Today, I’d like to talk about the themes of the story.  I don’t generally get too much into this, but I’ve grown a wee bit sick lately in being  classified as a “fluff” writer.  I tried not to let it bother me, but after a certain point, a guy just has to say something.  I’m not out to defend myself or my work.  I’m just here to give you a perspective of why I wrote it and what it means to me.

To be certain, Emperor Mollusk is an absurd story set in an absurd universe.  It involves aliens, ray guns, mad science, and supervillainy.  I have no problem admitting that these things are strange and generally “not serious”.  And this is an adventure story about our hero, a space squid, attempting to stop our villain, a disembodied brain, from conquering the galaxy.  There is no hard science here.  And most elements of the story exist because I thought it would be fun or interesting to put them in there.

Despite this, Emperor Mollusk is not meant to be a trivial read.  It wrestles with some philosophical and existential dilemmas, and its protagonist is meant to be three-dimensional and nuanced, even if he is a supervillain.  And make no mistake on that.  Emperor IS a supervillain.  While he’s our hero, he also has a bad history.  He’s done some pretty horrible things in the past.  Nothing malicious or cruel.  Just utterly ruthless and morally questionable.

Let’s just put it out there.  Emperor’s resemblance to Minion from Megamind is going to catch a lot of people’s attention.  And since Megamind was the story of a supervillain reforming, the comparisons will be drawn.  Probably often.  I rather enjoyed the film, but while both Megamind and Emperor Mollusk are reformed supervillains, there is a very big difference between them.  Megamind is mostly a harmless villain.  He doesn’t really hurt anyone.  He just menaces a bit before being recaptured and sent to jail.  His villainy is explicitly of societal expectation, and his redemption isn’t all that difficult to buy because he was never truly a bad guy, just a guy who acted bad because he thought that’s what he should do.

Emperor Mollusk is a bad guy.  Or at least, he was.  He’s done a lot of bad things in his backstory, and he did one thing so utterly terrible that it became his transformative moment.  I won’t say what he did (won’t ruin the surprise), but I will say while he considered it a necessary evil, it basically ruined supervillainy as a “fun” thing to do.  It is at that moment when Emperor stops being a bad guy.  However, he’s still not exactly a good guy.  He’s not interested in redemption because he knows he can never be redeemed.

But fortunately for Emperor, he’s not the kind of guy to beat himself up over past mistakes.  He swims forward.  He protects a world he previously conquered until it can defend itself again.  And he tries to keep his own love of superscience in check.  Or at least keep any of his experiments from accidentally destroying the universe.

So maybe Emperor lives in a strange universe.  His best friend is a giant, cyborg centipede from the center of the earth.  His bodyguard / archenemy is a lizard woman from Venus.  And he regularly runs across mutant dinosaurs, giant plant monsters, and mummy queens.  But that doesn’t mean he’s just a goofball.

He’s a not-quite-bad guy with a lot of baggage, and his personal journey is one of self-discovery, mad science, and the quest for inner peace we all struggle with.  And just because he’s a squid from Neptune, it doesn’t mean his story or his universe is a joke.

Just ask the Saturnites.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The biggest mistake Captain America makes is that the villain is the underdog.

It’s a basic truism that villains ACT and heroes REACT.  It’s a staple of adventure fiction in particular.  Some bad guys have a sinister plan.  Our heroes attempt to stop them from carrying out that sinister plan.  But the pressure is always on the heroes to counter the villain’s plans.  The Rebellion must destroy the deathstar.  Indiana Jones must recover the sacred stones.  James Bond must prevent the nuking of Fort Knox.  And so on.

On paper, Captain America seems like par for the course.  The Red Skull runs Hydra.  Hydra is out to rule the world.  And it’s up to Cap to save the day.  The only difference is how the story plays out.  And how it plays out puts the Red Skull on the defensive.

In fact, the only proactive scenes with the Red Skull involve him attacking an innocent village and killing some troublesome Nazis in order to establish his villain cred.  After that, everything the Red Skull does is purely defensive and reactive.

It begins with the supersoldier program.  It’s true that his agents manage to sabotage the experiment, to prevent the creation of an army of Caps.  But they also fail to prevent our singular Cap from coming into being, and they don’t even escape with the sample of supersoldier serum.  All of this is a foregone conclusion, so it’s unfair to judge all of Hydra’s effectiveness by this one scene.

Yet later, when Cap invades his first Hydra base, frees Allied soldiers, and forces the Red Skull to push the self-destruct button, the pattern is clearly set.  Captain America even learns the details of Hydra’s master plan before walking away, completely triumphant.  Our hero has only failed to capture the Red Skull at this point.  Everything he set out to do, he accomplished.  And while the Red Skull isn’t down for the count, his applecart has been upset.

And so it is in the film that Cap’s victory is so assured that we’re treated to a montage of he and his team beating nameless Hydra agents, destroying equipment and facilities, and otherwise, succeeding without sense of loss or urgency.  Only when we get to the train scene, do we have a cost to these victories, but it is, relatively speaking, a small cost to the team.  And Cap still accomplishes his task.

It all comes to a head in the grand finale, which isn’t much different than a traditional storming-the-enemy-fortress scene.  EXCEPT our heroes aren’t storming the fortress at the desperate last minute.  Nope, they’re the aggressors, the ones who cause the Red Skull to accelerate his plans.  Once again, the heroes dictate the speed of the plot, not the antagonists.  It would be like if the Rebels blew up the deathstar two weeks before it was actually ready to use.  Or if James Bond walked into the evil genius’s lair and just shot the poor villain while he was working on his master plan.

The Red Skull is still able to launch his final gambit, though at this point in the film, he seems an anemic threat.  He might succeed in killing millions of innocent people, but so what?  He’s already lost so much of his power, suffered one humiliating defeat after another, it seems like the spiteful last act of a defeated character rather than his moment of possible triumph.  In the end, the Red Skull and Hydra come across as ineffectual and toothless.  For all their lasers and giant tanks and storm trooper army, they seem never to be much of a threat.  You almost don’t need Cap to take them out.  Heck, even while storming the fortress, Cap doesn’t actually accomplish anything on his own.  He doesn’t open the way for his team.  He just walks in and gets captured then is rescued.  So while his storming of the fortress is cool from an action scene standpoint, it actually accomplishes nothing in itself.  In the end, it takes an army of soldiers to bust down the fortress doors.  All Cap seemed to do was act as a bit of a distraction, and even that’s debatable.

The question is whether or not this dynamic was intentional or not.

Part of me thinks it must have been.  Because it’s just too obvious.  Perhaps Captain America is meant to serve as an homage to American propaganda films of old.  The heroes are bright and shiny and capable.  The bad guys are dark, sinister, and easily foiled with a bit of muscle and determination.  From that perspective, the film works perfectly.  Its portrayal of a world where the righteous fist of justice is more than a match for the forces of evil might be a little blatant, but there’s nothing terribly wrong with that.  I certainly am not looking for shades of gray in a movie where a guy dressed in the American flag fights a guy with a skull for a face.

But from a storytelling perspective, I find it dissatisfying.  We hear the word “fluff” bandied around a lot, but Captain America is fluff.  It isn’t challenging, and even more disappointing, it isn’t even artificially suspenseful.  The audience knows Hydra won’t win, but the story seems to know this too.  And it isn’t interested in disguising that fact.  There’s no illusion of conflict here.  Good guys win.  Bad guys lose.  And there is never really any doubt.

Even the Red Skulls final defeat is so quick and offhand, it’s almost like the film doesn’t really care itself.  “Of course, he loses,” it says.  “He’s the bad guy.”

I don’t know if I consider it a terrible flaw, but it does keep the film from being great for me.  A superhero is only as good as his villain.  And while Cap comes across as a terrific guy with many wonderful heroic qualities, the Red Skull only comes across as a guy in way over his head . . . er . . .  skull.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Funny though.  Without Heroscape, I don’t think I’d be married today.  It was through Heroscape and a convoluted series of events that I met my lovely wife.  So if you ever love why I love games, that’s why.  They’ve given me hours of fantastic entertainment, taught me quite a bit about life (even though I know that sounds absurd), and they got me a wife.  So a guy really can’t ask for much more than that.  Although if they could somehow create a game that could give me laser vision, I’d want for nothing.  But that’s probably being greedy.

I went to a friend’s book club meeting this weekend, and it was a lot of fun.  It’s always cool to meet people who are excited to meet me.  When I do a booksigning, for example, I tend not to attract much of a crowd.  If I sign or sell four or five books, it’s a rousing success.  So when I actually get to talk to people that seem happy to see me, it’s still something I’m not entirely used to.

The book read was Gil’s All Fright Diner, and one of the questions asked was about Tammy.  If you haven’t read the book by chance, Tammy is the villain of the piece, a teenage sorceress with sinister designs on the titled diner.  Tammy is of Japanese descent, and she’s also adopted.  Someone asked me what happened to her parents and how she ended up in Rockwood.

I admitted I had no idea.  Hadn’t really thought about it.

There’s a myth that in order to write a character, you have to know everything about them.  It’s absolutely not true.  There’s another myth that if something is unusual about a character, it probably ties into the plot in some way.  So if Tammy is adopted, that must mean something.  But, honestly, it was just something that happened as I wrote the story.  Tammy was Japanese-American, an off-hand detail thrown in for no good reason other than why-the-heck-not?  And she was adopted because . . . well, for exactly the same reason.

Most of my characters do not have elaborate backstories, and I like it that way.  I don’t really care how they got where they are most of the time.  I care where they are and where they’re going.  Some might argue that you need to know a character’s past to understand how they would react, but I tend to view the past as an illusion anyway.  I’m less concerned with what happened in the past than with how they relate to the world now.

It’s tricky.  There are indeed times when backstory is important, and for some characters, their history is absolutely essential.  But I usually find it irrelevant.  One of the most elaborate backstories I’ve ever created belonged to Mack Megaton, the protagonist of The Automatic Detective.  Mack actually has quite a bit of justification for how he came to be.  And none of it ended up in the book, aside from a few hints here or there.  There just wasn’t a place for it, and to put it in would’ve only slowed the novel’s pace.

But even in stories where backstory is important, I usually am uninterested.  I couldn’t care less about how Darth Vader became evil or how the Empire came to power, for instance.  I don’t need to know how the Jedi were wiped out or how Luke Skywalker was born.  All those questions are irrelevant.  And trying to answer them only ends up tying everything into uncomfortable knots of continuity snarls.

I still believe that my job as a writer is to tell you just enough of a story that you can make as much or as little of it as you want.  Perhaps in your imagination, Tammy’s parents were sacrificed to a dark god and their daughter was shipped to Rockwood to begin the Apocalpyse.  Or maybe they just died in a car crash.  Or maybe they just gave her up because they didn’t like kids.  Your answer is as good as mine, and that’s cool with me.

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 subject at hand…

Recently, I found myself in a short debate on the nature of villainy.  What makes an interesting villain?  What doesn’t?  Is a colorful villain the same as a more subtle villain?  Stuff like that.  Rather than repeat it all, I recommend you check out the comments on my Opinions Vary blog entry.  Some ideas are shared, and it makes some interesting reading.

Near the end of the exchange, I noticed something.  I’m a writer.  A needless observation since, if you’re visiting this website, you probably know me first and foremost as a writer.  Safe to say, if I wasn’t a writer, you wouldn’t give a damn about what random thoughts were crawling through my head at any moment, no matter how well-expressed.  So I am indeed a professional writer, and I have the check stubs to prove it.

But more than being a pro, I’m actually a writer.  I think about stories, about characters and plots and premises and everything that makes a story up.  If it’s a book, you know I’ve thought about the sentences, considered how they all fit together, about what they say and what they don’t say.  If I’m reading the book, I’m analyzing it (even against my will).  And if I’m writing it, I’m trying to make sure it does what I want.  Oddly, even when I’m not sure what I want it to say.

If it’s a movie, I do the same thing.  Except I’m not really concerned with cinematography or subtleties of direction that I’m sure are there but usually go unnoticed except for a feeling of something great when it’s there and something off when it’s not.

I can turn this off to some degree.  I saw Legion this weekend, and while there are many questionable plot choices, I also was willing to overlook it because there’s a fight between archangels that is totally badass, and really, that’s the whole reason I’m there.

I have a pet peeve of using the term “storyteller”.  It just seems pretentious.  I also hate the phrase “craft of writing”.  It just bugs me for some reason.  But I do believe storytelling is an art and that writing is a craft.  Though maybe I’d be more comfortable with “trade of writing” because I’m a tradesperson, really.  But instead of making houses, I make stories.  It takes some of the romanticism out of it, but if you ask me, that’s a good thing.  Because novelology isn’t glamourous.  It’s mostly sitting in front of a computer and typing.

Being a professional teller of stories, I still sometimes get confused about it.  Recently, at the DFWWW’s after-IHOP gathering, a rollicking conversation about Transformers 2 and racism erupted.  The conversation is far too complicated to get into now, but it was fantastic.  It was great because we were all discussing a movie about giant robots and racial perceptions far deeper than one movie about giant robots and about the nature of stories themselves.  One of the most memorable discussions I’ve had in a long time, and one not soon forgotten.

More than an interesting diversion though, this was me discussing storytelling with fellow storytellers.  Really not any different than a bunch of carpenters sitting around discussing hammers and nails.  It’s why I keep the receipts from my IHOP gatherings because it is a business expense.  My writing benefits immensely from these discussions.

People think writing is easy.  Heck, I think it’s easy.  It’s certainly not as hard as breaking your back for minimum wage.  Or manning the counter at McDonald’s.  Or any number of thankless jobs that demand so much and give back so little.  But writing isn’t easy.  You have to think about it.  And if you do a good job, most people aren’t even going to notice.  And if you do a bad job, many people aren’t going to notice either.  People really don’t care that much about stories.  They tend to take them at face value.

I’m often amazed at how often people talk about the story without ever thinking about the writer behind the pages.  That’s how it should be.  I think only bad fiction draws attention to the author, just as bad directing tends to be all about the camera movements and stylistic shots rather than what’s happening on the screen.

But I am a writer.  And I do care.  And I do think about it.  Just do me a favor.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Yes, my friends, it is indeed.  A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is upon us once again, and while I’m sure all of you are up on the traditional festivities (play a board game, watch a monster movie, push A. Lee Martinez novels on friends / family / loved ones / strangers / enemies), not everyone knows that, by The Supreme Directive of The Mighty Robot King, you are required to read any blog post I write on this day.

Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do.  But trust me, you do not want to get on The Mighty Robot King’s bad side.  Before you know it, you’ll be up to your elbows in avenging dinobots and wrathful planet-devouring androids the size of the moon.  And nobody wants that.  So just sit back.  Relax.  Read this post at your leisure.  And know that in doing so, you’re placating the wrath of our all-powerful mechanical deity.

I’ve said it before, but I find that as I grow older, I have more and more appreciation for the absurd and the fun.  This is probably why I’ve outgrown so many things I used to love.  Although thinking about it, “outgrown” is probably the wrong word.

Take comics.  Modern comics are so dark, mature, and convuluted that they take all the fun out of people with strange powers beating each other up.  The most powerful villain in Marvel Comics at the moment is a beauracrat.  The stories of late resolve around mega crossover, soap opera style events that tie every single comic together into one giant story.  I won’t comment on the qualities of these stories because that’s fairly subjective.  But I will suggest that very few comics are actually fun anymore.  The reasons for this are way too complicated to get into, and I don’t even know if this is a good or a bad thing.  But it’s just the way it is.

The best comics I’ve read in the last year were Atomic Robo, We Kill Monsters, Lockjaw & the Pet Avengers, Beasts of Burden, and Casper & the Spectrals.  Of these comics, Beasts of Burden was probably the most “adult”, and it’s about a group of dogs and a cat who fight supernatural evil.  Both Lockjaw & the Pet Avengers are all ages.

Oh, and there was Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil.  I think that came out last year.  It was the best thing produced by Marvel Comics in a long, long time.  An epic 4-part limited series focused on Dr. Doom’s quest for ultimate power.  It managed, through a rare kind of magic, to be dark, brooding, fantastic, mature, and fun without resorting to swearing, gore, or anything even remotely edgy.  This was an all-ages comic that manages to explore a genuinely dark protagonist with more subtlety and intelligence than pretty much anything else out there.

Although Lockjaw & The Pet Avengers had a group of super animals fighting a giant red dinosaur.  So maybe it’s a toss up for greatest comic of all time.

Video games are the same thing to me now.  I notice that the games that get commercials on TV and exposure on G4 are all the dark, grown up games.  I got a Wii this Christmas, and right now, I’m enjoying the heck out of Super Mario Galaxy and Little King’s Story.  Neither game features realistic graphics.  Both are absurd adventures.  Whether you’re playing as a plucky Italian plumber facing off against an obnoxious, fire-breathing turtle tyrant or taking on the role of a boy king sending his army of grunts, miners, hunters, carpenters, and chefs into battle against a clockwork knight, there’s something unique and wonderful about these games.

It’s not that I’m a prude.  I don’t care if there’s swearing and blood in my media.  But I’m definitely over blood and profanity for their own sake.  Too often they’re crutches.  They’re used to present the illusion of sophistication, but sophistication isn’t found in making superheroes swear or the number of polygons that make up a video game sprite.  If only it were that easy to quantify.

So I finally saw the preview for the Percy Jackson & the Olympians movie, based on the books.  The strange thing is that I wrote this story already.  Several years ago.  Okay, technically I only wrote half of it.  And I never published it.  But just watching the preview, I saw things I’d put in my own reluctant demi-god story.  In my demi-god story, a character is attacked by an old lady who is actually a harpy in disguise.  In my demi-god story, the hero has to fight a hydra.  In my demi-god story, demi-gods are hunted by dark forces.

Similarities are inevitable when stories draw on similar source material.  I certainly can’t suggest that the Percy Jackson story was stolen from me (unless they were able to burrow into my dreams), and I can’t say that my ideas were stolen from them (unless I have amazing powers of foresight).  It’s just coincidence.  I say this because too often people are accused of stealing popular ideas when it’s just as likely that someone just came up with something similar, drawing on similar ideas.

Finally, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on just how lucky I am to be here.  Sure, I’m talented, intelligent, witty, able to bend spoons with my mind, and capable of levitating a few feet off the ground for several minutes at a time, but I am still basically a guy who is paid to make up stories.  I’m good at it, but being good at something doesn’t always mean you are fortunate to get paid for it.  I’m pretty good at thinking up cool nicknames for people, for example, and I can stick my whole fist into my mouth.  Yet nobody seems ready to pay me for these things.

So thanks, gang.  I’ve said it before.  I’m sure I’ll say it again.  But I’m grateful for all your support.  Now go enjoy your A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! monster movie (might I suggest Godzilla 2000 or It Came From Beneath the Sea?).  Have fun with your board game (Small World anyone?).  And push my books, gangs.

There.  End of the official A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! blog post.  You’re free to go.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of this game, each player takes on the role of a unique hero, exploring a 19th century village, looking for clues, fighting monsters, and ultimately hunting for the dark master villain.  Maybe it’s a vampire or a werewolf or a spectral horseman.  Whatever it is, it’s evil and somebody’s gotta stop it.  What makes A Touch of Evil fun is that, while it’s a simple game, your strategy and tactics vary based on your hero and the villain they face.  Also, you can play the game competatively (trying to be the first to kill the bad guy) or co-op, where all the players are teamed up trying to save the day.

I played A Touch of Evil a few times and enjoyed it.  Then I just put it aside and kind of forgot about it because…well, you probably know if you’re a regular BGG visitor how it is.  You buy a new game that pushes the others to the background.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Still, A Touch of Evil is a fun game.  And I realize every time I play it that I actually like it quite a bit.  But somehow, I forget and it ends up back on the shelf.  Which is weird.  It’s like a dark magic casts a spell over me, making me forget how much I enjoy the game until I actually get around to opening the box and playing it again.  Then it’s like, hey, this is a fun game! I should play it more often!

Which is why I’m glad that Something Wicked came out because it gives me a reason to dust this game off and play it again.

When I first saw Something Wicked in the store, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.  I didn’t buy any expansions for Last Night on Earth.  And I hadn’t played A Touch of Evil often enough to get burnt out on it yet.  But then I took a look at the box.  Specifically the back of the box.

Bog Fiend.

That’s all it took to convince me.  I’ve always been a fan of the Universal monsters and the gilman is an underrated horror if you ask me.  So the fact that Flying Frog thought well enough of this guy to include him in their expansion…how could I resist?

But what else is in this box that makes it worth buying?

Something Wicked introduces 4 new heroes, 4 new villains, and adds a new map, doubling the size of the board and adding new locations.  In short, it makes a good game better.

Something Wicked adds more content to A Touch of Evil, but it doesn’t really include a bunch of new rules to learn or modify the game in any radical way.  So if you don’t like A Touch of Evil then this expansion probably isn’t going to win you over.  On the other hand, if you enjoy the game but are looking for a new villain to test your resolve and some new encounters to spice up your game, this is a pretty solid investment.

I’m glad I bought it, but, to be honest, it could’ve added nothing but the Bog Fiend and I’d probably have been happy.

P.S. The new Hero Pack released simultaneously features a hero named The Scarlet Shadow, infamous highwayman and rogue.  Damn.  Looks like I just might have to pick that one up too.

One of the things that I feel modern comics are missing is a new character to step up.  We haven’t seen that in a while.  Where is the next Spider-Man or Wolverine, Batman or Superman?

I don’t think a great new character has been introduced in a long, long time.  Plenty of characters have been added to the world of comics, but most of those lack that timeless quality to extend their reign.  Spawn may have been big in the 90′s, but that’s kind of his problem.  He’s too 90′s.  Spawn is to the 90′s as The Hypno-Hustler is to the 70′s.  Yes, I said it.  Who says I shy away from controversy?

Invincible is a somewhat popular hero, but I’m still not certain he’ll have staying power.  Gravity could’ve been great, but Marvel threw him away without a second thought.  Nobody but me wants a Slapstick ongoing series (which just shows how far ahead of the curve I am compared to your average citizen).  Supergirl and X-23 are just lame knock offs that exist only in some half-hearted attempt to make female characters without having to try anything original.  I could name a dozen other characters, all with potential to break out, but I still say that Deadpool IS the next breakout character.  Or he could be if Marvel had the guts to actually make him work.

I know I’m the guy who is always complaining about how dark modern comics are, and I stand by that complaint.  But I also figure, if you’re going to go ahead and go dark, then try to do something different with it.  And Deadpool is perfect for that because he’s dark, but he’s funny.  He’s twisted, psychotic, but not exactly a villain either.  He might have no problem killing you, but in the end of the day, he’s still not entirely a bad guy.

Bottom line:  Deadpool is the best parts of Spider-Man and Wolverine wrapped in one terrific anti-hero package.  If Marvel can’t make this work, then they don’t deserve to be publishing comics today.

Their new projects have toyed with bloodshed and more “mature” material.  The first Ultimate Avengers animated film was solid, and the Hulk Vs. animated film (especially the Wolverine segment) was great fun.  Wolverine actually got to stab some people, and Deadpool lost an arm.  That’s just awesome.  Clearly, Marvel is willing to give these sort of gritty characters a shot.

Even in the new Wolverine live action movie, Wade Wilson steals the show until he’s reduced to a mute puppet because the writers of that particular film didn’t have enough sense to realize how awesome Deadpool is.

I’ve given comics in general (and Marvel specifically) a lot of crap over the years.  I still don’t buy any mainstream Marvel comic simply because I don’t have the time, money, or interest to read internimable stories that go nowhere and end badly.  Even Deadpool’s promising new series lost me as soon as it delved into endless crossover hell.  (Note to Marvel: No matter how much you try and sell it, Norman Osborne will never be Lex Luthor.  Also, Sentry is a really stupid character, and you should have Mephisto retcon him away as soon as possible.  But I digress.)

That’s why I want to see an animated Deadpool in his own movie.  His own PG-13 Merc with a Mouth adventure that could totally rock if they just had the balls to do it.  C’mon, gang.  Let’s get on this.  Write letters or sign petitions or send out good vibrations.  Whatever it takes.

Deadpool deserves his own animated film.

If, on the other hand, this doesn’t happen, then I guess I could settle for a Squirrel Girl film.  But I’m not going to settle for anything else.  Deadpool or Squirrel Girl.  Those are your only two options, Marvel.

Now get it done.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee