Okay, probably not.  Because that’s not something I do.  It’s not something that interests me.  I’ve got a pretty light touch when it comes to killing characters.  I’ll admit that.  I’ll usually kill or destroy or otherwise get rid of the bad guy, but it’s not my thing to introduce a colorful supporting cast and then pick them off to establish the credibility of the threat they face.  It’s probably yet another thing that keeps me from being taken as seriously as I’d sometimes like.  Nothing like a little blood on the page to remind everyone that you’re not screwing around.

I think this is probably because of my love of comic books.  Comic book superheroes are some of my earliest influences.  But I have a bad habit of liking the strange and obscure characters.  The very same characters that tend to die whenever a writer needs extra drama.  It puts me in a strange position.  If you’re favorite hero is Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man, you can rest assured that they aren’t going anywhere.  They might die for a gimmick, but no one with any sense believes they’ll stay dead.  Same with all the popular villains.  But if you, like me, enjoy Quasar, Diamond Lil, or Arnold Wesker, you are stuck walking a very difficult line.

Quasar, for example, is a character who was never popular but nonetheless had his own comic book series that lasted 60 issues before fading into complete obscurity.  I had the whole series and really loved it.  It also had the unfortunate side effect of making me a fan of several other even more obscure characters in his supporting cast.  Seriously, does anyone else out there like Makkari the Eternal?  If so, love to hear from you.

But then Quasar disappeared into comic book obscurity.  He did eventually reappear.  Only to be killed by an evil alien.

Story of my life, a comic book fan of the little guy, the obscure, the forgotten.

I think Quasar is back because death is rarely permanent in comic books if someone likes you, so clearly someone out there has a soft spot for Quasar.  Good luck, buddy.  I’m rooting for you.

Danger is often an important aspect of adventure fiction, but it shouldn’t be the only aspect.  Or even the most important one.  The conflict from adventure fiction should rarely be about the protagonists’ continued survival, but on their ability to achieve their goals.  Danger is only one of the obstacles that can get in their way, and it is, more often than not, an artificial one.

I call it The Invulnerable Protagonist Rule.  The rule says that if making your hero explicitly invulnerable to physical harm removes all the tension from your story, then you’re doing something wrong.

Almost all adventure protagonists are invulnerable.  Not explicitly.  But they’re invulnerable just the same.  Batman is not going to get shot and die, no matter how many times he leaps from the shadows into a mob of thugs.  Indiana Jones is not going to be killed, execution style, by the Nazis.  And no matter how many times James Bond is facing incredible odds, he won’t die.  This is necessary for most adventure fiction.  Without it, most protagonists would probably perish in very short order.

We might thrill to the adventures of action heroes, but for the most part, we know they are in no real danger because who wants to watch an superhero movie where the heroes spend all their time in traction?  Or watch Conan the barbarian get eaten by a giant spider?

The tension in adventure is found in whether our heroes can triumph.  Can Superman save Earth from an alien invasion?  Will Indiana Jones keep the Nazis from finding that magic superweapon?  Can James Bond keep Goldfinger from nuking Fort Knox?  Being invulnerable helps an action hero, but they usually have to work at it still.  Just because no one is going to shoot Batman in the back, it doesn’t mean he automatically wins.

I’m often surprised that this source of tension is lost among both writers and readers.  It’s one of the arguments most often used for why someone prefers Batman to Superman, for instance.  As if a Batman story is going to end with Bats getting mortally wounded.  The only difference between Batman and Superman is that Batman conveniently jumps out of the way of bullets while Superman doesn’t usually have to.  At the end of the day, they are both functionally invulnerable as their stories demand.

Yet there seems to be no greater joys for most writers than to get to write the story where ANYONE CAN DIE!  And the audience tends to dig it too.  And that’s their choice.

But I always get a little angry with it.  I don’t like stories where a character I’ve invested in is killed.  I don’t like them even as imaginary stories, as alternate universe adventures.  I find it annoying, manipulative.  Sometimes, it even seems a little abusive of the artist / audience relationship to trick the audience into caring for a character only to kill them off to supply drama.

I’m not suggesting that it shouldn’t be done.  I’m all for a diversity of stories, and if some stories make life cheap and the fans like it, well, good for them.   But in my fiction, if I’m going to invest in a character (or ask my readers to invest), I’m not going to yank the rug out from under their feet just because I can.  Frankly, I’ve lost too many important people in my life and in my fiction already.

This one goes out to you, Thunderstrike.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

One of the reasons I don’t like being considered a silly writer is that it lowers the bar.  Silly is fine, but it’s just a trifling thing.  It will always be considered unimportant.  And to some degree that’s to my advantage.  If someone reads a story of mine with no other expectation than to be entertained by some strange humor or weird situations, then it’s a standard I can usually meet.  If I was purely out to make a buck, then I’d be perfectly happy with that standard.  It’s not especially challenging, and others have built a career out of this kind of escapist fiction.  Writers I even admire.

But I have to admit, it bugs me to be thought of as slight and hollow.  I’m not writing the most meaningful fiction in the universe, and I’m certainly not out to change the world with my stories.  But they aren’t just stupid stories.  Not to me, at least.

What’s often frustrating to me isn’t my own writing and its reception, but the reception and excuse-making of other writings.  It annoys me to no end when someone excuses bad writing because a story is dumb and I shouldn’t expect it to be good.  It bugs me even more when a writer makes the same excuse.  In my last post, I mentioned my disappointment that DC Comics took the previously established short and stout Amanda Waller and turned her into another supermodel.  I’ve heard more than one comment on other sites that people are making too big deal about this, that comic book superheroes are “escapism” and who really cares if every single character is traditionally thin and good-looking?

I care.  And so do other people.

The notion that comic books are a lesser form of media and as such, are given free reign to avoid diversity is a false one.  I’m not saying I want comic book superheroes to go out of their way to be relevant and important, but just because they’re stories about people in funny costumes fighting aliens and evil clowns, that doesn’t excuse an outright hostility toward non-traditional character types.

The thing about escapism, about silliness, is that it actually matters a whole hell of a lot.  Because as much as we want to believe there’s a separation between meaningful media and silly media, there isn’t.  Both have tremendous influence on us as a culture and how we perceive things.  In fact, I sometimes think silly, escapist media is even more influential.  Because meaningful media is stuff we’re supposed to like, but escapist media is stuff we seek out.

This is why I’ve never bought in the idea that something like Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives as being meaningless candy.  More people have probably watched these shows than the latest academy award winning movie.  And regardless of how much we might pretend to laugh at the people who star in those shows, there’s no denying their influence.  You can bet there are plenty of folks who model their personalities after the morons of Jersey Shore.  And why should that be surprising?  People lined up in droves to get “The Rachel” haircut while Friends was popular.  And Marlon Brando made leather jackets cool.  We are influenced by our media, whether we admit it or not, and escapist, entertaining media is what we most often seek out and imitate.

All artists have a responsibility, even if they deny it.  When I wrote Gil’s All Fright Diner it wasn’t my intention to insult anyone with the fat jokes at Loretta’s expense.  I still stand by the book and think she’s a great character.  But it doesn’t change the fact that some people were put off by it, and I can certainly see why.  More importantly, if my response to their anger was a dismissive “Well, it’s just a silly story so get over it” I’d be guilty of ducking the responsibility.  After all, Gil’s is probably still my most popular novel.  It won several prominent bits of recognition.  So it’s hypocritical to say that it’s “silly, inconsequential” when it suits me, and “smart, clever” at other times.

It’s a paradox of sorts.  Shows like Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, etc. are popular and make a lot of money.  And they make a lot of money because people watch them.  But if confronted with their influence, producers and stars will often say they’re just TV shows and they don’t matter.  So apparently they matter enough that they earn millions of dollars but not enough that they actually have any influence on our culture.

In Bruce Campbell’s great autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, he observed that he once got a letter from someone who said his television show, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., had saved their life.  Campbell was deeply flattered, but also reluctant to accept this.  He understood that if you take credit for saving someone’s life, you have to also be ready to take credit for the opposite,  Yet media is quick to do exactly that.

Even if I am just a silly writer, I refuse to embrace the label because it would mean that my work, my art, would be ultimately meaningless.  But I don’t write meaningless stories.  I write from a certain point of view, and I have influence, whether I want it or not.  Even the stupidest story means something to someone.  Even the most mindless piece of art can affect someone in profound ways.  And the artist can’t deny that responsibility when it suits him.

But this isn’t just about art and media.  This is about all of us.  We are all tremendously influential, whether we realize it or not.  Our kind words can make all the difference in the world.  Our bad moods can spread like wildfire.  Our fears, our loves, our compassion, our disgust, these things aren’t self-contained.  They reach out and touch everyone around us.

Sure, as a novelologist, I have a larger reach than most people.  And if my career continues to grow, that influence will grow with it.  The more money I make, the more fame I gather, the less comfortable I am with the idea that I’m merely a silly writer of insubstantial stories.  And as I ponder the nature of media in this day and age, too many people try to avoid their obvious affect on our society even as they cash the huge checks that come with that influence.

There are no silly stories, no meaningless cotton candy entertainment.  It all goes into the cultural mix, and while that doesn’t mean every story has to be conscientious, uplifting, or insightful, it does mean that we can’t dismiss any of it as unimportant just because it’s about superheroes, robots, or egotistical chumps from New Jersey.  Because it all matters.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a little light entertainment, a little frivolity and silly escapism.  But escapist does not equal meaningless.  And while not every story can (or even should) be culturally enlightening, every story that reaches the world shapes it somehow.

We are who we admire, who we pretend to be.  We model ourselves and our world after our art.  Art imitates life, but life imitates art.  And if you’re confident on which has more influence on which, congratulations on that.  I’m not so sure.

All I know is that if being taken seriously as a writer means taking lumps for intended and unintended influence, it’s a burden I bear gladly compared to the alternative.  Although really, I don’t have any other choice.

None of us do.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Me?  I’ve got Ironsides and Oracle.

Oh, wait.  Scratch that second one.

Now name all the overweight minority characters in positions of authority in fiction.

There’s Amanda Waller from DC Comics . . . or at least there used to be.

Granted, there are probably handicapped protagonists I’ve never heard of and not-size-6 minority characters in prominent roles I’m also unfamiliar with.  But this only highlights how rare and difficult they are to find.  In comparison, if I were to ask you to name a prominent white male protagonist, the list goes on and on and on.  No problem filling that one out.

Diversity matters.  It’s time to acknowledge this.  It’s time to prioritize this.  And it’s time to stop making excuses for those who don’t.  Or, worse, those who actively fight against diversity, if even only by accident.

This is why DC’s reboot annoys me.  It’s not the comics themselves, which I have not found particularly impressive but also don’t really have a problem with.  I’ve got my nitpicks, my dislikes, but I’m just one opinion and it’s been clear for a long time that I’m not a reader most comic books care about.  And that’s cool.  But when you take prominent characters who are basically the sole representatives of entire groups of people and remove those qualities from them, you have to accept the consequences.

If there were more prominent handicapped characters in comics, I wouldn’t care if Barbara Gordon started walking again.  If there were more powerful, intelligent, capable minority characters in comics, I wouldn’t care if Amanda Waller went on a diet.  But there are not.  These characters, for better or worse, carry that weight on their shoulders.  And when writers reset the characters (or in Waller’s case, just re-envision her as skinny because they can) then they should be called on it.  It should be mentioned.  It should be talked about.  It’s not an imaginary concern.  It’s not reactionary.  It’s a reversal of everything these characters brought to the collective storytelling table, and we’re all poorer for it.

In my current project, Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest, Helen is a minotaur.  She’s almost seven feet tall, has horns and hooves, and is covered in fur.  I chose this because how often is a female character allowed to be “monstrous”?  And how often is this condition removed by the end of their story?  But Helen starts a minotaur, and she’ll remain one by the end of the story.  It’s true that being a minotaur isn’t all bad, but it’s also true that Helen isn’t going to win any traditional beauty contests.

Troy is Asian.  There’s no reason for that other than I could do it.  I didn’t go out of my way to make him or his family “Asian” because the premise of Troy is that he’s the all-American ideal.  He’s good-looking, smart, athletic, and just about perfect.  He could really be any race, but I chose to make him Asian.  Not as a twist.  Not as a joke.  But because it’s nice to add an Asian to the collective culture.

In Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain, Emperor is a ten pound invertebrate.  His bodyguard is a fierce warrior woman from Venus named Zala.  She could just as easily been male.  Her sex serves no purpose in the story.  There’s certainly no sexual tension between the two.  But i figured if I was going to have a major character, why not have her be female?

This is the question that more writers and creators should ask themselves.  Why should I?  Or why shouldn’t I?  Especially in questions of diversity.

In DC, there’s a certain logic (that I don’t necessarily agree with but don’t disagree with either) that Barbara Gordon started out as Batgirl.  And comic book characters get reset all the time, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they took her out of her wheelchair.  It’s only surprising that they took so long to do it.  But Amanda Waller isn’t being reset.  She’s being undone.  Not for any other reason than a writer thought it didn’t matter if they changed her.

Well, it matters.

Taking Harley Quinn out of her traditional costume and sticking her in underwear matters too.

And, while we’re on the subject, taking all the characters from The Last Airbender and making them white for the movie was a huge mistake.  Not that it would’ve helped the movie to keep them ethnic because the problems with the film are found in its hamhanded direction and writing.  But still, it doesn’t help.

Yet there’s no getting around a real and unspoken problem here.  When someone complains about a white character becoming ethnic, everyone talks about it.  When someone complains about an ethnic character becoming white, it draws very little attention.  It seemed like there was more press attention to “Black Heimdall” than “White Airbender”.  And when an alternate version of Spider-Man is black, the world gasps.  When the Avengers film drops its prominent female founding character, The Wasp, there’s not a peep from even the comic book fan community.

It’s time to look beyond ourselves, to realize that just because something is unimportant to us that doesn’t make it culturally unimportant.  I am neither black nor a woman nor do I have body issues.  But I’m bothered by the thin-ifying of Amanda Waller because we can’t afford to lose her.  And I’m less concerned with Barbara Gordon walking than I am with the fact that once she does, we’re having to look all the way back to a Raymond Burr series from the late 60′s for a handicapped hero.

If aliens were to judge American culture by its media, they could safely assume that we are all good-looking, thin, mostly white people who usually single.  And if we’re not single, we’re almost never married.  And if we do get married, it’s usually the end of our story, not the beginning.

Aliens could also deduce that it’s the job of minority characters to act as a support staff for the white characters, that fat characters are okay as long as they’re the sassy sidekick, and that mostly, minorities are around to either die for dramatic tension or sacrifice themselves for the good of a white character’s story.

They’d notice too that white male characters tend to have a complex array of personal histories and personalities, while most minorities and women are obviously of a hive mind and function on a certain baseline.

I’m not claiming racism / sexism here.  I’m claiming something even worse.  Indifference and insensitivity.  Or, worst of all, a lack of imagination on the part of our cultural creators.  After all, if you can’t tell a story with married characters, then maybe it’s your fault, not the characters.  And if you can’t tolerate even one fat chick in your otherwise size zero universe, then maybe it’s time to admit you have a problem.

Writing the good write, Fighting the good fight,

Lee

So there you have it.  Bombs.  The cause of / and solution to all of life’s problems.

Been a while, hasn’t it?  I’ve been working on a lot of stuff.  Important stuff.  Stuff I get paid for.  So you’ll excuse me if blogging about dinosaurs and robots has taken a backseat lately.  It’s not that I don’t care.  It’s that I’ve got bills to pay.  Speaking of which, Chasing the Moon is out in some stores now.  It’s a good book, and I’m sure you’ll like it.  So go ahead and buy a copy.  I’ll thank you in advance, and you can thank me later.

The reviews have been pretty favorable so far, though they’re the typical “Another wacky Martinez book” I tend to get.  It’s my albatross to bear.  Except instead of being a curse, it means people like what I write.  So what if I don’t quite agree with the reason?  Still, I’ll admit my ego still stings a bit when any book I’ve written gets classified as fluff, brain candy, etc.

I’ve written before about how frustrating I find it that it’s assumed something must be boring / depressing to be sophisticated.  And that if something is fun and brings a smile to your face then it must be empty of anything worthwhile.  But that’s not going to change anytime soon.

It’s the same sort of assumption that says video games make you stupid.  Or that education and self-improvement is such a rigid, specific process that there’s only one way to do it.  The boring way.

I learned to catch by juggling.  It certainly wasn’t easy, but it was a fun rewarding experience.  I learned to write by playing with toys, reading comic books, and watching cartoons.  I play board and card games almost like a religion because they continue to expand and hone my mind in new and startling ways.  These things shape and influence me and make me better every day.

I’m not going to say that reading Chasing the Moon will lead to a personal epiphany on the nature of the universe.  But I do know that, on a personal level, Moon means a hell of a lot to me.  It’s enjoyable enough as a strange story about weird beasts from beyond, but I’d like to think it has more to it than that.  I doubt it’ll change the world, or even have any real impact on the way we humans look at the world.  But I’d like to believe that at least one person might read it and say, “Hey, that’s kind of a neat way of looking at things.”

It might be an absurd ambition for a story featuring a giant green monster who wants to eat the universe and a purple hedgehog that can’t stop reproducing, but where would we be if we were afraid to dream.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Recently, I tweeted that I’d like to write a story with either Marvel’s Squirrel Girl or DC’s Killowog.  And I really, really would.  This is rare for me,  as I don’t aspire to write stories for characters I didn’t create.  I love Superman, Batman, the mighty Thor, but I have no real interest in writing anything with them.  (Although if someone at DC or Marvel thinks I’d be a good fit, I wouldn’t rule it out immediately.)

I think the appeal of Squirrel Girl and Killowog for me is that neither character has had a lot written about them.  This gives me a little more room to maneuver, to write my own story without having to worry about previous continuity and interpretations of the characters. 

For those who don’t know, Squirrel Girl is a comedic superhero in the Marvel universe with squirrel powers (of course).  The joke about Squirrel Girl is that she is the greatest superhero in the Marvel universe, despite her innocuous powers and personality.  She’s endlessly cheerful.  Her sidekick is a squirrel.  And she routinely kicks the butts of world-shattering villains.

Killowog isn’t a comedic character.  He’s just a Green Lantern.  But he’s usually portrayed as a no-nonsense guy who just kicks butt.  It’d be a chance to write a Green Lantern story without having to deal with Hal Jordan, who I’ve always felt was rather bland as a character.

Someone asked me, “How would I write a story with these characters to introduce them to the general public?”

It’s an interesting question.

Firstly, I’m not sure that’s even relevant.  Comic books are an insular medium at this point, and it’s rare for anyone to just decide to buy comics out of the blue.  Usually, they have friends who are comic book fans or have already been buying them for years.  The shrinking nature of the market is a big problem, but there seems to be no real effort to stop that at this point as comic companies continue to cater to diehard fans who are willing to catalogue decades of fake history in order to understand many stories.

But let’s just assume that I did get to write a comic book and that this would cause non-comic buying people to rush to the stores and purchase said comic.  It’s possible.  I do have fans.  I don’t know how many are eager to read a comic book I’ve helped write, but you never know.

The reason I find the question interesting is that I don’t see how writing a comic book with an established character would be any different than writing any other story I’ve written.  Since I have yet to write a sequel to anything, every story I create starts with the assumption that the reader won’t know anything going in.  That’s one of the things I love about writing original stories.  I don’t have to worry about excessive continuity or about balancing old fans with new.  Every book stands on its own.  Every book is a fresh start.

I would treat a comic book story in much the same way.  It’s true that established characters in established universes come with some baggage.  But I look at that as backstory.  It might shape and influence the character, but it shouldn’t be necessary to understand the history of everything a character has done to enjoy whatever story they are taking part in now.  As I said, neither Squirrel Girl or Killowog have much backstory to begin with because they’re minor characters.  And that’s what I find so appealing about them.

Whether or not a character has a history, I think it’s a mistake to revel in that.  Tight comic book continuity is one of the reasons the medium is dying.  It’s called continuity lockout at www.tvtropes.org and it’s a very real danger with any kind of ongoing story or universe.  Especially in comic books superheroes, where literally decades of history can be found on so many characters.

Good writing should seek to transcend continuity.  It shouldn’t rely on a fannish devotion to previous works.  There’s nothing wrong with a continuity nod here and there.  And characters with long histories can have layered and interesting stories told about them.  But the second a reader has to look up reference material to understand what you’ve written (not just to add to their enjoyment of it) is the second you’ve failed as a writer.  Usually.  These aren’t hard and fast rules, folks.  Novelology is a soft science.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, gang.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I mean, really.

Just wanted to be clear on that.

Also, my CREATE A TITLE FOR A SYFY ORIGINAL MOVIE contest is over.  I had a ton of great entries.  So many that I think I’ll end up having a winner and two or three runner ups.  I’ll be posting a list of all the titles as well as my choice for the lucky winners in a day or two.  So stay tuned.

But enough of that.  While striving to come up with an interesting topic for my latest blog post, I was fortunate enough to have a recent comment provide that topic for me.

Do you read books written by other writers who write in the same kind of themes and tone that you write? Examples above being Michael Rubens sci-fi novel The Sheriff of Yrnameer, and John Connoly’s The Gates.

Do you feel like there is competition or animosity between writers who have similar styles of writing in terms of theme, tone, and character?

Have you ever one a single game of Heroscape using Brunak? He never seems to work well for me, despite the fact he looks super awesome.

Bradley

Well, Bradley.  Thanks for the questions first of all. 

To answer your first question, No, I don’t really read “similar” writers with “similar” styles.  I put the “similar” in quotes because, as I’ve mentioned more than once, I don’t really consider myself a comedic fantasy writer despite the fact that nearly every other sentient being in this universe does.  Heck, even my dog thinks I’m funny.

Frankly, I’m not just a fan of most “comedic” fantasy.  Most of it just doesn’t do much for me.  I don’t think that’s a flaw in those books as just a personal thing.  There’s plenty of great comedic fantasy out there.  I just don’t read much of it.  But, and here’s the truth, I just don’t read much fiction anymore.  Somehow, I slowly transitioned into a non-fiction reader.  I don’t know why fiction stopped holding my interest, but I think it just has to do with the fact that I don’t read a lot. 

(I know, I know.  I’m a writer.  I’m not supposed to admit that.  But I’m a busy guy.  I have games to play and world domination to plot.  I do actually read quite a bit, but very little of it is fiction of any genre, much less my own.)

To your second question, I can’t speak for other writers, but I don’t bear any animosity toward other successful writers, whether they’re “similar” to my style or not.  (Sorry. But I gotta throw in the quotation marks because perceptions of style are so individual that I find them hard to take seriously.)   When my first book, Gil’s All Fright Diner, came out I was compared to Christopher Moore.  An Amazon review even criticized me for aping Moore’s style too closely.  Yet, up to that point, I’d never even heard of Moore.  Since then, I’ve read some of Moore’s work, and I don’t think we write very much alike at all.  But that’s just one guy’s opinion.

And that’s something I realized a long time ago.  People are going to draw comparisons.  If the comparisons are meant as a compliment, then I take them as such, regardless of if I agree with them.

The flip side is that it’s quite possible to end up in a losing battle with comparisons.  The Christopher Moore comparisons are perhaps the most common ones I come across, and not all of them are positive.  Just because someone is a fan of a “similar” writer, doesn’t mean they’ll like my work.  But, again, that’s not Moore’s doing.  And, if it wasn’t Moore (or Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett) it’d just be someone else.  Nothing exists in a vacuum.  You just can’t get around it.  So you just deal with it, good and bad.

Finally, have I used Brunak?  Yes, I have.  Not many times, but I have about a billion Heroscape units (give or take), and I always like to try new combinations.  The units I use most reliably are probably The Venoc Warlord and Major Q10.  And I do love a good ol’ fashioned HORDE OF ORCS!  Mwahahahaha!  Suicidal, bloodthirsty, raging orcs charging fearlessly into the jaws of death!  Truly, that is a beautiful thing.

Thanks again for the questions, Bradley.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Saw Iron Man 2 today.  Blah.  Not a bad movie, but not very good either.  Like most superhero sequels, it’s way too heavy on plot, too short on creative superhero action.  It’s not that I need to have a giant robot attack every five minutes (although that would be sweeeet), but for a movie about a guy named Iron Man, there really wasn’t much Iron Man.  Add to this that the movie’s plot is almost identical to the previous film, you just end up with something . . . well . . . I don’t want to say anything too bad about the film, as it wasn’t bad.  Just left me flat.

It’s hard for me to be critical on this.  Even in comic books, it seems like superheroes are more about talking heads than outrageous schemes and superfights.  I know it’s unsophisticated to say this, but I like my superheroes to kick butt.  They don’t have to be stupid, but in the end, I usually enjoy it when our hero punches out the bad guys to solve the problem.  That’s really what superheroes are all about, isn’t it?  Spider-Man’s motto is “With great power . . . ” I’m sure you know the rest.  And what is Spider-Man’s great power?  The ability to beat people up real, real good.  Batman might be the world’s greatest detective, but all that detecting usually leads to a fist fight somewhere down the road.  And The Thing’s battle cry is “It’s clobberin’ time!”, not “Let’s have a chat!”

Here’s a personal philosophy of mine.  If you spend a whole movie building up to a showdown, it should probably last longer than three minutes.  Every great video game knows that the final boss fight needs to be epic.  Otherwise, it just ends up making your villain look weak and your hero’s triumph seem handed to him.

But I’m sure that Iron Man 2 will make a billion dollars, so what do I know?  But I’ll stick with The Incredibles.

To switch to a more positive note, have you seen Community?  It’s a pretty cool show, and while I always hesitate to use the word subtle, I’m going to go ahead and say it on this one.  Community is, on the surface, a fairly standard sitcom, but there’s a sneakiness to it that both revels in the sitcom tropes and enjoys playing with them at the same time.  It’s not an easy thing to do, but so far, they’ve managed a fine balancing act.  From a writing perspective, I love how Community has so far been able to have its cake and eat it too.  It manages to be an homage of the sitcom genre while deconstructing it.  And the most impressive part is that it doesn’t limit its ambitions to sitcom tropes either.

The most recent paintball apocalypse episode is a multi-layered homage to every great action movie cliche that still stays true to the characters AND is funny too boot.  It’s also that rare treat that just gets better with repeated viewings.  If you haven’t tried the show yet, you might be surprised.  It just might grow on you.

If I was going to compare Iron Man 2 and Community (and I’m going to assume that I am the only one on Earth who shall do so) I’d say that this is where the two differ.  Iron Man 2 only succeeds in annoying me the more I think about it.  Community continues to impress me as I realize just everything that is going on here.  And, yes, I’ll go ahead and say it.  The paintball episode of Community was more thrilling and involving than Iron Man 2.  And that’s pretty bizarre when I consider that one of those things has an army of robotic drones.

Oh, and while Samual L. Jackson is a fine actor and does a terrific (if mostly unnecessary) job as Nick Fury, in my heart of hearts, I’ll always see David Hasselhoff as Fury.  Really, the guy nailed the role.

So how about them video game console wars?  Can we just admit that all the major video game systems out there are pretty solid, and stop acting as if one is truly superior to the other?  I have a Wii, and I enjoy it.  I’m sure I’d enjoy an Xbox or a PS3.  So let’s just stop acting as if it’s an either / or proposition.  You’re allowed to like one.  Or two.  Or all of ‘em.  This is video games, we’re talking about.  Not religions.

And while I’m on the subject, can we also stop fighting over which Batman is the best Batman?  Batman’s biggest strength has always been his flexibility as a character.  There’s room in this universe for Detective Noir Batman (Batman: The Animated Series), Action Hero Batman (The Batman), and Fun, Anything Goes Batman (The Brave & The Bold).  I like each version for very different reasons, but in the end, none is so much superior to the other as catering to our preferences.  Heck, there’s even room in this world for Frank Miller’s dreadful All-Star Batman and Robin.  The more, the merrier.

So going back to Iron Man 2, I guess I can retract some of my less flattering comments.  Why can’t there be a non-super superhero?  People sure seemed to like it with the Spidey movies.  As someone once told me, “I like the Spider-Man movies because I’m not a comic book fan.”  So superhero movies for non-superhero fans?  Why not?  It’s a big, beautiful world, isn’t it?  Who cares about the label?

It’s funny to even write “non-superhero superhero fans” because what does that even mean?  A big reason I’m not into comic books now is that they’re too much talking and plotting, not enough hitting and robot fighting.  While that might not seem very superheroic to me, it’s not as if I hold the key to what does and doesn’t constitute great superhero fiction.  For some folks, superheroes are about larger-than-life adventures and kicking evil aliens in the face.  For others, it’s about people standing around, talking, and maybe occasionally throwing a punch here and there.  Whatever floats your boat.

To end on a positive note, I enjoying seeing Happy Hogan (as played by Jon Favreau) re-introduced into the Iron Man universe.  I might be the only one happy to see Happy, but that’s good enough for me.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Onto the business at hand.

So from what I’ve heard, The Losers has turned out to be a box office disappointment and Kick-Ass is underperforming as well.  It’s easy to make excuses or come up with reasons for why this is happening.  Personally, I think it has less to do with the quality of these films and more about the juggernaut of awesomeosity that is How to Train Your Dragon.  That’s why movie making is such a tough biz.  You can make the greatest movie in the universe, but if you don’t promote it properly or if some other movie grabs the buzz, you’re out of luck.  A movie has only a short time to really gather positive momentum, and if it’s weak out of the gate, for whatever reason, it’s going to have trouble.  Although I don’t think Kick-Ass had that problem.  Rather, it just couldn’t hold its momentum.

My own pet theory is that both Kick-Ass and The Losers suffered from media transition.  Things that were pretty cool in the comic book format don’t necessarily translate well to film.  In both cases, I think the differing attitudes and expectations of different audiences were a bit of an obstacle.  This is exactly what happened to Mystery Men.  Everyone I know who is a comic book fan enjoys the film immensely.  For everyone else, it tends to fall flat.  The jump to a wider audience is a difficult one.

That’s what’s tough about movies.  Movies are bigger by nature.  As a novelologist, I can make a living appealing to a very small portion of the population.  Books are cheaper to produce, easier to allow as a niche market, and can sit on a bookshelf longer than a movie can languish in a theater.  Books also tend to pick up momentum as the audience discovers them while movies tend to lose that energy as new competition appears.

But let’s get back to myoriginal two examples.  Keep in mind, these are just my thoughts.  There’s no proof or guarantee that any observation I make is correct.  Just some musings on my end.  That’s all.

First up: Kick-Ass.

I’ll admit that I’m not a fan of the original Kick-Ass comic.  It’s too dark, too ridiculous, too inconsistent for me.  But that’s just a matter of taste.  Still, even the movie version of Kick-Ass acknowledges that changes must be made because ideas and story beats that are very successful in a smaller comic book audience would have trouble reaching more mainstream moviegoers.  And while there are small films that don’t care about being number one at the box office, Kick-Ass isn’t one of these types of films.

But even with these changes, many of the ideas and themes of the film have trouble reaching a wider audience.  To really enjoy what Kick-Ass is trying to do (in either format) requires a knowledge of comic book tropes in general and superheroes in particular.  It’s true that many of the concepts of superheroes have become mainstream, but for the most part, your average non-comic reader still thinks Clark Kent wears glasses / Superman doesn’t is cutting edge superhero deconstruction.

Add to this that Kick-Ass, like all superhero movies, struggles not to look ridiculous in a live action format.  Sure, the film adopts a more realistic approach to costumes and powers, but it still doesn’t change the fact that in several scenes a young girl in a costume kills a room full of thugs without batting an eye.  And let’s not forget the Jetpack.  I didn’t read the original comic book long enough to know if this actually happens, but I do know that the jetpack’s arrival crosses the line to full on ridiculous.  Especially considering the pains the movie takes to keep realism in most other scenes.

Sure, most of the audience really won’t care about the jetpack.  Not in the short run.  But in the long run, its arrival transforms a story that is supposed to be about non-super superheroes into genuine superheroes.  In that way, it ends up weakening the film.  It makes the film into just another superhero flick with a few plot gimmicks and unconventional characters, but I don’t believe movie audiences are looking for these things in superhero films.  They want melodrama, broad characters, and larger-than-life action.  Kick-Ass‘s desire to be more intimate, more believable, yet also superheroic ends up defeating itself.  The audience doesn’t notice, but in the long run, people like convention.  And conventions, like it or not, exist for a reason.

It’s easier to flaut convention in a smaller medium, but when you’re making a big movie, there’s more at risk.  People might disparage Avatar for its by-the-numbers story and uncomplicated characterizations, but people watched Avatar. 

But what about The Losers?  Why would this movie stumble out of the block?

Probably because, outside of the comic book medium, The Losers is all but indistinguishable from any number of generic action movies.  This isn’t an insult.  I enjoy action movies, and this one isn’t a bad one.  Although it’s not a great one either.  Regardless, The Losers is a comic book emulating an action movie, which makes it intriguing in that medium, but the moment you make it into an action movie, you’ve taken away the one element that makes it unique.  There aren’t many action-espionage comic books (especially in comparison to superheroes and shudder zombies).  But action-espionage movies are still a common staple.

The transition from one medium to another is always difficult, more difficult in certain situations than others.  Not just in terms of artistic differences, but in terms of competition and demands.  Kick-Ass the comic did very well.  The movie did well, but had trouble competing with a variety of films.  In the comic book world, Kick-Ass wouldn’t be competing with How to Train Your Dragon because there would be little crossover in audience.  But people only go to so many movies, only have so much time, and that means that even a rude, crude, adult-oriented big budget film has to be able to compete against a kid’s movie.

As for The Losers, well, it’s just hard to stand out when you are, for better or worse, an action movie in a world full of action movies.  Much easier when you’re one of a handful of such comics on the shelf.

I guess I’ve rambled on long enough.  For the record, I don’t equate either of these films or their performance with criticisms of their quality.  Just a few thoughts on my mind, especially since I might one day have to endure this trial by medium sometime myself with a little luck.

But remember, above all, Lockjaw & The Pet Avengers is freakin’ awesome.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Let’s talk about race.  Let’s rap, as the kids say.

As a writer, I wrestle with race.  It’s not something I particularly worry about, but it is something I have to consider.  Since most of my characters are weird creatures, usually surrounded by equally weird creatures, race (as we Terrans define it) isn’t always important.  But sometimes it comes up.

Teri and Phil, the mortal protagonists of Divine Misfortune, are African-Americans.  You wouldn’t know it though because they are never referred to as such in the book.  In fact, they aren’t really described in any specific details.  This isn’t unusual.  I do it all the time.  Unless I’m writing about a space squid or a mole man, I really don’t see the need to describe human characters in any great detail.  Perhaps because I usually envision my characters as being unremarkable physically.  Most are neither handsome or hideous.  They are you and me, regular people who are not defined by their appearance or the color of their hair.  They are people, and people are more than a collection of physical traits.  At least, they are in my universe.

But for Teri and Phil, I very specifically decided not to mention race.  Is this a copout?  Yes, it is.  It’s a copout because here are two minority characters who are automatically assumed to be caucasian because they don’t “Act Black”.  It doesn’t matter that Teri and Phil grew up in the suburbs, that they have an average middle class background, that neither of them has ever lived “in da hood”.  They’re black, and if they don’t act black enough than their characters will ring false to many.  Frankly, I just didn’t need the headache.

When I wrote Gil’s All Fright Diner, I took some heat for the character of Loretta.  Loretta is fat.  Very, very fat.  I made her fat because you just don’t see many overweight characters in fiction, particularly fantasy adventure fiction.  Loretta is a great character who just happens to be overweight, but for the wrong people, she comes across as insulting.  It’s true that I make plenty of jokes at her expense, but I do that for all the characters in Gil’s.  Nobody seems to notice when I poke fun at Earl’s scrawniness, Duke’s unshaven greasiness, or Chad’s churning teenage hormones.  But for some people, poking fun at Loretta’s weight is a definite sore spot.

I can’t really blame them for that.  Fat characters, particularly overweight women, are almost universally portrayed as undesirable and, often, insecure.  Whether it’s fiction or nearly ever magazine on the rack that tells women how to be thinner or obsesses over a woman’s weight, the appearance of a woman is nearly universal a shorthand for her character.  And if a woman is unattractive in general (and fat in particular) then she is usually flawed.  This leaves a writer with only so many options.  Either mention a character is overweight and take some heat for it or avoid the whole issue and just have the reader assume what they will about the character.

And it’s that assumption that illustrates the problem with race in our culture.  Because, inevitably, if you don’t mention a character’s skin tone or appearance, then the reader will almost always picture a white person.  If I don’t specifically point out a character is overweight, then the assumption is that they aren’t.  So a writer finds himself in a bizarre position.  Mention a detail that is largely irrelevant and hope that the reader won’t make much of it.  Except the reader usually will.

This is the insidious nature of race.  It’s not racism I’m talking about here.  Racism is obvious.  Racism is blatant and obnoxious.  What’s not so obvious is the assumption that caucasian is “average”, and that everything else is “not average”.  And when something is unusual, it can’t help but become a defining characteristic, even if it was never intended as such.

Being white (and usually male) is tabula rasa.  A blank slate.  Defining a character as white doesn’t give a writer much to work with, doesn’t give the reader much to hold onto.  To say a character is white is like saying he’s human.  It doesn’t mean a damn thing and usually can be assumed.

On the flip side, being non-white (or female) is often all a character needs.  To give them more than that can seem like too much.  Why bother with anything more complex when the reader will, unconsciously, consider them as an ethnicity (or sex) first and a character second?

Granted, this is a copout and a bit harsh.  I’m not suggesting that readers shy away from complex or fully developed non-white, non-male characters.  Rather, I’m suggesting that, even when we don’t want to, we can’t help but stick these types of characters in very specific categories with very specific expectations.  The same thing happens in fantasy, of course.  It’s perfectly acceptable for all orcs to be defined by their orc-ness, all elves to be generically elf.  But the humans have to be more than just human.  They have to possess personalities and culture and something that makes them more than merely human.

The character that immediately springs to mind for me is Luke Cage of Marvel Comics.  Luke Cage is defined by his blackness, now more than ever.  Just consider for a moment that Luke Cage is a superhero with super strength and invulnerability.  He fights crime alongside Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America.  All these characters have colorful code names, colorful costumes, and complex backstories.  Luke Cage, on the other hand, has no code name, no costume.  His backstory is quintessentially black.  Hard-knock life, prison term.  He fought crime as a Hero for Hire.  Yes, even as a superhero, he was just a hard-workin’ man tryin’ to earn a livin’.  While Cage’s backstory isn’t really negative, it is still very black.

Compare this to Spider-Man, who is a fully developed character that just happens to be white.  There’s nothing white about his backstory.  You’ll never hear the origin of Spidey start like this: “Once upon a time, a white teenager was bitten by a radioactive spider. . . ”  But it’s a guarantee that “A man from the streets (i.e. black)” will come up almost immediately with Luke Cage.

For cryin’ out loud, he even lost his code name.  Power Man might be generic, but at least it sounds like something a superhero would use.  And don’t tell me that he doesn’t have a secret identity and doesn’t need a code name.  Why the hell does Wolverine need a code name?  And when Tony Stark was outed as Iron Man, nobody started calling him The Invincible Tony Stark!

So what does this mean?  I don’t know.  Should I have outed Teri and Phil as black?  Probably.  But I chose not to, and while it is a copout, it was really the only way to ensure they would be treated as characters in their own right and not merely a racial backdrop on which a couple of minor personality quirks have been dropped.

Just a few thoughts.  Make of them what you will.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to any of those questions.  Writing is weird like that.  I write things.  I get paid.  Even if it doesn’t prove I’m good at it, proves that at least I can keep a roof over my head doing it.  And I get positive feedback on this blogging stuff.  Of course, that’s kind of a self-selecting audience.  Very few people take the time to post a comment telling me how obnoxious I am although I’m sure those folks are out there, too.

But ignoring those people and going by the checks that go into my bank account and the positive comments on my blogs and even the occasional real life person who says they read something of mine and liked it, I’ve got something going on here.  Some, dare I say it, talent.  (I dared.)

I hate that word though because it takes my job and makes it seem magical.  When really all I do is sit down in front of a computer and make up stories.  Anybody can do it.  Not anybody can do it well, but that doesn’t prevent a lot of bad writers from getting paid and getting paid well.  (Insert your favorite successful, untalented writer of choice here.)

That’s something I never forget.  No matter how good a writer I think I am, no matter how many people adore me (and while it’s not really that many people, it sure is a lot more than I ever expected), I could stink on ice.  I could be one of those bad but financially viable writers I make fun of.  Irony can be a real pain in the ass, huh?

Oh, and don’t bother telling me how great I am.  While it’s nice to hear, I’m not fishing for compliments.  Also, you might be one of those people with really bad taste that help encourage bad writers.  Either way, I thank you for indulging me because I’m a great writer, an adequate juggler, and a generally cool dude, but I’d probably be loading boxes on the night shift at UPS right now if it wasn’t for you.

Moving on . . .

So in addition to being a (disgruntled) comic book fan.  I’m also a game player.  I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere, I crossed the line from hobbyist to full-blown enthusiast.  I know game companies the same way people know car manufacturers.  I even follow some game designers the same way movie afficianados follow directors.

(FYI:  Bruno Faidutti has yet to make a bad game.  Ad Astra is a current favorite among my small gaming group.)

If such a thing is even possible, game designers are even more obscure than novelologists.  While everyone has heard of Stephen King and Daniel Steele, who knows the name of the guy who designed Sorry?

Even the hobby is difficult to explain.  When people find out that you play games, they usually get this perplexed look on their face and say “Like Monopoly?”  Then I close my eyes and shake my head.

“Kinda. . . ”

I’ve pretty much given up on trying to explain it because unless you’ve experienced the joy of Heroscape, Monsterpocalypse, or Citadels, you just ain’t gonna get it.

And finally . . .

Godzilla would totally kick King Kong’s ass.  Don’t try denying it.  One is a huge, city destroying, radiaoctive, fire-breathing dinosaur.  The other is a big ape that couldn’t even climb a single building without getting shot down like a chump.

Biplanes?  Seriously?  That’s weak.  So until you get laser vision or the power to regenerate, Kong, you should probably stay out of the big leagues.  Just a suggestion.

And on that controversial note, I bid you all a good night.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee