Top Ten Showcase Continuations I'd Like To See

As with Marvel, so goeth DC. I don't know if any of these series will ever get another volume--DC seems less invested in their Showcase line than Marvel is in the Essentials, despite a very strong rush of offerings in the first few years of their existence, and it kind of feels like they're just pushing the same old things. Still, a few of those same old things are on my list, so let's throw these out and see what happens, shall we?

10. Warlord. I really liked Volume One of 'Warlord'; Mike Grell's art is beautiful in black-and-white, and the series was a great fantasy pulp pastiche. I know it ran for over 100 issues, so it can't be that hard to keep it going for another few volumes, right?

9. Teen Titans. The first two volumes tied up the Seventies series, but that just means that the stuff everyone really wants, the Wolfman/Pérez run, is just around the corner. Raven, Starfire, Cyborg, all that great Pérez art in black-and-white, and I suspect that royalty issues will preclude it from ever seeing print. I can hope, though, can't I?

8. Superman. It's been ages since Volume Four, and I don't even think they're out of the Sixties with this title. The whole Julius Schwartz era hasn't even seen print yet. Really, they can't stop with this one, not with so much good stuff left.

7. Supergirl. It's been ages since Volume Two, and I don't think they're out of the Sixties here either. Plenty of great material to go on with, even if the character did sort of get sidelined in the Bronze Age, and I'm really hoping they keep going with it.

6. Legion of Super-Heroes. As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to ever stop with these, really. The Legion has such a rich history that it should all be available in cheap, easy-to-read versions for the edification of potential Legion fans who need to catch up on the endless backstory of the title.

5. Justice League of America. Because it's the Justice League, and who doesn't want to get the whole flagship title of the DC Universe collected? This one feels like 'Avengers' to me, a title that was just so integral that they can't not put it out.

4. Hawkman. Because I am a total sucker for the "space cop" version of Hawkman, and I want every scrap of his material that I can get.

3. Batman and the Outsiders. I actually think that one more volume of this one might put them all the way into the Nineties, but I'm fine with that. The first volume didn't even get around to wrapping up Halo's origin, the whole thing is wonderfully cheesy Eighties comics, and I love it. Not necessarily unironically, but I love it.

2. Batman. Because they're heading deep into the heart of the classic O'Neil/Adams run, and stopping now would be like parking the rollercoaster on the hill.

1. All-Star Squadron. This was great. It was Roy Thomas at his finest, taking the Golden Age characters and making them work again, making the rich continuity of DC live and work, and it ran for a long while before 'Crisis' finally killed it off. It'd be nice to see this magnum opus collected in its entirety.

Review: Green Lantern

This was almost "Under the Hood: Green Lantern", because the movie is so obviously flawed that I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to take the skeleton of this film and use it to make something actually good. It's a movie that encourages you not so much to watch it as red-pen it and send it back to Warner Brothers with a note saying, "No. Wrong. Do it again."

The flaws are enormous and fundamental, starting with the protagonist. They made a strange and distracting choice in this one, grabbing pretty much every single character flaw from Hal Jordan and piling them on one after another while adding a few new ones just for this movie. As a result, I couldn't tell you what Hal's emotional arc is in this movie if you put a gun to my head: Is he trying to overcome his fear of commitment? Is he trying to show everyone that he's as good as his father? Is he trying to cope with his fear of dying like his father? Is he trying to overcome his fear of failure? Or is he too much of a loose cannon, with the arc being that everyone else (including the Corps) needs to learn that he's right and they're wrong? The movie offers absolutely no answers and never really wraps up any of these things; in the end, Hal mutters the Green Lantern oath under his breath and then defeats Parallax in less than five minutes. It was as if they assumed that Hal would be sympathetic solely because of Ryan Reynolds' degree of dudebro roguish charm, and so they didn't need to do anything at all to make you like the guy based on the script.

Oh, yes, and Parallax. Let's have a long, sad talk about Parallax. Look, I know he's a major element of the last decade's worth of Green Lantern mythology, but...he's not really a villain. He's not even really a character. He's a walking collection of plot kludges that solved problems that the writer was having in the 'Green Lantern' titles at that time. He has no clear motivations--is he trying to destroy the universe? Rule it? Eat it? Punish it? Never explained. He has no clearly defined powers--in the film, he's just a big cloud of smoke with yellow souls in it that swoops through Coast City, except when he's a yellow goo that turns Hector Hammond into a creepy monster-person who otherwise has sweet Fanny Adams to do with the rest of the film. (And by the way, I'm going to give a little tip to you, filmmakers. If you do, in fact, plan to have Hector Hammond as a villain so you can retcon in a lifetime personal connection to Hal and give them the parallel problem of being unable to live up to their famous fathers...maybe have them meet sometime before the halfway point? The late second act is a little too late to have them bump into each other and start chatting.) And speaking of Hector Hammond, at least he had a connection to Hal, even if it was just made for this movie. Parallax could be pretty much anything from a giant meteor to a plague of space frogs for all that it matters to the main character.

And they have Sinestro in the movie, but they don't use him as a villain, because "you need to set it up". No, no you don't. Sinestro is an ex-Green Lantern who decided that the Guardians were soft and fear would exert control and curb disorder far better than "willpower", and so he turned to the power of fear to do the job that they could not. That's a sentence, not a movie. What people generally mean when they say that you need to set up Sinestro's fall is that they feel like Sinestro becomes a stronger villain when he's also Hal's mentor, but that's not necessary, just desirable. Given how weak Hal's Rogue's Gallery is outside of Sinestro (maybe Krona, maybe Star Sapphire, maybe the Manhunters but they're basically Sinestro without the ring, but before long you start getting down to dregs like the Black Hand and the Shark) you have to open with something big. Sinestro is your biggest gun. There's no point in saving him for a sequel that may never happen. Not to mention, if you do for some godforsaken reason want to use Parallax as a villain, you use him after you use Sinestro. Sinestro is a mortal using the tools of a god. He's less threatening if Hal has already beaten the god in question, even if it was through one of the dumbest and most awkward Chekhov's gun moments in cinematic history. "Here, poozer, let me teach you one thing and one thing only. The best way of defeating something large and monstrous is to throw it into the sun. Remember that in about an hour or so, okay?"

And even if you are going to set up Sinestro, maybe you should then decide to, oh, I don't know...set up Sinestro? As it is, Sinestro's emotional arc is the only easily comprehensible one in the entire film, and it's "arrogant and prideful hero wannabe learns that real courage isn't just power and combat skill, it's facing up to your fear and defeating it." It is an arc that means the one thing he's not about to do is put on the freaking fear ring at the end, by definition. Putting him in the neon yellow CGI animated bodysuit at the end (and I could write an entire post on the way this film was utterly drunk on CGI, using it for things that would have been done far better as practical effects like make-up and costumes, but life's too short to spend the rest of it detailing every single way this movie sucked rocks) was the one thing he should not have done based on his character as shown in this movie. It wasn't just an unearned Big Moment, it was an anti-earned Big Moment.

I could go on further--the opening saga voiceover was a pointless infodump that was covered later on in the movie in its entirety, there was no effort made at establishing the Guardians as actual guardians of the universe that people would listen to (the seemingly endless number of Guardian heel-turns only ever worked because they first grounded the Guardians as examples of the Wise Mentor archetype and then showed that they had a dark side), Abin Sur still had a spaceship even though there have been no less than two stories written in response to the question, "Why is a Green Lantern flying a spaceship anyway?", there's a criminally good setup line for a heroic quip that's utterly wasted (Parallax says "You are nothing without the ring," which absolutely begs for Hal to do something awesome and say, "No, the ring is nothing without me," but instead his sorry butt is saved by Carol launching cruise missiles at Parallax)...but I think I've made my point. There are exactly two things this movie did right, and one of them was not succumbing to the urge to call Tom Kalmaku Pieface. This is not a good track record.

I think a good 'Green Lantern' movie could still be made. In fact, it's been made pretty easy. Just look at every single creative decision this movie ever made, and do the exact opposite.

Terrible Pun of the Day

I apologize profusely for the lack of posts lately; I've been working on a writing project (one that's perilously close to being ready for a formal announcement, I hope) and it's left me with little energy to blog on top of it. I've mostly been kicking back with 'Avengers: Alliance' in my free time.

One of the enemies in the game has an attack called "Unavoidable Slash". Today I found myself wondering if it was Kirk/Spock or Harry/Snape. I think that's a sign of something, but I have no idea what.

Top Ten Marvel Essentials Series That Deserve Another Volume

Long-time followers of my blog will know that I love love love love love the Essentials series. I adore getting huge chunks of comics for a ludicrously reasonable price and tearing through twenty issues at a time of a classic title. They don't come out nearly often enough for my tastes, unfortunately, which means that not only are they not collecting some of the series that I want at all, they're also frustratingly slow in getting out more of the ones that they've started. Don't get me wrong--I understand that top priority will always go to the next Spider-Man, Cap, Thor, Iron Man and whoever else has a movie coming out soon. (Which may mean we might actually freaking see 'Essential Guardians of the Galaxy'!) But there are a lot of titles I want the next volume of, and I want it now. In reverse order of desirability:

10) Howard the Duck. Yes, I know this one's crazy. I know that the post-Gerber issues supposedly suck, and that they're not a patch on his great work on the series and that they were just an attempt to cash in on the character after he got sick of dealing with Marvel and quit. I'd still like to see them, just to make that judgment for myself. They'd also probably have room here to collect all the material Gerber did once he reconciled with Marvel before he died, which would be a nice gesture.

9) Captain Marvel. They've got two volumes out, and I think a third would actually bring them right up to 'The Death of Captain Marvel'. I'd like to see that, for the sake of closure if nothing else. Never been a big CM fan per se, but it'd be nice to have his story completed in one set of accessible volumes.

8) Doctor Strange. There were a lot of good Doctor Strange runs in the late 70s/early 80s, and the Essential series is on the verge of getting to them. My dream run goes all the way up through Roy Thomas' return to the series alongside Jackson Guice in the late 80s, before they got all 90s with the character and lumped him in with the Midnight Sons in a failed attempt to make him "edgy". (Oh, who am I kidding. As part of an Essentials run, I'd even take that.)

7) The Defenders. As with Captain Marvel, I think that one more volume should just about finish the series off. It'd be nice to get the original run collected, right up where it gets canceled and dovetails into the first issue of X-Factor. Plus, there was a certain apocalyptic splendour to the series finale; it's not quite the original Doom Patrol, but the team did implode in a pretty impressive way, and it'd be nice to read it all in one big story.

6) X-Men. Totally unfair, I know, because the odds of them not continuing to collect the X-Men are pretty slim even though Volume Eleven makes a good stopping point (it's the end of the Claremont era.) But just because they're likely to collect it doesn't mean I want it less. This was about where I stopped reading the X-titles, primarily because it was too expensive to keep up with them and there were too many series to keep track of and there was too little going on in each issue. The Essential version cures pretty much all those ills at once, so I say bring it on!

5) X-Factor. Pretty much everything I said about X-Men applies here, with the added bonus that the next volume would collect most of Peter David's original run on the title, which was absolutely divine. Vic Chalker and his family, Strong Guy, Cyber, and I'm pretty sure the X-Cutioner's Saga falls into this era too. Fun stuff, even if the end of X-Cutioner's Saga made it clear that they had no idea at the time who Stryfe and Cable were going to be. (Their dialogue makes literally no sense in light of their later origins.)

4) Web of Spider-Man. There is just no way I'm turning down mid-to-late 80s Spider-Man. Amazing, Spectacular, Web...I'm a sucker for all of it. This one's on here pretty much as the representative of the trio, because there's a little less of it than there is of the other two and I have fond memories of it. (And if they go far enough, we could get the Clone Saga! How sad is it that I actually enjoy 90s schlock when it's cheap enough and I can read it all in one sitting without having to open bags.)

3) Power Man and Iron Fist. There's still, I think, another volume or two to squeeze out of their original run, and that was a fun era on the title. The two characters had a great chemistry, they're still popular...or at least, Marvel's still pushing them on people, which may or may not be the same thing but I love reading their old series. They were hard to find on the newsstands when I was a kid, and all I really remember is that Iron Fist died at the end in a very stupid way. I'd like to go back and actually read it all, though.

2) She-Hulk. This one's a sneaky one, because the first volume collected her whole 70s run. Which means that a Volume Two would jump ahead to her classic John Byrne run, which I have fond-but-vague memories of as one of the great action-comedy series. Byrne's art in black and white is always easy on the eyes, too. I'm sure this one would be popular; it's got some serious nostalgia working for it.

1) Silver Surfer. Volume Two of this series was basically Volume One of the characters 80s title, and it deserves a Volume Three which would actually be a Volume Two. Steve Englehart's old run on this series was absolutely pure, unmitigated awesome. Better yet, continuing further would hit Starlin's run, and if there's anything that would sell right now it's the comics featuring the original return of Thanos. Add in the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos Quest, and you've got some truly great cosmic epics. I'd love to see it all in a single big, thick, black and white chunk.

Top Five Picks for the New Avengers Team (Once Disney Buys Up the Rights to All World Media)

Because let's face it, we know it's coming. And while it's undoubtedly going to have downsides to have a single massive corporation controlling the intellectual property rights to every single concept ever created by anyone ever, it does mean that the crossovers are going to be freaking metal. So let's just get on to the happy part of it now and worry about the rest later, okay?

1) Harry Potter. Because the Avengers have needed a magic specialist for a long time. You can't always cross your fingers and hope that Doctor Strange is going to be at home to answer the phone instead of being on the tail-end of the 14th Dimension fighting it out with Freddy Krueger, can you? (Remember, Disney will own everything.) Harry brings real magical expertise to the table, he's survived at least two uses of the Killing Curse, and he's got that great teen/tween appeal.

2) Snake Plissken. Because if there's one thing Brian Michael Bendis has forced on us taught us, it's that the Avengers should have at least one ruthless murderer on the team at all times, just in case a ruthless murder needs to happen and everybody else has scruples. (Because that's the extent of scruples as Bendis understands them--not doing the murdering yourself.) Plissken is a expert tactician, a weapons master and a good close-in fighter. I can see him teaming well with the Black Widow and Merida (oh, she's totally on the team. So's EVE. But we're limiting this to team-ups that couldn't already happen.)

3) Pikachu. You'd probably have to bring Ash along for the ride, here, sort of like how the Justice Society always had to hang out with Johnny Thunder even though you know they wanted to just stuff him in a dumpster somewhere and take the thunderbolt along by itself, but it'd be worth it. Anyone who ever played 'Super Smash Brothers' can tell you the little teleporting lightning mouse can be stone-cold brutal when the mood strikes him. Besides, how awesome would it be to have Doom cowering in fear on hearing "Pika Pika!"

4) Superman. Because if you're putting together a flagship comic of all the superheroes, how can you pass up the ultimate hero? He'd probably have to split time with his membership in the Justice League, like Captain America, but it'd still be a great addition to the title.

5) Hannibal Lecter. Hey, it still makes more sense than Wolverine.

Any suggestions you have for a great Avengers roster that involves non-Marvel characters? Toss it in the comments!

The Worst Thing About All This

Years ago, I thought I had a shot at breaking into screenwriting. I didn't think I was going to be any kind of artistic success, mind you, but I was more than willing to make some decent scratch off of being low-brow. And I thought I had a pretty good insight into what kind of comedies teenagers wanted to see. So I wrote a script for Jim Carrey.

It wasn't great, don't get me wrong. I knew I was slumming it, and I wasn't proud. But it was the kind of thing he did back then, and it was just tasteless and raunchy enough that I thought I might be in with a chance. Carrey was the male lead (of course), playing a dorky-yet-loveable congressman who went off to Washington determined to do the right thing. (There was a running gag about his last name, "Weiner", and all the other congressmen making fun of him.) But he was allergic to the cherry blossoms, so he got his doctor to prescribe some anti-histamines...only the doctor was actually this crazy mad scientist type (I was thinking maybe get Martin Short for this part? I had some suggestions, maybe I was overstepping my bounds there) and he mixed up this bizarre chemical concoction for him. And when he drank it, buttoned-down Congressman Weiner became the suave, sexy ladies' man Carlos Danger.

I figured it'd be a guaranteed sell. There was all sorts of wacky misunderstandings going on, Carlos kept doing things that Weiner had to explain away, the other Congressmen were using it as a way to try to get him to drop out of the race so that the crooked governor could appoint a sleazy creep to the post who was going to bulldoze an orphanage, and in the end Weiner got the girl (of course there was a girl) and saved the orphanage. I was already describing it in my head as "'The Nutty Professor' meets 'Mister Smith Goes To Washington'," which I knew was going to go great at the producers' meetings, and I figured I'd make a million off it and be able to quit my day job. My only question was whether I should have gone with 'Mister Weiner Goes To Washington' instead of 'Congressman Weiner'.

And Carrey shot it down cold. He sent it back to me with a note on it that said, "Give me a break! Totally unbelievable even by my standards. 'Congressman Weiner'? 'Carlos Danger'? Nobody's going to buy this, especially not me!" I can't pretend I wasn't hurt--I'd sold out my artistic integrity, and found out that nobody was even buying. (I was even more upset when I saw the ads for 'Me, Myself and Irene', but I decided not to sue. Dignity, that's my motto.)

And that's the worst part. Now I have proof it could all really happen, but Jim Carrey isn't doing those kinds of movies anymore.

Oh well. Maybe I could dust off my old horror movie script about a Mormon ex-governor who concealed the evidence of his serial killings in his tax returns...

Next Week On 'Finding Cthulhu'

Next week, on 'Finding Cthulhu', the team heads out to Arkham, Massachusetts.

MATT: Arkham is actually a very good place to go when you're looking for for 'Thuls; there've been about a dozen sightings there in the last century. We got some audio footage from a friend of mine in the area, said he heard several 'Thuls calling to each other.

[PLAYS AUDIO TAPE THAT SOUNDS LIKE WHALE SONG]

RANAE: I'm pretty sure that's just whale song, guys.

[CUT TO BOBO IN INTERVIEW TAPED LATER]

BOBO: That's Ranae all over. She doesn't understand that Cthulhus are expert mimics! The Call of Cthulhu can sound like any number of local animals. I think she needs to see Cthulhu for herself to understand the truth.

MATT (voiceover, over shot of map of Massachusetts): We traveled up to Arkham to see if we could uncover evidence of Cthulhu. Our first step, as always, was to ask residents if they'd seen the Elder God.

[EXTERIOR SHOT OF ARKHAM ASYLUM]

MATT: So you say you've actually seen a Cthulhu in the wild?

MAN IN STRAITJACKET, HIS HAIR STARK WHITE WITH UNHOLY DREAD: I have! I have seen him, I have seen his dread majesty! He comes forth to ravage the world! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[CUT TO RANAE IN INTERVIEW TAPED LATER]

RANAE: The boys gave a lot more credibility than I would to a witness who was committed to an insane asylum after murdering half a dozen people. I'd like to try to get some video evidence. That's why we're spending the entire night in a leaky rowboat out in the harbor, dropping heavy rocks into the area where we believe a Cthulhu to be nesting.

[CUT TO GANG IN LEAKY ROWBOAT]

BOBO (to CLIFF): Wanna try a few calls?

CLIFF: Sure. [puts fingers in front of mouth in a vaguely tentacular fashion and burbles through them]

MATT (voiceover): Cliff is an expert Cthulhu caller. His Call of Cthulhu should get some results, especially with me dropping rocks over the side.

CLIFF: Did you guys hear that? That strange, unearthly splashing noise?

RANAE: That was Matt, dropping a heavy rock in the water.

[CUT TO BOBO IN INTERVIEW TAPED LATER]

BOBO: Ranae didn't hear it, but I'm sure I heard a second splash a split-second after the rock hit the water. I'm sure that the 'Thul responded to us by slapping a tentacle...but when he saw that it was a bunch of humans and not another Cthulhu, he ran away. They're naturally timid around people.

[CUT TO MORNING]

MATT: Well, guys, I guess the stars weren't right tonight. Still, I'm sure we'll find some evidence next week in Innsmouth!

I Find Myself Deeply Disappointed in the Film "Pinocchio's Revenge"

I had a weird idea for a horror movie starring Pinocchio, but before I shared it with you I figured I'd look up the character on Wikipedia because the idea is so obvious I feel like it must have been used before somewhere. I did see that there was a horror movie called "Pinocchio's Revenge", but it didn't have even a single scene where Pinocchio grabs someone and starts rapidly telling lies, impaling them on his sharpened nose.

Why even bother if you're not going to do that? Huh, movie?

(Also, if anyone can tell me if this idea has been done, I'd be very grateful. It feels familiar to me, but then again I was reasonably certain someone must have done the 'Scooby-Doo'/'V for Vendetta' mashup, and I appear to have come to that one first.)

If I Wrote the Fantastic Four #1

Yes, it's a total rip-off of Chris Bird's "If I Wrote the Legion", but I can't help it. I have ideas for a Fantastic Four run, and even though this is no way to break into a major comics company (if it was, they'd have listen to Chris Bird's frankly awesome ideas for the Legion) fish gotta swim, you know? So, here's my first in an irregular series of posts on what I would do with the FF if I got it, starting with...

#1: Cosmic Rays. They're Not Just For Breakfast Anymore.

One of the things that I've become a big believer in, so far as comics go, is that there's a depressing dearth of creativity. Everyone comes onto a series to do their "Greatest Hits Album", taking the better-known villains on the title and trying to do the "ultimate" story for that villain. That isn't to say that this approach can't work; Kurt Busiek's run on 'Avengers' was a GHA, going from obscure villains like Imus Champion and Morgan le Fay to his take on Ultron and Kang, and it was great. But there's only so many times you can do a Fantastic Four run that goes through the Frightful Four, Galactus, the Mad Thinker, Doctor Doom, and never adds anything to the mythos.

Which isn't to say I wouldn't use Doom...but not from the start. My first storyline would involve creating some new villains for a change. And why not use the same method that created the Fantastic Four? "Probably because not everyone can just hop on a spaceship and fly past the Van Allen Belt," you might say, but I have a solution to that.

In my first issue, Reed discovers a source of concern regarding the Earth's ozone layer. Roxxon (they're still around, right?) has been using a new manufacturing process which they insist is perfectly safe...but as an expert in cosmic rays, Reed alone realizes that they're slowly eroding the Earth's protection from cosmic rays. As a result, the layer of atmosphere that shields from cosmic rays is dangerously thin, with shifting "hot spots" that allow full-strength blasts of cosmic rays to go all the way down to the ground.

As a result, random individuals are being hit by cosmic rays and gaining superpowers. Some of them are taking it well; I figure there'd be at least one who's trying to organize a support group. "People With Powers, Thursday 7-8." But there are always going to be some people who use their powers in the wrong way, and as the cosmic ray experts, the FF are the go-to people for it. They stop the bad ones, help the good ones, and Reed adds every single one of them to his "When I Finally Find A Cure For Cosmic Ray Bombardment" list.

Of course, there are other people out there interested in what is the beginning of a new army of superhumans...

Post-CONvergence Report

Sorry about the lack of a Thursday post, but as previously mentioned, I was at CONvergence this weekend. For those of you not familiar with it, CONvergence is a Twin Cities sci-fi/fantasy/general geekery convention that grew out of Minicon, but has rapidly come to outshine the venerable old sci-fi/party convention in the minds of me at least. It's a con that's hit that perfect sweet spot, large enough to attract cool guests like Paul Cornell and Kevin Murphy, but not so large that you have to wait in endless lines for each panel. (Although this year for the first time there were significant lines for badges. My advice to anyone going is to pick theirs up a day early.)

Once again on going to the con, I was struck by how absolutely great, how amazingly wonderful, how shout-it-to-the-rooftops awesome this con's harassment policy is. They make it clear through posters on every single wall and in every single convention space that being a jerk to your fellow conventioneers is not going to be tolerated (of either gender, by the way--several of the posters had men in kilts next to the slogan "Costumes Are Not Consent", which is a wonderful contrast to conventions that allow things like the Kilt Inspection Brigade.) They had various spaces designated as Official Safe Spaces, where you could go and be guaranteed that the person there would send whoever was bothering you away and give you a chance to get over whatever they did while they got convention staff to kick that person out of the con. CONvergence walks the walk as well as talks the talk, and the result is a con that attracts a lot of amazing and talented female guests and has wonderful gender representation on the panels. (Paul Cornell said that when he announced that he would only appear on panels if there was at least one woman up there with him, CONvergence was the only convention that didn't have to rearrange his schedule at all.)

And the panels were fun. I saw a great panel on the Worst of Bond, I was on a great panel on the Wilderness Years of Doctor Who (with Jason Tucker, who's arranging a new convention here in the Twin Cities, and Lars Pearson, who is always an absolute delight to talk to or listen to, and with my lovely lovely wife.) I ran four Red Dragon Inn demos, I jumped in a hot tub bigger than my actual bathroom, and I saw trailers for movies both real and fake. I took about fifty photos of people in awesome costumes, including a TV-quality Vastra and the Pink Dalek (an adorable eleven-year old girl handing out ribbons that said, "Exterminate! XOXO Pink Dalek". They were the hot item of the con.) And I am already looking forward to next year, and planning to join the movement to get Ben Aaronovitch to the next CONvergence. (The theme next year is urban fantasy. The man who wrote 'Rivers of London' deserves to be there.) (So does Paul Cornell, but he's already said he plans to go every year because he loves it so much.) (And frankly, so do I.)

So a big thank you to every single one of the volunteers, even if it was just someone who badged for a half-hour, and I hope to see you at next year's CONvergence!

Insane Comics Moments, Part Eight

Frankly, making fun of the Blackhawks is like shooting fish in a barrel. Sure, they were more popular than Superman at one point and sold more copies of their comic, but you can say the same thing about Youngblood. They're basically just "wacky ethnic people flying jets", which was enough to hang your hook on back in the Golden Age when they didn't know any better (other successful comics back in the day were "a guy who hits people", "a guy who throws smoke bombs, then hits people", and "a short guy who hits people".) But once the Silver Age rolled around and kids got real superheroes, sales of the 'Blackhawk' comic plummeted.

Which is when things got...awkward.

Because it led to Blackhawks #228, which is nigh-unto-legendary in the annals of lovers of Silver Age goofiness everywhere. The DC Universe goes temporarily meta, as Batman himself informs the President of the United States that the Blackhawks have become so terminally lame that even other fictional characters can't stand them anymore. (Lest you think I'm joking here, the actual quote from the comic is, ""It's fact, sir -- the Blackhawks are washed-up has-beens, out of date antiques, a danger to national security! To put it bluntly... they just don't swing!" That's Batman, explaining to the President. No really.)

Later, the secret agency known as GEORGE (I'd really like to say that's not an acronym, just because I love the idea of a secret agency named George, but it actually stands for "Group for Extermination of Organizations of Revenge, Greed, and Evil") defeats the Blackhawks in a mock battle to show them how inept they are. It's a comic-book intervention, basically. The Blackhawks decide that the only way that they can become crimefighters as good as superheroes...is to become superheroes themselves.

And this is what they come up with.



...just feast your eyes on that for a moment. Marvel at Stan's...what the hell is that, a tesseract on his wrist? Does he trap enemies in the fourth dimension with it?

Gaze in astonishment at "The Listener", which has to be the least menacing superhero name ever. "Talk, punk. Tell us what your plans are. Because I really want to know what you're thinking. People say...I'm a really good listener."

Admire the Weapons Master, who looks something like my mental image of the Unabomber before they caught the Unabomber.

And Dr. Hands...you know what? That's actually a step up in dignity for Chop-Chop. Screw it.

After 14 issues, this take on the characters was pretty much dumped down the memory hole to land next to Mopee, the Heavenly Helpmate who gave the Flash his powers, and the Blackhawks themselves entered decades of on-and-off (mostly on) comics obscurity. Their revamp, though, entered comics history as the only desperation move lamer than Penance.

I Must Be Getting Desperate For Topics

The real reason my posting schedule gets a little bit sparse at this time of year has nothing to do with lack of time and everything to do with lack of ideas. I get so consumed by work that I don't really pay attention to the world, which makes it hard to write about things that aren't the financial industry's decision to spend years and years depersonalizing the home mortgage process and getting personal influence out of the home valuation process by putting barriers between the loan officers and the appraisers so they can't communicate...then start requiring references from a financial institution for all new appraisers. (As you can imagine, this is something I can talk a lot about.)

So at this point, I'm just going to tell you about a dream I had the other day. In it, I was watching a "lost" Eccleston episode of 'Doctor Who', and marveling at the sheer audacity of Russell T. Davies. Because I knew that while the casual viewer wasn't going to notice it, Davies had gone and made the story into a mashup of "Vengeance on Varos" and "Timelash", and was demonstrating that there was really nothing wrong with the ideas, only the execution. In it, the Doctor and Rose and Jack landed on a degenerate former colony where the inhabitants had developed a Roman-esque Imperial Court, and the Doctor was framed by the Emperor as the ringleader of the rebels (who didn't really exist--they were just a convenient excuse to crack down on people) and sentenced to the Mindlash. (As a subplot, there was a faction who planned to use the Doctor to assassinate the Emperor and then execute him for that. Not many good guys in this one.)

The Doctor, in turn, found out that the Mindlash was actually a piece of broken technology from the original colony ship, an artificial intelligence that functioned as the ship's psychiatrist. Unfortunately, this one had become rather severely degraded, and was convinced that the default state for "sanity" was the 17th century explorer Vasco de Gama. The Doctor was deemed incurably insane for not believing himself to be a Spanish sailor from the Age of Exploration, and the machine decided that the best way to "cure" him was to erase his brain patterns entirely.

I woke up before the end, but I'd already guessed it--the Doctor had been talking to the Captain of the Imperial Guard, who was a good man who knew that the Court had become too decadent to survive, and I figured that in traditional Ninth Doctor fashion, he was going to win not through direct action but by inspiring someone else to do good. But it was an awesome episode, full of jokes and twists and courtly intrigue. I wish you could have seen it.

Self-Taught Superheroes, Part Twenty

If the room hadn't been the size of a couple of freaking football fields, I'd have been fast enough. As it was, I almost made it. But another thing I was learning about being a superhero, along with the crazy plans and the crazy supervillains and the general craziness, is that "almost" just doesn't cut it. "Almost" leaves you still twenty feet away when the bad guy opens the door and his minions flood into the room with their guns at the ready.

"I really have to thank you," Lord Raptor said as his men herded us back towards the portal. I really wanted to take them on, but the odds did not look good--especially not with Captain Light still hovering in the air, now looking increasingly strained as the energy cuffs drained away his power to keep the portal device open. I looked over at Kevin, then jerked my head towards the portal, but he managed to convey in some surprisingly economic gestures that he hadn't really equipped the jury-rigged device with a safety cut-out, and that it was drawing on Josh's ambient power to the point where he couldn't free himself from it. I responded with my own economic gesture that would probably be unprintable.

"Here I am, kidnapping and bombing and stealing and doing all this work to get my portal sustainable to the point where I can use it to enter other worlds...and all I really needed to do was to get a few inventive superheroes to do it for me! You've achieved all my goals, and I didn't even need to lift a finger. I'd let you share in my new Golden Age of Humanity, but I think we both all know that you're not the type to appreciate it." His men backed us up against the portal, and he sauntered arrogantly over to the computer bank.

"Instead, I think I will give you the mercy of exile. Our scans have uncovered a number of habitable worlds; we can find one for you that will keep you alive...if not necessarily comfortable...while I carry out my plans." He gestured to Captain Light. "Which isn't to say that you'll all be going on a one-way trip. This young man is proving to be quite invaluable."

He pressed a few buttons, and the swirl of the portal began to shift. "But the rest of you...entirely expendable, I'm afraid. I hope you understand that it's nothing personal. I'm sure we'd get along quite well socially. But you're in the way of a brand new destiny for the human race. A whole new frontier to conquer...and there's no room for sentimental fools like you that want to coddle the weak." The portal resolved onto a whole new world, one with lemon-yellow sky and trees with bright blue leaves. It was my first-ever glimpse of an alien planet. I'd have appreciated it a lot more if I hadn't been thinking at the time that I was going to spend the rest of my life there.

"Welcome to your new home, my dears. I hope you don't mind roughing it for a bit, but we really can't spare you the supplies. Not when we've got a beachhead to--what the HELL?" He broke off into a stunned silence just as his men started to fire.

As you can imagine, it took a lot for Lord Raptor to break off his love affair with the sound of his own voice. I'm not sure what it looked like to everyone else--probably just a blurred streak in the air, leaping and bouncing and...um, stabbing and mutilating and eviscerating. But I've got my super-speed perceptions, so I saw it perfectly. And by 'it', I mean 'her'.

She stood about eight feet tall, with lavender skin that was covered in some places with an outfit made of animal skins and and in others with war paint the color of dried blood. (At least, I hoped it was paint.) Her ears were pointy, her teeth were pointy, her tail was pointy, and her swords were pointy too. She was demonstrating it vividly and viciously to Lord Raptor's men; I could follow her movements, but they must have felt like food in a Cuisinart. She hacked her way through about a dozen or so, leaving them bleeding on the floor, before she stopped and bellowed a challenge to the rest.

"Ka kh'ra, spellack chirr, sha ka fra kee!" She gestured with her swords, wiggling the tip in a way that made it clear that 'Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!' transcended human language. A few of Lord Raptor's troops shot at her, but she darted away from the bolts as if they were slow-pitch softballs. She hissed back at them like an angry cat, her teeth bared in a parody of a smile.

"Kill the savage!" Lord Raptor shouted from his strategic position on the other side of the computer banks. "A million dollars to the man who brings back her head!"

"Saa...vij..." The alien woman rolled the word around in her mouth as if she was tasting it. "Saavij!" She slapped her own chest with the hilt of her sword. "SAAVIJ!" She laughed harshly, and flung herself back into the crowd of soldiers. I felt guilty for not doing more, but, um...not so guilty that I did more, you know? I mean, Lord Raptor was planning to dump us on a whole planet of 'savages' and then go kill a whole other planet of 'savages', and I knew the meaning of 'irony' as well as the next person. When the troops broke and ran for it, leaving Lord Raptor all alone with us and the alien chick, well...justice was being pretty poetic.

Lord Raptor tried to make for the door too, but Saavij (we never did learn her name in her own language) kept darting in front of him, cutting off his every avenue of escape. He backed away from her, but she was playing with him like a cat played with a mouse. He had nowhere to go except backwards, to the portal. To her world. And from the look on her face, she couldn't wait to give him the guided tour. He stumbled backwards into the alien world with the yellow skies...

And before she could follow, the portal cut out. We all heard the thump of Captain Light hitting the floor knees-first, then falling forward onto his hands. "Oh," he said. "So that's what 'tired' feels like..." With that, he slumped forwards and passed out.

It took him a full three days to wake up. In that time, we'd placated Saavij with some raw meat, taught her the words for 'food', 'water' and 'friend' (although I'm still pretty sure she thinks it means 'person who brings you food and water') and turfed out the few soldiers who hadn't bugged out. That left us with about two dozen airships, twenty or so tanks, an interdimensional portal that we knew how to run in a pinch, and a secret base built into a mountain.

And it was Josh who came up what to do with it all.

"I know there are others like us," he said. "People who have amazing abilities, and who actually want to do the right thing with them. We can get them together here--we've got enough space to store an army, literally. And we can all teach one another everything we've already learned, and learn from them what they've taught themselves! It'll be like an academy for superheroes, except that nobody's in charge. And we can encourage new people with powers, when we find them, to do the right thing instead of turning out like Lord Raptor, just another bully with big ideas." He shrugged. "At least, that's the plan. What do you say?"

I think at this point, you can guess what we said.

But that wasn't what I dreamed about. I'd already gone off into Angry Telepathic Frog House, as previously noted. And I woke up, shouting "Don't crawl down my shirt!" As already indicated. And then I really woke up, and opened my eyes...to the Best. Thing. Ever.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Once Again, Summer = Vanishing Time

Apologies for the missing post on Saturday; I am once again in that part of the year where my day job starts begging for people to work all the hours God sent, and I can't even post on my lunch break this summer because I am doing Seekrit Writerly Things during that time. (If all goes well, I should be able to let you in on the secret come Octoberish. Maybe a little sooner.)

I can make it up to you in a tiny way by mentioning that I'll be attending CONvergence over the 4th of July weekend, here in the Twin Cities. I've never been approached by anyone who reads my blog, so you could be the first! I'll be doing six panels:

Thursday, 7:00 PM: The Whovian Conundrum. A discussion of the way that Who fans deal with the plot holes and contradictions that build up after fifty years of continuity.

Thursday, 10:00 PM: What Makes a Good Bad Movie? A discussion of what makes some movies so bad they're good, and others just bad.

Friday, 12:30 PM: Doctor Who, Season Seven Round-Up. A panel on the most recent season of Who.

Friday, 7:00 PM: Comic Book Villains--The Worst of the Worst. A panel on the classic lame villains of comics, from the Kangaroo to Stilt-Man to Doctor Demonicus.

Saturday, 10:00 PM: Guilty Pleasure Film. A panel on our favorite movies that we love even if we'd never admit it.

Sunday, 2:00 PM: Doctor Who--The Wilderness Years. A panel about the best era of Doctor Who EVAR.

So if you do want to see what I'm like in person, feel free to stop by and listen to me ramble!

"Government Wiretaps Civilians" Is the New "Dog Bites Man"

There's another scandal about the federal government abusing its power to conduct covert surveillance on its own citizens, this time with under catchy and innocuous-sounding acronym of "PRISM". (Sometimes I get the feeling that deep down, every single one of our government intelligence analysts grew up watching 'The Man From UNCLE' one too many times. I'm not saying we should take away their TV sets, but maybe if they got a little therapy, they'd stop acting out their spy fantasies in the seats of government.)

There's a peculiar dichotomy going on right now. On the one hand, the same exact people who insisted Bush was our Glorious Leader and that we needed to be able to spy on innocent civilians to catch the terrorists in our midst that Jack Bauer had missed are now freaking out, because Obama's use of the exact same domestic surveillance in the exact same manner is the first step in the Coming of the Black Helicopters. On the other hand, you have a bunch of left-wing apologists saying that this abuse isn't nearly as bad as Bush's abuse, because it's being carried out by someone competent and intelligent so there's probably a good reason for it this time that we just don't know about. In addition, you also have some left-wingers who are SHOCKED! that Obama, the Second Coming of FDR, turns out to be perfectly willing to abuse government power when it's handed to him. I'd say there are also some right-wingers out there who are glad Obama is finally getting tough with terrorists, but let's just admit it, the neocons are so far gone these days they can't even admit that he got bin Laden and Khadaffi.

Whereas the actual fact is, the abuse is at this point institutional, just like pretty much everyone who was paying attention said it would be back when these things were being hashed out the first time, well over a decade ago at this point. Obama is neither a demonic monster nor a wise and benevolent patriarch; he's just a guy with access to power that really shouldn't be handed out. (And let's face it, probably most of the really bad abuse is done down at the grunt end anyway. People think in terms of power-mad dictators, but there's nothing quite so bad for invasion of privacy as a bored techie who can look at your Facebook account.)

(...um, yeah, it's probably worth mentioning at this point that there are already plenty of bored techies who can look at your Facebook account without the government getting involved. Privacy online really is just an illusion we sell ourselves so that we don't get skeeved out while looking at porn.)

The point is, getting shocked and outraged at Obama, like some people are, or defending him like other people are, isn't worth doing. It doesn't matter who you put in the Oval Office. These powers will be abused because they are broken, not because the people who are abusing them are bad. The remedy is to limit the power, not to find better people. Because I do still believe that Obama is a good man and a good President. Heck, I believe I'm a good man and I like to think I'd make a good President, but give me unlimited surveillance capability over the entire United States and I'd probably come up with some pretty good rationalizations for why I should use it, too. It's just not a tool we should allow people to have, that's all.

Or, alternatively, we should allow them to have it. So long as we can see everything they do on the Internet too. After all, fair's fair.

Phonemes Are Important

I've been thinking lately that I should get into advertising. I think I'd be good at it--I'm clever, I have a gift for a turn of phrase, and I know how to make something sound exciting and interesting. I'm pitching some sample slogans for McDonald's McWrap--just say these out loud, and let me know how they sound to you.

The McWrap--it's McWrap-tacular!

Go ahead, take a McWrap!

Hungry for hot, fresh food? Try our steaming McWrap!

McDonald's--we put our McWrap in your mouth!

Got a big party? We've got a big pile of McWrap for you!

McWrap--you know you're full of it.

You'll never forget the taste of McWrap!

We've got McWrap in our kitchen!

Let us leave a McWrap on your table.

The new premium McWrap--the McWrappiest McWrap we ever McWrapped!


.....

...what do you think? Am I in?

Can I Remake 'Resident Evil' Again?

I really would like to put out a brand new version of 'Resident Evil' for a next-gen console (much like Nintendo did when they re-released it for the Game Cube.) Because I've always had one really good idea for a survival horror game, but it's not about the plot or characters or setting. And I think those kind of need to be good.

But my idea is for the difficulty level. Most games, 'Resident Evil' included, don't go much beyond "Easy", "Normal", and "Hard". (Yes, some of them go on to "Very Hard". Not my point here.) But my idea is to make the difficulty levels customizable in a number of different ways, each one operating independently of each other. So you would have a "Number of Zombies" slider, allowing you to have anything from one zombie in the whole game all the way up to a horde in every room. You'd have a slider for "Amount of Weapons/Ammo", a slider for "Amount of Healing Supplies", a slider for "Zombie Durability", a slider for "Zombie AI" (smarter zombies can open doors and climb stairs, following you from room to room), a slider for "Zombie Speed", a slider for "Zombie Damage" (at the top end, every bite is a kill)...so each game would be its own custom experience tailored to your preferences. You could make a version of RE that's a blood-soaked shoot 'em up, with metric tons of zombies in each room and a shotgun round for every one of them, or you could make it a terror-filled game of relentless pursuit with only one zombie...that never died, that followed you everywhere, and that was only slightly slower than you were. (There'd be a representational slider at the top that rated your overall level of difficulty based on the different selections on the bottom. Not every version would be beatable.)

And there would be one extra-special slider, which would be what would make my version of 'Resident Evil' a truly horrific horror survival game. This slider would set the number of save points, from easy (one every few rooms) to OMG there are no save points. Anywhere. You die, the game ends and all your progress is lost. Trust me, when you are six hours into a ten hour game, and you know that all that goes poof if you run into a zombie at the wrong moment...you are going to be a bag of nerves.

Horror video games. I can't write them, design them, program them or even really play them all that well. But by god, I can come up with good ideas for making them hard.

If a Sexist Comics Fanboy Locked You Up In a Jail Cell He Made Himself

YOU: I can't believe you locked me in this cell!

FAN: Look, I don't have time for your hysterical delusions. There's no cell here, okay? You're free to leave any time you like.

YOU: ...no cell? What about all the freaking BARS?

FAN: Well, yes, there is a bar there. It's definitely something that I can agree with you on. But that bar was put there ages ago, and it's really a tradition by this point. I'd hate to get rid of it now. Besides, you can just go around it.

YOU: I can't "go around it", there's another bar right next to it.

FAN: Yes, that bar really is regrettable. I sincerely apologize for the existence of that bar. But you know, it's there now, and I don't want to take it back because then what would we learn from it? Let's just accept it's there, call it a learning experience, and go around it.

YOU: I can't go around it, dumbass. There's another bar next to that one, and they're spaced too narrowly for me to get between.

FAN: Whoa, what's with all the unwarranted hostility? I don't see how you can possibly expect me to take your arguments seriously if you won't discuss them civilly. I'm being perfectly polite to you--

YOU: Polite? YOU LOCKED ME IN A CELL! Look at these bars!

FAN: I acknowledge that bar as being problematic, yes. But let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment. How does that bar really impede your progress?

YOU: Um...because it forms part of the cage you've locked me in?

FAN: But you can just go around it. It's a minor obstacle, but you continue to treat it as a huge thing. Do you know that there are people out there locked in prisons made of big, obvious blocks of stone? And all you can do is complain about these thin pieces of metal. It's really very selfish of you.

YOU: Just because it's not big and obvious and made of rocks doesn't mean it's not a prison, dammit! Any one bar might be a minor obstacle, but there's always another one right next to it! LOOK!

FAN: That's not a bar.

YOU: Yes. It. Is.

FAN: No, sorry, I'm really not seeing it. I think you might just be over-sensitive to this whole "bar" thing. I can sympathize. I know that you've had to deal with bars in the past. But I think it's just made you read too much into things.

YOU: F**** it. (pulls out a spoon and begins chipping away at the moorings)

FAN: HEY! You're ruining my hobby!

Dangerous Food Ideas

I'm not much of a cook. I enjoy good food, and I can follow a recipe, but the idea of cooking food to produce a good meal always seems like a very labor-intensive method of getting good food. I tend to prefer some method of getting others to do the preparation, whether with money or through projecting enough of a sense of general food-based haplessness that people take pity on me and offer to cook. (There's probably something wrong with me.)

Between that and the diabetes, there are a number of reasons why I will probably never cook the ideas I sometimes have for desserts. They're sort of the dessert equivalent of Tesla's thought experiments, the ones he wrote up on a notebook towards the end because nobody would trust him with scientific equipment when he explained to people that he was pretty sure he could split the planet in half with it. And yet, I think they could be yummy if properly prepared. To wit...

1) Root beer syrup. Like maple syrup, only instead of maple sap you use root beer to flavor it. The simplest way, of course, would be to take a twelve-pack of root beer and boil off the excess liquid to thicken it, but I suspect some experimentation would be needed to get the proper consistency. But pouring thick, dark root beer syrup onto your pancakes? How could that not be delicious beyond all possible measure? (In theory, of course, any soda flavor could be used once you worked out the basic recipe. But honestly, I don't think the world is ready for Mountain Dew-drenched pancakes and waffles.)

2) Gourmet cereal treats. This one feels like it could be someone's start-up business. Sure, rice krispies are known as the de facto cereal base for one's marshmallow food-based adhesive. But it's always seemed odd to me how few people experiment with the possibilities. Crispix or the Chex family seem like they could have interesting textural effects, due to the way that liquid marshmallow would seep through the holes. The flake series (frosted, corn, et cetera) seem like they would produce a denser, crispier treat. Frosted mini-wheats would perhaps create an almost cake-like texture? And of course, Lucky Charms might do interesting things with their existing marshmallow treats when exposed to liquid marshmallows.

But more than that, I feel like there are whole unexplored vistas in the areas of mixing and topping. Marshmallow treats, as generally done, tend to have rice krispies, marshmallow fluff, an infrequent dash of peanut butter depending on taste, and perhaps chocolate chunks or M&Ms if you want to be "decadent". But that ignores so many possibilities! What about sprinkling in Reese's miniature peanut butter cups? Crushed toffee, or crumbled mint patties? Chocolate chip cookie dough? Heck, if you want to go insanely decadent, miniature Cadbury's creme eggs mixed in with the cereal! (I know that some of you may be forming a theory on how I developed diabetes, but these really are mostly thought experiments. I didn't have an insane sweet tooth even before sugar went off-limits for good.) And then you can top the whole thing off by dipping it in a coating of caramel or chocolate or both.

3) Dessert poutine. Substitute sweet potato fries for the french fries, use deep-fried cream cheese balls dusted in cinnamon instead of the cheese curds, and perhaps a thick cream for the gravy (or caramel sauce, chocolate sauce...really, lots of possibilities here), and you have a dessert that is guaranteed to bust an artery. And taste delicious while it kills you.

4) Thick Mints. Think "Thin Mints", except that instead of a thin crunchy cookie, you have a devil's food cake wafer about the thickness of a double-stuf Oreo. Still minty, still chocolate dipped. Tell me you wouldn't buy it.

Does anyone else out there have diabolical food creations they would never actually make, but can't un-imagine once thought of? Share them in the comments!

Why the Theatrical Ending to "Little Shop of Horrors" Was the Right One

"Little Shop of Horrors" (the 1986 musical) was on television the other day, and as always when I think of "Little Shop of Horrors" I think of the original ending Frank Oz filmed but never used due to unfavorable audience response. (In fact, according to Wikipedia, it was extremely unfavorable response; the ending got a score of 13 on a 1-100 scale.) The original ending, based on the stage musical, changed drastically from what was eventually released in theaters. For those of you not familiar with the planned ending (it has been around on YouTube now and again, and was on the first release of the DVD before they pulped it after a week or so in stores due to the inferior picture quality of the original footage)...

In this version, Audrey was fatally wounded by Audrey II's attack, and as her last request asked Seymour to feed her to the plant so she could help make his dreams come true. Seymour did as she asked, then prepared to commit suicide--only to stop when he got a proposal to grow cuttings from the plant and sell them in stores (as in the theatrical release.) In this version, though, the salesman has already "taken the liberty" of sneaking a cutting when Seymour wasn't looking, and has a tiny little Audrey II ready and waiting for sale. Seymour goes back to confront Audrey II, as the salesman shouts to his rapidly-receding form, "Hey! We don't need your permission, you know! Our lawyers have told us--you can't copyright a plant!"

From there, events transpire as in the film, with Seymour telling Audrey II that he knows its plans, and the plant launching into 'Mean Green Mother From Outer Space'. But in the original ending, Audrey II eats Seymour at the end of the song (the same fate he meets in the stage version, as well as in the original Corman film.) From there, the chorus goes on to explain that the plants were sold by the thousand to gullible jerks who were suckered into feeding them blood. Now, the plants are on the rampage (lovingly depicted in an absolutely astounding special effects sequence that still holds up today) and are coming after everyone...EVEN YOU! The film ends with Audrey II seemingly bursting through the movie screen, laughing wildly.

This version is now available on a Blu-Ray "Director's Cut", and I'm glad. The original ending had some fantastic miniature work, absolutely stellar for its time and even now, and it deserves to be seen...but frankly, I think that the studio made the right move in forcing Oz to switch to a more upbeat ending. Here's why.

1) It doesn't fit in with the tone of the movie. Up until Audrey dies, the movie is a comedy in the classical sense of the word; the protagonists begin the series in a predicament, and overcome numerous obstacles to escape their predicament while growing in the process as individuals. In the end, a moral order is asserted, with the just rewarded and the villains getting their comeuppance.

Prior to Audrey's death, the movie makes a strong effort to adhere to that structure. Mushnik is made into a less sympathetic character, less "crusty and cantankerous" and more "greedy and abusive", specifically so that his death at the hands of Audrey II will seem deserved. Doctor Scrivello went from being merely a sadistic dentist to a comically brutal dentist, and more than that, an abusive relationship with Audrey was added to his character solely to make you root for him to get chopped up into bits and fed to a killer flytrap. But more significantly, Seymour's role in the deaths was reduced. (In the original film, he killed three people, and while he did have diminished responsibility in all three deaths, they were as a result of his direct action. In the musical, he's more or less just in the right place at the right time when people die.)

But by killing both Audrey and Seymour, the movie abruptly upends that moral structure. Suddenly, the universe is a place where bad things can happen to good people, and there's no justice. It's kind of an unpleasant way to end a movie that's been full of laughs and jokes. And even if you are willing to grant that Seymour deserved his fate (while writing off Audrey as an object lesson to Seymour about the dangers of getting what you want, which denies her agency in a terribly sexist way...)

2) It's too abrupt. If you do want to structure the film as a morality play, with Seymour as an illustration of the dangers of making a deal with the green and thorny devil, you need to show a descent into sin, not a sudden fall off the cliff. Most of the cut numbers from the film are the ones that made Seymour's actions seem more deliberate (he originally had a solo where he sang about being willing to do what he had to do in order to get the material wealth he thought was bringing him Audrey) and more importantly, there's not enough time to absorb the change. The director's cut literally goes from "comedy bickering between Seymour and Audrey II" to "Audrey dead and Seymour standing on a rooftop ready to jump" in under five minutes. That's a hell of a wrench to ask the audience to absorb. And assuming they do...

3) It's surprisingly hectoring and preachy. Because it's not enough that Seymour suffers and dies for his greed in this version, or even that he takes his girlfriend with him. His attempt at redemption by killing the plant he created is rendered meaningless (and as a sub-reason here, it's also remarkably flat from a dramatic point of view--Audrey II spends three minutes singing about how tough and powerful and unstoppable it is, and then...is tough and powerful and unstoppable. You really can't spend that long telling the audience exactly what to expect and still hope they'll be surprised when you give it to them.) Audrey II wins, in every way. And then the final musical number is basically just the chorus telling everyone, "Don't do what Seymour did!" Finishing the story by yelling at the audience for five solid minutes, just after yanking the rug out from under their expected happy ending, makes the movie feel joyless and prudish. It's as though, having spent the preceding 90 minutes telling everyone to have fun and enjoy themselves with the blackly comedic material, the writers suddenly feel the need to punish everyone for doing exactly that. And with a song, that, well...

4) The closing number sucks. Let's face it--'Mean Green Mother From Outer Space' is easily the most memorable song of the whole movie. It's arguably the best. (Although I've got a soft spot for "Dentist!") It is certainly the signature tune of the musical. Following it up with 'Don't Feed the Plants'--a slow, muddy, mumbling dirge that scolds the audience instead of leaving it as your catchy, peppy closing number that everyone walks out humming? Not a good move. And even if it was a good song...

5) The sound mix at the end is horrible. Because they went with the big, epic "killer plants destroy New York" ending instead of the symbolic "everyone's faces appear as flowers to sing about how bad they feel about what they've done" ending, most of the final song is buried under the sound of falling bricks, screeching cars, falling bridges, gunfire and shattering windows. Whatever hope the final song had of having impact is buried right along with it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% satisfied with the filmed ending. Because it was added so late in the process, it's kind of abrupt and choppy. (And the inserted shots of Audrey are clumsy and obvious.) But their mistake was in sticking with the original ending for as long as they did, instead of listening to the studio (who wanted changes at the script stage.) That said, I am glad the original ending is out there.  Not just because we would have lost some amazing effects sequences without it, but also because the theatrical ending somehow seems that much sweeter once you've seen the original. Knowing what Seymour averts with his last-minute heroics makes you all the more grateful that he and Audrey wind up with their happy ending.

Exorcising Another DC Idea From My Head

I don't really want to write for Marvel or DC anymore. There was a time when I really did, because let's face it, between them they've got the biggest sandbox and the coolest toys in all of comics. But I think it's pretty clear to me now that there are some really unpleasant people running the playground, and people have been pissing in the sandbox for a decade or so now and most of the toys are broken. But I still like my old ideas, from time to time.

One of them, which really isn't usable in the post-Flashpoint universe, was a crossover that was a sort of pre-Infinite Crisis Infinite Crisis. A single villain, with a master plan and seemingly total knowledge of the heroes of the DC universe, has engineered the single worst day ever. Every hero faces insurmountable odds, villains that have been carefully manouvered into striking at them where they're weakest. Every hero faces his greatest challenge, every relationship is tested, everyone basically faces their hardest fight ever...

And meanwhile, in a back-up feature that runs through the crossover as it jumps from issue to issue, we see Triumph. Remember Triumph? He's the superhero who sacrificed his whole existence in our timeline to save the world, only to come back to a universe where nobody remembers what he did and nobody cares about him. When we last saw him, he'd lost his powers, his sanity, and had been turned into an ice sculpture by the Spectre. In the back-up, we find out he's regained the latter two, but he's working as a janitor in a public school in Cleveland. He's given up on trying to be remembered, or trying to be a hero, or trying to be anything. He's given up completely, and is just watching the days go by one by one. And then someone steals some cleaning fluid from his supply closet, and he wants to find out why.

But that runs as a backdrop to the major run of stories. Everything bad you could imagine happens, all at once. Superman loses his powers, Paradise Island gets attacked by Darkseid, Batman is dropped out of an airplane sans parachute...it'd just be this crazy, intense, "how did it get this bad this fast?" life-or-death struggle for every single superhero, all at once. But through this struggle, we see their best qualities come to the fore. Every hero rises to the challenge and overcomes it, fighting their most difficult battle when they're at their worst and winning. They come together, they work as friends and teammates in a way they hadn't done in a while, even then, and they figure out the truth behind it...whoever was behind all this didn't want them dead. They didn't want them humiliated. Batman recognizes the pattern first, but the others are only a few seconds behind. Whoever was behind all this wanted every single superhero on Earth to be as far away as possible from Cleveland, Ohio, on this particular day and time. And it's worked.

At which point, we cut back to Triumph, who's tracked the thief back to his lair. It's the Key. He's been behind all of it. His entire career as supervillain has led up to this moment, a mystical initiation that has led him to power, to madness, to sanity, and finally to the perfect purification that has made him ready for this moment. He has constructed the Lock. (The cleaning fluid was needed to purify the area it will stand on.) The moment he enters it, he will open the true mysteries of the universe and attain perfect cosmic oneness, the ultimate fulfillment of the spirit. Of course, the universe will cease to exist, but he's okay with that, because he won't be in it anymore.

The only problem is that the Lock will only be in convergence with our universe for five minutes of real time. And during that five minutes, all the Key's powers will disappear and he'll be just a normal human being. Meaning that he needs five minutes of time in which he can be absolutely sure that not a single superhuman will interrupt him. And he's arranged all that. Every superhero, every supervillain, everyone with any kind of special power whatsoever, is neatly out of the way for the five minutes that will lead to the Key's apotheosis.

But Triumph isn't anyone special. He's just a janitor. The Key didn't account for him. And so, for five minutes, Triumph becomes the most important person in the whole universe, because he's the only person in between the Key and the Lock. The fight that follows isn't pretty, it isn't graceful or athletic or even all that heroic. There's scratching, there's hair-pulling, there's biting. But it lasts a full five minutes, and that's all that matters.

At that point, the Key loses his chance, but regains his powers. He's about to take his vengeance on the powerless, bruised, battered Triumph...when every single superhero in the entire DC Universe shows up to stop him. Having saved the day, Triumph stares into the sunrise and realizes that what's important isn't being powerful, or famous, or idolized or rich or important. He remembers why he became a hero in the first place, to do what's right and to know that the world is going to keep on turning one more day. And even without powers, that's enough.

Magic Is Making Me Weirdly Nostalgic

It's weird, but I've had a hankering lately to get back into Magic: The Gathering. I got out of it in the mid-90s (somewhere around the release of 'Tempest', when I realized that my completist urges, my retail job, and WotC's release schedule made for a very bad combination) but the closure of 'City of Heroes' has made me long for tabletop gaming once again, and so I decided that I could get back into it on a limited basis. So I bought ten bucks worth of commons, a stack of basic lands...and I was surprised to discover that something I thought would be timeless was anything but.

There are no Llanowar Elves in the latest edition. No Fireballs, no Lightning Bolts, no Counterspells or Prodigal Sorcerers. No Terror or Pestilence, no Disenchant or Circle of Protection...somewhere in the intervening decade or so, the decision that there were certain "indispensable" cards that would carry over from one edition to the next (of course, they're not called "editions" anymore, they're "core sets") went by the wayside. Even the rules changed--no more Interrupts, no more burying creatures, and many mechanics I'm already familiar with like "Walls" and "Can block creature with flying" and "remove from the game" got codewords like "Defender" and "Reach" and "Exile".

It's a little bit weird to me. I'd always known Magic was putting out new sets while I was away, but somehow I always assumed that getting back into the game would just be a case of shaking off the rust and refamiliarizing myself with the cards. Now I find out that it's like learning a whole new game all over again. This isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong--I learn new games all the time. But an experience I thought would be like coming back home has turned out to be a visit to a whole new place, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. Maybe this is just what getting old feels like. Any day now I'll start talking about how back in my day, when you tapped too many lands in one turn, it actually hurt you! And we liked it! Then I'll start longing for Shivan Dragons and they'll put me in a home.

Or not. Maybe I'll embrace this strange new world where you can have planeswalker buddies and there are sometimes two spells to a card. Who knows? Either way, I'm determined not to let completism get the better of me this time. Magic might be a new game, it might be a familiar game...but it's a game. Not a collection. Not for me, at least.

Bonus Blog!

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce everyone to my new Doctor Who-focused blog, 'A Madman With a Box (Without a Box)'. It's going to be a mix of new Doctor Who posts, and old posts from a variety of sources (I've written about Doctor Who a lot, in a lot of places over the years) that you probably haven't seen. It will remain separate from 'The Doctor Who Book Project', which I'm writing with my lovely wife as an overview of the Doctor Who novels (we're just finished up with 'Blood Heat'.) Also, anything I published in print will not be reprinted there (so you'll need to actually buy 'Outside In' to read my essay on "The Web of Fear".)

So in short, if you're a Doctor Who fan who comes here for the Who stuff, you'll get a concentrated dose there (the new stuff updates once a week, the old stuff every other day.) If you're a fan of my writing, you'll also get a concentrated dose there. If you're not a fan of my writing or Doctor Who, you probably didn't read this far so I can say whatever I want about you. Puppy-killer.

How to Watch 'Room 237'

I've been reading some reviews of 'Room 237', both before and after watching the film itself, and it seems to me that the people who liked it all had one thing in common, and the people who disliked it all had an entirely different thing in common. To wit: People who hated the movie thought that it was about 'The Shining', and people who loved the movie (and I confess, I count myself among their number) thought that it was all about the interviewees.

And in that light, I think that both sets of reviews make perfect sense. Because as a movie about 'The Shining', 'Room 237' clearly fails. The interviewees are all (in the immortal words of XKCD) raising confirmation bias to an art form, viewing the film through the lens of their own preoccupations and focusing on irrelevant (or in some cases imaginary) details in the mistaken belief that Kubrick's "perfectionist" tendencies and refusal to provide people with easily-digested homilies about what his film "really means" translate into coded messages hidden in the film for the diligent. There's no benefit to be gained in listening to these people talk about how this is really a film about the Holocaust or the genocide of the Native Americans or the secret conspiracy to fake the moon landing footage, or at least not enough to justify sitting through a documentary on the subject.

But if you assume instead that this is a movie about obsession and fanaticism, about how a movie can become a sort of cinematic Rorschach test reflecting our own thoughts and ideas back at us, then it becomes fascinating. By allowing each of the interviewees to speak, unfiltered and uncensored, the film becomes a sort of Freudian analysis of the kind of person who would fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracy thought. Hearing person after person offer a variation of, "I don't know why nobody but me sees that this is what Kubrick was trying to do, maybe it was because I was thinking about this so much  just before I saw the film..." It's illuminating, as well as tremendously entertaining. (At one point, the camera freeze-frames on a scene where one commenter claims that Kubrick airbrushed his face into the clouds...and just pauses, as if to say, "Yeah, folks. We got nothing.")

So when you watch 'Room 237', don't think of it as a movie about a movie. Think of it as a movie about the people who watch movies. You'll be much happier.

Why 'Iron Man 3' **spoilers** Instead of **spoilers spoilers spoilers**

I went out and watched 'Iron Man 3' this weekend, and I did so with the movie's biggest plot twist already spoiled for me. Not that I minded--I have always been greatly of the opinion that if your twist is any good, you'd enjoy the story even if you knew it, and if it's not, then hiding it won't make it any better. (In that spirit, the killer in 'Saw' is the corpse on the floor. That's right, he fakes being shot in the head for ten freaking hours so well that the trained doctor sitting three feet away can't spot it. There. That saved you the cost of a rental.)

That said, I know not everyone feels the same way I do. So here's a spoiler cut, for those of you who want to experience 'Iron Man 3' without knowing the twist.

Review: The Wheel of Ice

'The Wheel of Ice', by Stephen Baxter, is the latest in the untitled series of "hardcover Doctor Who books by Proper Science Fiction Writers" that began with Michael Moorcock's 'The Coming of the Terraphiles'. It's interesting, really, how little difference there is between the Proper Science Fiction Writer books like 'Wheel' and the better parts of the existing Doctor Who series--this isn't a knock on Baxter so much as it is a paean to the way that the Doctor Who novels have produced quite a few stellar science-fiction writers who've gone on to have excellent careers of their own. Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies, Ben Aaronovitch...there's no shortage of people who made their mark as a Doctor Who writer and went on to bigger and better things.

Many of them, in fact, were writing Doctor Who in the period that Baxter first began his own career, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that 'The Wheel of Ice' was a novel whose genesis was as a Missing Adventure that Baxter didn't wind up publishing. It might sound like more of a stretch to those unfamiliar with Baxter's career, but he did wind up having a short story in one of the later, non-Who Decalogs for Virgin, so he was clearly aware of them as a market. And as this book shows, he's clearly also a huge Doctor Who fan. This story is so filled with kisses to the series' past that it reads much like the first-time work of a Cornell or a Gatiss, someone utterly filled to the brim with talent but desperately afraid that this will be their only Doctor Who book and they'll have to fit in every single continuity reference right now or they'll never get another chance to bring up T-Mat and the Ice Warriors and the Karkus and and and--

Despite the slightly intrusive nature of the fan references, the Doctor Who aspects of this Doctor Who book are handled excellently. Jamie is wonderful, accessible and interesting and funny and resourceful all at once, while Zoe is written by someone who clearly gave the character's background actual thought instead of just treating it as a reason for her to act "smart". One of the other reviews I read of this book disliked the fact that she spends time near the end babysitting someone else's kid, but I liked the way that we saw Zoe doing something she never did on television...heck, maybe something she never thought she would do...and being very interesting while doing it. The Doctor isn't entirely Troughton--there are times he feels a bit Pertwee--but he's very recognizably the Doctor, in a wonderful way.

And the plot is exactly what you'd expect from Baxter, a hard sci-fi story that excellently synthesizes the genre with the humanist elements of New Wave science fiction. The characters are all sympathetic and interesting (especially MMAC, the robot raised as a human to calibrate its AI, who could sustain a novel all by himself) and the Big Idea at the story's heart is suitably big. And because this is Doctor Who, the series without a formula, you really can't be sure how things are going to go until the final page. Really, the only flaw is that Florian Hart, the human villain of the piece, can't decide whether she's a heartless mining tycooon or a comic-book supervillain. (Once you drop lines like, "You may have defused the bomb, Doctor, but you won't find it that easy to escape my wrath!" you've pretty much closed down the first option.)

On the whole, I'd happily recommend this one, and I think it's great that they're doing books like this again. Classic Series stories, written by great sci-fi writers, with appeal to adults...it's almost like the Virgin years all over again.

A Potpourri and an Apology

Mostly, this is one of those obnoxious "sorry there aren't more posts" posts--as I mentioned in my last post, there are new hires, which is significant in that it implies that there aren't enough people working here right now to handle the demand. So until the new hires are fully trained and able to help out, work is exhausting and not leaving me in much mood to blog at the end of the day. (Paradoxically, the new hires are making things worse, as we now have to dedicate people to train them, and if we had those people to spare, we wouldn't be doing hiring. Right now, we've got ten people doing the work of eighteen.)

But a quick potpourri of things I've been thinking/doing when I'm not utterly wiped--I'm enjoying the back half of Season Seven well enough, I guess, but I have to say that Moffat's non-Moffat episodes are worse than Davies' non-Davies episodes (of course, Davies had Moffat writing for him, and Moffat doesn't have Davies writing for him.) 'Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS' was a low point for me, though. It felt a bit like "What if the kid from 'Axe Cop' wrote a Doctor Who episode?" only without the charm of knowing that a five-year old did it all by himself.

I finished 'Into the Fire' in my B5 rewatch, and I'm amazed at how little energy I have to keep going now; some of that is that I have very little energy in general at the moment, see above, but given that I had very little enthusiasm for the bits of 'Return of the King' after Frodo destroyed the One Ring, I'm wondering if I'm not going to feel like the extended super-epilogue is a bit much here, too. On the other hand, the aftermath sub-plots were actually set up and foreshadowed (the Minbari, the humans, the Centauri, the Narn, and Psi-Corps all have so much stuff going on that I can see taking a season to wrap all that up), whereas the scouring of the Shire really felt like it came out of left-field.

Good on Jason Collins, although the Sports Illustrated blurb of "The Gay Athlete" made him sound like The Elephant Man. Maybe "A Gay Athlete", or even better yet "Jason Collins' Life As A Gay Athlete"? Oh, and the ESPN analyst who said he thought that it was sinful because "any sex outside of marriage is sinful"...first, better get cracking on those gay marriage laws, buddy! Second...um...how the heck do you have any friends in basketball? Or pro sports? Or broadcasting? Maybe he only hangs out with octegenarian broadcasters.

Hopefully, after this week, things will calm down a bit and I'll be able to resume a slightly less laggy blogging schedule. If not, I'll at least try to make the next post a little less Larry King-ish.

Why I Love My Job

I was asked to write the following quiz up by my boss, to distribute to the new hires. Let me repeat that: I was asked to write this by my boss, to distribute to the new hires.


in1. My ideal spaceship is:
a) the size of a small city, and capable of traveling at Warp 9
b) able to make the Kessel Run in less than two parsecs
c) blue, rectangular, and bigger on the inside
d) like a leaf on the wind; watch how it soars
e) don't know/no opinion

2. Who would win in a fight between these characters?
a) Kirk
b) Luke Skywalker
c) River Song
d) Buffy
e) Um...you know these are all fictional characters, right?

3. Which is cooler?
a) a phaser
b) a lightsaber
c) a bow tie
d) a wooden stake
e) an electric guitar

4. Vampires are:
a) aliens that draw the salt out of human bodies
b) dark Jedi that feed on the Force
c) fish people with perception filters
d) soulless monsters that drink human blood (with two notable exceptions)
e) sparkly and popular with teenagers right now

5. The handiest tool in the universe is:
a) a tricorder
b) an astromech droid
c) a sonic screwdriver
d) another wooden stake
e) a Swiss army knife

6. Telepathy is possible...
a) sure! Lwaxana Troi has it!
b) With the Force, young Padawan, all things are possible.
c) Yes, but don't make a habit of it.
d) Yes, but it drives you insane. (Unless you live on a spaceship.)
e) No. Don't be silly.

7. The scariest thing in the universe is:
a) the Borg.
b) the Death Star.
c) a Dalek.
d) a giant snake that used to be the town's Mayor.
e) a king cobra.

8. When someone dies...
a) You have to return their body to their home planet.
b) They get a blue ghost body.
c) They regenerate.
d) Joss Whedon marks another notch on his writing desk.
e) Let's not discuss that at work, shall we? It's a very serious topic.

9. A good length for a series is:
a) Seven years.
b) Three movies. That's where they should have stopped.
c) Fifty years and counting.
d) Seven years. You hear that, FOX? Not one, not two. SEVEN.
e) I don't know, it depends on the series. Which one were you talking about?

10. The best movie ever made is:
a) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
b) The Empire Strikes Back.
c) Doctor Who and the Daleks.
d) Either Serenity, Cabin in the Woods or Avengers. Don't make me choose!
e) Citizen Kane.

Reviews: 'Plague of the Cybermen', 'The Dalek Generation', 'Shroud of Sorrow'

One of the nice things about the return of Doctor Who to our screens is the way that it also gives a shot in the arm to the nigh-dormant book line. As someone who really spent most of his formative fan period during the Wilderness Years, I'm thrilled to see any new book. Was I thrilled after reading them? Well...

Plague of the Cybermen: This one was not so much "thrilling" as "standard". Everything about this was absolutely straightforward and done according to the tropes of Doctor Who, with just the minimal amount of energy to keep you from falling asleep while reading. The Doctor arrives in a vaguely European, vaguely pre-industrial village so generic that I literally expected the big twist to be that it wasn't Earth, and begins to track down the source of mysterious deaths and disappearances. (Hint: The novel is called 'Plague of the Cybermen'. There are a limited number of ways to surprise the audience with the cause of the disappearances.)

The actual plague is dealt with in about the first thirty pages, and proves to be more or less irrelevant to the plot; it's there mostly because "...stuff, I guess of the Cybermen" wouldn't have been a great title. The Doctor finds a villager who's sufficiently spunky-yet-vulnerable to be his pseudo-companion, and they investigate anachronistic technology, a castle with hidden passageways, grave robbings, and mysterious disappearances until Justin Richards has filled out enough of the page count. Then the Cybermen come out in force and rampage a bit, until the Doctor does something clever and vaguely inspiring and they all die. (I'd say "spoilers", but really, you can pretty much see this one coming from about page one.) I's not bad, I'll stress. Justin Richards is incapable of turning in a truly bad novel; he's just too competent on a fundamental level to make mistakes in plot, character or tone. But at the same time, he's not really trying to turn in a great one, either. Just "good enough". It feels weird to say that the two weakest books of the last few years have both been his, but that's as much a tribute to his work as an editor as it is an indictment of him as an author. Even so, I wish he'd done more of that great editorial work and commissioned someone else for this slot.

The Dalek Generation: Technically speaking, this is the work of a first-time author, but Nicholas Briggs has written a lot of Doctor Who. Just not for the novels. He's a veteran of the Big Finish range (where he wrote excellent stories like 'Creatures of Beauty' and...um, less than excellent ones like 'The Sirens of Time') and he's probably best known to the average passerby as the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen on the new series. So all in all, it's about time that he wrote a novel. How was it?

Well, the concept is glorious. It's set in a distant galaxy where the Daleks are the benevolent creators of an interplanetary utopia known as the Sunlight Worlds, and an entire generation of humans knows them as nothing other than benefactors. When the Doctor shows up and tries to denounce them as evil, he's prosecuted for incitement to hate crimes. Every part of this is nothing short of brilliant. Having seen the Daleks as often as we have, it's easy to understand (as the Doctor does) that this has to be part of some sinister scheme. But it's rare to see the Daleks portrayed as such utterly Machiavellian schemers; Briggs shows them as clever, patient, and manipulative, which is something that's more often told than shown. And Briggs revels in showing the whole thing from just enough of an outside perspective that we can see how the Doctor is reduced to utter impotence in the face of this gambit; he can't rally a population to fight the Daleks when they don't have anything they want to fight against, and seeing him reduced to a ranting nutter in the street is genuinely unsettling in a way that the series rarely is.

Next to that, the actual plot (Spoilers: The Daleks aren't really good guys after all!) is kind of boring, but it does provide a reasonable explanation as to why the Daleks are doing everything. My only real complaint is that it seems like they're heading towards an ending that makes the Doctor's hiding in misery in Victorian London make sense, but they pull back. The ending should be very bleak, and it's sort of "whew, that was too close! Better stop traveling and righting wrongs, then."

Shroud of Sorrow: Another new writer for the novels, and unlike Nick Briggs, Tommy Donbavand doesn't have a ton of Who credits in another medium. He's a genuinely new voice for the range (and as an aside, Justin Richards has been doing an admirable job of this lately. Oli Smith, Una McCormack, James Goss, Paul Finch, George Mann, Naomi Alderman...that's a lot of new authors getting their shot, and there've been a lot of successes in that batch. Yay Justin!) How did he do? Well, the concept is strong, and thematically linked to the 50th anniversary; the Shroud feed on grief, and the death of Kennedy (which, of course, took place the same weekend as the debut of a certain television series) has provided them with a feast to end all feasts. It's a strong idea, and for the first three-fourths of the book, it's quite well executed. Donbavand has a good ear for dialogue, and evokes the slightly fairy-tale feel of Matt Smith's character quite well. The plot also jumps straight into gear; there are no slow, creeping menaces here. The Shroud rapidly spreads over a whole city, and the Doctor's got maybe eleven hours before Earth is irretrievably parasitized. (Although I'm not crazy about the idea that if your grief gets "eaten", another emotion gets stronger to fill the breach. As menacing fates for the human race go, it's been topped.)

The book goes off the rails a tiny bit towards the end, when the Doctor goes to a planet previously victimized by the Shroud and finds...um, clown therapists. Who travel to Earth in a dimensionally transcendental clown car to battle the Shroud with laughter. I think this is one of those concepts that will either work for you or it won't. For me, it didn't. And after that, we get several more strategies deployed to battle the Shroud at the rate of about one every other page, which is a bit too fast paced even for me. On the other hand, this section does contain one of the finest sequences in the book, where the Doctor lures the Shroud to him with memories of the Brigadier's funeral. It's a wonderful tribute to one of the show's touchstones. On the strength of that, and some of the other vivid and clever sequences, I'd like to see another book from Tommy Donbavand, even if this one contains a few first-time writer flaws.

"Who Are You, Doctor?"

The Doctor attempted to rub his head, but was distracted by the strangely familiar tugging sensation on his other wrist when he reached up. He spent a moment or two moving each hand in turn, noticing the way that the other was forced to follow. As his vision cleared, he was finally able to place it--of course. His hands were cuffed together. That would explain it. And likewise, the pain in his head and foggy vision would imply being knocked unconscious. He smiled. For the first time since he'd come to Babylon 5, the Doctor felt like he was finally on familiar ground.

"You didn't answer the question," the voice rang out in strident, arrogant tones. "Who are you?"

The Doctor rolled onto his back and looked up at the man in Victorian dress. "I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"

"Unacceptable!" the man shouted. He cracked his cane against the ground and pain flared up through the cuffs, into the Doctor's arms, and across his entire body.

"Ah," the Doctor said mournfully, half to himself. "It's one of those sorts of conversations, then. Yes, you look the sort. Always a bit too excited about the wrong answers, always a bit too eager to crack the whip. No, don't bother responding, I've heard it all before. You couldn't have 'sadist' written all over you more obviously if you were at a BDSM convention full of graffiti artists." With a bit of effort, he sat up. "Now I'm sorry, you had a question for me?"

"Yes, Doctor," the man said, making a visible effort to control his petulant fury. "My masters wish to know more about you. If lives are to be entrusted into your care, if the future is to depend on you, then they must be sure that you are doing the right things for the right reasons. And so I will ask, as many times as I have to until they are satisfied or you are dead. Who are you?"

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, slowly and delicately rising to his feet. "Is it a curriculum vitae that they're looking for? My monster-fighting résumé? Let me see, I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey--actually, I'm the last Time Lord from the former planet Gallifrey, it's rather a long story and you don't strike me as the patient sort. I've fought the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Adipose, well I say I fought them but they were actually babies, so it was really more sort of giving their governess a stern talking to, I've died ten times, well, call it nine and a half, and I travel through time and space in a box that's bigger on the inside than the outside. And if you believe even half of that, you're far more open-minded than I'm giving you credit for, so why don't we just skip to the bit where you say..." The Doctor smiled grimly, gesturing in expectation.

"Unacceptable!" The cane cracked against the floor again. The Doctor staggered but did not fall. "Listen to yourself, Doctor! That's not who you are, merely what you've done! Where you're from! You're so filled with blinkered, arrogant pride over your history that you haven't even thought about the question! How can you come here, set yourself up as savior, ask people to follow you into death--"

The Doctor raised himself up to his full height. "I have never asked them to follow me!" he roared. His eyes were filled with ageless sorrow. For the first time in three centuries, the inquisitor flinched. "I have  traveled this universe for eleven hundred years, and I have seen agony beyond your capacity to understand. And where I go, I try to help. Because, well..." he shrugged. "What else am I supposed to do? Cluck my tongue and step back into the TARDIS? I've seen where that path leads, I have seen what happens to people who decide that not everyone is worth helping, and I cannot follow it. I would die first. I have died first.

"And so where I travel, when I see pain...I help. A little. Have I succeeded? I like to think so. I know there are a few worlds...well, a few galaxies...well, a few universes, no false modesty here...that wouldn't be around if not for me. But I have never...I have NEVER...told anyone that I am their savior. I've never been anything other than what I am. I'm just a traveler who's sometimes in the right place at the right time to do something good. I'm just a clever old Doctor who tries to fix things when they're broken. I might save people, but I'm no savior. I'm a madman with a box. No more, no less."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim wand. He touched a button, and with a high-pitched whirr, the cuffs sprang free. He caught them before they reached the floor and handed them to the inquisitor. "And if that answer doesn't satisfy your masters, then I suggest they come and ask me themselves. Because unlike them, I'm not hiding from anything."