All Hail Dark Phoenix!

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

There's been some chat recently about the lack of strong female villains in comics - characters that have the iconic status of Doctor Doom or The Joker. So what is Dark Phoenix? Chopped liver?

The Wikipedia list of supervillainesses (I'm not sure that's even a word. Surely "villain" is not gender specific) does not even mention her, and yet she has been one of the most influential and popular, not to mention one of the most physically powerful female villains in the history of comics. For many years after her first appearance, when a hero character went bad (particularly if female) they would be referred to as "Dark-" and everyone got the reference.

Okay, I know some might question whether Dark Phoenix counts as a villain because she is only a hero gone bad temporarily, but Catwoman is on the Villainess list and she's been swapping sides since the mid-1950's. And consider Dark Phoenix's thematic ancestor, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: can you see anyone ever arguing that Hyde doesn't count as a villain because he is only the dark aspect of Jekyll?

The storyline that first introduced Dark Phoenix is possibly the best thing Chris Claremont ever wrote. His work with John Byrne during this period produced some classic X-Men stories that were so effective and powerful that they are still getting recycled even now, and the slow build of the Dark Phoenix/Hellfire Club storyline was a masterwork of pacing. It's an excellent story on its own, but it reaches a whole other level when, in a classic case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory Jean Grey triumphs over Mastermind's mind control by opening Pandora's box and letting out her dark side, which is kinda like beating someone at chess by blowing up the building where the game is being played.

In fact, in her original outing, Dark Phoenix only lasts two issues. Then she is shut down, and before she can escape again Jean Grey allows herself to be killed rather than become the monster again. But in that short time she eats a star - she may be solar powered but she is anything but environmentally friendly - and tears through a Shi'arr battlecruiser like a tank through butter. Sadly, we don't get to see her do much else as Claremont and Byrne realise that there is no credible way for the X-Men to defeat her unless they get tricksy, and so they backpedal a little and even though in Uncanny X-Men #135 Phoenix says she is leaving Earth forever, and her grasp of her powers is good enough that she is opening warp gates and consuming stars, she then feels the need for a little angst moment and pops home to mommy so they can have a rematch with her.

It's only because the pace is rattling along like the best action movies that your suspension of disbelief doesn't crumble at this point. Dark Phoenix is described as having Galactus level power, and that's before she consumed the star, and yet when she zaps Professor Xavier it just appears to squish his wheelchair and tear his clothes a bit. Okay, Prof X may be the most powerful telepath on the planet but Dark Phoenix snuffs out suns. When she says she is killing you I'd expect more than cuts and grazes on anything below god-level. They then go head to head in a telepathic battle and the Prof wins, of course. The rationale being that deep down, part of her was on his side.

But they couldn't leave it there. Like all great villains, Dark Phoenix was too good a character to throw away, even if she was dead. But the first sequel Claremont gave us was something different. Introducing Madeline Pryor as visually identical to Jean Grey, he plays with our expectations of what the connection might be between the two. The great thing about this story, which was utterly destroyed in later retconning, is that there is no connection. Madeline is just an ordinary person who looks like Jean. But in superhero comics where almost everyone the protagonist meets in the most mundane setting turns out to be a villain/demon/alien it was a masterly subversion of the reader and the characters' expectations to have the returning villain Mastermind play on these assumptions to make the X-Men think that this was Dark Phoenix resurrected, getting revenge on the X-Men by setting them up to murder the innocent, ordinary Maddy.



After this it goes downhill like a sledge on Jupiter and retcon is piled on top of retcon to the point where I kind of lose track. Jean Grey was never Phoenix in the first place and Maddy was some kind of demon clone or some such, and Rachel, Jean's daughter from an alternate future, inherits the phoenix power that Jean never had anyway and I lose the will to live.

Last I looked Jean was currently dead but nobody expected it to last, Dark Phoenix had a miniseries where she got to destroy the universe (or something) and she's about to get her big screen debut.

Who's that Girl? Part 8: Hitting Bottom

It's taken a long time to get this episode written because the comics it covers are so, so bad that it was hard to work up the enthusiasm to read them. But here we are at last.

Wonder Woman v1 287 - 299
Dc Presents 41

I probably should have included one more issue in the previous entry as we get a second "guest writer" issue before the comic gets yet another makeover.

Marv Wolfman pops up with a story that guest stars the Teen Titans. It's been a while since I read any of Marv's work but I remembered him as a decent writer. Sadly it's not too evident in this story which opens with Wonder Girl being shot at by generic minions in hooded robes. She does the usual bullets and bracelets routine - which is a good trick with lasers (1) but eventually a hit in the arm from one of these "laser guns" causes her to fall unconscious rather than burning a hole through her.

So the minions kidnap Wonder Girl and the Titans call Wonder Woman in to help rather than go deal with it on their own. (2) And this is the whole point because it was all a convoluted plot by Doctor Cyber (3) to grab Wonder Woman and steal her face. Eerily, there is one panel that has unintended resonance decades after it was drawn, when Wonder Woman's invisible robot plane goes out of control.



And then it's makeover time but not in Wonder Woman #288; first we have to slip over to DC Presents #41 for what is called a "preview" but is in fact a self-contained Wonder Woman 14 page mini-comic (4). Along with new writer Roy Thomas and art by Gene Colan even the cover logo gets a renovation in a story that replaces the stylised eagle motif on Wonder Woman's chest for the =w= symbol we are more familiar with today.

The new chest symbol was a result of DC president Jennette Kahn's plan to to celebrate Wonder Woman's 40th anniversary by establishing a Wonder Woman Foundation to honour outstanding women over 40 (5). I cannot find any information about this foundation beyond 1986 so I can only assume that it no longer exists (6), but I did find some references to women who had received the award in the mid-80's (7).

In the story the women of the Wonder Woman Foundation present Wonder Woman with her new bustier and after thinking it over while beating up on Hercules and outracing Hermes she agrees to wear it. It's a nice way of tying the comic in with the real life foundation, but in context it appears that the amazon is agreeing to wear the Foundation's logo rather than them adopting hers and it comes off looking like she is now taking advertising on her costume like some sports player with a Nike logo on their shirt (8).



Reports suggest that Roy Thomas was keen to work on Wonder Woman, and he does seem to have done some homework, giving us a historical and mythological context to traditional WW villain Mars' sponsoring of new enemy Silver Swan and the introduction of an Earth 1 version of Doctor Psycho, and yet his research isn't quite up to date as he has Steve Trevor and Diana Prince working for military intelligence (9) instead of the Air Force, and places Paradise Island in the Bermuda Triangle (10). Would be nice if they could decide once and for all whether to call WW's mom Hippolyte or Hippolyta and just stick to it, too.

Diana Prince briefly gains a new roommate and wouldn't you know it, it's the Silver Swan in her secret identity of Helen Alexandros. She's supposed to be hideously ugly but I don't see it, myself. I know that it's easy to get hung up on any little imperfection, but the way the heavy handed narration goes on you'd think she looked like a troll, rather than a cute girl with a couple of zits.



The story itself is confused and muddy. Silver Swan is under orders to kill Wonder Woman but sometimes she helps her out, even though she hates her. Why does she hate Wonder Woman? I don't know. Doctor Psycho turns into Wonder Man whenever Steve Trevor falls asleep, and he is stronger than WW because Steve thinks he is, apparently. At the end of the story Mars takes Swan girl's powers away because she hasn't yet killed Wonder Woman; you'd think a god would have a little more patience, particularly when this particular chore is one he's failed at so often, himself.

Then we get into a big story which, if it happened today would probably be a company wide event, but (thank Athena) here is just a 3 parter with a lot of guest stars. It involves one of those omniscient godlike beings that seem to spend so much time poking around in other people's business, and who appears to be a cross between the Celestials and the Beyonder. He gives planets marks out of 10 and if they don't get a high enough grade he destroys them, or in this case arranges fights for a lot of super-heroines. In the end some even more godlike beings take him home for a spanking. It's pure cack.

Just when you feel like you have hit the bottom of the barrel, something like the next story comes along and you realise that the barrel was a whole lot deeper than you could possibly imagine. This one involves people getting brainwashed by a video game. Okay, so that was a relatively original concept in 1982, but where it hits the wall of dumb is when you find out that the evil video game was created by the villain, General Electric (11) while he is in prison, in the prison workshop. After he learns electrical engineering. But not programming. Even if this were possible we are then given no information about how this game has gone from being a prison prototype to a mass market success.

In fact the stupid game is so incredibly successful that he could just rake in the profits and enjoy the fruits of his labour, but no, it's all a means to an end. What that end may be is never explained, although it seems to involve gathering a private army. But he never actually does anything with it, so who knows? For something that started at barrel-bottom, it's hard to believe that it could get worse, but it does, ending with a dire Tron steal that exposes the writer's utter ignorance of everything he is writing about. Didn't anybody ever research their subject matter during this period? Or did they just not care?

Apparently Dan Mishkin did, and in the lead up to the big 300 he brings us a story built on the myth of Beleraphon, who has been hiding out on Themiscyra (12) until some greek terrorists turn up and he enlists them to attack Paradise Island to get the purple healing ray and restore his sight (13).

Wow. The novelty of having a villain with motivation that makes sense and a clear cut plan of action is staggering after the last few dozen issues. There's also an interesting subplot involving a skeleton dressed in a Wonder Woman outfit. Sadly, this is completely blown by the use of the new =W= insignia, since it relates back to events long before the new insignia was created, but the error is corrected by the time it becomes the main plot in issue #301.

But I'm going to save that for next time.

Next: The only way to go is up (at least that's the theory).

Notes
1. amazon training is so good that their reflexes are faster than light now?
2. Did the Titans ever call on a related adult when one of their number was in trouble? Ever?
3. remember Doctor Cyber?
4. though at a time when the amazon princess was only getting 17 pages of story a month, it's practically a full comic
5. it was also a better brandname logo and easier to trademark
6. although a Wonder Woman Foundation does still exist in post-Crisis DC continuity
7. Such as Rosa Parks (pictured above).
8. Nike being the greek goddess of victory long before she got into sports footwear
9. which they haven't done since 1967
10. entirely an invention of the TV show
11. ludicrous but true
12. which it turns out isn't another name for Paradise Island after all, but the previous home of the Amazons thousands of years ago
13. He was blinded by Zeus when he attempted to fly to Olympus on Pegasus. This version says Zeus hurled him back to Earth, causing his injuries, but according to Brewer's Phrase and Fable Zeus sent a mayfly to sting the flying horse and throw him off. But I guess that lacks the same drama.

In my dreams...

...newspaper comic strips taste of marzipan.

Hal's Head

Anyone who reads The Absorbascon on a regular basis will be aware of Scipio's documentation of Hall Jordan's clumsiness, particularly his penchant for getting hit on the head (although so far he's missed my favourite Hal's Head moment when he is knocked unconscious by a toy airplane), but I would like to suggest that without this clumsiness Hal would never have become Green Lantern in the first place.

Clumsiness is not an inherent problem with weilding the green ring, so we have to assume that Hal's head has been bouncing off any nearby surfaces long before he became Green Lantern, and it seems to me that this is the real key to his character. Abin Sur, who we know wasn't exactly the full packet by the time of his death, commands his ring to locate a man without fear (wait, wouldn't that be Matt Murdock?).

Now fear is a very important survival trait. Fear tells us not to get too close to the edge of the cliff. Fear tells us not to pet the big hairy thing with teeth and claws. Fear prevents us from doing stupid things. Too much fear is extremely counter-productive, but too little will get you dead a lot faster. Fear is an integral part of human construction.

Accident-prone Hal Jordan is so brain damaged from all the cracks to the skull that he has entirely lost this fear response, but due to an early indoctrination in the armed forces before the damage became so severe, he remains disciplined enough (or maybe he's just too dumb) to not do anything really stupid. Since the only other available options to the ring are the kind of people who ride motorcycles blindfold into oncoming traffic for a laugh, Hal wins by default.

He didn't get the ring because he was without fear. He got it because he was the only person without fear who stood a chance of living long enough do do anything useful with it.

All hail Servalan!

The Wikipedia list of Well known Supervillains contains exactly forty nine names. Only one of them is female. Whether this is an error and it was only supposed to be a list of male villains (since there is also a list of supervillainesses) anyway, or because only one female villain has really made an impact on popular culture equivilent to Fu Manchu or The Joker is not clear because that one female name is Servalan.

Servalan is quite simply the archetypal female super villain. She is the embodiment of the empowered woman. She is clever, capricious, sexy, ruthless, and as cuddly as a pit full of vipers armed with laser sights. She dresses to kill. That is to say she dresses extravigantly and people usually die in her immediate vicinity. And she really enjoys her work.


As the arch-villain of the british TV show Blake's Seven she is considerably more successful than the heroes. Despite Blake and Co. having the useful advantages of owning the most powerful and fastest spaceship in the galaxy, the only teleport system in existance (against which there is no defence), and an omniscient computer that can hack any other computer, they stumble around having the occasional inconsequential success in their revolutionary cause, while Servalan works her way up (over any number of dead bodies) to become President of the Federation. After the power of the Federation is broken (due to alien invasion, nothing to do with Blake's bunch) and Servalan is deposed, it is no time at all before she is building her second empire under the name of Commander Slear.


And in the end she wins.

Which is more than most villains can boast.

irrelevent trivia

Microwaved porridge is one of the few meals that takes longer to eat than it does to prepare.

Sound effect of the week

Who's that Girl? Part 7: Deja vu me one more time

Wonder Woman v1 269 - 286

Okay, so by now you must be used to some odd changes of direction and ludicrous rationalisation, but grab some asprin because this next bit is going to make your head hurt.

In a big shake up that I can only assume was ordered by those in charge to try and get Wonder Woman back on the rails, issue #269 begins a storyline that once more throws out baby, bathwater, bath, and assorted plumbing fixtures in a storyline reminiscent of #204. At least nobody gets shot by a random sniper this time.

Wonder Woman is feeling depressed and so decides to unwind watching TV. Unfortunately her choice of viewing appears to be either a 24 hour news channel or one of those "World's Hundred Greatest attrocities" shows and the result makes her more miserable than ever. Deciding that she's had enough of man's world, she hops in her invisible jet and flies home to mother.

Queen Hippolyte sees what a state she is in and assumes that she is still moping over the twice dead Steve Trevor and so prays to Aphrodite to make WW forget she ever met him (1). Aphrodite agrees suspiciously easily (2) and before you can say "what's that strange purple smoke I'm sniffing?" Wonder Woman has forgotten she ever met Steve Trevor and presumably the large chunks of her life he featured in and is all happy again (3).

But then, just as Hippolyte believes everything is nicely sorted, an aircraft crashlands right next to her trireme (4) and wouldn't you just know it? It's a Steve Trevor from a parallel universe. Aphrodite pops up again to explain who he is but fails to mention why he just happened to fall through a dimensional hole in order to crash 10 feet away from Wonder Woman, thus enabling her to rerun her origin, or why Aphrodite never mentioned this in the previous issue when she helped Hippolyte erase WW's memory. It is clearly part of the same scheme, and poor Hippo is just left looking like an idiot (5). So it's out with the mists of Nepenthe again, only this time they must be using the economy size box in order to rewrite the memories of everyone on the planet who has ever heard of Wonder Woman or Steve Trevor.

Does this qualify as a retcon? I think it does. The universe has been magically reprogrammed so that parallel universe Steve Trevor has always been a member of the U.S. air force of this world and is shown as being in charge of ongoing projects that have been running for some time, so Aphrodite's spell is not just affecting people's memories, it is altering the past to accomodate the new status of our heroes. Diana Prince is now a captain and his adjutant. Etta Candy reappears again as Diana's secretary (6). The amazon princess is now so brain damaged from all this memory erasing over the years that she can't even remember that she was in the army for over two decades



Wonder Woman goes out clubbing with Steve in full Wonder Woman costume (7) but fails to attract any attention (8) until the tedious Angle Man (9) shows up to spoil her date. But he's just the warm up act. The real plot begins in #274 with the introduction of Kobra as the lastest in a long line of secret organisations out to blah de blah de waffle world domination waffle blah.

Oh my god will someone play a different tune for a change? They've been playing this same cracked record over and over for years now. At least Doctor Cyber had style until she went mad. But they've recycled this same plot half a dozen times one after the other and this dead horse ain't getting any fresher for each new flogging.

Issue #274 also revamps an old WW villain, the Cheetah. There's even a helpful editorial note to remind readers that she was last seen in #230. Very handy, except that #230 was one of the Earth 2/World War 2 issues, and so cannot have anything to do with the current storyline. In fact the last time THIS Wonder Woman met the Cheetah was in #166, way back in 1966

For some reason writer Gerry Conway feels the need to have Pricilla Rich (10) die of some unspecified illness so that her neice Debbi Domaine can be brainwashed by Kobra into wearing the costume while acting as an eco-terrorist. I see absolutely no point to this. Why bother to reintroduce an old villain if you are going to revamp them to the point where they bear no resemblence to the original? Why not just make a new one? In context it would have made more sense for Debbi to be brainwashed into becoming an eco-terrorist (11) on purpose rather than grabbed as a kind of consolation prize when the kobrettes couldn't get Pricilla.

In fact it would have been a much more interesting plot twist if Debbi had just taken the identity of the Cheetah without reference to Pricilla at all. That way you could have Pricilla come out of retirement to confront the person who had stolen her identity. What a waste.

Of course it does allow for the ludicrous opening scene of #276. Wonder Woman sneaks into Pricilla's funeral looking for clues. Luckily Kobra are filming the event (12) and so WW gets to chase the cameraman, who blows himself up to avoid capture because people who make home movies of funerals are just that hard.



Having failed to get snapshots of Pricilla getting planted, Kobra move on to more serious matters and steal a specially evil nuclear bomb that the air force had been building and which Steve Trevor had been overseeing for months, despite having only been in this dimension for a week or two. When Aphrodite casts a retcon spell she doesn't mess around. And then it's back to fantasy physics as Steve explains just how nasty the bomb is.

In fact the basic idea he outlines doesn't seem to be too far into lala land. His use of the term "cobalt 93" initially made me think he was talking about a nonexistant isotope, although he does claim this is a "code name", so perhaps he actually means Cobalt 60, which would be used in the kind of dirty bomb he's talking about. The "93" apparently refers to the number of years the affected area would remain radioactive, which is awfully specific of him, particularly when he seems so vague about everything else to do with it.



The big booboo here is that dirty bombs are not strictly nuclear bombs. In a nuclear weapon the radioactive material is made to fission, which causes the explosion. The more material that fissions, the bigger the bang, the less radioactive material there is spread around the countryside. In a dirty bomb the whole point is to spread as much radioactive material around as possible and the bang is just the delivery system. Consequently the current definition of a dirty bomb is usually one where the actual explosives are non-nuclear and are only used at all as a way of dispersing the radioactive material into the atmosphere. Early nuclear bombs only included a "dirty" aspect because they were innefficient and failed to cause all of the radioactive material in them to fission.

Then just as Steve is explaining what this top secret project is to unspecified bigwigs at the Pentagon, King Kobra makes a worldwide broadcast to blackmail the world's governments with this device that apparently even the Pentagon didn't know about until just now. Presumabably everyone thinks he's a crank in a snake hat because no other superheroes make any effort to stop him.

Luckily Diana Prince's landlord gives her a tip on the Kobra cult (13) that leads her to generic psychic (14) Mother Juju, who gives her a history lesson about how the original cobra cult was responsible for ending british rule in India (15) and having suceeded in that they got a bit power happy and now want to rule the entire world (16). This gives our heroine the idea that the main Kobra base may be in New Delhi, so off she goes.

Arriving in an embarrasingly cliched representation of India staffed entirely with orange skinned people in robes, she immediately locates the secret Kobra base but falls down a hole and twists her ankle like a total girly so she can be caught by Kobra. But after a quick fight with a giant robot snake she escapes, of course.

Meanwhile Steve is now talking about "cobalt 93 isotope" and explaining the plot to Diana Prince before going off on a rant that shows his grasp of politics is as great as his understanding of nuclear physics, but it seems to fool Diana.



We next find that Kobra have fitted the cobalt 93 bomb into an army surplus ICBM (17) that they've installed in the great pyramid of Cheops in Egypt without being spotted by tourists. Wonder Woman arrives and of course is immediately caught by Kobrettes who have no clue who she is. Apparently they didn't get the memo.

At least this distracts them from noticing Steve climb into the missile and reprogram the guidance system by ripping out some wires. It's effective though, and he manages to guide it to a non-explosive splashdown in the Arabian Sea where Wonder Woman can pick him up after the great pyramid of Cheops blows apart when she hits some control panels.

With #279 we get a change of pace as Etta Candy is kidnapped by demons living in the apartment below (18). A little hocus pocus from Mother Juju (19) sends Wonder Woman off to investigate a military project to summon demons, but after a lot of running about it all turns out to be complicated plot by Klarion the Witch Boy to trap Etrigan the Demon. It doesn't work.

And then it's back to yet another secret organisation, but this one is chinese and just wants to return the world to a feudal state. Oh yes, that's a realistic ambition all right. They've even got a robot dragon and a U.S. army surplus missile (20).

After wading through all this tedious, repetitive, cliched, derivitive dreck, issue #286 comes as something of a shock. It's the story of a failed actress who desperately wants to achieve something in the few months she has left before she dies of cancer. It rises above sentimental cliche by the clever trick of being better written than any Wonder Woman story for the best part of a decade. And the biggest twist of all is that such a touching, human story was written by Robert Kanigher.

And I'm going to stop there, because I have a nasty suspicion that next issue we'll be back in the poo.

Next: The trademark police hit town.

Notes

The majority of this article was written back in September but the comics of this period are so dire that I couldn't work up the enthusiasm to finish it. The next part will be sooner in coming.

1. seems like Hippo's first choice for any problem is to make everyone forget it happened
2. she's read ahead on the plot
3. wait, what about all the other stuff that was depressing her?
4. yes, the amazons have an advanced space program, submarines, and their own airforce, but when they want to investigate potential threats to the safety of their island, they go in a trireme.
5. that'll teach her to ask a favour of such capricious deities
6. last seen in the same job during World War 2 in the Earth 2 issues
7. plus the cape from the TV show
8. no paparazzi in 1980, apparently
9. his appearances in Wonder Woman since #227 have involved him showing up and being annoying, getting beaten by Wonder Woman and then having his Angler weapon destroyed. And yet somehow it's always magically fixed the next time he turns up even though it is Apokolips tech and he has no idea how it works
10. the original Cheetah
11. she had already been introduced as an ecological activist so it would just be taking her views to the extreme
12. Why? What possible use could it be to them? Someone please explain this to me because it makes no sense as far as I can see.
13. how handy
14. more of a large than a medium
15. yeah, right.
16. Funny, but none of the Kobrettes we've seen so far have shown any evidence of being indian.
17. InterContinental Ballistic Missle.
18. no wonder the rent was so reasonable. Poor Diana doesn't have much luck with neighbours.
19. plot devices a speciality
20. do you think they shop at the same place as Kobra?

Batman on TV 40 years on

Apparently it's the 40th aniversary of the Adam West Batman TV this week. By total coincidence I happened to see the unbroadcast Batgirl pilot yesterday and caught an episode of The Batman cartoon today.

It seems unlikely that the 7 minute Batgirl show was a test for an actual Batgirl series as it introduces both Batgirl and Barbara Gordon as new characters meeting Batman for the first time. It also heavily features the Batman cast, but it's basically one scene, set in the library where Barbara works, which will need to close for renovation by the end of it. My guess is that it was a test or sample of some sort to pilot the third season of Batman, which first introduced the "dominoed dare-doll" *cringe*.


I haven't watched any episodes of the show in years, so I couldn't say if there are any changes between this presentation of Batgirl and how she appears in the Batman show, except for one thing; the Batgirl motorcycle that Sleestak exposed us to recently on Lady That's My Skull is not the one in this show. This one has some bat-customisation (including a windscreen at such a low angle that a jolt forward would be liable to cause you to smash your face against the top edge) but is a lot closer to a stock machine than the frilly mauve nightmare Slee presented us with.

One bit of trivia that entertained me - although this bore no relation to the comics origin of this Batgirl, it shared the same villain from her first comics appearance, Killer Moth.


Fast forward nearly 40 years and we have The Batman; latest in a long line of animated versions of the character, and struggling under the shadow of the definitive Batman The Animated Series. I'd only seen a couple of episodes before, and it hadn't prompted me to make any effort to find more. I like the Tim Burton inspired "Batman Classic" feel of BTAS and this version isn't good enough to outweigh my annoyance that its presence limits how much of the BTAS version is allowed on Justice League Unlimited. It seems very strange that there are currently two interpretations of the same character in different shows, but that's a whole other rant.

How does The Batman fare when judged for itself? It has its own style, which is good. The conceptual artists at least have put in a lot of effort. I think it was courageous to go for such a radically different interpretation of the Joker, but it's an interesting one. I haven't seen enough to tell what they've done with it. And that's where the problems start, really. The visual style and the designs are interesting and fresh (mostly) but the actual execution...

Take the episode I saw today - it was the introduction of Man-Bat. Initially it looked like the motivation of the villain, Dr. Langstrom might be interesting as we find out he is studying bat sonar to help his deaf neice. Except that this turns out to be a lie and his neice can hear fine. In fact the only motivation he seems to have for turning himself into a grotesque monster is because he wants to be as scary as Batman. Even though he has been working on it for months he appears to have no plan once he succeeds. He just kind of flies around and sucks the blood of goats and stuff.

So all the depth and characterisation of the original version of the character is dumped in favour of a superficial monster of the week. Maybe they didn't have the budget for a plot with greater depth. They certainly didn't spend a lot on the animation. Although the actual designs are stylish and the animation we get is adequate, it fails to disguise how empty the world is. The streets are completely bare. Other than those essential to the plot there are no people and no vehicles.

This kind of economy does result in the few regular characters having to shoulder responsibility for covering all demographics, of course. So the only two cops who ever appear in the show are the laid back friendly black guy and his partner the hardass no-nonsense career girl (who I think is also supposed to be ethnic as her surname is Yin) who is determined to bring Batman to justice even though he saves her ass every episode. In many ways it's as cliche ridden as the '60's show, but it's not as funny.

Cake or Death?

While there are many differences between people, I usually have this idea that deep down our minds work in similar ways, causing us to instinctively respond in similar and ways to events. And then every so often I come across a situation that makes me wonder.

I mean, what kind of person when faced with the choice of cake or death says "What kind of cake?"

When Catgirls Attack!!

Kawaii Overload!!

The Care and Feeding of Compliments

And here's another thing; compliments.

Lots of people don't really understand compliments, what to do with them and how to respond to them. Often the response to a compliment is to deny it: "You look great in that dress!" "What, this old thing? It's nothing special." Whether this is some kind of social false modesty, I don't know.

Other people deflect them with jokes: "Your hair looks nice today." "So what was wrong with it yesterday?"

But some people really don't know how to deal with a compliment at all. Say something nice to them and they either look at you blankly or pretend that they haven't heard. They are uncomfortable with compliments and have no clue what to do with them.

Somewhere, long ago I read where someone described a compliment as a gift, and the appropriate response to recieving a gift is to smile and say "thank you".

That works for me.

Atonement

The other part of saying sorry is atonement. That's when you ask the other person's forgiveness. These days when someone says "forgive me" they seem to think that merely saying the words should be enough, but traditionally this request to mend a hole in the relationship requires the person asking for forgivness to actually do something to make amends for whatever they have done.

Sometimes it's obvious. You accidentily put a ball through next-door's window; you expect to replace it. But with less immediately tangible situations people often seem to think that saying the words should be enough. An example occured yesterday when I was playing the online super villain game City of Villains.

Someone had invited me on to a team that was much higher level than my character, but the game has a system where you can 'sidekick' a lower level player and they are boosted to the level of the higher player while teamed up. All was going fine and well, except that my partner became (for reasons irrelevent to this article) fed up and decided to leave. He committed one of the worst breaches of ettiquette possible in an online game by quitting the team during a fight. Apart from any effect it had on the others to lose a team member at this point, it caused me to lose my sidekick status and suddenly I was surrounded by enemies who had just gained 10 levels relative to me and I was face down in the gutter.

I was surprised that he had the gall to contact me after this, but he did, apologizing to me for leaving but he wasn't happy with the team. It wasn't until I pointed out that his action was calculated to kill me that he even considered the effect his action had on anyone else, and he was genuinely upset and asked me to forgive him.

And I thought "What is my forgiveness worth to you? Are you prepared to fix the trouble you caused me? Are you about to help me work off the experience debt I acquired due to your actions? No, you just want me to say the words so you can feel better. Why should I let you off the hook when your action is going to take me maybe a half hour's effort to fix?".

So I said I'd forgive him when I had worked off the debt.

He didn't offer to help.

Links should be good

People have different views on linking. Some will give you everything including kitchensinkblog, and that's cool. It does give you a lot of different things to sample, but it's also very unfocussed.

My links are few; the blogs I link to are those that I check every day and ones I would recommend to anyone. It's a very short list and really deserves to be expanded. I could easily add Nobody Laughs at Mister Fish, Polite Dissent, Suspension of Disbelief, and probably several others that I have undeservedly forgotten*, but links to these can be found at the places I do link to, so I don't feel too much pressure to link to every single blog that I like. Anyhow, my point is that it's not routine for me to add a new one, and certainly not when I only just read it for the first time today.

Not only that, it's a linkblog. I have nothing against linkblogs, and have whiled away many hours when I should have been doing something else following entertaining links from such places, but I've never seen much point in linking to something that just links to something else.

So it's a big deal to me to add When Fangirls Attack to the list, and it's not just because they referenced something I'd written, honest. The subject of Women and Comics is an important one to me, and this is what Ragnell and kalinara address on a regular basis, bringing together links from all over the place that contribute to the debate.



*Blanket apology there to the creators of all those fine blogs that didn't spring to mind while I was writing this. I'm very, very sorry and should be spanked for leaving out something as wonderful as yours.

Half of seven is four

WARNING: Arr! There be spoilers ahead, matey!

I know a lot of people are waiting until Grant Morrison's epic Seven Soldiers is completed before passing comment, but I just got the opportunity to read the first four mini-series in one go, so I thought I'd venture a few thoughts.

First off one has to acknowledge that it's an ambitiously mad epic experience. Kudos to Grant for even attempting it. I can't think of anyone this side of Alan Moore who would even try to do something like this. It also makes me think of Kirby's Fourth World. That's the only other time I can think of where a single writer produced several monthly comics with distinctive individual flavours to tell stories that were part of a larger experience.

Which is not to say individual titles or stories are not without faults. There are times in almost all the titles where the Metaphysical bullshit detector veers dangerously into the red, but what really struck me was that most of the titles feel a bit cramped. In Manhattan Guardian the first three issues are about the Guardian's relationship with his girlfriend and family, then they are suddenly dropped and we're in major flashback city with very little set up. In Klarion our hero spends several issues escaping to the world above and then you blink and he's already established as part of a gang. I haven't read up on the background to the production but I have this sneaking suspicion that maybe the original plan was to do seven miniseries of seven issues each, and as part of some compromise with editorial it was reduced to four.

Things I liked: Each of the different series was actually different. While strands of meta-plot wandered from one to the other the stories themselves were quite individual.

Things I didn't like so much: The apparent compression of storylines, the metaphysical BS, and what the hell was the point of revealing that the Shining Knight was female five pages before the end of the story? The only relevance it seems to have is to add some intensity to the confrontation with Lancelot because we are informed that she's always had a thing for him. Surely that would have been even more poignant if Justin had been male? Knowing that she is female doesn't make you think "oh, that bit from earlier in the story suddenly makes a lot more sense" so it has all the surprise value of pulling a sock out of a hat - you weren't expecting it but you don't really care. I can only hope that it becomes relevant later on.

Pained apology

I recently received an apology from someone I knew. It was crap. In fact it was one of the worst apologies I had ever received. And it's not the first time. This is someone who is so bad at apologising that he actually makes any situation worse than before when he says 'sorry'.

In this instance, as is usually the case, it was a very minor issue where I had gently chided him for chasing me up about a non-essential issue before I'd had a chance to do anything about it. His response was "I don't think I deserve being called a nag, but I apologize to you if you think so." It's like talking to a politician. He denies that the accusation is valid but grudgingly agrees to humor me with the word anyway. But wait! There's more! He then goes on to explain in detail about how I had mislead him as to the situation and how it was my fault all along. All of which converts a bijou mole living space into a geographical feature visible from orbit.

He's pissed at me and I am now pissed at him where I wasn't before, but it's all so pathetically trivial that I can't be bothered to call him on it. That and it feels like anyone who over-reacts over such a minor issue is hardly going to be receptive when you try to talk to them about a real problem they have.

The dictionary gives several definitions of 'Apology', but the main one is this:

a·pol·o·gy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-pl-j)
n. pl. a·pol·o·gies

1. An acknowledgment expressing regret or asking pardon for a fault or offense.

Now if you refuse to acknowledge that you are at fault and deny responsibility for any offense then it's not an apology, however much you claim it is.

It's an insecurity thing, I think. And we all go through it when we are young. I know I remember a time when I found it tremendously difficult to admit that I had done something wrong, even when it was a genuine accident or misunderstanding. And later I too went through a period where I would apologise, but still find a way to deny responsibility for the situation. But at some point I became secure enough in myself that I understood that I could acknowledge my mistakes without it diminishing me in any way.

How to apologise

If you find yourself in a situation where you feel that you should make an apology to someone, keep it simple. Like the definition says, an acknowledgement expressing regret or asking pardon. Any attempt to elaborate beyond this should be strictly avoided.

Good example:

I'm sorry I stepped on your toe.

Bad example:

I'm sorry I stepped on your toe but your stupid foot shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Even if you do believe that the other person shares some responsibility for the problem, ie, putting their foot somewhere that it might easily be trodden on, it's irrelevent. An apology acknowledges your responsibility, nobody elses. If they then have the grace to acknowledge they were also at fault, then that's cool. But it's for them to say, not for you to point out. Plus, you know, if they then fail to do so you can feel morally superior to them for the rest of the day.

Since I've been gone

Apologies for the lack of posts this week. I just don't seem to have had much to say. But I just started reading the whole Seven Soldiers thing, so expect a comment or two on that soon.

Violence and the single girl

The Fan Fatale forum over at Big Monkey Comics brings up the subject of violence in comics, and how it differs where women are concerned to when it's just guys. This got me thinking, but it's a big subject and there is no way I can address it properly with one post, so I've decided to make it an occasional series that I'll add to whenever I can think of something to say on the subject.

The forum asks if violence towards or by women is portrayed differently than when it only involves men. I think another related question to consider might be will violence by or toward women be perceived differently by the reader?

I'm going to leave you to think about that for a while and take a look at a scene from Supergirl #3.*


Lex Luthor, who has been obsessing over Supergirl for some time, spying on her and pasting up candid photos over her all over his walls finally confronts her and beats her up. Now disregarding the whole creepy stalker aspect of the situation, what we have here is the classic hero/villain confrontation which can be found in virtually every comic ever published by Marvel and DC. So why does Lex feel the need to justify himself?

There is something distasteful about the whole scene. Is it because it's an adult male beating down a 15 year old girl? There have been teenage girl superheroes for a long time. Supergirl herself has been around since 1957. In the silver age a girl hero would be generally pitted against a girl villain, but Supergirl has fought plenty of adult male villains, and even faced off against Luthor on plenty of occasions. So what is different about this scene?

Is it that attitudes have changed over the years and such a scene carries connotations it would not have had before? Is it that Luthor, known for psychologically torturing women for fun, suddenly feels the need to justify attacking his enemy? Or that the explanation he gives is so thin and pathetic? "You wear the big S and that makes it okay for me to beat the crap out of you" doesn't begin to cover all the creepy stalker stuff that's led to this confrontation.

I think a lot of it is that the fight is so totally one-sided and so brutally depicted. Okay, at the end Supergirl appears to have hardly a scratch on her, but that's just a problem with the artist who has just shown her being repeatedly hit so hard that she's spurting blood but is incapable of actually making her look as if she's been bruised. Personally I think if you are going to show violence then do it properly and show the effects of that violence. I'd really rather do without the brutal beatings at all, but if you have to show one, then don't lie to us and pretend that 5 minutes later the character is all better with barely a hair out of place.



*Disclaimer: I picked this comic because it contains the scene I wish to address and I would have done so regardless of who wrote it. Those people who make a fuss every time I discuss a comic written by Jeph Loeb are free to suggest an alternative comic which contains an equivilent scene that I could address. Otherwise please feel free to get over yourselves.

Glad to be gay

Yesterday Robbie Williams won a libel case over a newspaper claiming that he was gay. The basic report is here but that doesn't give the real significance of the story. According to BBC radio 4's news program PM the dispute was not over whether he was gay, but by claiming that he was gay the newspaper was saying that he was a liar when he said he was entirely hetrosexual.

Why not just do them for calling him gay? Because now in the UK to call someone gay is not in itself libelous. As character defamation it has all the power of calling someone "bignose".

I can't but help see this as a mark of greater tolerance toward alternative lifestyles. It almost makes me feel patriotic.

Ever and anon

I blame Stan Lee.

He was the one who had the odd idea that Scandiwegion gods should speak in elizabethan english which, when you think about it makes as much sense as giving Kali and Ganesha japanese accents. But it kind of works to a degree, and does give the Aesir a sense of difference from ordinary mortals. Well, other than ordinary mortals that use thee and thou a lot, anyhow. The big problem with this is that a lot of the writers on Thor, being American, haven't got much idea how elizabethan english works, so they get it wrong a lot.

Okay, I have an advantage here. I'm british. I may not be able to tell you which way up our national flag is supposed to go, but I was taught Shakespeare well enough to get the jokes in Macbeth. It also means that the occasional Shakespearian word makes it into everyday speech here and there.

Most of the time you ignore the stupid mistakes. Either that or you don't read the comic. But now and again you get something that is so stupid it's funny. Case in point:


Now Dan Jurgens is apparently under the impression that "anon" means "immediately". It doesn't. It means "at another time" or "later". So here we have Hercules saying with great anger "Apologise to my father, Thor. In the fullness of time."

Similarly here we have Balder sent on a desperately urgent mission to Svartelfheim, and he says:


Translation: "If your life matters to you, you must free me at some point in the not too distant future!"

It gives the action a much more relaxed feel to it, don't you think?

Harley and Ivy

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy: are they totally hot for each other or what?


Well yes, of course they are. But although giving comic characters a homosexual subtext is somehow a whole lot less controversial when they are female rather than if they are male, it's still problematic to openly admit it, especially when the relationship comes out of a cartoon aimed at a 'family' audience, ie. one where the older members of the family don't want to have to explain any of the more complicated aspects of life to the younger ones because the show they are watching was realistic enough to contain any. So although Harley and Ivy are often seen living together, in situations and states of undress that a pair of male characters could never get away with, no details are ever given about their relationship.

Except for one time, in the Batgirl Adventures special, Paul Dini (responsible for the whole situation in the first place) manages to slip in a couple of references that really leave no doubt as to what's going on. The most significant piece of dialogue comes when Harley and Batgirl find Ivy tied up, and at the mercy of the evil Kit Nozawa and her all girl gang and Batgirl says "Why you care about that walking waste dump is beyond me. You'd be safer around a spitting cobra."

And if that wasn't enough, there's also the panel where Ivy describes Harley as "More important to me than you'll ever know." And then when Harley and Ivy are finally reunited...

Aw, it's so sweet.

It's kinda funny that all this paranoid editorial self censorship has actually resulted in a relatively subtle depiction of a lesbian relationship. If they have to pretend it's not there it can never become an issue in the way overt depictions of homosexuality are usually handled.

Go Paul Dini!

We are all NPC's in someone's game

I was playing City of Villains this morning and some guy calls me out of the blue and asks if he can join my group. I point out that he is much lower level than the rest of the group I'm in, so he says that since his character is more of a support type, his total inneffectiveness against the enemies we would face was not important (which was true to a degree) and he'd get lots of experience points (gaining experience points, for those who don't play these kind of games, is how you progress and get better toys). This is also true, but I didn't feel that inclined to take on a group member whose main skill appeared to be freeloading. I explained this, he called me bad words, and I added him to my ignore list, which blocks me from ever hearing anything he says. But it got me thinking.

Had it been a friend who asked I would have invited them in without hesitation, and expected similar response from them if I was the lower level. We do it all the time among the people I hang out with. But allowing a complete stranger to join my team purely to gain from our efforts while offering minimal contribution themselves? That's going to take a little more persuasion than that they would greatly benefit from it, and I was a little perplexed that anyone should even offer this as a reason.

The only conclusion I could come to was that this guy didn't really understand the difference between a regular solo game and an online game. In an ordinary game there is you, and every other character you meet is generated by the computer and run by the game programming to respond to you in specific ways; these are called Non-player characters, or NPC's for short. In a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) you have plenty of NPC's, of course, but you also have a lot of characters that are the avatars of other players who, like you, are sitting at home playing the game on their computer. It's really not hard to tell them apart.

I sometimes think there are some people who never quite get that the other characters they team up with are real people. Their attitude is completely selfish and self-centred. They will leave the game in the middle of a big fight without warning, because they have decided to do something else, thereby getting everyone else killed who was relying on them. They will go take a break leaving their character parked in a position where they will continue to receive their share of the experience points being won by the rest of the team even though they have gone off to make coffee or are chatting with friends on IM. And they will consider it a reasonable argument that they should be put in a position where they gain maximum reward for minimum contribution, and are upset when this fails to persuade complete strangers.

You know, I think there are people like that in real life, too.

Epilogue: now what?

Several people have asked me what I'm going to do with my story now its finished, and when they'd get to see it.

The simple answer is not anytime soon. While there are parts I am very pleased with, there are others that I dread to reread now, not to mention all the bits where I decided that something which happened two chapters ago had now happened differently or not at all.

I'm going to get a bit of distance from it and write something else before I come back and do a second draft. The month may be over but I find I really enjoy this stuff. I always wanted to write since I was a little kid, but I never really had that much confidence in my own fiction writing ability. Now I do, so I'd like to do some more.

After that I may either try to sell it to a publisher or self-publish through Lulu.com or something. I'd rather make it available as an actual physical book than just post it online.

It may be a while but it's likely that this story will be available in some form eventually. I don't intend to just metaphorically stuff it in a drawer and not let anyone ever see it. That's not really my style. :>

Day twenty eight: final entry

I did it!

I can hardly believe it myself, but it's finished. The longest single thing I have ever written. I am in awe of myself. Well, I might be if I didn't have some idea just how much work will be required for the rewrite. Still feeling very smug, though.

I have this thing about life where I'm thinking if somebody came up to me and asked me what i had to show for the last six months, what would I say? Right now I could say "I wrote a novel".

Anyhow, it seems unfair to end this without a quote from the story, so here's a bit from the epilogue.

Greta’s dad led them out to the car park and stopped at a nice looking car, a deep green in colour. Candy had no clue about cars beyond them all having a wheel at each corner, but this was an impressive vehicle. It was the kind of car driven by people who could afford Rolls Royces but didn’t want to appear flashy.

The man opened the boot and he and Greta’s dad started to pile their cases into it. Oh, thought Candy, he’s the chauffer. Which was nice.

“So what’s my little girl been doing at school this term?” Asked Greta’s dad, smiling that big smile. Now there’s a loaded question, thought Candy.

Final word count for first draft: 50,249

Day twenty seven

One of the problems you often find at the end of a novel is where the reader finally finds out what is going on. At the worst this can involve the heroes taking a chapter at the end of the story to explain the plot to each other after it's all over even though they all know it already, or there's the old cliche of the villain going

"And now before I kill you I shall explain the details of my dastardly scheme."

But how do you get around this kind of infodump cliche? I find as I reach the climax of my story I have to do some of this, partly because I only just worked out a lot of it myself. I started writing it during the final big confrontation, but that just seemed stupid.

Why on Earth would the villain be explaining the plot in the middle of a fight? I read way too many comic books.

So I went back a bit and had various characters who hadn't met before locked up in a cellar so they could compare notes, but it's still kinda clunky. At least it gives me the opportunity to set up one of the final twists a bit better.

Most unexpected plot twist of the day, possibly the whole novel, occured when I realised that the bit of the epilogue I wrote on Friday isn't the epilogue at all. The actual epilogue occurs a little earlier. What I started writing on Friday was the first chapter of the sequel.

Oh dear.

Word count now: 48,133 and on schedule to pass the finish line late tomorrow!! OMG OMG!!!

Day twenty six

Okay, I'm now getting that whooshing sound as I fly down the hill at ever increasing speed and I'm wondering if I've got any control of this sled or where it's going and am I going to hit a tree.

I had been intending to let the climax of the story build a little more slowly while I figured out what was going on, but given the amount I'm writing right now each day I realised that if I used the last day to tie up loose ends and finish the epilogue, spent the previous day on the climactic confrontation, that only left today to set up the climax.

So about 500 words in to today's episode everything shifts up a gear and the characters who were sitting around being witty and attempting to puzzle out what was going on now have to go deal with a situation RIGHT NOW.

I'm going to have to smooth that out a bit in the rewrite and build up the tension a bit more, but I don't have time to worry about that now.

This is one of the bits I find most difficult to write, when I know I have to get characters from A to C via B and have D, E and F occur along the way. I find it very mechanical, as opposed to when I can just point my characters in the general direction I want them to go and let them get there in their own sweet time, being witty and clever along the way. My main characters are such fun to write that it's like I'm not writing them at all, just running along behind them and taking notes.

One of the most memorable things I read about creating characters was by Dave Sim, back in the sane days. I forget the exact quote (yes, it was that memorable), though I'm sure someone can remind me, but the basic idea was that he reckoned that the mark of good characterisation was that you could lock your characters together in a closet for an issue and you'd still get an entertaining story. He eventually did something very like this in Cerebus #51 or #52 and proved his point. Now I know if I locked my two main characters in a closet they'd just start making out, but maybe if I tied them up...

Meanwhile, back at the novel I did finally work out who the villain was, and it wasn't who I had been setting up at all. And yet somehow it all makes sense and gives the thing a neat twist.

Word count now 45,675.

Day twenty five

Things are starting to get exciting now.

There was something about hitting 40,000 that felt like reaching the top of the hill. It had been a big struggle at times, and a lot of fun at others, but when you have reached that point then all you have left to do is something that you've already done four times over. I was still a little vague on a few minor plot points, like who the villain was and what they were up to, but these were just details.

The biggest worry left was really whether I was going to go over or under fifty thou. It felt like the amount of story left was pretty much on target, but it might take a sudden twist and all tie up a little early, in which case I knew there were plenty of places I had only roughly sketched in where I could go back and add description and detail, but I didn't really want to be doing that if I could help it.

Now I have just over five thousand words left and I don't see any danger of under-running. It was a bit of a slow start this morning and I did a bit of the epilogue, since that was more interesting than the next sequential scene, but I can now see I'll be hard pushed to get from here to there in five thou.

I think I might just pull this one off.

Day 22

Just zoomed past the 40,000 word mark. I'm still on schedule to finish November 29th.

Woohoo!

Playing with dolls

I have this theory that all these cool grown up computer games we play are really just a kind of virtual substitute for the toys we played with as kids. I mean obviously all these simulation games are thinly disguised train sets, but MMOG's are really just playing with dolls.

Ok, I'll call them action figures if you perfer, but we all know deep down that action figures are just the name some clever marketing guy came up with so that he could sell dolls to boys without the social stigma that would normally be associated with boys playing with dolls.

Hmm. Maybe we can hire the same guy to re-brand comics so it's acceptable for adults to be seen reading them.

Look at the evidence; the classic MMOG is a heroic fantasy with dragons and wizards and heroes with swords and all that. It's fantasy action figures on a stick.

But the real revelation comes with City of Heroes/Villains. You know what the most successful part of this game is? The bit that everyone comments on and which wins it awards? It's the character creator where you get to design your character and then play dress up with them, choosing your costume from hundreds of different styles and colours. As you progress through the game, there are milestone points where your level of success allows you to add another costume or a cape, or special effects. The whole reward system of the game is geared toward playing dress up with your virtual doll.

But that's probably why I like it so much.

The important things in life

You know when you watch some biographical movie or read a story of someone's life, do you ever wonder how much of the detail is made up? Like if they made a movie of your life, would they get your favourite mug right?

I wonder about stuff like that. When they get to make a movie of my life I think it's essential that when they deal with the period of writing my first great novel (look, this is a daydream, ok?) they should know that the timer on my computer that I use to set up 30 minute writing sessions has an alarm that I replaced the easy to miss and rather dull beep with the theme song to Pinky & the Brain. It's important that I have a little clock that sits on top of my monitor that is set to EST so that when I play online games I don't have to work out whether to add or subtract five hours whenever a time is mentioned. It's maybe less important that sitting on the corner of my monitor is a goth doll with one black plait and one red one, but she means a lot to me.

Things I don't understand

Write a diary of your attempt to scale the mountain of a 50,000 word novel in a month, and nobody comments, not to offer wishes of support or cheer you on your way, not even to say "this is boring, tell us more about Wonder Woman". Stop writing it and you get more comments than you've seen in the best part of a month put together saying no don't go.

Don't misunderstand, I like a bit of feedback at any time. Anyone who does a blog I read knows I read it because I regularly leave a comment, even if it doesn't really contribute anything. Except for Dave's Long Box, which doesn't need my patronage, since it gets more comments during the week when Dave is on vacation and not posting than I get in a month of daily wit and crit. Everyone needs a little support, and unless you are paying to read a blog that you enjoy then it seems only polite to say so now and again.

It's great to find that something I've written has been used in a classroom. But why wait till now to tell me? When I last posted I was going through a very difficult time with the novel and I was getting very depressed about it. The apparent indifference of anyone who read the blog just made me wonder why I was bothering.

So I took a break and didn't even look at the blog for a few days, and I come back and find a bunch of nice comments, so thanks for that.

Meanwhile, somehow the novel just about manages to keep on schedule. Day twenty, the word count is now at 34,374 and I'm in the middle of writing the big lesbian sex scene. Does it count as erotica if they fall out of bed?

Day fifteen

Halfway.

Decided to stop publishing my novel diary since no one is interested in it. I may or may not return to regular blogging once the novel is done.

Day thirteen

Twenty two thousand words in and I still don't know where the plot is going. Okay, I have a pretty good handle on the romantic plot, but the fighting-the-evil-scary-things plot just arrives in little scenes that will at some point blossom into a climax if I'm really lucky. Right now I have no idea who is doing what or why.

The funny thing is that the story does trundle along, occasionally giving me scenes that develop this mythical plot. In fact I've been really enjoying the whole story even though it now bears little resemblence to the one I started writing thirteen days ago.

Until this morning.

I knew I had to start moving the plot along at this point so I started writing without much of an idea where it was going. It wasn't really flowing, but I had a notion and pushed in that direction. But after a while I realised that I for the first time I was not comfortable with the direction the story was going. I don't know where it was taking me but I didn't want to go there. So even though I'd only written about 400 words I stopped. I was tempted to delete what I'd written and start over, but I didn't. Nano is all about the word count, and I could always delete it on the rewrite.

What the heck, if necessary I could take the day off and make it up later (I have faith in my ability to achieve wonders in a last minute panic). I was not going to write something I was not enjoying. So I went for a walk, did some shopping, visited the library, and generally tried not to think about my story.

By the time I got home I had found that the scene I'd written was not going in the direction I thought it was after all, and in fact led in an entirely different direction which didn't give me a bad feeling, so I wrote another 500 words. It wasn't a great 500 words but it moved the plot along a pace or two, and I didn't hate it.

Here's a little snippet from what I wrote yesterday:

“I think we should investigate.” Greta said. “See if we can find this secret passage.”

“Uh huh” Said Candy. “If I come, do I get a Scooby snack?” Funny how almost anything could be a double entendre when your head was in the right place. Greta flashed her a smile that said “Have I got a Scooby snack for you.” in letters of pink neon eight foot high.

It wasn’t until some time later when they had a few minutes alone that Greta explained her thinking.

“You see the thing about secret passages is that they are secret.”

“Also passages.” Said Candy with heavy sarcasm. Greta just smiled and waited for her to get it.

“What’s so… Oh. You mean secret as in nobody ever goes there, so two young ladies might get a little private time together, don’t you, my cunning little kitten?”

Current word count: 22,307

Day eleven

Yesterday I only managed a measly twelve hundred words which I had written in the morning. It was a most excellent twelve hundred words, but my daily minimum target is sixteen hundred and sixty six. Later in the day I sat down to write some more to bring up the total but my mind was blank. My Muse had switched the lights out, left the office, and wasn't taking my calls.

All I needed was a pathetic five hundred words. I could fill that much touching up some of the descriptive passages I had only roughly sketched in. And yet I ended up just staring blankly at the keyboard for about ten minutes, desultoraly playing City of Villains for half an hour, and then getting an early night.

So this morning I woke up with a tinge of panic, wondering what was going to happen next. Two thousand words later I've written some of the best stuff so far and blown straight through one of the most emotional scenes in the story. And yes, sorry, it's a kissing scene. It didn't start out that way but it has turned into what the kid in The Princess Bride would call a kissing book.

Having transcended its origins as a bit of Harry Potter snarkery, I find the fantastic elements of the story almost superfluous. I would have hated this story as a kid. It even has sports in it. I hate sports. One of the reasons I took to cable TV is because they stick the sports onto a whole separate channel where I can safely not watch it instead of having it unexpectedly pre-empt Star Trek with the same boring sports event that is showing on three other channels already.

Okay, so it is Kendo, which I'd be quite interested in trying myself. It's not like my protagonist has suddenly developed a love of football. I am not completely insane.

I also found time for some comics yesterday.

Infinite Crisis continues to fail to impress me. It feels like a trailer for six other comics. And Power Girl looks deformed, and no, not in a good way.

Polly and the Pirates continues to succeed in impressing me. I am still undecided whether the whole story is a dream sequence that started when she went to sleep near the end of issue #1. This issue contains hints that could take it either way. But I did notice an odd graphical quirk in Ted Naifeh's art - in a similar vein to Courtney Crumrin's lack of nose as a purely stylistic device, in Polly we find that none of the little girls have feet. This does not impinge on the story in any way, but were I to ever be in the position of speaking to him, my first question would be

"Courtney's nose. Polly's feet. What's that about, then?"

Word count so far: 19,653

Day Nine: I know you're out there because I can hear you breathing

I'm glad now that I chickened out of blogging the whole novel as I went along. The fact is that a lot of it is very rough, and I'm scattering mental post-it notes freely as I go along with instructions to polish up or rewrite all the crap bits to make them more interesting, more accurately detailed, and more fun.

Plus there's the whole business of suddenly requiring a character for the plot who needed to be introduced two chapters previously that is part of the whole novel writing process, but which would be a mite confusing to anyone reading the work in progress. At this stage also almost everyone has the same bland voice until suddenly you find that one of them is speaking with an irish lilt and another talks in a very precise, careful way and never uses contractions (always handy when you have a constant eye on the word counter).

And anyway, since nobody has commented in over a week I guess you don't really care about my novelling adventures, so I'm glad I saved myself the additional stress of placing my work in front of an audience that wasn't interested in supporting it.

I'll talk about Kate Bush instead.

I find with Kate's later albums that they take a while to grow on me. Hounds of Love is my favourite and the only one that doesn't seem flawed in some way, containing at least one song that comes across as amateurish on some level - usually because it has an interesting and unusual subject which she has written from the heart, based on some half-remembered experience and then not bothered to research in order to get the facts straight. See my piece on Babooshka for further information.

With that said, my first impression of the new double album Ariel is not great. There's one song whose chorus seems to consist of numbers rather than words, which is interesting and unusual. Do the numbers mean anything? I don't know. There's also what I think may be the first song I've ever heard about washing machines. A quite reasonable and underused metaphor in song, but once you are past the initial oddity, it seems to be just another love song with a peculiar central image.

Don't consider this a review, though. I haven't even listened to the second disk yet. Maybe it will grow on me.


Word count so far: 15,981

Day seven

Ran into a small problem yesterday when I realised that the calculation I'd used to set my minimum daily target was slightly out and that if I stuck to it I'd finish around December 4th. I was already panicking slightly as the story was slowly grinding to a halt for lack of plot.

And yet somehow it continues, and even starts to rise above its origins as an excuse to get snarky about the plot holes in Harry Potter. Although I am quite entertained to find that the character who was originally intended to be the class bully, the Draco Malfoy equivilent, is becoming a running gag so that whenever he catches our heroine alone, before he can do any bullying something dreadful happens to him. The first time they meet Candy punches him in the face and the second time she throws up on him. I'm so bad.

One of the laws of NaNoWriMo is that the first week goes great but by the second week the novelty has worn thin and it's tough to keep the momentum going. For me the opposite seems to be occuring. The first week was a drag, setting out the furniture and introducing the characters without much real inspiration bar the odd Potter dig, but as I hit Day Seven I am all excited about the first big fight scene which I should be tackling today, and which, if all goes well, should shoot my word count well ahead for the first time. We shall see.

In the meantime, here's a snippet from the unfolding adventure:

Candy’s face burned as she spluttered. “Is this really the time and place to enquire about my sex life?” Then she thought for a moment and did a quick sum in her head that went unicorns plus virgins equals...

“Um, okay, I can see it probably is in fact. So, um, no I haven’t actually…” TMI, she thought. To Much Information. No need to give it the Director's commentary. “Uh, yes I’m a virgin.” The word “technically” she left unspoken and decided that this was not the time to debate the specific shading of the term, and hoped that the unicorns weren’t too fussy.

Update: Completely stunned myself by writing three thousand words today, which puts me up to 12,501, and ahead of the minimum daily target for the first time so far. Go me!

Day five

The epic continues. Okay, so 50,000 words is hardly an epic, but it feels like it right now. Especially as I have narry a notion where the plot is going. On reflection I realise it was a lot more clever than I realised at the time to do a school story, since that gives me a ready made structure to work with.

It's still moving in a fairly dull, slow way. But there was a nice moment of sexual tension yesterday, so I have hopes that the two characters I wanted to get together won't need to be locked in a cupboard after all.

I'm surprised to see that some people have already completed the NaNoWriMo challenge and finished their 50,000 words in the first four days. I can't help feeling that they must be in the wrong place. NaNoWriMo is all about challenging yourself, and for anyone who can complete a month's work in four days, there's clearly not much of a challenge going on. It reminds me of when Scott Kurtz of PVP did the 24 hour comic challenge and used it simply to run up a bunch of strips of the webcomic he had been doing daily for two years. That's not setting yourself a task that will stretch you creatively, it's just getting ahead on deadlines.

Similarly I have to wonder about those who have already completed their NaNo novels. What are they going to do for the rest of the month, sit around and gloat? It's about personal challenge, and if the official challenge is not hard enough then maybe you should be finding a way to reset the bar to a point where it will be a challenge for you.

Not a lot in the way of Harry Potter snarkery lately, other than to make clear that british school dinners rarely resemble anything as tasty or nutritious as can be found at Hogwarts. Indeed, the Harry Potter deconstruction I'm doing for research makes me realise just what a complete fantasy even the most mundane aspects of his school are. Not to mention the pupils we follow through their teenage years who never watch TV, play video games, or think about sex.

It did also come up with a Potter pun of resounding awfulness that I shall share with you now:

"Oh yes,"” The mermaid was saying, "We also have a most popular sport where I come from. It is played underwater, of course, and we have sea creatures instead of balls. We call it Squiddich."

Day three

In order to get 50,000 words in thirty days I need to average a minimum of 1,500 per day so as I said before I've been aiming for 2,000 to give me a little leeway to allow for little disasters like the power going out when water leaks through my kitchen ceiling and gets into the light circuit, leaving me in the dark. Which was what happened yesterday.

I haven't quite hit the 2,000 words in one day, yet. But it's still chugging along. Nothing particularly witty appeared today or yesterday that I feel like sharing, but bits of plot happened that needed to occur and just about everyone of any interest has now been introduced, one way or another. Frankly it's been very dull, but I'm hoping something interesting will occur soon.

My novel: Day One

I can't believe I actually started it. After several weeks of having my head so stuffed full of half finished but contradictory plans and ideas I reached the point where I thought it might explode, so I went and played City of Villains solidly for 3 days, ending in an unexpected all-nighter to get my newly created Gothic fun Barbie character, Necro Sis up to level 7. I just couldn't resist making a character decked out in shocking pink skulls. And it goes so well with the Cyborg Fun Barbie I did for City of Heroes.

Anyhow, so I was in the frame of mind for writing a novel when I woke up that is akin to waking up on the day of your exams to realise that the night before instead of studying for the exam you went out partying in a little premature celebration. This did not seem a good way to start.

And yet somehow I dragged myself up to the keyboard and start writing. I saved myself the pain of attempting to create a witty and possibly profound opening by starting with Chapter Two. I'll get around to doing the first chapter later. Or not. It may be complete rubbish, but I managed 1,500 words, and I plan to have another go later and try to knock it up to 2,000. I reckon if I aim for 2,000 a day then I stand a good chance of reaching 50,000 by the end of the month even allowing for moderate disasters.

Here's a sample of the story in progress.

“Platform eleven and four ninths? What the hell do they mean, platform eleven and four ninths? That’s just stupid.”

Candy looked around to see if she could catch sight of a platform sign that included fractions, and was contemplating asking someone why the station wasn’t in decimal, but then she looked again and realised that it wasn’t platform eleven and four ninths, it was platform eleven on the fourth of the ninth. Today. Phew. She had narrowly avoided making herself look like a complete tool. She stuffed the letter back in her pocket and rebalanced her bags and moved on, looking around for the platform numbers. The one ahead was nine, so she was going in the right direction after all.

. . .

The letter had specified a school uniform. The only place to buy this uniform, along with a list of very odd supplies that she was required to bring, including some text books with the oddest titles, like “Woggart’s History of Illusionary Species” and “Old Fimble’s Introduction to Alchemical Grammar” seemed to be some obscure part of London. Candy had looked it up on her A – Z but it didn’t seem to be listed. In the end she’d managed to get most of the stuff on ebay.

Only another 48,500 words to go.

Nobody home

Regular readers will notice the lack of anything regular to read lately. I know I said that posts might be few and far between during November as I am supposed to be writing my novel then, but my head has been so full of it lately that I haven't had much time to think about a lot else.

For those that are interested the current title is Candy Frankenstein and the Ordinary Phoenix and it's kind of vaguely along the lines of what might happen if Tim Burton directed a transgendered version of Harry Potter. Originally it started as something quite different but after several weeks of carefully plotting out scenes I realised I had only the first half of the story worked out and I had two other competing ideas for novels and I couldn't decide which. The current version is sort of a hybrid of various ideas but with very little in the way of planning other than a couple of interesting characters and an intention to get very snarky about Potterworld. And a lesbian love affair, of course.

How stupid is Superman?

When Wonder Woman gives up her powers in 1967 she goes to the Justice League to resign, and to tell them about a murder they might be interested in that she noticed along the way that implicates Green Arrow, but Superman is more concerned about how a civilian got into JLA headquarters. No wonder he thinks that putting on a pair of glasses is going to fool everyone when he can't recognise an old friend and colleague when she's not wearing her tiara.

Or maybe he just hasn't been looking at her face enough.

The Real Amazons: Hercules wasn't so bad

One of the things that's always bugged me about the silver age origin of Wonder Woman is the role of Hercules. First he is the villain that causes all the troubles for the Amazons, and yet later he becomes a benefactor and gifts Diana with great strength.

This inconsistancy is never addressed in the comic when in fact a little closer adherance to the myth on which it is based would resolve the situation quite nicely. In greek myth one of the twelve tasks of Herakles (1) was to get the girdle (2) of Hippolyta (3) for Admeta, the daughter of king Eurystheus. The girdle was a gift from Ares (4) that signified her authority as queen of the Amazons.

When Hercules arrives the Amazons greet him warmly and Hippolyta comes to his ship to greet him. Upon hearing his request, she agrees to let him take the girdle. Hera (5), however, is not pleased that he is getting off so easy. To stop him, Hera disguises herself as an Amazon and runs through the land, crying that Hercules intends to kidnap their queen. The Amazons charge toward the ship to save Hippolyta. Fearing that Hippolyta has betrayed him, Hercules takes the girdle and escapes. Some versions say he slays Hippolyta, but other myths take up her story beyond this point. Either way, it is here that the Wonder Woman version departs from its myth basis, as in no version does Hercules defeat the amazons in battle or enslave them.

But if the encounter with Hercules is based a little more closely on the mythic version he becomes much less of an aggressor, and the conflict between him and the Amazons becomes a tragic misunderstanding set up by mean old Hera. In this situation it makes sense that once he found out, Hercules would feel tremendous guilt for the trouble he had caused the Amazons, and it would be perfectly reasonable for him to bless the baby Diana. A shame the writers of Wonder Woman never researched the myths the story is based on enough to actually make sense of it.

Notes
1. the greek name for Hercules.
2. a sort of belt
3. note that the accepted symbolism of taking a woman's belt meant to have sex with her
4. Ares/Mars was the Amazons' patron in myth
5. Hercules' stepmother