The truth revealed

Earlier in the week I posed a question about a Strange Tales cover. I can now reveal an artist's recreation of what this cover probably looked like. We may never know for sure.

Batman's double standards

There was this story in JLA a few years ago (I'm sure someone can provide issue numbers, I only read this in a borrowed collection) in which the Bat-computer is hacked by Ra's Al Ghul and he steals the contingency plans the ever prepared Batman had put in place in case any or all of his super powered buddies went bad and he had to take them down.

It's a decent story and of course our heroes win the day. They are a little uncomfortable with Batman for preparing for this kind of eventuality, but they can't escape the hard fact that it's a reasonable thing to do given how often they are individually or collectively brainwashed, possessed, replaced with evil duplicates, and all the other problems with which superhero life is fraught. None of them suggest that the security on the Bat-computer needs a little upgrading.

Something like a year later, after Batman has spitefully kicked out Steph for doing not only what any other Robin would do but I'm 95% certain has done in similar circumstances, she tries to prove herself to him by hacking the Bat-computer and using one of his plans. It's an incredibly clumsy plot constructed purely to make Steph The Flawed Hero Who Must Give Her Life to Atone for the Mistake She Made. I saw where this was going in the first issue and couldn't bring myself to follow it to the end. But I'm betting nobody suggested that Batman upgrade the security on the Bat-computer.

And then we come to the OMAC project. Batman comes up with a new scheme for defending against his super-buddies on the off chance they go bad. Can you possibly make a wild guess what happens? Yes, one more time someone hacks the bloody Bat-computer and steals these most top secret and dangerous plans, reprograms the OMAC control system, and uses it to kill a lot of people.

Batman surely has some responsibility here? Isn't he in the same position as Steph, only with a higher body count? How come Brucey doesn't get to sacrifice himself nobly to atone for his mistake? But no, you see Batman doesn't even acknowledge he has done a thing wrong. In fact he manages to get on his high horse and be disgusted with Wonder Woman for killing Max when she is given no alternative, even while the fruits of his criminal negligence are killing people by the thousand.

Nobody even suggests that his clever schemes (and doesn't anyone think that a plan that involves converting innocent bystanders into cannon fodder is fundamentally flawed?) have caused far more damage than the potential dangers they were designed to guard against, or that maybe it's time he stopped trying to think of ways to hurt his friends, or if he really must do so, he write these plans down in a notebook and keep it in a big safe at the bottom of the Batcave, rather than publishing them on the internet.

Losing Faith

I remember when I was a kid and I really honestly believed it the first couple of times I read a story in which a major comic book character died. There was one time I spent weeks puzzling over why Superman's death (no, not The Death of Superman, another one) hadn't seemed to have caused any repercussions in other comics, and was quite relieved to find everything set right in the second half of the two-parter.

As I read more comics it became apparent that hero death was a regular occurance and not to be taken too seriously. With big-name characters like Batman or Superman it was either a fake out, or at worst an "event" (yes, I do mean The Death of Superman this time). In some ways it felt a bit of a cheat, but I realise now that deep down it was very reassuring to know that however bad things looked, my heroes would always come through, somehow.

It's not like that now. Sure, the iconic name brands are untouchable, but Wonder Woman hasn't been able to hold a supporting cast since before Crisis (the first one), Batman's been largely unreadable for years, and Superman gets retconned so often that I have no idea what Krypton is now supposed to have looked like or whether Kandor is currently only available in bottled form.

And gods help you if you are a B list character. You can vanish from history with a lame explanation, or none at all, and nobody even notices when you are replaced a month later by someone else with the same name. Or you can be built up for a couple of months so that readers will care more when you become the sacrificial goat to make an "event" more... Meanspirited? Depressing? I don't know what the hell the point of that is.

At least once you hit the C list they just use you as dramatic cannon-fodder to show how evil the villains are. Your death may be brutal and violent, but it's usually quick.

So when I read Robin #150 I wasn't excited; I just felt a little nauseous and depressed. It may be, as Kalinara suggests, a misdirection, and Cassandra may yet be saved. But DC already cancelled her comic and they have a new Batwoman all lined up and ready to roll. So I have no deep down tingle of anticipation over how Batgirl is going to get out of this one. No expectation that the clever writer is going to resolve the impossible situation with a surprise twist that I should have seen coming. No faith in DC any more to give me a happy ending.

It's times like this I wonder if maybe I've grown out of comics.

The final Loebotomy/Cir-El's Last Stand

I stopped commenting on Jeph Loeb's work in Superman/Batman some months ago. Time was he could be at least relied on to do something to fire me up with a good rant, but the final storyline of the series was so lame and so much one more dip into his tired old bag of tricks that there was nothing of interest to say. I hadn't even looked at the last couple of issues.

And then I heard he had brought back Cir-El. My delight at the prospect of seeing the lost Supergirl appear in a DC comic, even just for a cameo, was tempered by a degree of anger toward big Jeph. In all the Supergirl stories he had written to date, any mention of Cir-El and Linda was significantly absent, even where it beggered belief that someone among those present never brought up any previous wearers of the cape.

So why now? Especially given that even though neither even appeared for two panels in Infinite Crisis so that they could get their heads ripped off or something, the word has come down from on high that neither are now in continuity.

Why? Because Jeph wanted to fill his last big Bats/Supes story with all the possible versions of his main characters as he could think of, and that included all the available Supergirls.

In fact Cir-El and Linda get three lines apiece (one each of which is "Ouch"), no characterisation or even explanation of how they got there or where they came from. But then given the characterisation of what appears to be some kind of moronic analogue of silver-age Supergirl from Earth-Stupid, I don't really mind so much.

Oh, and one last thing. I know you had a lot of them to stuff into these issues, McGuinness, but if you are going to do fan favourite cameos, you might take the trouble to get the costumes correct.

And that's my last bit of bile for Jeph Loeb. He's off to ruin some comics I don't read so I'll leave it to the Marvel fans to take up the venom.

Lost and forgotten

Cerisa Tempest is updating the infamous Women in Refrigerators list and I notice that there's one name that didn't make it to the original list and isn't on the new list either.

Okay, look I know she was badly written, had a horrible costume, and nobody liked her, but she had one of the most unfair, pathetic superhero deaths ever, and it feels like the writing her out of continuity was been so thorough that not even the readers remember her.

She may only have been the one between the Peter David one and the skinny one, but she was still Supergirl.

Super self-parody

A friend of mine brought me this back from the UK comic convention in Bristol this weekend. Proof, if any were needed, that Ian Churchill draws Supergirl like a stick figure.

Clea Must...?

The other day I was looking at some old comics on the wall of a store and they must have been a bit stuck for space because the comics were overlapped so you could only see the left hand side of many of them.

My eye was caught by the cover to Strange Tales #154 and I was intruiged. What was it that Clea must do?

Okay, anyone who has ever read a Marvel comic in their entire life knows where this headline goes, but just suspend your disbelief for a moment and tell me what it is you think that Clea must do here.

Samplers should be good

Let's be honest, Free Comic Book Day is essentially seen by publishers as a promotional tool. It's a chance to get their product seen by a lot of people who would not normaly look at it.

Which is fine. I heartily approve of enlightened self-interest. Everyone wins.

Anyhow, so most of the stuff that I came home with last Saturday was samples intended to persuade me to read comics I didn't know. Now if I was head honcho of a comic publisher I'd ensure that my sample comic contained the best stuff I could find that would engage the interest of anyone who read it and bring them back for more. Judging by some of the comics in my pile either I am out of step with current strategy, or the rest of the stuff they publish must be real dreck.

Case in point being Arcana Studio Presents; a sampler of scenes from three ongoing titles. Kade had some interesting painted technique but looked just like a zillion other fantasy comics and I haven't worked up the energy to read it yet. Big muscley hero fights firey demon. Gag me with a spoon.

Second up was Ezra, generic fantasy heroine whose most interesting aspect is her inability to ever stop talking, regardless of whether her audience is composed of thugs, woodland creatures, or nobody at all. She tells the thugs her life story inbetween beating them up. She tells a racoon much of the same story a page later. She chats for a page to an empty woodland. I'm almost tempted to pick up this comic to find out whether this is a deliberate character trait or just terrible writing.

Finally we have 100 Girls. I have no idea what 100 Girls is about but I don't think this sample was much of a help as it was entirely about a bad man who stumbles around in some wreckage and then dies. There was some mention of a girl with super powers but since she only appears for one panel in flashback, I have no clue whether she is any more important to the comic this is supposed to be encouraging me to buy than the bad dead man.

Marvel kind of did okay. I don't know whether the Runaways/X-Men 11 pager is a reprint or unique to this comic, but it is a nice self-contained little story that I liked a lot. On the strength of this I could well be persuaded to give Runaways a try. The rest of the comic wasn't so hot. A Franklin Richards story that didn't really do anything for me, what appeared to be half a random fight scene from an Avengers variation I wasn't familiar with, and a lengthy text synopsis of Ultimate Spider-Man that made it sound so hideously convoluted that it put me off ever looking at it. Personally I'm holding out for Penultimate Spider-Man.

As for DC... On the plus side I really like the Justice League Unlimited comic. On the minus side I fail to comprehend the logic of promoting this comic when it's just been cancelled.

Archie Comics were one of the few to produce something entirely original, and although it would be easy to pick holes in the quality of this offering, it's more fun to experience it through Scipio's eyes.

More to come...

The problem with Sluggy

There's a web comic I've been reading for several years now, although it's been very off and on lately. In fact I stopped reading it altogether for three months.

It's called Sluggy Freelance and the problem is that it takes itself way too seriously. The comic started out as a gag strip revolving around a small group of people: Torg; the everyman figure, Biff; the mad scientist (but cool with it), Zoe; the hot babe, Gwynne; the plain one who is also a witch, Bun-Bun; the psycopathic rabbit, and Kiki; braindead ferret. They would fall into other dimensions, fight elves, vampires, and demon kittens, parody pop culture favourites like Star Trek and Harry Potter, and generally have a lot of fun in stories that ran for a few weeks.

And then along the way creator Pete Abrams started moving away from daily gag strips with continuity to epic graphic novels puplished at the rate of 4 panels a day. And even though the stories took a much more seriously dramatic turn, they still dragged along all the gag baggage. You can't do a serious dramatic story where characters struggle with pain and loss and fill it with demons with silly names from the "Dimension of Lame".

And because individual storylines might only feature a couple of the regular cast and drag on for the best part of a year, it becomes hard to keep track of what is going on. The final straw was the science ficton epic "Oceans Unmoving" which only featured Bun-Bun of the main cast, and had a hideously complicated plot involving timeless space that ran for 13 months, broken only by 3 week digression into Harry Potter parody. Abrams tried desperately to keep this behemoth moving along by producing a prodigious amount of comics each day, but that didn't stop it being a big complicated graphic novel chopped up into small pieces and spread out over such a long period of time that you needed to keep going back and rereading all the previous bits to make any sense of it. It was totally the wrong format for the story, and Abrams freely admitted it had got out of hand.

A month or so into this storyline I stopped reading the comic daily and just caught up about once a week in hopes of the story making sense, but to be honest I wasn't that interested in it. It was a clever concept, but it just went on and on. I wasn't very interested in most of the newly introduced characters and I really lost track of what it was about. I wanted to see Biff blow stuff up, Gwynne get all witchy, Zoe make cutting remarks and slap people, and Kiki go "ooh, shiny!". Eventually I stopped reading it altogether.

It was several weeks after the story finished before I even noticed. At first it seemed like things were back to the way they used to be, albeit with some more serious characterisation under the humour. But within a couple of weeks we were off on what first appeared to be a short digression road trip with added ninjas but which has just turned into 3 weeks of soul searching as Torg confronts his feelings for Zoe. Okay, the shadow puppet imagery was cool, but three weeks of it? And when we find that one of Torg's fears is that Oasis will show up and kill Zoe, I was surprised. I mean if she were really out to get Zoe, surely she would have turned up sometime in the last four years?

It's evident that Abrams has moved beyond the format of a daily gag strip, but that is what he is working with and it's an unhappy compromise. And he seems unable to dispense with the broad humour, using it as a crutch even while it is undermining the more serious things he is trying to do. It is not impossible to mix drama and humour. Just look at Girl Genius, for example. But what's going on in Sluggy is sometimes as effective as putting fart jokes in Hamlet. Any laughs it generates are at the expense of the dramatic tension he is trying to create.

I am all for creators pushing their limits, and I am not in any way suggesting that Sluggy should return to some arbitary "good old days". I just wish that Abrams would make a decision and either find a way to do the big graphic novels he wants to, or do a gag strip with limited continuity and puns. Both at the same time is not working, and it hasn't been working for a long time now.

Eggs and bunnies

The lunar month around the month of April in the Julian calendar was called the Eostre-monath. And as the Christian tradition of Easter, which has also fallen in April, arrived in some Germanic-speaking regions, the people named the then-unnamed Christian day after the festival, that is, in English as Easter, and in German as Ostern.

In ancient Anglo-Saxon myth, the goddess Eostre (AKA Ostara) is the personification of the rising sun. In that capacity she is associated with the spring and is considered to be a fertility goddess. She is the friend of all children and to amuse then she changed her pet bird into a rabbit. This rabbit brought forth brightly colored eggs, which the goddess gave to the children as gifts.

Happy Eostre everyone!

My first comic

apparently it's First Comic Week so I'm trying to remember back that far. To be fair it's almost certain that the first comics I read were british, but the majority of people reading this wouldn't have heard of them even if I could remember what they were called, so I'll keep it to the first american comics I encountered.

I don't know how old I was, but it was at a point before I could read when I came across a stash of comics belonging to (I think) a relative. I don't really remember the details, but I was attracted to the colourful and exciting pictures, which were so much more dynamic than anything available locally. One of the comics here may have been Action Comics #324. I couldn't say for certain, but it's the earliest comic I remember.

There was something about Supergirl growing horns and becoming evil that stuck with me. That and the issue of Wonder Woman where she grows to giant size and eats a big pizza. If I had an analyst they'd have a field day.

Is it any wonder why I have a thing for silver age DC?

Power Girl's Phantom Pregnancy

eu·phe·mism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (yf-mzm)
n.

The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive: “Euphemisms such as ‘slumber room’... abound in the funeral business” (Jessica Mitford).

In comics (and other pop culture media) we often see a kind of symbolic euphemism; on the good side, allegory is used to address emotive issues by giving them a fantastic context, for example a racial issue might be played out amongst different shaped/coloured alien beings. On the bad side this is used to sugar coat unpleasant things to make them acceptable, thus robots are often used as antagonists that can be safely torn to pieces without any moral questions raised, and female characters can be made pregnant against their will without all the unpleasantness of having them raped.

When Power Girl announces that she thinks she's pregnant in Justice League International #52 it's a bit of a surprise, not least to her.
Over the next year there is very little visible sign of Power Girl's pregnancy (although it's a little hard to tell at times given how dreadful the art gets on occaision) and she continues to wear the same ghastly spandex outfit and get into fights. And then suddenly between JLI #67 (August 94) and Zero Hour #3 (Sept 94) she swells up like a beach ball having an alergic reaction and changes into a polo neck sweater.

Everyone else runs around and hits stuff, and Wonder Woman gets to tell Captain Atom to piss off while she delivers the baby. The only things wrong with this scene being that Diana grew up on an island that had zero population growth and has no experience of dealing with a birth, while Captain Atom explains that he helped deliver his own two children. You'd think she might at least think to get Karen a cushion or something, but the only pictures we see of her between this point and after the birth show her flat on her back on what appears to be a hard shiny floor, with no support of any kind.

And the next we see of her, the baby is born and all the messy stuff has been cleaned up. In fact she only appears for two small panels in the last issue of Zero Hour, and by the time we see her again in the following month's JLA #93 she has regained her figure and the child looks about a year old. The plot then kicks into gear as we meet the villain of this story and Arion shows up and explains that he was responsible for getting Karen up the duff. And I don't care how noble his cause was, or what mystical euphemism is used, getting your granddaughter pregnant without her consent is not okay, and the way it is treated here is pure misogyny (as is most of the storyline, for that matter).

Even under all the fantasy bullshit they can't get away from admitting that Karen has basically been raped by her own grandfather, so they just gloss over it as fast as possible and get back to the fighting.

In fact it gets worse. By the climax of the storyline it is revealed that Karen's entire life has been orchestrated purely to produce Arion's "mystical great grandson". Until this point she has had no true free will as she had simply been programmed for this purpose, her whole life directed by Arion and his mystics.
It is an utterly repellent and misogynistic storyline, written entirely by Gerard Jones (except for the few brief panels in Zero Hour), and in no way enhanced by a variety of terrible artists. I gather it had been written out of continuity even before Crisis 2 erased the whole Arion aspect of Power Girl's backstory. But brushing it under the carpet doesn't mean DC can pretend it never happened.

Arbitary anniversary moment

Although I didn't start this blog until August, as of today I have been blogging for one year. I used to hang out on a comics based message board called Z-Cult FM, and every so often I would go off on a rant or write some lengthy essay about Wonder Woman's boots or like that. When the Cult set up a blog system of its own I thought I could use it to collate and archive all this stuff I was writing because I was quite pleased with some of it and didn't want it just disappear, not to mention all the time and effort I'd put in to researching stuff.

Don't worry, you're not missing anything. I reposted anything worth reposting here.

Anyhow, I was pleased with the result, but found that even though plenty of people were reading it, I hardly ever got a response, where the same thing written in one of the forums might prompt several pages of discussion. I started looking around for a way to find a larger and more responsive audience, and it was then that I stumbled across this little corner of the blogosphere. I forget the exact details, but I think I followed Sleestak. He had been running a version of the wonderful Lady, That's My Skull at Z-Cult, but soon filled up his allowance for pictures there and so started the Blogger version. At least I'm assuming this was how it happened, I'm sure Slee can correct me if I'm mistaken.

It was then I discovered some of my favourite blogs, like The Absorbascon and Dave's Long Box, which I still read regularly, and decided to set out my own stall here. Hard to believe after all this time I still haven't finished reading Wonder Woman v1. I really must get back to that sometime.

Life imitates art. Or not

I don't usually post about the real world because I find it too strange and scary, but I couldn't resist commenting on this:

I was reading this news report about an airplane sighted over Daytona beach towing a black banner with words written in white: "6/6/06 You have been warned". The report goes on to detail the reaction of Terica Washington who saw it and called the FBI.

"I thought it might be terrorists," she said.

Yes, Terica. That's just the kind of despicable thing terrorists would do. Fly banners in the sky announcing the date of their next attack. Next thing you know they'll be sending cryptic clues to the police commissioner. But don't worry honey, you know Batman always solves the puzzle in time and foils their dastardly plot.

Valerian page 9

It's been a while, but here we go again.

L: Tu es gentil de me avoir achetée… smack… Tu sais elle marche!

You are nice to have bought it for me... smack... You know it [walks]!

I can’t work out what marche means here. Nothing I’ve found fits the context.

V: Bah… Frais de mission! Allons voir lā-bas cet attroupement!

Bah... Mission expenses! Let us see over there this crowd!

V: Que se passé-t-il?

What [last it]?

I couldn’t find any kind of translation for passé-t-il that made sense here. Obviously in context Laureline is saying something like “What is it?” but it would be nice to know what she’s actually saying.

Merchant: C’est la première fois que vous venez sur Syrte? Alors regardez bien… Voici l’un des plus célèbres connoisseurs qui, aujourd’hui, accepte de repondre aux questions…

It is the first time that you come to Syrte? Then look at well... Here one of the most famous Adepts who, today, agrees to answer questions...

M: …Tenez, un riche marchand de la planète Flugil vient le consulter.

Hold, a rich merchant of the planet Flugil comes to consult him

Merchant2: Puissant connaisseur! J’invoque de ta magnanimité une réponse ā cette question: vais-je vivre assez vieux pour voir prospérer mon commerce jusqu’ā ce qu’il soit le plus important dans le domaine qui est le mien?

Powerful Adept! I call upon your magnanimity to answer this question: will I live long enough to see my trade thrive through what it is most significant in the field which is mine?

Hmm. That last bit seems a bit mangled.

Caption: Dans le silence de la foule attentive, c’est une voix assourdie, mais aux résonances profondes qui s’impose bientôt

In the silence of the attentive crowd, it is a deafening voice, but with major resonances which is essential soon

S’impose has me confused here.

Adept: Ma réponse est la suivante marchand, tu vas mourir dans cent jours… Rentre sur ta planète si tu veux metre de l’ordre dans tes affaires car ta maladie.. !!

My answer is as follows, merchant, you will die in hundred days... Return to your planet if you want meter of the order in your business because your disease.!!

I assume there’s a colloquial expression I’m missing here.

Caption: Soudain, ā la surprise générale, le connaisseur s’interrompt et…

Suddenly, to general surprise, the Adept stops and...

Adept: Jeune fille! Approche!

Girl! Approach!

Crowd1: Que se passé-t-il?

That annoying passé-t-il again.

Crowd2: Jamais les connoisseurs ne parlent d’eux-mêmes ā des gens du people…

The Adepts never speak to the common people...

Confusion here over ā. It doesn’t seem to be listed at all in the main dictionaries I’m using, and in at least one case (jusqu’ā) it should have been à. Can someone explain what is going on here?

Adept: Approche!!

L: Qui ça … Moi?!

Who, me?

Adept: Oui toi! Oū as-tu trouvé cet objet?

Yes you! Where did you find this object?

That accent again. It has to be où (where) because the only alternative seems to be ou (or).

L: Mais… Mais ici! Je viens de l’acheter au marché parce qu’il me plaisait et…

But... But right here! I just bought it at the market because I liked it and...

Adept: Ā quoi sert oe … Bijou?

What use is it? A jewel?

L: à donner l’heure voyons! Il n’y a rien d’extraordinaire à ça!

For telling the time! There is nothing extraordinary with that!

Caption: Ā ces paroles, la foule s’esclaffe autour de Laureline cependant que, sans un mot de plus, le connaisseur se détourne pour rentrer précipitamment au palais…

with these words, the crowd bursts out laughing around Laureline while, without a word, the Adept hurriedly turns away and returns to the palace...

L: Enfin, qu’est-ce que j’ai dit?

What did I say?

V: Tais toi et felons d’ici! Nous avons dû faire une gaffe, mais j’ignore laquelle.

Be quiet and let’s get out of here! We’ve screwed up, but I’m not sure how.

Crowd1: Donner l’heure ah! Ah! Ah!

For telling the time ah! Ah! Ah

Crowd2: Cette fille est folle…

This girl is insane...

Crowd3: Le connaisseur a été blessé par son impertinence, vous avez vu? Il part…

Was the expert offended by her insolence, do you think? He leaves...

I think we are getting the general sense of what's going on here but there are those few odd words and phrases that have me completely stumped. Thoughts, anyone?

Jealous, much?

You know, sometimes I wonder about these two.

Oh no! Jimmy's got all those girls after him. I must rescue him!

Kara's incredible Super-Skirt

One thing that's puzzled me since the new Supergirl first appeared in costume is how she manages to keep her skirt from flying up and giving us a flash of her super knickers.

The thing is that it is a short skirt. A very short skirt. As drawn by Micheal Turner and Ian Churchill it barely covers her bottom anyway, and it is a loose pleated design. And yet it remains modestly glued to as much of her ass as it ever covers even when her cape is cheerfully being blown upwards.

Now I know there is a long tradition of superhero underwear defying physics, generally in the whole area of not getting destroyed. They should build tanks out of the material Bruce Banner uses for pants - it might turn them purple but this would be a small price to pay for something that could withstand the direct blast of an atom bomb.

But I digress. The difference is that not only are these panties are intended to be seen, but they are often clearly visible to people around her. Any cheerleader can tell you that there's a difference between what you wear while doing cartwheels in a short skirt in front of 100,000 people and underwear that you don't plan to share with an audience. Silver age Supergirl was flashing her panties all the time - particularly after she started trying out different costume designs in the 70's.

They were usually blue, if you're interested.

When it was just Turner and Churchill it might be a personal choice of the artist, but now Supergirl is all over the DC universe and being drawn by many different artists. They may not be able to agree on what age she is supposed to be, but the skirt remains stapled to her thighs, so I can only assume it's an editorial decision.

So the question is if the sight of a bikini bottom is so terrifying, why permit this costume design in the first place? Why have this absurd situation where the art has to be carefully arranged so reader can't see the super thong even though characters in the comics are constantly getting an eyeful? Why not give her some shorts like Stargirl? Why not give her any other damn costume design but one where you have to keep coyly hiding bits of it that are clearly visible to anyone behind/below her?

Gah.

Hal's Head 2: It's genetic

There's been a lot of speculation about Hal Jordan's legendary clumsiness, but my own researches reveal that it may well be hereditary. In GL #14 Hal's brother Jim gets control of the ring and what happens? The first thing he does is knock himself out, as explained here by his girlfriend Sue Williams, AKA Exposition Girl.

The Valerian project (5)

Page 8

…Valerian et Laureline quitient sans encombre l’astroport et se dirigent, mêlés ā d’autres voyageurs, vers la capitale.

... Valerian and Laureline leave the spaceport unnoticed and blend in with other travellers moving towards the capital.

Hang on a sec. Didn't it just say that they landed far away from the spaceport? If it was supposed to mean that they materialised far away and then flew to the spaceport and landed there it's a bit vague. Or did it mean to say that they materialised at an isolated part of the spaceport? That would make more sense. Though if they are supposed to be doing covert reconnaisence, landing at the main spaceport in a craft hugely more advanced than anything else there and then wandering around in their uniforms seems a bit lacking in subtlety to me.

Tout se passé bien pour le moment!

All [se passé] good for the moment!

There are half a dozen meanings of se passé and none of them seem to fit well. Any ideas? From the context I'd guess the meaning of the line would probably be the equivilent of

So far, so good!

Oui… Pas de surprise… La plupart des races sont humanoids, nous pourrons nous perdre dans la foule!

Yes... No great surprise there... The majority of the races are humanoid, so we should be able to lose ourselves in the crowd!

V: Heureusement que l’on rencontre tous les accoutrements possibles! Nous passons inaperçus…

V: Luckily that one meets all the possible getups! We pass unnoticed..

Yeah, I know that line is ugly. I'm still working on it.

L: Quel merveilleux marché! Tiens, l’allée des orfèvres! Allons jeter un coup d’oeil…

L: What a marvellous market! Wait, an alley of goldsmiths! Let's take a quick look...

L: J’ai de l’or sur moi et j’ai vu que c’était une monnaie acceptée ici!

L: I've got some gold and I noticed it was an acceptable currency here!

I'm slightly bemused by all the exclamation points. I know this dates from the early seventies but it's almost reached the stage of "I made a cup of tea!" I can't wait to find out how they denote when someone is really excited/alarmed about something. And isn't it a bit late in the day for them to be working out what is acceptable currency?

V: Oh écoute! Tu ne vas pas commencer ā acheter des tas de choses hein! …enfin

V: Now listen here! Don't you go buying heaps of things!

L: Brrr… Tous ces bijoux qu’on se fixe sur la peau sont superbes, mais je n’ai guère envie de me promener avec ces bestioles sur moi…

L: Brrr... These jewels that you set on the skin are amazing. But I don't like the idea of walking around with little creatures stuck to me...

Would it be stretching it too far to just call them 'skin jewels' here? That first sentence reads so clunky. Does it read so unlike natural dialogue in the french? And if it does, is it appropriate for me to translate it more naturalistically? Should I be improving on the original script, or be doing my best to preserve its faults?

L: Oh Valérian regarde!

L: Oh look, Valérian!

L: Une montre… Elle a l’air tres ancienne avec ces jolies decorations.

L: A watch... These decorations are pretty but it looks so old.

V: Oui… Curieux… On en voit de presque semblables au musée préatomique de Galaxity. Alors, elle te plaît?

V: Yes... Curious... It looks a lot like one I saw in the Galaxity preatomic museum. You like it?

Oh, you just know this is going to be trouble...

The Valerian translation project (4)

So far I've been translating connaisseurs as experts, which is quite reasonable but I don't think it really gives them the kind of identity the context calls for, since it fails to convey any sense that this group is supposed to be mysterious and powerful. After consulting my thesaurus I decided that adepts might be more appropriate. It's still (just about) a valid translation but conveys an undertone of mysticism in english that seems to fit, however I just discovered that there is an excellent and comprehensive entry on Valerian in Wikipedia and the part about this volume calls these guys Authorities. Now I don't know what to call them.

Page 7.

Laureline: Tu peux enregistrer, c'est prêt!

You can record. It's ready.

Valerian: Bien! Salut les enfants! ici Valérian appariel XB982 parti le 23/9/2720 de Galaxity pour le système Syrtien...

Good! Hello children! Valérian here, XB982 left the Galaxity as of 23/9/2720 under way for the Syrtien system...

So it's Valérian after all. No accent on the book covers though. And "Hello children"? Is Valerian being facetious here or is there another possible translation of enfants?

V: Rapport oral numéro quatre. Nous sommes maintenant ā proximité de Syrte et avons récupéré les dernières sondes automatiques terriennes qui ont précédé notre exploration. Les enregistrements du langage syrtien nous ont permis d'apprendre la langue courante sous mémoriseur comme prévu. Nous nous préparons ā effectuer le dernier saut spatio-temporel pour débarquer sur l'astroport de Syrte. Rien de particulier ā signaler pour le moment _ Terminé.

Oral report number four. We are now in the vicinity of Syrte and have recovered the last of the advance probes. The recordings of the syrtian language have enabled us to learn the current language with the memoriser as planned. We are now preparing to make the final space-time jump to Syrte starport. Nothing special to report so far _ report ends.

L: Curieuse impression… Dire que nous allons entrer en contact avec la première grande civilisation dans laquelle la terre n’a joué aucun rôle! Crois-tu qu’il y ait vraiment du danger?

How strange... To think that we will come into contact with the first great civilization which had nothing to do with Earth! Do you believe that there is really danger?

V:Mmm… Je n’en sais trop rien, Laureline! Et puis nous ne sommes que de simples agents du service spatio-temporel. Ce qui compte c’est de savoir si Syrte est dangereuse pour la Terre, ou si elle peut le devenir...

Mmm... I don't know if there's anything to it, Laureline. But then we are only of simple agents of the spatio-temporal service. What counts is to find out if Syrte might pose a danger to Earth now or in the future.

L: Mais tout semble prouver que Syrte n’a pas découvert le saut dans l’espace-temps! Si cette civilisation n’a pas essaimé, c’est que la propulsion interplanétaire y reste classique. Impossible pour les syrtiens de sortir de leur système ā moins de voyager pendant des siècles.

But everything seems to prove that Syrte has not discovered the jump in the space-time! If this civilization has not expanded any further, it is because interplanetary propulsion remains [classique]there. Impossible for the syrtiens to leave their system has less to travel during centuries.

I'm stuck again. I think I can see what is meant here but the words are refusing to make sense. The sense of the line seems to be that if the Syrtians have never left their own system it must be because they only have interplanetary propulsion, but the reason it gives for this escapes me. I can't find a translation of classique here that works. And that last sentence just gives me a headache.

M: Je sais bien! Peut étre n’y a t il aucun risqué et c’est pour cela que nous devons étre discrets. Nous allons débarquer incognito et jouer les tourists…

I know well! It is a risk we cannot afford to take, and for that reason we must be discrete. We will land incognito and play tourists...

Parée pour le dernier saut?

Ready for the last jump?

Parée…

Ready...

Et, plongeant dans l’espace temps

And, plunging through space-time...

…l’appareil de Valerian et Laureline vient se matérialiser en un point isolé de l’astroport syrtien…

Valerian and Laureline's machine materializes at a point isolated from the syrtien starport...