META: Wish Fulfillment, WCs, and Mary Sues
Tom Russell
I was in Ann Arbor a few years back, spending the
afternoon with my friends, David and Stephanie, and
their friend, Shaun. It was the first time I ever met
Shaun, and our relationship-- which never did get past
a stiff sort of friend-of-my-friends stage-- got off
to a very rocky start.
We spent the afternoon walking around, poking our
heads into various stores. None of us had much money,
and I quickly got irritated looking at stuff that I
couldn't purchase. I said to Shaun, I don't
understand the point of window shopping.
And he looked at me and sneered, That's spoken like
someone who's always had money.
Well, I never had much money at any point in my
life. I tried to explain to Shaun that I was speaking
out of frustration, but I didn't seem able to get the
point across.
See what I mean? A rocky start.
Later that afternoon, I discovered that we both had
an intense interest in comics. He seemed to warm up
to me initially, and asked me if ever read BLUE
MONDAY. No, can't say that I have.
What about SIP?
SIP?
STRANGERS IN PARADISE?
Oh, right. I've heard of it, but I never...
JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC?
No.
He listed a few more titles, all of which I greeted
with a shrug. He then asked me what I had read, what
I thought had value. I rattled off a list of personal
favourites (and, my tastes are admittedly fairly
popular ones)-- Busiek (early THUNDERBOLTS, AVENGERS,
ASTRO CITY), DeMatties (SPEC. SPIDER-MAN, SILVER
SURFER), Todd DeZago (SENS. SPIDER-MAN), some Alan
Moore (WATCHMEN, of course, but I also liked TOM
STRONG), IMPULSE (whether it was written by Waid or
DeZago or Bill Loebs [a Michigander who's been away
from comics for far too long!]). And I would have
listed a few others, and expounded upon all the
reasons I cherished those stories, but Shaun wasn't
listening. He snorted and told me that he didn't read
superhero comics. He read serious comics.
Like I said. A rocky start, and it never did get
any better.
When I tried to convince Shaun of the value of my
favourite genre, be it in comic book form or prose, he
served me with the usual grocery list of complaints:
that the world superheroes occupy is unrealistic, that
they're just made to sell toys, that the idea of a
supervillain is almost as ridiculous as some of the
origin stories (radiation doesn't give you powers,
he'd say, it only gives you cancer). The women are
little more than eye candy. The plotting is terrible.
The writing stilted.
I defended the genre as best I could, offering
explanations where I could and invoking such grandiose
terms as "suspension of disbelief" and "world
building" when I couldn't come up with a satisfactory
answer. But, in actuality, none of my answers were
satisfactory for Shaun. And, at the end of this
conversation, of our first day in one another's
company, he hit me with the double-whammy: it's all
just male empowerment fantasy anyway.
How many times have you heard that? Even the
genre's defenders, like Gerard Jones, agree with this
ugly generalization. Jones argues, more explicitly in
his book KILLING MONSTERS (2002) and more implicitly
in MEN OF TOMORROW (2004), that empowerment fantasy
and wish fulfillment is what makes superheroes healthy
for young psyches. (Which, actually, reaffirms the
equally irritating idea that superheroes are for kids
and adolescents.)
People use the empowerment fantasy statement to
dismiss the genre out of hand; for a long time, I
dismissed that statement out of hand. I mean, when I
read superhero fiction, be it in comics form or prose,
I never felt empowered. I never put myself in the
character's shoes or wished that I was them.
Spider-Man never empowered me; Spider-Man interested
me. No one uses the empowerment rap when talking
about works of science fiction or high fantasy. When
Tolkien read Beowulf, no one said he was using it
cathartically to act out his own juvenile needs for
male power.
Because of these reasons, and many others, I often
dismissed the empowerment fantasy/wish fulfillment
criticism without a second thought. But I was as
wrong in my blanket dismissal as Shaun was in his
blanket condemnation. The genre-- hell, and life!--
is far more complex than that. Wish fulfillment is
what started the genre.
Jones tells us in MEN OF TOMORROW that Jerry
Siegel's father was murdered. Superman, too, is
fatherless (in fact, he's an orphan twice-over).
Superman, like Siegel (and co-creator Joe Shuster)
feels alienated from most of those around him (Supes
is an alien among humans; Siegel & Shuster were Jews
among Goys during a time of extreme anti-Semitism).
Clark Kent presents himself as weak and insecure,
unable to succeed with women (as were Siegel &
Shuster). But Superman...
Superman is desired by the women who spurn Clark
Kent. And that, my friends, is wish fulfillment.
Superman, in turn, spurns Lois Lane-- punishes her, in
classic fairy tale fashion-- because she cannot
recognize the goodness in Kent. That, my friends, is
Siegel & Shuster getting back at all the girls who
laughed at them. It's revenge fantasy.
In fact, a lot of the early Superman stories are
about Siegel & Shuster getting back at the world. War
profiteering makes them angry? Superman shows the war
profiteers who's boss. Living conditions getting you
down? Time to have Superman intervene. Nazism is on
the rise, and no one's doing anything about it? Let's
have Superman compete against a Hitler parody and show
him a thing or two about racial supremacy.
The superhero was born just as the second World War
was getting underway, and during the war years, it
thrived. How could it not? Everyone wanted to see
Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito get knocked into a
garbage can. I bet Jack Kirby personally wanted to
sock Hitler in the nose. And so Captain America did
it, several months before the U.S. entered the war!
That's wish fulfillment.
Bob Kane wished he didn't have to work for a
living, so that he could be a rich playboy. And thus
Batman was born. (And, you know what? He got rich
and he didn't have to work! That's what Bill Finger
and Jerry Robinson were for.)
Is it juvenile? Is it silly? Sure. It's
child-like at best, revenge fantasy at worst. But you
know what else it is? It's primal.
I never used to like the Golden Age of Comics.
First of all, I hadn't had much exposure to them;
secondly, the stories I did read were pretty
unsatisfying. It wasn't until after I stopped
collecting comics regularly that I took an interest in
the history of the art form in general and the
superhero genre in particular. And it was at that
point that I got ahold of some Golden Age reprints and
read them carefully.
To get something out of a Golden Age story, you
have to read it in a certain state of mind. The same
thing goes for any story, really. You can't be all
geared up for WATCHMEN and then pick up AMAZING
FANTASY # 15. (And that's not a slant on either of
those stories; both are some of the most significant--
and, I'd argue, equally accomplished-- pieces of comic
literature in the history of the form.)
You have to experience it on a primal level,
because that's what it operates on. Golden Age comics
are high-energy, high-immediacy affairs. If the
endings are unsatisfactory, it's because the only way
a head-long rush can truly end is with a sudden, jerky
stop. If they feel unpolished, like first drafts,
that's because the Golden Age creators were the
godfathers of Kerouac. Refinement would make it more
readable, and in many ways would make it richer,
deeper, better; at the same time, the very essential
primal nature of it would be seriously diluted. It
would cease to be the thing that it is.
There's only one RACC series that's gutsy enough to
operate on this very primal level, one that runs on
Golden Age fumes: Jochem Vandersteen's GOLDING.
The first time I tried to read it, I just couldn't
get into it. I wasn't clicking with the material, the
premise, or the tone. The prose style didn't really
grab me, and at times, the story seemed to lack the
proper awe for what was going on.
I mean, this is a story about ancient Greek gods
giving their power to a college mythology professor.
When the Godling-to-be, Professor Alexander, finds
himself transported to Olympus:
<< She moved her hands in a strange pattern. We
became enveloped by
purple light and suddenly.... I wasn't on the campus
grounds anymore.
Where I was it took me a while to believe.
They had to be gods. The man with the white beard
holding the shaft of
lighting had to be Zeus, the woman with the large
shield Athena. It was
like they'd stepped right out of the ancient Greek
vases I'd
studied for years. There were dozen more like them...
I glanced at
Circe with big eyes. "Are they really...?"
"Gods? Yes. Welcome on Olympus."
I couldn't help but kneel, overwhelmed as I was by the
presence of
godhood. >>
Where's the awe, the majesty? I pondered the first
time I read GODLING # 1. This was a big moment, and
it didn't feel big.
A few months later, though, I tried it again. I'm
glad I did. It's one of the best series currently on
RACC, and one that I look forward to, month after
month.
The second time I read it, I found myself perfectly
allied with Jochem's vibe. The first paragraph, which
I initially dismissed as a schmaltzy appeal to the
reader's emotions, gave me goose bumps the second time
around:
<< After 9-11 the fear had gotten worse and worse. We
feared for our lives
from the terrorists that were prepared to die to
inflict their damage
on our society. I felt so powerless against it all. To
top it off, my
own city had fallen into the hands of strangely
powered villains.
Nobody knew where they came from, they just suddenly
were there. They
were armed with futuristic blaster weapons, some could
control heat or
cold or fire energy blasts with their fists. And where
was I? Teaching
mythology at the University. I was too weak to fight.
But looking at
the movie reels of the war, I could think about only
one thing. What if
the old gods still lived. What if we had heroes like
Hercules and
Achilles at our side? What if we were able to wield
the power of Zeus
to strike at the enemies threatening our city?
And then came the day I got my chance....>>
GODLING runs on primal emotions. On fear, on
wonder, on desire. On power. The second time around,
Alexander's arrival on Olympus didn't leave me wanting
more pageantry from the prose; I got a heady feeling
similar, I think, to that of Alexander in that moment.
If you're not reading GODLING, you should be. It's
full of great ideas, expressed with urgency and
simplicity. In one adventure, Godling uses his powers
to start healing the sick and dying. The Olympians
call him in for a meeting, and show him the end result
of his actions:
<< Godling became totally surrounded by the black
mist. He started waving
his arms, trying to make the mist dissipate. When the
mist cleared he
was looking at all kinds of scenes that seemed to
happen in one space.
It was like having all kinds of computer screen
standing next to each
other, but instead of computers the image were live,
3-D. He saw humans
shooting each other, getting up, then shooting each
other again. He saw
men hacking into each other, blood everywhere. There
seemed to be
hundreds of them. Building were burning down, stores
were being looted.
An orgy was going on, dozens of people involved. There
were people of
all kinds of ages lying on the floor, leaning against
the walls,
shooting their arteries full of drugs. He saw no art,
no love, no
peace, no sports, no kindness.
"What... How... What.." Godling stuttered.
Thanatos was right behind him. "That is what happens
if men do not
fear Death. They have no reason not to take what they
want, because
they do not need to fear the wraith of those they take
it from. They
can fornicate what they want, because they cannot get
any venereal
diseases. Because there is no Death there is no
danger, no excitement.
They live forever and forever is too long a time for
them, so they seek
their escape in drugs. They fight to unleash their
anger because there
is no fear to die from their injuries.">>
If you tried to read it before but couldn't get
into it, try it again. (If you need extra help
getting into the mood, Wil Alambre's cover image on
Wil's Ego serves as an excellent GODLING aphrodisiac.)
And if you're not clicking with it-- if the Golden
Age primal vibe is not your thing-- why not take a
look at GODLING # 6, which is richer, thematically
speaking, than its predecessors. And it does this
without becoming something that it's not, without
diluting its very cool and very primal power.
<< What if
the old gods still lived. What if we had heroes like
Hercules and
Achilles at our side? What if we were able to wield
the power of Zeus
to strike at the enemies threatening our city?
And then came the day I got my chance....>>
And this brings up another kind of wish
fulfillment: character wish fulfillment. Professor
Alexander _wants_ to be more powerful, he wants to
meet the Greek gods, and he gets what he wants.
Jochem gives his character what he wants. This is a
phenomenal tool for fiction writing, and not just in
the superhero genre.
You give a character what they desire, then you see
how they deal with it. Instant drama. It's not a
matter of "be careful what you wish for", which, like
most axioms, is a shallow understanding of life.
Nothing is more trite than seeing someone get what
they want and end up with their life spinning out of
control. The moral of that story is conformity and
being content with your lot in life. Just as that
premise farts on the human spirit, I fart on that
premise with grave contempt.
When a character is given their greatest desire, it
should be glorious. It shouldn't be the answer to
everything. It should bring its own brand of
difficulties. But the character still has achieved
their greatest desire. That should be well worth it,
or at the very least, a small comfort. Like I said
before, I hate it when wishes are really omens of doom
that go horribly, horribly wrong.
Let me give an example to illustrate this
difference. I'm going to be completely crass and
self-promoting here, so fair warning.
In my feature length motion picture, MILOS, LIFE
AND TIMES OF A DREAMER, the titular character wants to
have friends more than anything else in the world. He
is desperately lonely, and in his attempts to win
people over and wheedle his way into their lives, he
often pushes people away. His behaviour is too
extreme, too needy.
Ten minutes into the picture, Milos gets what he
wants. He gets friends. Almost like a gift; at
first, he's a little flabbergasted by it all.
One of these friends, Bradley, is going slowly
insane. Even the most well-adjusted person would have
difficulty dealing with this. Milos is not
well-adjusted. Bradley's descent is painful for
everyone involved, including Milos, who blames
himself.
Now, his friendship to Bradley brings a lot of pain
into Milos's life. But Milos is better off because of
the friendship. He is a more mature person and a
better friend by the end of the picture. To my mind,
this wasn't a case of be careful what you wish for,
but of his deepest desire bringing with it unforeseen
complications. Now, the difference between this and
"be careful what you wish for"?
Well, if his friends turned out to be serial
killers...
Let me give you another example of a wish being
fulfilled and having unforeseen complications.
Deja Dude, the writer character of Martin Phipps,
wanted to have a girlfriend. And so Julie Lee was
created. This particular case is unusual in that Deja
Dude _himself_ grants his wish for companionship; Deja
Dude _creates_ Julie Lee as a more-or-less ideal
girlfriend. Since she exists to be in love with him,
this brings up a tricky question about free will, one
that is addressed in the big revelation/break-up scene
in Martin's classic LEGION OF NET. HEROES (Vol. 1) #
81.
<< Julie sighed. "Deja, we've been living here
together for almost a
year now." Deja Dude nodded in reply. "Now, don't
get me wrong, it's
been great... it's just that... seeing as how Pocket
Man and Organic
Lass are getting married I thought... I _wondered_ why
we couldn't
do the same." She looked him directly in the eye.
"Ah." Deja Dude looked down and away from her.
Julie frowned. "What's wrong?"
"I guess I'm going to have to tell you then," he
said looking back
up at her.
"Tell me what?"
Deja Dude let out a big sigh and grasped her by the
shoulders. "I
wanted our relationship to seem real to you. You see,
that'd make it
all the more real for me." Julie sensed she wasn't
going to like what
Deja Dude was going to tell her. "It wouldn't just be
role playing
for you... your feelings... they'd be just like those
of a real woman."
Julie pulled herself free from his grasp and stepped
back. "Are
you saying my feelings aren't real?"
Deja Dude shook his head. "No. It's _you_, you
yourself who isn't
real."
"What are you talking about?"
Deja Dude reached out his left hand. "Take my
hand." Julie hesitated.
"Please!" She grabbed his hand.
Deja Dude pulled her closer and placed her hand and
his over his watch
and activated the button on the back that transported
them out of
alt.comics.lnh.
"Where are we?"
"This... is the space between newsgroups. See:
every newsgroup is
arranged in hierarchies; alt.comics.lnh, the newsgroup
we just came
from, it's right there." Deja Dude held Julie
securely with his
left arm and pointed with is right. "See? Right
there between
alt.comics.elfquest and alt.comics.superman."
Julie shook her head. "This doesn't mean anything
to me."
Deja Dude nodded. "Now, 'lnh'... that stands for
'Legion of
Net.Heroes'. You see, the Legion of Net.Heroes: Rebel
Yell, Continuity
Champ, Ultimate Ninja, it's because of them... _for_
them that
alt.comics.lnh was created." He looked at Julie.
"And then when I
came along I wanted a girlfriend: that's why I created
you."
"You _created_ me?"
Deja Dude nodded. "That's right."
Julie closed her eyes. "Take me back... NOW!"
Deja Dude pressed a button on the back of his watch
and they returned
to their quarters in LNH Headquarters.
Julie went to sit down. "Alright: I want the whole
truth from the
beginning!"
"'From the beginning'?" Deja Dude mused for a bit.
"It's like I
said: this newsgroup... this world that you call the
Looniverse...
is actually a newsgroup called 'alt.comics.lnh'. It's
only been in
existance [sic] for about a year and a half."
"Excuse me? I'm _twenty_ years old! My
grandparents are in their
sixties!"
Deja Dude shook his head. "You and your entire
family have existed
for little more than a year."
"Bull! I have _memories_!"
"Do you really? Do you remember how we first met?
Do you remember
moving your stuff into here? Or does it seem to you
that certain
things just came to be?"
Julie thought for a moment. "So you're saying that
the memories I
_do_ have are just the ones that you've planted in my
head?"
Deja Dude nodded. "You only existed a few months
before you moved
in with me."
Julie was horrified. "So... you're telling me that
I was created to
be your plaything?"
Deja Dude shook his head. "No."
"I think so! You created me, you manipulated me...
you _lied_ to me."
"NO!" Deja Dude sighed. "It's true: you've never
had much choice
in life; ultimately, yes, you've always acted as I
would imagine you
acting... but don't you see that that's why I'm
telling you all this
now... that if you were to stay here now it'd truly be
because you
_want_ to stay here."
Julie's eyes welled with tears. "What makes you
think I'm going to
want to stay here now that I know the truth?"
Deja Dude shook his head. "I know you don't... but
maybe, someday,
you'll want to come back."
"Don't count on it!"
Deja Dude nodded. "Do you want me to help you
pack?"
"No." She didn't even want to look at him. "Go to
your friends.
I'll be gone when you get back." Deja Dude did as she
wished,
hurrying along, hoping that the joviality of the party
would help
him to forget his own situation.>>
LNH # 81 is a very poignant little story, and to
get that kind of emotional resonance from breaking the
fourth wall is no easy feat. Martin is intelligent
and canny enough to dissect the relationship in this
scene between his author surrogate and that
surrogate's imaginary girlfriend.
Not all authors are. Let's look at another example
from my own work, but one that's not nearly as
shameless and self-promoting. Let's look...
::shudder:: ... at TEENFACTOR.
I created Carolyn Forge in much the same way Deja
Dude created Julie Lee: as the woman I wanted to love
and be loved by. She was a genius with a knock-out
body. She was a confident, capable leader who was
personally shy and vulnerable. She could be fiery in
an argument but always listened to reason.
In short, she was a person who didn't exist. A
"perfect woman". (Remember that I was fifteen or
sixteen at the time.)
It wasn't until three months and... twenty-eight
issues later (what the fuck?)... that I introduced
"myself": Terrence Coffee, aka Useless Powers Lad. He
was immature, incompetent, unquestionably silly.
(Which, at the time, was a pretty accurate depiction
of myself.) He also harbored a dark and secret
painful past that more-or-less excused his silliness.
(An excuse that I lacked.) He was immortal (what?),
had the ability to grant immortality to others
(Useless Powers Lad?? useless?? what??), and won the
heart of said perfect woman (what the fuck?).
Despite the fact that he was a ridiculous ignoramus
with the maturity and attention span of a gnat.
In short, it was a severely desperate and
embarrassing case of wish fulfillment. The kind of
thing that gives superhero fiction, internet fiction,
and writer surrogates a bad name. And, it should be
painfully obvious, Terrence Coffee was a Mary Sue.
(I'm so glad Jesse Willey killed the bastard.
Thank you, Willey.)
In fact, many of my own writer characters had a
tendency towards Mary Sueism, something I find
extremely embarrassing now when I'm (supposedly,
anyway) older and wiser.
Tyler Bridge, for example, was an idealized version
of my own personality. He appropriates my mannerisms
when speaking-- such as calling people by both their
first and last names-- and my love of puns, my
attempts at wit. That's all well-and-good.
But Tyler Bridge is also loved and admired by
nearly all his teammates. He is always right about
everything, he deciphers the important clues, makes
the most important decisions, and basically shows up
everyone else.
That's a textbook case of Mary Sue. When I began
re-editing NET.HEROES ON PARADE for TEB republication,
this was one of the many problems I had with the
series. As I think the first volume will show, I've
greatly reduced Tyler's Christ-like competency,
allowing other characters to appear as intelligent as
I meant them to be. In these new editions, Tyler
Bridge is less a Mary Sue and more of an author
surrogate, a writer character.
The original LNH WCs were, at their heart,
reductive. The writer took one of their personality
traits and amplified it, creating a character who was
more or less defined by that trait. Super Apathy Lad,
for example, is defined by that apathy; I'd like to
assume that creator Jacob Lesgold had more going on in
his life at the time than being apathetic towards
everything.
I don't think that the more reductive WCs can be
taken as author surrogates in the strictest sense.
It's not a matter of wish fulfillment or
self-insertion; it's them having fun, goofing around.
Some of the WCs, in fact, don't even seem to
reflect their authors at all, in whole or in part. I
have a hard time believing that anyone could act like
the Ultimate Ninja, and an even harder time believing
that Ray Bingham could. In cases like that, it seemed
more like a type of role-playing.
As time went on, the writing in the LNH got more
complex, and so did the characterizations, WCs
included. It's easy to pin down the personality of
Super Apathy Lad; it's much harder to "get" Pocket
Man, one of the Saint's three (!) writer characters.
In order to get a firm grip on Pocket Man, one has to
read the stories carefully. Let's try an experiment.
When I say Pocket Man, what do you think of? What
personality traits come to mind?
Well, we all know he's weak-kneed around Organic
Lass and absolutely adores the Maid of Molecules.
Otherwise, he's a fairly confident and capable leader.
He's able to keep Sarcastic Lad in line.
The picture in my head is somewhat vague. He's
just there. And so, when I write him, I tend to write
him as a straight man, someone for the silly
characters to play off of and keep the plot advancing.
But I wasn't reading carefully enough. A careful
reading of Pocket Man's appearances reveals a
personality trait that's often ignored: he's really,
really horny. And what's more, he's proud of it.
Look at the aforementioned LNH # 81.
<< "Hey, Pok, it's about time you got here!"
Pocket Man took a look around to see who was there.
"Where's Deja
Dude?"
"Probably doing with Julie what you were doing with
Ori," Sarcastic
Lad suggested. "So what made you decide to finally
come here? Did
you wear her out?"
Pocket Man smiled. "Hey! I'm the guest of honour!
I'm entitled
to get here late.">>
Too subtle? It's much more explicit in
PASSIONFISHING (though not nearly explicit enough to
merit wReam's comment that it might be more
appropriate for alt.sex.stories). Pocket Man takes an
obvious, swelling pride in his sexual combustibility.
It's a trait he shares with Gary's more popular writer
character, Sarcastic Lad.
Often times, Sarcastic Lad is treated like Super
Apathy Lad: as a one-trait character, in this case, as
snarkiness and sarcasm incarnate. But there's more to
Sarc than that. Sarcasm does not play as much a role
in PIGS IN SPACE (Gary St. Lawrence's masterpiece) as
bravado and swagger. One will often find the caustic
crusader just as ready as Master Blaster when it comes
to flirting (and bedding) the opposite sex.
From reading Gary's stories, I think he has a
proclivity towards bawdy humour. His work would often
qualify as being in cheerfully bad taste, and I think
a juxtaposition of these two writer characters (I
think the third, Elvis Man, falls under the
"role-playing" category) provides an interesting
exploration of Gary's bawdy side.
In PIGS IN SPACE, Sarcastic Lad (along with Master
Blaster) participates in a marathon orgy with the Moon
Amazons. He is extremely virile and provides great
satisfaction to his partners. He then recounts his
adventure to Mainstream Man.
<< "So you actually had sex with several hundred
Amazon women on the Moon?!?" asked a dazzled and
disbelieving Mainstream Man. "The two of you and
*all* of them?!?"
"You know it, bunkie," said a preening and
chest-swelled Sarcastic Lad. "They never knew what
hit them.">>
It really has the tone of a locker room story, and
the entire piece plays as a cheerfully phallocentric
male empowerment fantasy. As, well, wish fulfillment.
It still remains one of my favourite early LNH
stories, and one of the jewels in the Collected Works
of Gary St. Lawrence.
Pocket Man is equally virile, and equally
enthusiastic. He doesn't delve into graphic detail
about his encounters with Ori, and this seems about
right: he loves her and respects her. He doesn't
reduce her to a conquest. He just hints around,
subtle and sly, probably smirking while raising a
self-satisfied eyebrow.
These are two different approaches to the same
subject matter, and, I think, two different aspects of
every male. Gary uses wish fulfillment/empowerment
fantasy to *explore* these two different approaches to
male sexuality.
This is a major difference, I think, between good
wish fulfillment driven stories and bad ones; between
writer characters and Mary Sues. A bad writer uses
wish fulfillment to appease themselves. I conjured
myself up a perfect girlfriend. I conjured up a world
where everyone liked me. I took people who gave me a
hard time and made them look ridiculous in one
embarrassingly juvenile revenge fiction after another.
Bad writer! Bad Tom! Bad!
But Gary, like Martin Phipps, uses that wish
fulfillment impulse as a starting point. As a way to
dig deeper. Martin explores the psychological
mechanisms underneath girlfriend-conjuring, whereas I
just denied them. In fact, of all the writers on
RACC, Martin has used wish-fulfillment and writer
characters to the deepest and richest effect,
exploring and exploiting the relationship between
character and author. Usually, this kind of
meta-fictional approach leaves me kind of wanting.
But Phipps is one of the few who does it well.
I talked about this (wish fulfillment, the uses of
fiction, and Phipps's approach to meta-themes) a
little bit in my essay of last year, THE PHIPPSIAN
READER, especially in discussing his story, LNH ASIA:
THE WEEK AFTER NEXT. So I'll spare you a reprise of
that discussion and instead talk about some of his
more recent work-- and another way in which he uses
his writer character (and his fiction).
Martin and I had a sort of playful psuedo-feud over
the course of this last year. And it was waged
through stories. It all began with HOUSE OF FICTION #
4, the "narrator's pornography addiction" episode.
Martin, DEJA DUDE/MASTER BLASTER SPECIAL # 6, had his
alter-ego weigh in. The first speaker is Master
Blaster:
<<"Dude, you need to try downloading porn instead."
"Um... well..."
"I knew it! You're downloading porn!"
"Yeah. Okay. But don't tell Tom Russell! The last
thing he wants to hear is that everybody else is still
looking at porn behind his wife's back and that he's
just whipped!">>
My rebuttal was in LEGION OF NET.HEROES Vol. 2 #
11, the WikiBoy story:
<< It was shortly after Master Blaster decided that
CyberWikiBoy was a hardcore nudist who loved to fondle
his own breasts all day long that the ScarletWiki
peered into the back seat via the rear mirror and
asked him what his wife would think of his actions.
"I'm not touching," said Master Blaster. "I'm only
looking. That's not cheating, is it? What do you
think I am, man, whipped?"
"It does show a tremendous amount of bad faith in
the sanctity of your marriage vows," said the
ScarletWiki.>>
And his response came in DEJA DUDE/MASTER BLASTER
SPECIAL # 7:
<<"And we're back! I'm Deja Dude!"
"Yeah. And I'm Master Blaster."
"Hey, Rob, what's wrong? You look a little down."
"It's nothing."
"No, come on, tell me, what's wrong?"
"It's just something WikiBoy said."
"Who?"
"He's the latest in a long line of Tom Russell
creations that Tom Russell will later forget he ever
created when somebody gives him his own limited
series.">>
Ouch.
<<"Oh. I see. So what did he say?"
"He said that my fascination with large breasts
showed -- and I quote -- 'a tremendous amount of bad
faith in the sanctity of your marriage vows'."
"I see. And did you then pull out a very large gun
and blow him away?"
"No."
"Okay. So, Rob, has it occured [SIC] to you that
you
might not be the real Master Blaster but a robot
duplicate?"
"No no no. We already played out that scenario in
the last add-on cascade, remember?"
"But the Master Blaster I know wouldn't have stood
for such an insult."
"Well, I did give him large breasts."
"Aha! What did he say to that?"
"I just told you. It was the fact that I gave him
large breasts that inspired the comment. So I figured
he might have had a point with regard to the
implication that I was overly obsessed with breasts."
"Yeah, okay, but still... is this Wikiboy [SIC]
himself
married?"
"Not that I know."
"So where does he get off...?"
"My guess is that he was channeling the opinion of
the writer of said issue, namely Tom Russell."
"Ah. It all makes sense now."
"How so?"
Deja Dude smiled. "To Tom, his wife may represent
the ideal woman that he wishes his mother could have
been."
"You mean he's whipped?">>
I thought that was funny, and I responded in kind with
the MASTER BLASTER: FRICKIN' LAME APES MONTH ONE-SHOT.
And I think I went a little overboard. In the story,
Master Blaster visits the Philippines and decides that
it is, quote, frickin' lame, end quote.
Martin's response came in DEJA DUDE/MASTER BLASTER
# 9. I'm not going to quote it because the bulk of
the issue _is_ his thoughts on his adopted homeland.
He provides us with a few scenes, more or less taken
directly from his life. They're very funny, very
touching, and they deftly demonstrate his ability to
provide a satisfying story just by sketching out a few
scenes.
In short, Martin Phipps at times uses his fiction
as a form of personal essay. He uses his author
surrogate to express his own opinions and he makes no
bones about it. At the same time, they still work as
stories and gags. I think of all the "silly" LNH
writers, Martin's work strikes me as the most
personal.
--
Wish fulfillment can be a very powerful thing. I
wish, for example, that this essay could have been
shorter, more concise, that it rambled less. But to
me, all these ideas are inter-connected and
inter-related. Writer characters and Mary Sues exist
as the result of wish fulfillment, and the difference
between the two is really a matter of how the author
uses that wish fulfillment impulse.
And, when it's the characters themselves whose
wishes are fulfilled, it is, again, how that wish
fulfillment impulse is utilized that divides good
stories from bad ones. The common theme in both these
situations, whether it is the writer whose wishes are
being granted or the character, is exploration and
extrapolation.
If I had to have that conversation with Shaun all
over again, I would say that, yes, wish fulfillment
and empowerment fantasy have a great deal to do with
superhero fiction-- hell, with all fiction in general.
And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's
perfectly healthy-- and not, as Jones suggests,
because it allows children to blow off steam and
channel aggression. It's healthy because it
encourages introspection. Because it helps us explore
our own selves. By using wish fulfillment to explore a
character or a theme, an author is telling us about
our deepest desires and the power those desires hold
over us.
(C) 2006 Tom Russell.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Jesse Willey
world, including an analogue of yourself and then
placing them in their ideal situation is fairly
healthy.
Now... creating versions of you just to sadistically
torture them... I think that's something else.
Rick Henkerton was sort of based on parts of me.
What do I do to him? I killed most of his friends.
Had becoming an over burdened depressed taskmaster Had
him get mind controlled into having sex... put him
into psychotherapy... have him stop believing he had a
responsiblity to help people. Had him redeem himself.
Of course, *then* he had an affair with his best
friend. So that just goes to show you how far
redemption really gets you.
Andrew Weinstein... definately borders into
Marysueism. The only thing that saves him is that he
aknowledged that he was a self serving, amoral piece
of shit. He didn't care if you liked him. He got
results. He was not heroic. He occasionally used
horrible methods to accomplish 'good' things. He was
scum. He was essentially a super villain with his own
pet team of heroes. But because the public only saw
the results and not the methods... he came off like a
hero.
Part of that appeals to me. It'd be so easy to
take moral short cuts to accomplish what I perceive to
be right. He's everything I was afraid exists inside
me. Because what right do I have to decide things for
everyone? Andy is a part of me. But he scares the
crap out of me.
Lucas Curry-- hearing impaired rock star with hot
artsie fartsie girlfriend. At the time I was writing
The Team... two parts of that were true. Alas, now
only one, but I'm okay with that.
Very much the type of person I'd want to be. And
really tried to be when I was dating said artsie
fartsie girl.
Dalton Asters-- what type of person WISHES they were
a nut job? I mean honestly... the same basic forces
drive Dalton drive me. He's just as likely to help
you for a peanut butter and bananna sandwhich as he is
for money. Dalton is incredibly loyal to his
friends. He is a bit of jerk, but is overall pretty
honorable. He's got a basic 'live and let live'
attidue.
An ex-girlfriend who I dated off and on thinks Vel
is like me. I tend to disagree. He is sarcastic to
the point of being crass. Intentionally rude and
refuse to listen to anyone he doesn't respect. He's
smart and uses his brain as his greatest weapon
(Okay, that part I can agree with.)
Vel is violent. He doesn't necessarily like it...
but he doesn't go out of his way to avoid it either.
When he's in brawl, he revels in the blood shed. He's
the perfect fusion of intellect and animal. He has
absolutely no qualms about killing. He willing to
become a monster in order to fight them. That's not
me at all.
Dave Van Domelen
Tom Russell <milos_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Later that afternoon, I discovered that we both had
>an intense interest in comics. He seemed to warm up
>to me initially, and asked me if ever read BLUE
>MONDAY. No, can't say that I have.
> What about SIP?
> SIP?
> STRANGERS IN PARADISE?
> Oh, right. I've heard of it, but I never...
Left me cold the one or two times I read it as an OPB (Other People's
Books).
> JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC?
> No.
Love it.
> He listed a few more titles, all of which I greeted
>with a shrug. He then asked me what I had read, what
>I thought had value. I rattled off a list of personal
>favourites (and, my tastes are admittedly fairly
>popular ones)-- Busiek (early THUNDERBOLTS, AVENGERS,
>ASTRO CITY),
Love 'em.
> DeMatties (SPEC. SPIDER-MAN, SILVER SURFER), Todd DeZago
> (SENS. SPIDER-MAN),
Don't care for either. DeZago is actually on my "drop the book if he's
put on it" list.
> some Alan Moore (WATCHMEN, of course, but I also liked TOM STRONG),
I can take or leave him. He's better when he's not trying to be a
Serious Writer With Depth.
> He snorted and told me that he didn't read superhero comics. He read
> serious comics.
Dude, love 'em as much as I do, I wouldn't call JtHM or Blue Monday
"serious" comics. JtHM has, if anything, all the power fantasy stuff of
superheroes turned up to 11. I expect a lot of people define serious comics
as "everything in the world except superheroes," although Shaun sounds like
he mostly considered serious comics to be ones where the conflicts are
romantic rather than physical (JtHM aside). In other words, if your main
source of drama is "will he/she/they sleep with me?" rather than "can I
defeat him/her/them in mortal combat?", you're a Serious Comic. Especially
if it's all slice-of-life and the plots make no sense (because, of course,
real life doesn't make sense).
Dave Van Domelen, "The superhero who could be YOU!"
Adrian James McClure
incredibly long essays. In particular, the stuff about Golden Age
comics is very helpful for something I'll be writing in the near
future, which involves retcon Golden Age characters.
I'm not going to say anything about the characters in my own RACC
fiction, largely because I haven't written very much of it yet. (It's
been two years since I last wrote an issue of Ultimate Mercenary. Two
years!) I will say that all of my major characters tend to have some
aspects of my personality. I tend to be a bit distrustful of giving my
characters too much of what they want, which probably reflects the fact
that I have somewhat depressive tendencies in real life.
Also, I can't help but feel that another creation of yours who had
aspects of you at the point you created him, whether you were aware of
it or not, was Ultimate Mercenary. Ultimate Mercenary is extremely
naive and exuberant and not the brightest tool in the shed. He's
dedicated to living up to the ideal of Ultimate Ninja but doesn't have
enough self-awareness to realize that he's not succeeding. Replace
Ultimate Ninja with Dave van Domelen and that's very much the portrait
you currently give of yourself circa 1997. :)
(Have I really been away for two years? Oh well...)
Adrian James McClure
in psychobabble. Kraven's Last Hunt was one of the high points of
Spider-Man and the Giffen-Dematteis JLA was sublime. That said, I felt
most of his stuff from the 90's was pretty dire. And I'm glad to know
I'm not the only one who's somewhat ambivalent about Alan Moore. I
actually enjoyed Supreme the most of all his work. (And it's a fairly
substantial influence on the project I enigmatically hinted about
above... :) )
Tom Russell
Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> In article <2006031218120...@web31302.mail.mud.yahoo.com>,
> Tom Russell <milos_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > What about SIP?
> > SIP?
> > STRANGERS IN PARADISE?
> > Oh, right. I've heard of it, but I never...
>
> Left me cold the one or two times I read it as an OPB (Other People's
> Books).
Recently (remember, this conversation was a few years back), I did get
a chance to read eight or nine TPB's. And my overall response was...
meh.
> Don't care for either. DeZago is actually on my "drop the book if he's
> put on it" list.
I liked DeZago's Spider-Man run. It wasn't the best, but it was fun;
certainly better than Mackie or DeFalco (though DeFalco is someone I
have enjoyed from time to time). I think my enjoyment of it might be
coloured by my encounters with DeZago the man-- he's a fine decent
human being.
I would like to say in his defense that he writes the Looter better
than anyone since Stan Lee.
>
> > some Alan Moore (WATCHMEN, of course, but I also liked TOM STRONG),
>
> I can take or leave him. He's better when he's not trying to be a
> Serious Writer With Depth.
Agreed. :-)
I couldn't stand FROM HELL, for example. Everyone told me how much I
was supposed to like it... but... eh. I finally got around to THE
KILLING JOKE and found it pretty lame. PROMETHEA read like the
collected works of every high school poetess I ever met. But I did
enjoy the six issues I read of TOM STRONG; in that case, at least, he
didn't let pretension get in the way.
Something that does bug me about WATCHMEN, The Greatest Superhero Comic
Ever Published (TM), is the way he overcomplicates things. Like having
the text supplements. Or the pages with the pirates, in which I have
to keep two different trains of thought-- dialogue, and the captions in
the pirate page-- running at the same time. It's the kind of
post-modernist formal over-complexity that discerns Important Work from
(Sneer) Popular Fiction, the kind of thing teachers with too much time
on their hands associate with True Artistry.
Me, I'd rather have the Popular Fiction. At least writers of Popular
Fiction know how to construct a sentence. (Yes, Mr. Joyce. I'm
talking to you. Mr. Joyce and I have an understanding-- once he learns
basic sentence structure, I'll read ULYSSES.)
> Especially
> if it's all slice-of-life and the plots make no sense (because, of course,
> real life doesn't make sense).
This is true, and it reminds me of another misconception that irks me.
I finally got around to reading the WILD CARDS series. Well, actually,
no: I finally got around to reading the afterwords to the first two
books and one story. But in the afterwards, George R. R. Martin
explained the reasoning behind the Wild Cards Virus.
In the original role-playing campaign that he ran, all of the
characters had different origins. In the books, however, *all* the
characters recieve their powers as a result of the Wild Card Virus.
The reason behind this, he says, is that it's more plausible: so many
wondrous characters having so many different origins stretches
suspension of disbelief to a breaking point.
I strongly disagree with this notion. It is the same notion that
informed the asinine decision to tie the origin of Spider-Man with that
of Doctor Octopus in SPIDER-MAN: CRAPTER ONE. Having Spider-Man and
His Greatest Foe gain their powers in the same explosion is stupid for
many reasons.
First of all, Spider-Man's origin story is not, Caught in a radioactive
explosion that would have killed him if not for the bite of a radiated
spider which also gave him spider-like powers. He's bitten by a
spider. That's it. And that makes sense. Spider-Man, spider-bite.
But more importantly, this need to tie everything in together violates
the thing that makes the disparate elements of a shared universe work:
casuality. The story of the Eightfold Universe, for example, is the
story of all the people in it. But each of those people-- from my
Martin Rock to the Joltin' One's Billy Kidman-- has their own story, as
well. And sometimes (hint, hint) these stories intersect and
intertwine, since they are one big story. And that's what a shared
universe is all about.
The way I see it, the story of Doctor Octopus is often intertwined with
that of Spider-Man. But it's not the same story. To make it so makes
both characters less special and less independent of each other.
The story of Tom Russell is often intertwined with that of his
beautiful wife, Mary. But she has her own story which started before
mine. And, as far as I'm aware, that's the way real people and real
life work.
I don't mean any disrespect to any of the shared universes, be they on
RACC or in your local comic book store, that have a Shared Origin
premise. They can work, and I'm not saying they can't. It's just my
personal opinion that casuality and coincidence do not tax the willing
suspension of disbelief, because casuality is *more* realistic, more
slice-of-life, more shaggy-baggy.
But that's me, and that's what irks me. (TM)
>
> Dave Van Domelen, "The superhero who could be YOU!"
--Tom
Tom Russell
Adrian James McClure wrote:
> I just wanted to let you know how much I've appreciated your recent
> incredibly long essays. In particular, the stuff about Golden Age
Thank you for taking the time to read them. I am sorry if I do go on a
bit too long; far too often in the past, what I say has been
misinterpetted to my detriment. This is, of course, because I leave it
open to be misinterpetted and I can, on occassion, be clumsy with my
words. So now I try to be careful and to express my complete thought.
> years!) I will say that all of my major characters tend to have some
> aspects of my personality. I tend to be a bit distrustful of giving my
I think that's a given for most authors, as Mr. Willey aptly pointed
out in this thread. In fact, I can't think of a single character that
I've created-- other than gag characters-- that didn't share or
represent some aspect of myself or my personality.
How about all of you out there in RACC-land? Which
major/three-dimensional characters of yours, if any, don't share an
aspect of their creator?
>
> Also, I can't help but feel that another creation of yours who had
> aspects of you at the point you created him, whether you were aware of
> it or not, was Ultimate Mercenary. Ultimate Mercenary is extremely
> naive and exuberant and not the brightest tool in the shed. He's
> dedicated to living up to the ideal of Ultimate Ninja but doesn't have
> enough self-awareness to realize that he's not succeeding. Replace
> Ultimate Ninja with Dave van Domelen and that's very much the portrait
> you currently give of yourself circa 1997. :)
It's true that I've spent a lot of time in my life trying to garner the
acceptance/approval of people I admire-- and that I fixated on those
whose approval was unlikely, Dave included. And I understand perfectly
why Dave didn't read or enjoy my stuff, why the praise and pat on the
head I was waiting for was not forthcoming: my stuff was bad! It was
shit! And, to top it off, I acted like a shit!
And yet, despite my antics and whining, Dave conducted himself like a
prince. He didn't dismiss me outright, but rather offered damn sound
advice.
"No one reads Teenfactor," he said. (Well, more or less. I'm
paraphrasing here.) "It has a stigma attached to it. Why don't you
try writing something else that doesn't have that stigma? And, once
you've got people reading, if you still want, switch back to
Teenfactor."
That was great advice. I should have taken it. Instead, I whined.
And, despite the whining, he didn't ignore me: whenever I sent an
email, he answered it. When I asked to borrow the Cheeez Zeppelin, he
said okay.
There were a lot of people besides Dave who I pissed off and/or acted
like a shit towards. I remember that after my first post-- the
excreble MANGA GIRL # 1-- Jamas Enright kindly suggested that it might
be better suited to rec.arts.anime.creative. He was being extremely
helpful, and I bit his head off for it. Not exactly the way to win
friends and influence people.
And there were so many others, too many to count. I want to take a
moment here and say that, again, I'm very sorry. There was no excuse
for the way I acted.
--Tom
martin...@yahoo.com
> I defended the genre as best I could, offering
> explanations where I could and invoking such grandiose
> terms as "suspension of disbelief" and "world
> building" when I couldn't come up with a satisfactory
> answer. But, in actuality, none of my answers were
> satisfactory for Shaun. And, at the end of this
> conversation, of our first day in one another's
> company, he hit me with the double-whammy: it's all
> just male empowerment fantasy anyway.
Which, of course, is why Wonder Woman was created, ie
to provide a female empowerment fantasy for young girls.
Problem is, the Wonder Woman's creator (Dr. William
Moulton Marston) ignored the fact that women don't normally
try to solve problems with their fists. Wonder Woman's skimpy
costume, of course, appealed to men, whereas male characters
like Batman and Superman had full body costumes including
capes. The bracelets and lasso even suggested that the writer
was symbolizing bondage with Wonder Woman using the
symbols of slavery (the bracelets) against her oppressors and
then tying them up and making them obey her commands (in
this case, to tell the truth). Rumour has it he even had his wife
dress in a Wonder Woman costume.
Now what were we talking about? Oh yeah. So comics are a
fantasy no matter how you look at it. And romance comics are
not female (empowerment?) fantasies? I mean, romance comics
are not sex books: they don't appeal to guys. One imagines
that the stories about men telling women that they love them
represent an ideal world to these writers and readers as well.
Freud said every dream is a wish so maybe comics are the stuff
of dreams. Who hasn't dreamed they could fly? Stan Lee seems
to think that comic book heroes are like the heroes of mythology
and legend, and indeed there's overlap with characters like Thor
and Hercules in his books.
If a comic book, book, movie or novel is not somebody's fantasy
then who wrote it and to whom does it appeal to? In order for a
shared universe to have a widespread appeal, it has to appeal on
a primal level. If somebody says superhero comics are just "wish
fulfillment" then he needs to explain what is entertainment that
doesn't satisfy our wishes and what satisfaction at all you can get
from it.
Martin
Jamas Enright
> Which, of course, is why Wonder Woman was created, ie
> to provide a female empowerment fantasy for young girls.
> Problem is, the Wonder Woman's creator (Dr. William
> Moulton Marston) ignored the fact that women don't normally
> try to solve problems with their fists. Wonder Woman's skimpy
> costume, of course, appealed to men, whereas male characters
> like Batman and Superman had full body costumes including
> capes. The bracelets and lasso even suggested that the writer
> was symbolizing bondage with Wonder Woman using the
> symbols of slavery (the bracelets) against her oppressors and
> then tying them up and making them obey her commands (in
> this case, to tell the truth). Rumour has it he even had his wife
> dress in a Wonder Woman costume.
Not his wife, try his mistress...and the two of them were into the whole
bondage thing.
As for the lariat, he invented the Lie Detector (aka polygraph aka piece
of junk that doesn't measure squat outside of skin conductivity...), and
since this was such a marvellous (although flawed) creation, he gave a
perfect version to WW.
--
Jamas Enright
"Answers answered and questions questioned."
Homepage: http://www.eyrie.org/~thad/
Blue Light Productions homepage: http://www.blue-light-productions.com/
"If a great state has decided by law that twice two is five, it would be
foolish to allow mathematicians to testify." - Comment during the Scopes
Monkey Trial.
Tom Russell
martinphip...@yahoo.com wrote:
> If a comic book, book, movie or novel is not somebody's fantasy
> then who wrote it and to whom does it appeal to? In order for a
> shared universe to have a widespread appeal, it has to appeal on
> a primal level. If somebody says superhero comics are just "wish
> fulfillment" then he needs to explain what is entertainment that
> doesn't satisfy our wishes and what satisfaction at all you can get
> from it.
Elegantly said, Martin. May I use that as a signature quote?
--Tom
Tom Russell
> > this case, to tell the truth). Rumour has it he even had his wife
> > dress in a Wonder Woman costume.
>
> Not his wife, try his mistress...and the two of them were into the whole
> bondage thing.
Not only that, but I believe the mistress (Olive Byrne) was living with
both William Moulton Marston and his wife, Sadie. Wonder Woman herself
was tied up in the comic books on, oh, I don't know... EVERY OTHER
PANEL!
And, to top off the wrongness of it all-- the way in which she was a
total failure as a Role Model For Strong Women but instead a total
success as the sum total of her creator's sexual predilections-- the
cherry on top of all this is: Wonder Woman isn't even a good or
interesting character.
And, I think, she fails on an iconic level. When someone says
Superman, I think of truth, justice, and the American way. Apple pie,
a proudly swelling chest, a chiseled chin and a smile, sunlight blaring
in the background.
When someone says Batman, I think of dark things, of shadows. I think
of homicidal maniacs, severe architecture, of an orphan standing over
his parents in a grimy alleyway.
Hell, when someone says Scrooge McDuck, I think of adventure, of
whimsy, of daring and surprise around every corner!
But when someone says Wonder Woman, I think of an invisible jet and
Etta Candy.
I mean, sure, the Superman and Batman mythos have some silly elements
(Ace the Bat-Hound?), but the essential, iconic nature of the
characters over come it. To me, Wonder Woman lacks that iconic
stature. That's not necessarily a bad thing: there are many great
characters who don't operate on iconic levels, but rather on very
specific ones. They are very complex, very specific characters with a
great deal of personality.
But Wonder Woman lacks even that.
In the words of Master Blaster:
Lame. Frickin' lame.
> --
> Jamas Enright
> "Answers answered and questions questioned."
> Homepage: http://www.eyrie.org/~thad/
> Blue Light Productions homepage: http://www.blue-light-productions.com/
>
> "If a great state has decided by law that twice two is five, it would be
> foolish to allow mathematicians to testify." - Comment during the Scopes
> Monkey Trial.
Yes, but one can be equal to zero.
--Tom
Jamas Enright
> There were a lot of people besides Dave who I pissed off and/or acted
> like a shit towards. I remember that after my first post-- the
> excreble MANGA GIRL # 1-- Jamas Enright kindly suggested that it might
> be better suited to rec.arts.anime.creative. He was being extremely
> helpful, and I bit his head off for it. Not exactly the way to win
> friends and influence people.
Actually, I was trying to get permission to give it a MST3K treatment
(beware anyone asking to "repost with a few comments added" :) ), but
never did anything about it.
Jamie Rosen
>major/three-dimensional characters of yours, if any, don't share an
>aspect of their creator?
I'm not sure any of my characters don't share an aspect of me (I'd be
hard-pressed to believe a "major/three-dimensionl" character could be
created that didn't share an aspect of its creator.)
Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass doesn't quite fit in the with the
LNH, much as I didn't fit in with it when I created her, but at the
same time she has an attraction to one of its members -- much the same
as I kept on wanting to write for the LNH even though I couldn't really
pull it off.
Everyone from Miss Translation has bits of me in them.
And Billy from Template, surprisingly, may have the least in common
with me of anybody. My parents are alive, neither of them was a
superhero, I didn't grow up in a small town... It's true that Rex Falls
is modeled on a town I spent some time visiting on a regular basis, and
I did work in an independent bookstore (although I didn't own one like
Billy does...) Some of his relationship with his mother mirrors my
relationship with mine at times, but we'll have to see how that
develops as the series goes on (and it will go on -- issue #3 is
probably halfway done, and it's almost as long as #1 was in its
entirety.)
My really writer-character-y characters are mostly from the one-shots
-- the Stolen Garbages, the 24MINUTECOMICs, the Gutter Trash guest
issue.
Jamie Rosen
>Etta Candy.
To be fair, that's probably not the fault of the concept but of the way
it was handled. I can't help but wonder if she'd been allowed to go
into temporary obscurity (a la Martian Manhunter) or pass the torch (a
la Flash) there would have been a renewed groundswell for her. Or heck,
if she'd gotten the quality treatment Thor got over the Marvel
Universe, instead of cut rate chauvinism.
Who knows -- the same legal ranglings that required WW be kept in print
for so many years may have harmed her more than it helped her. Some
time off to become a beloved character to be brought back could have
recharged the creator's batteries.
Tom Russell
The Joltin' One wrote:
> To be fair, that's probably not the fault of the concept but of the way
> it was handled.
Yes. As the hangman advised the writer, Execution is everything.
You know, one of my favourite movies when I was a kid was Albert
Brooks's DEFENDING YOUR LIFE (I was a weird kid). I watched it again
recently, and I realized that I loved the movie more for the set-up
than for the way it was done. Really, it's a pretty weakly executed
film. But the set-up! The little world that Brooks built, his whole
concept? It's terrific, and could easily support dozens of great
stories. I really think it'd be a great TV series, and I'm surprised a
DEFENDING YOUR LIFE fan fiction fandom hasn't developed yet.
There are a lot of movies, TV shows, and comics that thrive on a high
concept that just isn't executed well, that doesn't really deliver the
goods. For example, there's this story in SUPERMAN # 125 (November,
1958), "Clark Kent's College Days."
The gimmick is this: Clark "Superboy" Kent finds himself engaged in a
battle of wits with the famed Professor Thaddeus V. Maxwell, "... one
of the most brilliant men in the world!" In fact, he's so famous, that
Metropolis University has a glass display case featuring "Scientific
Awards Won By Professor Maxwell". (My video teacher was Russ Gibb, the
man who started "Paul is Dead". He didn't get a glass display case.
All he got was a yardstick. But that was high school.)
Prof. Maxwell deduces that Superboy is one of the students in his
class, and decides, as a personal challenge to himself, to try and
figure out which one it is. He has never before failed in an
experiment.
Now, this is a great *concept* for a story. It's an offbeat sort of
challenge for Our Intrepid Hero, and one that requires intellect and
cunning. A battle of wits, set in the halls of academia! But the
*execution* ...
First of all, Prof. Maxwell pulls out a lie detector and attaches it to
each of his students, one-by-one, and asks that student if he is
Superboy. Let's pretend for a moment that the lie detector does work.
Okay. Does it strike you as odd that one of the most cunning and
brilliant of all scientists would, as his opening gambit in this battle
of wits, ASK ALL HIS STUDENTS WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE SUPERBOY?
The bell rings before Clark has to take the test. He's the only
student left. Now, if you ask me, that means the mystery is solved.
Since it's already clear that Superboy is a member of the class,
wouldn't the only student left be Superboy, just by process of
elimination?
Maxwell proceeds, by a number of ridiculous schemes that I will not
even attempt to summarize here, to try and prove that Clark is
Superboy. Each and every one of these schemes takes place during
class. So, if Maxwell succeeds, than Clark will be outed-- in front of
the entire class!-- as Superboy. If Maxwell was secretly Lex Luthor,
this would make a lot of sense. But, no: Maxwell just wants to figure
it out to see if he can figure it out. In fact, he tells Clark that
should he deduce that he is Superboy, he would keep that information to
himself... a statement that is directly contradicted by every single
action Maxwell has ever performed in the story. If you ask me, he's
senile.
Clark does end up beating both the professor and the lie detector in
the end, and, really, the way in which he does so is somewhat clever.
And the story is of note because it is, actually, the origin story of
Superman.
But it's still pretty lame. There's a good story in there: a canny
professor trying to satisfy an intellectual curiosity but meaning no
harm. A superhero desperate to perserve his identity. It could be a
great, fun, entertaining story with a very offbeat sort of menace. But
the actual execution of the story doesn't do justice to the big idea,
to the premise.
I might just go ahead and swipe the premise for a story of my own. But
this raises some tricky questions: to start with, would it be ethically
right for me to do so?
How important is the big idea in art? Stan Lee argues, for example,
that the person who comes up with the character or the idea should then
be called the creator of that character or idea.
Is someone who is good at improving (like Shakespeare) or synthesizing
dispariate and often-times inferior source materials (like Tarantino)
less of an artist than those who created those original materials? I
mean, by all accounts, ANTZ is a knock-off of A BUG'S LIFE. But ANTZ
is better!
Is it plagarism to take a high concept (like Defending Your Life, or
Clark Kent's College Days) and extrapolate from it? I think I'd be a
bit miffed if someone created a character with Gregory Dingham's powers
and wrote a story about said character's moral decline. At the same
time, what if they did it better?
Questions, questions.
Any answers?
--Tom
martin...@yahoo.com
Sure. Although, in retrospect the "book ... novel" part may be
redundant.
Martin
Jamie Rosen
>Clark Kent's College Days) and extrapolate from it?
No. Plagiarism is taking somebody's writing and passing it off as your
own.
You're talking about inspiration. Since you've made it quite clear that
you don't like the execution of the stories -- in other words, if I may
be so bold, you like the ideas but not the plots -- you'd obviously
write something different from what came first. If you sat down and
rewrote "Clark Kent's College Days" and basically just changed the
names and some other window dressing, that would be a different matter;
but sitting down and saying, "What if a college professor took it on
himself to discover a superhero's secret identity?" is just taking an
idea and running with it.
After all, doesn't the above sound a bit like some Spider-Man story?
If you think about it, many good ideas are twists on previous ones.
Heck, the Punisher is a variant on Batman -- instead of a child seeing
his parents gunned down in front of him, a father sees his wife and
child gunned down in front of him. It would be interesting to see a
maternal take on the same idea.
Dave Van Domelen
Tom Russell <milos_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Is it plagarism to take a high concept (like Defending Your Life, or
>Clark Kent's College Days) and extrapolate from it? I think I'd be a
>bit miffed if someone created a character with Gregory Dingham's powers
>and wrote a story about said character's moral decline. At the same
>time, what if they did it better?
No, it is not plagiarism to just take the idea. You have to actually
lift significant bits of text, either unaltered or insufficiently altered,
for it to be plagiarism. That's the problem faced in the lawsuit over The
DaVinci Code right now.
However, the larger question (which I snipped) of "is it ethical?" is
not so clear-cut. At one extreme, you can take the position that there are
only so many truly original plots or premises, and therefore all writing goes
to the same well and it's perfectly okay. At the other extreme, you could
say that if it takes more then N words (N=100, 50, whatever) to adequately
explain a plot or premise, it's original enough that the idea of theft would
be plausible.
In general, I'd recommend citing inspirations in your end notes, but
don't worry about it being wrong to take the idea. Synthesis IS a valid form
of creativity, and an unexploited or underexploited idea is fair game.
Dave Van Domelen, "Always be sure to be calling it 'research,'" - Tom
Lehrer
Tom Russell
Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> However, the larger question (which I snipped) of "is it ethical?" is
> not so clear-cut. At one extreme, you can take the position that there are
> only so many truly original plots or premises, and therefore all writing goes
> to the same well and it's perfectly okay. At the other extreme, you could
> say that if it takes more then N words (N=100, 50, whatever) to adequately
> explain a plot or premise, it's original enough that the idea of theft would
> be plausible.
> In general, I'd recommend citing inspirations in your end notes, but
> don't worry about it being wrong to take the idea. Synthesis IS a valid form
> of creativity, and an unexploited or underexploited idea is fair game.
That's very sound advice. Both you and the Joltin' One bring up some
good points here.
>
> Dave Van Domelen, "Always be sure to be calling it 'research,'" - Tom
> Lehrer
I recently did a baptism video for a family member. I was going to put
"Vatican Rag" in the background, but my wife talked me out of it.
--Tom
"If a comic book, book, movie or novel is not somebody's fantasy
then who wrote it and to whom does it appeal to? In order for a
shared universe to have a widespread appeal, it has to appeal on
a primal level. If somebody says superhero comics are just 'wish
fulfillment' then he needs to explain what is entertainment that
doesn't satisfy our wishes and what satisfaction at all you can get
from it." -- Dr. Martin Phipps
Tom Russell
Jamie Rosen wrote:
> After all, doesn't the above sound a bit like some Spider-Man story?
Most of the early Spider-stories are very offbeat-- something I'd
attribute more to Ditko than Lee.
>
> If you think about it, many good ideas are twists on previous ones.
> Heck, the Punisher is a variant on Batman -- instead of a child seeing
> his parents gunned down in front of him, a father sees his wife and
> child gunned down in front of him. It would be interesting to see a
> maternal take on the same idea.
Yes, it would be interesting. If you don't write it, I will. :-)
For some reason, it reminds me of Medea-- which is really the story in
reverse, isn't it? Instead of someone avenging the death of their
children, they achieve vengeance through the death of their children.
Now, that's a Tyler Perry movie I'd like to see.
That whacky Medea.
--Tom
"If a comic book, book, movie or novel is not somebody's fantasy
then who wrote it and to whom does it appeal to? In order for a
shared universe to have a widespread appeal, it has to appeal on
a primal level. If somebody says superhero comics are just 'wish
fulfillment' then he needs to explain what is entertainment that
doesn't satisfy our wishes and what satisfaction at all you can get
from it." -- Dr. Martin Phipps
Jamie Rosen
It's a thought. I went and checked my Who's Whos because I thought the
post-Crisis Golden Age Fury (replacing the non-existent Golden Age
Wonder Woman at the time) might have fit that description. It turns out
she was another avenging-the-parents type, however.
>For some reason, it reminds me of Medea-- which is really the story in
>reverse, isn't it? Instead of someone avenging the death of their
>children, they achieve vengeance through the death of their children.
I remember at least one story where it transpired that Medea had been
framed for the deaths of her children by Jason, who had actually killed
them himself.
martin...@yahoo.com
> Is someone who is good at improving (like Shakespeare) or synthesizing
> dispariate and often-times inferior source materials (like Tarantino)
> less of an artist than those who created those original materials? I
> mean, by all accounts, ANTZ is a knock-off of A BUG'S LIFE. But ANTZ
> is better!
>
> Is it plagarism to take a high concept (like Defending Your Life, or
> Clark Kent's College Days) and extrapolate from it? I think I'd be a
> bit miffed if someone created a character with Gregory Dingham's powers
> and wrote a story about said character's moral decline. At the same
> time, what if they did it better?
Awfully subjective, really. I don't think Antz was better than A Bug's
Life. I mean, if you forget for a moment that the ants in A Bug's Life
are all colored wrong (blue ants???) then A Bug's Life is better.
Similarly, I liked Phil Collin's Sussudio better than Prince's 1999 so
I'm not going to get upset when Phil admits in an interview that he
literally stole the hook from the latter song. The fact that he could
admit it might have saved him some trouble. I mean, if an author goes
on to write a novel based on Speak and then somebody asks him where he
got the idea and he says "Oh there was a similar story on the internet.
Some guy named Tom Russell wrote it." then you might still be pissed
but at least you eventually got credit.
I suppose the best situation is when an author gives permission for you
to use his idea. Then the next best situation is when the character or
concept is old enough to be considered public domain but not yet
cliche. Then there's the possibility that you only borrow a snipet so
that it could be considered a homage or an unattributed quotation. Of
course, in the case of writing stories to be posted on the internet,
the question of "fair use" comes up. Legally, a writer might be able
to appeal to freedom of speech if by using somebody else's character or
concept you are actually making a comment about the character, say in
the form of parody or satire (which is why Mad Magazine can't be sued
for its TV or movie satires). There are a lot of individual situations
to be considered.
Martin
martin...@yahoo.com
> If you think about it, many good ideas are twists on previous ones.
> Heck, the Punisher is a variant on Batman -- instead of a child seeing
> his parents gunned down in front of him, a father sees his wife and
> child gunned down in front of him. It would be interesting to see a
> maternal take on the same idea.
Rather than become a vigilantee, a mother would be more likely to
create a support group, say MAHMWKYF (Mothers Against Homocidal Maniacs
Who Kill Your Family).
Martin