(or "The Score Stands At 4-1")
If you were to look at a single common thread that ties together the storytelling engines of the Universal horror movies, it would probably be that none of them were ever intended to be continuing series. Watching the end of 'The Wolf Man', you could be forgiven for thinking that a sequel would be utterly impossible--the movie ends with Larry Talbot being bludgeoned to death with a silver-handled cane, the exact same fate he deals out to the werewolf that bit him to begin with. (It's hard to feel a whole lot for Larry, who's a bit too slimy to really be sympathetic, but the stricken look on the face of Claude Rains when he realizes that the beast he killed is his son speaks volumes.)
And yet, legendary writer Curt Siodmak was pressed into the unenviable task of turning this one-off film into a series. Oh, and would it be too much trouble to work the Frankenstein Monster (and later, Dracula) in as well? (Thankfully, he wasn't also given the task of figuring out a way to fit Abbott and Costello in there too.)
There's really only one direction you can go from the end of 'The Wolf Man', and it's to Siodmak's immeasurable credit that he doesn't shy away from it in order to placate delicate sensibilities. If your lead character died at the end of the last movie, and yet is alive at the start of this movie, well, then he has to be immortal. (The opening sequence of 'Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man', where grave robbers crack open Talbot's tomb to find his perfectly-preserved body, is a classic.) And if you're immortal, and you also happen to turn into a vicious killing machine three nights a month, well...you're going to wish you could die. For those of you who think that entertainment in the 40s was more genteel and wholesome, picture watching five movies about a guy whose fondest wish is suicide. Because the alternative is mass murder.
The problem with this as a storytelling engine is that it's a classic "false status quo". No matter whether he's wishing for death (as in 'Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man') or a cure (as in 'House of Frankenstein' or 'House of Dracula'), he's doomed to never get what he wants, because if he did there'd be no more Wolf Man to make movies about. He gets his longed-for death four times (by silver, flood, silver, and a plunge into icy waters) and a cure once (via an exotic fungus that makes his skull soft and squishy like Play-Doh so that scientists can mold it into a shape that won't squish his brain, because pressure on the brain is what turns people into werewolves...look, the later Universal movies don't make a whole lot of sense, all right?) But none of it ever takes.
This is actually pretty common in "werewolf" series, but most of them give themselves a little leeway by finding ways to make the bestial side just sympathetic enough that the transformation isn't an unalloyed curse. But again, Siodmak's uncompromising take on the werewolf mythos (while working excellently for a single story) is a little hard on a series. His Wolf Man is pure sadistic killer. All you can do with such a beast is...well, all right, you can lock him up during the full moon to keep him away from random innocent people, but Talbot's kind of a "big picture" guy, OK? He's a bit busy trying to die to worry about the little details.
Later writers (such as Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman and Roger Zelazny) have used the Talbot character in one way or another in their stories. Usually, they've adapted the character slightly to the needs of a workable storytelling engine, as well as to their own personal tastes; the post-movie Talbot seems to have grown past his need for death, and accepted his curse of occasionally-hirsute immortality as an opportunity to battle other supernatural monsters. This tiny change turns a difficult-but-workable storytelling engine into a compelling one, and it'd be very interesting to see what could be done with such an idea on the big screen once again.
Oh, come on. A high-budget open-ended series of new "Wolf Man" movies, masterminded by Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison--I can dream, can't I?
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
An Open Letter To Grant Morrison
Dear Mr. Morrison,
First, let me just apologize in advance if this expression of dissatisfaction comes across as depressing and personally abusive. Rest assured, I have a great respect for you as a writer--honestly, if you'd retired after 'Animal Man', I'd have a great respect for you as a writer, on the strength of that alone, and your later work has only helped your reputation.
That said, I think you might be slightly confused as to the source of some of the ire fans hold for the recent comics that you have written, and DC has published. This isn't necessarily your fault, of course. While I love the Internet greatly, I do find that some of the people that populate it aren't the best at articulating their thoughts and feelings. (Luckily, everyone who reads my blog is intelligent, articulate, and possessed of eminent taste and discretion.) But I do flatter myself that one of my strengths as a writer is in explaining things clearly, so let me go ahead and try to do just that.
In your recent interview at Newsarama, you express a great deal of confusion over the phrase "event fatigue", wondering exactly how someone could be "fatigued" with "events". You also express some confusion and dismay at the frustration fans felt with "Batman R.I.P.", and wondered why it was that these fans were so angry. The causes are distinct, but related. I'll try to tackle them in order.
The first one is very simple. "Event fatigue" is not a mental syndrome, but a financial one. I'm aware that most DC writers are put on the "comp list", where they get copies of the company's comics every month, so it might very well have been a while since you've had to pay for a comic yourself. I'm also assuming (and certainly hoping) that DC pays you pretty well for your efforts. Between these two things, you might have forgotten just how much one has to spend to follow an "event".
Newsarama has been kind enough to break down the cost here. If you who don't feel like wading through the article, it comes out to about $135, with an extra $152 for those who bought 'Countdown to Final Crisis', which you have said was not connected to 'Final Crisis'--a fact you politely waited until approximately one week after 'Countdown' had concluded to mention. Which does, of course, mean that the people most interested in 'Final Crisis' had already spent that money before finding that fact out. They also tack on an extra thirty bucks for 'Death of the New Gods', another series that was released as being "essential to 'Final Crisis'" that actually wasn't.
Note those last two points. Stories not connected to 'Final Crisis' were being sold as "essential to 'Final Crisis'." This is also an issue with "Batman R.I.P.", which was first sold as "the end of Batman", then sold as "the end of Batman that ties into 'Final Crisis'," then finally explained as "a Batman story that came out at roughly the same time as the end of Batman which happens in 'Final Crisis', because Dan DiDio asked me if we could have these two relate to each other so I made sure they happened at roughly the same time." (If I can slightly paraphrase your statements in the interview. I hope I'm not taking too severe a liberty with them; the link is, of course, there for those who want to read your exact words.)
These two issues relate there, at the convergence of DC's marketing strategy (which I could charitably describe as "disingenuous") and the rather large financial outlay required to pick up all of the stories that DC is marketing as "essential to 'Final Crisis'." Very few fans have unlimited financial resources that we can devote to comic books. We have to pick and choose the titles that we're interested in, and fit our purchases to a budget. Event crossovers are a strain on that budget, because of the extra purchases they require--asking fans to bear that burden too often, and essentially tricking them into bearing a larger burden than needed through deceptive advertising and deceptive public statements, invites discontent which eventually becomes frustration which eventually becomes exhaustion with the medium as a whole. Hence, "event fatigue".
Now naturally, you have the right to feel as though laying this at your doorstep is unfair. You are not DC's marketing department, nor are you DC's editor-in-chief. You didn't schedule 'Final Crisis', nor did you participate in the various marketing tactics that caused people to spend large amounts of money on comics that they didn't enjoy, and found out they didn't need only after they'd spent that money. In that sense, yes, the ire directed at you is entirely misplaced.
But as noted, you weren't exactly speaking up at the time to protect your fans' financial well-being. You waited until after we'd spent our money, then explained that of course we didn't need to spend that money in order to follow your story. Who could possibly have thought otherwise? And it's hard not to feel that you're being deliberately obtuse in that regard. Surely you had to know that they were marketing a full year of build-up to your story, one that would ultimately be nothing more than a waste of time and money? Surely you had to notice, as you did interviews leading into "Batman R.I.P.", that DC was promoting it as "the end of Batman," "the last Batman story", et cetera, something that you knew it wasn't going to be and wasn't intended to be? Surely you have to understand that it's a bad idea to create expectations of a work that you know it's not going to be able to fulfill?
In short, I think that if you want less dissatisfaction from fans, you need to take a greater hand in the promotion of your work at DC. I'm aware that such a thing is probably much easier said than done, but a good share of the frustration with 'Final Crisis' comes from a feeling--probably one a lot of fans couldn't even articulate to themselves, much less to others--that the series was badly misrepresented to us, and that DC walked away with a lot of our money based on that misrepresentation. That creates mistrust, which is a very dangerous thing in an industry that relies on its customers returning every week for the rest of their lives. The last thing you want is for your readers not to trust you, and clearly 'Final Crisis' proves that the promotion of your work can't be left in the hands of the DC marketing department. While you blithely suggest in the interview that dissatisfied fans "Do something else, buy cigarettes or booze or bananas," if they don't want to buy the series, I'm sure you don't want to see readers abandon DC en masse.
I hope that this proves helpful to you. But really, I'd settle for you ever actually seeing it in the first place.
Sincerely,
John Seavey
First, let me just apologize in advance if this expression of dissatisfaction comes across as depressing and personally abusive. Rest assured, I have a great respect for you as a writer--honestly, if you'd retired after 'Animal Man', I'd have a great respect for you as a writer, on the strength of that alone, and your later work has only helped your reputation.
That said, I think you might be slightly confused as to the source of some of the ire fans hold for the recent comics that you have written, and DC has published. This isn't necessarily your fault, of course. While I love the Internet greatly, I do find that some of the people that populate it aren't the best at articulating their thoughts and feelings. (Luckily, everyone who reads my blog is intelligent, articulate, and possessed of eminent taste and discretion.) But I do flatter myself that one of my strengths as a writer is in explaining things clearly, so let me go ahead and try to do just that.
In your recent interview at Newsarama, you express a great deal of confusion over the phrase "event fatigue", wondering exactly how someone could be "fatigued" with "events". You also express some confusion and dismay at the frustration fans felt with "Batman R.I.P.", and wondered why it was that these fans were so angry. The causes are distinct, but related. I'll try to tackle them in order.
The first one is very simple. "Event fatigue" is not a mental syndrome, but a financial one. I'm aware that most DC writers are put on the "comp list", where they get copies of the company's comics every month, so it might very well have been a while since you've had to pay for a comic yourself. I'm also assuming (and certainly hoping) that DC pays you pretty well for your efforts. Between these two things, you might have forgotten just how much one has to spend to follow an "event".
Newsarama has been kind enough to break down the cost here. If you who don't feel like wading through the article, it comes out to about $135, with an extra $152 for those who bought 'Countdown to Final Crisis', which you have said was not connected to 'Final Crisis'--a fact you politely waited until approximately one week after 'Countdown' had concluded to mention. Which does, of course, mean that the people most interested in 'Final Crisis' had already spent that money before finding that fact out. They also tack on an extra thirty bucks for 'Death of the New Gods', another series that was released as being "essential to 'Final Crisis'" that actually wasn't.
Note those last two points. Stories not connected to 'Final Crisis' were being sold as "essential to 'Final Crisis'." This is also an issue with "Batman R.I.P.", which was first sold as "the end of Batman", then sold as "the end of Batman that ties into 'Final Crisis'," then finally explained as "a Batman story that came out at roughly the same time as the end of Batman which happens in 'Final Crisis', because Dan DiDio asked me if we could have these two relate to each other so I made sure they happened at roughly the same time." (If I can slightly paraphrase your statements in the interview. I hope I'm not taking too severe a liberty with them; the link is, of course, there for those who want to read your exact words.)
These two issues relate there, at the convergence of DC's marketing strategy (which I could charitably describe as "disingenuous") and the rather large financial outlay required to pick up all of the stories that DC is marketing as "essential to 'Final Crisis'." Very few fans have unlimited financial resources that we can devote to comic books. We have to pick and choose the titles that we're interested in, and fit our purchases to a budget. Event crossovers are a strain on that budget, because of the extra purchases they require--asking fans to bear that burden too often, and essentially tricking them into bearing a larger burden than needed through deceptive advertising and deceptive public statements, invites discontent which eventually becomes frustration which eventually becomes exhaustion with the medium as a whole. Hence, "event fatigue".
Now naturally, you have the right to feel as though laying this at your doorstep is unfair. You are not DC's marketing department, nor are you DC's editor-in-chief. You didn't schedule 'Final Crisis', nor did you participate in the various marketing tactics that caused people to spend large amounts of money on comics that they didn't enjoy, and found out they didn't need only after they'd spent that money. In that sense, yes, the ire directed at you is entirely misplaced.
But as noted, you weren't exactly speaking up at the time to protect your fans' financial well-being. You waited until after we'd spent our money, then explained that of course we didn't need to spend that money in order to follow your story. Who could possibly have thought otherwise? And it's hard not to feel that you're being deliberately obtuse in that regard. Surely you had to know that they were marketing a full year of build-up to your story, one that would ultimately be nothing more than a waste of time and money? Surely you had to notice, as you did interviews leading into "Batman R.I.P.", that DC was promoting it as "the end of Batman," "the last Batman story", et cetera, something that you knew it wasn't going to be and wasn't intended to be? Surely you have to understand that it's a bad idea to create expectations of a work that you know it's not going to be able to fulfill?
In short, I think that if you want less dissatisfaction from fans, you need to take a greater hand in the promotion of your work at DC. I'm aware that such a thing is probably much easier said than done, but a good share of the frustration with 'Final Crisis' comes from a feeling--probably one a lot of fans couldn't even articulate to themselves, much less to others--that the series was badly misrepresented to us, and that DC walked away with a lot of our money based on that misrepresentation. That creates mistrust, which is a very dangerous thing in an industry that relies on its customers returning every week for the rest of their lives. The last thing you want is for your readers not to trust you, and clearly 'Final Crisis' proves that the promotion of your work can't be left in the hands of the DC marketing department. While you blithely suggest in the interview that dissatisfied fans "Do something else, buy cigarettes or booze or bananas," if they don't want to buy the series, I'm sure you don't want to see readers abandon DC en masse.
I hope that this proves helpful to you. But really, I'd settle for you ever actually seeing it in the first place.
Sincerely,
John Seavey
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Silence of the Sublime
Sometimes, I worry that I only write reviews on this blog (and in general) when I've read something I dislike. Not that I think I'm unfair in my bad reviews--I try to give specific, concrete reasons why I dislike something, and I like to think I'm fair, even if I admit that I can be cruel.
But what I worry about is that if people read only negative reviews, they'll start to think that I'm actually a negative person. I worry that I'm coming off as a grump, a curmudgeon that doesn't like anything at all. Whereas in fact, I'm a grump and a curmudgeon who likes a lot of things. (Rimshot.) I just find it harder to talk about the things I like than the things I dislike.
Because the fact is, it's a lot easier to write a bad review than a good one. A bad review can point to specific areas where improvement is needed, giving concrete and constructive advice like, "These two characters are telling each other information that both of them already know, solely to provide exposition for the audience. That's a mistake." Or, "A car chase scene doesn't work nearly as well in a book as it does in a movie. Work to the strengths of your medium." Or, "Research is important to a believable and well-crafted book. If you're going to use intelligent zombie rats and mice in your novel, you should do some reading on actual rats and mice, so that your book doesn't wind up filled with plot holes because you don't understand just how hard it is to 'rat-proof' a building." (Um, sorry, Brian Keene, author of 'City of the Dead'. But it's all true.)
But a good story...it touches the soul. Whether comedy or tragedy, horror or romance, there's an indefinable element to the alchemy it produces in its audience. When you describe something truly brilliant, eventually all you're left with is synonyms for "good". You can say "the characterization is wonderful," you can say "the story was brilliant", you can say "the acting was amazing", but you can't ever really describe why. That brilliance exists on a level deeper than words. The sentence, "If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded 'Born To Lurk', these two would have been on the album cover," cannot be pinned down or quantified to explain exactly why it is funny. It just is. There is a transcendent comic genius to Simon Pegg jump-kicking an old lady in the head that you cannot explain to anyone who has not seen 'Hot Fuzz' for themselves--and you'll get some odd looks if you try. The end of 'The Kindly Ones' will always bring tears to my eyes, but I can no more explain why than I can tell you why 'Slither' terrifies me.
Which is, of course, what we love about these stories. It's why we make art, to create something that transcends a mere description of its contents. But it does mean that ultimately, any good review can only say, "Go and experience this for yourself. I cannot do it justice." And you feel silly writing that every time.
But what I worry about is that if people read only negative reviews, they'll start to think that I'm actually a negative person. I worry that I'm coming off as a grump, a curmudgeon that doesn't like anything at all. Whereas in fact, I'm a grump and a curmudgeon who likes a lot of things. (Rimshot.) I just find it harder to talk about the things I like than the things I dislike.
Because the fact is, it's a lot easier to write a bad review than a good one. A bad review can point to specific areas where improvement is needed, giving concrete and constructive advice like, "These two characters are telling each other information that both of them already know, solely to provide exposition for the audience. That's a mistake." Or, "A car chase scene doesn't work nearly as well in a book as it does in a movie. Work to the strengths of your medium." Or, "Research is important to a believable and well-crafted book. If you're going to use intelligent zombie rats and mice in your novel, you should do some reading on actual rats and mice, so that your book doesn't wind up filled with plot holes because you don't understand just how hard it is to 'rat-proof' a building." (Um, sorry, Brian Keene, author of 'City of the Dead'. But it's all true.)
But a good story...it touches the soul. Whether comedy or tragedy, horror or romance, there's an indefinable element to the alchemy it produces in its audience. When you describe something truly brilliant, eventually all you're left with is synonyms for "good". You can say "the characterization is wonderful," you can say "the story was brilliant", you can say "the acting was amazing", but you can't ever really describe why. That brilliance exists on a level deeper than words. The sentence, "If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded 'Born To Lurk', these two would have been on the album cover," cannot be pinned down or quantified to explain exactly why it is funny. It just is. There is a transcendent comic genius to Simon Pegg jump-kicking an old lady in the head that you cannot explain to anyone who has not seen 'Hot Fuzz' for themselves--and you'll get some odd looks if you try. The end of 'The Kindly Ones' will always bring tears to my eyes, but I can no more explain why than I can tell you why 'Slither' terrifies me.
Which is, of course, what we love about these stories. It's why we make art, to create something that transcends a mere description of its contents. But it does mean that ultimately, any good review can only say, "Go and experience this for yourself. I cannot do it justice." And you feel silly writing that every time.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Universal's "Dracula"
(or "Undead Means 'Not Dead'")
When it comes to horror, Bela Lugosi's turn as the infamous Count Dracula has gone beyond simply being a classic, genre-defining role to become a pop culture touchstone. Millions (possibly even billions) of people who've never in their life seen the original 1931 film still know that vampires all talk in Hungarian accents and say things like, "Children of the night...what sweet music they make!" or "I never drink...wine." Universal didn't have to think twice to realize that they had a bona fide hit on their hands, and even in an era where horror was becoming increasingly neutered due to film censorship boards, they were thinking 'sequel'.
There's only one small problem. The movie, the stage play and the book that both were based on all end with Dracula getting a wooden stake pounded through his heart, finally ending his eternal life once and for all. Um...oops?
This is actually a problem with more storytelling engines than you might think, particularly those in the horror genre. Historically speaking, lots of people have failed to realize that they have a potential series of films on their hands, and they go for the closure of seeing the villain meet his or her grisly demise instead of disappointing audiences with a teaser ending. (Heck, it doesn't even have to be horror. The Joker was slated to be killed in only his second appearance as a Batman villain, and only a last-minute addition to the art saved his life. Anyone want to imagine Batman without the Joker?) Freddy, Jason, Michael (who seemed to survive the first movie, but bit it in the second), and the shark in "Jaws" all shared Dracula's remarkably definitive fate.
This problem--how to resurrect a very dead yet very essential character--shaped every subsequent appearance of the character. "Dracula's Daughter" tried to escape the snare by being about, well...Dracula's daughter, not the Count himself (I know, the title led you to suspect a twist.) In fact, it opens with Marya stealing and incinerating Dracula's body in order to try to escape her own curse of vampirism. Unsurprisingly, she fails. Even less surprisingly, the sequel turned out to be less popular than the original, in no small part because when people go to a movie with "Dracula" in the title, they expect to see Dracula.
"Son of Dracula" decided to skirt the issue by being ambiguous. Count Alucard could be a vampiric descendant of the original count...or he could be Dracula, concealing his true self behind a pseudonym. The movie never really decides one way or the other, and it almost feels like the screeenwriters (Curt Siodmak and Eric Taylor) were arguing about it behind the scenes. Whether imitating his famous father, or reprising his fate, Alucard nonetheless bites the dust (no pun intended.)
Which leaves the door open for the solution finally decided upon in the last two Universal films featuring Dracula, a solution later used by Hammer Films for their Dracula series, and for that matter by Freddy and Jason and all his pals. Namely, that Dracula's a resilient little cuss. "House of Frankenstein" has a scene where the evil scientist finds Dracula's corpse, stake still protruding from his chest...and wouldn't you know it? As soon as he pulls it out, phoomp! Instant Drac, just add blood. Sunlight, crosses, holy water, they all put him down but not out.
Which has also become part of the myth of Dracula. As Buffy says, "I've seen the movies. I know you come back." Dracula might have died back in 1931, but the power of imagination and our need to see him return has made him far more immortal than any vampire's bite ever could. It took Universal a little while (and several actors) to see that, but eventually they caught on to Dracula's eternal appeal.
When it comes to horror, Bela Lugosi's turn as the infamous Count Dracula has gone beyond simply being a classic, genre-defining role to become a pop culture touchstone. Millions (possibly even billions) of people who've never in their life seen the original 1931 film still know that vampires all talk in Hungarian accents and say things like, "Children of the night...what sweet music they make!" or "I never drink...wine." Universal didn't have to think twice to realize that they had a bona fide hit on their hands, and even in an era where horror was becoming increasingly neutered due to film censorship boards, they were thinking 'sequel'.
There's only one small problem. The movie, the stage play and the book that both were based on all end with Dracula getting a wooden stake pounded through his heart, finally ending his eternal life once and for all. Um...oops?
This is actually a problem with more storytelling engines than you might think, particularly those in the horror genre. Historically speaking, lots of people have failed to realize that they have a potential series of films on their hands, and they go for the closure of seeing the villain meet his or her grisly demise instead of disappointing audiences with a teaser ending. (Heck, it doesn't even have to be horror. The Joker was slated to be killed in only his second appearance as a Batman villain, and only a last-minute addition to the art saved his life. Anyone want to imagine Batman without the Joker?) Freddy, Jason, Michael (who seemed to survive the first movie, but bit it in the second), and the shark in "Jaws" all shared Dracula's remarkably definitive fate.
This problem--how to resurrect a very dead yet very essential character--shaped every subsequent appearance of the character. "Dracula's Daughter" tried to escape the snare by being about, well...Dracula's daughter, not the Count himself (I know, the title led you to suspect a twist.) In fact, it opens with Marya stealing and incinerating Dracula's body in order to try to escape her own curse of vampirism. Unsurprisingly, she fails. Even less surprisingly, the sequel turned out to be less popular than the original, in no small part because when people go to a movie with "Dracula" in the title, they expect to see Dracula.
"Son of Dracula" decided to skirt the issue by being ambiguous. Count Alucard could be a vampiric descendant of the original count...or he could be Dracula, concealing his true self behind a pseudonym. The movie never really decides one way or the other, and it almost feels like the screeenwriters (Curt Siodmak and Eric Taylor) were arguing about it behind the scenes. Whether imitating his famous father, or reprising his fate, Alucard nonetheless bites the dust (no pun intended.)
Which leaves the door open for the solution finally decided upon in the last two Universal films featuring Dracula, a solution later used by Hammer Films for their Dracula series, and for that matter by Freddy and Jason and all his pals. Namely, that Dracula's a resilient little cuss. "House of Frankenstein" has a scene where the evil scientist finds Dracula's corpse, stake still protruding from his chest...and wouldn't you know it? As soon as he pulls it out, phoomp! Instant Drac, just add blood. Sunlight, crosses, holy water, they all put him down but not out.
Which has also become part of the myth of Dracula. As Buffy says, "I've seen the movies. I know you come back." Dracula might have died back in 1931, but the power of imagination and our need to see him return has made him far more immortal than any vampire's bite ever could. It took Universal a little while (and several actors) to see that, but eventually they caught on to Dracula's eternal appeal.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Showcase Update '09
Another year begins, ripe with the promise of twenty-four brand new thick volumes of black-and-white goodness on cheap paper. That's right, it's time for another update of my wish list for DC's "Showcase Presents" line!
DC's slowed down considerably from their first year, where it seemed like every month had two brand-new series coming out. But that's only to be expected; having released collections of most of their "big guns", they're starting to get deeper into those series' original runs. Two volumes of the Flash, three of Green Lantern, four or five now of Superman...it starts to cut into the number of new series they can release. (Marvel's in the same boat.)
And looking at last year's list, it kind of shows. Of the fifteen titles I picked for my wishlist, only two (Blackhawks and Doom Patrol) were released or are slated to be released. That's not to say those were the only new series DC put out--did anyone ever expect to see a "Showcase Presents Ambush Bug"? But in terms of their score of catering to my personal wishes, they didn't do so good.
So what are my personal wishes for the coming year?
15. Kamandi. Really, this and the "New Gods" material should have been released in preparation for "Final Crisis" (and probably some "OMAC" stuff as well.) Sure, DC can point to their big, thick Kirby Omnibii and say, "Look, we're putting out our Kirby backlist to help make "Final Crisis" comprehensible," but those things aren't cheap. I'm not made of money, here, DC!
14. Tomahawk. DC's been pretty good about getting their war comics into the line, but their westerns have been far less represented; why not start here, with the frontier adventures back from when everything in the United States counted as "frontier"?
13. The Demon. Another Kirby creation (how he's not featured prominently in "Final Crisis" is downright inexplicable to me), the Demon has tons of material available for collection. Sure, his own original series only ran sixteen issues, but he's had numerous revivals, guest appearances galore--heck, they could toss in his appearances in 'Batman Adventures' if they wanted!
12. New Gods. Again, this is something that should be out already--"Final Crisis" is so dense in Fourth World mythos that it desperately needs supporting material to make it comprehensible. And yet, the only "Fourth World" collections are sixty bucks apiece and need a forklift to get them out of the comics shop. It's a travesty, I tells ya.
11. Superboy. Sometimes, it can be hard picking new series to go up here, especially for someone like me who didn't spend his childhood steeped in DC lore. (I was a total Marvel Zombie as a kid.) Luckily for me, I have a feeling this one is here to stay forever, what with the endless litigation over the rights to the character between DC and the Siegel estate. (Which I have literally no opinion over--it's strictly a business matter between the Siegels, Warner Brothers, and the court system, and with any luck it will be resolved fairly between the two parties.)
10. Sugar and Spike. I was gratified to find out that I'm not the only person who really wants to see DC's classic humor series published; none other than the legendary Chris Sims, of the Invincible Super-Blog, referred to the situation of this book not being in print as "DC hating money".
9. Plastic Man. Or maybe it could just be, "DC hates fun." Plastic Man is pretty much their only signature character who doesn't have a "Showcase Presents" volume--the entire Super Friends pantheon has one, including an actual "Super Friends" collection coming soon, but Plas is left out in the cold. (Hope he doesn't become brittle.)
8. Warlord. They're launching a new "Warlord" series soon, if memory serves me right, so that might mean we actually see this one--DC's been pretty good about marketing synergy like that (although there's always room for improvement.)
7. The Question. I've heard rumors that "The Creeper" is coming soon (all right, I did a search for "showcase presents" on Amazon and it listed it as coming soon.) Point is, if they're doing "The Creeper", can "The Question" be far behind?
6. Blue Beetle. Or for that matter, can "Blue Beetle" be far behind? (Note for non-die-hard comics fans...who I have to imagine are reading this solely out of sheer bloody-mindedness..."The Creeper", "The Question", and "Blue Beetle" were three of Steve Ditko's classic series during the time he worked for Charlton comics. Charlton was later bought out by DC, so they're DC characters now.)
5. Swamp Thing. This had so many A-list creators working on it that half the series has already been collected in color; why not give us a nice, cheap black-and-white version we can lend out, too? (I suspect the answer is, "Because that's a Vertigo series." About which I will say no more right now.)
4. Firestorm. I don't think DC realizes just how popular this volume would be--the original Ronnie Raymond Firestorm is just old enough now to catch a strong wave of nostalgia (and the fact that he was in a couple of seasons of "Super Friends" can't hurt.) The old series could segue into the new series pretty effortlessly, if they needed additional material, and increasing the character's visibility before trying another "Firestorm" relaunch couldn't hurt.
3. Hawk and Dove. It's another classic Ditko series, but more than that, the later run written by Karl and Barbara Kesel is my personal favorite series DC ever published, and it's the series that got me into DC. More than any other item on this list, this is a personal indulgence on my part, but I don't care.
2. Suicide Squad. So after canceling the "Showcase Presents Suicide Squad" volume, and telling everyone that it would be resolicited next year...DC did not, in fact, resolicit it. It's the lies that really hurt, DC. You can make it up to me by putting this collection of 80s awesomeness out this year, though.
1. MAD Magazine. People have pointed out to me that you can get a CD-ROM collection of every MAD Magazine issue, but if I've managed to get one thing across with these yearly lists, I hope it's that I still prefer old-school, hard-copy, ink-on-paper editions of these classic stories. You can't toss a CD-ROM in your bookbag and read it when you're in line at the bank, you can't grab it off the shelf on your way to the bathroom when you're just looking for something to while away a minute or two, and you certainly feel a lot worse if you drop it in the tub by accident. I'd like all of MAD, from the beginning, in a convenient and affordable format. Because I love it.
DC's slowed down considerably from their first year, where it seemed like every month had two brand-new series coming out. But that's only to be expected; having released collections of most of their "big guns", they're starting to get deeper into those series' original runs. Two volumes of the Flash, three of Green Lantern, four or five now of Superman...it starts to cut into the number of new series they can release. (Marvel's in the same boat.)
And looking at last year's list, it kind of shows. Of the fifteen titles I picked for my wishlist, only two (Blackhawks and Doom Patrol) were released or are slated to be released. That's not to say those were the only new series DC put out--did anyone ever expect to see a "Showcase Presents Ambush Bug"? But in terms of their score of catering to my personal wishes, they didn't do so good.
So what are my personal wishes for the coming year?
15. Kamandi. Really, this and the "New Gods" material should have been released in preparation for "Final Crisis" (and probably some "OMAC" stuff as well.) Sure, DC can point to their big, thick Kirby Omnibii and say, "Look, we're putting out our Kirby backlist to help make "Final Crisis" comprehensible," but those things aren't cheap. I'm not made of money, here, DC!
14. Tomahawk. DC's been pretty good about getting their war comics into the line, but their westerns have been far less represented; why not start here, with the frontier adventures back from when everything in the United States counted as "frontier"?
13. The Demon. Another Kirby creation (how he's not featured prominently in "Final Crisis" is downright inexplicable to me), the Demon has tons of material available for collection. Sure, his own original series only ran sixteen issues, but he's had numerous revivals, guest appearances galore--heck, they could toss in his appearances in 'Batman Adventures' if they wanted!
12. New Gods. Again, this is something that should be out already--"Final Crisis" is so dense in Fourth World mythos that it desperately needs supporting material to make it comprehensible. And yet, the only "Fourth World" collections are sixty bucks apiece and need a forklift to get them out of the comics shop. It's a travesty, I tells ya.
11. Superboy. Sometimes, it can be hard picking new series to go up here, especially for someone like me who didn't spend his childhood steeped in DC lore. (I was a total Marvel Zombie as a kid.) Luckily for me, I have a feeling this one is here to stay forever, what with the endless litigation over the rights to the character between DC and the Siegel estate. (Which I have literally no opinion over--it's strictly a business matter between the Siegels, Warner Brothers, and the court system, and with any luck it will be resolved fairly between the two parties.)
10. Sugar and Spike. I was gratified to find out that I'm not the only person who really wants to see DC's classic humor series published; none other than the legendary Chris Sims, of the Invincible Super-Blog, referred to the situation of this book not being in print as "DC hating money".
9. Plastic Man. Or maybe it could just be, "DC hates fun." Plastic Man is pretty much their only signature character who doesn't have a "Showcase Presents" volume--the entire Super Friends pantheon has one, including an actual "Super Friends" collection coming soon, but Plas is left out in the cold. (Hope he doesn't become brittle.)
8. Warlord. They're launching a new "Warlord" series soon, if memory serves me right, so that might mean we actually see this one--DC's been pretty good about marketing synergy like that (although there's always room for improvement.)
7. The Question. I've heard rumors that "The Creeper" is coming soon (all right, I did a search for "showcase presents" on Amazon and it listed it as coming soon.) Point is, if they're doing "The Creeper", can "The Question" be far behind?
6. Blue Beetle. Or for that matter, can "Blue Beetle" be far behind? (Note for non-die-hard comics fans...who I have to imagine are reading this solely out of sheer bloody-mindedness..."The Creeper", "The Question", and "Blue Beetle" were three of Steve Ditko's classic series during the time he worked for Charlton comics. Charlton was later bought out by DC, so they're DC characters now.)
5. Swamp Thing. This had so many A-list creators working on it that half the series has already been collected in color; why not give us a nice, cheap black-and-white version we can lend out, too? (I suspect the answer is, "Because that's a Vertigo series." About which I will say no more right now.)
4. Firestorm. I don't think DC realizes just how popular this volume would be--the original Ronnie Raymond Firestorm is just old enough now to catch a strong wave of nostalgia (and the fact that he was in a couple of seasons of "Super Friends" can't hurt.) The old series could segue into the new series pretty effortlessly, if they needed additional material, and increasing the character's visibility before trying another "Firestorm" relaunch couldn't hurt.
3. Hawk and Dove. It's another classic Ditko series, but more than that, the later run written by Karl and Barbara Kesel is my personal favorite series DC ever published, and it's the series that got me into DC. More than any other item on this list, this is a personal indulgence on my part, but I don't care.
2. Suicide Squad. So after canceling the "Showcase Presents Suicide Squad" volume, and telling everyone that it would be resolicited next year...DC did not, in fact, resolicit it. It's the lies that really hurt, DC. You can make it up to me by putting this collection of 80s awesomeness out this year, though.
1. MAD Magazine. People have pointed out to me that you can get a CD-ROM collection of every MAD Magazine issue, but if I've managed to get one thing across with these yearly lists, I hope it's that I still prefer old-school, hard-copy, ink-on-paper editions of these classic stories. You can't toss a CD-ROM in your bookbag and read it when you're in line at the bank, you can't grab it off the shelf on your way to the bathroom when you're just looking for something to while away a minute or two, and you certainly feel a lot worse if you drop it in the tub by accident. I'd like all of MAD, from the beginning, in a convenient and affordable format. Because I love it.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
TV Schedule For Tonight
Tonight, at 8 PM (7 Central), George W. Bush makes his "Farewell" address to the nation.
Following that, at 9, Barack Obama makes his "Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass On The Way Out" address to George W. Bush.
Following that, at 9, Barack Obama makes his "Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass On The Way Out" address to George W. Bush.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Storytelling Engines: The Muppet Show
(or "Failure Is Funny")
I don't think it'd be controversial to say that Jim Henson was something of a genius when it came to comedy (then again, judging by some of my previous posts, I also don't think it'd be controversial to say that I'm not good at guessing what's going to be controversial and what isn't.) He certainly spent time thinking about settings and character dynamics that would help him come up with skits for a half-hour variety show; he's famously quoted for his axiom on how to end a comedy sketch ("blow something up, have one character eat another, or start tossing animals in the air"), but he also spent a lot of time working on ways to begin one. 'The Muppet Show', his best-known series, is filled with recurring gags and repeated characters that somehow never get old, and it all comes from one of the simplest rules of comedy. Failure is funny.
Well, let's clarify that a bit. Other people's failure is funny, so long as you don't focus too sharply on the consequences of that failure. 'Requiem for a Dream', for example, is never going to be regarded as a comedy classic. But looking at the Muppets, you see a group of people united by a) their passion for entertainment and their dream of making people happy through art, and b) their lack of talent at their chosen field. The gap between their desires and their actual abilities provides fertile ground for chaos, confusion, and comic misunderstandings as events slowly (and sometimes quickly) spin out of their control.
It starts with Kermit, who's the emcee and showrunner, but who has problems controlling his temper and asserting his authority. Not only can he not keep his cool when problems hit, but when he does fly into a rage, it's endearingly cute instead of intimidating. Then we have Fozzie, who's almost the perfect emblem of the show; he's a comedian who's so unfunny it's funny. Miss Piggy is a diva who doesn't conform to the traditional feminine standards of beauty, but who acts like she does. Gonzo is an avant-garde performance artist trapped in a run-down vaudeville theater, Bunsen Honeydew's inventions don't work, Sam the Eagle continually fails at injecting moral uplift into the show, Wayne and Wanda can't ever finish a single song, Statler and Waldorf are continually disappointed in their hopes of seeing quality entertainment--really, the only characters who seem fulfilled are Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and you still get the feeling they'd rather be doing arena rock for a bunch of counter-culture types.
This "comic disaster" mentality permeates every aspect of the show, helping to create not just sketches but entire episodes that are structured around a slowly building crisis--Carol Burnett, for example, comes on the show to do her "classic" comedy bit, the "lonely asparagus" sketch. But due to a scheduling conflict (Gonzo's running a dance marathon in the theater that week), all her efforts to get some stage time are continually frustrated until at the end, she only manages to get off one joke before time runs out and the show's over. Quite clearly, they only had one joke they could come up with in the "lonely asparagus" sketch (it's too terrible to repeat, even by my pun-happy standards), but by turning the story into the failure of the sketch, they made that one terrible joke into an entire hilarious episode.
This structure also allows Henson to come up with recurring characters and sketches that nonetheless manage to be funny every time, despite only slight variations; somehow, seeing incompetence never manages to become too formulaic, no matter how many times we see it repeated. The basic gag for the Swedish Chef is the same every time, but it's always funny to see an incomprehensible guy fail spectacularly at a simple task. In fact, the Swedish Chef is probably the perfect distillation of the entire concept of the Muppet Show (and 'The Jim Henson Hour', and 'Muppets Tonight', and all of the various movies and specials and, well, everything else Muppety.) Watch the Swedish Chef, and you'll understand Jim Henson's genius in less than two minutes. He wants to teach people how to cook, but he can neither cook nor teach. That's just always going to be a good start to a comedy bit.
I don't think it'd be controversial to say that Jim Henson was something of a genius when it came to comedy (then again, judging by some of my previous posts, I also don't think it'd be controversial to say that I'm not good at guessing what's going to be controversial and what isn't.) He certainly spent time thinking about settings and character dynamics that would help him come up with skits for a half-hour variety show; he's famously quoted for his axiom on how to end a comedy sketch ("blow something up, have one character eat another, or start tossing animals in the air"), but he also spent a lot of time working on ways to begin one. 'The Muppet Show', his best-known series, is filled with recurring gags and repeated characters that somehow never get old, and it all comes from one of the simplest rules of comedy. Failure is funny.
Well, let's clarify that a bit. Other people's failure is funny, so long as you don't focus too sharply on the consequences of that failure. 'Requiem for a Dream', for example, is never going to be regarded as a comedy classic. But looking at the Muppets, you see a group of people united by a) their passion for entertainment and their dream of making people happy through art, and b) their lack of talent at their chosen field. The gap between their desires and their actual abilities provides fertile ground for chaos, confusion, and comic misunderstandings as events slowly (and sometimes quickly) spin out of their control.
It starts with Kermit, who's the emcee and showrunner, but who has problems controlling his temper and asserting his authority. Not only can he not keep his cool when problems hit, but when he does fly into a rage, it's endearingly cute instead of intimidating. Then we have Fozzie, who's almost the perfect emblem of the show; he's a comedian who's so unfunny it's funny. Miss Piggy is a diva who doesn't conform to the traditional feminine standards of beauty, but who acts like she does. Gonzo is an avant-garde performance artist trapped in a run-down vaudeville theater, Bunsen Honeydew's inventions don't work, Sam the Eagle continually fails at injecting moral uplift into the show, Wayne and Wanda can't ever finish a single song, Statler and Waldorf are continually disappointed in their hopes of seeing quality entertainment--really, the only characters who seem fulfilled are Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and you still get the feeling they'd rather be doing arena rock for a bunch of counter-culture types.
This "comic disaster" mentality permeates every aspect of the show, helping to create not just sketches but entire episodes that are structured around a slowly building crisis--Carol Burnett, for example, comes on the show to do her "classic" comedy bit, the "lonely asparagus" sketch. But due to a scheduling conflict (Gonzo's running a dance marathon in the theater that week), all her efforts to get some stage time are continually frustrated until at the end, she only manages to get off one joke before time runs out and the show's over. Quite clearly, they only had one joke they could come up with in the "lonely asparagus" sketch (it's too terrible to repeat, even by my pun-happy standards), but by turning the story into the failure of the sketch, they made that one terrible joke into an entire hilarious episode.
This structure also allows Henson to come up with recurring characters and sketches that nonetheless manage to be funny every time, despite only slight variations; somehow, seeing incompetence never manages to become too formulaic, no matter how many times we see it repeated. The basic gag for the Swedish Chef is the same every time, but it's always funny to see an incomprehensible guy fail spectacularly at a simple task. In fact, the Swedish Chef is probably the perfect distillation of the entire concept of the Muppet Show (and 'The Jim Henson Hour', and 'Muppets Tonight', and all of the various movies and specials and, well, everything else Muppety.) Watch the Swedish Chef, and you'll understand Jim Henson's genius in less than two minutes. He wants to teach people how to cook, but he can neither cook nor teach. That's just always going to be a good start to a comedy bit.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
ConBestiary #7
Celebrity Shade: These poor souls were once human as you or I, but their life essences were captured by television cameras a long time ago. Unlike regular celebrities, who maintain the semblance of normality by regularly renewing their contact with the film industry, these people only snagged one or two choice roles over the course of their life, and never managed to act again. Without a soul or a connection to one, they must exist in a perpetual half-life where their existence is defined by that one TV series they appeared in twenty-five years ago.
Celebrity shades can be found filling out the lower echelons of the guest list at any convention, lurking in the Walk of Fame in a desperate attempt to feed on the glimmerings of their half-remembered fame. They're too weak to be really dangerous; instead, they come off as somewhat pathetic, sitting around all by themselves with an occasional burst of happiness as someone remembers their show from when they were kids. One can only hope that they somehow manage to reclaim their soul someday, either by returning to the TV studio where it's being kept or by finally breaking it free of the seductive embrace of fame once and for all.
Celebrity shades can be found filling out the lower echelons of the guest list at any convention, lurking in the Walk of Fame in a desperate attempt to feed on the glimmerings of their half-remembered fame. They're too weak to be really dangerous; instead, they come off as somewhat pathetic, sitting around all by themselves with an occasional burst of happiness as someone remembers their show from when they were kids. One can only hope that they somehow manage to reclaim their soul someday, either by returning to the TV studio where it's being kept or by finally breaking it free of the seductive embrace of fame once and for all.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Hopefully Meaningless
I now have a Gmail account, and since it was glitching all the time when I used my old Blogger account to try to post to my Blogspot account now that Blogspot is owned by Google and Google runs Gmail and Gmail wants me to use my Gmail account to sign into Google's Blogspot...
Basically, it was all starting to seem a bit Doctor Seussy, so I added my Gmail version of me in as an author, gave him admin privileges, and then removed my old Blogspot self. If it all works right, nobody but me should ever notice any difference at all. If it doesn't, well...this post is here to tell you why some stranger is suddenly posting as me.
Basically, it was all starting to seem a bit Doctor Seussy, so I added my Gmail version of me in as an author, gave him admin privileges, and then removed my old Blogspot self. If it all works right, nobody but me should ever notice any difference at all. If it doesn't, well...this post is here to tell you why some stranger is suddenly posting as me.
The Metastory Trap
This is one of those ideas that I've been looking for a place to fit into the "Storytelling Engines" series, as that tends to be where I put my ideas on how writing a long-term, continuing series of stories. But the problem is, it's a relatively recent phenomenon, and most of the books and TV shows and movies I've been writing about don't fall into it very often in the material I'm reading/watching for the columns. (Which isn't the same as "all", and I have touched on the idea in my entries on Buffy, Angel, and Spider-Man.) So I've decided to just devote a quick post to it, which neatly saves me from having to come up with something to write about this week.
Put simply, the metastory trap comes when a long-running series of separate-but-linked stories gets more interested in its metastory than the individual stories that compose it. Put even more simply, you get caught in a metastory trap when you're more worried about your arc than you are about your individual installments. Put even more simply, you're caught in a metastory trap when you write "Countdown to Infinite Crisis". *rimshot*
This is a relatively recent phenomenon, as I said in the opening paragraph, but you can definitely see its roots in Chris Claremont's 80s X-Men comics. As the series went into the 200s and the crossover began to rise in popularity, issues would come out that would have no payoff at all in story terms other than to set up the next crossover. Claremont did a pretty good job of balancing these "arc" issues with stand-alone stories, depending on who you ask (there's still a lot of fan griping about #229-280, a long run with progressively more arc material), but you can see the problem starting to take shape--as the series grew more complex and the plots grew too large to contain in twenty-two pages, the issues became chapters in a book instead of short stories.
But really, the problem didn't explode until after 'Babylon 5' really sold TV fans and writers on the idea of having a series with an over-arching metastory. While each episode of 'Babylon 5' theoretically told a stand-alone story, fans tended to focus on (even obsess about) the moments within each episode that advanced the overall plot of the war with the Shadows. They dissected each episode, looking for clues to Stracynski's "five year plan" and how it all was going to play out...something which was not lost on the creative team, who attended enough cons to notice that people cared more about the arc plot than they did about any given story.
That's the real essence of the metastory trap--once fans start caring more about whether an episode is "important" to the Big Picture than whether or not it's good, it's hard for a writer to keep on an even keel. Reviewers (and not just fans, but professional reviewers) will start dismissing episodes as "inconsequential", and "nothing really changed by the end" becomes an insult. The demand becomes a drumbeat: Every story has to do something big and change the status quo, and big stories that change the status quo are inherently exciting and dramatic.
Once that idea gets into a writer's head (and worse, an editor/showrunner's), there's trouble ahead. Because not all changes to the metastory are good ones, and if you're in a position where you're forcing yourself to make changes to the metastory just to keep audience interest, sooner or later you're going to make a mistake. Example: Xander and Anya's wedding in Season Six of "Buffy". (Spoilers ahead, although if you haven't watched the show after seven years of chances, I don't feel too guilty about telling you now.)
At the end of the episode, Xander left Anya at the altar, and Anya responded by resuming her ways as a vengeance demon. Big, shocker ending, major metastory advancement, and a big twist...except that the writers didn't have any idea where to go with this particular plot point, it flew in the face of the character development of both characters, it left them both without anything to do in the series, and after less than half a season, they reverted Anya to human...then killed her off half a season later when it became clear that she had no role in the series anymore. The obsession with advancing the metastory led the writing team to make a decision they probably wouldn't have made if they weren't feeling that pressure to do something big and shocking.
Likewise, "Civil War" is a good example. Mark Millar said he refused to do a crossover unless it was something as earth-shaking as "Crisis On Infinite Earths". It's telling (if a bit unfair to point out) that he cited "earth-shattering" instead of "good" as his primary criterion for the story's success. It's also telling that many of the consequences of "Civil War" were retconned away or quietly ignored not long afterwards--Spider-Man's secret identity has been re-concealed, registration is rarely enforced in the stories themselves, and apart from a few vague threats to "talk", Thor's taken it remarkably well that one of his oldest friends made a murderous clone of him and unleashed it on his other friends.
DC right now is all about the metastory, both in terms of its readers and its fans. Dan DiDio has been constantly building everything to "the next Crisis", from Identity to Infinite to Final, and that doesn't even count the way that the Sinestro Corps War has built to Rage of the Red Lanterns to The Blackest Night and the way that Batman has built from RIP to Battle for the Cowl. I don't blame DiDio for this, either; when your fans are constantly showing up at conventions, demanding more metastory, more big changes, more "important" stories that "shake up the status quo", what can you really do except bring back everyone who's dead and kill off everyone who's alive every two years, just to keep things moving?
So if the fans like it and the writers like it, why is it a metastory "trap" then? The answer is simple. The existing fans are not the only audience. A series that is all about its metastory rapidly develops a complex, tangled mythos that can obscure the simple, powerful idea at its heart ("A teenage girl fights monsters in a high school that's literally hell", "Intergalactic cops have near-magical weapons to help them fight space crime", "A boy sees his parents gunned down and grows up wanting to fight crime") and turn off new readers/viewers. And given that all existing audiences are subject to attrition (and not just from death or sickness, either--who hasn't cut back their comics buying at least some due to the recession?) ...well, if you're not getting in new people, you'll eventually lose your audience as frustration sets in and the mythos grows too impenetrable for even the die-hard fans to care about. Then the whole thing collapses into a mess, lying dormant for years, even decades until someone cares enough to dust off that central concept at its heart and make it shine again.
Sort of like "Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man".
Put simply, the metastory trap comes when a long-running series of separate-but-linked stories gets more interested in its metastory than the individual stories that compose it. Put even more simply, you get caught in a metastory trap when you're more worried about your arc than you are about your individual installments. Put even more simply, you're caught in a metastory trap when you write "Countdown to Infinite Crisis". *rimshot*
This is a relatively recent phenomenon, as I said in the opening paragraph, but you can definitely see its roots in Chris Claremont's 80s X-Men comics. As the series went into the 200s and the crossover began to rise in popularity, issues would come out that would have no payoff at all in story terms other than to set up the next crossover. Claremont did a pretty good job of balancing these "arc" issues with stand-alone stories, depending on who you ask (there's still a lot of fan griping about #229-280, a long run with progressively more arc material), but you can see the problem starting to take shape--as the series grew more complex and the plots grew too large to contain in twenty-two pages, the issues became chapters in a book instead of short stories.
But really, the problem didn't explode until after 'Babylon 5' really sold TV fans and writers on the idea of having a series with an over-arching metastory. While each episode of 'Babylon 5' theoretically told a stand-alone story, fans tended to focus on (even obsess about) the moments within each episode that advanced the overall plot of the war with the Shadows. They dissected each episode, looking for clues to Stracynski's "five year plan" and how it all was going to play out...something which was not lost on the creative team, who attended enough cons to notice that people cared more about the arc plot than they did about any given story.
That's the real essence of the metastory trap--once fans start caring more about whether an episode is "important" to the Big Picture than whether or not it's good, it's hard for a writer to keep on an even keel. Reviewers (and not just fans, but professional reviewers) will start dismissing episodes as "inconsequential", and "nothing really changed by the end" becomes an insult. The demand becomes a drumbeat: Every story has to do something big and change the status quo, and big stories that change the status quo are inherently exciting and dramatic.
Once that idea gets into a writer's head (and worse, an editor/showrunner's), there's trouble ahead. Because not all changes to the metastory are good ones, and if you're in a position where you're forcing yourself to make changes to the metastory just to keep audience interest, sooner or later you're going to make a mistake. Example: Xander and Anya's wedding in Season Six of "Buffy". (Spoilers ahead, although if you haven't watched the show after seven years of chances, I don't feel too guilty about telling you now.)
At the end of the episode, Xander left Anya at the altar, and Anya responded by resuming her ways as a vengeance demon. Big, shocker ending, major metastory advancement, and a big twist...except that the writers didn't have any idea where to go with this particular plot point, it flew in the face of the character development of both characters, it left them both without anything to do in the series, and after less than half a season, they reverted Anya to human...then killed her off half a season later when it became clear that she had no role in the series anymore. The obsession with advancing the metastory led the writing team to make a decision they probably wouldn't have made if they weren't feeling that pressure to do something big and shocking.
Likewise, "Civil War" is a good example. Mark Millar said he refused to do a crossover unless it was something as earth-shaking as "Crisis On Infinite Earths". It's telling (if a bit unfair to point out) that he cited "earth-shattering" instead of "good" as his primary criterion for the story's success. It's also telling that many of the consequences of "Civil War" were retconned away or quietly ignored not long afterwards--Spider-Man's secret identity has been re-concealed, registration is rarely enforced in the stories themselves, and apart from a few vague threats to "talk", Thor's taken it remarkably well that one of his oldest friends made a murderous clone of him and unleashed it on his other friends.
DC right now is all about the metastory, both in terms of its readers and its fans. Dan DiDio has been constantly building everything to "the next Crisis", from Identity to Infinite to Final, and that doesn't even count the way that the Sinestro Corps War has built to Rage of the Red Lanterns to The Blackest Night and the way that Batman has built from RIP to Battle for the Cowl. I don't blame DiDio for this, either; when your fans are constantly showing up at conventions, demanding more metastory, more big changes, more "important" stories that "shake up the status quo", what can you really do except bring back everyone who's dead and kill off everyone who's alive every two years, just to keep things moving?
So if the fans like it and the writers like it, why is it a metastory "trap" then? The answer is simple. The existing fans are not the only audience. A series that is all about its metastory rapidly develops a complex, tangled mythos that can obscure the simple, powerful idea at its heart ("A teenage girl fights monsters in a high school that's literally hell", "Intergalactic cops have near-magical weapons to help them fight space crime", "A boy sees his parents gunned down and grows up wanting to fight crime") and turn off new readers/viewers. And given that all existing audiences are subject to attrition (and not just from death or sickness, either--who hasn't cut back their comics buying at least some due to the recession?) ...well, if you're not getting in new people, you'll eventually lose your audience as frustration sets in and the mythos grows too impenetrable for even the die-hard fans to care about. Then the whole thing collapses into a mess, lying dormant for years, even decades until someone cares enough to dust off that central concept at its heart and make it shine again.
Sort of like "Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man".
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Good Time For a Break
Just wanted to drop a quick note that no, this week's Storytelling Engines entry is not late; it is entirely absent. I will be spending the week celebrating the holidays, reading "Sgt. Rock", watching old Dracula movies, and dealing with a minor plumbing emergency; two of those four things will contribute to future columns. You may guess which in the columns section.
There may or may not be a Thursday entry (although my track record lately means I should amend that to "There may or may not be a Saturday entry." Hey, it may be late, but at least I haven't just skipped a week. Well, not without telling you.)
There may or may not be a Thursday entry (although my track record lately means I should amend that to "There may or may not be a Saturday entry." Hey, it may be late, but at least I haven't just skipped a week. Well, not without telling you.)
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Sports Fan Responsible For MNF Delay, Says NFL
December 26th, 2008--A spokesperson for the National Football League explained today that the reason for the forty-five minute delay to the opening kickoff of this week's Monday Night Football game has been traced down, and discovered to be a Chicago fan who was insufficiently ready for some football. The final game of the season, which was shown in its entirety, was being played in Chicago, a town which is generally known for its football-preparation acumen, making the delay all the more shocking.
"It's always unfortunate when something like this happens," Hank Williams Jr said of the situation. "The vast majority of Chicago fans are not to blame, and it's truly sad that they all had to wait for one person who wasn't quite ready for some football. But I take my duties as host of Monday Night Football seriously. That's why I've begun asking twice, in order to confirm true readiness for some football. When I asked the first time, 'Are you ready?', I got what seemed to be a satisfactory response, and I expected the evening to go off without a hitch. But when I asked, 'I mean, really ready?', I was not satisfied with the response I got from William Sanderson, on the East Side of Chicago. I had no choice but to postpone stamping on the giant button that launches the enormous football helmets out of the roof of my house until Sanderson could be tracked down and his readiness fully ascertained."
Added Williams, "If I had launched too soon, all my rowdy friends would never have forgiven me."
Insufficient football preparation is rare, but always taken seriously by the NFL. At one point, Cincinnati's Monday Night Football game was delayed upwards of a decade to ensure that the team, as well as the fans, were truly ready for some football, while Dallas fans stage frequent drills to ensure proper readiness. Failure to respond promptly to the question, "How 'bout them Cowboys?!" can result in harsh fines within city limits.
Humiliated and ashamed despite their victory, Chicago fans now feel that they must work even harder to demonstrate their readiness for some football. Some 30,000 fans plan to keep a year-round vigil in Soldier Field, working in shifts, in order to ensure that no matter what time of the day or night, even outside of football season, they will in fact be ready for some football. "We've got a lot to prove," said one weary fan. "It's just...damnit, the countdown to the kickoff had officially started! How could he not know?"
Sanderson has refused all media requests, but a statement released through his lawyer claims that he was merely making an extra beer run, and that his car got stuck in the snow. At this time, no legal action is being taken.
"It's always unfortunate when something like this happens," Hank Williams Jr said of the situation. "The vast majority of Chicago fans are not to blame, and it's truly sad that they all had to wait for one person who wasn't quite ready for some football. But I take my duties as host of Monday Night Football seriously. That's why I've begun asking twice, in order to confirm true readiness for some football. When I asked the first time, 'Are you ready?', I got what seemed to be a satisfactory response, and I expected the evening to go off without a hitch. But when I asked, 'I mean, really ready?', I was not satisfied with the response I got from William Sanderson, on the East Side of Chicago. I had no choice but to postpone stamping on the giant button that launches the enormous football helmets out of the roof of my house until Sanderson could be tracked down and his readiness fully ascertained."
Added Williams, "If I had launched too soon, all my rowdy friends would never have forgiven me."
Insufficient football preparation is rare, but always taken seriously by the NFL. At one point, Cincinnati's Monday Night Football game was delayed upwards of a decade to ensure that the team, as well as the fans, were truly ready for some football, while Dallas fans stage frequent drills to ensure proper readiness. Failure to respond promptly to the question, "How 'bout them Cowboys?!" can result in harsh fines within city limits.
Humiliated and ashamed despite their victory, Chicago fans now feel that they must work even harder to demonstrate their readiness for some football. Some 30,000 fans plan to keep a year-round vigil in Soldier Field, working in shifts, in order to ensure that no matter what time of the day or night, even outside of football season, they will in fact be ready for some football. "We've got a lot to prove," said one weary fan. "It's just...damnit, the countdown to the kickoff had officially started! How could he not know?"
Sanderson has refused all media requests, but a statement released through his lawyer claims that he was merely making an extra beer run, and that his car got stuck in the snow. At this time, no legal action is being taken.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Storytelling Engines: Universal's "Frankenstein"
(or "The Sins Of The Father, Grandfather, Great-Great-Grand-Uncle, Et Cetera...")
When dealing with 'Frankenstein', it's important to carefully delineate which version of the Frankenstein mythos you're talking about in any given discussion. Because while they might all draw on the same source material, Mary Shelley's classic Gothic novel, they definitely don't have the same storytelling engine. The Hammer Frankenstein series, for example, followed Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein as he went through one diabolical experiment after another, descending ever further along a path of perfectly rational madness and calculating viciousness, until he turned into a monster far more inhuman than the ones he created.
The Universal Frankenstein films, though, took a far different tack. They started from virtually the same point: Frankenstein, a scientist with heretical views on artificial life, creates a human being out of an assemblage of corpses and animates it. The resultant Monster (which never gets a name, in the Universal canon) turns out to be a brutish, simple-minded beast instead of the perfect creation Frankenstein intended, at which point the drawbacks of making him eight feet tall with the strength of a dozen men become apparent.
The second Universal film is a pretty natural extension of the first, with Frankenstein being induced to make a female version of his creation (and in the process, creating the very first beehive hairdo.) But it's with "Son of Frankenstein" that the storytelling engine of the series really takes off, and the Frankenstein legacy becomes a key point of the series.
The third movie follows Frankenstein's now-grown son, Wolf, as he returns to his ancestral home, already interested in the reputation his father had and conflicted over his own views of his father as a brilliant man and a great scientist. Despite hearing about the horrors the Monster has visited on the village of Frankenstein over the decades (and yes, that's accurate--if he's the Baron von Frankenstein, it would make sense that the village is the village of Frankenstein), Wolf believes that his father's ideas were fundamentally sound...and when he discovers the dormant Monster, he decides to bring it back to life and cure its defects, fixing what his father made and showing the world what a genius his father truly was.
The first two movies are, of course, excellent cinema, but it's here that the series shows its true potential as a generational saga. This allows individual Frankensteins to progress along different character arcs--some redeeming themselves, some being destroyed, some taking the Hammer tack and becoming human monsters--while preserving the general theme of "scientist tries to do good, but creates evil." The Frankenstein Monster becomes a tangible symbol of a family secret, something that both repels and lures in successive generations of Frankensteins as it endures, eternally. It may fall into a pit of burning sulfur or get entombed in glacial ice, but it's always there, waiting for the next generation of Frankensteins to find and wonder about...and eventually bring to life once more.
Arguably, it's the abandonment of this theme, as much as anything else that led to the demise of the series (and there was quite a bit of "anything else", including random cast changes and a growing insistence on shoehorning in Dracula and the Wolf Man into the films.) And decades later, it was this theme that Mel Brooks returned to in his homage/parody "Young Frankenstein", a film that works as well at being a continuation of the Frankenstein story as it does at being a parody of the series. Frankenstein's grandson might do everything he can to deny his legacy, but, well, "Destiny, destiny, no escaping, that's for me!"
A reboot of this series might very well be warranted, in fact. If the original is set back at the time of Shelley's story, that gives writers a potential two hundred years of successive generations to play with, and all sorts of permutations to bring into the story. Perhaps a World War II era story, where a refugee Frankenstein works with the American government to make an atomic Monster? A Women's Lib Frankenstein who's tired of the lack of respect her female mad scientist ancestors have gotten? Frankenstein in the Great Depression, cobbling together a lab without the family resources? And at the back of it all, the original Monster, always there, always returning...it seems to be a storytelling engine ripe with possibilities, even beyond the ones already explored. And more than likely, it's one we'll see someday. Like its central character, people are always resurrecting the Frankenstein concept.
When dealing with 'Frankenstein', it's important to carefully delineate which version of the Frankenstein mythos you're talking about in any given discussion. Because while they might all draw on the same source material, Mary Shelley's classic Gothic novel, they definitely don't have the same storytelling engine. The Hammer Frankenstein series, for example, followed Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein as he went through one diabolical experiment after another, descending ever further along a path of perfectly rational madness and calculating viciousness, until he turned into a monster far more inhuman than the ones he created.
The Universal Frankenstein films, though, took a far different tack. They started from virtually the same point: Frankenstein, a scientist with heretical views on artificial life, creates a human being out of an assemblage of corpses and animates it. The resultant Monster (which never gets a name, in the Universal canon) turns out to be a brutish, simple-minded beast instead of the perfect creation Frankenstein intended, at which point the drawbacks of making him eight feet tall with the strength of a dozen men become apparent.
The second Universal film is a pretty natural extension of the first, with Frankenstein being induced to make a female version of his creation (and in the process, creating the very first beehive hairdo.) But it's with "Son of Frankenstein" that the storytelling engine of the series really takes off, and the Frankenstein legacy becomes a key point of the series.
The third movie follows Frankenstein's now-grown son, Wolf, as he returns to his ancestral home, already interested in the reputation his father had and conflicted over his own views of his father as a brilliant man and a great scientist. Despite hearing about the horrors the Monster has visited on the village of Frankenstein over the decades (and yes, that's accurate--if he's the Baron von Frankenstein, it would make sense that the village is the village of Frankenstein), Wolf believes that his father's ideas were fundamentally sound...and when he discovers the dormant Monster, he decides to bring it back to life and cure its defects, fixing what his father made and showing the world what a genius his father truly was.
The first two movies are, of course, excellent cinema, but it's here that the series shows its true potential as a generational saga. This allows individual Frankensteins to progress along different character arcs--some redeeming themselves, some being destroyed, some taking the Hammer tack and becoming human monsters--while preserving the general theme of "scientist tries to do good, but creates evil." The Frankenstein Monster becomes a tangible symbol of a family secret, something that both repels and lures in successive generations of Frankensteins as it endures, eternally. It may fall into a pit of burning sulfur or get entombed in glacial ice, but it's always there, waiting for the next generation of Frankensteins to find and wonder about...and eventually bring to life once more.
Arguably, it's the abandonment of this theme, as much as anything else that led to the demise of the series (and there was quite a bit of "anything else", including random cast changes and a growing insistence on shoehorning in Dracula and the Wolf Man into the films.) And decades later, it was this theme that Mel Brooks returned to in his homage/parody "Young Frankenstein", a film that works as well at being a continuation of the Frankenstein story as it does at being a parody of the series. Frankenstein's grandson might do everything he can to deny his legacy, but, well, "Destiny, destiny, no escaping, that's for me!"
A reboot of this series might very well be warranted, in fact. If the original is set back at the time of Shelley's story, that gives writers a potential two hundred years of successive generations to play with, and all sorts of permutations to bring into the story. Perhaps a World War II era story, where a refugee Frankenstein works with the American government to make an atomic Monster? A Women's Lib Frankenstein who's tired of the lack of respect her female mad scientist ancestors have gotten? Frankenstein in the Great Depression, cobbling together a lab without the family resources? And at the back of it all, the original Monster, always there, always returning...it seems to be a storytelling engine ripe with possibilities, even beyond the ones already explored. And more than likely, it's one we'll see someday. Like its central character, people are always resurrecting the Frankenstein concept.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Not Quite As Good As Scented Candles
Just a note to explain that posting might be light for a bit, as my computer now gives off a scent somewhat like burning plastic while running, and that can't be good.
December of 2008 seems to be out to get me...
December of 2008 seems to be out to get me...
Monday, December 15, 2008
Storytelling Engines: SOAP
(or "Confused? You Won't Be, After This Week's Column")
When it comes to needing a storytelling engine, there's nobody quite in the same position as a soap opera. I've talked in the past about the volume of stories needed for a monthly comic or a weekly TV show or a series of movies, and how a good storytelling engine can help provide ideas to a writer who desperately needs them (because deadlines don't wait for inspiration)...but a soap opera puts all of them to shame. Sixty minutes a day, every day, every week, every year for decades. (There are some soap operas that actually predate television.) Even granted that most soap operas will stretch out a plotline over multiple episodes to keep people tuning in tomorrow, that's a heck of a lot of ideas.
When you realize that, it's not too surprising that soap operas get so bizarre, so quick. Evil twins? Alien abductions? Affairs, cults, returns from the dead, ghosts and hypnosis and amnesia and murders? Some soap operas have all of the above in one episode. The soap opera is the storytelling equivalent of mulligan stew, where everything and anything that can be used will be used.
And it's that approach that forms the basis for the series "SOAP", which ran for four seasons in the late 70s/early 80s. It's kind of difficult to call it a parody, since parodies are generally over-the-top versions of the source material, and it's frankly impossible to be more over-the-top than a typical soap opera. Let's call it a soap opera with jokes. But whatever you call it, "SOAP" tried to consciously emulate the chaotic, borderline absurd atmosphere that soap operas have adopted more or less out of necessity. They crammed as many soap opera standards into the opening set-up as they could (a rich family, a poor family, marital infidelity, impotence, mob connections, and a gay son, although "SOAP" decided to be more open about that one than any of the soap operas that preceded it...which means that "SOAP" actually gave soap opera writers a whole new area to be convoluted in. Wow.)
Then it was just a case of grabbing whatever soap opera tropes came to mind and slotting them in as fast as the plot would allow. Demonic possession? Got it. Amnesia? Got it. Alien abductions? Got it. Long lost secret sons and missing mothers? Got it. Characters having affairs with convicts on the run from the law while on the rebound from their affair with a married congressman? Got it. Distilling the forty years of traditional soap opera plotlines into a single half-hour weekly series gave the writers of "SOAP" more to do than they could ever fit into four years of their series, which may be why "SOAP" ends on a cliff-hanger. (Or it may just be time-honored tradition; a good soap opera never wraps everything up. You have to end it on a shocker to keep people coming back.)
The particular storytelling engine of "SOAP" gave its writers two key advantages when coming up with stories; one, they were working with source material that had already churned out loads of potential storylines to parody, and two, they were working in a genre that held, as one of its genre conventions, that no plot twist was ever too unbelievable to be used. These two things combined meant that "SOAP" just needed to keep delivering the jokes, because the writers never had to worry about their characters (a man who talks to his ventriloquist's dummy?) or their storylines (Jessica falls in love with a South American revolutionary?) becoming too implausible to fit. It was a godsend for any comedy writer.
But the truly important thing about "SOAP", and by extension about soap operas, storytelling engines, and indeed writing in general, is--
When it comes to needing a storytelling engine, there's nobody quite in the same position as a soap opera. I've talked in the past about the volume of stories needed for a monthly comic or a weekly TV show or a series of movies, and how a good storytelling engine can help provide ideas to a writer who desperately needs them (because deadlines don't wait for inspiration)...but a soap opera puts all of them to shame. Sixty minutes a day, every day, every week, every year for decades. (There are some soap operas that actually predate television.) Even granted that most soap operas will stretch out a plotline over multiple episodes to keep people tuning in tomorrow, that's a heck of a lot of ideas.
When you realize that, it's not too surprising that soap operas get so bizarre, so quick. Evil twins? Alien abductions? Affairs, cults, returns from the dead, ghosts and hypnosis and amnesia and murders? Some soap operas have all of the above in one episode. The soap opera is the storytelling equivalent of mulligan stew, where everything and anything that can be used will be used.
And it's that approach that forms the basis for the series "SOAP", which ran for four seasons in the late 70s/early 80s. It's kind of difficult to call it a parody, since parodies are generally over-the-top versions of the source material, and it's frankly impossible to be more over-the-top than a typical soap opera. Let's call it a soap opera with jokes. But whatever you call it, "SOAP" tried to consciously emulate the chaotic, borderline absurd atmosphere that soap operas have adopted more or less out of necessity. They crammed as many soap opera standards into the opening set-up as they could (a rich family, a poor family, marital infidelity, impotence, mob connections, and a gay son, although "SOAP" decided to be more open about that one than any of the soap operas that preceded it...which means that "SOAP" actually gave soap opera writers a whole new area to be convoluted in. Wow.)
Then it was just a case of grabbing whatever soap opera tropes came to mind and slotting them in as fast as the plot would allow. Demonic possession? Got it. Amnesia? Got it. Alien abductions? Got it. Long lost secret sons and missing mothers? Got it. Characters having affairs with convicts on the run from the law while on the rebound from their affair with a married congressman? Got it. Distilling the forty years of traditional soap opera plotlines into a single half-hour weekly series gave the writers of "SOAP" more to do than they could ever fit into four years of their series, which may be why "SOAP" ends on a cliff-hanger. (Or it may just be time-honored tradition; a good soap opera never wraps everything up. You have to end it on a shocker to keep people coming back.)
The particular storytelling engine of "SOAP" gave its writers two key advantages when coming up with stories; one, they were working with source material that had already churned out loads of potential storylines to parody, and two, they were working in a genre that held, as one of its genre conventions, that no plot twist was ever too unbelievable to be used. These two things combined meant that "SOAP" just needed to keep delivering the jokes, because the writers never had to worry about their characters (a man who talks to his ventriloquist's dummy?) or their storylines (Jessica falls in love with a South American revolutionary?) becoming too implausible to fit. It was a godsend for any comedy writer.
But the truly important thing about "SOAP", and by extension about soap operas, storytelling engines, and indeed writing in general, is--
Thursday, December 11, 2008
A Strange and Profound Moment
Oddly enough, the quarter I used in the vending machine the other day contained spoilers for the book I'm reading right now.
Okay, I'll explain that one. I'm in the middle of reading 'Team of Rivals', by Doris Kearns Goodwin (which should make my sister very happy if she reads this, because she gave the book to me last Christmas and has been patiently waiting for me to get to it.) It really is every bit as good as my sister told me it would be, a compelling and electric story that seems more relevant than ever right now, and I've been devouring it as fast as one really can devour an 800+ page book at work.
And it's really good stuff. Goodwin makes you feel like this is recent history, not just something out of a dusty old book. It's a chronicle of turbulent, violent times in our nation's history, when you could feel the stormclouds gathering on the horizon every day and the idea of the United States of America seemed to actually be in danger. Just the thought of America collapsing seems alien and terrifying now, but a hundred fifty years ago, it was a real and tangible possibility, and Goodwin explains it in clear and intelligent terms to the reader.
I had gotten up to about 1856 in the book, when Lincoln was running for Senate against Stephen Douglas (when the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates happened.) The pivotal event in all this was the adoption of the so-called "LeCompton Constitution", where a bunch of pro-slavery Kansans got together and drafted a Kansas state constitution that was (surprise, surprise) pro-slavery, and shot it off to the President for ratification without really checking to see with the rest of the state as to whether or not this was actually a good idea. President Buchanan said it sounded like a great idea, because President Buchanan was pretty much willing to say and do anything to keep the South happy at that point, but even guys like Stephen Douglas called shenanigans on the LeCompton Constitution, vowing to fight it and not let it get through Congress.
And that was when I set the book down to go grab a soda. And when I reached into my wallet and pulled out a quarter, it was a Kansas state quarter. Just below the name of the state was the year it entered the Union, 1861. Which meant that the Lecompton Constitution couldn't have been ratified, meaning that Kansas must have entered the Union as a free state. (It would have been nice to get a spoiler warning on my spare change...)
And it just hit me that history really is everywhere around us. We are steeped in the past, so thoroughly that we frequently fail to notice it, but the stories of our lives are intertwined inextricably with those of the people who came before us. The tiny little details we barely notice some days are the stories of triumph and tragedy, of heroism and villainy and blood and sorrow and joy and wonder, the stories of our parents and their parents and their parents before them. The quarter that I spent in a vending machine contained the tale of men and women who moved halfway across the country to fight and die for their beliefs about freedom, if anyone took the time to listen to it. It was almost a little scary to think that everything would be like that if you looked at it from the right perspective.
I think that's part of why I enjoy learning new things so much. It makes the everyday world a lot more interesting.
Okay, I'll explain that one. I'm in the middle of reading 'Team of Rivals', by Doris Kearns Goodwin (which should make my sister very happy if she reads this, because she gave the book to me last Christmas and has been patiently waiting for me to get to it.) It really is every bit as good as my sister told me it would be, a compelling and electric story that seems more relevant than ever right now, and I've been devouring it as fast as one really can devour an 800+ page book at work.
And it's really good stuff. Goodwin makes you feel like this is recent history, not just something out of a dusty old book. It's a chronicle of turbulent, violent times in our nation's history, when you could feel the stormclouds gathering on the horizon every day and the idea of the United States of America seemed to actually be in danger. Just the thought of America collapsing seems alien and terrifying now, but a hundred fifty years ago, it was a real and tangible possibility, and Goodwin explains it in clear and intelligent terms to the reader.
I had gotten up to about 1856 in the book, when Lincoln was running for Senate against Stephen Douglas (when the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates happened.) The pivotal event in all this was the adoption of the so-called "LeCompton Constitution", where a bunch of pro-slavery Kansans got together and drafted a Kansas state constitution that was (surprise, surprise) pro-slavery, and shot it off to the President for ratification without really checking to see with the rest of the state as to whether or not this was actually a good idea. President Buchanan said it sounded like a great idea, because President Buchanan was pretty much willing to say and do anything to keep the South happy at that point, but even guys like Stephen Douglas called shenanigans on the LeCompton Constitution, vowing to fight it and not let it get through Congress.
And that was when I set the book down to go grab a soda. And when I reached into my wallet and pulled out a quarter, it was a Kansas state quarter. Just below the name of the state was the year it entered the Union, 1861. Which meant that the Lecompton Constitution couldn't have been ratified, meaning that Kansas must have entered the Union as a free state. (It would have been nice to get a spoiler warning on my spare change...)
And it just hit me that history really is everywhere around us. We are steeped in the past, so thoroughly that we frequently fail to notice it, but the stories of our lives are intertwined inextricably with those of the people who came before us. The tiny little details we barely notice some days are the stories of triumph and tragedy, of heroism and villainy and blood and sorrow and joy and wonder, the stories of our parents and their parents and their parents before them. The quarter that I spent in a vending machine contained the tale of men and women who moved halfway across the country to fight and die for their beliefs about freedom, if anyone took the time to listen to it. It was almost a little scary to think that everything would be like that if you looked at it from the right perspective.
I think that's part of why I enjoy learning new things so much. It makes the everyday world a lot more interesting.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Storytelling Engines: The Critic
(or "Dumpy Guys Are A Tough Sell")
On paper, the ABC (and later Fox) series "The Critic" seems like it should have run for a long time. The creative team behind it shares a lot of names with the seemingly-immortal "Simpsons", it's got a pretty familiar name as the lead in Jon Lovitz, and the storytelling engine feels remarkably strong for a "workplace sitcom", especially an animated one. Sitcoms set in an office (or a TV studio) that center on the inter-personal dynamics of the (generally quirky) characters who have to work together despite their various dysfunctions, tend to reach a point where it's hard to keep finding things for them to do that aren't repetitive; the good ones, like 'Cheers', work around this problem by having a flow of guest-star and semi-regular customers to keep things fresh, while the bad ones just embrace repetition. (I'll leave it up to you to fill in the blank here with your own most-hated sitcom.)
By focusing primarily on one character, film critic Jay Sherman, "The Critic" works around this problem by expanding to his family and romantic life as well as his job, and showing all the ways those intertwine. He has to deal with an egomaniacal boss (who is wonderfully played by Charles Napier as a crazed Ted Turner), a frustrating and emotionally distant family (with the exception of his little sister, who looks to him for guidance), and the fallout from his disastrous first marriage. Each element provides fodder for one or more stories above and beyond the typical "workplace" drama, which is also present (and it helps a lot that the choice of "film critic" as job allows for plenty of gags about the entertainment industry, from brief gag movie clips to whole episodes revolving around a spat between Ebert and Siskel.)
So why, with all the talent behind it and all the opportunities available to it, did "The Critic" fail? Even a spot just in front of 'Home Improvement' couldn't help it on ABC, and even a guest appearance on "The Simpsons" couldn't save it on Fox. (And incidentally, that's not a good question to bring up to Matt Groening. Trust me on this.) What made "The Simpsons" into a huge success, and "The Critic" into an obscure cult series?
We have to consider the setting to be a culprit; unlike "The Simpsons", which takes place in a deranged vision of Anytown USA, "The Critic" sets itself in New York City and is squarely cosmopolitan. From a storytelling angle, this works great. New York becomes a character in its own right in the series, with the atmosphere of the city informing every episode in all sorts of ways that show that more than a few New Yorkers worked in the writing room. But to a non-Manhattanite (yes, we do exist!), these elements worked to exclude potential viewers instead of draw them in. It's sort of like Woody Allen's films, which work well in critics' circles but never seemed to make a ton of money in nationwide release.
A comparison to Woody Allen also brings us to the key point that made "The Critic" a tough sell; it's a self-consciously intellectual comedy about an intellectual character (how many sitcoms are about Pulitzer Prize-winners?) In a country like America, which has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism, that's a tough sell in and of itself. But more than that, "The Critic" is a comedy about failure, about a single guy who stays single due to his lack of confidence (and looks and virility and savoir faire...) Despite the seeming attractions of the concept, audiences don't tend to want to watch the lives of people who are even worse off than they are, especially not one who seems to be mired in failure. The series attempted to fix that when it moved to Fox, adding Park Overall's "Alice Tompkins" character as a love interest, but by then, the tone of the series had already been set in the minds of its potential viewers. And so Jay Sherman, like Woody Allen, remains an acquired taste on DVD instead of an enduring icon like Homer Simpson. (Hmm...so maybe "dumpy" isn't that tough a sell after all...)
On paper, the ABC (and later Fox) series "The Critic" seems like it should have run for a long time. The creative team behind it shares a lot of names with the seemingly-immortal "Simpsons", it's got a pretty familiar name as the lead in Jon Lovitz, and the storytelling engine feels remarkably strong for a "workplace sitcom", especially an animated one. Sitcoms set in an office (or a TV studio) that center on the inter-personal dynamics of the (generally quirky) characters who have to work together despite their various dysfunctions, tend to reach a point where it's hard to keep finding things for them to do that aren't repetitive; the good ones, like 'Cheers', work around this problem by having a flow of guest-star and semi-regular customers to keep things fresh, while the bad ones just embrace repetition. (I'll leave it up to you to fill in the blank here with your own most-hated sitcom.)
By focusing primarily on one character, film critic Jay Sherman, "The Critic" works around this problem by expanding to his family and romantic life as well as his job, and showing all the ways those intertwine. He has to deal with an egomaniacal boss (who is wonderfully played by Charles Napier as a crazed Ted Turner), a frustrating and emotionally distant family (with the exception of his little sister, who looks to him for guidance), and the fallout from his disastrous first marriage. Each element provides fodder for one or more stories above and beyond the typical "workplace" drama, which is also present (and it helps a lot that the choice of "film critic" as job allows for plenty of gags about the entertainment industry, from brief gag movie clips to whole episodes revolving around a spat between Ebert and Siskel.)
So why, with all the talent behind it and all the opportunities available to it, did "The Critic" fail? Even a spot just in front of 'Home Improvement' couldn't help it on ABC, and even a guest appearance on "The Simpsons" couldn't save it on Fox. (And incidentally, that's not a good question to bring up to Matt Groening. Trust me on this.) What made "The Simpsons" into a huge success, and "The Critic" into an obscure cult series?
We have to consider the setting to be a culprit; unlike "The Simpsons", which takes place in a deranged vision of Anytown USA, "The Critic" sets itself in New York City and is squarely cosmopolitan. From a storytelling angle, this works great. New York becomes a character in its own right in the series, with the atmosphere of the city informing every episode in all sorts of ways that show that more than a few New Yorkers worked in the writing room. But to a non-Manhattanite (yes, we do exist!), these elements worked to exclude potential viewers instead of draw them in. It's sort of like Woody Allen's films, which work well in critics' circles but never seemed to make a ton of money in nationwide release.
A comparison to Woody Allen also brings us to the key point that made "The Critic" a tough sell; it's a self-consciously intellectual comedy about an intellectual character (how many sitcoms are about Pulitzer Prize-winners?) In a country like America, which has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism, that's a tough sell in and of itself. But more than that, "The Critic" is a comedy about failure, about a single guy who stays single due to his lack of confidence (and looks and virility and savoir faire...) Despite the seeming attractions of the concept, audiences don't tend to want to watch the lives of people who are even worse off than they are, especially not one who seems to be mired in failure. The series attempted to fix that when it moved to Fox, adding Park Overall's "Alice Tompkins" character as a love interest, but by then, the tone of the series had already been set in the minds of its potential viewers. And so Jay Sherman, like Woody Allen, remains an acquired taste on DVD instead of an enduring icon like Homer Simpson. (Hmm...so maybe "dumpy" isn't that tough a sell after all...)
Friday, December 05, 2008
Review: The Best of Rifftrax Shorts Volume One
Those of us who are fans of the classic series "Mystery Science Theater 3000" know that some of the best comedy came from their riffing on those old public domain "educational" films, the kind of thing that your teacher would show in class to kill twenty minutes when they needed to grade papers (or were hung over.) These lessons on good citizenship, the virtues of listening to your teacher, and the need to avoid drugs always seemed to be just perfectly deranged in such a way that lent itself to MST3K's commentary. Sometimes it was the bizarre obsessions of the characters in the film, who seemed utterly devoted to springs or workplace safety or watching out for trains ("Why don't they look?") Sometimes it was the worldview of the shorts, which seemed so relentlessly cheerful that dark humor was just about the only defense. And almost always, it was the fact that cheap public domain educational films hired hilariously bad actors.
MST3K has been off the air for almost ten years now, and the last three seasons of the show on the Sci-Fi Channel rarely featured short films. The fine folks at Rifftrax have noticed this gap and have been producing downloadable media files of short films, complete with mockery, but for those of us who like to watch these things on TV, the old-fashioned way, it's been a long drought between goofy short films with built-in heckling.
So it's nice to see Mike, Bill and Kevin returning to the one part of the MST3K oeuvre that hasn't been covered by MST3K.com and Cinematic Titanic by releasing a DVD that collects their available-for-download short films (one that you can buy here, if my review makes you inclined to do so.) This DVD collects nine of their short films, and I gotta say, there are some instant classics in there. "Drugs Are Like That", "Down and Out", and "Patriotism" each proudly carry on the tradition of shorts like "Mr. B Natural" and "Why Study Industrial Arts?" (and trust me, if you're a fan of the old MST3K series those things would mean something to you.) The other shorts are great too, but those three probably make it worth buying right there. And as an additional bonus, the menus play three of the songs that Mike, Bill and Kevin wrote as the Rifftones for QuickStop Entertainment's "Song Fu" competition.
The DVD also includes an all-new short done exclusively for the DVD, and while "Shake Hands With Danger" is just as funny as the other eight (and probably funnier than "The Trouble With Women", the weakest of the nine), my only advice to the Rifftrax crew would be to go ahead and leave off the "digital avatars" when it comes time to release a Volume Two. (Which I, for one, would love to see...) They're pretty much unnecessary (the first eight shorts don't have them, and I didn't find myself missing them) and they were actually a little distracting, since the short had to be resized and played on a smaller screen-within-a-screen so that we could see the CGI riffers. Nice idea, worth trying, but it's not needed. Next time just have a brief live-action introduction from the actors, and call it good.
But trust me, that minor quibble doesn't in any way compromise my basic point: Great DVD, well worth buying.
MST3K has been off the air for almost ten years now, and the last three seasons of the show on the Sci-Fi Channel rarely featured short films. The fine folks at Rifftrax have noticed this gap and have been producing downloadable media files of short films, complete with mockery, but for those of us who like to watch these things on TV, the old-fashioned way, it's been a long drought between goofy short films with built-in heckling.
So it's nice to see Mike, Bill and Kevin returning to the one part of the MST3K oeuvre that hasn't been covered by MST3K.com and Cinematic Titanic by releasing a DVD that collects their available-for-download short films (one that you can buy here, if my review makes you inclined to do so.) This DVD collects nine of their short films, and I gotta say, there are some instant classics in there. "Drugs Are Like That", "Down and Out", and "Patriotism" each proudly carry on the tradition of shorts like "Mr. B Natural" and "Why Study Industrial Arts?" (and trust me, if you're a fan of the old MST3K series those things would mean something to you.) The other shorts are great too, but those three probably make it worth buying right there. And as an additional bonus, the menus play three of the songs that Mike, Bill and Kevin wrote as the Rifftones for QuickStop Entertainment's "Song Fu" competition.
The DVD also includes an all-new short done exclusively for the DVD, and while "Shake Hands With Danger" is just as funny as the other eight (and probably funnier than "The Trouble With Women", the weakest of the nine), my only advice to the Rifftrax crew would be to go ahead and leave off the "digital avatars" when it comes time to release a Volume Two. (Which I, for one, would love to see...) They're pretty much unnecessary (the first eight shorts don't have them, and I didn't find myself missing them) and they were actually a little distracting, since the short had to be resized and played on a smaller screen-within-a-screen so that we could see the CGI riffers. Nice idea, worth trying, but it's not needed. Next time just have a brief live-action introduction from the actors, and call it good.
But trust me, that minor quibble doesn't in any way compromise my basic point: Great DVD, well worth buying.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Storytelling Engines: George Romero's "Dead" Films
(or "The Purest Example Ever")
Normally, when I talk about a series' storytelling engine, what I'm really doing is trying to take a look at a long-running (or occasionally short-running) series from a different perspective. Instead of just seeing the elements of the series as part of the story the writer is telling, I'm looking at them as story-generating components--the supporting cast fulfills this function, the setting adds this potential, the protagonist moves the plot this way, and so on. But it's very rare that I think that writers consciously consider their status quo as a machine that generates plots.
In the case of George Romero's seminal zombie movie series ("Night of the Living Dead", "Dawn of the Dead", "Day of the Dead", "Land of the Dead", "Diary of the Dead"), though, that's pretty much exactly what they are. Romero starts with a set of postulates that function as his "engine", and then takes other stories and runs them through the engine to see what the result will be. It's a storytelling engine that takes the world as it is, applies a major change, and observes the logical result.
The change is, of course, the dead coming back to life. Romero postulates an event (never explicated, but hinted as some sort of radiation wave released by a returning satellite) that causes every recently-deceased corpse in the world to re-animate and seek out living humans with an instinct to consume their flesh. (Their bite is invariably lethal, although Romero never makes it clear whether this is an effect of their status as zombies, or just due to the normal infections that would result from being bitten by a septic, rotting corpse.) They retain traces of their former personality, but generally have limited intelligence and diminished physical capacity (they're slower, but stronger.) Being dead, they're pretty much immune to pain, and the only way of permanently killing them is with damage to the head. But more importantly, the event affected living humans as well, even if it doesn't show. Anyone who dies in the series re-animates within minutes of their death as a zombie, unless that death is due to head trauma.
Romero's movies (and the various comic and novel spin-offs) focus on the consequences of this event for different groups. He never returns to the same set of protagonists (which allows him a lot of freedom when it comes to killing off characters), but the world is always the same. Humans find ways to survive the zombie apocalypse, some of which are co-operative (as in the small community of survivors in "Land") and some of which are competitive and counter-productive (as with the nihilistic end to "Dawn".) Different people cope with the psychological stress of the event in different ways (most of which aren't good--if Romero's movies have a common theme, it's that people tend to come unglued in crisis situations.) And the zombie horde always gets larger--in fact, with the span of time separating the movies, the size of the zombie horde provides the only definitive timeline for the series. "Diary" might look like 2005 and "Night" might look like 1968, but the two both occur early on in the zombie plague.
Romero's "zombie rules" provide a very interesting storytelling engine, precisely because they're the only real element of an engine with very loose continuity from installment to installment. This faithfulness to the rules has meant that the entire zombie sub-genre of horror has found itself defined by Romero's rules and the ground-breaking films that provided them, to the point where many zombie movies are essentially Romero movies in all but name. Some of them are loving homages, like "Shaun of the Dead", others are rip-offs, like "The Dead Next Door", and still others are deliberate reactions against or alterations of the Romero rules, like "Return of the Living Dead" or "28 Days Later" (or, for that matter, the James Gunn/Zack Snyder remake of "Dawn of the Dead".) But the Romero rules now provide a practically inescapable framework for everyone following in Romero's footsteps, a storytelling engine that has escaped its creator and run wild throughout the genre. Its simplicity is also its strength, something that is constantly proved with each new zombie movie, comic, or book that comes out.
Normally, when I talk about a series' storytelling engine, what I'm really doing is trying to take a look at a long-running (or occasionally short-running) series from a different perspective. Instead of just seeing the elements of the series as part of the story the writer is telling, I'm looking at them as story-generating components--the supporting cast fulfills this function, the setting adds this potential, the protagonist moves the plot this way, and so on. But it's very rare that I think that writers consciously consider their status quo as a machine that generates plots.
In the case of George Romero's seminal zombie movie series ("Night of the Living Dead", "Dawn of the Dead", "Day of the Dead", "Land of the Dead", "Diary of the Dead"), though, that's pretty much exactly what they are. Romero starts with a set of postulates that function as his "engine", and then takes other stories and runs them through the engine to see what the result will be. It's a storytelling engine that takes the world as it is, applies a major change, and observes the logical result.
The change is, of course, the dead coming back to life. Romero postulates an event (never explicated, but hinted as some sort of radiation wave released by a returning satellite) that causes every recently-deceased corpse in the world to re-animate and seek out living humans with an instinct to consume their flesh. (Their bite is invariably lethal, although Romero never makes it clear whether this is an effect of their status as zombies, or just due to the normal infections that would result from being bitten by a septic, rotting corpse.) They retain traces of their former personality, but generally have limited intelligence and diminished physical capacity (they're slower, but stronger.) Being dead, they're pretty much immune to pain, and the only way of permanently killing them is with damage to the head. But more importantly, the event affected living humans as well, even if it doesn't show. Anyone who dies in the series re-animates within minutes of their death as a zombie, unless that death is due to head trauma.
Romero's movies (and the various comic and novel spin-offs) focus on the consequences of this event for different groups. He never returns to the same set of protagonists (which allows him a lot of freedom when it comes to killing off characters), but the world is always the same. Humans find ways to survive the zombie apocalypse, some of which are co-operative (as in the small community of survivors in "Land") and some of which are competitive and counter-productive (as with the nihilistic end to "Dawn".) Different people cope with the psychological stress of the event in different ways (most of which aren't good--if Romero's movies have a common theme, it's that people tend to come unglued in crisis situations.) And the zombie horde always gets larger--in fact, with the span of time separating the movies, the size of the zombie horde provides the only definitive timeline for the series. "Diary" might look like 2005 and "Night" might look like 1968, but the two both occur early on in the zombie plague.
Romero's "zombie rules" provide a very interesting storytelling engine, precisely because they're the only real element of an engine with very loose continuity from installment to installment. This faithfulness to the rules has meant that the entire zombie sub-genre of horror has found itself defined by Romero's rules and the ground-breaking films that provided them, to the point where many zombie movies are essentially Romero movies in all but name. Some of them are loving homages, like "Shaun of the Dead", others are rip-offs, like "The Dead Next Door", and still others are deliberate reactions against or alterations of the Romero rules, like "Return of the Living Dead" or "28 Days Later" (or, for that matter, the James Gunn/Zack Snyder remake of "Dawn of the Dead".) But the Romero rules now provide a practically inescapable framework for everyone following in Romero's footsteps, a storytelling engine that has escaped its creator and run wild throughout the genre. Its simplicity is also its strength, something that is constantly proved with each new zombie movie, comic, or book that comes out.
Friday, November 28, 2008
The Clone Saga Finally Makes Sense! (Sort Of...)
So recently, MightyGodKing.com did a post on the aftermath of "One More Day", and that got me thinking about that controversial storyline once again. You know, the one where Aunt May was on her deathbed, and Peter and Mary Jane made a deal with Mephisto; save her life, and we'll agree to forget that our marriage ever happened. And apparently, MJ added a rider to the deal that caused everyone to forget that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. And also, apparently, Mephisto added a twist of his own, bringing back long-time Spidey ally/villain/supporting cast member Harry Osborn, who believes himself to have been "in Europe" all this time. (Although Marvel is claiming that there's a "completely logical, non-magical, and totally plausible way he came back from the dead", they said that about Norman, too.)
Which is where the thunderbolt hit. Doesn't this all sound a bit...familiar? Peter's in a disastrous situation in his life due to a recent shocking personal revelation that he (and the editors) regret, there's a life-changing event that seems to age the character, and Aunt May dies. Then, suddenly, that life-changing event is spontaneously undone, the recent shocking revelation is reversed, Aunt May comes back to life...and an Osborn wanders in, saying, "Oh, I've been in Europe all this time. But I certainly was alive!"
What if Peter and MJ made a deal with Mephisto off-panel during the Clone Saga? It'd be after "Maximum Clonage", at a point where Aunt May was dead, MJ was pregnant, and Peter had been definitively proved to be the clone and Ben Reilly the original article. Mephisto shows up, offering a deal: He'll resurrect Aunt May, bring her back to life hale and hearty, but in return, Peter and MJ aren't allowed to know their child exists. She'll live, she'll grow up happy and healthy and hearty with a good foster family, but her parents will never know of it.
After a long, grim discussion, they agree, but MJ secretly adds her own twist to the deal: If he can alter reality to make Aunt May live, he can alter it to make Peter the original and Ben the clone. "Sure," Mephisto says, grinning from ear to ear...
And he changes reality by bringing back Norman, and making him the agency of all the alterations. Suddenly, Peter's the original, Aunt May's death was faked, the baby is stolen and claimed as stillborn, and there's the Green Goblin, behind it all. And Mephisto expects to get all the pain and misery he can reap out of the deal, as Peter is tormented by loss after loss and the Green Goblin gets his revenge.
But it doesn't work as well as he'd hoped, because Peter and MJ lean on each other as a source of strength through it all. Mephisto realizes that to really crush Peter's spirit, it's not enough to take away his daughter; he needs to take away his wife, too. And so he arranges things in such a way that Aunt May winds up on her deathbed again...
Am I crazy, or does this actually make a ton of sense?
Which is where the thunderbolt hit. Doesn't this all sound a bit...familiar? Peter's in a disastrous situation in his life due to a recent shocking personal revelation that he (and the editors) regret, there's a life-changing event that seems to age the character, and Aunt May dies. Then, suddenly, that life-changing event is spontaneously undone, the recent shocking revelation is reversed, Aunt May comes back to life...and an Osborn wanders in, saying, "Oh, I've been in Europe all this time. But I certainly was alive!"
What if Peter and MJ made a deal with Mephisto off-panel during the Clone Saga? It'd be after "Maximum Clonage", at a point where Aunt May was dead, MJ was pregnant, and Peter had been definitively proved to be the clone and Ben Reilly the original article. Mephisto shows up, offering a deal: He'll resurrect Aunt May, bring her back to life hale and hearty, but in return, Peter and MJ aren't allowed to know their child exists. She'll live, she'll grow up happy and healthy and hearty with a good foster family, but her parents will never know of it.
After a long, grim discussion, they agree, but MJ secretly adds her own twist to the deal: If he can alter reality to make Aunt May live, he can alter it to make Peter the original and Ben the clone. "Sure," Mephisto says, grinning from ear to ear...
And he changes reality by bringing back Norman, and making him the agency of all the alterations. Suddenly, Peter's the original, Aunt May's death was faked, the baby is stolen and claimed as stillborn, and there's the Green Goblin, behind it all. And Mephisto expects to get all the pain and misery he can reap out of the deal, as Peter is tormented by loss after loss and the Green Goblin gets his revenge.
But it doesn't work as well as he'd hoped, because Peter and MJ lean on each other as a source of strength through it all. Mephisto realizes that to really crush Peter's spirit, it's not enough to take away his daughter; he needs to take away his wife, too. And so he arranges things in such a way that Aunt May winds up on her deathbed again...
Am I crazy, or does this actually make a ton of sense?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Storytelling Engines: James Bond
(or "The Dreaded Reboot")
Even its detractors would have to admit that the James Bond film series is a genuinely astonishing achievement. Even the most popular movies die off after five or six sequels (horror icons like Freddy and Jason managed eight to ten), but James Bond's 22nd "official" film is in theaters now, and they're already getting started on Number 23. The series really does seem to be an "evergreen" franchise, having outlasted five of the actors who played the part (not counting the Niven Bond, the Sellers Bond, the Woody Allen Bond...) and the author who wrote the series of books it was based on.
Of course, those same detractors might also argue that the Bond movies are more of a formula than a storytelling engine; after an exciting opening set-piece, Bond meets with M and learns of some threat to the free world, then goes and gets interesting gadgets from Q (an element played down in recent movies, as the real-world spy technology has essentially caught up with Bond's MI6 boffins). He goes off and investigates, meeting beautiful women, getting into an exciting chase and evading at least one elaborate death-trap, before fighting the villain in an action-packed climax. That sums up the plot of most Bond movies and books (although it should be noted that Ian Fleming's novels were far less gadget-heavy and more cerebral, playing to the strengths of the printed page instead of the big screen.)
But the Bond formula offers plenty of flexibility; as a jet-setting spy, he has his choice of world locations from Jamaica to Russia to New Orleans, and "chase scenes" and "death-traps" and "gadgets" can mean anything from le parkour foot-races to elaborate space battles, depending on the particular era of the series. Bond films don't so much follow a formula as create one; our whole popular perception of the "spy movie" is moulded by the Bond films, whether imitating them, spoofing them (yes, hello, there, Austin, in the back) or reacting against them, as with John le Carre's spy novels (which have themselves been adapted for the screen.)
The flexibility of the Bond formula for the writer, though, is different from the flexibility of the Bond formula in the eyes of the audience. Writers might insist that there's always something new to be done with a glamorous super-spy who needs to save the world from a crazed madman's evil scheme, but when the audience stops being able to tell one Bond film apart from another, it's time to employ a strategy loved by some and hated by others: The "reboot".
Reboots are generally employed very late in the life of a storytelling engine, usually after the engine has been partially or totally ruined by bad writing decisions that have crippled its ability to function. Either so many elements have been added that only fanatical followers of the series can understand all the layers of complications obscuring the original, entertaining core concept (the Superman Emergency Squad, the bottle city of Kandor, New Krypton, super-pets, and a dozen types of Kryptonite) or else too many important elements have been destroyed/permanently altered due to a lack of foresight on the part of the writers and editors (the deaths of the Joker, the Green Goblin, Harry Osborn, and the lead character and entire supporting cast of 'Aquaman'.) Usually, the blame for this lies with the editors; writers tend to have their hands full thinking of story ideas (that is, after all, the point of a storytelling engine, to help the writers think of ideas) and it's the editor's job to evaluate their impact on the series.
The point is, when the series gets so completely written into a corner that you can't tell any more stories, you "reboot", starting over at the beginning, clearing the decks of all the baggage that's accumulated over the years, and going back to the core concept. Long-term fans tend to dislike it, because the root word of "fan" is "fanatic", and fanatical followers of a long-running series tend to enjoy all the baggage as much as they do the core concept, but a well-executed reboot can win over skeptical fans. It also tends to bring in new fans, who relish the chance to get in on the ground floor of the next generation of the series. (Of course, that next generation will usually have baggage of its own, not to mention the problem of new writers who try to bring back that old baggage because they're fans themselves--Ultimate Stryfe and Ultimate Onslaught, anyone?--but a reboot at least offers a chance at some fresh stories.)
But how does that relate to James Bond? After all, there's no complex continuity in the Bond films--they've changed lead actors five times, and nobody except George Lazenby noticed. There aren't any damaging decisions to undo; every Bond film is pretty self-contained, sharing very few recurring characters...unless you argue that the introduction of John Cleese as "R", or Felix Leiter losing a leg are "damaging decisions", really, any Bond film can serve as an introduction to the series. Even the chronology is loose, vague and unimportant to the films; Bond has moved from Cold War politics to a post 9/11 world, and all that's changed is what country the villain is working for.
A soft continuity demands a soft reboot, and that's exactly what "Casino Royale" is; it doesn't so much erase the previous movies as gently ignore them. It could be a flashback--after all, Bond movies seem to take place in a sort of ever-present "now", so a flashback film that seems to post-date the movies it's set before seems kind of appropos. It could be a reboot--sure, M is the same character as in 'Goldeneye', but Bond films have pretty short memories, so why not? It could just be another stylistic shift, the same as occurred from 'Moonraker' to 'For Your Eyes Only', or from 'A View To A Kill' to 'The Living Daylights'. Since the Bond films are fairly chameleonic in tone (as all long-running series tend to be), it's not too surprising to see shifts like that.
Ultimately, the much-debated Bond reboot is really just another way for the series to adapt in order to stay relevant, something all truly effective storytelling engines do. Times change, and a timeless series isn't so much one that fits the changing times as one that changes with the times. Daniel Craig is the Bond that fits this era; he's a rebooted Bond, yes, but in a sense, they all are.
Even its detractors would have to admit that the James Bond film series is a genuinely astonishing achievement. Even the most popular movies die off after five or six sequels (horror icons like Freddy and Jason managed eight to ten), but James Bond's 22nd "official" film is in theaters now, and they're already getting started on Number 23. The series really does seem to be an "evergreen" franchise, having outlasted five of the actors who played the part (not counting the Niven Bond, the Sellers Bond, the Woody Allen Bond...) and the author who wrote the series of books it was based on.
Of course, those same detractors might also argue that the Bond movies are more of a formula than a storytelling engine; after an exciting opening set-piece, Bond meets with M and learns of some threat to the free world, then goes and gets interesting gadgets from Q (an element played down in recent movies, as the real-world spy technology has essentially caught up with Bond's MI6 boffins). He goes off and investigates, meeting beautiful women, getting into an exciting chase and evading at least one elaborate death-trap, before fighting the villain in an action-packed climax. That sums up the plot of most Bond movies and books (although it should be noted that Ian Fleming's novels were far less gadget-heavy and more cerebral, playing to the strengths of the printed page instead of the big screen.)
But the Bond formula offers plenty of flexibility; as a jet-setting spy, he has his choice of world locations from Jamaica to Russia to New Orleans, and "chase scenes" and "death-traps" and "gadgets" can mean anything from le parkour foot-races to elaborate space battles, depending on the particular era of the series. Bond films don't so much follow a formula as create one; our whole popular perception of the "spy movie" is moulded by the Bond films, whether imitating them, spoofing them (yes, hello, there, Austin, in the back) or reacting against them, as with John le Carre's spy novels (which have themselves been adapted for the screen.)
The flexibility of the Bond formula for the writer, though, is different from the flexibility of the Bond formula in the eyes of the audience. Writers might insist that there's always something new to be done with a glamorous super-spy who needs to save the world from a crazed madman's evil scheme, but when the audience stops being able to tell one Bond film apart from another, it's time to employ a strategy loved by some and hated by others: The "reboot".
Reboots are generally employed very late in the life of a storytelling engine, usually after the engine has been partially or totally ruined by bad writing decisions that have crippled its ability to function. Either so many elements have been added that only fanatical followers of the series can understand all the layers of complications obscuring the original, entertaining core concept (the Superman Emergency Squad, the bottle city of Kandor, New Krypton, super-pets, and a dozen types of Kryptonite) or else too many important elements have been destroyed/permanently altered due to a lack of foresight on the part of the writers and editors (the deaths of the Joker, the Green Goblin, Harry Osborn, and the lead character and entire supporting cast of 'Aquaman'.) Usually, the blame for this lies with the editors; writers tend to have their hands full thinking of story ideas (that is, after all, the point of a storytelling engine, to help the writers think of ideas) and it's the editor's job to evaluate their impact on the series.
The point is, when the series gets so completely written into a corner that you can't tell any more stories, you "reboot", starting over at the beginning, clearing the decks of all the baggage that's accumulated over the years, and going back to the core concept. Long-term fans tend to dislike it, because the root word of "fan" is "fanatic", and fanatical followers of a long-running series tend to enjoy all the baggage as much as they do the core concept, but a well-executed reboot can win over skeptical fans. It also tends to bring in new fans, who relish the chance to get in on the ground floor of the next generation of the series. (Of course, that next generation will usually have baggage of its own, not to mention the problem of new writers who try to bring back that old baggage because they're fans themselves--Ultimate Stryfe and Ultimate Onslaught, anyone?--but a reboot at least offers a chance at some fresh stories.)
But how does that relate to James Bond? After all, there's no complex continuity in the Bond films--they've changed lead actors five times, and nobody except George Lazenby noticed. There aren't any damaging decisions to undo; every Bond film is pretty self-contained, sharing very few recurring characters...unless you argue that the introduction of John Cleese as "R", or Felix Leiter losing a leg are "damaging decisions", really, any Bond film can serve as an introduction to the series. Even the chronology is loose, vague and unimportant to the films; Bond has moved from Cold War politics to a post 9/11 world, and all that's changed is what country the villain is working for.
A soft continuity demands a soft reboot, and that's exactly what "Casino Royale" is; it doesn't so much erase the previous movies as gently ignore them. It could be a flashback--after all, Bond movies seem to take place in a sort of ever-present "now", so a flashback film that seems to post-date the movies it's set before seems kind of appropos. It could be a reboot--sure, M is the same character as in 'Goldeneye', but Bond films have pretty short memories, so why not? It could just be another stylistic shift, the same as occurred from 'Moonraker' to 'For Your Eyes Only', or from 'A View To A Kill' to 'The Living Daylights'. Since the Bond films are fairly chameleonic in tone (as all long-running series tend to be), it's not too surprising to see shifts like that.
Ultimately, the much-debated Bond reboot is really just another way for the series to adapt in order to stay relevant, something all truly effective storytelling engines do. Times change, and a timeless series isn't so much one that fits the changing times as one that changes with the times. Daniel Craig is the Bond that fits this era; he's a rebooted Bond, yes, but in a sense, they all are.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Essential Update '08
That's right, it's that time of year again, time for me to pick my favorite series that Marvel needs to collect in big five-hundred page chunks for our viewing pleasure. (Because I sincerely hope I've managed to infect at least one or two people with my love of great big cheap "readers' editions" of Marvel's classic series.)
So how did Marvel do, off of last year's picks? Um...not so much of the good, really. In the sense that they didn't print very many new series at all. We got plenty of continuations of older stuff, like more Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, but the only new series to be printed were the 'Rampaging Hulk' and 'Captain Marvel' collections, and while I won't knock those, they weren't on my list. So let's go over the list again, with extra special begging and pleading this time...
15. The Champions. I suspect that this one won't ever get a release, since it's out in the "Classic" format, and since the rights situation is so confusing, and since 'The Order' got canceled (does that prove that there's no viability to the 'Champions' franchise, since it got canned, or that there is, because they couldn't call it 'Champions' for rights purposes?) Still, with a Hercules series and a Ghost Rider series running right now, there's a slim chance we could see a collection of a book that contains both characters.
14. Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Another one where the ship might have sailed; Shang-Chi did pop back up again in 'Heroes for Hire', but that book didn't even last a year, so the character's returned to comic book limbo for a time. Still, with Brian Michael Bendis' crush on the 70s being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if he joined the Avengers along with Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, and Howard the Duck.
13. Micronauts. Again, I don't even know who has the rights to the Micronauts right now, so this could be a plea to Devil's Due or Dynamite for all I know. But hey, Dark Horse is reprinting 'Savage Sword of Conan', so clearly the "giant reprint book" idea is catching on industry-wide...
12. Adam Warlock. He's back, he's in the new Guardians of the Galaxy (which seems to be fairly popular), why not reprint his older stuff? This is the kind of synergy that a company with a large backlist should be taking advantage of, reprinting their older material to build interest in their new stuff, and simultaneously getting fans of the new stuff to buy reprints of the backlist (which are low cost to produce, since you've already paid the writers and artists.)
11. New Warriors. They really should have done this one last year, in order to maybe build up some sort of buzz for the new 'New Warriors' title (actually, it's the fourth 'New Warriors' series--the New New New New Warriors?) Now they're canceling that series, so that dims the chances of seeing any old 'New Warriors' for the upcoming year. Oh, well. Any title that's had three relaunches is bound to have a fourth.
10. Spider-Man 2099. Really, all the 2099 series should probably be collected, but Spidey 2099 was the best of the lot; Peter David really enjoyed his time writing this one, and it shows. Sure, it's a little bit obscure, but can it really be any more obscure than the Living Mummy, Brother Voodoo, or Gabriel the Devil Hunter? (I don't even know who that last one is, and I've got every single volume of the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe.)
9. Power Pack. The lack of this one continues to surprise the heck out of me. It's got name recognition, it's got plenty of guest-stars, it's a relatively self-contained and popular title with a long run...really, I honestly don't know what they're waiting for here. It's easily the most obvious choice on this list, even if there are others I'd want more.
8. West Coast Avengers. I can only assume Marvel's trade paperback department is currently committing ritual seppuku for knowing that there is a comic book series out there in which Hawkeye leads a team of Wonder Man, Iron Man, Tigra and Mockingbird, and not releasing it in collected format for the American reading public to enjoy. Shame, really. They were nice people.
7. Alpha Flight. Sure, we all know that Marvel has never been able to successfully recreate the popularity of the early 1980s Alpha Flight, despite attempted relaunch after attempted relaunch. But really, isn't that actually an even better argument in favor of reprinting the classic John Byrne-era series?
6. ROM. I've heard some rumors recently that we might see a ROM revival, spearheaded by Hasbro. Could this mean that the adventures of the Greatest Spaceknight will no longer languish in Marvel's forgotten vaults, but will instead be told in glory? We can but hope.
(Seriously, these were some great comics. It really did feel like an epic war, complete with a grand conclusion that spread through all of Marvel's books that month as the Dire Wraiths made their last great attack on the human race. It's a shame that rights issues have held reprints of this series up.)
5. Quasar. Another character who's currently in the Guardians of the Galaxy...umm, sort of. It's actually a lesbian alien daughter of Captain Marvel with the same name and powers as the Quasar whose book I want to see reprinted. That's not, um, convoluted or anything, is it?
4. New Mutants. Okay, remember what I said about 'Power Pack' being the most obvious title for an Essential edition? Kidding. It's actually 'New Mutants', which was as popular as any of the mutant books, tied into the other X-series frequently, and formed a cornerstone of mutant continuity for almost a decade. Let me put it this way--the Essentials of X-Men and X-Factor are already up to about issue #75 of where 'New Mutants' would be, complete with numerous dangling plotlines that get resolved within that book's pages. This one is a frustrating missing chapter for any X-fan.
3. Excalibur. This one is a lot less necessary than 'New Mutants', because it was pitched at the time as a "casual" book for X-fans who were sick of having to follow three series' worth of continuity. But that's exactly what would make it so nice for the purposes of reprinting; there's a nice, clean through-line of story that involves very little tying-in and crossing-over. (There's also a long, ugly stretch of fill-ins and weak writing between Claremont's departure and Alan Davis' run as writer, but hey, that's why they're cheap, folks.)
2. Guardians of the Galaxy. Look, there is a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' series going right now! It is very popular! It features numerous references to the classic series that I want to see reprinted! This is about as easy a decision as you can make, Marvel! Heck, you can start with the 70s origins of the team to keep Bendis happy! Please!
1. What If...? This is clearly pretty popular, as there are 190 issues available for collection already and they still do one-shots, specials, and limited series based around the concept to this day. I know I'd love to see them collected in big 500-page chunks, and I hope that I'm not alone. Because if I am, you'll see this one again next year in the top spot.
So how did Marvel do, off of last year's picks? Um...not so much of the good, really. In the sense that they didn't print very many new series at all. We got plenty of continuations of older stuff, like more Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, but the only new series to be printed were the 'Rampaging Hulk' and 'Captain Marvel' collections, and while I won't knock those, they weren't on my list. So let's go over the list again, with extra special begging and pleading this time...
15. The Champions. I suspect that this one won't ever get a release, since it's out in the "Classic" format, and since the rights situation is so confusing, and since 'The Order' got canceled (does that prove that there's no viability to the 'Champions' franchise, since it got canned, or that there is, because they couldn't call it 'Champions' for rights purposes?) Still, with a Hercules series and a Ghost Rider series running right now, there's a slim chance we could see a collection of a book that contains both characters.
14. Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Another one where the ship might have sailed; Shang-Chi did pop back up again in 'Heroes for Hire', but that book didn't even last a year, so the character's returned to comic book limbo for a time. Still, with Brian Michael Bendis' crush on the 70s being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if he joined the Avengers along with Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, and Howard the Duck.
13. Micronauts. Again, I don't even know who has the rights to the Micronauts right now, so this could be a plea to Devil's Due or Dynamite for all I know. But hey, Dark Horse is reprinting 'Savage Sword of Conan', so clearly the "giant reprint book" idea is catching on industry-wide...
12. Adam Warlock. He's back, he's in the new Guardians of the Galaxy (which seems to be fairly popular), why not reprint his older stuff? This is the kind of synergy that a company with a large backlist should be taking advantage of, reprinting their older material to build interest in their new stuff, and simultaneously getting fans of the new stuff to buy reprints of the backlist (which are low cost to produce, since you've already paid the writers and artists.)
11. New Warriors. They really should have done this one last year, in order to maybe build up some sort of buzz for the new 'New Warriors' title (actually, it's the fourth 'New Warriors' series--the New New New New Warriors?) Now they're canceling that series, so that dims the chances of seeing any old 'New Warriors' for the upcoming year. Oh, well. Any title that's had three relaunches is bound to have a fourth.
10. Spider-Man 2099. Really, all the 2099 series should probably be collected, but Spidey 2099 was the best of the lot; Peter David really enjoyed his time writing this one, and it shows. Sure, it's a little bit obscure, but can it really be any more obscure than the Living Mummy, Brother Voodoo, or Gabriel the Devil Hunter? (I don't even know who that last one is, and I've got every single volume of the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe.)
9. Power Pack. The lack of this one continues to surprise the heck out of me. It's got name recognition, it's got plenty of guest-stars, it's a relatively self-contained and popular title with a long run...really, I honestly don't know what they're waiting for here. It's easily the most obvious choice on this list, even if there are others I'd want more.
8. West Coast Avengers. I can only assume Marvel's trade paperback department is currently committing ritual seppuku for knowing that there is a comic book series out there in which Hawkeye leads a team of Wonder Man, Iron Man, Tigra and Mockingbird, and not releasing it in collected format for the American reading public to enjoy. Shame, really. They were nice people.
7. Alpha Flight. Sure, we all know that Marvel has never been able to successfully recreate the popularity of the early 1980s Alpha Flight, despite attempted relaunch after attempted relaunch. But really, isn't that actually an even better argument in favor of reprinting the classic John Byrne-era series?
6. ROM. I've heard some rumors recently that we might see a ROM revival, spearheaded by Hasbro. Could this mean that the adventures of the Greatest Spaceknight will no longer languish in Marvel's forgotten vaults, but will instead be told in glory? We can but hope.
(Seriously, these were some great comics. It really did feel like an epic war, complete with a grand conclusion that spread through all of Marvel's books that month as the Dire Wraiths made their last great attack on the human race. It's a shame that rights issues have held reprints of this series up.)
5. Quasar. Another character who's currently in the Guardians of the Galaxy...umm, sort of. It's actually a lesbian alien daughter of Captain Marvel with the same name and powers as the Quasar whose book I want to see reprinted. That's not, um, convoluted or anything, is it?
4. New Mutants. Okay, remember what I said about 'Power Pack' being the most obvious title for an Essential edition? Kidding. It's actually 'New Mutants', which was as popular as any of the mutant books, tied into the other X-series frequently, and formed a cornerstone of mutant continuity for almost a decade. Let me put it this way--the Essentials of X-Men and X-Factor are already up to about issue #75 of where 'New Mutants' would be, complete with numerous dangling plotlines that get resolved within that book's pages. This one is a frustrating missing chapter for any X-fan.
3. Excalibur. This one is a lot less necessary than 'New Mutants', because it was pitched at the time as a "casual" book for X-fans who were sick of having to follow three series' worth of continuity. But that's exactly what would make it so nice for the purposes of reprinting; there's a nice, clean through-line of story that involves very little tying-in and crossing-over. (There's also a long, ugly stretch of fill-ins and weak writing between Claremont's departure and Alan Davis' run as writer, but hey, that's why they're cheap, folks.)
2. Guardians of the Galaxy. Look, there is a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' series going right now! It is very popular! It features numerous references to the classic series that I want to see reprinted! This is about as easy a decision as you can make, Marvel! Heck, you can start with the 70s origins of the team to keep Bendis happy! Please!
1. What If...? This is clearly pretty popular, as there are 190 issues available for collection already and they still do one-shots, specials, and limited series based around the concept to this day. I know I'd love to see them collected in big 500-page chunks, and I hope that I'm not alone. Because if I am, you'll see this one again next year in the top spot.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Storytelling Engines: Firefly
(or "The Real World Tells Stories Too")
(And a hearty "welcome back!" to all the Joss Whedon fans who visited my blog!)
Whenever people try to describe Joss Whedon's 'Firefly' to someone who hasn't seen the series yet, the inevitable term they use is, "It's a Western in space." Which is true enough as far as it goes; any series that has an episode with the heroes smuggling cattle to another planet definitely earns the title "Western in space" pretty definitively. But when he came up with the idea for 'Firefly' and its storytelling engine (TV series are always very concerned with storytelling engines, because TV series look at 100 episodes as a minimum benchmark for success), Whedon didn't just decide to combine the tropes of the Western genre with the tropes of the science-fiction genre. He used the reality of the American frontier, rather than the fiction of the Old West, as his model to create a storytelling engine.
Noticing how involves a quick history lesson. What we think of as "the Old West", with gunslingers and bank robbers and grizzled settlers and sheriffs who were the only law in their town and madams with a heart of gold, et cetera, was a product primarily of the Civil War. There was settlement of the West prior to the Civil War, of course, but when the Confederacy collapsed, many of the former Confederate soldiers who didn't want to live under a government they'd just spent four years fighting drifted westward, where the United States' authority was minimal and they could use their military experience to make a living in a lot of not-particularly-legitimate ways. This meant living a lot rougher, but again, four years of being in a war had left them with different standards as to "civilized life" than the average person.
These semi-lawless veterans flooded into an already not particularly lawful part of the country that was still awash with gold prospectors and settlers who were also leaving the civilized parts of America for their own reasons (the Mormons also moved west into Utah during this period.) This created an unusually anti-authoritarian, sometimes violent society...one which was within the borders of the United States, and which the federal government had to tame if they wanted to truly become a continental government. (And one which, arguably, they never managed to completely conquer--many states in the western part of the US remain firmly libertarian and anti-authority, although the streak seems to have been put to positive uses for the most part.)
So this was the model that Whedon used for 'Firefly'. The conflict between the Sino-American Alliance and the "Browncoats" (and note that Whedon has always been vague about the exact causes and ideals of the Browncoats--Mal, of course, simply says they were for "freedom", but just about everyone thinks they're fighting on the right side) is an analogy for the Civil War, and Mal is one of the many disaffected veterans of that war who moves out to the frontier. The societal model for 'Firefly' feels real because it is real. It's got the kind of logic that's been tested by history. Writers should never feel afraid to borrow from history, because it's the only kind of plagarism that audiences admire. *rimshot*
Other elements of the Western in 'Firefly' are born out of economic logic. Sure, you could probably use a futuristic hover-buggy to ride around in, but if fuel is short, a horse is cheaper to feed. Laser pistols? A fancy toy for the rich, and a bullet kills just as sure as amplified and focused light. Why build tables out of wood instead of synthetics? Because it's cheap and plentiful and we've been working with it for the entire length of human history, and we know how to do it. The tropes of the Western aren't just there because Whedon thought they would look cool, they're there because they make sense within the story. (The only real "Western trope" is the idea of the Reavers as frontier savages, and Whedon deliberately subverts the idea in order to avoid the uncomfortable subtext of racism that's frequently present in Westerns.)
I've talked a lot about storytelling engines in this column (mainly because that's what it's about), but 'Firefly' does remind us that one of the quickest, easiest, most reliable storytelling engines comes from the world around us. Because the world is always full of stories, more than can ever possibly be told.
(And a hearty "welcome back!" to all the Joss Whedon fans who visited my blog!)
Whenever people try to describe Joss Whedon's 'Firefly' to someone who hasn't seen the series yet, the inevitable term they use is, "It's a Western in space." Which is true enough as far as it goes; any series that has an episode with the heroes smuggling cattle to another planet definitely earns the title "Western in space" pretty definitively. But when he came up with the idea for 'Firefly' and its storytelling engine (TV series are always very concerned with storytelling engines, because TV series look at 100 episodes as a minimum benchmark for success), Whedon didn't just decide to combine the tropes of the Western genre with the tropes of the science-fiction genre. He used the reality of the American frontier, rather than the fiction of the Old West, as his model to create a storytelling engine.
Noticing how involves a quick history lesson. What we think of as "the Old West", with gunslingers and bank robbers and grizzled settlers and sheriffs who were the only law in their town and madams with a heart of gold, et cetera, was a product primarily of the Civil War. There was settlement of the West prior to the Civil War, of course, but when the Confederacy collapsed, many of the former Confederate soldiers who didn't want to live under a government they'd just spent four years fighting drifted westward, where the United States' authority was minimal and they could use their military experience to make a living in a lot of not-particularly-legitimate ways. This meant living a lot rougher, but again, four years of being in a war had left them with different standards as to "civilized life" than the average person.
These semi-lawless veterans flooded into an already not particularly lawful part of the country that was still awash with gold prospectors and settlers who were also leaving the civilized parts of America for their own reasons (the Mormons also moved west into Utah during this period.) This created an unusually anti-authoritarian, sometimes violent society...one which was within the borders of the United States, and which the federal government had to tame if they wanted to truly become a continental government. (And one which, arguably, they never managed to completely conquer--many states in the western part of the US remain firmly libertarian and anti-authority, although the streak seems to have been put to positive uses for the most part.)
So this was the model that Whedon used for 'Firefly'. The conflict between the Sino-American Alliance and the "Browncoats" (and note that Whedon has always been vague about the exact causes and ideals of the Browncoats--Mal, of course, simply says they were for "freedom", but just about everyone thinks they're fighting on the right side) is an analogy for the Civil War, and Mal is one of the many disaffected veterans of that war who moves out to the frontier. The societal model for 'Firefly' feels real because it is real. It's got the kind of logic that's been tested by history. Writers should never feel afraid to borrow from history, because it's the only kind of plagarism that audiences admire. *rimshot*
Other elements of the Western in 'Firefly' are born out of economic logic. Sure, you could probably use a futuristic hover-buggy to ride around in, but if fuel is short, a horse is cheaper to feed. Laser pistols? A fancy toy for the rich, and a bullet kills just as sure as amplified and focused light. Why build tables out of wood instead of synthetics? Because it's cheap and plentiful and we've been working with it for the entire length of human history, and we know how to do it. The tropes of the Western aren't just there because Whedon thought they would look cool, they're there because they make sense within the story. (The only real "Western trope" is the idea of the Reavers as frontier savages, and Whedon deliberately subverts the idea in order to avoid the uncomfortable subtext of racism that's frequently present in Westerns.)
I've talked a lot about storytelling engines in this column (mainly because that's what it's about), but 'Firefly' does remind us that one of the quickest, easiest, most reliable storytelling engines comes from the world around us. Because the world is always full of stories, more than can ever possibly be told.
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Long, Difficult Task Of Recycling My Old Ideas
So every so often, I think to myself, "Hey! Remember that 'Captain Action' open submissions call that Moonstone Books put out? Although my idea didn't win, being beaten out by longtime industry veteran Fabian Nicieza, I thought it was a pretty good concept. I should put the pitch up on my blog."
And then I can never find it on my hard drive, and I give up. So today, I'm not giving up! Today, you will hear about my idea for Captain Action: The Comic!
Obviously, this is based on the classic Captain Action toy from the 1960s, which was a superhero action figure that you could buy additional outfits for, with each outfit being the outfit of another superhero. So you'd buy the one figure, but you could make him look like Batman, Superman, the Lone Ranger, Aquaman, Buck Rogers...
I took this idea and ran with it for my series pitch. The idea was that it was set in a "developed" comics universe, one with lots of existing superheroes and supervillains, and that there was kind of a social connection between the superheroes. If you proved yourself, you were accepted into the superhero "community". And if you really proved yourself, you were put in touch with the superheroes' secret weapon--Captain Action. Nobody knew who he really was, but he was a master of disguise so brilliant that he could impersonate any superhero, powers and all.
Each issue would be a sort of superhero version of Mission: Impossible combined with the Unknown Soldier. One of the characters would be Captain Action, but the readers wouldn't necessarily know any more than the characters. Always, he'd have to impersonate his target flawlessly, lest he give away his own existence to the supervillain community. (One sample plot involved him having to impersonate a Superman-type hero in order to foil a death-trap that takes advantage of that hero's specific weaknesses...not only does he have to survive it, but he has to do so in a way that doesn't reveal that he's not that other hero.)
With each story, a few tiny clues as to Captain Action's real identity would be revealed, until about five years in, the readers would learn the truth: He's actually the future self of this world's most nefarious supervillain, a Doctor Doom/Lex Luthor megalomaniac who's constantly trying to rule the world. In the future, he would have tried to blackmail the world with a device that could shift the Earth out of its orbit...but in the resultant battle with Earth's heroes, he wound up actually using it, sending Earth spinning into space. In the slow, bitter apocalypse of the Earth's cooling off that followed, he realized the folly of his ways and spent his time as the last survivor building a time machine to undo his mistake by helping the heroes out.
That's not the whole thing, of course; I actually had about ten paragraphs describing sample plots, various scenarios that I thought would highlight the possibilities of a hero who could be anyone. But it was a while ago, and my memory's not perfect. This should give you the gist, though.
And then I can never find it on my hard drive, and I give up. So today, I'm not giving up! Today, you will hear about my idea for Captain Action: The Comic!
Obviously, this is based on the classic Captain Action toy from the 1960s, which was a superhero action figure that you could buy additional outfits for, with each outfit being the outfit of another superhero. So you'd buy the one figure, but you could make him look like Batman, Superman, the Lone Ranger, Aquaman, Buck Rogers...
I took this idea and ran with it for my series pitch. The idea was that it was set in a "developed" comics universe, one with lots of existing superheroes and supervillains, and that there was kind of a social connection between the superheroes. If you proved yourself, you were accepted into the superhero "community". And if you really proved yourself, you were put in touch with the superheroes' secret weapon--Captain Action. Nobody knew who he really was, but he was a master of disguise so brilliant that he could impersonate any superhero, powers and all.
Each issue would be a sort of superhero version of Mission: Impossible combined with the Unknown Soldier. One of the characters would be Captain Action, but the readers wouldn't necessarily know any more than the characters. Always, he'd have to impersonate his target flawlessly, lest he give away his own existence to the supervillain community. (One sample plot involved him having to impersonate a Superman-type hero in order to foil a death-trap that takes advantage of that hero's specific weaknesses...not only does he have to survive it, but he has to do so in a way that doesn't reveal that he's not that other hero.)
With each story, a few tiny clues as to Captain Action's real identity would be revealed, until about five years in, the readers would learn the truth: He's actually the future self of this world's most nefarious supervillain, a Doctor Doom/Lex Luthor megalomaniac who's constantly trying to rule the world. In the future, he would have tried to blackmail the world with a device that could shift the Earth out of its orbit...but in the resultant battle with Earth's heroes, he wound up actually using it, sending Earth spinning into space. In the slow, bitter apocalypse of the Earth's cooling off that followed, he realized the folly of his ways and spent his time as the last survivor building a time machine to undo his mistake by helping the heroes out.
That's not the whole thing, of course; I actually had about ten paragraphs describing sample plots, various scenarios that I thought would highlight the possibilities of a hero who could be anyone. But it was a while ago, and my memory's not perfect. This should give you the gist, though.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Storytelling Engines: Indiana Jones
(or "Know Thyself")
Indiana Jones' storytelling engine was worked out by two absolute masters of their form while both of them were (arguably) at their creative peak, and it shows. (Yes, let's just get the gushing out of the way now.) It's a brilliant idea, one that's so great that it was either ahead of its time or else just copied a lot--take a particular era (such as the 1930s), and then take the tropes of its fiction and apply them as though the era really was like that. So just as Doctor Who pastiched the fictional image of Victorian London in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" instead of using the much duller actual London (hey, Doctor Who has always been ahead of its time, even for a time-travel show), George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decided to create a two-fisted pulp image of the times leading into World War II and make it seem real.
Part and parcel of this was their brilliant (again, gushing) decision to treat myths and legends as real (within the context of the entirely unreal 1930s they'd created for the series.) In the world of Indiana Jones, all the ancient relics and mysterious MacGuffins of all those pulps really did what they said they did, and a daring treasure hunter (let's face it, the "archaeology" thing is just a dodge) has to clash just as much with the supernatural as he does with fiendish death traps, cold-hearted Nazi seductresses, and decidedly unfriendly natives. (Which remains a problematic element for any story that pastiches the fictional tropes of another time--do you use story elements that have not aged well in terms of their racism and sexism, and hope that your audience is well-educated enough to understand the context of their usage, or do you eliminate them, cutting out a lot of the authenticity of your pastiche?)
So what we have in your basic Indiana Jones story, as generated by the engine, is a story set in the era of the pulps, using tropes and stock characters/settings generated by them, with supernatural elements usually added in (but not necessarily required)...and then overlaying that with a veneer of authenticity by a) researching the historical myths that are the basis for the supernatural elements (you'd be amazed at just how much work went into getting the bits about the Ark of the Covenant as close to "right" as they could), and b) having a lead character who's flawed and human in a way that pulp heroes tended not to be. (Anyone see Doc Savage whimpering in pain and saying, "It's not the years, it's the mileage?") And yet, it's important to note that for all of Indy's flaws, he's flawed in a human, likeable way. His original motivation for treasure hunting (he's a playboy professor who lives beyond his means and sells his finds to finance his lifestyle) is almost totally muted in the series as we see it on screen...and in books, comics, video games, et cetera.
Just a quick sampling of the books, comics, video games, et cetera bears this out. We see Indy searching for the fourth nail of Christ's cross, fighting zombi armies in Haiti, searching for Atlantis and the supposed lands inside a hollow Earth, fighting dragons, and duking it out with Tibetan telekinetics. He even met Dracula. This seems like a very sustainable engine.
So why is it that audiences seem so reluctant to embrace Indy's sequels? (For a given value of "reluctant"--it's not like the Indy movies don't make money.) Setting aside the books and comics and video games for the moment--those tend to be produced for the "fan", not the casual enthusiast--only two of the four movies have gotten a good critical response, and the "Young Indiana Jones" television series crashed and burned after just two seasons, a genuine shocker considering the high-profile talent working on it. The fourth movie, in particular, was thoroughly panned (despite, again, not having any problems making money.)
Looking at the movies that were loved and the ones that were merely tolerated, it's easy to spot why--just look for the ones that didn't use the storytelling engine. 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' skimped on its research, making up its MacGuffin (and not incidentally, falling on the wrong side of the "problematic" question mentioned above...all too often, it seems to use its pulp tropes as an excuse for racism, rather than attempting to examine the attitudes of the era it pastiches.) "Young Indiana Jones" skimps on the adventure--apart from one episode where Indy meets Dracula, most of the stories revolved around boringly educational meetings with historical figures and tame escapades in historical settings. There's no zip to them.
And 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'...the fourth Indiana Jones movie essentially tries to invent a brand-new storytelling engine built on the principles of the original, but using the tropes of 50s science-fiction films instead of 30s pulp films. Which is an interesting idea, and one that almost becomes necessary in order to continue using Harrison Ford as Indy (and let's face it, Ford's performance is 90% of what makes the character who he is; none of the other actors have ever managed to make the character work quite so well.)
But back when they were first considering the idea, Lucas and Spielberg had the option to use any era they wanted, and they chose the pulps of the 30s over the sci-fi 50s. Perhaps it was that Nazis made better bad guys than commies, perhaps it was because ancient relics were more exciting than flying saucers, perhaps it was just because Crash Corrigan was more fun than Flash Gordon, but for whatever reason, they saw that one era had more potential than the other for stories. Setting aside any question of whether Lucas and Spielberg have "lost it" over the decades, the storytelling engine they made the first time just worked in a way that the new one doesn't, which doesn't exactly bode well for attempts to make a fifth Indiana Jones movie. But the fundamental soundess of the original storytelling engine means that Indy books and comics, at least, can keep going strong for ages to come.
Indiana Jones' storytelling engine was worked out by two absolute masters of their form while both of them were (arguably) at their creative peak, and it shows. (Yes, let's just get the gushing out of the way now.) It's a brilliant idea, one that's so great that it was either ahead of its time or else just copied a lot--take a particular era (such as the 1930s), and then take the tropes of its fiction and apply them as though the era really was like that. So just as Doctor Who pastiched the fictional image of Victorian London in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" instead of using the much duller actual London (hey, Doctor Who has always been ahead of its time, even for a time-travel show), George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decided to create a two-fisted pulp image of the times leading into World War II and make it seem real.
Part and parcel of this was their brilliant (again, gushing) decision to treat myths and legends as real (within the context of the entirely unreal 1930s they'd created for the series.) In the world of Indiana Jones, all the ancient relics and mysterious MacGuffins of all those pulps really did what they said they did, and a daring treasure hunter (let's face it, the "archaeology" thing is just a dodge) has to clash just as much with the supernatural as he does with fiendish death traps, cold-hearted Nazi seductresses, and decidedly unfriendly natives. (Which remains a problematic element for any story that pastiches the fictional tropes of another time--do you use story elements that have not aged well in terms of their racism and sexism, and hope that your audience is well-educated enough to understand the context of their usage, or do you eliminate them, cutting out a lot of the authenticity of your pastiche?)
So what we have in your basic Indiana Jones story, as generated by the engine, is a story set in the era of the pulps, using tropes and stock characters/settings generated by them, with supernatural elements usually added in (but not necessarily required)...and then overlaying that with a veneer of authenticity by a) researching the historical myths that are the basis for the supernatural elements (you'd be amazed at just how much work went into getting the bits about the Ark of the Covenant as close to "right" as they could), and b) having a lead character who's flawed and human in a way that pulp heroes tended not to be. (Anyone see Doc Savage whimpering in pain and saying, "It's not the years, it's the mileage?") And yet, it's important to note that for all of Indy's flaws, he's flawed in a human, likeable way. His original motivation for treasure hunting (he's a playboy professor who lives beyond his means and sells his finds to finance his lifestyle) is almost totally muted in the series as we see it on screen...and in books, comics, video games, et cetera.
Just a quick sampling of the books, comics, video games, et cetera bears this out. We see Indy searching for the fourth nail of Christ's cross, fighting zombi armies in Haiti, searching for Atlantis and the supposed lands inside a hollow Earth, fighting dragons, and duking it out with Tibetan telekinetics. He even met Dracula. This seems like a very sustainable engine.
So why is it that audiences seem so reluctant to embrace Indy's sequels? (For a given value of "reluctant"--it's not like the Indy movies don't make money.) Setting aside the books and comics and video games for the moment--those tend to be produced for the "fan", not the casual enthusiast--only two of the four movies have gotten a good critical response, and the "Young Indiana Jones" television series crashed and burned after just two seasons, a genuine shocker considering the high-profile talent working on it. The fourth movie, in particular, was thoroughly panned (despite, again, not having any problems making money.)
Looking at the movies that were loved and the ones that were merely tolerated, it's easy to spot why--just look for the ones that didn't use the storytelling engine. 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' skimped on its research, making up its MacGuffin (and not incidentally, falling on the wrong side of the "problematic" question mentioned above...all too often, it seems to use its pulp tropes as an excuse for racism, rather than attempting to examine the attitudes of the era it pastiches.) "Young Indiana Jones" skimps on the adventure--apart from one episode where Indy meets Dracula, most of the stories revolved around boringly educational meetings with historical figures and tame escapades in historical settings. There's no zip to them.
And 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'...the fourth Indiana Jones movie essentially tries to invent a brand-new storytelling engine built on the principles of the original, but using the tropes of 50s science-fiction films instead of 30s pulp films. Which is an interesting idea, and one that almost becomes necessary in order to continue using Harrison Ford as Indy (and let's face it, Ford's performance is 90% of what makes the character who he is; none of the other actors have ever managed to make the character work quite so well.)
But back when they were first considering the idea, Lucas and Spielberg had the option to use any era they wanted, and they chose the pulps of the 30s over the sci-fi 50s. Perhaps it was that Nazis made better bad guys than commies, perhaps it was because ancient relics were more exciting than flying saucers, perhaps it was just because Crash Corrigan was more fun than Flash Gordon, but for whatever reason, they saw that one era had more potential than the other for stories. Setting aside any question of whether Lucas and Spielberg have "lost it" over the decades, the storytelling engine they made the first time just worked in a way that the new one doesn't, which doesn't exactly bode well for attempts to make a fifth Indiana Jones movie. But the fundamental soundess of the original storytelling engine means that Indy books and comics, at least, can keep going strong for ages to come.
Friday, November 07, 2008
The Trickle-Up Theory
I'm once again suffering from a head cold, which is my excuse this week for being a day late with my post (it's always nice when it's something tangible.) I'm going to just dip my toes into politics this week--I don't quite feel the need to wallow in it at the moment, because I think emotions are still running very high from a historic election and there's just no way to talk about it without someone being unhappy, but this is a bit more generic. Let's talk taxes.
We're all familiar with the "trickle-down" theory of economics, which is the idea that if you set government policies to benefit the rich (including, but not limited to tax rates), they'll have more money to invest in the economy, which creates jobs, which helps the poor make money. The benefits of the rich making more money "trickles down", you see.
But this ignores the basic rule of economics, which I am just now making up: In an environment of laissez-faire capitalism, money always flows from the poor to the rich, just like water always flows downhill. It's absolutely inexorable, because the rich have more money than they can ever spend, and the poor have to spend all the money they have.
This is really pretty obvious, easily supported by everyday observation and common sense. The richer you get, the more money you have, pretty much by definition. Income rises on an unlimited curve, whereas expenses don't--eventually, no matter how extravagant you are and how much you invest, you hit a point where new money you make just goes onto the pile. That money is removed from circulation--for all that it helps the economy, you might as well burn it.
Whereas on the low end of the curve, income matches or exceeds expenses all the time. This is what's known as "living paycheck to paycheck", and lots of middle and lower-class people do it, because there's always a car to fix or rent to pay or clothes to buy for the kids. And that money goes to the makers of the clothes...some of it to the individual workers who make them, who are themselves living paycheck to paycheck and spending money as fast as they make it, but some of it to the owner of the clothes factory, who is not living paycheck to paycheck. Everyone who's in the middle-class is spending money, everyone who is upper-class is hoarding money. Eventually, that money is bound to wind up in the hands of the rich, and pass out of circulation.
So what's needed is, yes, a "trickle-up" theory of economics. The rich need to be forced to get that money back into circulation, through policies that reward investment and punish large accumulations of capital. And yes, this does mean higher taxes on the rich, but the rich shouldn't care about this. That money will always come back to them. The government will spend that tax income to build roads (and who owns the construction companies?), make tanks and guns (and who owns the defense companies?), and aid banking, housing, and other industries (and yes, "industry" generally means someone well-off to own their own company.)
This is not socialism, this is simply tending the garden of capitalism. Farmers don't just rely on rain to water their crops, because they understand that water always flows downhill. They pump the water to where it needs to go. We need to irrigate the middle-class and keep it healthy, because they in turn support the rich on a sustainable basis. The rich can stay rich, but the mindless accumulation of capital is disastrous, in the long run, to the health of the economy...and that means they gotta spend money to keep making it. And if they won't do that voluntarily, then the government should help them out a little.
We're all familiar with the "trickle-down" theory of economics, which is the idea that if you set government policies to benefit the rich (including, but not limited to tax rates), they'll have more money to invest in the economy, which creates jobs, which helps the poor make money. The benefits of the rich making more money "trickles down", you see.
But this ignores the basic rule of economics, which I am just now making up: In an environment of laissez-faire capitalism, money always flows from the poor to the rich, just like water always flows downhill. It's absolutely inexorable, because the rich have more money than they can ever spend, and the poor have to spend all the money they have.
This is really pretty obvious, easily supported by everyday observation and common sense. The richer you get, the more money you have, pretty much by definition. Income rises on an unlimited curve, whereas expenses don't--eventually, no matter how extravagant you are and how much you invest, you hit a point where new money you make just goes onto the pile. That money is removed from circulation--for all that it helps the economy, you might as well burn it.
Whereas on the low end of the curve, income matches or exceeds expenses all the time. This is what's known as "living paycheck to paycheck", and lots of middle and lower-class people do it, because there's always a car to fix or rent to pay or clothes to buy for the kids. And that money goes to the makers of the clothes...some of it to the individual workers who make them, who are themselves living paycheck to paycheck and spending money as fast as they make it, but some of it to the owner of the clothes factory, who is not living paycheck to paycheck. Everyone who's in the middle-class is spending money, everyone who is upper-class is hoarding money. Eventually, that money is bound to wind up in the hands of the rich, and pass out of circulation.
So what's needed is, yes, a "trickle-up" theory of economics. The rich need to be forced to get that money back into circulation, through policies that reward investment and punish large accumulations of capital. And yes, this does mean higher taxes on the rich, but the rich shouldn't care about this. That money will always come back to them. The government will spend that tax income to build roads (and who owns the construction companies?), make tanks and guns (and who owns the defense companies?), and aid banking, housing, and other industries (and yes, "industry" generally means someone well-off to own their own company.)
This is not socialism, this is simply tending the garden of capitalism. Farmers don't just rely on rain to water their crops, because they understand that water always flows downhill. They pump the water to where it needs to go. We need to irrigate the middle-class and keep it healthy, because they in turn support the rich on a sustainable basis. The rich can stay rich, but the mindless accumulation of capital is disastrous, in the long run, to the health of the economy...and that means they gotta spend money to keep making it. And if they won't do that voluntarily, then the government should help them out a little.
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