The mass market paperback for Divine Misfortune is out in stores now.  If you haven’t read it yet, you should buy it and read it soon.  Maybe not today, but soon.  You’ll be glad you did.

There.  Self-promotion out of the way.  Let’s talk about movies.

I watched Sucker Punch last night.  My review is mixed.  On one hand, it had some amazing action, creating fantastic set pieces that you probably haven’t seen before.  On the other, the story itself didn’t quite engage me, and the end left me cold.  I’ll admit that Zack Snyder has yet to wow me with his story.  This is probably because I’m not a “dark” guy.  300 was good.  Watchmen was meh, but then again, I’m meh toward the original material, so I can’t really blame that on Snyder.  Perhaps that’s why I’ll never be considered literary.

Most people will probably end up comparing Sucker Punch to Inception.  Both deal with the blurring of fantasy and reality.  Both are about characters dealing with emotional baggage.  Both are determined to say something.  And my reaction to both is the same.  Good, imaginative films that I just couldn’t connect with.

But I think a more interesting comparison to me is found in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World.  I think Sucker Punch is much closer to Pilgrim.  Inception is a more traditional fantasy flick in that it creates a justification for the fantasy elements.  Neither Punch or Pilgrim bother with this.  They simply jump in without hesitation.  And just as the fights and video game references in Pilgrim are metaphors and stand ins for the emotional conflict of the story, so the battles in Punch fill the same role.  In this way, both films remind me of classic musicals, where plot points and conflicts are resolved via metaphorical action.  Only instead of bursting into song, our heroes throw fireballs and fight dragons.

This will strike many as dissonant.  Inception was well-recieved because it went out of its way to be real.  Even the dreamworlds we see are all grounded in reality.  I don’t think this is because of a lack of creativity in the film.  It fits with the story being told to avoid too much fantasy.  And, like it or not, the audience will always find fantasy to be silly and frivolous.  Unashamed fantasy, even more so.

Thematically, both Punch and Pilgrim are very similar films.  They both deal with young people adrift who are trying to overcome an overwhelming world.  But Pilgrim is a film I prefer mostly for the portrayal of a generally more positive story.  It’s not that Punch doesn’t have positive moments, but Pilgrim doesn’t have the same dark moments.  There are scenes in Punch that are deliberately hard to watch, of cruelty and tragedy.  Pilgrim doesn’t have that.

The assumption by many will be that its darker scenes will mean Punch is a more serious film.  Fair enough.  But I have never found this to be true.  Pilgrim resonated with me.  Punch did not.  It’s not just because the scenes are dark, but because they always end up boring me.  Maybe that’s why I’m not a horror guy either.  Because in a film like Saw, I don’t get scared watching someone being tortured or taunted.  I get bored and annoyed.  It’s just my reaction.  Yours might be different, and that’s cool.

I can say I find all three films to be excellent pieces of filmmaking, and just because one speaks to me more than the others, it doesn’t necessarily indicate a better film.  Only a better film for me.  It’s one of the lessons I’ve learned as a writer.  No story will speak to everyone.  It’s true there are stories that fail completely, but it’s also easy to mistake a story that fails for us as a story that fails.  Period.

We shouldn’t be afraid to say something stinks.  Tron: Legacy is a lousy film.  It isn’t impossible to convince me otherwise, but it’s highly unlikely.  But this isn’t because of the lack of emotional depth in the film.  It’s because it’s told so poorly, with dropped plot points, missed opportunities, and empty nostalgia.  The lack of emotional depth (at least for me) is just the final nail in the coffin.

Inception, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, and Sucker Punch are all variations of the same basic premise.  People will prefer one to the other.  My own ranking is Pilgrim, Punch, Inception.  Yours might be different.  It isn’t about right or wrong.  It’s about what speaks to us.

Unless it’s about Tron Legacy because Tron Legacy stank on ice.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I am fairly unique at this point.  I can’t think of many other novelologists right now who are doing what I’m doing.  I wouldn’t say it makes me a better writer than those who choose the more conventional path.  How can we even measure such things?  But I am definitely doing something different, and so far, it’s working.

There are writers who create shared worlds, populate them with dozens upon dozens of characters, and then just play with a few at a time.  This is very similar to writing standalone novels.  You can read most of the Discworld novels as standalone novels, for instance, and Christopher Moore’s books all seem to take place in the same continuity, though that continuity is so loose and flexible that, aside from characters popping in now and then, most the books could be considered standalone novels.

But I’m the guy who goes out on a limb and creates it all from scratch.  I’ll write about vampires, robots, trolls, gods, aliens, and incomprehensible monsters.  I’ll design worlds that are incompatible, that were never made to go together.  The retro-sci fi noir of The Automatic Detective is mostly incapable of blending with the fantasy of A Nameless Witch.  I’m not even interested in using the parallel worlds justification to allow them to crossover.  Maybe I’ll change my mind later.  But for now, Duke the werewolf and Mack Megaton, robot detective, will never bump into each other.

(There is a small reference to Gil’s in Divine Misfortune.  Not many people spot it.  It’s just for fun, not meant to imply that the two books are related in any way.  Although, again, I could always change my mind.)

I pass no judgment, good or bad, on series books in fantasy / sci fi.  There are good ones.  There are bad ones.  But isn’t that true of everything?  I don’t think I am more creative because I have no interest in series.  Writing a book is a creative process, even if using an established world with established characters.  I think writing standalone novels gives me the illusion of being more creative.  It certainly has helped my burgeoning Hollywood career.  It’s given me more books to option, helped certain people to view me as a writer that isn’t easy to pigeonhole.  But even that Hollywood stuff is a lot of luck.  The right people at the right time.  I can’t explain it.  I couldn’t even tell you how to do it because I don’t know how I did it.  Other than write what I want to write and hope someone else out there likes it too.

It’s not a perfect system, but so far, it’s worked out all right for me.

So can a sci fi writer make it writing standalone novels?  Yes, he can.  At least, I can.  Make of that what you will.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

This was a few years back when the original Iron Man movie was about to come out.  Or maybe it had just come out.  Little hazy on the details, but I remember that some tenative steps were taken between me and a publisher to write an Iron Man novel.  It wasn’t going to be an adaptation, but rather, an original story.  I even wrote and submitted an outline.

I don’t quite remember the exact details of the story I had in mind, but I know it revolved around espionage, both corporate and governmental, and attempts to recover a lost alien robot.  The robot, for those who have enough of a knowledge of the Marvel universe to even care, was an inactive Kree Sentry.  Basically, I imagined an Indiana Jones style story where Tony Stark has an adventure, foils the bad guys, fights the reactivated Sentry.  Also, Iron Man’s love interest was going to be a Skrull spy in disguise.

The deal stalled, and I don’t remember why.  Just sort of sputtered to a halt.  It happens.  Still, it would’ve been cool, I think.

I was also approached once to write a Brutal Legend novel.  That fell apart quickly though, and I didn’t get nearly as past the tenative stages.  While I wasn’t a fan of the game (how could I be?  It wasn’t even out yet.), it might’ve been fun.

The near-adaptation I bemoan most though is the Heroscape novel I might have written.  This one was purly my idea, and my agent even went so far as to approach the right people and express my interest.  Regrettably, that interest wasn’t reciprocated.  No one with the power to authorize such a thing seemed to think there was a demand for a novel based on one of the greatest board games ever.  Too bad because I guarantee my Heroscape novel would’ve been amazing.

But thinking about these potential projects, I can’t say I’m disappointed that they didn’t work out.  The money would’ve been nice, and while it might have been cool, it would have been work for hire with no real control over how it came out.

I’ve never really understood people who aspire to write Superman, Batman, or some other character not of their own creation.  I understand doing it.  I even understand enjoying it.  It can be fun to play in someone else’s sandbox and enjoy their toys.  But in the end, those toys will never be yours.  You’re just borrowing them for a short while.  Of course, if you’re an aspiring comic book writer, you really don’t have much choice.

Even more troublesome to me is the invention of an original character that you surrender all control over.  Steve Gerber had this problem with Howard the Duck.  He had very little control over Howard, and he only wrote Howard stories if Marvel allowed it.  I’m not villainizing Marvel for that.  You know the deal when you write for Marvel (or DC).  Yet making that deal is usually easier than living with it.

Two of my favorite new superhero characters, Blue Beetle (DC) and Gravity (Marvel), currently languish in editorial disinterest.  Blue Beetle’s comic was one of the last ongoing titles I enjoyed.  After its cancellation, he was moved to Teen Titans, and as much as I wanted to like that comic, I just don’t have any interest in any of the other Teen Titans.

Gravity had a terrific debut miniseries, and then…he just sort of vanished.  Gone.  He’s coming back, this time in a team comic.  But again, I doubt I’ll have enough interest in the rest of the team to care.

I find it tremendously annoying, and I’m just a fan of these characters.  I can’t imagine being the creator behind them, having lost any creative control over them, not even being able to ensure that they will get any real exposure at all.  Even worse, there’s the very real threat that someone somewhere will decide to kill or maim these characters in the service of more popular characters.  Either that, or just disappear into obscurity.  Either fate sounds lousy.

I’ve had a few books optioned for film, and it’s certain that however these films turn out, I’m cool with.  But that’s because my characters and my stories will still exist.  The movies might be very similar.  Or they might be entirely different.  But the books, the original characters and worlds, will still exist.  No one is going to write a dark and gritty reboot of Gil’s All Fright Diner or the Mack Megton story where zombie cannibals attack Empire City.  Not on my watch.  Not as long as I have a say so.

Although if Marvel came to me and asked me to write a Devil Dinosaur or Man-Thing story, I’d be up for it.  And if DC ever gave me the green light to write a Kilowog . . . well, that ain’t going to happen.

But it’d be awesome if it did.

Fighting the good fight, writing the good write,

Lee

I recently started a Twitter mini-debate with a friend of mine.*   Watching a preview for the new Kick-Ass movie, I remarked how the movie straddles a clumsy line between superheroes and realism.  This has always been a tricky prospect.  Some elements of fantasy are closer to reality than others, and superheroes are about as far from reality as one can get.

I haven’t read the original mini-series this movie is based on, but the premise is an exploration of what would happen if people in the real world tried superheroics.  This could be interesting.  Although it seems like the story would be really, really short.  Person in funny costume leaps out at bank robbers.  Bank robbers shoot costumed person.  The end.

However, the premise is destroyed for me the moment Hit-Girl, a small child, is able to kill a whole room of thugs and killers all by herself.  This might even be possible under the right circumstances, but Hit-Girl is able to dodge bullets, reload guns by throwing clips in the air and slamming her pistols into these spinning clips, able to kick a grown man across a room, and cut off limbs with a sword.

None of this is realistic.  All of this dwells firmly in the realm of the absurd.  For all practical intent, Hit-Girl isn’t a parody of superheroes.  She’s not a deconstruction of the superheroic fantasy.  She’s not even really a tongue-in-cheek joke about superheroes.  She’s just a superhero.

Kick-Ass seems even less realistic than Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.  At least those films go out of their way to justify Bruce Wayne’s training and equipment.  These aren’t realistic films by any stretch of the imagination, but at least by giving Batman a technological edge and an elaborate backstory, they’ve designed a fantastic justification for why Batman is Batman.

But Hit-Girl is just a little girl who has been trained to kill people.  And while I do believe it wouldn’t be that hard to train a young girl to shoot people, I think teaching anyone to dodge bullets in a firefight would qualify as a superpower in itself.

Realism is absurd in this context.  Once a character, any character in any story, is able to dodge bullets, you are dealing with fantasy.  If you don’t believe me, then try an experiment.  Have five or six friends stand around you with Nerf guns in a small room.  Then have them all shoot at you.  Can you dodge all those slow moving, readily visible projectiles?  Of course you can’t.  And that’s giant foam darts, not speeding, invisible bullets.

Also, swords don’t just slice through flesh-and-bone like Play-Do.  I know that Kill Bill helped to cement this in our pop culture perceptions, but even that film took the time to justify it by giving our heroine a special sword, her own personal Excalibur.

None of this is meant as a criticism of Kick-Ass as an off-beat action adventure film.  But it is a criticism of the realism of Kick-Ass.  And anyone who suggests that Kick-Ass is realistic has no weight with me.

Realism in fantasy films is one thing.  But what about realism in other mediums?  How about video games?

A big game right now is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  It’s a first-person shooter that involves running across the globe, fighting terrorists and other bad guys.  While certainly on the surface, this game is more realistic than Super Mario Galaxy or Pokemon, in the end it isn’t very realistic at all.  Because a realistic FPS would involve the player running around in a panicked state, trying to keep cool in a sea of chaos.  And when you were shot, you’d die.  End of story.  Admittedly, getting shot doesn’t always kill you instantly.  So the game could choose to have your character lay helplessly on the ground for a few minutes until either you expired or someone came along and carried you off to the infirmary.

Or you could be captured and thrown in a cell for years.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?

A life bar or health meter makes a game fun, but it doesn’t smack of realism.  When was the last time you were punched in the face and said, “Thank the Mighty Robot King that my health bar was full!  Now if I can just find a health pack and a power up.”

Now Mario is, in the spectrum of things, more unrealistic.  Realism is probably the last thing the designers of Mario games worry about.  As I play Super Mario Galaxy, I don’t try to make much sense of it.  Why does a big, evil turtle have an obsession with kidnapping princesses?  Why does he emply an army of turtles, mushrooms, skeleton turtles, ghosts, and walking bombs?  Why do I climb a giant toy robot in one level, fight a flower monster in another, and turn into a bee in another?  Who knows?  Who cares?  It’s Mario.  That’s just the way Mario works.

I’m not suggesting that Mario is a better game than Call of Duty.  I like Mario better, but that probably has less to do with the quality of the game and more to do with my old school platformer roots.  And I do enjoy weirdness for weirdness’s sake.  I have no reason to believe that Call of Duty isn’t a solid game in its genre.  But is it realistic?  No, it just ain’t.  It’s only realistic in comparison to something that is less realistic, and it’s hard to find things less realistic than a chubby (yet surprisingly athletic) Italian plumber who explores the universe, collecting stars, fighting the minions of a giant, fire-breathing turtle to rescue a princess.

Kick-Ass will undoubtedly be more realistic than much superheroic fantasy.  The costumes alone demonstrate this, and the fact that many of our characters are clumsy wannabees with illusions of grandeur is more realistic than many comic book universes, where it often appears as if just putting on a costume makes you capable of fighting crime.  But characters like Big Daddy and Hit-Girl are cut from the superhero cloth.  They do swear, but a lot of modern comic book heroes do that.  They do kill people, but a lot of modern comic book heroes do that.   They’re thinly disguised psychopaths, but a lot of modern comic book heroes are that, too.   

(When will we get tired of retelling Moore’s Watchmen?  Or at least when will we stop acting like retelling the story is edgy or original?  Just wondering on that one.)

There’s very little, if anything, to distinguish these characters from your garden variety superhero.  And that’s not a problem for me.  I like superheroes.  I like superheroics.  And Kick-Ass looks like it could be a fun, surreal, dark comedy adventure.  I’ll probably even see it though I’m not a fan of Millar in general.  I could launch into a rant about the ridiculous nonsense that was “Old Man Logan”, but that’s another blog post entirely and one most people wouldn’t give a damn about.

(Long story short: Old Man Logan was a very dumb Wolverine story.)

There’s nothing wrong with surrealism.  There’s nothing wrong with realism.  Both are valid styles.  But don’t try wrapping surrealism in a realism package.  Because that’s just silly.  It makes realism look bad.  It makes surrealism look bad.  And it’s just unnecessary.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

*My friend-in-question is Russell C. Connor.  He’s a good guy, and he has a couple of books available on Amazon.  There’s a plug for you, Russ, because I’m cool like that.

I don’t know if my regular readers have noticed this or not, but I tend to spend an unusual amount of time bemoaning the quality of modern comic books.  A big part of this, I’ll admit, is simply coming from a different era.  Everybody tends to like things they grew up with more than is reasonable.  But it’s also because comics are kind of lame now.

Let’s be fair though.  When I complain about modern comics, I’m actually complaining about modern superhero comics because those are what I like.  Those are what I prefer to read.  There are some great non-superhero comics out there, but, honestly, I’m just not interested most of the time in these.  I hear the accolades for Fables, The Walking Dead, 100 Bullets, etc, and while I don’t dislike them, I find nothing particularly appealing about them.  Nope.  For better or worse, when I think of comics, I think of superheroes.

And when I think of superheroes, I think in broad terms.  Good versus evil.  Surreal.  Melodramatic.  Inventive.  (Things I prefer not to think of but tend to pop up:  zombies, morality plays, rape.  But I digress.)  While there’s no reason for a lack of subtlety, there’s also nothing wrong with remembering that these are stories about people in strange costumes fighting other people in strange costumes, usually employing bizarre powers and signature gimmicks.  And, yes, Batman fans.  This applies just as much to your vaunted “realistic” superhero as anyone.  Unless you happen to know of any clowns in purple tuxedos who have access to a gas that makes you laugh until you die with a permanent smile left on your face.

But enough of my redundant, overstated comic book criticism.  Let’s actually get to the review.

REVIEW BEGINS HERE:

Green Lantern: First Flight is a terrific animated film.  While it is indeed a bit bloodier and grittier than I generally prefer, it never panders and always entertains.  I am not a Green Lantern fan.  I like the idea, like his powers.  But in comics, I just haven’t read a Green Lantern story that thrilled me.  But First Flight makes me realize that he can be awesome.

Superhero stories should be defined by action.  Anyone who says otherwise has no truck with me.  Superheroes and supervillains are not about talking.  They’re about leaping into adventure and kicking butt.  First Flight soars on this level.  The action is fantastic, thrilling, inventive, and just plain cool.  Green Lantern is one of those characters that thrives with clever writing.  And when you watch Hal Jordan pound a giant orb of death with an even more giant glowling green baseball bat, you know you’re watching something incredible.

Of course, writing is important.  It’s not just about punching bad guys in the face.  The writing in First Flight is rock solid.  The story isn’t groundbreaking, but it doesn’t need to be.  Too often, “subtle” writing is just a code word for “overly complicated” and “dull”.  But First Flight manages to keep its story going while investing in its characters and world.  Sinestro is a bizarrely sympathetic, ruthless, and classic villain.  (He’s like Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda in that way.)  You aren’t going to like Sinestro, but you are going to respect him.  And when he is finally defeated (hope that’s not giving anything away that the bad guy loses), you are glad to see him get his just desserts.

Can I also take a moment here to mention how fantastic the animation is in this movie?  It is unbelievable.  From the body language and character design to the thrilling action sequences and quiet moments.  This is quality from top to bottom.

Also, Kilowog is in this, and Kilowog will always be the best Green Lantern in my universe.  (P.S. If you’re ever looking for someone to write a Kilowog min-series, DC, you know where to find me.)

First Flight is a solid sci fi superhero adventure.  If you’re not familiar with Green Lantern, you don’t need to be.  And if you are a Lantern fan . . . well . . . hard to say there.  I’ve heard some fans complain about the film, and I’m not one myself (as previously noted) so that’s a toss up.

Listen, I think we can all agree that I’m a great writer and therefore, must have great taste.  So check out Green Lantern: First Flight.  Watch space cops with magic rings fight evil alien crime lords for the fate of the universe.  And if that doesn’t sound cool to you . . . I gotta say we live in very different worlds.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee