblin was named "the Glob" after Anir's soccer picture, in which she calls herself that to imply she'll make a good goalie. It was meant as a humorous shout out to Marvel's "Blob." Laney the Laughable - a sort of discount Harley Quinn - was originally Jackie Regg, a Barefoot-Inmate original character. She became part of the cast after escaping Camelorum to get away from another woman there who was treating her like a slave. She joined the circus to avoid recapture, and became a super-clown. Finally, the Camelry was given a leader in the form of a homeless man that could shoot lightning, dubbed "Lightning Hobo" in reference to Hobo With a Shotgun.

Xiboruty was made to resemble a sort of knock-off of Loki from The Avengers and Galaxar from Monsters vs. Aliens, but with speech mannerisms taken from Mark Hamil's DCAU version of the Joker. This played in perfectly to Jenny J and Jenny K becoming the "Jen in Black," with everything but the weapons being present in The Sims 4 to make a Men in Black parody possible. Other characters were rendered as the humor elements required.

Visual media
Most artists behind the series hand-draw or digital-paint the frames themselves. Only Dozerfleet art panels seem to go the machinomic route, utilizing primarily The Sims 4 as a visual medium.

Setting
Not all artists can agree exactly where the characters in Camelorum truly are, or where they started out before being sent to Camelorum. In Dozerfleet continuity, the characters were usually sent to Camelorum directly. They were also from Dromedary Heights or Giddewaltz, DE originally; the latter town also being the setting of The Trapezoid Kids - a similar cartoon world. Some artists depict Emily as being from Florida, however. In Carly's case, it's considered advantageous that her origins are a mystery. In this regard, Camelorum's geographic ambiguity is comparable to that of Springfield from The Simpsons.