REVIEW: End of Month Reviews #78 - June 2010 [spoilers]
Saxon Brenton
[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #78 - June 2010 [spoilers]
Reviewed This Issue:
Academy of Super-Heroes #107 [ASH]
The Flagsuit Memo [ASH]
The Gong Fu Kid [Contest] {high concept 10}
Jolt City #19 [8Fold]
Silver Arrow #2 [StarFall]
SW10: What About Judy And Me? [SW10]
World Tales #16 [LNH/Else] {high concept 10}
Also posted:
Lady Lawful and Doctor Developer Special: Pull [ASH]
{high concept 10}
Legion of Net.Heroes vol.2 #36 [LNH] {high concept 10}
My Father's Son #1 [8Fold]
The Pyramid Trap [ASH]
Hmm. Last month Ted Brock made a return appearance, this month
Jamas Enright. Oh, and the theme for High concept Challenge number 10
was 'the immigrant experience'.
Spoilers below...
====
Academy of Super-Heroes #107
'I Hate Mondays' [The Office Part 1]
An Academy of Super-Heroes [ASH] series
by Dave Van Domelen
This episode acts a bridging story from the previous 'Rival Schools'
arc into 'The Office': a few loose ends are tied up (Fury and Centurion's
discussion on the effectiveness of Red Widow's media strategy; the follow-
up to Netwalker's rescue mission/theft of the ADA artificial intelligence),
combined with a setup explaining the new problem that the ASH members
face (the briefing to explain what the Multiversal Office is and why it's
a potential threat), plus some scenes reintroducing the main cast in
thematically appropriate ways and in some cases carrying forward their
personal soap opera subplots.
Actually, when I started analysing about how issue 107 hung together
as a story I mentally ran through the events, and naturally enough the
first thing was the opening scene with Fury and Centurion - and my first
reaction was 'Ah, back to the regularly scheduled soap opera'. Stripped
of any pejoratives that might cling to the term 'soap opera' it
describes a lot of modern four-colour superhero comics rather well.
Historically the comics of the Golden Age tended to feature iconic heroes
fighting crime in self contained stories, with no carry-over in either
plot or subplot from story to story. The watershed change-over to
'heroes dealing with personal problems in the subplots of their private
lives' came with the Marvel Comics of the Silver Age. (And arguably the
whole trend towards heroes beset with personal problems reached an
over-ripe asymptote in the dysfunctional protagonists of the
grim'n'gritty Iron Age.) These days the trend seems to take an average
somewhere around the style of the Silver Age - with the exact amount to
which personal subplots appear being a matter of authorial and stylistic
choice. Certainly the ASH series seems to fall somewhere around that
midpoint.
That said, it does occurr to me that a situation like that of Fury
and Centurion doesn't quite count as 'soap opera'. Despite Centurion's
ongoing health status as being internally amorphous, neither of them
has had a direct personal problem to worry about/angst over/struggle
against for quite some time. Instead, they are familiar characters who
are here being trotted out to be used for identification purposes and as
talking heads. This actually describes most of the ASH membership, now
that I come to think of it, and probably for good reason. On a
government sponsored superteam with goodness knows how many psychologists
on support staff, it's reasonable that only a minority of the characters
are carrying an emotional problem parcel at any one time, even if that
does mean that most of the rest of the time everybody looks like their
personal lives have settled into something that looks suspiciously like
cosey domesticity.
Crap, but that random thought and its consequences went on for
longer than I expected. More important stuff: the Multiversal Office.
It wasn't until my third read-through that I finally caught the signif-
icance of all the references to bureaucracy and red tape in the first few
scenes. (See what I have to put up with? Sometimes I over-analyse
stuff, while ignoring other stuff that's sitting in front of me pulling
faces. Gah!) Hmm, and those same scenes also involve questions of
identity as well... I wonder if that's foreshadowing too.
Anyway, I'm mildly interested in seeing how the depiction of the
Multiversal Office is handled in the ASH setting. My reason? Well, the
Multiversal Office first appeared in the initial Net.Trenchcoat Brigade
story/chaotic add-on cascade _Wrath of the Administrator_ back in the
early 1990s and later got used by Dvandom in the 'Bad Forms' arc for his
old Legion of Net.Heroes series _Constellation_ and crossovers. I
mention this because I think there's a subtle difference between its two
depictions - which I suspect I only really notice now because I recently
reread parts of _Wrath of the Administrator_ when I was researching the
character of Doubt, the Eight Endless for the 5th High Concept Challenge
back in December 2009. The NTB story, being faux-Vertigo style,
combined the surreal with the Kafka-esque. The LNH story, being
superhero parody, took the surreal and pumped a lot of it up to become
silliness and could not help but tone down some of the Kafka-esque
elements. Quite apart from the whole 'superheroes simply fight their
way through any obstacle' inherent within the genre, the way that Acton
Lord was able to (quite brilliantly, actually) outthink the Office's
drain on his life force defies the type of existential helplessness that
unaccountable bureaucracy should create.
Now, at the risk of pointing out the bleeding obvious, _Academy of
Super-Heroes_ doesn't quite share the genre styles of either the Trench-
coaters or the Legion. It's more of a science fiction/four colour
superhero hybrid. What will that mean for the way the Multiversal
office manifests in the mainstream ASH universe? We shall have to wait
and see.
The Flagsuit Memo
An Academy of Super-Heroes [ASH] sourcebook
by Dave Van Domelen
Anal-Retentive Archive Kid sighs. "Okay, fine, screw this. I don't
*care* what it's *labelled* as. If the substantive portion of the text
is written from an in-universe perspective then it's gonna get treated
as a story."
This one-shot takes the form of an email from a member of the
Combine government's Department of Super-Human Affairs to his new
superior. He seeks clarification on current department policy and
preferred approach on the subject of creating a 'Captain America' style
iconic national hero (or 'flagsuit') for the Combine. Several possible
approaches are outlined, along with their benefits and drawbacks.
Given the timing of this being published more-or-less concurrently
with the bureaucracy themed 'The Office' arc starting in _ASH_ #107, the
reader might be inclined to think that the somewhat cynical opinions
expressed in the email are a function of the rising bureaucracy caused
by the Multiversal Office. This is possible, but it would be a mistake
to automatically assume it. _The Flagsuit Memo_ is certainly
thematically appropriate at this point in time. However, manipulative
bureaucracy has always been somewhere in the background of the ASH
setting. The very first story - published in the initial _ASH_ mini-
series - was based on the notion of pushing trainees into a 'sink or
swim' situation.
As ASH sourcebooks go the email format means it's less dry than a
number of others. However, when talking about sourcebooks the primary
purpose is not merely to entertain but to inform. People who *need* to
know this information will (admittedly quite a small group, considering
the size of the ASH writing stable at the moment) will gulp it down
regardless of format as long as it's set out clearly and coherently.
People who are interested in the specific subject, or in the world
building aspects of a superhero setting, will similarly read it
regardless. Casual readers are more likely to be swayed by a narrative-
like structure - but I'm guessing that the email format would be less
appealing than the story format of, for example, the taxonomy of monsters
in _Monsters 101_.
The Gong Fu Kid
A High Concept Challenge [Contest] posting
by Martin Phipps
Here's the first of there High Concept Challenge entries for round
10: the immigrant experience.
Since I got burnt last time I'll go the obvious route and start off
by taking a guess at which movie Martin is using as a template for this
story. This might not normally be too difficult an ask, but frankly
I've never been that much of a film buff (either through cinema release
or television reruns) so I'd normally be at a disadvantage in this sort
of... and yes, I do mean this literally in my case... *guessing* game.
Fortunately the first _The Karate Kid_ movie has such a high profile
pop-culture presence that I can recognise its general plot structure
even though I've never seen it or its sequel.
In any case, Jaden Smith and his mother move to China when she gets
a job at the United States embassy. Jaden slowly makes friends with the
locals, and through his acquaintance with the girl Su zi is introduced
to the home economics teacher Mr Han, who agrees to teach Jaden
appropriate 'skill', or gong fu.
With this setup the whole story is basically an amusing inversion
of the outsider-must-learn-to-win-acceptance-by-fighting plot. However
in this case Jaden's ultimate challenge from the stereotypical gang of
bullies is to be able to read and order food from a Chinese menu, and
then eat it using chopsticks. Extra points for the 'we're not gonna be
friends because you suceeded, we're just not gonna beat you up' line,
since it so neatly highlights the rather contrived logic of movie
conflicts: real gangs of bullies would only be using an inability to
order from a menu as an excuse to beat people up.
Jolt City #19
'The Little League of Doom!'
An Eightfold [8Fold] series
by Tom Russell
Well, that was particularly nasty - which was the point, of course.
Uhm, the story's author notes already make clear its debt to _Lord
of the Flies_, plus Tom has already made a particularly lengthy commentary
in reply to Andrew Perron, so I feel I can keep this short and dwelling
on first impressions. The thing that struck me straight away about the
behaviour of the super-powered children is that it was an example of
possessing and using power without heed for the consequences. Part of
that comes from the sheer level of power involved - at Docartes level
(or in more general pop culture parlance, Superman level) there's few
superhumans who could simply stop them with brute force alone. In that
regard they don't have an immediate need to consider consequences.
The other part comes from the fact that they are children. Children
are often said to be innocent - which is true, but it's not always
appreciated what that means. Children may not have the life experience
to develop some of the more sophisticated perversions that adults do. On
the other hand, part of the growing up process is gaining a sense of 'the
other', of developing empathy for how other people feel and recognising
truisms like 'do unto others as you would be done by'. Children can be
hideously self-centred.
(And if you so choose you can also throw in commentary about modern
entertainment, such as electronic games like Grand Theft Auto that are
also romps of violence without consequences. Although in this case I
suspect that this third option would be better described as an
exacerbation of the previous two.)
Other impressions: Poor Blue Boxer is still smarting from the
public reaction to his fight with the telegraph pole, huh? Well, his
success in solving the problem of the Little Leaguers should help soothe
his ego a bit - but I suspect that'll just set him up for his next fall.
Sad things is, the Boxer is a bit of the cocky side, coming up with good
ideas but not necessarily thinking them through. The engineering of the
pizo electric boots are a case in point. So I would hazard that the
Boxer needs to learn from his setbacks, rather than merely move past them.
And then there's Dr Tarif. WTF!? Does she read comics as well?
Or does she just read *everything* and retain it all with near-eidetic
memory?
Finally, a revised impression of the summary of Fish's fate. On
first read through I found it tedious and irritating. I skimmed through
it, and indeed I continued skimming through the final coda with Dani and
Martin. The question is: why? I don't think it's the length. The
summary of Fish's trial and jail term is only four paragraphs, which is
actually shorter than the previous scene with Canton and Proctor scheming.
Another possibility that I gave serious consideration was the way
more and more injustice was being heaped upon Fish and his reputation,
since it was about the point that his mother wrote a tell-all book after
his death that I began to lose interest. Tom has already noted elsewhere
that this was a consideration, and that the scene that saw print is a
truncated and in some ways watered down version, while still seeming a
bit raw. So, is it possible that it can be proclaimed: "Tom Russell!
J'Accuse! For all your claims of hating anti-superhero stories, you have
become what you hate, and stand guilty of *gratuitous grim'n'gritty*!"
Eh, maybe, maybe not. The final 'the dead are dead, let them rest in
peace' statement provides a more realistic balance than any revelation of
a post-mortem vindication, but the fact remains that the scene is still
written to evoke emotion and the inherent unpleasantness of the emotion
may contribute.
Finally it occurred to me that the contrast between the Canton and
Proctor scene, and the Fish summary, was the key. The first showed the
scene, then second narrated it. Yeah, it's the 'show, don't tell' adage.
Possibly this is a bit unfair a comparison in this instance, since the
Fish summary is telling of things happening in the future, and at the end
of an already lengthy story really does need to be a short and sweet.
You can't really construct an epilogue showing something like an innocent
man rotting in gaol for several decades.
Silver Arrow #2
'Descent'
A StarFall [StarFall] series
by Ted Brock
I find myself asking 'should I just copy'n'paste my commentary
on the first issue here?' and then wonder to what extent I'm being
facecious. The second issue contains many of the same elements,
although they have been shuffled to create a different beat pattern to
the story. Silver Arrow gets into a cool fight; Jade continues to be
more deeply involved in something morally dubious than Silver Arrow
suspects; more supporting cast - both allies and opponents - are
introduced; Silver Arrow gets to be cocky both in his costumed identity
and out of it.
Actually, the bit about Silver Arrow being cocky is interesting.
On a superficial level it raises the obvious questions about how he'll
handle the revelation about how deeply Jade is involved with Sun Li's
business in general and the assassination in particular. (Providing
that he ever finds out; Ted may have a twist planned.) Then there's
the fact that he's cocky both in and out of costume, but this contrasts
with his concerned reaction when Fran turns up. So, he has more depth
to him that first appearances would imply. It also suggests that his
smugness is a function of how in-control he feels; which means the
audience needs to get a firmer idea of where the limits of his
competence are. More wait and see is required.
SW10: What About Judy And Me?
A Superhuman World [SW10] story
by Scott Eiler
I think I may have misjudged Wyatt. That includes a mixture of
both good and bad, incidentally. I think that somewhere along the line
the combination of 'crusading gonzo reporter who'll go anywhere' and
'superpowers' got a bit mixed up in my head, such that I rather
unthinkingly expected the character to act like a superhero. This
despite the fact that only a few moment's recollection was needed to
indicate that, no, actually he's been acting like a gonzo journalist.
This wrongfooted me towards the end of the post when his actions, which
had been predictable up until then, stopped being so.
Specifically Wyatt is set to marry his longtime girlfriend Judy
Kraaco, but on the day of the wedding Judy's grand-niece Mary Mystery
casts some paranoia spells to disrupt the occasion. Faced with the
prospect of arrest because his enemy has soured his reputation with the
authorities, Wyatt does what any costumed superhero would do: he bugs
out. That done I had expected him to do the next standard thing: set
about clearing his name and winning back the girl. The first indication
that this wouldn't be the case was from the comments that Wyatt's brother
Calvin ferried from Judy - that she had expected him to run away.
However I didn't even see what was coming even then. After all, it's a
trope that superheroes may suffer from their friends having bad opinions
of them in their secret identity. Clark Kent is the obvious example,
and Steve Ditko came close to fetishising it in the comics he created.
So what happens next? Well, Wyatt leaves, retrenches, and
eventually unearths what happened. Significantly however he doesn't use
this information to try to vindicate himself with Judy. And I'm not
even completely sure whether he even tried.
At times like this I really regret the presentation of Wyatt's
reports in blog entry style. I get the feeling that they're able to
handle reports of straight facts, but that they're less amenable for
explaining feelings and motivations. Even if they're his own.
Especially if they're his own.
World Tales #16
'Crossing States'
An Elsewhirls [Else] story in a Legion of Net.Heroes [LNH] series
by Jamas Enright
My pre-publication feedback to this story via email was much the
same as Andrew's public response on the mailing list/newsgroup: this is
old school LNH silliness. Warms the cockles of yer heart, it does.
There's a moderately ludicrous setup where a new hero arrives in
Net.ropolis, and despite the amazing odds against it not only gets to
fight a villain within half an hour of getting off the bus, but also
discovers that his powers are exactly matched to thwart the powers of
the new villain. There's various bits of comedy coming from both
characterisation (MasterBlaster's attitude is spot on and as self-
absorbed in his schitck as ever) but also from the writing style (the
ongoing, excessive, and occasionally downright recusiveness of the
editorial interjections).
----------
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon....@uts.edu.au
The Eyrie Archives of Russ Allbery which collect the online superhero
fiction of the rec.arts.comics.creative newsgroup and its sibling group
Superguy can be found at:
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http://archives.eyrie.org/superguy/ or
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/superguy/
Tom Russell
best impression of Emile Zola:
> "Tom Russell!
> J'Accuse! For all your claims of hating anti-superhero stories, you have
> become what you hate, and stand guilty of *gratuitous grim'n'gritty*!"
Oh noes!
In all seriousness, thank you for your feedback, Saxon. You've given
me a lot to chew on.
When I was discussing this story with my wife, and mentioned my unease
about the possibility of things tipping over to Le Grim et Gritty, she
said, "Yes, you wouldn't want anything that feels jarring. What
you're talking about totally wouldn't fit in with the kids who were
killed by the park shooter (# 4)? Or when Martin was assaulted by the
Contessa (# 8)? Or when Derek's father was murdered by the serial
killer (# 14)? The extinction of the balloon animals (# 18)?" Well,
she didn't say it in quite those words, and certainly not with
parenthetical issue numbers, but the point she made still had some
sting: as much as I talk about optimism, JOLT CITY as a whole has been
pretty downbeat, and one could argue that it tips over too much into
darkness.
And yet-- I'd like to think it's an optimistic series, that it carries
real affection for the people in it, instead of hating them the way an
anti-superhero story or series very clearly despises the people it's
supposed to be about. I'd like to think that I empathize with my
people's weaknesses and tribulations, instead of being above them or
making cheap little points at their expense. My hope, as mentioned
elsewhere, was that Martin's perhaps quixotic sacrifice was heroic and
dignified enough to offset the terrible circumstances which put him in
that situation; it is entirely possible, however, that a quixotic
sacrifice in a superhero story is mutually exclusive to the genre.
The same could be said, perhaps, for a story in which evil is largely
triumphant and goes unpunished. And no matter how much I yammer on
about intentions, hopes, and why-I-did-this-or-that-etc., the simple
fact remains that this story did, indeed, contain those things.
I will say, in case this last installment has made any readers weary,
that it's unlikely for a disaster of this scale to hit the city again
any time soon.
> Finally, a revised impression of the summary of Fish's fate. On
> first read through I found it tedious and irritating.
Sorry.
> Finally it occurred to me that the contrast between the Canton and
> Proctor scene, and the Fish summary, was the key. The first showed the
> scene, then second narrated it. Yeah, it's the 'show, don't tell' adage.
> Possibly this is a bit unfair a comparison in this instance, since the
> Fish summary is telling of things happening in the future, and at the end
> of an already lengthy story really does need to be a short and sweet.
> You can't really construct an epilogue showing something like an innocent
> man rotting in gaol for several decades.
One reason why I went with the summary-- besides length-- is that the
summary format allowed for some wistfulness in my phrasing. The voice
of the narrator in that section was intended to be distant (one reason
for the flash-forward), saddened, and resigned. My hope is that that
would lessen the sting of the injustice somewhat, and it made room for
those final lines you alluded to--
"I'd like to say that one day, the truth did come out, that poor
Fish was vindicated from the grave. But what good would that do him;
what comfort would it provide? The dead are dead. The future holds
promise and terror in equal measure, but it only does so for the
living."
-- which I'm still quite proud of, and which I hoped would resonate in
a more... how do I say this without being too pretentious? I guess I
can just say that I wanted those words to be evocative of something
bigger than Fish, something bigger than any one person.
It's not that I didn't want the reader angry-- as I said elsewhere, I
definitely intended to agitate one's sense of justice. I guess what I
was trying to do by using that summary format and that tone was to try
and ensure that while the reader might be angry about what had
happened, he wouldn't also be angry at me for writing it. :-O
How well I succeeded, though, is obviously up for debate.
And here's hoping, as always, that you (and others) get more pleasure
from the next installment.
==Tom
Tom Russell
> And then there's Dr Tarif. WTF!? Does she read comics as well?
> Or does she just read *everything* and retain it all with near-eidetic
> memory?
I'm not sure if the good doctor would be an active fan of fictional
superhero comics, especially considering how she lives in a universe
populated by "real" four-colour heroes. But being that she knew the
various Captain Marvel characters and publisher names, comics probably
figured as one of her many points of interest at some point.
I'm also unsure if she has eidetic memory-- she probably has a pretty
good one to be able to do the whole super-genius inventor thing that
will lead to her Nobel-winning invention of the perpetual motion
machine (as mentioned in the Grey Gelding story)-- but I don't think
it's a stretch to say that she might remember how the Fawcett Marvel
Family's powers worked even if she hadn't touched a comic since she
was a teenager; I don't have anything that approaches an eidetic
memory, but sometimes a little lightbulb will go off in my head and
out will come some fact I haven't thought of in ten or fifteen years
that proves useful in a given situation.
There's also the possibility, of course, that since they were trying
to figure out how the powers worked, and since Derek offered Marvel as
a solution, that the two things just clicked in her head and out came
that little bit of information-- so it wasn't completely out of the
blue, as it were.
==Tom
Scott Eiler
> SW10: What About Judy And Me?
> A Superhuman World [SW10] story
> by Scott Eiler
Oops, I guess this story really is public.
> I think I may have misjudged Wyatt. That includes a mixture of
> both good and bad, incidentally. I think that somewhere along the line
> the combination of 'crusading gonzo reporter who'll go anywhere' and
> 'superpowers' got a bit mixed up in my head, such that I rather
> unthinkingly expected the character to act like a superhero. This
> despite the fact that only a few moment's recollection was needed to
> indicate that, no, actually he's been acting like a gonzo journalist.
> This wrongfooted me towards the end of the post when his actions, which
> had been predictable up until then, stopped being so.
Well then, that's a good thing. If Wyatt Ferguson wanted to be a
superhero, he'd have been one already.
> Specifically Wyatt is set to marry his longtime girlfriend Judy
> Kraaco, but on the day of the wedding Judy's grand-niece Mary Mystery
> casts some paranoia spells to disrupt the occasion...
>
> So what happens next? Well, Wyatt leaves, retrenches, and
> eventually unearths what happened. Significantly however he doesn't use
> this information to try to vindicate himself with Judy. And I'm not
> even completely sure whether he even tried.
I think I can testify, Wyatt sent Judy an e-mail with the evidence.
She never responded.
> At times like this I really regret the presentation of Wyatt's
> reports in blog entry style. I get the feeling that they're able to
> handle reports of straight facts, but that they're less amenable for
> explaining feelings and motivations. Even if they're his own.
> Especially if they're his own.
Heh. We can't really blame the format, because it's Wyatt's blog
after all. The format just expresses what Wyatt wants to say.
Wyatt really ought to mention, his motivations may have been entangled
at the time, but he's now glad to be free from that dysfunctional
family stuff. He's the ultimate free spirit, after all. He's also
reluctant to talk about more of that family stuff in public.
Yes, I've established Wyatt and I are not quite exact counterparts.
But there's still a lot of Me in Wyatt Ferguson.
Andrew Perron
> Anyway, I'm mildly interested in seeing how the depiction of the
> Multiversal Office is handled in the ASH setting. My reason? Well, the
> Multiversal Office first appeared in the initial Net.Trenchcoat Brigade
> story/chaotic add-on cascade _Wrath of the Administrator_ back in the
> early 1990s and later got used by Dvandom in the 'Bad Forms' arc for his
> old Legion of Net.Heroes series _Constellation_ and crossovers.
And their appearance in ASH, usually so isolated from other fiction
universes, was a welcome surprise! (Both the isolation and the appearance
make sense, mind you, due to how the Barrier works and how the Office
works.)
> I mention this because I think there's a subtle difference between its two
> depictions - which I suspect I only really notice now because I recently
> reread parts of _Wrath of the Administrator_ when I was researching the
> character of Doubt, the Eight Endless for the 5th High Concept Challenge
> back in December 2009. The NTB story, being faux-Vertigo style,
> combined the surreal with the Kafka-esque. The LNH story, being
> superhero parody, took the surreal and pumped a lot of it up to become
> silliness and could not help but tone down some of the Kafka-esque
> elements. Quite apart from the whole 'superheroes simply fight their
> way through any obstacle' inherent within the genre, the way that Acton
> Lord was able to (quite brilliantly, actually) outthink the Office's
> drain on his life force defies the type of existential helplessness that
> unaccountable bureaucracy should create.
Which is (one reason) why I love superheroes: they fight helplessness,
apathy, and the deprecation of the individual.
> Now, at the risk of pointing out the bleeding obvious, _Academy of
> Super-Heroes_ doesn't quite share the genre styles of either the Trench-
> coaters or the Legion. It's more of a science fiction/four colour
> superhero hybrid. What will that mean for the way the Multiversal
> office manifests in the mainstream ASH universe? We shall have to wait
> and see.
I figure it'll be more about the mechanics behind the Office than either of
the previous two was; more so than NTB because it'd decrease the horror,
and more so than LNH because it'd get in the way of drama and
puncheminnaface. (LNH had more than NTB, tho, because puzzle-solutions are
so intrinsic to superheroes; the Easily-Discovered Man part of the
crossover is probably the best example.)
> The Gong Fu Kid
> A High Concept Challenge [Contest] posting
> by Martin Phipps
<snip>
> Fortunately the first _The Karate Kid_ movie has such a high profile
> pop-culture presence that I can recognise its general plot structure
> even though I've never seen it or its sequel.
Actually, this was based on the recent remake!
> Jolt City #19
> 'The Little League of Doom!'
> An Eightfold [8Fold] series
> by Tom Russell
<snip>
> Other impressions: Poor Blue Boxer is still smarting from the
> public reaction to his fight with the telegraph pole, huh? Well, his
> success in solving the problem of the Little Leaguers should help soothe
> his ego a bit - but I suspect that'll just set him up for his next fall.
I don't think we'll be jumping right into hubris quite yet. It looks like
Derek's going to be the main action hero from now on - which means he'll
have a whole new set of problems on his shoulders.
> Sad things is, the Boxer is a bit of the cocky side, coming up with good
> ideas but not necessarily thinking them through. The engineering of the
> pizo electric boots are a case in point. So I would hazard that the
> Boxer needs to learn from his setbacks, rather than merely move past them.
He seems to have some ability in that area - more than Martin does,
definitely.
> And then there's Dr Tarif. WTF!? Does she read comics as well?
> Or does she just read *everything* and retain it all with near-eidetic
> memory?
Dr. Tarif <3
> So, is it possible that it can be proclaimed: "Tom Russell!
> J'Accuse! For all your claims of hating anti-superhero stories, you have
> become what you hate, and stand guilty of *gratuitous grim'n'gritty*!"
> Eh, maybe, maybe not. The final 'the dead are dead, let them rest in
> peace' statement provides a more realistic balance than any revelation of
> a post-mortem vindication, but the fact remains that the scene is still
> written to evoke emotion and the inherent unpleasantness of the emotion
> may contribute.
Yeah; it's grim, yes, and an argument could maybe be made for gritty, but
it's definitely not gratuitous.
> Yeah, it's the 'show, don't tell' adage.
> Possibly this is a bit unfair a comparison in this instance, since the
> Fish summary is telling of things happening in the future, and at the end
> of an already lengthy story really does need to be a short and sweet.
> You can't really construct an epilogue showing something like an innocent
> man rotting in gaol for several decades.
Mmmmm. After thinking about it, I realized that part of my problem with it
is that I simply don't like "this is what the future is going to be"
epilogues.
> SW10: What About Judy And Me?
> A Superhuman World [SW10] story
> by Scott Eiler
<snip>
> At times like this I really regret the presentation of Wyatt's
> reports in blog entry style. I get the feeling that they're able to
> handle reports of straight facts, but that they're less amenable for
> explaining feelings and motivations. Even if they're his own.
> Especially if they're his own.
I'd like to see this story from the opposite point of view!
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, or another, anyway.
Andrew Perron
> My hope, as mentioned
> elsewhere, was that Martin's perhaps quixotic sacrifice was heroic and
> dignified enough to offset the terrible circumstances which put him in
> that situation; it is entirely possible, however, that a quixotic
> sacrifice in a superhero story is mutually exclusive to the genre.
I don't think so. Heroism is heroism, and sometimes, lost causes are the
only ones worth fighting for. *puts a crysanthemum on Lost Cause Boy's
grave*
Besides, sometimes, you try and it just doesn't work. That's life; it's
not pointlessly dark, it's just how it works sometimes.
> "I'd like to say that one day, the truth did come out, that poor
> Fish was vindicated from the grave. But what good would that do him;
> what comfort would it provide? The dead are dead. The future holds
> promise and terror in equal measure, but it only does so for the
> living."
>
> -- which I'm still quite proud of, and which I hoped would resonate in
> a more... how do I say this without being too pretentious? I guess I
> can just say that I wanted those words to be evocative of something
> bigger than Fish, something bigger than any one person.
And, IMHO, it did. I gotta say, that's my favorite part of the whole
thing.
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, Fish dish.
Martin Phipps
> The Gong Fu Kid
> A High Concept Challenge [Contest] posting
> by Martin Phipps
>
> Here's the first of there High Concept Challenge entries for round
> 10: the immigrant experience.
> Since I got burnt last time I'll go the obvious route and start off
> by taking a guess at which movie Martin is using as a template for this
> story. This might not normally be too difficult an ask, but frankly
> I've never been that much of a film buff (either through cinema release
> or television reruns) so I'd normally be at a disadvantage in this sort
> of... and yes, I do mean this literally in my case... *guessing* game.
Could it be that you're still a little bit mad at me about Swell Boy?
> Fortunately the first _The Karate Kid_ movie has such a high profile
> pop-culture presence that I can recognise its general plot structure
> even though I've never seen it or its sequel.
> In any case, Jaden Smith and his mother move to China when she gets
> a job at the United States embassy. Jaden slowly makes friends with the
> locals, and through his acquaintance with the girl Su zi is introduced
> to the home economics teacher Mr Han, who agrees to teach Jaden
> appropriate 'skill', or gong fu.
Right. I found it odd one time when I couldn't open one of these
sealed cups of water and an old man came up to me and said "I'll show
you" and he took a straw, held it up in the air and then struck the
plastic lid of the cup, penetrating it with the straw. "Oh," I said,
"you don't need to take the plastic off: you just stick the straw
straight through!" He nodded and said "Chinese gong fu!"
I thought he was joking but as my Chinese improved here I got to the
point where I could read street signs and advertising. I saw an ad
that said -literally translated from Chinese- "Our furniture is made
with the best gong fu!" Now if "gong fu" is a fighting style then the
sentence didn't make much sense so I looked "gong fu" up in the
dictionary and it said "skill", not "fighting skill" just "skill".
So when this Karate Kid remake came out people complained online that
it should be called "The Kung Fu" kid. Every time people made this
complaint I pointed out that "gong fu" in Chinese actually means
"skill" so "The Gong Fu Kid" could be about somebody learning to use
chopsticks. Then, conveniently enough, the immigrant challenge
appeared.
Oh, by the way, I never saw the remake of The Karate Kid: it was
boycotted here in Taiwan.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/art/movies-&-films/2009/04/23/205432/Jackie-Chan.htm
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/Lifestyle/Story/STIStory_367422.html
Martin