Travel

I really hate to travel. Well, I guess that's not entirely true. It's not so much the travel I hate, as all the components that go into the travel. Booking hotel rooms, flights, planning to be at point X by time Y, figuring out a new city or place – all of it leaves me feeling stressed and wound up tight. Of course, once I get all wound up like that, I end up having to fight my innate 'flee' response, which leads to me becoming depressed and moody.

Once the initial part of a trip is over and I know things are going to work out, I can relax a bit more, but until that point I'm generally tired and listless. Why I'm like this, I don't really know. As a child, we travelled quite a bit – Hawaii, New Mexico, trips to Peace River and Grand Prairie, and even a Disneyland expedition. Those all seemed to work out. I don't have any specific memories of anxiety or worry during those trips, but I sometimes wonder if I picked up some kind of vibe off my mother and father that affects me now that I'm on my own and doing all this.

My main coping mechanism is to offload and delegate as much of the planning to others, hoping that in doing so I will reduce the mistakes and ensure success. I feel terrible doing it, because I am an adult and shouldn't have to rely on Mom-surrogates to accomplish something like a week in Vancouver – but there it is.

Up too Late

Richard Dansky, ex-editor of mine and a friend, has his first real novel out and published. It is Firefly Rain, and is getting good reviews. I'm waiting for my copy to arrive from Amazon right now. Hopefully you are, too.

Meanwhile, James Maliszewski continues to disassemble the pieces of the original Dungeons & Dragons to see what made it work. He's looked at the thief, cleric and the magic-user, and now he's prodding at demi-human level limits. Not too much there for me to disagree with, and in fact, much of what he says resembles my own thoughts.

I'd like to briefly discuss the magic-user in D&D, though. I mentioned in a comment on James' post that the MU (as we used to call them) was basically an artillery piece, transported over from the miniature wargame part of D&D's heritage. I'd like to expand on this a bit, before I pass out to sleep.

The traditions of magic in literature prior to the arrival of D&D were that magic was hard to use, difficult to control, and when used by the Good Guys, often subtle rather than overt. I think if D&D were being designed today, we'd see a wizard class that would conform to that image. Minor spells that could be cast-at-will would be the norm, with more powerful magics either being the result of rituals, or, if damaging, being dangerous to the caster.

The original D&D, however, was not truly designed with the literature in mind. Over on the table-top battlefield, the wizard provided a fantasy army with an artillery options akin to a trebuchet, catapult or ballista. The mighty figure wielded powerful spells that could put a unit to sleep, blast it with fire, rain missiles down upon it or shock it with lightning. While the description was magical, the mechanical effects were similar to lobbing rocks or firing small, sharpened logs into people. When D&D turned to adventure, the wizard came along and brought with him his powerful artillery spells.

In the tight constraints of the dungeon, I'm sure that the constraints on the powers of the wizard were shaped by the fact that his battlefield spells were designed to take on units, not single monsters. Spell levels were introduced as a means to balance the wizard against the hero. New spells were added, I have no doubt, as the people playing encountered new situations and would ask "what if there was a spell to deal with this?" The wizard became a utility knife character, with very big cannon.

What's interesting to me is how much the D&D wizard has influenced literary magic. Wizardry in typical fantasy is now fuller of the blasts and zorts you'd expect from the dungeon crawl, than the subtle displays of yore.

A closing thought hits me, though – in the 4e talk, they've discussed wizards as "controllers", using area effect spells or terrain modifying spells to shape the battlefield. It's an interesting definition and very tied to the clear tactical focus of the new edition. It also is a very clear break from the old utility knife wizard of the previous editions. One wonders if wizards will retain the ability to cast spells that duplicate the class abilities of others (knock being an obvious example).

On Purple and Green

As promised, a short discussion of the color coding of super-villains in old Marvel and DC comics.

In the 60s and 70s, both Marvel and DC used costume colors as a kind of shorthand for indicating a character's status. The main colors used for this activity were purple and green; often in combination, sometimes alone. The two companies made a distinct split, however, in how they presented the characters in these colors. We'll look at DC first, and then move on to Marvel's handling of the sumptuary of its villains.

Over in DC, the combination of the color purple and green was a clear indicator of villainous status. The two obvious poster-boys for this are Lex Luthor and The Joker. Lex Luthor spent much of the 70s running around in green pants, boots and a purple top with a flared collar over a green undershirt. The Joker was rarely seen without his purple suit, and of course has green hair. Brainiac, at least in his pre-floating skull days, was also clad in purple over his green skin (a color scheme maintained in his reboot appearances). Over in DC, when a character appeared with purple and green in his or her costume, you were pretty safe assuming it was a villain.

Meanwhile, Marvel uses the purple and green colors as indicators of reformed or redeemable villains: Quicksilver first appeared clad in green, Hawkeye in purple, the Prowler in green and purple, Wonderman in green. All of these character later turned into heroic characters, though some more so than others (I'm looking at you, Quicksilver). In general, when reading an old Marvel comic, if a character debuted with a green, purple, or green and purple costume, at some point you could expect them to turn out to be not so bad after all. In the case of someone like the Green Goblin, they might be bad but not entirely aware of their badness, or the best friend of the main character. In other cases, like the Beetle, it might take decades before someone would reform them and turn them into Mach V.

Of course, these weren't universally true – The Vulture and The Scorpion debuted in green, and they were pretty irredeemable. Over on the DC side, the Green Arrow and Green Lantern (well, until the Parallax thing) were heroic despite their color choices. Still, as a fair bet, you can't go too far wrong watching the color coding of the characters. Heck, when Gambit appeared, he had purple under that oh-so-cool trench-coat. You knew he had to be more evil than he was letting on…

Monday Monday

I haven't been able to shake off my cold yet, and I'm back to losing at Scrabble; in other words, another week that's the same as the last week.

Over on (postmodernbarney), Dorian had an interesting question derived from two message board quotes:

True writing talent comes from inspirational ideas, vision and creativity. The boring technical stuff can be done by others.

And

The characters are not there to serve your super-special plot. Rather, your plot should serve the characters. This a fundamental rule of writing in someone else's universe. *I* obey it and I don't even get paid, you fuckwads.

Dorian's question, likely rhetorical, was how telling these comments were about fandom in general.

I've heard the first sentiment expressed a lot, about how writing is just about putting words down on the page. It's the ideas that are hard, they say. After all, everyone always seems to ask (well, at the SF conventions I'd go to, anyway) "Where do you get your ideas?" like it's some magical process. Over the years of reading various how-to books on writing, talking with authors, hanging out with some and attempting to become one myself, I've learned that the ideas are actually the easy part. The hard part is taking that idea and expressing it in a way that others will find interesting. One of the reasons for my attempting this blog this year is to gain practice in just that.

Thus, I find that the first statement denigrates the writing process, and doesn't recognize that even a bad story (like, oh, One More Day) still takes craft, discipline and skill to put together.

The second statement is more subtle in its wrong-headedness. Assuming it's written by someone referencing super-hero comic books, it seems to ignore that the comic book characters are corporate properties. It also ignore that comic books have almost always given no more than a passing nod to characterization, letting the needs of plot drive events. The insult at the end is, however, unsubtle in its contempt for the people who are trying to put out this entertainment.

Fandom, or at least, the vocal contingent of fandom online, has grown to believe itself to be privileged to act as the gatekeeper of taste and quality. This sense of entitlement has definitely led some people to hold unreasonable expectations of the object of their fanaticism. I suspect there have always been people like this, since I can remember some of the old letter pages having the occasional missive with hints of that "how dare you do something I don't approve of" tone to them. The more extreme letters, I hope, were filtered out by the editors. Online now, there are no editors – so people like me can vent and rant and complain all we want.

I have been trying hard, though, to step back from my emotional responses and recognize that it's not my Avengers or Legion of Superheroes or Batman or Iron Man who's being "ruined". Rather, it's just a story I don't enjoy. My not enjoying it doesn't make it a bad story, or a story without merit. Nor does it mean that anyone who does like that story is instantly an idiot or loser. Other people's enjoyment of these things should not threaten or undermine my own sense of worth and self, after all. I can express why I don't like what Marvel has done to Spider-man, but I shouldn't berate, insult or call you an idiot if you disagree.

… anyway, tomorrow, I think I'll rant a little bit about color coding villains in old DC and Marvel comics.

Rob Liefield

You know, I don't ever hear about too many people declaring that they're Rob Liefeld fans...usually the opposite, in fact. But someone's buying these comics.

… Mike Sterling

Over at Progressive Ruin, Mr. Sterling's commenting on the rapid sale of Onslaught: Reborn #5, the latest (late, last?) issue in Marvel's attempt to do a 10 year anniversary revisit to the Onslaught and Heroes Reborn story lines. Rob Liefeld, who must be one of the most hated men in comics, does the art.

I'm reluctantly going to admit to being a fan of Liefeld's work. I bought X-Force #1 solely for the art, and grabbed Youngblood #1 for the same reason. The guy can't draw feet, barely manages human anatomy and loves pockets far too much, but I still enjoy the energy and enthusiasm that fills some of his best work. When he was younger, working on something like Hawk and Dove, you could just see that he was a guy who loved what he was doing.

In the late 80s, early 90s, I think comic book art went through a revolution. On the one hand, you had folks like Erik Larsen, Rob Leifeld, Jim Valentino and Todd McFarlane on one side, who were injecting their books with high energy and loosey-goosey style that broke from the more staid works of people like Jerry Ordway, George Perez, Curt Swan, etc. On the other hand, there was the work of people like Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio, who stretched the realism and detail work of a Neal Adams, John Byrne and (once again) George Perez out to the limits.

I really enjoyed all these new artists works – they pushed comics into new, interesting looking directions. While Rob was probably the least polished of the bunch, he also seemed to have the most fun with what he was doing. At the time, and even today, I value fun in my comics a lot and so I became a fan.

I suspect that, as time has passed and things changed … because things always change as we grow older … that some of the fun Rob was having has passed. His work seems to be trying harder to conform to expectations of the audience, rather than his own imagination and ideas. While it remains identifiable as Rob Leifeld in style, a great deal of the energy and appeal for me has faded. Yet I can still look at the cover to something like Onslaught: Reborn and feel a bit of the rush that I had 15 or so years ago, going into the comic store.

I am a Rob Liefeld fan.

Distractions

In truth, I don't know that I can ever actually be bored. I have far too many distractions, as yet another late blog post can attest. Recent distractions now include Pirates of the Burning Seas, Rock Band, my D&D campaign, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, and the comics I bought yesterday. This leaves out Holly & Hunter, the two best distractions I could have. I have a shelf full of DVDs to be watched, shelves of books to be read, boxes of comics to be flipped through, and a stack of games to be completed.

Pirates of the Burning Seas is truly an obsession right now, though. It's an MMORPG set in the Caribbean, circa 1720, with the player nations of Spain, Britain, France and Pirate. Sailing ships, boarding actions, and even some swordfight on shore make up the action component of the game. That alone hits on two of my interests – wooden ship combat and old-time fencing. Add in the complex economy modeled, as near as I can tell, on the theories of Adam Smith and his The Wealth of Nations, and I'm sucked into a black hole of deep interest. I'm maintaining an offline spreadsheet of resource costs to work out up to the minute values of products I'm making and working out profit models, all while battling pirates and the evil British in my Spanish cutter.

It's all too much fun, and also the reason this post is short and late.

Marvels

This writing every day thing is harder than it looks.

I went to the comic shop today (Legends Comics on Johnson St. in Victoria – great shop, you should shop there) and picked up 2 months worth of comics. Not with a lot of enthusiasm, mind you. I did grab up a collection of the Savage Sword of Conan stories from Dark Horse, though, and the Essential Captain America 4. Good nostalgia fodder, that. More modern fare includes The Immortal Iron Fist trade, collection Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction's story with the character, and the usual suspects: Punisher: MAX, Astonishing X-Men, The Spirit and World War Hulk. I wish I felt more of an urge to read the books, though.

What I did re-read recently is MARVELS, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' breakthrough series… it's actually 14 years old now, which surprises me. When the books first came out, I passed them up, mostly due to the cost. I think they were a little more expensive than other books, and I had only recently moved to working full-time. This would have also been back when I was collecting a whole bunch of books from DC, Marvel, and others – my monthly budget for comics was already used up. I didn't really pick up and read the collected trade until last year.

Well, I missed out on something grand. The books really do establish the tone and style of Busiek, with the emphasis on the human perspective on the super-humans and the impact of super-beings on the normal world. This is something he does very well in the best of his Astro City work, and even manages to inject him his more mainstream works (like his Iron Man or The Avengers runs). That's one key element of the series. The second key factor is that the books treat continuity and the old comics with respect and finds a way to weave the existing old stories together to create something epic, but also accessible. The final factor must be Alex Ross' art. The feel here is looser and rougher than his later work, on Kingdom Come or Earth X. It has life and energy that's often lacking from his latest works – Justice comes to mind. Even so, the painted images with their sense of reality and humanity transform the old stories from fantasy to something with a real weight and reality.

I look at what Busiek and Ross were doing in 1994 and have to remember that it was likely a response to the wild and irreverent approach to superheroes being taken by companies like Image and Malibu. Just as Mark Waid would later do in Kingdom Come, MARVELS is an attempt to restore a kind of respectability and luster to the older stories that these authors and artist grew up reading. There's no real attempt here to tear down the heroes, to bring them to earth by giving them flaws or new failings. Instead, even in their failures and flaws, Busiek gives them a grandeur and style that reminds me why I grew up loving superhero comics.

If you haven't given it a read, I recommend it.