Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in aaron_bourque's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, November 8th, 2009
8:22 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Eight: 20,160 Words Well, I haven't beaten last week's record (115 words less than last Sunday's 3400), but I actually am a little impressed with what I wrote today. I actually progressed the plot! And yes, there is a plot. I'm actually kind of pleased with myself, here. I did have a very loose outline of what I wanted to write, but I had little idea how to fill out the middle part (which is what I'm in the middle of right now). I had a plot wrinkle, which developed into a full on plot twist, and am galloping headlong into what should be the end of the first third of the story. And it's now officially the second longest single piece of fiction I've ever written. I'm interested in what happens the rest of the week! Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: Let It Be by The Beatles (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
11:19 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Seven: 16,874 Words Today started off terribly. Too many errands put off that needed doing, and then when I finally had time to sit and write, I was almost unable to keep my eyes opened. So I said "To hell with it, I am ahead, I'll take a nap." Then I napped, woke up, and wrote and wrote. This is now officially the third longest single piece of fiction I've ever written (~18000 and ~21000, for second and first place). Man, I hope I can keep going. I'm actually not disgusted by about a tenth of what I've put down. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; tomorrow will be the real test, I have other errands I need to finish up. But last Sunday, 3000+ words. I wonder if I can top that? Current Mood: energetic Current Music: Fool In The Rain by Led Zeppelin (Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
8:39 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Six: 14288 I was under the impression I'd be babysitting today, so I didn't get an early start. But still, over 2000 words. Maybe I've found my pace? Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; I also seem to have passed the Bechdel Test by accident. Current Mood: anxious Current Music: The Whip/We Got The Better Bomb by Audioslave (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
8:47 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Five: 12,625 Words After I heard what had happened at Ft. Hood, I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to write today. But I managed a couple thousand words. Go me, I guess. Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Harder Better Faster Stronger by Daft Punk (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
8:13 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Four: 10480 Words Woo! Broke the 10,000 word mark! That means I'm at twice the minimum! Woo! twice the minimum Wonder how long that'll last. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; also, I man'd up and included an excerpt, bad writing and all, in the novel info part of my NaNoWriMo page. Current Mood: rejuvenated Current Music: Spirit Never Dies by MasterPlan (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
8:54 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Three: 7009 Words Alright. That's a bit more like it. Current Mood: artistic Current Music: I Got The Power by Snap (Comment on this)
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
7:33 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day Two: 4425 Words Meh. Bad day. Couldn't get my head in the game. At least I'm still ahead of the minimum. Current Mood: apathetic Current Music: Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
4:29 pm	[NaNoWriMo]Day One: 3400 Words So. So far, so good. That's double the minimum, at least, and it's not yet evening. Maybe I'll add some more later, but probably not. I needs to deflate my brain a bit. Current Mood: content Current Music: Ain't No Rest For The Wicked by Cage The Elephant (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
12:59 pm	If You Write It I've been seriously considering trying NaNoWriMo this year. However, I've been getting over a mildly serious illness the past near-week, and my head feels like mush. I don't know if I can produce 5000 words in a month right now, let alone 50,000. I do still have a few more days to finish my recovery, but I'm not optimistic enough. . . . I'll still give it a shot, what the hay. The worst that will happen is that I don't finish a novel (as they describe it). I've been doing that just fine for decades! Current Mood: awake Current Music: She's Got The Look by Roxette (Comment on this)
Monday, October 19th, 2009
1:43 am	Sometimes I Wonder . . . As an addendum about my Wonder Woman post: One of her main problems is her rogue's gallery. Since she's not really a super-hero, thematically her villains are in trouble right off the bat. Oh, sure, even in the Golden Age, she had mythological figures as antagonists (Circe, Ares, called Mars back before people bothered with the distinction), and that still fits her role nowadays (even my offered Champion role). Her non-mythological villains are a different story. Diana has, quite possibly, the biggest unused rogues gallery in comics. Sure, everyone throws Cheetah at her. Most people use Dr. Psycho. Beyond that, people might be aware of Silver Swan or Angle Man, or Giganta--or, heck, even Egg Fu--but they haven't been used too much (or in Egg Fu's case, no longer as a Wonder Woman villain). Its not that her rogues are bad or dumb or anything (some might be, and almost all of them need a revamp; but then, the modern Cheetah is nowhere near what the Golden or Silver Age Cheetahs were. I think Dr. Psycho is the only member of her rogues gallery from back then and also now who is essentially the same back then and also now). It's just that few have bothered to do anything with her rogues gallery . . . except replace them with new villains who have failed to make an impact, so they are subsequently replaced with more new villains who fail to make an impact. Quickly checking Wikipedia for simply names that jump out at me (those I haven't already mentioned): Baroness Paula von Gunther, Osira, Shim'Tar, the White Magician, Anton Unreal, the Gentleman Killer, the Bughuman Plague, the Human Tank, Doctor Domino, Iron Claw, Red Dragon, Count Cagliostro . . . these are just names that deserve to persevere. Here's some mini-revamps (probably not worth the electronic ink they're printed on) Baroness Paula von Gunther! She can be the classical "I want to take over the world!" type villain. Every good hero needs one. Osira! Originally an alien, perhaps someone trapped in a reincarnation cycle like Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who believes her final rest will come when she defeats the world's greatest CHAMPION--e.g.: Wonder Woman! Shim'Tar! Originally a title for the "champion of the Bhana-Mighdall," who fought Diana essentially so she could prove herself to them. Could still be used as that, but the Bhana have assimilated into the Themysciran Amazon society almost completely. How about maybe a secret sect of the Bhana who resist the Themysciran assimilation. There's "The Circle," a group of former honor guards who are psychotically opposed to the idea of Diana as a daughter of the Queen, so that territory might already be covered. Honestly, Shim'Tar's too good a name not to keep around. Maybe just an alien monster who just wants to get home . . . but whose biology is exceedingly toxic to our environment and Diana keeps having to imprison Shim'Tar until a way back can be found (not to mention a way to communicate). The White Magician! Actually, I think he was used within the last 10-15 years, but from my understanding it was a mind-numbingly dumb plot. He seems to just want more magical power, and has made a pact with a demon to get it. Perhaps in addition, he can be one of the objects in Diana's long tradition of destroying monsters? Or he wants to gain magical knowledge secreted on Themyscira--Felix Faust would try it on occasion, why not another demon-pacted wizard? Anton Unreal! With a name like that . . . Diana's already got a foe who messes with people's minds, so how about if ole Anton doesn't do that. What if he actually has a device or artifact, or whatever, that actually brings alternate dimensions in contact with this one. He could be a great Lovecraftian mad scientist/alchemist type, bringing in things Man Was Not Meant To Know to mess with people. The Gentleman Killer! That's just another wonderful name. He could be like the Red Baron of assassins, perhaps a little bit of a Batman/Catwoman relationship: both of them are very professional and dedicated to what they do, they're of the opposite gender, they know they really shouldn't be flirting, but gosh darn it, every time circumstances thrust (a-hem) them together (a-HEM) they just have so much fun matching wits against each other . . . or it could be that he's a throwback to another time, and Diana doesn't appreciate his gentlemanly behavior, finding it patronizing. His "I would never hit a girl" attitudes slamming point blank into a woman who would certainly hit, and indeed hit back . . . The Bughuman Plague! That's another great goddamn name. I don't even know what the hell it means. It's just awesome! Seriously, BUGHUMAN PLAGUE! I just now realized that, with some of Diana's enemies, like Dr. Psycho, Dr. Poison, Giganta, she almost has a stable of classic B-Movie threats to bounce off of. The BUGHUMAN PLAGUE!!! would be a great zombie threat for her. BUGHUMAN PLAGUE!!! The Human Tank! Even if you keep the old style meaning of "tank" he originally had, that of someone difficult to damage, due to being bulletproof, he would be a great threat for her. He could be like her Juggernaut, an unstoppable force. Thus, she would have to outthink her enemy, rather than rely on the typical superhero tactic given her powerset of brute force-ing her way to victory. Not that she really uses that tactic anyway, but having a villain where the obvious solution is automatically barred would be interesting. Or, we could make him a literal human tank, and have him be both hard to damage AND capable of dishing out devastation! Maybe even LONG-RANGE destruction--one of Di's weaknesses is in her lack of real long range ability; the lasso is by definition of limited range, and her other go-to weapon for reach is tossing her tiara like a boomerang. Which wouldn't be of much help against THE HUMAN TANK!!! And, again, we have another B-Movie threat, of the unstoppable killer. Not a "slasher" in this case, though . . . Doctor Domino! Dominoes, like chess, is a game about long-term planning (but to a lesser extent, and a bit more luck-based). Dr. Domino, originally, was a fairly standard (if flamboyant) terrorist leader. Coupling the two, we would have a very plan-heavy enemy with the resources of a typical fictional terrorist group (think any terrorist plot from 24). It would force Diana to move out of her "warrior" comfort zone and into that of a cat-and-mouse investigator. After all, competent combat skills are only useful if you've got a target to aim those skills at. Diana's not stupid, and would be able to foil the terrorist plots, of course, but it would be fun to see her stretch out and sort of "play against type." And, again, terrorist group, another B-Movie villain! Iron Claw! This was a somewhat common trope used in WWII-era comics, of the evil Nazi with a metal claw for a hand. Again, a great B-Movie villain, but updated to modern day . . . maybe . . . invention is failing me . . . maybe a cyborg? Well, she's already got Silver Swan and . . . "Cyborgirl" . . . but no male cyborgs . . . really, I think mainly a cool visual is all he's really got. But hell, sometimes that's all you need--the Joker got by for years on just a neat visual hook. Red Dragon! Originally a Yellow Peril terrorist villain (fine for the B-Movie stable, but in this day and age, I think we can do better; besides, Dr. Domino already supplies the terrorist angle). How about . . . in the Golden Age, Amazons didn't, technically, have super powers. They had just trained their bodies and minds to such ludicrous extremes that, to normal people, it all looked super. What if we transplanted that idea onto the Red Dragons, a . . . cult? Family? Disenfranchised tribe? Something, certainly, who have trained their bodies and minds to such ludicrous extremes that they're capable of matching (?) or surpassing (!) Wonder Woman's divine gifts. Or, it could just be a big red dragon, that could work, too. Count Cagliostro! Original to her live-action show, apparently never been used in the comics (despite an AWESOME DAMN NAME!!!). The only notation on Wikipedia is that he was a mage who claimed to be an alchemist. But his name evokes a sort of cultured, aristocratic . . . something. I mean, Cagliostro was used in the title of a Lupin III movie (co-written and directed by Hiyao Miyazaki!). Angle Man already carries the "gentleman thief" load for Wondy's rogues . . . but damn it, Count Cagliostro! Maybe just be a little lazy and make him a vampire. All I'm saying is, give 5 minutes thought to a character here or there, and Wonder Woman's rogues gallery could be interesting, if not AWESOME. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; what the hell am I doing posting at a quarter-to-two in the morning? I need to get my sleep schedule under control. BUGHUMAN PLAGUE!!! Current Music: Hide And Seek by Imogen Heap (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
8:16 pm	Iron In, Iron Out Iron Age (1987-1997) After the Bronze Age . . . things slid badly. Most people complain about the content of recent comics by comparing them to "the 90s." The truth is, while there was a lot wrong with comics the 90s, there were still lots of good stuff during that time. It's just it often gets drowned out by the overwhelming attitude created in the 90s: style over substance. After the seminal works The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen people suddenly realized something about comic books. Sadly, it wasn't what the creators wanted them to realize, that comic books could be just as deep, meaningful, "literate," and inspired as other media of entertainment. Instead, it was that "heroes" could be mean, grunting, asshats and people would still buy the hell out of 'em. The Batman in DKR and the primary p.o.v. character in Watchman, Rorschach, were rather monosyllabic, brutal figures. They were, charitably, anti-heroes. They were jerks. People loved them. Since comics never let a good idea go by without stealing it, more and more protagonists like these appeared. However, where DKR-Batman and Rorschach were also deep, well-rounded characters, their followers often had no personality to speak of, and their motivation rarely more complex than "hit stuff." Another effect that led to the low quality in many people's recollections of this time was an overreliance on "flashy," "star" artists, often whose styles were fads. This grew to a head with the early output of the nascent comic publisher Image, which was really a loose coalition on recently independent artist studios, who all lacked business experience and whose story-telling abilities weren't quite up to snuff, either. Basically, they broke away from the mainstream publishers--mostly Marvel--because they wanted to be paid according to their stature as "megastar" artists. Their output at first emphasized style and flash over substance (not everything they did was terrible, but their ignorance of core story-telling--and business--practices showed, hard). Because of the "grim & gritty" themes, this time period is often called the Dark Age, and because of Image's rising star during this time, it's sometimes called the Image Age. I choose to call it the Iron Age because it fits in with the metals theme naming for the other age, because Iron isn't very reflective, or as "shiny" as the other metals used, and because it's a little more neutral than other terms. As I said, there were good comics that came out around this time: Neil Gaiman's Sandman for one, James Robinson's Starman, Kurt Busiek's Astro City, just to name a few. There were diamonds in the rough, is what I'm saying. You just had to comb through a lot of rough. Astro City bears extra mention. DKR and Watchmen are often cited as "deconstructions" of the super hero comic book. Those who say so have a point, since they basically underlined the massive differences between a world like ours, and one in which super heroes would actually live in. However, too many people get caught up in the surface details of the Deconstruction, and forget the point behind it all: tearing down the bad stuff so more GOOD stuff can be built; a "Reconstruction,</i> one that showed us all why we fell in love with this ridiculousness in the first place, building off of the good foundations left over after the Deconstruction. Astro City is the first one I can find--certainly it's the only one still around. But it paved the way for a backlash against the overreliance on grim & gritty, paper-thin characterization and world-building, as well as "style over substance" visuals of the time (most notably with Mark Waid and Alex Ross' Kingdom Come). Which is why I choose to end the Iron Age just after it came out. Current Mood: artistic Current Music: Dueces Are Wild by Aerosmith (Comment on this)
8:14 pm	Battered Bronze Bronze Age (1971-1986) In the 70s, there was something of a sea change in the way super hero comics were being handled. Essentially, in the Golden and Silver Ages, comic books were created as cheap, disposable entertainment if little consequence. Issues were meant to be stand-alone, with little consequence to the actions occurring in the series. Rarely would there be ramifications of any actions in any issue beyond some acknowledgment that the bad guy went to prison or seemed to have died in a previous appearance (so the bad guy would escape from prison or explain how they didn't actually die). Continuity was starting to occur--it had started earlier at Marvel, because Stan Lee was in charge of so many books, and kept making references to other events in other books. Continuity beyond a super-hero's origin and "When last you say me" amongst villains. Dick Grayson, who had started as Robin at 10 years old or so in 1940 was finally allowed to age a bit, being old enough to go to college (this actually occurred in the late 60s, but that just meant they'd make excuses for Batman and Robin to team up instead of it being part of the status quo). The point is that comics were no longer in any way meant to be disposable. Even though most stories were still "done-in-ones" events would build and build over time. Continuing with the Robin example, Dick Grayson eventually dropped that identity completely, and created a new one in the figure of "Nightwing." Dick Grayson's aging up also meant that his friends in the Teen Titans were aged as well, and started to deal with more mature threats in the pages of their new series The New Teen Titans. This New Teen Titans series was written by Marv Wolfman, who wrote the Crisis On Infinite Earths, and he started foreshadowing the Crisis a year or two before in NTT. The Crisis heralded the end of the Bronze Age, but it wasn't the only herald: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen ushered in the darker and edgier, "grim & gritty" next age of Super-hero comics. So while Crisis shelved the content of the previous Ages, DKR and Watchmen provided the building blocks for the themes of the next. Interestingly, there are a couple of people who think that the Silver Age stretched all the way into the 80s. They're not entirely correct. The Silver Age stories were all focused around filling pages. There was little logic involved in the story-telling. Whatever far-out idea the writers could come up with, as long as it filled pages, was used. However, in the Bronze Age, there were attempts to tell "meaningful" stories. Stories about the state of the real world (the Green Arrow/Green Lantern series of the 70s, for instance, where GA lectured GL on how badly he was doing his job) or questions about how needed super-heroes really were (like one of the most often mentioned story of that era, "Must There Be A Superman?" in which the Guardians of the Universe planted a suggestion in Superman's mind that perhaps all that saving everyone he was doing wasn't helpful to humanity in the long run, stunting our "evolutionary growth" or somesuch). The point is that there was very little depth to Silver Age stories, whereas Bronze Age tales at least strove for depth. And, in so doing, they paved the way for the "grim & gritty" deconstructionist DKR and Watchmen. Current Mood: artistic Current Music: Dueces Are Wild by Aerosmith (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
7:42 pm	She's Batgirl There have been four Batgirls. Well, technically five, but officially four. The original Batgirl--often called the "Golden Age" Batgirl, though she actually debuted during the Silver Age--was a young girl named Bette Kane. At the time, giving superheroes big "families" was all the rage, so there was Batman, Batwoman, Robin, Batgirl, the Bat-Mite, Ace the Bathound, and so on. She barely had a characterization, just a "romantic foil" relationship with Robin, who was still stuck in the "girls have cooties" stage. Definitely not a triumph of feminism. After cosmic reboots, she was never Batgirl. The next (first) Batgirl came about because of the campy TV show: the show wanted to pull in young men and women, so the producers wanted to give the show a female character in tights, both a role model for girls and some titillation for the boys. She was Barbara Gordon, daughter of the police commissioner. Interestingly, she became Batgirl pretty much on her own, as much to show her dad she'd grown up as to fight crime. She became "Batgirl" rather than anyone else because she had a little crush on Batman, but she had already trained herself in judo and gymnastics. Even more interestingly, she had a photographic memory, thus having the potential to be a better detective than Batman. I may have mentioned this before, but being the World's Greatest Detective was Batman's original shtick. Having a supporting cast member who could possibly be better at his whole shtick? And that supporting cast member being a woman? Perhaps a bit more of a triumph of feminism. Oh, sure, she still got the same ridiculous "girl-centric" stories that women got in comics (and elsewhere) at the time, like finding the right man to marry and things of that nature. Complaining that she got treated like a stereotypical woman at the time would have been like complaining that every woman got treated that way. There are better ways to complain about femininity in comics, nowadays. She faded away a bit as time went on. Eventually she was practically forgotten. If she had been, perhaps things would be different these days. Instead, Alan Moore remembered her, and had permission to cripple her in his prestige-format book "The Killing Joke." The crippling stuck. She continued being pretty much forgotten . . . until J. M. DeMatteis was writing a book called Suicide Squad, dealing with a team of criminals and anti-heroes drafted by the US intelligence and para-military community to perform very dangerous missions for a chance at reduced sentencing (or absolved guilt in the case of most of the anti-heroes). A background subplot dealt with the identity of a super-hacker called the Oracle, who was offering intelligence and data processing for the team. Eventually, it turned out that the Oracle was Barbara Gordon, who was picking up the pieces of her life after being crippled by turning herself into the sedentary super-hacker and information broker Oracle. She bopped around a bit, settling in the Batbooks, until she was given her own title (sort of) in Birds of Prey, where she worked as a coordinator for theoretically a small team of super-heroine operatives (but usually just Black Canary until the last few years of the series). While Barbara was busy with the Birds, Helena Bertinelli (aka Huntress) tried to deal with the mess that was the No Man's Land by being both Huntress and a new Batgirl. That only lasted a couple of months, though, before Batman judged her too unreliable and gave the Batgirl costume Helena had made to a girl named Cassandra Cain. Cassandra was the next long-term Batgirl. She was raised by mega-assassin David Cain. Cain had strange ideas about martial arts and child-rearing: Cassandra was trained to be fluent in only one language, the "language of violence." Basically, she was taught to express herself with martial arts and to read peoples' body language to understand how others express themselves. She was brought onto an assassination and killed the target . . . and her abilities at reading body language was so acute that she watched the target's death throes and was traumatized by it. She ran away, living on her own somehow (it's never been explored exactly what she had to do to survive for years) until she ended up in Gotham during the No Man's Land. Oracle found her and made her a part of her Baker St Irregular-type of operators around Gotham at the time, and events conspired to have her meet Batman--who, having been trained by Cain as well, understood her "language of violence" upbringing. He started to trust her and gave her the Batgirl mantle. A psychic messed with her head so she could have an understanding of actual language (its been documented that people who don't learn to speak in their developmental years show a great difficulty in learning later in life). She tried to learn to read, but it turns out she has some form of dyslexia. She had a weird relationship with Batman (especially after he learned she actually had killed someone), but they mostly weathered the storm and she affirmed her loyalty to the idea of Batman (but not Bruce Wayne himself; this is important). Her series had some high points over the years, but despite being a somewhat solid-ish performer, was canceled with the onset of Infinite Crisis and the One Year Later events. And that's when the suck truly set in. After 1YL, Cassandra reappeared as a dragon-lady-ish villain in Robin. It was completely unrelated to any of her previous characterization. DC tried to fix the horribleness, but also kept shoveling crap on her. Finally, Bruce Wayne was declared dead and Cassandra Cain quit her life as a super-heroine. Which leads us to the current Batgirl: Stephanie Brown. Unlike all previous versions of Batgirl (except the short stint by Helena Bertinelli), Stephanie actually had experience as a crimefighter before becoming Batgirl. She started out as the Spoiler, "spoiling" the crimes of her father--Arthur Brown, aka the Cluemaster--in the pages of Robin. She had a lot of enthusiasm, and some gymnastic moves, and some common sense, but that was about it. Batman didn't approve, but Robin was kind of attracted to her so he helped her out. Eventually, Batman decided to give her some training, but gave up on her because, again, he felt she was unreliable. She got some mentoring from the Birds of Prey, but that didn't end well for . . . some reason. Then, in a shocking turn of events, Tim Drake quit being Robin, and Batman--in an attempt to shame him back into the tights--gave the mantle to Stephanie. She did a decent job, but it was very brief, and then she died. Sort of. She actually faked her death and hid in Africa, doing charitable work for a while. Then she came back, tried to resume her life before becoming Robin, and found it wasn't quite as easy as she'd hoped. Tim Drake wasn't quite the same guy from before, having suffered from a lot of death in a short damn time. He tried to exercise more control over his life by forbidding her to be Spoiler (there was other stuff going on, but it basically boils down to that). She refused, but then, after witnessing Cassandra's retirement moment, she took Cass's Batgirl outfit and is currently DC's Batgirl (after gaining acceptance from Barbara Gordon, who had a vested interested in the Batgirl name and in keeping girls from being damaged by it). And that's where we stand now. I've been meaning to post about these events for a bit, but I wanted to wait until the introductory arc on the new series ended. Cassandra Cain not being Batgirl anymore, I can buy. How she gave up the Batgirl name is silly. She is loyal to what the Bat-legacy stands for. She wouldn't quit just because Bruce Wayne was dead. Now, her being tired and burned out from the garbage shoveled on her in the past few years, that I can buy. But what she ended up doing? She beat up some mooks, stripped out of her outfit (in the rain!) and walked away, after a (brief) soliloquy to Spoiler. Supposedly, there are plans for her some time in 2010. Considering her past treatment, I'm not really confident, but I'll remain optimistic, because that's what I do. And the thing is, aside from how Cass gave it all up, the series so far is pretty well written. Brian Q. Miller wrote 4 episodes of Smallville, which isn't really a glowing pedigree, a fill-in arc on Teen Titans (a pretty good one), and now Batgirl. Those are all his writing credits I could find. Despite what might be lack of experience, this Miller guy is pretty good. There's some weirdness, which I'd mark down as inexperience with comics, but other than that, on writing alone, I'd recommend this Batgirl series. I guess having someone else under the cowl was the kind of creative resurgence the Batgirl idea needed . . . but did they have to drop the previous Batgirl in such a strange way, after dumping bad after bad on her just to have the new girl come in? Current Mood: peaceful Current Music: Kristine Sixteen by KISS (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
11:41 pm	And I Wonder Wonder Wonder Who (Who) Who Wrote The Book Of Wonder Woman Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. Princess Diana (sometimes Prince or Trevor, sometimes not) of Themyscira. Wonder Woman is sort of tricky to pin down. Unlike Superman or Batman, Wonder Woman actually had a meta-reason for existence. Well, several. She was meant to be a strong, independent female role-model in a medium dominated by strong, independent male role-models who were as often bad examples to follow. She was meant to be a sexy female to attract boys into reading her stories (10-year-old boys, the most common demographics for super hero comics, are still often stuck in the "girls have cooties" stage of development, but are also starting to develop physical and emotional attraction to those cootie-having girls). She was meant to be a piece of pro-sado-masochistic propaganda, convincing the reader that if men willingly agreed to "loving submission" as administered by strong women, the world would be a better place. Well, I dunno about that. My kinks sort of swing the other way, and I don't think any single sexual identity can save the world. That requires less pillow talk and more people threatening each other with global annihilation. But that's me. Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. She was rather different in many ways. First, there was the gender. Sure, there were other super heroines before here, but most of them existed just to titillate a male-dominated audience. And few were anywhere near as powerful as her (even though, at first, her super powers weren't all that impressive, especially as compared to her powers now). There was also her origin: there are some people who consider comics to be a sort of modern mythology, forgetting that myths were often about individuals who were worshiped, and while plenty of fans have created shrines dedicated to their favorite characters, few if any have created religions based on them. Anyway, Wonder Woman's origins are tied directly to ancient--particularly Greco-Roman--mythology. She's literally a daughter of the legendary Amazons, the warrior women of Ancient Grecian myths, who despite their strength in combat are nevertheless always beaten by men for getting too uppity (ancient Greeks were almost comical in their blind misogyny). Turns out, the Greek goddesses sent the Amazons to an island where they could live forever in peace and enlightenment (because those are highly prized by warrior cultures) thousands of years ago after the rape of their queen by Heracles (or Hercules, or totally not Gilgamesh, y'all) and the entire culture's enslavement. Now, if you think about it, there are a couple (or more) unfortunate implication here: a race of slaves, sent to live alone on an island . . . yeah, someone obviously meant well (something you should be repeating to yourself throughout much of this article), but didn't think things through (something else you should be repeating). So time passes and the Amazons are magically able to not age due to magic (in the form of their island itself as well as the Golden Girdle of Hippolyta--an actual mythological artifact). On their island, they developed their own society of women, and created a paradise . . . for Amazons. They had several scientific achievements, including telepathic radio and invisibility, and rode around on animals called "Kangas"--essentially scaled-up kangaroos. They were perfect, and were so perfect, that they had, through training alone, surpassed the human physical ideal. Like, say, Captain America. And the pinnacle of that pinnacle was Princess Diana, (sculpted from clay and granted life by the Greek goddesses). Anyway, there's a pilot crashes on the island, he's nursed back to health, the Amazons are told by Aphrodite (their main goddess at the time) they need to return to Man's World to help with WWII, which was building up, and so they decide to have a contest and send the winner. Alone. Without much backup. To fight in WWII. What? So Diana wins, she goes out to man's world, and immediately, other differences are apparent. 1) Diana has little interest in just catching crooks. She tries to reform many of them. In fact, there's an island off the coast of Paradise Island called "Transformation Island" for this explicit purpose. One of her first attempts, the villainess Cheetah--a fursuiter who's turned to a life of crime (I KNEW IT!)--works for most of the Golden Age of comics. 2) Diana is actually a patriotic hero, in the sense that she is steeped in nationalistic iconography (red white and blue--and yellow--swimsuit, and a starfield skirt) and is there to help the Allies and America, specifically, win WWII. 3) Diana's romantic life was rather healthy. Oh, sure, there was the standard soap-opery-ness because of her secret identity: Diana Prince (secret ID of Wonder Woman) was always trying to attract Steve Trevor (love interest to Wonder Woman) but he only had eyes for Wonder Woman (Wonder Woman). Steve was rather competent as both an army pilot and an intelligence agent. He was a bit hard-headed and insular, but it was intended to show a strong, vital man as a match for the strong, vital Wonder Woman. And he was excited and almost worshipful of Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman was always there for him. Steve was also always respectful of Diana Prince . . . although he did have a tendency to not realize that the "other woman" probably doesn't have much interest in hearing the guy talk about how amazing his girlfriend is. In contrast, although Lois Lane was very interested in Superman, and was a strong independent woman, she was almost a shrew to Clark, and Superman always kept her at a distance, emotionally. Sure, he'd always save her if she fell (or threw herself) out of a window. But it was rare that he indicated his care for her verbally. 4) There was a whole order of magnitude more bondage imagery in Wonder Woman. Sure, this would happen with female characters a lot . . . but she also got tied up (and spanked!) by her allies. And did a significant amount of tying up (and spanking). And then there was the . . . fucked up story in which a group of women were dressed as deer, "hunted" down, and then made up to look like the after-hunt feast. There was just . . . a lot of fetish in between those covers. But eventually, the original creators died, and work on Wonder Woman (contractually mandated, at first, or the rights to the character would revert to the writer's estate) went to more typical comic book writers. And . . . well, Diana quickly lost her defining strength and independence. Ironically, she wouldn't regain them again until she lost the super powers she sported through much of the Silver Age (those Greek goddesses who granted her life I mentioned earlier? Well, in the Silver Age, they also gave her super powers). The changes in the Silver Age (aside from her powers) weakened the character concept significantly: now, no longer was she crusading on America's behalf, she was just another costumed crimefighter, and when she wasn't fighting crime, she was trying to get Steve Trevor to marry her. But Steve was no longer the enthusiastic if a bit boneheaded "good match" of the Golden Age. He was actually a major league jerk, and he wouldn't marry Wonder Woman because he didn't want to get tied down. And his treatment of Diana Prince was as bad as or worse than Lois Lane's treatment of Clark Kent. So Diana actually had a few suitors in the Silver Age, like Mer-Man, Birdman (but not Harvey Birdman, which would've been kinda cool), and . . . Amoeba-Man. What woman could resist his asexual magnetism? Things limped along until the mid-to-late sixties, when an actual feminist movement was occurring. Suddenly, women could be sexy, strong, and independent again (hey! Just. Like. Wonder Woman!), and there was a certain British tv show starring Diana Rigg featuring a sexy catsuit wearing female spy who was just as capable as her male co-star . . . and in some ways (like Judo) more. Comic books, never able to let a good idea someone else used go for long without shamelessly ripping it off, took the idea, and transplanted it almost completely onto Diana Prince. Suddenly, Wonder Woman was no longer super powered . . . but she was strong and independent again (it didn't entirely hurt that the jerkhole Silver Age Steve Trevor was killed off), and she could have been a fantastic symbol of female empowerment . . . . Except they took her powers away. Gloria Steinem, a feminist icon herself, pointed out the problem in the very first issue of Ms. magazine. Apparently, she'd missed out on the characterization of the Silver Age, though. There was enough controversy that eventually, Wonder Woman got her powers back . . . and actually managed to keep her independent, pro-feminist streak (even despite the resurrection of Steve Trevor as a love interest). Well, for the time, at least. She wouldn't get her true feminist characterization again until after Crisis On Infinite Earths, and the whole continuity was rebooted. Sort of. Well, Diana never really made waves in comics again until COIE, despite her television series (which was much less campy than Batman's). She was just another reliable super hero. And then, the crisis. On INFINITE Earths, not just one. Diana got a complete tear-down and rebuild, using only her best qualities (and a few new ones). This new Diana (and I'm going to continue calling her that for reasons I'll get to) was a new immigrant to "Man's World." Where Superman and Batman's post-Crisis reboots assumed they'd been around a bit and established themselves at least somewhat, Diana's didn't. She's previously existed in the form prior to her debut, growing up on Themyscira. Her first appearance after the Crisis was her first appearance. So Diana was a fish out of water, who implicitly trusted all females she came in contact with--and who at first didn't even speak English. This new Diana had her Silver Age powers, perhaps ramped up a bit (there was no question now, she could totally match Superman punch for punch). But the defining characteristic of this new Princess Diana was that the lasso of truth--a peripheral she'd had since her origins in the '40s, because her creator had helped invent the lie-detector--was now sort of metaphysically a part of her. The "fires of Hestia," goddess of the hearth, lent her an inherent honesty and resistance to lies and falsehoods. She also wasn't a crime-fighter (she was granted the nom de vigilante Wonder Woman by a publicist who kind of wanted to exploit her), hence my calling her "Diana" now instead of "Wonder Woman." Whereas most super heroes have a dual identity thing, Diana inherently has a hard time grasping the concept. She groks its importance to her colorfully costumed colleagues, but it's so far from her intrinsic honesty she would have a hard time living with a dual identity (until a recent retcon-crisis thing, but I don't want to get into it, don't make me get into it). She thinks of herself as Diana, whereas Clark sometimes might actually think of himself as Superman, and Bruce sometimes thinks of himself as Batman. She was more interested in showing Man's World--now called "Patriarch's World"--the benefits of Amazon philosophies: peace, love, mercy (and ass-kicking awesome)--than fighting crimes, although she'd certainly do it when the occasion called for it. She also doesn't really think of herself as a superhero: she came to Patriarch's World as an ambassador. Some people think that, being a kickass Amazon warrior is hypocritical for an ambassador of peace and love and mercy, but such people have a simplistic view of peace and war. Sometimes, warriors are needed to keep peace, to enforce peace. And when peace fails, who you gonna call? Warriors. You call the warriors. That, uh, was where I was going with this. Some people also think Wonder Woman is a flawed character because she's inherently sex material. Which is stupid. As I pointed out near the beginning, she certainly was there to titillate the reader, but she had many other aspects. She's no more inherently sex-objecty than she is inherently a caring, motherly figure, or a warrioress. So what if she exists because of her creator's kinky sex-life? Does that mean that women can't have a sexual identity? I thought that was one of the points of feminism! I believe that there are no bad characters. And I don't think there are any bad character marks on Diana. She's a strong, confident, independent woman who takes her obligations and duties seriously. She's also a wise, caring, dignified woman with a quiet sense of humor and an acceptance of both her body figure and the effect said figure has on people. And she has a mission beyond simple cleaning up crime or saving the world from epic, cosmic threats (not that she can't do those things). In other words: she's a great character! Anyone who has any problems with any aspect of her character might want to look into their own gender issues before they cast aspersions upon her! Is she perfect? Well . . . I don't see why she can't have a long-term love interest. Sometimes it could be read that only an unmarried woman, single woman can be a strong feminist ideal, and that's as stupid as saying all feminists must be lesbians, or that all penetrative sex is rape. And nowadays, she has a stupid secret identity that doesn't fit her characterization at all. Her "secret identity" should just be like how celebrities sometimes try to avoid paparazzi: frumpy jeans, t-shirt, a jacket, sunglasses, and a baseball cap. Sometimes, she should have the right to let her hair down and not have to live the role of ambassador, or princess, or Wonder Woman. And her role can be tightened up. See, Diana isn't a super hero. She can be plopped into super hero stories, but that's not her role. Superman's role is Protector, or maybe Savior. Batman's role is Detective, or maybe Avenger, or perhaps Crusader (as in Caped) would be better. Diana's role is CHAMPION. She sees injustice and disenfranchisement, and champions those people, so that they may flourish and thrive. Some people might think Superman can take that role, and sure, there's room for overlap. But Diana should be treated as an outsider who enters a situation to understand it, and comes out trying to show people the flaws in their system and possible solutions to make things better. Which can be really tricky in super hero comics, where status quo is sometimes more a powerful force than the heroes or villains. But I think it's that understanding that would be a wonderful drive for stories. And it could be a great way to educate the audience. But be sure to remember: Diana isn't preachy. That's an annoying trait that she seems to have gained from one specific, prolific, writer at DC. Diana isn't someone who wants to make you different. She's accepting of people as they are more than any other fictional character! That's her thing, truth. She won't try to change you. If you're hurting people, she'll try to stop you. And if you want to be better, there's almost no one better to have run into you. But she's not the type to drone on and on about the benefits of her lifestyle. She'd rather show you the benefits of her lifestyle through her example, but without an patronization. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; okay, and maybe she can cover a bit more of her skin. But then again, most of her bouts in her costume wouldn't amount to light workouts, for someone of her skill and power levels. When she needs armor, she's got access to it. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Krawhitham by Aerosmith (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
11:18 pm	Sparkling Like Sterling Silver Silver Age (1956-1971) For a couple of years after the creation of the Comics Code Authority, super heroes in comics were almost non-existent. Sure, there were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel (the guy who got his powers from a magic word, not the guy from space, or the guy who split his body . . . . because). And occasionally, a super powered character would debut, but usually the hero's powers were either downplayed (like the Martian Manhunter, who very briefly at first, wasn't so much a super hero as an alien disguised as a police officer), or kind of integral to the setting (like Adam Strange, which was more a toned down update of the John Carter of Mars series, with a little Buck Rogers tossed in for texture). Basically, comic books subsisted on other genres, like westerns (primarily) or romance or horror stories that were scaled down so much they barely qualified as scary. Horrible, sure. But scary? And it wasn't entirely the CCA's fault, or Dr. "I Don't Realize I May Be Ruining A Medium With My Overblown Scare-Mongering" Wertham, either. Super hero comics were actually on the decline since the end of the second World War. Without that inherent jingoism and a focused threat like the Axis (and the Nazis), coupled with the general attitude of the Nuclear Age that such simplistic heroic characters might not be needed, super heroes declined. And declined. And declined. And declined. But super heroes never completely left us, and a guy named Julius "Julie" Schwartz, who got his start writing pulp science fiction (and wrote comic books to make ends meet since the 1930s--in fact, he wrote the Batman story in which Batarangs debuted), was an editor at DC comics, and realized that most of the kids who had grown up reading super hero comics . . . had grown up, and there was a new batch of kids out there ready to rot their brains on comic books. But he wasn't just going to throw the same characters at kids, he was going to retool them to appeal to the mass market needs of the day. Namely? Science fiction. Ever since people realized what scientists were capable of during WWII, what with submarines, jet planes, radio communications, the first computer applications (mostly codemaking and breaking), and FRIGGIN' NUCLEAR WEAPONS, they realized this "science" mumbo-jumbo could actually move stories, and not just be a nebulous threat that heroes had to defeat. Sure, there were still mad scientists, and often the comic book science made less sense than just plain ol' magic would have, but there had been a paradigm shift. Before, in the Golden Age, super heroes as often as not got their powers from fully occult occurrences or what I like to call "folk science"--not real science, but if you think about it on a certain level, it makes a kind of sense, and is what people who may not have made it all the way through high school would remember. But now, "science" props were replacing "magic" props. Chemical mixtures super-charged by lightning, artifacts of advanced cultures powered by the wielder's will, nuclear experiments gone wrong, just being from an alien and/or advanced species, or whatever. There had been a few characters like that in the Golden Age--like Superman or the first Robotman--but now it pretty much was de riguer. The first true Silver Age comic book character was the updated speedster The Flash. Originally, the Flash was slowpoke college student Jay Garrick, who when working late in his lab after breathing "hard water vapors"--possibly mistaken for heavy water vapors, which increases circadian periods . . . so it seems like you have more energy, I guess? Like I said, folk science--found himself able to run really fast. However, the new Flash was slowpoke police scientist--think today's CSIs--Barry Allen, who when working late in his lab (sounds familiar) was struck--from outside--by a bolt of lightning that knocked him into a cabinet full of flasks full of different chemicals that shattered all over him and entered his bloodstream, presumably from the cuts on his skin. A slightly more plausible scenario, though it still has its problems. But who cares. It was a success, it drew lots of new kids into super hero comic books, and it opened the door for plenty of new reimagined Golden Age super heroes using a science-ish origin: the Silver Age Green Lantern became a space cop and test pilot, the Silver Age Atom became a college professor who could actually use a "shard from a white dwarf" to shrink to miniature size, and the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl were alien police officers hunting down criminals congregating on Earth. There were others, but those were the main ones. Even previously established heroes became more "science fiction-y": Superman fought more alien threats and traveled through time, Wonder Woman's invisible plane stopped being a single prop and entered the jet-age (there were other changes, but those weren't "science fiction-y") and Batman . . . fought alien threats and traveled through time. Okay, so it didn't always improve things. He did get better, eventually. Another change that characterized the Silver Age was, because of the CCA, comic books lost the bit of pulp-influenced edge they'd had and became rather tame and amazingly simplistic. Due to constraints--or as a way for writers to rebel against those constraints--the stories also became bug-fuck insane. There were several gonzo plots in the Golden Age but in the Silver? To tone down violence below what in America would still allow you to have a G-Rating, villains were now no longer allowed to kill people, which led to often goofy plots in a sometimes vain attempt to antagonize the heroes. (In one case, the Joker's scheme is to cause people sadness. One way of doing that? Not by killing people and having others mourn, but by stealing a little kid's report card, whose grades had started to improve. That was just the surface plot, but yeah, you can see that whatever interest might have been garnered by it was stymied by the ludicrous set-up. Another infamous silly story from the Silver Age had Superman being plagued by a minah-bird. That's right. Not a super-villain. Not even a criminal. A bird, which was squawking that Clark Kent was Superman. Clark apparently talks in his sleep and dreamt about revealing his identity to Lois. He eventually--and let me emphasize that Superman at this time has a super-intellect, and it takes him multiple tries to outwit a fucking songbird--managed to overcome by . . . dressing up as a giant bird and scaring the minah into muteness. I completely sympathize . . . with the bird. What makes it even more mind-bogglingly ludicrous is that he actually has to get the bird to repeat his identity spoiling squawking!). However, it wasn't all goofy stories that insulted the reader as often as not. Several of those stories were actually able to be grippingly told tales, like the first appearance of the Guardians of the Universe in Green Lantern, judging whether Hal "Green Lantern" Jordan was worthy of the ring. The Silver Age's resurgence of the super hero also gave rise to completely new heroes, particularly at Marvel, which became DC's main--and eventually only real--competition. You see, Marvel had been in a rut for much of the early 50s, grabbing onto whatever new fad was popular and trying to milk some money out of it. If Westerns were popular, they'd publish westerns. Romance popular, publish romance. Monsters? Publish monsters. Super heroes popular? Really? Again? Okay, well, let's publish some super heroes . . . but when the bottom fell out of super heroes last time, they almost closed up shop completely, so lets keep elements of the last popular thing: monsters. So, first came the Fantastic Four, a sort of psychologically deep group who emphasized a family dynamic, and like all families, they constantly bitch at each other. Particularly Ben "The Thing" Grimm, the resident "monster" character. It struck a nerve--partly because of dynamic art by Jack "The King" Kirby, partly because of the unusual narration and dialogue by Stan "The Man" Lee. Before this, all super heroes were noble and pure and kinda dull. Suddenly here was a group of heroes . . . who would constantly verbally snipe at each other, or make mistakes (in fact, that's how they got their powers, Reed Richards, their ringleader, led them to fly in an unshielded rocket and they got bombarded by mutating "cosmic rays") or had actual falling outs (they would usually get resolved by the end of the adventure, but still). Following that was stuff like The Hulk (basically a monster story inverted: the military trying to stop the monster's rampage was the main antagonist of the tale, and the monster himself was actually somewhat sympathetic, or at least was the protagonist); Dr. Strange (one of the few supernatural heroes created in the Silver Age, who had been a successful but egotistical surgeon who lost his skill after a terrible car crash . . . caused by him because he'd been drunk, so he seeks someone who can heal his hands, even trying supernatural aid, and instead learns great mystical power, eventually becoming Sorcerer Supreme); and the true Marvel success story, Spider-Man. There were three main differences about Spider-Man, as compared to almost every other super-hero out there. Firstly, Spider-Man was a 15-year old boy, or at least that's how he started. He was someone who would've been another hero's kid sidekick. To completely hide his age, he used a full face mask that had no hint of skin, whereas most other superheroes covered the top of their face, or just used a domino mask, or didn't use any mask at all. Secondly, his personal life was a mess. Most super heroes were either independently wealthy, or just able to keep most of their life from spiraling out of control, outside of romance, anyway. Spider-man couldn't keep his personal life straight. He was constantly battling his need for personal relationships with his need for money, and both of those always waged war with his need to go out at night and fight crime. In short, he needed a valuable lesson in time management. Finally, Spider-man was generally hated by the public. Sure, the people he saved were appreciative, but he was always hounded by the police, at then there was The Daily Bugle, which had the editorial slant that fear-mongering about Spider-man sold papers. This was practically unprecedented--well, sure, the Hulk was hated and feared . . . but he was a giant rampaging monster destroying almost everything in his path, fueled by anger and hate. And Batman, at first, was as feared as the criminals he put behind bars . . . but a) he's Batman, cultivating an aura of mystery and fear is his modus operandi and b) all of that had completely evaporated by the middle of the Golden Age, and this was the Silver Age, bubby. But Spidey? He never did anything to deserve the terrible things said about him in the press, and it was strange that the police were going after a masked vigilante when that's what the super hero genre ran on! It took a while, but eventually these kinds of differences spread to a lot of other comic book characters, new and old alike. And these differences resonated with the comic buying public. It made sense: Superman was practically perfect, and it would take a lot of work to approach Batman, and the Fantastic Four? They were essentially celebrities. But Spider-man, outside of his super powers, was practically a normal human being. Many readers knew a guy like Spidey . . . or heck, they were a guy like Spidey, always plugging away, doing some good, here or there, but rarely appreciated for their efforts, often struggling with the demands on their time, rarely sure about anything. So, that was the Silver Age, the height of sci-fi concepts, somewhat goofy story-telling that often veered into the outright bizarre (in one instance, Superman generates a miniature Superman out of his finger . . . which has all of Superman's powers and in fact was better at hero-ing than Supes . . . which made him almost insanely jealous. What? I mean, what? That's downright Freudian! What kid would understand what the fuck that was about?), sadly uber-sexist (this was when Lois Lane, for example, became essentially a gold digger with few redeeming qualities, and when Wonder Woman became her super-powered equivalent, doing lots of stupid stuff to "land her a man"), but the beginnings of surprisingly mature subject matter. It's easy to see where the Silver Age began, but harder to see where it ended. In fact, some people think it lasted until the mid-80s, when the "grim 'n' gritty" style overshadowed everything else. These people are idiots. Most agree it was some time in the 70s, and usually cite the death of Peter "Spider-man" Parker's long-time love interest Gwen Stacy as the end of the Silver Age, claiming that's when comic books lost their innocence. Others are more nebulous, citing a general increase in "social consciousness" in comics. There are other theories, but I think, just as the creation of the Comics Code Authority marked the end of the Golden Age, the high-lighting of its ineffectiveness should mark the end of the Silver Age. What ineffectiveness? Well, throughout the 50s and 60s, the threat of the CCA was enough to keep comic books at that "less than G-Rated" level I mentioned earlier, because the CCA had been created to keep the government from shutting comic book publishers down completely. However, in 1971, the U.S. government, no less, commissioned Marvel to do an anti-drug story in Spider-man. Seemed simple enough, but the story was rejected by the CCA, because drug use was prohibited in comics. Well, Marvel published the story anyway, without the CCA seal of approval . . . and nothing really happened to them. I think there was a fine, but that was it. Comic publishers realized the CCA was toothless, and gradually broke more and more CCA rules, forcing more and more rewrites to the Code until almost no one uses it anymore. But it was the 1971 story that proved that the CCA wasn't the great big bogeyman publishers believed it to be, and that's when I mark the end of the Silver Age. ETA: typos, lovely typos, they're the greatest thing in his-tor-eee. From the. Town of Bedrock. It's a song that's steeped in par-o-deee. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; I've been talking about writing a little, too, huh. That's because I'm really trying to dig in and make my break. It's not going well. Current Mood: blank Current Music: Mama Kin by Aerosmith (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
12:38 am	Write Beating So, as mentioned, I've been working on a story. It's slowed down a bit. In fact, I'm not even working on the same story. I don't mean something about the story has changed so much it's gone in a different direction. I mean literally a different story, different characters, different tone (still light-hearted, but less cynical). I was working on a mildly science fiction story, about a kid trying to get a job as customer service at a mad science tech firm. Now I'm thinking of a modern-day fantasy story, with magic and all, about an apprentice magic user sacrificing his familiar. I originally had the idea about 4 or 5 years ago. Recently, I've wanted to revisit it and change the genders around. And that's not the worst part. The worst part is that those two stories . . . are just two out of 8 stories I'm working on right now. The third is another fantasy, but more along the lines of Lord of The Rings, or should I say Song of Ice and Fire: a cynical, filthy, bleak world, and the story's about one former friend taking revenge on another for the murder of a third. Fourth story's another sci-fi story, in a setting I've had percolating for about 7 years, about a group of people who have taken military (and military academies) and transported their philosophy of discipline and (hopefully) excellence onto all aspects of their life, sort of "military-issue civilians," who are valuable in the war going on. But that's just one part of the setting, and the story is about a maintenance guy working to keep one of their fortifications running during an attack. Fifth takes place in the same setting, but is about a research party near the sun trying to survive when regular transportation is diverted due to the war. Sixth is also in the same setting, about a bunch of POWs who keep morale up by messing with their captors. Seventh is finally in a different setting, another fantasy (a different one!) about a female bounty hunter. Seventh is in the same fantasy setting, about an exiled prince who finds himself fighting against his home country. Eighth is from a setting I've been working on for 15 years. It's a joke concept, a space opera-ish setting, sort of my own take on the same ideas tread by Douglas Adams: even in a space opera, the universe is just as mundane and small-minded and ridiculous as our real-life. This one, part of "The Adventures Of The Mad Whitaker" is where I get the nickname I use in my sigs. Anyway, those aren't even all my stories. Just the ones I'm working on now. The problem is, each of these stories require almost as much planning and prep-work as novels ten, twenty, or thirty times their size. Usually, in the past, when I worked on a story, I'd just write it. Start to finish, one word at a time, or as many words at once as I can manage, editing as I go. But recently I've been trying a different approach: outlining the beats. "Beats" in "writer lingo" are actions. That's all. So I work on outlining what happens, often using crude, unfiltered, unprofessional language. Like what I do here. Or when talking to people in real life. "'Jack' needs to reprogram the thing, so while he's doing that, 'Joe' and 'Jake' are protecting his ass." Etc. The trouble comes in when I overbeat, trying to stuff too many actions in a story. Or when I've got the beats down, and then need to fill those story beats in . . . with more beats. Even when working on dialogue, beats are necessary to break up the dialogue. In life, when speaking, you don't just say words. Your inflection and what you're doing (like, with your hands) sometimes dictates what you mean. But still, don't fall into the trap of overbeating. Describing every single expression that passes on a characters face. I'm unused to it for shorts--I've got a few novels in outline form I've worked on, and I'm more comfortable with that. But shorts trip me up. I keep thinking I've got space to get into more detail . . . except then I remember a short is supposed to be just that, short. Also, sometimes when I'm writing beats, I get hung up on some bit of business that might or might not be relevant to the plot, so I've suddenly got several paragraphs devoted to a beat that might end up being only a sentence or two in the final story. But that's good, that way there's stuff I know that can inform the story, even if it never takes up an important place in the story itself. But what it boils down to is, to write, you've got to write something, then you've got to rewrite it, and then you've got to throw all that out and rewrite something else. Heh. I've been writing about 1000 words a day since my last update on the 25th using only this method, and not even a little of my usual edit-to-final-draft-as-I-go style. It's different. I'm not sure if I'm happy with it. Maybe with all the writing, I'll have written out all the bad stuff and gotten only the good stuff by the time I've reached final draft. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; he's called "The Mad Whitaker" because he's mad, and he whitakes. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Free-For-All by Ted Nugent (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
2:19 am	The Golden Age Of Comics Is Ten Golden Age (1938-1954) Sure, comics existed in some for or other before 1938, but it was Action Comics #1, cover-dated June of '38, with the image of people freaking out to Superman lifting a car over his head--and these were old-timey cars, possibly clocking in at several tons--that almost overnight single-handedly changed the nature of comic books. Super heroes were the new cash cow, and the machiavellian nature of early 20th-century printing turned to producing more and more of them with near-sweatshop precision. Sure, westerns and sports and pirates and horror and romance were still around, but superheroes dominated. Stories of this age, especially super hero ones, were based almost exclusively on their pulp ancestors, featuring manly he-men saving some skimpily attired woman who may or may not be able to handle herself otherwise but is usually just there for the arm candy. They often featured brutally evil villains, but that's okay, because they were opposed by often brutally heroic protagonists. Strangely, these dark stories were also often incredibly naive; sexually, politically, ethically, artistically. However, there were still bits of maturity inherent in these comics. There was one story, for instance, in which Clark Kent was investigating unsafe mining conditions, a bold stance to take at the time. Of course, it ended with Superman trapping the corrupt mine owner in a collapse. Like I said, brutally heroic. While super heroes were often criticized as fascists, it's interesting to note that most super heroes lacked one crucial factor that defines fascism: they weren't all that nationalistic at first. Sure, they'd defend America if it needed help, but it often felt that they did so because that's where all their stuff was--many super heroes were actually champions of the underdog, exemplified by the common American working man; since the American government at the time wasn't exceptionally interested in helping the common American working man, that meant they were as often counter-culture heroes as they were maintainers of the mainstream. This of course changed the closer to WWII America got, reaching a high point during 1941-1945 (the war years). Super heroes bashed (often racially) the Axis powers on their covers, often imploring the reader to buy war bonds and support war bills (or at least, to tell their parents to do so). This is interesting, and I'll get to why in a minute. First, two other features of the Golden Age bear mentioning: there was much more focus on supernatural and magical themes and elements, and not always as villainous (in fact, usually a magical villain was countered by a magical hero, and some magical heroes had little to no supernatural enemies). Often, enemies were either typical old-school gangster types, the kind you'd likely to see in sporting tommy guns and wearing double-breasted suits; or else they were aging mad scientists. A theme that science was dangerous was much more likely than one about the "evils" of magic (this would change in the next age for at least two reasons). But back to talk of the war. In some ways, the War Years were actually the true Golden Age of Comics: after the war ended, super hero comics sort of lost their appeal, as America sort of settled into a position as a global power (which they never ever were before, in any capacity--most Europeans viewed American help during the first World War as a lucky fluke. WWII changed that pretty quick) and tried to play their success in wartime into proving they were somehow pillars of moral purity. This sort of indirectly led to the near collapse of the comics industry, but before we get to that: super heroes were help up against the accomplishments ordinary and non-fictional men (and women) made in WWII, and the non-fiction heroes won. Super heroes almost completely vanished, aside from Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (the latter mainly because of a deal the creator had made that allowed the rights to the character to revert to him and his estate if a certain number of issues per year weren't published--this eventually was renegotiated--not because of any quality of story-telling; not that Superman or Batman could get by with any claims of superiority on that front), the magical-based (and original) Captain Marvel--who was during this time actually more popular than Superman, and so a target of a copyright infringement lawsuit that they eventually lost--and a few occasional attempts to wring the last bit of goodwill people had for super heroes--most notably, the Martian Manhunter, who debuted in 1955, just after the Golden Age ended. Why did the Golden Age end? Well, a certain psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham published a book he'd been working on for far too short a timeawhile called "Seduction of The Innocent." This book claimed that every single image in comic books were designed to undermine the moral and ethical character of everyone, not just those who read it. It was filled with misinterpretations and exaggerations, determining, for instance, that Wonder Woman was a lesbian merely because she was strong and independant. He may have been on to something. The book was a strong piece of sensationalism, and it worked wonders. People were terrified that little Jimmy might turn into a degenerate simply by reading comics, and Congress held hearings, and threatened to shut down all comics publishers. They managed to survive by creating their own, exceptionally restrictive policing agency called the Comics Code Authority, that made some interesting and strange choices in censorship. Depictions of homosexuals were banned, as was drug use or questioning of authority. Many monster and horror cliches were also banned (because it seemed that Wertham had a particular hate-on for horror comics), so for decades, comic books couldn't feature fights against vampires, zombies, or werewolfs (interesting factoid: writer Marv Wolfman almost didn't get credited for his first published story--about a wolfman--because of restrictions outlined in the Comics Code). While comics had to be put through even more obsessive and foregone conclusion-type investigation, they were allowed to live, but the damage was done. It looked like super heroes had just been a passing fad, and would never show up on newstands again. Comic publishers limped on with romance comics, licensed comics starring celebrities, humor strips, funny animals, westerns, sci-fi, even horror stories (tame horror stories, to be sure) . . . practically anything but super heroes. However, it was because of this shifting away from super heroes and to other genres that would quickly lead to a resurgence of super hero (and comic book) popularity). Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; it's important to note that Wertham was aiming for a rating system for comics, and was completely dissatisfied with the Comics Code. Apparently he wasn't interesting in obliterating "mature reader" comics, just restricting the chances of impressionable minds reading them. In that respect, he failed spectacularly. Perhaps if he had done a more thorough job on his research, hadn't resorted to the worst of yellow journalism tactics, and been more moderate in general in his approach, comic books wouldn't have been relegated to just "kiddie books" until the late 70s in the eyes of most of the country. Or perhaps he just said all that after the fact. His book certainly painted him in a different light than later statements would. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Rock Me Like A Hurricane by The Scorpions (Comment on this)
Friday, September 25th, 2009
1:04 am	Beating Up Writer's Block I've been sitting on a story idea for almost three weeks. I've had the idea for the story for almost three months but haven't tried to write it until about 3 weeks ago. And it's been sitting. I had an opening paragraph. It was crap. I tried again. Again, crap. But today, in about 30 minutes, I wrote about 1000 words of the story--and considering I self-edit as I go, probably closer to 1200, just 200 of those words were elided. I got into that zone, and any writers in the audience know what I'm talking about, where you can't type fast enough for the words coming in. I wish I was in that zone more often. It sneaks up on you. And vanishes just as suddenly, eek. Hasn't yet, I stopped writing because it's almost bedtime and I need to unwind before I can slumber. Hopefully, the zone will not be bored of me tomorrow and will help out some more. ::crosses fingers:: . . . ::crosses toes:: Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; it's also a "humorous" story, and those kind of don't work when you're not feeling particularly funny, ugh. But it should be more soft chuckling than out and out guffaw-type stuff when it's done. Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Dirty Work by Steely Dan (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
10:24 pm	Poor Little Rich Boys (Classism And Super Heroes) I wanted to talk more about the Ages of Comic Books, or maybe lay the ground work on a thing about the new Batgirl DC has, or finally do a thing on Wonder Woman. But I'm angry write now, so hundreds and hundreds of words on something I hate. There's a little bit of minor drawmer on Daily_Scans about class issues and the supposed fact that many super heroes are rich white guys beating up those poor (both in the economical and pitiful sense) criminals. And it is BULL FUCKING SHIT And it pisses me the fuck off, if my bold and large red font didn't clue you in. This doubly pisses me off because I grew up poor, I grew up dirt goddamn poor. You've heard stories of sharing beds with siblings, and not getting toys at Christmas or birthdays or both, and not getting much more to eat than a bologna sandwich a day for weeks on end. Well, it got fucking worse when my parents put themselves through college, first my dad, and then my mom (and then she went to graduate school!), and suddenly in my mid-teens, we were no longer lower class, we were middle class. I've been through a spectrum of economical classes (not the whole spectrum, but there's still time, and hopefully the upward trend will continue), so when I say things about classism I'm not speaking from ignorance. I fucking know. And I don't have any sense of entitlement about it, and entitlement is one of my pet peeves, anyway, and that leads to more off pissing. First of all: Super heroes don't beat up poor people. They beat up criminals, minor mooks, gang-bangers, hoodlums, old-timey gangsters, gang leaders, mob bosses, supervillains, etc. It's not about class. It's about CRIME. (as an aside, I hold no brook with the argument that poor people go to crime because they don't have a lot of choice; fuck no, the go to crime because they're lazy and think crime will be easy, no matter their economic background, or because they don't care who it hurts, or because they don't realize is will hurt people, or out of misguided desperate self-preservation, or some combination of all of them. Why do I think this? Because I'm a bastard, and I grew up poor. I know that there are other options. Just because you're poor isn't an excuse. Also, because I'm not a fucking moron and know getting away with crime is hard fucking work, but I have no desire to do crime at all, so . . . there. Yeah, I shop-lifted a loose toy at a department store once when I was, like 7. My parents found out and we returned it, and I had to apologize to the store manager, and I never did anything like that again. Blah, anyway). Secondly: There's a sidetrack about the Batman family. How supposedly, Jason Todd turned out "bad" because he was the only member of the family who was poor. Which, uh, what? I doubt the Graysons were pulling down six figures with their circus act. I don't think that the Gordons were exceptionally wealthy, even after James G. became Commissioner. I don't think Cassandra Cain was rolling in the dough when she ran away from her life as a mute assassin-in-training with dyslexia at the age of eight (or six or ten or whenever she ran away). I don't think Stephanie Brown and family ever made much off of her dad's failed criminal enterprise as the Cluemaster. Jason Todd turned out "bad" because the writer who killed him wanted to generate as much hate for the character as possible, and made him a jerk who maybe crossed a line with a rapist one day. The writer would have done the same even if Jason Todd kept his pre-COIE origin of being another circus kid, or if, like Tim Drake, he would been from a wealthy family. The writer, Jim Starlin, didn't like the concept of the kid sidekick, hated the idea of Batman having a partner, wanted him to be a lone wolf again. It was simply a case of a writer with an agenda. Since then, other writers have kind of gone back and forth showing a Jason Todd who--gasp!--smoked! And also a Jason Todd who was exceptionally excited about being a costumed crimefighter and ready to get down to business and help clean up Gotham. The "bad" characterization was more common, though. And then he went evil because he died and came back to life and got a bit of Lazarus Pit insanity and thought that Batman didn't get vengeance on the Joker for killing him. Never mind that a)Batman's no kill thing is pretty fucking important, and Jason's desire for Batman to kill the Joker over Todd's death is pretty fucking selfish, shut up Jason Todd and b)he's not dead, anymore, so even if Bats had broken his One Rule, don't you think he'd probably feel pretty bad over killing someone for something that no longer exists, and shut the FUCK UP, Jason Todd. Thirdly: Super heroes usually only beat up criminals who resist--I mean, if cops were actually well paid for their jobs, would people say "Well, of course it's classism at work, there, when they beat up the poor criminals!" Well, probably. Because people? Are fucking stupid, sometimes--or HAVE SUPER FUCKING POWERS. Super heroes isn't about classism. Jesus. Only fucking morons who just realized that--gasp!--some peoples have more money's than other peoples, and that's just not fair, or those looking for class issues to find them, whether they exist or not would think so. As a final note, there's the supposed fact that Batman (it keeps going back to him, because he's a big target, and lazy people find big targets easier to snipe at, nevermind what kind of body armor he wears! He's easy to hit, and hits count, dammit!), being wealthy, is going out at night and beating up the poor and disenfranchised of Gotham. And they'd almost have a point, if the previous bit about criminals, minor mooks, gang-bangers, hoodlums, old-timey gangsters, gang leaders, mob bosses, supervillains, etc weren't also true. Their argument truly falls apart because Batman, with his Bruce Wayne persona, uses a METRIC FUCK TON AND A HALF of his vast wealth to fund charities (around the world): soup kitchens, free clinics, shelters (for both homeless and battered womens); not to mention the job-placement programs both the Wayne Foundation and Wayne Industries have--lessening the anger-in-me-inducing "economic motivation for crime" that induces anger in me; not to mention a dozen other things Bruce does--through his Foundation and personally to improve the quality of life for Gothamites. In short: classism in super hero comics is almost like rampant homosexuality in super hero comics: you've got to be looking really hard, and fuck with characterization, for it to be present. Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; that's "rampant homosexuality," like what exists in the minds of enthusiastic slash-fans. Actual homosexuality exists in comics, and that's a good thing. Current Mood: angry Current Music: If I Were A Rich Man by Harnick & Bock (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
7:43 pm	Flash In The Pan I'm gonna do something I don't usually do. I'm gonna use a cut in this post. (I usually don't because it always seems like a come on to do it, just personal reasons, nothing serious). ( Nothing you've never seen before on the internet. ) Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; I get that it's an independent book, but COME ON! Current Mood: flabbergasted Current Music: The Scotsman by Irish Rovers (Comment on this)