One of the perennial debates in comics is the question, "Who created (insert character here)?" You really have to put "(insert character here)" into the end of that question, because there are debates over who came up with Spider-Man, who created Cable, whose idea was Venom...really, any successful and popular character you'd care to name, there's probably going to be a few extra people claiming that it was really their idea. (In general, this only happens with successful and popular characters. To quote Peter David, "Nobody argues about who created Night Nurse.")
The debate doesn't just encompass comics fans and historians, it actually goes all the way up to the creators themselves. Plain and simple, there's a lot of money to be had if you can prove that a character is your intellectual property and you weren't properly compensated for that idea, and so there's a strong monetary incentive to claim creator's rights. This doesn't mean that (to choose a random example) Steve Ditko is lying, or just in it for the money when he claims he created Spider-Man...I'm sure he honestly feels that his creative contributions to the concept are being overlooked, and deserve to be acknowledged. (Obviously, I haven't talked to him personally.) But the money issue will always be there, and deserves to be mentioned. Many lawsuits over copyright and trademark in the comics industry resemble all the worst parts of a custody battle and a contract dispute put together.
And that's fine, when it goes to court. The law has decided that the originator of a concept deserves to be compensated for their idea if money is to be made off of it, and if lawyers want to sift through all of the competing recollections and ambiguous evidence and try to say, "So-and-so created Character X", they can have fun with it. But we, as comics fans, aren't arguing for the benefit of a court of law. It's time for us to get past that question of "Who created?", and acknowledge that as a practical matter, it's actually a meaningless question.
It's meaningless because the creation of a character is actually just the first step in a long, long process of development that will see the character pass through multiple hands, writers and artists and editors (and in some cases actors and screenwriters and directors) all adding new elements as they interpret that initial concept in a different way. Ultimately, the interpretation that becomes popular might have nothing to do with that initial concept beyond simply the name. Arguing about "the creator" misses the point; it's all about the most important influences, not the first.
For example, there's really no question that Len Wein created Wolverine. He wrote the character into an issue of the Hulk, and then when he was coming up with the "All-New, All-Different" X-Men with Dave Cockrum, he decided to toss the character in to represent Canada in their international team. Len Wein = creator of Wolverine. Very simple.
Except that Wein intended Wolverine to be an actual wolverine, mutated by the High Evolutionary into a human form. He was going to be a teenage punk, a rough-and-tumble scrapper who had trouble getting along with human beings because of his animal ancestry, and who used metal blades built into his gloves to compensate for the natural claws that the High Evolutionary took away. (Edit: Len Wein personally swears that this is not what he intended for the character; Wolverine was meant to be a teenage punk with metal blades built into his gloves, but the High Evolutionary was not involved, nor were any actual mustelids. There was an intended plan to make Wolverine a mutated animal, but Len Wein was not, I repeat, not involved in it.)
Now, there's no question in my mind that this is a good concept for a comics character--one only needs to look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to see how it could become a commercial hit. But Dave Cockrum first drew Wolverine without the mask, and he made him look to be in his forties instead of his teens. Chris Claremont took over the book shortly after its rebirth, and he promptly ditched the "mutated wolverine" idea in favor of his being human. John Byrne came on as artist not long after that, and spent a lot of time and energy suggesting ideas for Wolverine because he liked the idea of a Canadian super-hero. By the time the Claremont/Byrne era ended, Wolverine had a different origin, a different personality, a different set of powers, and a different costume. The only thing you can point to that stayed the same was the name, and even then, Claremont and Byrne gave him the "Logan" sobriquet. While there's still no question that Len Wein created Wolverine, calling it "his" character creates a serious misperception in the mind of the average fan. (It would be very interesting to visit an alternate reality where he'd stayed on the book, though, wouldn't it?)
Another, simpler example: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Hulk. But the character they wrote and drew in "Hulk #1" wasn't dumb, wasn't green, didn't change when he got mad, and didn't have the distinctive "Hulk smash puny humans!" dialogue that generations of comics fans know and love (or hate, in the case of Marvel's current editorial staff and just about every writer they put on the book.) Those elements were added over months and years, frequently by other writers and artists. Even then, you could make a solid case that the interpretation that's stuck most solidly in popular culture is Lou Ferrigno's wordless, wild-haired Hulk. Should Lou Ferrigno be credited as "the creator of the Hulk"? Of course not. But his performance and what it brought to the concept shouldn't be brushed aside simply because he wasn't first in line.
Sometimes, of course, the creator and the prominent influence are one and the same. The Fantastic Four always seem to curve back towards the version that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created in their classic 102-issue run on the series. But in general, it's worthwhile to talk about all the talented people who worked on making a popular character who they are today, and leave the discussions of who created them to the courts. Because while it might seem like a custody dispute sometimes, and while we use it as an analogy a lot, these are not the children of their creators. There is nothing inherent that they give to the characters that cannot be removed by a later writer or artist, no hereditary stamp that is preserved forever. A new creator can always transform the concept so completely that it may as well be theirs. Because biology may be destiny, but fictional characters don't have genes.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Time To Go Calen!
I'm sure that you were proud to help out our planet yesterday by celebrating Earth Day, but did you know that today is Middle-Earth Day? It's a day dedicated to how we can all come together to help preserve the lands of Middle-Earth from the depredations of the Dark Lord, Sauron.
Sure, I know what you're saying. "I'm only a simple human/hobbit/elf/dwarf (delete where applicable.) I don't even know where the One Ring is, let alone have the time to cast it into the fires of Mount Doom! How can I help?"
Sometimes, it's not all about the grand gestures. You can help Middle-Earth in all sorts of simple ways. Take some time to scrub the walls of the White City, light a signal fire to the Riders of Rohan, slaughter an orc, bake some lembas bread for a hobbit, or even just plant an ent or two. Even the smallest gesture can make the greatest of differences--and after all, it's your Middle-Earth too.
Middle-Earth Day--if you don't help to crush the all-consuming evil of the Lidless Eye, who will?
Sure, I know what you're saying. "I'm only a simple human/hobbit/elf/dwarf (delete where applicable.) I don't even know where the One Ring is, let alone have the time to cast it into the fires of Mount Doom! How can I help?"
Sometimes, it's not all about the grand gestures. You can help Middle-Earth in all sorts of simple ways. Take some time to scrub the walls of the White City, light a signal fire to the Riders of Rohan, slaughter an orc, bake some lembas bread for a hobbit, or even just plant an ent or two. Even the smallest gesture can make the greatest of differences--and after all, it's your Middle-Earth too.
Middle-Earth Day--if you don't help to crush the all-consuming evil of the Lidless Eye, who will?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Darkman
(or "The Kitchen-Sink Superhero")
Sam Raimi's been pretty open about two things when it comes to the creation of Darkman; one, that he wanted to create a superhero who could sustain an open-ended series of films, and two, that he drew on a lot of other superheroes for influence. The character winds up being an interesting mix of Wolverine, Swamp Thing, Batman, the Unknown Soldier and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although it's worth mentioning that Raimi was thinking more "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Phantom of the Opera" than Swamp Thing and the TMNT. But the conversation on the line of descent of those characters can wait until another day.)
So what you wind up with is a scientist who gets disfigured by crime bosses and left for dead. (Like Alec Holland.) He survives, though, and sets up a laboratory in a disused warehouse (an abandoned train station in the sequels), scavenging and stealing old technology and kitbashing it into new equipment. (Like the Turtles...although admittedly more the cartoon versions than the comics.) This technology allows him to recreate his brilliant discovery, a synthetic skin that allows him to assume the identity of anyone for 99 minutes at a time, covering his burns with a seemingly normal face for a while. (A la the Unknown Soldier--he even wears bandages when not using a mask.) But the formula isn't stable, so a normal life is forever denied him. (And we're right back to Swamp Thing again, along with the Thing, the Hulk, Robotman, and literally hundreds of other heroes and villains.)
Except that there's another angle to the character. This one is a scientist who gets disfigured by crime bosses and left for dead. (Like Alec Holland.) Surgeons save his life with an operation that nullfifies the pain of his horrific burning, but at a price--he no longer has any feeling in his body at all. He's impervious to pain, but the feelings of disconnection and alienation leave him with wild surges of uncontrolled anger and berserker rage, complete with spikes of adrenalin that give him superhuman strength. He fights crime as a shadowy creature of the night, barely able to keep his fury in check. (See, that's where the Wolverine comes in.)
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Darkman series (as opposed to the Darkman movie, which makes this dichotomy its central conflict.) On the one hand, you have a superhero whose powers lend themselves to plots involving intrigue and subterfuge, as his ability to impersonate anyone leads him to set criminals against each other while he steals their assets to further his research while posing as them. It requires a hero who's patient and clever, calm under pressure and able to outfox anyone at their own game. (And who just happens to be a gifted mimic, because the masks don't change your voice, but Peyton Westlake seems to be in luck there. Amazing how that happens soemtimes.)
On the other hand, you have a superhero who's filled with barely constrained fury, who could snap at any second and frequently does. He defeats enemies by overwhelming them with sheer brutal power, savaging them with his relentless, single-minded anger and devotion to punishing them for their crimes. (One of the best moments in the movies is when Darkman is dangling from a helicopter piloted by the villains, furiously waving away a police chopper and shouting, "He's mine!")
These two aspects of the character don't always mesh well, forcing writers to make the character behave inconsistently as the plot demands. He winds up having a sort of convenient "pocket berserker fury", only to be brought out when it's time for a big action sequence and the writer has run out of other ideas. The Darkman sequels demonstrate this problem--both of them turn from complex caper films into action mayhem, sacrificing the payoffs of a well-timed twist for a big set piece where Darkman beats a bunch of guys up with his super-strength.
Which isn't the only problem with them--it's a struggle, having gone to all the work the original did to try to set him up as a plausible superhero in a realistic world, to find antagonists outlandish enough to fight a man with super-strength and plastic faces that last 99 minutes (more in the dark, but that's an angle that always seems to get forgotten--mainly because a 99 minute timer makes for more drama.) The sequels introduce super-strength drugs and laser cannons, elements that jar with the atmosphere established in the first film. This might eventually be overcome simply through acclimatization; as you become more accustomed to a weird world, it becomes easier to accept that drug kingpins routinely employ insane scientists that design exotic particle beam weapons with nuclear batteries. But unfortunately, Darkman never got the time to make that kind of transition in the movies or on TV. Hopefully, returning to his spiritual home in the comics will give the character a bit more space to resolve these contradictions and come out of them as a more unified hero.
And with that, I close what will be my last Storytelling Engines column for a while--I'm putting the series on hiatus for a bit, hopefully not indefinitely. It's not a lack of time or energy, it's a lack of material--having covered just about every significant Marvel and DC character, and big swathes of movies and TV, I have gone through just about every open-ended series that I have books/DVDs of. Naturally, if anyone wants to buy me some DVDs or trade paperbacks so that I can watch/read them and do a column on them, they can feel free to leave a comment to that effect and we can talk, but for now, I think the series will go on hiatus while I "reload". There will still be a Monday(-ish) column on my blog every week, rest assured, and the entire series of Storytelling Engines columns is re-running from the beginning on Xenagia.com for those of you who missed the early installments (shameless plug alert!), but for right now, I'm putting it to bed after 114 columsn for a nice, long, well-deserved nap. Thanks to everyone who read it, and thanks even more to the people who told me so!
Sam Raimi's been pretty open about two things when it comes to the creation of Darkman; one, that he wanted to create a superhero who could sustain an open-ended series of films, and two, that he drew on a lot of other superheroes for influence. The character winds up being an interesting mix of Wolverine, Swamp Thing, Batman, the Unknown Soldier and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although it's worth mentioning that Raimi was thinking more "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Phantom of the Opera" than Swamp Thing and the TMNT. But the conversation on the line of descent of those characters can wait until another day.)
So what you wind up with is a scientist who gets disfigured by crime bosses and left for dead. (Like Alec Holland.) He survives, though, and sets up a laboratory in a disused warehouse (an abandoned train station in the sequels), scavenging and stealing old technology and kitbashing it into new equipment. (Like the Turtles...although admittedly more the cartoon versions than the comics.) This technology allows him to recreate his brilliant discovery, a synthetic skin that allows him to assume the identity of anyone for 99 minutes at a time, covering his burns with a seemingly normal face for a while. (A la the Unknown Soldier--he even wears bandages when not using a mask.) But the formula isn't stable, so a normal life is forever denied him. (And we're right back to Swamp Thing again, along with the Thing, the Hulk, Robotman, and literally hundreds of other heroes and villains.)
Except that there's another angle to the character. This one is a scientist who gets disfigured by crime bosses and left for dead. (Like Alec Holland.) Surgeons save his life with an operation that nullfifies the pain of his horrific burning, but at a price--he no longer has any feeling in his body at all. He's impervious to pain, but the feelings of disconnection and alienation leave him with wild surges of uncontrolled anger and berserker rage, complete with spikes of adrenalin that give him superhuman strength. He fights crime as a shadowy creature of the night, barely able to keep his fury in check. (See, that's where the Wolverine comes in.)
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Darkman series (as opposed to the Darkman movie, which makes this dichotomy its central conflict.) On the one hand, you have a superhero whose powers lend themselves to plots involving intrigue and subterfuge, as his ability to impersonate anyone leads him to set criminals against each other while he steals their assets to further his research while posing as them. It requires a hero who's patient and clever, calm under pressure and able to outfox anyone at their own game. (And who just happens to be a gifted mimic, because the masks don't change your voice, but Peyton Westlake seems to be in luck there. Amazing how that happens soemtimes.)
On the other hand, you have a superhero who's filled with barely constrained fury, who could snap at any second and frequently does. He defeats enemies by overwhelming them with sheer brutal power, savaging them with his relentless, single-minded anger and devotion to punishing them for their crimes. (One of the best moments in the movies is when Darkman is dangling from a helicopter piloted by the villains, furiously waving away a police chopper and shouting, "He's mine!")
These two aspects of the character don't always mesh well, forcing writers to make the character behave inconsistently as the plot demands. He winds up having a sort of convenient "pocket berserker fury", only to be brought out when it's time for a big action sequence and the writer has run out of other ideas. The Darkman sequels demonstrate this problem--both of them turn from complex caper films into action mayhem, sacrificing the payoffs of a well-timed twist for a big set piece where Darkman beats a bunch of guys up with his super-strength.
Which isn't the only problem with them--it's a struggle, having gone to all the work the original did to try to set him up as a plausible superhero in a realistic world, to find antagonists outlandish enough to fight a man with super-strength and plastic faces that last 99 minutes (more in the dark, but that's an angle that always seems to get forgotten--mainly because a 99 minute timer makes for more drama.) The sequels introduce super-strength drugs and laser cannons, elements that jar with the atmosphere established in the first film. This might eventually be overcome simply through acclimatization; as you become more accustomed to a weird world, it becomes easier to accept that drug kingpins routinely employ insane scientists that design exotic particle beam weapons with nuclear batteries. But unfortunately, Darkman never got the time to make that kind of transition in the movies or on TV. Hopefully, returning to his spiritual home in the comics will give the character a bit more space to resolve these contradictions and come out of them as a more unified hero.
And with that, I close what will be my last Storytelling Engines column for a while--I'm putting the series on hiatus for a bit, hopefully not indefinitely. It's not a lack of time or energy, it's a lack of material--having covered just about every significant Marvel and DC character, and big swathes of movies and TV, I have gone through just about every open-ended series that I have books/DVDs of. Naturally, if anyone wants to buy me some DVDs or trade paperbacks so that I can watch/read them and do a column on them, they can feel free to leave a comment to that effect and we can talk, but for now, I think the series will go on hiatus while I "reload". There will still be a Monday(-ish) column on my blog every week, rest assured, and the entire series of Storytelling Engines columns is re-running from the beginning on Xenagia.com for those of you who missed the early installments (shameless plug alert!), but for right now, I'm putting it to bed after 114 columsn for a nice, long, well-deserved nap. Thanks to everyone who read it, and thanks even more to the people who told me so!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Everyday Magical Items
Sure, we all know about your standard rings of protection, swords of slaying, and all the other wonderful and wondrous goodies that can be found in any Dungeons and Dragons campaign. (Some campaigns more than others, of course. When I was a kid, we considered ourselves lucky if we even got +1 chainmail! And we had to walk uphill into and out of the dungeon!)
But really, how useful would those actually be nowadays? How many people really need magical armor and weapons? Let's face it, if we had real wizards these days, they'd be crafting items like you'd see on the list below.
Decanter of Endless Soda: This insulated plastic mug will fill, upon speaking the command word, with forty-eight ounces of any soda the holder wills it. The soda stays cold, and does not go flat no matter how long it is left in the mug.
Ring of Spell Checking: This magical ring tightens (not painfully, but noticeably) around the wearer's finger any time they misspell a word when typing a document. (Leetspeak users may consider this a cursed item.)
Girdle of Metrosexuality: Anyone wearing this girdle, whether male or female, becomes instantly able to pick out stylish, fashionable clothing and decorate their houses or apartments impeccably. They also gain a new appreciation for modern art and the ability to listen to what other people are saying and really understand their feelings.
Amulet of Protection From Flames: All posts, chats, emails, and trolls directed at the wearer of this amulet are instantly lost in dropped connections, forum glitches, and other seemingly coincidental Internet misfortunes. The net effect (no pun intended) is that nobody can ever say anything nasty about you online.
Vorpal Toothbrush: This toothbrush instantly gets rid of all plaque, tartar, bacteria and discoloration with just a single swipe across the teeth. Brushing once a day with the vorpal toothbrush is the equivalent of getting a six-month cleaning from a dentist.
Universal Cleanser: A slightly milder version of the universal solvent, this alchemical mixture just gets rid of dirt, mold, mildew, and stubborn stains. (It is not recommended as a shampoo or body wash, though. You can never tell whether the wizards were paying close attention when they were mixing it up.)
But really, how useful would those actually be nowadays? How many people really need magical armor and weapons? Let's face it, if we had real wizards these days, they'd be crafting items like you'd see on the list below.
Decanter of Endless Soda: This insulated plastic mug will fill, upon speaking the command word, with forty-eight ounces of any soda the holder wills it. The soda stays cold, and does not go flat no matter how long it is left in the mug.
Ring of Spell Checking: This magical ring tightens (not painfully, but noticeably) around the wearer's finger any time they misspell a word when typing a document. (Leetspeak users may consider this a cursed item.)
Girdle of Metrosexuality: Anyone wearing this girdle, whether male or female, becomes instantly able to pick out stylish, fashionable clothing and decorate their houses or apartments impeccably. They also gain a new appreciation for modern art and the ability to listen to what other people are saying and really understand their feelings.
Amulet of Protection From Flames: All posts, chats, emails, and trolls directed at the wearer of this amulet are instantly lost in dropped connections, forum glitches, and other seemingly coincidental Internet misfortunes. The net effect (no pun intended) is that nobody can ever say anything nasty about you online.
Vorpal Toothbrush: This toothbrush instantly gets rid of all plaque, tartar, bacteria and discoloration with just a single swipe across the teeth. Brushing once a day with the vorpal toothbrush is the equivalent of getting a six-month cleaning from a dentist.
Universal Cleanser: A slightly milder version of the universal solvent, this alchemical mixture just gets rid of dirt, mold, mildew, and stubborn stains. (It is not recommended as a shampoo or body wash, though. You can never tell whether the wizards were paying close attention when they were mixing it up.)
Friday, April 10, 2009
A Brief Primer on Mathematics
Dear Marvel Comics,
Today, we're going to learn about numbers! Numbers serve a very important purpose to your comic company, and to your reading audience. After all, Marvel publishes a new issue of every comic every single month! Without numbers, new readers wouldn't know what order to read the old issues in. They'd get very confused and irritated, and might even stop reading as quickly as they'd started.
You already know some of this, of course. Why, you put a number on the front of every single comic you publish! But you seem to be a little confused as to how to figure out what number goes with what comic. We know it's a little confusing, so we're here to help you out.
You see, each number represents a quantity of comics. So if you took all the individual issues of a series and stacked them together, the number of comics in the stack should be the same as the issue number of the top comic in the stack. For example, a comic that's run for fifty issues should be issue #50. Every time you add a comic to the stack, you add one to the issue number! And if someone wants to start from the beginning, they can just find issue #1, and work their way forward. Like a counting game!
And for that game to work, you see, you have to use every single number. Even though #1 is a very popular number, you can't just call every single issue "#1", or nobody will be able to play the counting game right. And even though "#600" is a big, exciting number, you can't just change the rules and decide to jump to #600 because you've decided that #1-55 were secretly #545-599 but you didn't tell anyone at the time because those numbers don't sell comics. I mean for God's sake, you decided to renumber Avengers at issue #500 and then canceled it three issues later to relaunch it for another new number one! How dumb do you think your fans are? Do you really think our enthusiasm for "collectible" issues is so deeply ingrained that we salivate like Pavlov's dog at the mere sight of a new "#1 collector's edition"? Don't you realize that you're strip-mining the enthusiasm of your fan-base for a quick couple of bucks, while rendering the hobby practically incomprehensible for anyone trying to enter it cold? Try mail-ordering an issue of Captain America mail-order, or the Avengers, or Iron Man, or any re-re-re-relaunched series! It's like Russian Roulette, trying to get the right volume number! Seriously, what the hell are you people thinking!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!??!!!?!?!!?
...that is to say, by learning this simple lesson, we can all have more fun! Isn't that right, boys and girls? Of course it is. Now, have fun learning how to put the right issue numbers on your comics, and practice at home!
And when you've learned, teach the guys at DC. "Green Lantern #41" my sorry butt...
Today, we're going to learn about numbers! Numbers serve a very important purpose to your comic company, and to your reading audience. After all, Marvel publishes a new issue of every comic every single month! Without numbers, new readers wouldn't know what order to read the old issues in. They'd get very confused and irritated, and might even stop reading as quickly as they'd started.
You already know some of this, of course. Why, you put a number on the front of every single comic you publish! But you seem to be a little confused as to how to figure out what number goes with what comic. We know it's a little confusing, so we're here to help you out.
You see, each number represents a quantity of comics. So if you took all the individual issues of a series and stacked them together, the number of comics in the stack should be the same as the issue number of the top comic in the stack. For example, a comic that's run for fifty issues should be issue #50. Every time you add a comic to the stack, you add one to the issue number! And if someone wants to start from the beginning, they can just find issue #1, and work their way forward. Like a counting game!
And for that game to work, you see, you have to use every single number. Even though #1 is a very popular number, you can't just call every single issue "#1", or nobody will be able to play the counting game right. And even though "#600" is a big, exciting number, you can't just change the rules and decide to jump to #600 because you've decided that #1-55 were secretly #545-599 but you didn't tell anyone at the time because those numbers don't sell comics. I mean for God's sake, you decided to renumber Avengers at issue #500 and then canceled it three issues later to relaunch it for another new number one! How dumb do you think your fans are? Do you really think our enthusiasm for "collectible" issues is so deeply ingrained that we salivate like Pavlov's dog at the mere sight of a new "#1 collector's edition"? Don't you realize that you're strip-mining the enthusiasm of your fan-base for a quick couple of bucks, while rendering the hobby practically incomprehensible for anyone trying to enter it cold? Try mail-ordering an issue of Captain America mail-order, or the Avengers, or Iron Man, or any re-re-re-relaunched series! It's like Russian Roulette, trying to get the right volume number! Seriously, what the hell are you people thinking!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!??!!!?!?!!?
...that is to say, by learning this simple lesson, we can all have more fun! Isn't that right, boys and girls? Of course it is. Now, have fun learning how to put the right issue numbers on your comics, and practice at home!
And when you've learned, teach the guys at DC. "Green Lantern #41" my sorry butt...
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Battletech
(or "Subverting History")
I'm not saying anything particularly new when I say that science fiction is rarely about the actual future. It's really more about the present, translated into an allegorical form, and the venerable "Battletech" franchise is no exception. It doesn't even really disguise it, with the various Great Houses of the Inner Sphere being clear analogies of various Earth nations--it doesn't really make much sense when you sit down and analyze it that these lines of sheer demarcation between a Japanese monoculture, a Chinese monoculture, et cetera would actually translate across hundreds of light years and centuries into the future, but it makes emotional sense to us because it's a recognizable allegory for our world. It feels right that in the fall of the Star League (Rome), the Inner Sphere (Europe) would splinter into bickering, warring nation-states constantly jockeying for political advantage, with ComStar (the Catholic Church) as the primary mediator of disputes. (You could probably write a paper on the symbolism of ComStar, guardians of faster-than-light communications, acting in the role of priests, but not today.)
But having built a universe that makes emotional sense to us, complete with a sympathetic British/American heroic House as the hero (the Federated Suns sort of blend that line as necessary, much like House Marik straddles a line between American and Prussian--again, you could probably do a paper on the way that two of the major strains of American ancestry are divided up in the Battletech universe)...having set up the universe to feel comfortable to us armchair historians, Battletech deliberately subverts the audience's expectations of how this "future history" will flow. So we see the allegorical China joining with Japan and Germany to repel an invasion by Britain and Norway, then a shift as the alliance between the latter two falters and the Japanese analog winds up allied with the pseudo-Britain, while the futuristic church of ComStar splinters along ideological lines--OK, so that bit's fairly historically accurate, but you get my point. Having established factions that we recognize, the Battletech writers then have them behave in ways that are very different from their historical analogs, which serves to heighten the sense of surprise at every plot twist.
The ultimate example of this is, of course, the Clans. The first era of Battletech books established the legend of "the Star League", the united and glorious nation that splintered into the various Great Houses. It felt comfortable, understandable, the kind of legend that you see a lot in fantasy and science fiction. The Star League drew upon historical Rome (which wasn't nearly as benevolent or enlightened as its legends would indicate, but that's what happens when you write all the history books) to create a backstory that made emotional sense to the readers. Nobody saw it coming when the lost legions of the Star League came back as ticked-off, bloody-minded Spartan-style conquerors sweeping waves of devastation through the Inner Sphere and forcing them into a tenuous alliance, any more than you'd expect to hear about the Roman legions coming back in World War II armed with machine guns. It was a complete paradigm shift in the whole concept of the Battletech universe, and yet one that was foreshadowed expertly in hindsight.
Once the Clans opened up the second era of the Battletech universe, it was even easier to generate real suspense. If something so major could change so rapidly, then surely just about anything could happen? And in some ways, it did. Several major plot twists marked the later Battletech novels of this era, as the political maneuvering reached a fever pitch. Unfortunately, many of the storylines were left unfinished as the property changed hands and jumped ahead about sixty years (to the "Dark Ages" era.) Still, that decision is in some ways typical of the Battletech line. It remains strong and vital in some ways because of the writers' willingness to take risks. There are no sacred cows in the Battletech universe, not even history itself.
I'm not saying anything particularly new when I say that science fiction is rarely about the actual future. It's really more about the present, translated into an allegorical form, and the venerable "Battletech" franchise is no exception. It doesn't even really disguise it, with the various Great Houses of the Inner Sphere being clear analogies of various Earth nations--it doesn't really make much sense when you sit down and analyze it that these lines of sheer demarcation between a Japanese monoculture, a Chinese monoculture, et cetera would actually translate across hundreds of light years and centuries into the future, but it makes emotional sense to us because it's a recognizable allegory for our world. It feels right that in the fall of the Star League (Rome), the Inner Sphere (Europe) would splinter into bickering, warring nation-states constantly jockeying for political advantage, with ComStar (the Catholic Church) as the primary mediator of disputes. (You could probably write a paper on the symbolism of ComStar, guardians of faster-than-light communications, acting in the role of priests, but not today.)
But having built a universe that makes emotional sense to us, complete with a sympathetic British/American heroic House as the hero (the Federated Suns sort of blend that line as necessary, much like House Marik straddles a line between American and Prussian--again, you could probably do a paper on the way that two of the major strains of American ancestry are divided up in the Battletech universe)...having set up the universe to feel comfortable to us armchair historians, Battletech deliberately subverts the audience's expectations of how this "future history" will flow. So we see the allegorical China joining with Japan and Germany to repel an invasion by Britain and Norway, then a shift as the alliance between the latter two falters and the Japanese analog winds up allied with the pseudo-Britain, while the futuristic church of ComStar splinters along ideological lines--OK, so that bit's fairly historically accurate, but you get my point. Having established factions that we recognize, the Battletech writers then have them behave in ways that are very different from their historical analogs, which serves to heighten the sense of surprise at every plot twist.
The ultimate example of this is, of course, the Clans. The first era of Battletech books established the legend of "the Star League", the united and glorious nation that splintered into the various Great Houses. It felt comfortable, understandable, the kind of legend that you see a lot in fantasy and science fiction. The Star League drew upon historical Rome (which wasn't nearly as benevolent or enlightened as its legends would indicate, but that's what happens when you write all the history books) to create a backstory that made emotional sense to the readers. Nobody saw it coming when the lost legions of the Star League came back as ticked-off, bloody-minded Spartan-style conquerors sweeping waves of devastation through the Inner Sphere and forcing them into a tenuous alliance, any more than you'd expect to hear about the Roman legions coming back in World War II armed with machine guns. It was a complete paradigm shift in the whole concept of the Battletech universe, and yet one that was foreshadowed expertly in hindsight.
Once the Clans opened up the second era of the Battletech universe, it was even easier to generate real suspense. If something so major could change so rapidly, then surely just about anything could happen? And in some ways, it did. Several major plot twists marked the later Battletech novels of this era, as the political maneuvering reached a fever pitch. Unfortunately, many of the storylines were left unfinished as the property changed hands and jumped ahead about sixty years (to the "Dark Ages" era.) Still, that decision is in some ways typical of the Battletech line. It remains strong and vital in some ways because of the writers' willingness to take risks. There are no sacred cows in the Battletech universe, not even history itself.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Meet 'N Greet #6
This time, I'm actually going to focus on two characters for the "Meet 'N Greet" (an irregular feature that describes the backstories of my 'City of Heroes/Villains' characters, as silly as that sounds. Hey, they let you put a lot of detail into these characters' biographies, so I'm going to share them.)
But the question is, are they really two characters? On the one hand, you have Mary-Sue Quantum, a high school student from the 30th century with an A+ in telepathy, an A- in telekinesis, and a potential F in history staring her in the face. Clearly, there's only one thing for her to do--travel back in time to the 20th century and learn about events first hand by becoming the super-hero known as...Millennium Girl!
But Millennium Girl doesn't spend all her time in the 20th century, and sometimes when she's gone--especially after big, earth-shaking events--another time traveler shows up. Marisu Neutron, a nuclear mutant who's one of the last survivors of a dying human race, claims that for all their good intentions, it was heroes who caused the atomic holocaust that produced her future. The only way to stop World War Three, she claims, is to unite the world under a single leader, Lord Recluse (Statesman's arch-nemesis, and ruler of the Rogue Isles.) So, taking her cue from the last few ancient historical records she found with the time machine in the underground lab she stumbled into, she fights for Lord Recluse's cause as...Dystopia Girl!
Many have noted the remarkable similarity of appearance between the two women (once mutations are accounted for), but only the top temporal physicists have began to suspect what it might mean...and even they aren't sure what to do about it. But they suspect that despite the presence of two time travelers, time might be running out.
But the question is, are they really two characters? On the one hand, you have Mary-Sue Quantum, a high school student from the 30th century with an A+ in telepathy, an A- in telekinesis, and a potential F in history staring her in the face. Clearly, there's only one thing for her to do--travel back in time to the 20th century and learn about events first hand by becoming the super-hero known as...Millennium Girl!
But Millennium Girl doesn't spend all her time in the 20th century, and sometimes when she's gone--especially after big, earth-shaking events--another time traveler shows up. Marisu Neutron, a nuclear mutant who's one of the last survivors of a dying human race, claims that for all their good intentions, it was heroes who caused the atomic holocaust that produced her future. The only way to stop World War Three, she claims, is to unite the world under a single leader, Lord Recluse (Statesman's arch-nemesis, and ruler of the Rogue Isles.) So, taking her cue from the last few ancient historical records she found with the time machine in the underground lab she stumbled into, she fights for Lord Recluse's cause as...Dystopia Girl!
Many have noted the remarkable similarity of appearance between the two women (once mutations are accounted for), but only the top temporal physicists have began to suspect what it might mean...and even they aren't sure what to do about it. But they suspect that despite the presence of two time travelers, time might be running out.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Coming Soon To A Theater Near You!
(Cue Ominous Music.)
She gave him the egg for safe-keeping...
(Lightning and thunder flashes. A feathered hand holds out a large white egg, in the middle of a thunderstorm.)
But when he found out what she wanted it for, all he could do...was run.
(Cut to montage of travel from jungle to ocean to city.)
Now, he must escape his captors, evade a madwoman, and find some way to hatch...
THE EGG.
HORTON: I said what I meant, and I meant what I said, and an elephant is faithful--
MAYZIE (cocking gun): Until he is DEAD!
This summer...
HORTON.
HATCHES.
THE EGG.
HORTON: Hey. It can't be any worse than "The Cat In the Hat".
She gave him the egg for safe-keeping...
(Lightning and thunder flashes. A feathered hand holds out a large white egg, in the middle of a thunderstorm.)
But when he found out what she wanted it for, all he could do...was run.
(Cut to montage of travel from jungle to ocean to city.)
Now, he must escape his captors, evade a madwoman, and find some way to hatch...
THE EGG.
HORTON: I said what I meant, and I meant what I said, and an elephant is faithful--
MAYZIE (cocking gun): Until he is DEAD!
This summer...
HORTON.
HATCHES.
THE EGG.
HORTON: Hey. It can't be any worse than "The Cat In the Hat".
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Discworld
(or "The Amazing Transforming Meta-Engine!")
"The Colour of Magic", the first Discworld novel, is far from author Terry Pratchett's best work. In fact, it could be the weakest of all the Discworld stories; it's essentially a rambling, shaggy-dog tale of an almost terminally naive tourist wandering through a stereotypical fantasy kingdom, upsetting numerous apple-carts with the way he treats the life-and-death struggles of its heroes and villains as entertainment. That's not to say that it doesn't have its good bits; it is, after all, Terry Pratchett we're talking about here. But it's not particularly focused, and it's not very subtle in its satire of the fantasy genre.
Which is why it's also the clearest example of just how the Discworld storytelling engine works.
The parodic characters that appear in "Colour" are pretty broadly sketched, and easily recognizable as cousins to their non-humorous counterparts--Hrun is Conan, Bravd and the Weasel are Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Bel-Shamharoth is Cthulhu with the serial numbers filed off. This means that it's easy to recognize the book as what it is, a commentary on the tropes of fantasy novels (general and specific.) Pratchett is writing metafiction, drawing inspiration from his predecessors even as he satirizes the conventions of the genre.
To which all Pratchett fans say, "Duh!" But Pratchett continues this trend for quite some time, even as he gets better at disguising it and more creative in his satire. Cohen, for example, is as much a Conan parody as Hrun, but instead of simply being another big dumb barbarian, he's a fully realized and poignant character with real depth. But he's still a parody of a fantasy trope, just as Granny Weatherwax satirizes the conventions both of the "young apprentice" genre of fantasy novels and the traditional notions of "wicked witches" from fairy tales and popular culture. Even as the cast of the series expands (Lawrence Watt-Evans identifies eight separate sub-series in his book "The Turtle Moves"), the metafiction aspect remains a constant.
But significantly, starting roughly around the time of "Wyrd Sisters", he's no longer just satirizing fantasy, he's drawing on reality for inspiration as well. Hwel, the dwarvish playwright, is used as a lens to look at Shakespeare and the theater in general (and cinema as well, in a few memorable gags.) The Ephebian philosophers in "Pyramids" twist and warp the ancient Greeks (to delightful effect.) Pratchett is still writing satire, but he's gradually moving away from metafiction into satire of the real world. "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music" are the most obvious and direct examples of this, but all the Discworld novels take on the flavor of a world we recognize.
But the real world is decidedly unlike fantasy kingdoms in one major aspect. (At least one major aspect, that is. Obviously, the real world doesn't have vampires, werewolves, dwarves, trolls, and magic...although curiously, this is where magic, in the showy flashy sense, really starts to vanish from the series.) A fantasy story is usually about the restoration of the old order--once there was a long, static period when things were good, things are now changing and that's bad, the hero brings back the true king or the magic talisman or whatever, and the change is undone. Let me just re-emphasize that bit. The change is undone.
In "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music", that's exactly what happens. With a magical zap, the wild ideas that infested the Discworld are forced out, and everyone feels slightly sheepish and wonders why they were so obsessed with the clicks or Music With Rocks In. (It's significant that the danger in "Moving Pictures" is that the Discworld is such a thin construct that it could be torn apart if people stop believing in it. Too much reality makes the cracks in the fantasy show.) Pratchett is using the Discworld to comment on reality, but the Disc itself is still recognizably a fantasy world. (In the sense of being static and unchanging, that is. It's always a recognizably fantasy world in the sense that it's flat and carried on the backs of four elephants which are, in turn, carried on the back of a giant turtle.)
But reality, that has a way of changing constantly. Sometimes for the worse, but sometimes for the better. While people might like to remember a long, static period when things were good (and write that nostalgia into fantasy stories which then become meat for satirists), the fact is that the past wasn't as static as you remember, and probably not as good, either. A series that's genuinely satirizing the real world, instead of just borrowing elements of it, is going to have to change.
And so, the storytelling engine of the Discworld, the elements of it that help Pratchett come up with story ideas, that has to become about change instead of stagnation. The first novel that undeniably ends with the world in a different place than it began is "Small Gods", a novel that uses the Church of Om to comment on the ways that religion has modernized to fit into a newer, more enlightened secular world. In addition to being frankly brilliant, it is a novel that doesn't retreat from the ideas it expresses. The Omnian Church after "Small Gods" is a different church, inspiring different ideas in later novels.
But "Small Gods" also takes place some distance away from the main events of the Discworld. It's a big shift, but it's one that's easy to ignore when it doesn't affect Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind or even Death to any significant degree. No, the novel that definitively states, "The world is changing and this is now the well from which inspiration is drawn," is "The Truth".
Watt-Evans dismisses "The Truth" pretty casually in "The Turtle Moves", lumping it in the same pile as "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music" (with "newspapers" taking the place of "movies" and "rock music".) With all due respect to an author whose work I enjoy, this misses the biggest point of the book--this isn't a wild idea, summoned by magic and prone to rip a hole in the fabric of the Discworld. This is a printing press, made by mundane hands and inspired by good old-fashioned intelligence. (Pratchett even comments on his own tendencies at one point, as the Patrician asks a series of weary questions in an effort to make sure that the whole enterprise isn't going to destroy the world.) The notion of change, of modernization really crystalizes here and becomes the engine for the series at just about every point after that.
Unfortunately, Terry Pratchett's tragic diagnosis of Alzheimer's means that the Discworld series will be winding down soon. Although he is continuing to write for as long as he can, the disease will eventually take its toll, and I think I speak for just about all fans of the series when I fervently hope that nobody will attempt to fill his shoes just for the sake of keeping the franchise going. So after perhaps forty novels, a half dozen short stories, and numerous ancillary books and other materials, the Discworld's story will end. But that body of work is a testament to just how well the Discworld's storytelling engine works, as one of the best satirists in literature today turned his observations on the world into stories time and time again.
"The Colour of Magic", the first Discworld novel, is far from author Terry Pratchett's best work. In fact, it could be the weakest of all the Discworld stories; it's essentially a rambling, shaggy-dog tale of an almost terminally naive tourist wandering through a stereotypical fantasy kingdom, upsetting numerous apple-carts with the way he treats the life-and-death struggles of its heroes and villains as entertainment. That's not to say that it doesn't have its good bits; it is, after all, Terry Pratchett we're talking about here. But it's not particularly focused, and it's not very subtle in its satire of the fantasy genre.
Which is why it's also the clearest example of just how the Discworld storytelling engine works.
The parodic characters that appear in "Colour" are pretty broadly sketched, and easily recognizable as cousins to their non-humorous counterparts--Hrun is Conan, Bravd and the Weasel are Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Bel-Shamharoth is Cthulhu with the serial numbers filed off. This means that it's easy to recognize the book as what it is, a commentary on the tropes of fantasy novels (general and specific.) Pratchett is writing metafiction, drawing inspiration from his predecessors even as he satirizes the conventions of the genre.
To which all Pratchett fans say, "Duh!" But Pratchett continues this trend for quite some time, even as he gets better at disguising it and more creative in his satire. Cohen, for example, is as much a Conan parody as Hrun, but instead of simply being another big dumb barbarian, he's a fully realized and poignant character with real depth. But he's still a parody of a fantasy trope, just as Granny Weatherwax satirizes the conventions both of the "young apprentice" genre of fantasy novels and the traditional notions of "wicked witches" from fairy tales and popular culture. Even as the cast of the series expands (Lawrence Watt-Evans identifies eight separate sub-series in his book "The Turtle Moves"), the metafiction aspect remains a constant.
But significantly, starting roughly around the time of "Wyrd Sisters", he's no longer just satirizing fantasy, he's drawing on reality for inspiration as well. Hwel, the dwarvish playwright, is used as a lens to look at Shakespeare and the theater in general (and cinema as well, in a few memorable gags.) The Ephebian philosophers in "Pyramids" twist and warp the ancient Greeks (to delightful effect.) Pratchett is still writing satire, but he's gradually moving away from metafiction into satire of the real world. "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music" are the most obvious and direct examples of this, but all the Discworld novels take on the flavor of a world we recognize.
But the real world is decidedly unlike fantasy kingdoms in one major aspect. (At least one major aspect, that is. Obviously, the real world doesn't have vampires, werewolves, dwarves, trolls, and magic...although curiously, this is where magic, in the showy flashy sense, really starts to vanish from the series.) A fantasy story is usually about the restoration of the old order--once there was a long, static period when things were good, things are now changing and that's bad, the hero brings back the true king or the magic talisman or whatever, and the change is undone. Let me just re-emphasize that bit. The change is undone.
In "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music", that's exactly what happens. With a magical zap, the wild ideas that infested the Discworld are forced out, and everyone feels slightly sheepish and wonders why they were so obsessed with the clicks or Music With Rocks In. (It's significant that the danger in "Moving Pictures" is that the Discworld is such a thin construct that it could be torn apart if people stop believing in it. Too much reality makes the cracks in the fantasy show.) Pratchett is using the Discworld to comment on reality, but the Disc itself is still recognizably a fantasy world. (In the sense of being static and unchanging, that is. It's always a recognizably fantasy world in the sense that it's flat and carried on the backs of four elephants which are, in turn, carried on the back of a giant turtle.)
But reality, that has a way of changing constantly. Sometimes for the worse, but sometimes for the better. While people might like to remember a long, static period when things were good (and write that nostalgia into fantasy stories which then become meat for satirists), the fact is that the past wasn't as static as you remember, and probably not as good, either. A series that's genuinely satirizing the real world, instead of just borrowing elements of it, is going to have to change.
And so, the storytelling engine of the Discworld, the elements of it that help Pratchett come up with story ideas, that has to become about change instead of stagnation. The first novel that undeniably ends with the world in a different place than it began is "Small Gods", a novel that uses the Church of Om to comment on the ways that religion has modernized to fit into a newer, more enlightened secular world. In addition to being frankly brilliant, it is a novel that doesn't retreat from the ideas it expresses. The Omnian Church after "Small Gods" is a different church, inspiring different ideas in later novels.
But "Small Gods" also takes place some distance away from the main events of the Discworld. It's a big shift, but it's one that's easy to ignore when it doesn't affect Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind or even Death to any significant degree. No, the novel that definitively states, "The world is changing and this is now the well from which inspiration is drawn," is "The Truth".
Watt-Evans dismisses "The Truth" pretty casually in "The Turtle Moves", lumping it in the same pile as "Moving Pictures" and "Soul Music" (with "newspapers" taking the place of "movies" and "rock music".) With all due respect to an author whose work I enjoy, this misses the biggest point of the book--this isn't a wild idea, summoned by magic and prone to rip a hole in the fabric of the Discworld. This is a printing press, made by mundane hands and inspired by good old-fashioned intelligence. (Pratchett even comments on his own tendencies at one point, as the Patrician asks a series of weary questions in an effort to make sure that the whole enterprise isn't going to destroy the world.) The notion of change, of modernization really crystalizes here and becomes the engine for the series at just about every point after that.
Unfortunately, Terry Pratchett's tragic diagnosis of Alzheimer's means that the Discworld series will be winding down soon. Although he is continuing to write for as long as he can, the disease will eventually take its toll, and I think I speak for just about all fans of the series when I fervently hope that nobody will attempt to fill his shoes just for the sake of keeping the franchise going. So after perhaps forty novels, a half dozen short stories, and numerous ancillary books and other materials, the Discworld's story will end. But that body of work is a testament to just how well the Discworld's storytelling engine works, as one of the best satirists in literature today turned his observations on the world into stories time and time again.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
It's Time To Charge the Rings Up...
So we're now approaching "The Blackest Night", the final war between the various Lantern Corps of the emotional spectrum. Green, Red, Blue, Black, Orange, Violet, Yellow, and Indigo will all slug it out for the fate of the DC Universe! But obviously, they'll need reinforcements. After all, the more ring-bearers the better. So I'm coming to the aid of the Corps as well as the writers of the mega-event by suggesting some additional characters who could participate in the battle to end all battles, some well-known mainstays who could really stoke the fans' excitement and get them talking.
For the Red Lanterns, the color of "rage", the obvious choice is Animal. Sure, Kermit the Frog has his occasional outbursts of temper, but how can even Atrocitus compare to a barely-contained beast whose fury is such that he only bowls overhand? If anything, Animal could wind up leading the Red Lantern Corps.
And who better to join the Orange Lanterns ("avarice") than Oscar the Grouch? He wouldn't be a leader, but his fervent passion for scavenging the unwanted relics of modern society would give him a power that would endure while other members of that Corps were defeated. Others might covet money, wealth, gold or gems...but how do you stop someone who can even want an old torn sneaker with that same degree of intensity? Oscar could be the Orange Lanterns' secret weapon.
An important thing to keep in mind, when picking someone to join the Yellow Lantern Corps, is that you're looking for someone who inflicts fear, not someone who is fearful themselves. With that in mind, I'd suggest Statler and Waldorf. These two are well-known for being able to reduce full-grown bears to quivering, whimpering bundles of nerves with nothing more than their acid wit. Imagine what they could do to Kyle Rayner? ("I hear he designed that costume himself!" "Sure! Nobody else would admit to it!")
And of course, who knows better than Kermit the Frog that it's not that easy to be a Green Lantern? He's had experience managing large numbers of strange-looking creatures with diverse temperaments and getting them to work together, and he knows sinister secrets about the emotional spectrum that the Guardians might be hiding from others. ("Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide...so we've been told and some choose to believe it, I know they're wrong, wait and see...")
It's almost hard to choose a single member for the Blue Lanterns, the color of hope. After all, there are a lot of very optimistic characters out there to choose from. But I'd have to say that Gonzo the Great best symbolizes the hope that characterizes the Blue Lantern Corps--after all, he sincerely believes that someday, people will watch him eating a rubber tire to the music of "Flight of the Bumblebee" and call it Art. That takes a lot of hope.
This could have the potential to create some serious drama and conflict in the story, because the Indigo Lanterns of compassion have chosen Camilla the Chicken to aid them in this epic conflict. With her constant selfless concern for Gonzo's well-being, her loyalties will be torn to the breaking point. (I'm expecting that this will be the moment that all the fans remember.)
And of course, Star Sapphire's irrational obsession with Hal Jordan is nothing next to Miss Piggy and her love of Kermit. This makes her the perfect choice for the Violet Lantern Corps, who use the power of love to fuel their rings. And unlike that wussy Carol Ferris, Miss Piggy's fully capable of defending herself even without a ring. Hiiii-yaa!
Which just leaves the Black Lanterns, the Corps of death. Several prominent deceased DC characters have already been revealed to be Black Lanterns, such as the Martian Manhunter and the Earth-2 Superman, but their terror pales next to that of Uncle Deadly, the sinister Muppet inspired by none other than Vincent Price himself. The Uncle Deadly/Mogo fight is going to be one that fans are talking about for ages.
In fact, if DC takes my advice, I think fans will be talking about this whole crossover for ages.
For the Red Lanterns, the color of "rage", the obvious choice is Animal. Sure, Kermit the Frog has his occasional outbursts of temper, but how can even Atrocitus compare to a barely-contained beast whose fury is such that he only bowls overhand? If anything, Animal could wind up leading the Red Lantern Corps.
And who better to join the Orange Lanterns ("avarice") than Oscar the Grouch? He wouldn't be a leader, but his fervent passion for scavenging the unwanted relics of modern society would give him a power that would endure while other members of that Corps were defeated. Others might covet money, wealth, gold or gems...but how do you stop someone who can even want an old torn sneaker with that same degree of intensity? Oscar could be the Orange Lanterns' secret weapon.
An important thing to keep in mind, when picking someone to join the Yellow Lantern Corps, is that you're looking for someone who inflicts fear, not someone who is fearful themselves. With that in mind, I'd suggest Statler and Waldorf. These two are well-known for being able to reduce full-grown bears to quivering, whimpering bundles of nerves with nothing more than their acid wit. Imagine what they could do to Kyle Rayner? ("I hear he designed that costume himself!" "Sure! Nobody else would admit to it!")
And of course, who knows better than Kermit the Frog that it's not that easy to be a Green Lantern? He's had experience managing large numbers of strange-looking creatures with diverse temperaments and getting them to work together, and he knows sinister secrets about the emotional spectrum that the Guardians might be hiding from others. ("Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide...so we've been told and some choose to believe it, I know they're wrong, wait and see...")
It's almost hard to choose a single member for the Blue Lanterns, the color of hope. After all, there are a lot of very optimistic characters out there to choose from. But I'd have to say that Gonzo the Great best symbolizes the hope that characterizes the Blue Lantern Corps--after all, he sincerely believes that someday, people will watch him eating a rubber tire to the music of "Flight of the Bumblebee" and call it Art. That takes a lot of hope.
This could have the potential to create some serious drama and conflict in the story, because the Indigo Lanterns of compassion have chosen Camilla the Chicken to aid them in this epic conflict. With her constant selfless concern for Gonzo's well-being, her loyalties will be torn to the breaking point. (I'm expecting that this will be the moment that all the fans remember.)
And of course, Star Sapphire's irrational obsession with Hal Jordan is nothing next to Miss Piggy and her love of Kermit. This makes her the perfect choice for the Violet Lantern Corps, who use the power of love to fuel their rings. And unlike that wussy Carol Ferris, Miss Piggy's fully capable of defending herself even without a ring. Hiiii-yaa!
Which just leaves the Black Lanterns, the Corps of death. Several prominent deceased DC characters have already been revealed to be Black Lanterns, such as the Martian Manhunter and the Earth-2 Superman, but their terror pales next to that of Uncle Deadly, the sinister Muppet inspired by none other than Vincent Price himself. The Uncle Deadly/Mogo fight is going to be one that fans are talking about for ages.
In fact, if DC takes my advice, I think fans will be talking about this whole crossover for ages.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Universal's "Invisible Man"
(or "Like '100 Bullets', But Without The Bullets")
The problem with creating an open-ended series from H.G. Wells' classic novel, 'The Invisible Man', is fairly obvious when you read it; not to spoil the big surprise, but the title character winds up dead by the end of the story. This makes it a little bit tricky to continue telling tales about him (a common theme among Universal's horror films, as we've seen in the past. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon all met similar fates.)
But, as with those other monsters, that didn't stop Universal from deciding to make a sequel to a profitable film. It fell to Lester Cole, Curt Siodmak, and Joe May to find a way to turn the one-off story into a storytelling engine, and they found a doozy. Sure, Jack Griffin, the inventor of the invisibility formula, might have gone mad from the side effects of his creation. Yes, he was shot and killed in order to end his reign of terror. But that's the end of Griffin, not the end of the formula.
The invisibility formula becomes the new center of the sequels that followed the continuity of the original film (which wasn't all of them. "The Invisible Woman" is a screwball comedy with a nutty professor, and "The Invisible Man's Revenge" follows a different scientist with his own formula, which he tests on someone who was pretty insane to start with.) Griffin's brother, Frank, duplicates his brother's research...but runs into the same stumbling block his brother did. There's no way to reverse the formula, and no way to cure the side effect of progressive megalomania. But for a few people who have access to the formula, the power is there...as is the price.
So the question in the sequels becomes, "What would drive someone to use such a formula?" In "The Invisible Man Returns", it's a question of necessity; the main character has been sentenced to hang for a murder he didn't commit, and has to use the formula to clear his name and find the real killer (while scientist Frank Griffin frantically searches for a cure.) In "Invisible Agent", it's an issue of patriotism; Griffin's grandson (the movie seems confused on which Griffin it is--they suggest Jack, but Frank makes more sense) uses the formula to become the ultimate Allied spy, able to walk through the streets of Berlin and steal vital secrets right out from under the Nazis...until his paranoia turns him against his German contacts. It's worth mentioning that both movies do invent a cure, in the form of massive blood transfusions--when the character you're following is more sympathetic than the original glory-hungry Jack Griffin, it's nice to be able to give them a happy ending.
Universal's sequels trailed off after that, but the "invisibility formula" MacGuffin can easily provide more seeds for stories in the hands of an intelligent writer. Giving a power that carries a price to a desperate man or woman isn't just a good way to start a story, it's a resonant one; we've all felt the touch of obsession and its dangers to some degree or another, and whether the protagonist manages to pull back from the brink of madness or falls into its depths, their struggle reminds us of the risks of giving everything up for a single cause.
The problem with creating an open-ended series from H.G. Wells' classic novel, 'The Invisible Man', is fairly obvious when you read it; not to spoil the big surprise, but the title character winds up dead by the end of the story. This makes it a little bit tricky to continue telling tales about him (a common theme among Universal's horror films, as we've seen in the past. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon all met similar fates.)
But, as with those other monsters, that didn't stop Universal from deciding to make a sequel to a profitable film. It fell to Lester Cole, Curt Siodmak, and Joe May to find a way to turn the one-off story into a storytelling engine, and they found a doozy. Sure, Jack Griffin, the inventor of the invisibility formula, might have gone mad from the side effects of his creation. Yes, he was shot and killed in order to end his reign of terror. But that's the end of Griffin, not the end of the formula.
The invisibility formula becomes the new center of the sequels that followed the continuity of the original film (which wasn't all of them. "The Invisible Woman" is a screwball comedy with a nutty professor, and "The Invisible Man's Revenge" follows a different scientist with his own formula, which he tests on someone who was pretty insane to start with.) Griffin's brother, Frank, duplicates his brother's research...but runs into the same stumbling block his brother did. There's no way to reverse the formula, and no way to cure the side effect of progressive megalomania. But for a few people who have access to the formula, the power is there...as is the price.
So the question in the sequels becomes, "What would drive someone to use such a formula?" In "The Invisible Man Returns", it's a question of necessity; the main character has been sentenced to hang for a murder he didn't commit, and has to use the formula to clear his name and find the real killer (while scientist Frank Griffin frantically searches for a cure.) In "Invisible Agent", it's an issue of patriotism; Griffin's grandson (the movie seems confused on which Griffin it is--they suggest Jack, but Frank makes more sense) uses the formula to become the ultimate Allied spy, able to walk through the streets of Berlin and steal vital secrets right out from under the Nazis...until his paranoia turns him against his German contacts. It's worth mentioning that both movies do invent a cure, in the form of massive blood transfusions--when the character you're following is more sympathetic than the original glory-hungry Jack Griffin, it's nice to be able to give them a happy ending.
Universal's sequels trailed off after that, but the "invisibility formula" MacGuffin can easily provide more seeds for stories in the hands of an intelligent writer. Giving a power that carries a price to a desperate man or woman isn't just a good way to start a story, it's a resonant one; we've all felt the touch of obsession and its dangers to some degree or another, and whether the protagonist manages to pull back from the brink of madness or falls into its depths, their struggle reminds us of the risks of giving everything up for a single cause.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Top Five Movies Due For a Remake
This post is actually coming to you from sunny Texas (OK, rainy Texas, but it beats single-digit Minnesota temperatures.) And I'm stuck for an idea, I'm wasting time that could be spent watching my niece be goofy, and it's only my superhuman dedication to my reading audience that keeps me from just skipping this week. (The smart-alecks among you may point out that I'm "superhumanly" posting this two days late. That's not the point, people, stay focused.)
So I'm just going for the easy post this week: Given that Hollywood seems to be remaking just about everything, why don't we use that power for good and direct them to some movies that need a little remake love? Here's five movies that need to be remade today, and why.
5. The Last Starfighter. This one had it all--a brilliant high concept, action a-plenty, heroes fighting it out for the future of the human race, and some classic one-liners ("What do we do now?" "Die.") But unfortunately, they decided to go with CGI graphics when those were still in their gestation, let alone their infancy, they had a slightly-below-par budget for the flick, and as a result, I don't think it was realized quite as well as it should be. Admittedly, a remake would lose Robert Preston's wonderful performance, but it's not like it erases the original from the shelves.
4. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. No, seriously. Ben Edlund agrees with me, and he made "The Tick"! It's a fun, goofy idea for a kid's movie, with Martians trying to kidnap Santa Claus to make the Martian children happy, but it suffers from several poor performances and the lowest production values of any movie in history. (Seriously, Ed Wood spent more money on his films.) Imagine for about five seconds what Pixar could do with this, and you'll agree it belongs here.
3. The Lost World. Not the "Jurassic Park" sequel, although given how bad that turned out, they could probably stand to take another whack at it. No, I mean the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "hidden valley of dinosaurs" classic, done with reimagined special effects, a huge budget, and not necessarily a slavish devotion to the original like "King Kong" had.
2. All Quiet on the Western Front. This is pretty much here as a representative of all those great classic "should be made into a movie once for every generation, as a lens through which we can examine ourselves" books. The story is about World War I, but so timeless that it always seems to be about the current war, and it'd be nice to see a lavishly produced version by someone like Spielberg. (Think "Saving Private Ryan" in WWI...)
1. The Universal Horror films. I've been going on about this at length for some time now (and I'm not done--next week is "The Invisible Man"), but seriously, these could be evergreen franchises for Universal if they only took the time and effort to develop them. These could be like the James Bond movies, vehicles for unlimited numbers of popular sequels, so long as Universal doesn't make the mistake it did last time of diluting the brand with low-quality, shoddy sequels that they figured would sell simply on the strength of the title. A slick, unpretentious, exciting remake of "Dracula" is always going to work, whether today, tomorrow, or a hundred years from now.
So I'm just going for the easy post this week: Given that Hollywood seems to be remaking just about everything, why don't we use that power for good and direct them to some movies that need a little remake love? Here's five movies that need to be remade today, and why.
5. The Last Starfighter. This one had it all--a brilliant high concept, action a-plenty, heroes fighting it out for the future of the human race, and some classic one-liners ("What do we do now?" "Die.") But unfortunately, they decided to go with CGI graphics when those were still in their gestation, let alone their infancy, they had a slightly-below-par budget for the flick, and as a result, I don't think it was realized quite as well as it should be. Admittedly, a remake would lose Robert Preston's wonderful performance, but it's not like it erases the original from the shelves.
4. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. No, seriously. Ben Edlund agrees with me, and he made "The Tick"! It's a fun, goofy idea for a kid's movie, with Martians trying to kidnap Santa Claus to make the Martian children happy, but it suffers from several poor performances and the lowest production values of any movie in history. (Seriously, Ed Wood spent more money on his films.) Imagine for about five seconds what Pixar could do with this, and you'll agree it belongs here.
3. The Lost World. Not the "Jurassic Park" sequel, although given how bad that turned out, they could probably stand to take another whack at it. No, I mean the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "hidden valley of dinosaurs" classic, done with reimagined special effects, a huge budget, and not necessarily a slavish devotion to the original like "King Kong" had.
2. All Quiet on the Western Front. This is pretty much here as a representative of all those great classic "should be made into a movie once for every generation, as a lens through which we can examine ourselves" books. The story is about World War I, but so timeless that it always seems to be about the current war, and it'd be nice to see a lavishly produced version by someone like Spielberg. (Think "Saving Private Ryan" in WWI...)
1. The Universal Horror films. I've been going on about this at length for some time now (and I'm not done--next week is "The Invisible Man"), but seriously, these could be evergreen franchises for Universal if they only took the time and effort to develop them. These could be like the James Bond movies, vehicles for unlimited numbers of popular sequels, so long as Universal doesn't make the mistake it did last time of diluting the brand with low-quality, shoddy sequels that they figured would sell simply on the strength of the title. A slick, unpretentious, exciting remake of "Dracula" is always going to work, whether today, tomorrow, or a hundred years from now.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Sherlock Holmes
(or "The Ultimate Success")
I'm currently in the midst of reading Kelly Hale's fascinating (and undeservedly obscure) novel, "Erasing Sherlock", and it occurs to me that a large part of the reason it works so well is that the phenomenon it describes feels so real. The book, for those who haven't read it, is about a time-traveling historian who insinuates herself into the life of Holmes as a maid, in order to observe the Great Detective first-hand and discover details of his life, methods and motivations that Watson never wrote down. (Naturally, from there things Go Horribly Wrong, but I'll leave it to you to find out how. Amazon's still got it for sale...) The reason this feels so real is that large numbers of people do involve themselves in "The Great Game" of treating Watson's writings as actual accounts of a real person, analyzing and studying them with an almost obsessive fervor to learn everything they can about Sherlock Holmes...despite the fact that not only was Holmes not real, neither was Watson.
So what exactly is it that makes the Holmes canon such a magnificent storytelling engine that not only could it generate four novels and fifty-six short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not only could it generate hosts of additional novels, short stories, TV shows and movies by authors like Kelly Hale, not only could it inspire fictional detectives like "Monk" and "House", but it could actually inspire people to treat it as though it was a genuinely non-fictional story about real people?
For starters, there's the character of Holmes himself. Doyle imbued the man with a brilliant complexity that lends astonishing verisimilitude to the stories. Holmes doesn't feel like a fictional character (and according to Doyle, was based on an actual person to some degree); he's mercurial, contradictory, displaying a full range of the moods and feelings that real human beings display (for better or worse, sometimes.) He's not exactly charming; in fact, you could make a good case that you wouldn't want to get stuck on a long train ride with the man. But he is fascinating, which is absolutely key for any character that the audience is going to be following for any length of time.
But don't underestimate the importance of Watson. For all that Holmes is the central character, Watson is as key to the series as the companion is to 'Doctor Who'. (Which reminds me, as long as I'm plugging non-canonical Holmes, if you can track down the sadly out-of-print 'All-Consuming Fire', by Andy Lane, you'll get an excellent Holmes/Doctor team-up.) Watson fulfills Holmes' emotional need to explain his brilliant deductions, but more than that, he provides a mechanism to get those deductions from Holmes' mind to the audience in a naturalistic way. A Holmes story without Watson would consist of Holmes grabbing a random man and saying, "He did it!" And where would be the fun in that?
But the final element, and the one that works the hardest to make the Holmes canon seem not just believable but actually real, is the world he operates in. Doyle set the series in what was, for him, the modern day, and grounded it in the familiar world around him. But Doyle's great gift was in bringing those details to life in ways that made them accessible even to someone who didn't live in Victorian London. To a reader picking up the Holmes series a hundred years later, Doyle paints a vivid picture of a time and place that we know to have been real, then inserts his fictional creations into them so seamlessly that it's almost impossible to find the gap. We can believe in a police plodder like Inspector Lestrade, or a matronly boarding-house owner like Mrs. Hudson, or the thousands of tiny details on everything from slum life to hansom cabs to politics that form the world Holmes operates in.
Because of that, it's small wonder that Holmes seems to have taken on a life of his own. Even when his own creator decided to kill him off once and for all, Holmes managed to survive because the audience wouldn't let him be dead. How real is he? He's got a survival instinct, that's how real he is.
I'm currently in the midst of reading Kelly Hale's fascinating (and undeservedly obscure) novel, "Erasing Sherlock", and it occurs to me that a large part of the reason it works so well is that the phenomenon it describes feels so real. The book, for those who haven't read it, is about a time-traveling historian who insinuates herself into the life of Holmes as a maid, in order to observe the Great Detective first-hand and discover details of his life, methods and motivations that Watson never wrote down. (Naturally, from there things Go Horribly Wrong, but I'll leave it to you to find out how. Amazon's still got it for sale...) The reason this feels so real is that large numbers of people do involve themselves in "The Great Game" of treating Watson's writings as actual accounts of a real person, analyzing and studying them with an almost obsessive fervor to learn everything they can about Sherlock Holmes...despite the fact that not only was Holmes not real, neither was Watson.
So what exactly is it that makes the Holmes canon such a magnificent storytelling engine that not only could it generate four novels and fifty-six short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not only could it generate hosts of additional novels, short stories, TV shows and movies by authors like Kelly Hale, not only could it inspire fictional detectives like "Monk" and "House", but it could actually inspire people to treat it as though it was a genuinely non-fictional story about real people?
For starters, there's the character of Holmes himself. Doyle imbued the man with a brilliant complexity that lends astonishing verisimilitude to the stories. Holmes doesn't feel like a fictional character (and according to Doyle, was based on an actual person to some degree); he's mercurial, contradictory, displaying a full range of the moods and feelings that real human beings display (for better or worse, sometimes.) He's not exactly charming; in fact, you could make a good case that you wouldn't want to get stuck on a long train ride with the man. But he is fascinating, which is absolutely key for any character that the audience is going to be following for any length of time.
But don't underestimate the importance of Watson. For all that Holmes is the central character, Watson is as key to the series as the companion is to 'Doctor Who'. (Which reminds me, as long as I'm plugging non-canonical Holmes, if you can track down the sadly out-of-print 'All-Consuming Fire', by Andy Lane, you'll get an excellent Holmes/Doctor team-up.) Watson fulfills Holmes' emotional need to explain his brilliant deductions, but more than that, he provides a mechanism to get those deductions from Holmes' mind to the audience in a naturalistic way. A Holmes story without Watson would consist of Holmes grabbing a random man and saying, "He did it!" And where would be the fun in that?
But the final element, and the one that works the hardest to make the Holmes canon seem not just believable but actually real, is the world he operates in. Doyle set the series in what was, for him, the modern day, and grounded it in the familiar world around him. But Doyle's great gift was in bringing those details to life in ways that made them accessible even to someone who didn't live in Victorian London. To a reader picking up the Holmes series a hundred years later, Doyle paints a vivid picture of a time and place that we know to have been real, then inserts his fictional creations into them so seamlessly that it's almost impossible to find the gap. We can believe in a police plodder like Inspector Lestrade, or a matronly boarding-house owner like Mrs. Hudson, or the thousands of tiny details on everything from slum life to hansom cabs to politics that form the world Holmes operates in.
Because of that, it's small wonder that Holmes seems to have taken on a life of his own. Even when his own creator decided to kill him off once and for all, Holmes managed to survive because the audience wouldn't let him be dead. How real is he? He's got a survival instinct, that's how real he is.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Personal Favorites: Flash #50
Today, I just wanted to take a moment to talk about something I love; don't think of it as a formal review, so much as me talking about something awesome and saying, "Isn't that COOL!" like a six-year-old. Because let's face it, sometimes we all need to let out our inner six-year-old. This does mean there'll be spoilers, BTW, so if you just want to experience the issue unspoiled first and then come here and reminisce about it with me, I'd advise running to a comics shop and finding the back issue before reading this.
The subject of my gushing adoration is Flash #50, published in May of 1991, written by the wonderful (and woefully underused these days) William Messner-Loebs, penciled by the talented Greg LaRocque and inked by the equally talented Jose Marzan Jr, with Tim Harkins providing the lettering and Glenn Whitmore handling the coloring, and the underappreciated Brian Augustyn taking care of editing duties.
To fully appreciate this story, you have to understand that Messner-Loebs had been building up to it for a while. Vandal Savage, immortal super-villain, had returned, and he was well and truly making Wally West's life a living hell. He'd kidnapped Wally's friends and family, turned a Russian super-speedster into his drug-addicted slave and dubbed her "Lady Flash", feeding her a super-speed drug called "Velocity 9" to make her as fast as the Flash, and finally set a trap for Wally out in the desert. Actually, it was more sort of a dare than a trap. At the end of Flash #49, Vandal Savage displayed his latest gizmo, a kinetic absorption platform. Standing on it sucked away the Flash's super-speed, leaving him no faster than a normal man. The dare was this: Vandal Savage would let the Flash's loved ones go if he just went and stood on that platform. After that, if he could get back off of it before Vandal Savage could shoot him, he could do whatever he wanted.
So the Flash stepped onto the platform...and Vandal Savage shot him in the chest. (Best. Cliffhanger. Ever.)
We open the issue with Wally bleeding out in the desert sands, as Vandal Savage (true to his word) returns Wally's loved ones to safety. But Messner-Loebs has been setting this up for a while, and one of the things he set up was that the machine intellect Kilg%re, a former-enemy-turned-enlightened-being, promised Wally one big favor. Turns out that favor was a nanite colony in his body that would give him a one-time instant heal from any injury, no matter how apparently fatal. Nice deal, really, and Wally returns to life feeling just fine (albeit slightly freaked out at watching machines erupt out of his chest and fix his wounds.) In fact, he's feeling better than ever--his near-death experience has finally liberated him from his fears of being in Barry Allen's shadow as the Flash.
Meanwhile, Vandal Savage is using Lady Flash to clear out his competitors in the drug trade. He's planning, in his own way, to be altruistic--he's going to corner the drug market, then flood it with tainted product and end the drug problem by killing all the addicts. (He's got a bit of an issue with drugs, since an accident with Velocity 9 is burning up his immortality.) He is, to say the least, confident with the Flash out of the way.
Now is where things kick into gear. Wally goes to STAR Labs and gets a slick new costume (Lady Flash has his old one), and then uses a hologram generator to contact Vandal Savage, telling him that he's not dead, and that he's coming for him at noon tomorrow. "Why did you do that?" one of Flash's allies asked. "You lost the advantage of surprise!"
"I replaced it with something better," Wally says in the second-best line of the issue. "Fear."
Noon tomorrow, and Savage thinks he's ready for the showdown. He's got his desert mansion ringed with the speed-sapping devices, he's got armed gunmen, he's got Lady Flash hopped up on V-9 and ready to fight. Whatever's coming, he can handle it.
He's wrong. The Flash races across the desert so fast the sand is melting to glass under his feet, sending up plumes of liquified sand behind him as he runs. He slams into the speed-sappers at Mach Ungodly, instantly overloading their capacity to absorb energy and causing them all to go up in a massive explosion that knocks half the gunmen out of commission with its shockwave and leaves the whole place a blinding mix of smoke, flames, and blowing sand. In the ensuing eyeblink, the rest of the gunmen go down. It's just the Flash, Savage, and Lady Flash.
Gun out, Savage snarls defiance, ordering Lady Flash to kill him. But she refuses--she's fallen so low, but deep down, she wants to live up to the costume she wears. She wants to be a hero, and the first step is breaking her shameful subservience to Savage. She finds within her a nobility of spirit that she'd lost, and refuses to fight.
Savage is furious. He empties his entire pistol into her at point-blank range, less than an inch away from her skin. They both look down at the same time...but her skin is unmarked. "How--" Savage gasps. "Even with your speed, you could not have--"
From his position twenty feet away, the Flash opens his hand. Six bullets fall out onto the dust. "I caught them," he says, in the best line of the issue. "I could have caught them from fifty feet away, a hundred yards away, two miles away." He starts walking, slowly and confidently, towards Savage. "People always told me that I could be just as fast as Barry, if only I believed it. They're right." He grabs the barrel of the gun, and brings Savage's arm up to point the pistol at his own head. "Care to try another six shots? I've reloaded the gun for you."
That moment is immortalized in my mind, even eighteen years later.
Savage gives up on victory at that point and tries to flee, only to be stopped by his old foe the Immortal Man (whose own powers are in flux, thanks to his connection with Savage--he looks about twelve at the moment.) Their mixed-up powers react on contact with each other, and the explosion leaves neither of them to be seen...but Wally's stopped his drug trade and broken his empire, while finally casting off his self-doubts and becoming the hero he was meant to be.
Many people point to Mark Waid's run on the series as the point where Wally became a legitimate Flash, but I think it began here--certainly, Messner-Loebs seemed to feel he'd done enough, as he left the series a few issues later (although as with any writer's departure, it could have been involuntary.) But I think that this issue capped off a stellar run by a great writer, and it remains a favorite of mine to this day. If you can track it down in back issue boxes, it's well worth reading. (Okay, so there's a bit of "review-ness" to this. But only a bit.)
The subject of my gushing adoration is Flash #50, published in May of 1991, written by the wonderful (and woefully underused these days) William Messner-Loebs, penciled by the talented Greg LaRocque and inked by the equally talented Jose Marzan Jr, with Tim Harkins providing the lettering and Glenn Whitmore handling the coloring, and the underappreciated Brian Augustyn taking care of editing duties.
To fully appreciate this story, you have to understand that Messner-Loebs had been building up to it for a while. Vandal Savage, immortal super-villain, had returned, and he was well and truly making Wally West's life a living hell. He'd kidnapped Wally's friends and family, turned a Russian super-speedster into his drug-addicted slave and dubbed her "Lady Flash", feeding her a super-speed drug called "Velocity 9" to make her as fast as the Flash, and finally set a trap for Wally out in the desert. Actually, it was more sort of a dare than a trap. At the end of Flash #49, Vandal Savage displayed his latest gizmo, a kinetic absorption platform. Standing on it sucked away the Flash's super-speed, leaving him no faster than a normal man. The dare was this: Vandal Savage would let the Flash's loved ones go if he just went and stood on that platform. After that, if he could get back off of it before Vandal Savage could shoot him, he could do whatever he wanted.
So the Flash stepped onto the platform...and Vandal Savage shot him in the chest. (Best. Cliffhanger. Ever.)
We open the issue with Wally bleeding out in the desert sands, as Vandal Savage (true to his word) returns Wally's loved ones to safety. But Messner-Loebs has been setting this up for a while, and one of the things he set up was that the machine intellect Kilg%re, a former-enemy-turned-enlightened-being, promised Wally one big favor. Turns out that favor was a nanite colony in his body that would give him a one-time instant heal from any injury, no matter how apparently fatal. Nice deal, really, and Wally returns to life feeling just fine (albeit slightly freaked out at watching machines erupt out of his chest and fix his wounds.) In fact, he's feeling better than ever--his near-death experience has finally liberated him from his fears of being in Barry Allen's shadow as the Flash.
Meanwhile, Vandal Savage is using Lady Flash to clear out his competitors in the drug trade. He's planning, in his own way, to be altruistic--he's going to corner the drug market, then flood it with tainted product and end the drug problem by killing all the addicts. (He's got a bit of an issue with drugs, since an accident with Velocity 9 is burning up his immortality.) He is, to say the least, confident with the Flash out of the way.
Now is where things kick into gear. Wally goes to STAR Labs and gets a slick new costume (Lady Flash has his old one), and then uses a hologram generator to contact Vandal Savage, telling him that he's not dead, and that he's coming for him at noon tomorrow. "Why did you do that?" one of Flash's allies asked. "You lost the advantage of surprise!"
"I replaced it with something better," Wally says in the second-best line of the issue. "Fear."
Noon tomorrow, and Savage thinks he's ready for the showdown. He's got his desert mansion ringed with the speed-sapping devices, he's got armed gunmen, he's got Lady Flash hopped up on V-9 and ready to fight. Whatever's coming, he can handle it.
He's wrong. The Flash races across the desert so fast the sand is melting to glass under his feet, sending up plumes of liquified sand behind him as he runs. He slams into the speed-sappers at Mach Ungodly, instantly overloading their capacity to absorb energy and causing them all to go up in a massive explosion that knocks half the gunmen out of commission with its shockwave and leaves the whole place a blinding mix of smoke, flames, and blowing sand. In the ensuing eyeblink, the rest of the gunmen go down. It's just the Flash, Savage, and Lady Flash.
Gun out, Savage snarls defiance, ordering Lady Flash to kill him. But she refuses--she's fallen so low, but deep down, she wants to live up to the costume she wears. She wants to be a hero, and the first step is breaking her shameful subservience to Savage. She finds within her a nobility of spirit that she'd lost, and refuses to fight.
Savage is furious. He empties his entire pistol into her at point-blank range, less than an inch away from her skin. They both look down at the same time...but her skin is unmarked. "How--" Savage gasps. "Even with your speed, you could not have--"
From his position twenty feet away, the Flash opens his hand. Six bullets fall out onto the dust. "I caught them," he says, in the best line of the issue. "I could have caught them from fifty feet away, a hundred yards away, two miles away." He starts walking, slowly and confidently, towards Savage. "People always told me that I could be just as fast as Barry, if only I believed it. They're right." He grabs the barrel of the gun, and brings Savage's arm up to point the pistol at his own head. "Care to try another six shots? I've reloaded the gun for you."
That moment is immortalized in my mind, even eighteen years later.
Savage gives up on victory at that point and tries to flee, only to be stopped by his old foe the Immortal Man (whose own powers are in flux, thanks to his connection with Savage--he looks about twelve at the moment.) Their mixed-up powers react on contact with each other, and the explosion leaves neither of them to be seen...but Wally's stopped his drug trade and broken his empire, while finally casting off his self-doubts and becoming the hero he was meant to be.
Many people point to Mark Waid's run on the series as the point where Wally became a legitimate Flash, but I think it began here--certainly, Messner-Loebs seemed to feel he'd done enough, as he left the series a few issues later (although as with any writer's departure, it could have been involuntary.) But I think that this issue capped off a stellar run by a great writer, and it remains a favorite of mine to this day. If you can track it down in back issue boxes, it's well worth reading. (Okay, so there's a bit of "review-ness" to this. But only a bit.)
Saturday, February 28, 2009
My Marvel/DC Crossover
Everyone remembers these things, right? Back in the 90s, when somehow the editorial staffs of both companies were just so mellow towards each other that they were like, "Sure, let's do two Batman/Punisher crossovers! And a Green Lantern/Silver Surfer, and a Superman/FF, and a couple of 'everyone gets together and pounds the snot out of everyone else' crossovers...why the heck not, these things are a license to print money!"
That Golden Era is pretty much over now (which is a shame just for the lack of new Amalgam titles--'Lobo the Duck' alone was worth the entire existence of that concept.) Marvel and DC are pretty much at loggerheads, scrapping for the title of "#1 Comics Company", and the last inter-company crossover was about five years ago now (and arguably, that only got made because George Perez made it a personal crusade to get it done.) So sad to say, my idea for a new Marvel/DC crossover will have to remain here, in this blog. Which doesn't mean you don't want to hear it, right? (er, right?)
It's a typical day in the Marvel and DC universes (a typical pre-Civil War, pre-Final Crisis Day), and Spidey's swinging through mid-town Manhattan and Superman's flying through Metropolis and everything's right in the world...or at least as right as things usually get in a comic-book world, because as usual, super-villains pop up and scheme their usual schemes. The Joker has a plan to plant laughing gas bombs in City Hall, the Rhino is robbing a bank, Doctor Octopus is stealing some scientific equipment from STAR Labs...
"Hang on a second," our reader says. "STAR Labs?" Because that's the trick of it. The readers realize it just before the characters do, but all the villains are in the wrong universe. The Joker's wondering who this newcomer is that's got the funky goo coming out of his wrists, the Rhino's wondering why his strongest punches don't hurt the guy in the blue long-johns, and in short, the heroes are right where they should be, but the villains aren't.
There'd be a bunch of one-shots set around the main story of issue #1, telling self-contained stories about heroes confronting these out-of-place villains. So you'd get a "Superman Vs. Juggernaut" one-shot, a "Hulk Vs. Doomsday" one-shot, a "Spider-Man Vs. the Joker" one-shot, a "Batman Vs. the Green Goblin" one-shot, et cetera et cetera et cetera. (Well, as many "et ceteras" as the market would bear, but come on, everyone has to have their own dream fight for this. Captain America vs. Kobra? Wonder Woman battles the Red Skull? The possibilities are endless...)
While the heroes are all off dealing with the various crises and catastrophes caused by panicky villains wreaking havoc, it falls to Doom to investigate the reason for it all. He finds that Darkseid has captured Access on Apokalips (Access is a character who can travel back and forth between the Marvel and DC universes freely, as established all the way back in the original "DC Vs. Marvel" crossover), and has hooked him up to a machine that exists in both the Marvel and DC universes, one that forces Access to use his powers. The machine is being looked after by Thanos, who has teamed up with Darkseid (they've been communicating through Access, natch.) It turns out that after Darkseid tried to use the Infinity Gems in the DC Universe and failed (because they're a Marvel artifact, with no power in the DC Universe--this comes from "JLA/Avengers"), he got to thinking...if the Infinity Gems are the most powerful relic in the Marvel Universe, but they have no power in DC's universe, what if there were counterparts that acted the opposite way? And what if those counterparts were disposed of at some point in the history of the DC Universe by some do-gooder like Access who could travel back and forth? And how powerful might those artifacts be if someone were to bring them back?
Darkseid and Thanos decided to test that theory. In order to keep the heroes out of the way, they swapped over a bunch of other villains at the same time as their own switch (Darkseid is now running around in the Marvel Universe, Thanos in DC.) Now they're hunting down the artifacts--Thanos is searching for the Infinity Gems, something he has a lot of experience with, while Darkseid is searching out the Eternity Spheres. Some of the cosmic heroes (the Green Lanterns, the Silver Surfer, et cetera) tweak to the plan and go after them, but it is, after all, Darkseid and Thanos we're talking about here, two master schemers with unbelievable power. They don't manage to get the complete sets of their respective artifacts, but they get enough to make them more powerful than ever before.
And then Doom steals them. Because he is, after all, Doom.
Doom uses his newfound power to siphon off the Omega Sanction, taking it for his own. He grabs the Power Cosmic, snatches the energies of the Central Power Battery--in short, he starts going on a rampage, draining away all the power sources of both universes and using them to bolster his own. The collective heroes of both universes now know about the threat and have united to defeat it, but can they?
Hell yes. A strike force of heroes breaks Access out of the machine, while a team of the greatest scientists of both universes builds a device that will super-charge the efficiency of Superman's solar-collecting physique. Once they've perfected it, Access merges Superman and Captain America to recreate Super-Soldier, the Amalgam character who combines the tactical and strategic combat skills of Cap with Superman's powers, and they hook him up to the device. He turns jet black as his body absorbs every erg of light that strikes it, giving him more power than ever and letting him go toe to toe with even a cosmically super-charged and insane Doom. They fight, the good guys win, and Access returns everyone to their own reality and goes off to have a long think about how dangerous he can be to the universe if he falls into the wrong hands.
And meanwhile, the Gems and the Spheres drift off, scattered by the fight...but scattered to which universe?
That Golden Era is pretty much over now (which is a shame just for the lack of new Amalgam titles--'Lobo the Duck' alone was worth the entire existence of that concept.) Marvel and DC are pretty much at loggerheads, scrapping for the title of "#1 Comics Company", and the last inter-company crossover was about five years ago now (and arguably, that only got made because George Perez made it a personal crusade to get it done.) So sad to say, my idea for a new Marvel/DC crossover will have to remain here, in this blog. Which doesn't mean you don't want to hear it, right? (er, right?)
It's a typical day in the Marvel and DC universes (a typical pre-Civil War, pre-Final Crisis Day), and Spidey's swinging through mid-town Manhattan and Superman's flying through Metropolis and everything's right in the world...or at least as right as things usually get in a comic-book world, because as usual, super-villains pop up and scheme their usual schemes. The Joker has a plan to plant laughing gas bombs in City Hall, the Rhino is robbing a bank, Doctor Octopus is stealing some scientific equipment from STAR Labs...
"Hang on a second," our reader says. "STAR Labs?" Because that's the trick of it. The readers realize it just before the characters do, but all the villains are in the wrong universe. The Joker's wondering who this newcomer is that's got the funky goo coming out of his wrists, the Rhino's wondering why his strongest punches don't hurt the guy in the blue long-johns, and in short, the heroes are right where they should be, but the villains aren't.
There'd be a bunch of one-shots set around the main story of issue #1, telling self-contained stories about heroes confronting these out-of-place villains. So you'd get a "Superman Vs. Juggernaut" one-shot, a "Hulk Vs. Doomsday" one-shot, a "Spider-Man Vs. the Joker" one-shot, a "Batman Vs. the Green Goblin" one-shot, et cetera et cetera et cetera. (Well, as many "et ceteras" as the market would bear, but come on, everyone has to have their own dream fight for this. Captain America vs. Kobra? Wonder Woman battles the Red Skull? The possibilities are endless...)
While the heroes are all off dealing with the various crises and catastrophes caused by panicky villains wreaking havoc, it falls to Doom to investigate the reason for it all. He finds that Darkseid has captured Access on Apokalips (Access is a character who can travel back and forth between the Marvel and DC universes freely, as established all the way back in the original "DC Vs. Marvel" crossover), and has hooked him up to a machine that exists in both the Marvel and DC universes, one that forces Access to use his powers. The machine is being looked after by Thanos, who has teamed up with Darkseid (they've been communicating through Access, natch.) It turns out that after Darkseid tried to use the Infinity Gems in the DC Universe and failed (because they're a Marvel artifact, with no power in the DC Universe--this comes from "JLA/Avengers"), he got to thinking...if the Infinity Gems are the most powerful relic in the Marvel Universe, but they have no power in DC's universe, what if there were counterparts that acted the opposite way? And what if those counterparts were disposed of at some point in the history of the DC Universe by some do-gooder like Access who could travel back and forth? And how powerful might those artifacts be if someone were to bring them back?
Darkseid and Thanos decided to test that theory. In order to keep the heroes out of the way, they swapped over a bunch of other villains at the same time as their own switch (Darkseid is now running around in the Marvel Universe, Thanos in DC.) Now they're hunting down the artifacts--Thanos is searching for the Infinity Gems, something he has a lot of experience with, while Darkseid is searching out the Eternity Spheres. Some of the cosmic heroes (the Green Lanterns, the Silver Surfer, et cetera) tweak to the plan and go after them, but it is, after all, Darkseid and Thanos we're talking about here, two master schemers with unbelievable power. They don't manage to get the complete sets of their respective artifacts, but they get enough to make them more powerful than ever before.
And then Doom steals them. Because he is, after all, Doom.
Doom uses his newfound power to siphon off the Omega Sanction, taking it for his own. He grabs the Power Cosmic, snatches the energies of the Central Power Battery--in short, he starts going on a rampage, draining away all the power sources of both universes and using them to bolster his own. The collective heroes of both universes now know about the threat and have united to defeat it, but can they?
Hell yes. A strike force of heroes breaks Access out of the machine, while a team of the greatest scientists of both universes builds a device that will super-charge the efficiency of Superman's solar-collecting physique. Once they've perfected it, Access merges Superman and Captain America to recreate Super-Soldier, the Amalgam character who combines the tactical and strategic combat skills of Cap with Superman's powers, and they hook him up to the device. He turns jet black as his body absorbs every erg of light that strikes it, giving him more power than ever and letting him go toe to toe with even a cosmically super-charged and insane Doom. They fight, the good guys win, and Access returns everyone to their own reality and goes off to have a long think about how dangerous he can be to the universe if he falls into the wrong hands.
And meanwhile, the Gems and the Spheres drift off, scattered by the fight...but scattered to which universe?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Mystery Science Theater 3000
(or "No, I Won't Compare It To 'Savage Sword Of Conan'")
'Mystery Science Theater 3000' (and 'The Film Crew' and 'Cinematic Titanic', its spiritual heirs) has a luxury that a lot of series don't possess; it doesn't really need a storytelling engine at all. The core of the concept is "comedians delivering a humorous commentary track to an existing movie", and Rifftrax shows that deep down, that alone is enough to deliver entertainment value. The extraneous elements--the sketches, the characters, the rationale for making fun of cheesy (and not-so-cheesy) movies--all that is just icing on the cake. This means that, since it doesn't necessarily have to carry the series every time, the writers of the series can and have tinkered with their storytelling engine quite a bit over the years--sometimes out of necessity, sometimes just to improve the comedy.
When it started, MST3K had a fairly involved backstory (much of which never made it to the screen.) Joel Robinson and Clayton Forrester both worked at Gizmonics Institute, a sort of "not quite mad science" university where people greeted each other by showing off their latest inventions. (Yes, that's what the Invention Exchange is supposed to be every week.) Doctor Forrester and his fellow scientist Dr. Laurence "Larry" Erhardt went renegade, hiding in a self-made secret lair called "Deep 13" and deciding to conquer the world by inflicting bad movies on people until they begged for mercy. Forrester chose Joel as his test subject, based primarily on an irrational dislike of him, and shot him into space to begin the experiment. Joel, in turn, built a series of robots out of non-essential bits of the ship to keep him company.
So that's the dynamic at the start of the series. Two mad scientist buddies on Earth, and Joel as the slightly-bemused father figure to a trio of wise-cracking robots (plus Cambot, who never talks, and Magic Voice, who doesn't have a body.) Fairly simple, but you can already see room for improvement. Doctor Erhardt doesn't really have much to distinguish him from Doctor Forrester, and there's a certain "comedy villain" dynamic that they're struggling to establish; the villain has to be evil enough to be credible as a villain, but can't actually succeed because failure is funny.
Luckily, necessity became the mother of invention as J. Elvis Weinstein, the actor playing Erhardt, left after the first season. Frank Conniff replaced him as "TV's Frank", and in so doing provided Doctor Forrester with exactly what every comedy mad scientist needs--a bumbling assistant. This freed Doctor Forrester up to become the cartoonishly evil mad scientist he needed to be for the success of the series, because Frank could foil his schemes through his sheer incompetence in carrying them out. (Why doesn't Doctor Forrester find a better lackey? Just repeat to yourself it's just a show...)
This dynamic continues through Seasons Two, Three, Four, and part of Five, and proves to be an extraordinarily stable generator of comedy sketch ideas. The robots settle into their personalities fairly quickly (Tom as pompous blowhard, Crow as exuberant man-child, Gypsy as the seemingly dim-witted one who actually has all the common sense), and the whole thing runs quite smoothly...
Until Joel Hodgson, series co-creator and the actor playing Joel Robinson, decides to leave the series. Suddenly, they're without a human host, and without a key part of the dynamic--Joel is the principal foil for the Mads, he's essential to the rationale for the series, and he acts as an authority figure to the bots (which paradoxically allows them to act out more, not less--having Joel there to put the brakes on their antics means that they can constantly push those boundaries themselves.) The series obviously needs another host, but the exact mix of elements Joel provides is irreplaceable. So how do you solve this?
Enter Mike Nelson, playing...er, Mike Nelson. Mike trades in Joel's slightly-bemused father figure role for a completely bewildered bachelor uncle, or perhaps older brother...he didn't build the bots, he's not an authority figure--or at least not one they're willing to consistently recognize. His efforts to assert some form of control over the rebellious bots, and his frequent failure (because failure is funny) becomes the new dynamic and source of comedy for the rest of the series. This gives the Mike episodes a slightly "edgier" tone, because Joel isn't there to act as a brake on the darker comedy and Mike can't fill that role, but it's nothing you can't see shades of when you look back at the older material.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Frank Conniff leaves the series, to be replaced by Mary Jo Pehl as Doctor Forrester's mother, Pearl. Pearl doesn't work very well as a second banana, for the same reasons that made her so entertaining as an occasional guest star; she's the next place up on the food chain, the figure that makes Doctor Forrester feel just as helpless and incompetent as he makes Frank feel. With her in place, suddenly he looks like the bumbling sidekick, and if there's one thing a series can't have, it's confusion as to who's the lead villain and who's the lackey.
But after six episodes (Season Seven was quite short), Trace Beaulieu bows out and Pearl becomes the lead villain. They introduce not one, but two sidekicks for her--Professor Bobo, who begins as an intelligent ape scientist but who loses about fifty IQ points an episode (because bumbling sidekicks are funnier, see above) and Observer, who actually fulfills the role of "smart, competent villain" but clearly takes his orders from Pearl (this is known, in some circles, as the "Jeeves and Wooster" comedy dynamic.) It's this final model that runs through the last three seasons of the series.
All these are mainly just variations on a theme, but it's interesting to note which variations find their rhythm and which get tinkered with over the course of the series. As the subsequent direct-to-DVD series (again, 'The Film Crew' and 'Cinematic Titanic', both very worthy successors to the original) show, vast chunks of the concept can be changed, added, or jettisoned while still retaining a good comedy dynamic ('The Film Crew' takes a mix of bored office-workers in a sinecure job and friends doing some male-bonding over a bad movie, while 'Cinematic Titanic' has vaguely conspiratorial overtones as Joel and friends reunite to save bad movies for posterity.) The core of the series, when done well, is always so vital and entertaining that the fans can enjoy a little experimentation.
'Mystery Science Theater 3000' (and 'The Film Crew' and 'Cinematic Titanic', its spiritual heirs) has a luxury that a lot of series don't possess; it doesn't really need a storytelling engine at all. The core of the concept is "comedians delivering a humorous commentary track to an existing movie", and Rifftrax shows that deep down, that alone is enough to deliver entertainment value. The extraneous elements--the sketches, the characters, the rationale for making fun of cheesy (and not-so-cheesy) movies--all that is just icing on the cake. This means that, since it doesn't necessarily have to carry the series every time, the writers of the series can and have tinkered with their storytelling engine quite a bit over the years--sometimes out of necessity, sometimes just to improve the comedy.
When it started, MST3K had a fairly involved backstory (much of which never made it to the screen.) Joel Robinson and Clayton Forrester both worked at Gizmonics Institute, a sort of "not quite mad science" university where people greeted each other by showing off their latest inventions. (Yes, that's what the Invention Exchange is supposed to be every week.) Doctor Forrester and his fellow scientist Dr. Laurence "Larry" Erhardt went renegade, hiding in a self-made secret lair called "Deep 13" and deciding to conquer the world by inflicting bad movies on people until they begged for mercy. Forrester chose Joel as his test subject, based primarily on an irrational dislike of him, and shot him into space to begin the experiment. Joel, in turn, built a series of robots out of non-essential bits of the ship to keep him company.
So that's the dynamic at the start of the series. Two mad scientist buddies on Earth, and Joel as the slightly-bemused father figure to a trio of wise-cracking robots (plus Cambot, who never talks, and Magic Voice, who doesn't have a body.) Fairly simple, but you can already see room for improvement. Doctor Erhardt doesn't really have much to distinguish him from Doctor Forrester, and there's a certain "comedy villain" dynamic that they're struggling to establish; the villain has to be evil enough to be credible as a villain, but can't actually succeed because failure is funny.
Luckily, necessity became the mother of invention as J. Elvis Weinstein, the actor playing Erhardt, left after the first season. Frank Conniff replaced him as "TV's Frank", and in so doing provided Doctor Forrester with exactly what every comedy mad scientist needs--a bumbling assistant. This freed Doctor Forrester up to become the cartoonishly evil mad scientist he needed to be for the success of the series, because Frank could foil his schemes through his sheer incompetence in carrying them out. (Why doesn't Doctor Forrester find a better lackey? Just repeat to yourself it's just a show...)
This dynamic continues through Seasons Two, Three, Four, and part of Five, and proves to be an extraordinarily stable generator of comedy sketch ideas. The robots settle into their personalities fairly quickly (Tom as pompous blowhard, Crow as exuberant man-child, Gypsy as the seemingly dim-witted one who actually has all the common sense), and the whole thing runs quite smoothly...
Until Joel Hodgson, series co-creator and the actor playing Joel Robinson, decides to leave the series. Suddenly, they're without a human host, and without a key part of the dynamic--Joel is the principal foil for the Mads, he's essential to the rationale for the series, and he acts as an authority figure to the bots (which paradoxically allows them to act out more, not less--having Joel there to put the brakes on their antics means that they can constantly push those boundaries themselves.) The series obviously needs another host, but the exact mix of elements Joel provides is irreplaceable. So how do you solve this?
Enter Mike Nelson, playing...er, Mike Nelson. Mike trades in Joel's slightly-bemused father figure role for a completely bewildered bachelor uncle, or perhaps older brother...he didn't build the bots, he's not an authority figure--or at least not one they're willing to consistently recognize. His efforts to assert some form of control over the rebellious bots, and his frequent failure (because failure is funny) becomes the new dynamic and source of comedy for the rest of the series. This gives the Mike episodes a slightly "edgier" tone, because Joel isn't there to act as a brake on the darker comedy and Mike can't fill that role, but it's nothing you can't see shades of when you look back at the older material.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Frank Conniff leaves the series, to be replaced by Mary Jo Pehl as Doctor Forrester's mother, Pearl. Pearl doesn't work very well as a second banana, for the same reasons that made her so entertaining as an occasional guest star; she's the next place up on the food chain, the figure that makes Doctor Forrester feel just as helpless and incompetent as he makes Frank feel. With her in place, suddenly he looks like the bumbling sidekick, and if there's one thing a series can't have, it's confusion as to who's the lead villain and who's the lackey.
But after six episodes (Season Seven was quite short), Trace Beaulieu bows out and Pearl becomes the lead villain. They introduce not one, but two sidekicks for her--Professor Bobo, who begins as an intelligent ape scientist but who loses about fifty IQ points an episode (because bumbling sidekicks are funnier, see above) and Observer, who actually fulfills the role of "smart, competent villain" but clearly takes his orders from Pearl (this is known, in some circles, as the "Jeeves and Wooster" comedy dynamic.) It's this final model that runs through the last three seasons of the series.
All these are mainly just variations on a theme, but it's interesting to note which variations find their rhythm and which get tinkered with over the course of the series. As the subsequent direct-to-DVD series (again, 'The Film Crew' and 'Cinematic Titanic', both very worthy successors to the original) show, vast chunks of the concept can be changed, added, or jettisoned while still retaining a good comedy dynamic ('The Film Crew' takes a mix of bored office-workers in a sinecure job and friends doing some male-bonding over a bad movie, while 'Cinematic Titanic' has vaguely conspiratorial overtones as Joel and friends reunite to save bad movies for posterity.) The core of the series, when done well, is always so vital and entertaining that the fans can enjoy a little experimentation.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The "Hidden" Theme of 'The Empty Child'
I actually hesitate to write this little analysis of the Doctor Who Series One two-parter, "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances", because it's something that seems so obvious to me that I feel kind of condescending pointing it out. But everyone has their own little blind spots, and it's entirely possible that you could be a brilliant person with great critical analysis skills and insightful recognition of themes and still manage to miss the subtext of the story--which can be summed up with the sentence, "Doctor Who is the best show on television."
The two-parter is probably now best known for introducing Captain Jack Harkness, frequent Doctor Who companion and guest star and central cast member of the spin-off, "Torchwood". Captain Jack is a ladies' man (and a man's man as well), a swift-thinking con artist, a crack shot and a debonair man about town. In general, he's exactly the kind of character you'd expect to see go from a one-off guest star to a recurring character to a series lead. But the fact that this actually happened misses a key point--Moffat was taking the piss when he came up with him.
Essentially, Captain Jack is a "Hollywoodized" version of the Doctor himself, Moffat's vision of what the character would be like if all of the quirky, eccentric edges of the character were smoothed away by slick studio executives trying to make him more "marketable". Instead of being a "Doctor", he's a "Captain". Instead of being an almost-asexual alien, he's a sexy, suave human. Instead of having a time machine that looks like an antiquated British phone booth, he's got a sleek futuristic timeship (with a "cloaking device" instead of a "chameleon circuit".) He's even got a "sonic cannon"! He's everything you'd expect a sci-fi hero to be.
He's certainly everything Rose expects a sci-fi hero to be. in the first half of the story, he "scans for alien tech", he strides around boldly zapping things with his sonic cannon, and he charms her with his debonair, Captain Kirk-esque sexuality. Next to him, Christopher Eccleston's big-eared, big-nosed Doctor, who apparently looked at his screwdriver one night and decided it needed to be a little more "sonic", looks frumpy and goofy and generally not the kind of guy who gets his own series.
But in the second half, we see what the Doctor does that Jack doesn't (and what "Doctor Who" does that other sci-fi series only make a half-hearted pretense at.) He thinks. Underneath the scares (and this one has plenty), Moffat's been carefully concealing a fact about the Monster of the Week; it has a reason for everything it does. It's not just wandering around converting people into gas-mask zombies, it's following Nancy. "Are you my Mummy?" isn't just the catch-phrase of the week, it's the desperate question of a frightened child. The Doctor doesn't save the day with a well-timed punch or a zap from a ray gun, he saves it by figuring out what's going on and fixing it with kindness, compassion, and a heroic regard for human life. ("Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!") While Jack, for all his swift-thinking con artistry, remains about six steps behind the Doctor the entire time. ("Like I said, I was there. Once. There's a banana grove there now. I like bananas.")
And in the end, when Jack makes his noble and heroic self-sacrifice, right out of the classic sci-fi mold, there's the Doctor, materializing on his sleek timeship with his clunky old TARDIS and saving the ostensible hero--and deflating his slightly-pompous death speech to boot. The Doctor, for all his "unsexiness", is the one who knows how to dance.
The two-parter is probably now best known for introducing Captain Jack Harkness, frequent Doctor Who companion and guest star and central cast member of the spin-off, "Torchwood". Captain Jack is a ladies' man (and a man's man as well), a swift-thinking con artist, a crack shot and a debonair man about town. In general, he's exactly the kind of character you'd expect to see go from a one-off guest star to a recurring character to a series lead. But the fact that this actually happened misses a key point--Moffat was taking the piss when he came up with him.
Essentially, Captain Jack is a "Hollywoodized" version of the Doctor himself, Moffat's vision of what the character would be like if all of the quirky, eccentric edges of the character were smoothed away by slick studio executives trying to make him more "marketable". Instead of being a "Doctor", he's a "Captain". Instead of being an almost-asexual alien, he's a sexy, suave human. Instead of having a time machine that looks like an antiquated British phone booth, he's got a sleek futuristic timeship (with a "cloaking device" instead of a "chameleon circuit".) He's even got a "sonic cannon"! He's everything you'd expect a sci-fi hero to be.
He's certainly everything Rose expects a sci-fi hero to be. in the first half of the story, he "scans for alien tech", he strides around boldly zapping things with his sonic cannon, and he charms her with his debonair, Captain Kirk-esque sexuality. Next to him, Christopher Eccleston's big-eared, big-nosed Doctor, who apparently looked at his screwdriver one night and decided it needed to be a little more "sonic", looks frumpy and goofy and generally not the kind of guy who gets his own series.
But in the second half, we see what the Doctor does that Jack doesn't (and what "Doctor Who" does that other sci-fi series only make a half-hearted pretense at.) He thinks. Underneath the scares (and this one has plenty), Moffat's been carefully concealing a fact about the Monster of the Week; it has a reason for everything it does. It's not just wandering around converting people into gas-mask zombies, it's following Nancy. "Are you my Mummy?" isn't just the catch-phrase of the week, it's the desperate question of a frightened child. The Doctor doesn't save the day with a well-timed punch or a zap from a ray gun, he saves it by figuring out what's going on and fixing it with kindness, compassion, and a heroic regard for human life. ("Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!") While Jack, for all his swift-thinking con artistry, remains about six steps behind the Doctor the entire time. ("Like I said, I was there. Once. There's a banana grove there now. I like bananas.")
And in the end, when Jack makes his noble and heroic self-sacrifice, right out of the classic sci-fi mold, there's the Doctor, materializing on his sleek timeship with his clunky old TARDIS and saving the ostensible hero--and deflating his slightly-pompous death speech to boot. The Doctor, for all his "unsexiness", is the one who knows how to dance.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Universal's "Mummy"
(or "Works In Theory")
The five movies that form Universal's original "Mummy" series--hang on. Let's break this down properly. There are actually three "Mummy" series from Universal, with similar but not contiguous continuity. First, there's the original film starring Boris Karloff, in which the reanimated Imhotep uses Egyptian magic to seek out his reincarnated lover, Ankh-es-en-amon, and to punish those who stand in his way. Then, there's a collection of four films ("The Mummy's Hand", "Tomb", "Ghost", and "Curse", respectively) which follow Kharis, who shares an identical backstory to Imhotep but was reanimated not by magic, but by a drug brewed by the priests of Karnak (or Arkam in the later films.) Kharis guards the tomb of Ankara, who is essentially Ankh-es-en-amon but who doesn't get reincarnated until about halfway through the series. He uses no Egyptian magic, simply physical strength and invulnerability to kill those who would defile the tombs of Egypt. Finally, there's the 1999-2008 version, which uses Imhotep and his love for Anck-su-namun, but gives him terrifying supernatural powers and turns the secret order of priests from the second franchise into his jailers, rather than his masters.
Got all that?
So, now we can talk about this properly. The first "Mummy" series that actually has a storytelling engine is the second franchise. (The Karloff film, while excellent, is entirely self-contained.) In the tradition established by Universal's other franchises, unfortunately, the studio spent less time and effort on them as the series went on. Monster movie fans, it was felt, would attend solely on the strength of the title and Lon Chaney's presence as Kharis--why work hard on a script, pay high-end actors, and establish good production values? With the exception of "Hand", these films are exercises in plodding boredom, barely even livened up by the frequent murders the slow-moving mummy commits, and the stories are lazy and disinterested.
But the storytelling engine is quite different. Egypt already has numerous tropes and a certain mystique that makes it a natural setting for a series. Then the idea of a secret order of priests that has infiltrated every level of Egyptian society, consumed with the idea of getting vengeance on a Western society that defiled their tombs and made off with their treasures--and an order that can re-animate the dead, no less? That's a rock-solid basis for at least one movie all on its own. The idea that their champion is kept alive as much by love for his long-dead Ankara as by the sacred tana leaves, and that he longs to drink enough of the heady brew to cast off the shackles of the priests' control and decide his own destiny? That's a tension that can build off of the priests of Arkam and come to a head in later stories. Then, adding to that all, we have Ankara herself, who's in a new body with a new life and who may or may not be willing to go back to the half-decomposed Kharis, and as the heroes--a two-fisted archaeologist, his street-wise Brooklyn buddy, their stage-magician business partner "The Great Solvini", and Solvini's daughter, a spunky trick-shot expert with a short fuse and a crush on the archaeologist. (The biggest mistake the series made was in getting rid of these characters in the last three movies.)
This is the engine behind the franchise, and it's a potentially great one. Arguably, Kharis would be a more compelling enemy if he could talk, and he might want to be a bit less, um...shambly...if he wants to be menacing, but those are minor changes. The point is, just because bad stories were told using this storytelling engine doesn't mean it's a bad engine.
The 1999 remake borrows liberally from all five previous films (with expert skill--the remake is almost a distillation of every good idea in the preceding movies)...but what's odd about it is that its sequels ("The Mummy Returns", "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor", two Scorpion King flicks, and a short-lived animated series) confuse the series' mythos with its storytelling engine. All of the later installments focused on Imhotep, Anck-su-namun, their ancient adversaries, the order of priests, other mummies that might happen to be in the vicinity...while the actual storytelling engine is simply, "two-fisted treasure hunter and spunky researcher seek out supernatural evils alongside her ne'er-do-well brother, all done in an 'action-comedy' tone." In the final iteration of the "Mummy" storytelling engine, the actual mummy, while brilliantly done, isn't necessary to the storytelling engine at all. Sometimes what you get on the screen isn't actually a representation of the potential of the series.
The five movies that form Universal's original "Mummy" series--hang on. Let's break this down properly. There are actually three "Mummy" series from Universal, with similar but not contiguous continuity. First, there's the original film starring Boris Karloff, in which the reanimated Imhotep uses Egyptian magic to seek out his reincarnated lover, Ankh-es-en-amon, and to punish those who stand in his way. Then, there's a collection of four films ("The Mummy's Hand", "Tomb", "Ghost", and "Curse", respectively) which follow Kharis, who shares an identical backstory to Imhotep but was reanimated not by magic, but by a drug brewed by the priests of Karnak (or Arkam in the later films.) Kharis guards the tomb of Ankara, who is essentially Ankh-es-en-amon but who doesn't get reincarnated until about halfway through the series. He uses no Egyptian magic, simply physical strength and invulnerability to kill those who would defile the tombs of Egypt. Finally, there's the 1999-2008 version, which uses Imhotep and his love for Anck-su-namun, but gives him terrifying supernatural powers and turns the secret order of priests from the second franchise into his jailers, rather than his masters.
Got all that?
So, now we can talk about this properly. The first "Mummy" series that actually has a storytelling engine is the second franchise. (The Karloff film, while excellent, is entirely self-contained.) In the tradition established by Universal's other franchises, unfortunately, the studio spent less time and effort on them as the series went on. Monster movie fans, it was felt, would attend solely on the strength of the title and Lon Chaney's presence as Kharis--why work hard on a script, pay high-end actors, and establish good production values? With the exception of "Hand", these films are exercises in plodding boredom, barely even livened up by the frequent murders the slow-moving mummy commits, and the stories are lazy and disinterested.
But the storytelling engine is quite different. Egypt already has numerous tropes and a certain mystique that makes it a natural setting for a series. Then the idea of a secret order of priests that has infiltrated every level of Egyptian society, consumed with the idea of getting vengeance on a Western society that defiled their tombs and made off with their treasures--and an order that can re-animate the dead, no less? That's a rock-solid basis for at least one movie all on its own. The idea that their champion is kept alive as much by love for his long-dead Ankara as by the sacred tana leaves, and that he longs to drink enough of the heady brew to cast off the shackles of the priests' control and decide his own destiny? That's a tension that can build off of the priests of Arkam and come to a head in later stories. Then, adding to that all, we have Ankara herself, who's in a new body with a new life and who may or may not be willing to go back to the half-decomposed Kharis, and as the heroes--a two-fisted archaeologist, his street-wise Brooklyn buddy, their stage-magician business partner "The Great Solvini", and Solvini's daughter, a spunky trick-shot expert with a short fuse and a crush on the archaeologist. (The biggest mistake the series made was in getting rid of these characters in the last three movies.)
This is the engine behind the franchise, and it's a potentially great one. Arguably, Kharis would be a more compelling enemy if he could talk, and he might want to be a bit less, um...shambly...if he wants to be menacing, but those are minor changes. The point is, just because bad stories were told using this storytelling engine doesn't mean it's a bad engine.
The 1999 remake borrows liberally from all five previous films (with expert skill--the remake is almost a distillation of every good idea in the preceding movies)...but what's odd about it is that its sequels ("The Mummy Returns", "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor", two Scorpion King flicks, and a short-lived animated series) confuse the series' mythos with its storytelling engine. All of the later installments focused on Imhotep, Anck-su-namun, their ancient adversaries, the order of priests, other mummies that might happen to be in the vicinity...while the actual storytelling engine is simply, "two-fisted treasure hunter and spunky researcher seek out supernatural evils alongside her ne'er-do-well brother, all done in an 'action-comedy' tone." In the final iteration of the "Mummy" storytelling engine, the actual mummy, while brilliantly done, isn't necessary to the storytelling engine at all. Sometimes what you get on the screen isn't actually a representation of the potential of the series.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Terrible Pun of the Day
If Gollum hadn't accidentally bitten the ring off of Frodo's finger and fallen into Mount Doom with it, isn't it entirely possible that Frodo could have conquered the whole world, simply through force of hobbit?
(I'm not sure it's entirely fair to put the humor tag on this one...)
(I'm not sure it's entirely fair to put the humor tag on this one...)
Monday, February 09, 2009
Storytelling Engines: Creature From the Black Lagoon
(or "The Perils Of A Really Good Costume")
Realistically speaking, Universal's "classic" horror/sci-fi movie "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" isn't any better or worse than the dozens of cheap B-movies churned out in the 1950s. In fact, it's awfully difficult to tell it apart from its many competitors--a bunch of scientists go exploring a distant part of the world looking to find the truth behind a mysterious legend, and have interminably long debates over the ethics of their profession while a monster lurks in the background, jumping out whenever a good scare is needed. Eventually, the monster is defeated, and the survivors return to civilization. Back in the days when big movie studios had standing sets and actors under contract, you could whip out two or three of these a week and slap 'em together as drive-in double features. (With a much better "A-movie" as the draw, which is where the term "B-movie" came from, for those of you who didn't know.)
But "Creature" has come to be regarded as a high point of the genre, whereas films like "The Deadly Mantis", "Beginning of the End", and "The Mole People" have not. More germane to this column, it's gotten two sequels ("Revenge of the Creature" and "The Creature Walks Among Us"), while "Them" and "The Thing" did not. Why?
Well, the less-important (but immediately obvious) reason is that Universal is very good at marketing. Instead of showing the films once at the drive-in and then letting them die a quiet death, they re-packaged them dozens of times over the years for revival in theaters and on TV sets. For well over thirty years, right up until the age of home video began, young monster fans thought of the Creature as part of an extended horror family that included Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. (In fact, Remco produced a line of exactly that in the early 1980s, adding in the Phantom of the Opera for good measure.) Nostalgia and the collective appeal of the complete Universal package helped the Creature stick in people's minds long after many of its contemporaries have faded away into the mists of time, remembered only by dedicated horror fans and watchers of "Mystery Science Theater 3000".
But the more important reason was that costume. Bud Westmore's stunning creation still holds up today as one of the best monster costumes ever, a somehow natural-looking mix of fish, lizard and amphibian that looks just as good in the close-ups as it does in the long shots. Ricou Browning's swimming skills make it look fantastic and graceful underwater (to the point where you assume that the Creature's misshapen back must hide a scuba tank under the costume, but in fact Browning was just excellent at holding his breath for the long periods necessary to get the extended takes.) And on land, Ben Chapman (aided by ten-pound weights in his boots) gives the Creature a graceless lumber that makes it really feel like a fish out of water. The mix of stellar acting, swimming, and costuming makes the Creature a spectacular monster, genuinely memorable to the point where a sequel was inevitable.
Which is a huge problem, because there's no storytelling engine there. (See? I do actually remember what these columns are about.) As I said, plot-wise, "Creature From the Black Lagoon" is just your bog-standard 50s monster movie. It's almost a cookie-cutter formula. You could do a sequel that repeats the formula ("Hey, let's go down there and see what those other scientists were talking about!") but that's not a storytelling engine. A storytelling engine is designed to give writers help in coming up with stories that aren't mere repetitions of the previous film (or book, TV episode, comic, or what have you.) A formula reduces every installment to interchangeability.
The series does try, though. "Revenge of the Creature" takes the next logical step, by having the next group of scientists succeed in bringing the Creature (which they call "the Gill Man", but I think that name is too stupid to use more than once) back to civilization. I somehow doubt that the Creature would actually be put on display at Sea World if that were to happen, and I think that John Agar's "Hey, let's see if we can teach the Creature to obey simple commands by giving it powerful electric shocks!" plan would be rejected in favor of actual science, but it is one of the few directions you can go with the story.
The third movie, "The Creature Walks Among Us", shows just how hard it is to come up with any more places to go beyond that, as this one is about scientists who capture the Creature and experiment on him to allow him to breathe air. (In order to prove some point about, you know, evolution and stuff.) Unfortunately, on land and with a radically-altered costume, the Creature loses most of his appeal and the movie peters out, focusing more on a pseudo-love triangle between a jealous scientist and a "dashing" sea captain who's after the scientist's wife.
And then nothing. It's not that the series closes off all opportunities for a sequel in the third movie; it ends with the Creature heading back to the ocean, either to drown with its air-breathing lungs, or to survive with gills that may be healed enough to be useful. The problem is, either way, there are no more stories to be told. The Creature is, fundamentally, an animal. It's not supernatural, it doesn't prey on mankind unless humans intrude on its territory, it just wants to swim and be left alone. There's really only so much you can do with a central figure like that, and the "Creature trilogy" has done it all. And arguably, it only did the last two movies because people really wanted to see more of Ricou Browning swimming around in that costume.
Realistically speaking, Universal's "classic" horror/sci-fi movie "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" isn't any better or worse than the dozens of cheap B-movies churned out in the 1950s. In fact, it's awfully difficult to tell it apart from its many competitors--a bunch of scientists go exploring a distant part of the world looking to find the truth behind a mysterious legend, and have interminably long debates over the ethics of their profession while a monster lurks in the background, jumping out whenever a good scare is needed. Eventually, the monster is defeated, and the survivors return to civilization. Back in the days when big movie studios had standing sets and actors under contract, you could whip out two or three of these a week and slap 'em together as drive-in double features. (With a much better "A-movie" as the draw, which is where the term "B-movie" came from, for those of you who didn't know.)
But "Creature" has come to be regarded as a high point of the genre, whereas films like "The Deadly Mantis", "Beginning of the End", and "The Mole People" have not. More germane to this column, it's gotten two sequels ("Revenge of the Creature" and "The Creature Walks Among Us"), while "Them" and "The Thing" did not. Why?
Well, the less-important (but immediately obvious) reason is that Universal is very good at marketing. Instead of showing the films once at the drive-in and then letting them die a quiet death, they re-packaged them dozens of times over the years for revival in theaters and on TV sets. For well over thirty years, right up until the age of home video began, young monster fans thought of the Creature as part of an extended horror family that included Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. (In fact, Remco produced a line of exactly that in the early 1980s, adding in the Phantom of the Opera for good measure.) Nostalgia and the collective appeal of the complete Universal package helped the Creature stick in people's minds long after many of its contemporaries have faded away into the mists of time, remembered only by dedicated horror fans and watchers of "Mystery Science Theater 3000".
But the more important reason was that costume. Bud Westmore's stunning creation still holds up today as one of the best monster costumes ever, a somehow natural-looking mix of fish, lizard and amphibian that looks just as good in the close-ups as it does in the long shots. Ricou Browning's swimming skills make it look fantastic and graceful underwater (to the point where you assume that the Creature's misshapen back must hide a scuba tank under the costume, but in fact Browning was just excellent at holding his breath for the long periods necessary to get the extended takes.) And on land, Ben Chapman (aided by ten-pound weights in his boots) gives the Creature a graceless lumber that makes it really feel like a fish out of water. The mix of stellar acting, swimming, and costuming makes the Creature a spectacular monster, genuinely memorable to the point where a sequel was inevitable.
Which is a huge problem, because there's no storytelling engine there. (See? I do actually remember what these columns are about.) As I said, plot-wise, "Creature From the Black Lagoon" is just your bog-standard 50s monster movie. It's almost a cookie-cutter formula. You could do a sequel that repeats the formula ("Hey, let's go down there and see what those other scientists were talking about!") but that's not a storytelling engine. A storytelling engine is designed to give writers help in coming up with stories that aren't mere repetitions of the previous film (or book, TV episode, comic, or what have you.) A formula reduces every installment to interchangeability.
The series does try, though. "Revenge of the Creature" takes the next logical step, by having the next group of scientists succeed in bringing the Creature (which they call "the Gill Man", but I think that name is too stupid to use more than once) back to civilization. I somehow doubt that the Creature would actually be put on display at Sea World if that were to happen, and I think that John Agar's "Hey, let's see if we can teach the Creature to obey simple commands by giving it powerful electric shocks!" plan would be rejected in favor of actual science, but it is one of the few directions you can go with the story.
The third movie, "The Creature Walks Among Us", shows just how hard it is to come up with any more places to go beyond that, as this one is about scientists who capture the Creature and experiment on him to allow him to breathe air. (In order to prove some point about, you know, evolution and stuff.) Unfortunately, on land and with a radically-altered costume, the Creature loses most of his appeal and the movie peters out, focusing more on a pseudo-love triangle between a jealous scientist and a "dashing" sea captain who's after the scientist's wife.
And then nothing. It's not that the series closes off all opportunities for a sequel in the third movie; it ends with the Creature heading back to the ocean, either to drown with its air-breathing lungs, or to survive with gills that may be healed enough to be useful. The problem is, either way, there are no more stories to be told. The Creature is, fundamentally, an animal. It's not supernatural, it doesn't prey on mankind unless humans intrude on its territory, it just wants to swim and be left alone. There's really only so much you can do with a central figure like that, and the "Creature trilogy" has done it all. And arguably, it only did the last two movies because people really wanted to see more of Ricou Browning swimming around in that costume.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)