Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog, page 28

WiRL: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Yes, it’s another episode of Writing in Real Life, the only podcast featuring my wife and me babbling about writing and kids and marriage and publishing.

This week:

The New York Times finally meets our demands. “Who knew women could write books?” Wishing your life away. Is keeping a baby alive “productive?” Leia turns ten months. Participation trophies: threat or menace? Figuring out “the twist” ahead of time.

Playing Politics with Guns

A thought I’ve had for a little while, sadly as relevant today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow…

Americans famously craft legislation that is named not to accurately describe its function, but rather to appeal to jingoist or clueless appetites. The PATRIOT Act had nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with a power grab. No Child Left Behind was all about using schools to churn out a generation of unthinking robots.

Someone needs to send a bill to the House and Senate called, oh, I dunno, the “No More Murdered Children Act.” Or the “Less Blood in Schools Act.” Or the “Anti-Bullets in Killing People at Random Act.”

In short, make the opposition stand up and be forced to vote against something called the “Preserving Kindergartners’ Lives Act of 2015.” The same way the PATRIOT Act passed in large part due to cowardly shitheels in Congress who didn’t want to vote against something with the word “patriot” in the title.

Stories I Never Told: Crime Syndicate of America

Being something of a loner as a youth, I had a lot of time to think. And what I thought about were stories.

Most of those stories were no good, but some of them were pretty damn cool. Sadly, a bunch of them were the sorts of stories that had expiration dates on them. Mostly comic book stories that now no longer fit into any kind of continuity.

But I’ve decided to dig into my archives and give those stories some new life, presenting them here in a little feature I like to call…

 

DC Comics’s Crime Syndicate of America always seemed really cool to me. The basic premise was this: In an alternate universe (called Earth-3), there were no superheroes, only a group of villains resembling Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Batman. I always loved that concept.1

In a comic published in 1985, Earth-3 was destroyed, then retroactively (thanks to time travel) made to have never existed at all. Young Barry thought it was a shame to lose such great characters.

I spent some time thinking of ways to recreate the CSA2 for the new, post-Crisis DC Universe. At the time, alternate universe/parallel worlds were verboten at DC, so that option was out. I had to come up with something new.3

Cobbled together from my old notes, here’s what I came up with in 1987 or thereabouts. (I would have been around 15 or so at the time.)

The first question to solve: Where do these characters come from, if no longer from an alternate universe? I decided that Ultraman (the Superman doppelgänger) and Superwoman (the ersatz Wonder Woman) would both have the same origin — they would be slightly off-kilter clones of Superman and Wonder Woman, created by the same Operation: Changeling process introduced in Man of Steel. The process had been refined; it still wasn’t perfect, but it was better than when it had created Bizarro. As a result, we get characters who look sort of but not exactly like Superman and Wonder Woman, only with villainous intent.4

My thinking here was that Ultraman and Superwoman would be kept under lock and key by Lex Luthor as he figured out what to do with them. They would eventually fall in (villainous, twisted) love and decide to break out, eventually hooking up with the other CSAers, who were…

Power Ring — the alternate Green Lantern. Originally, Power Ring was a rip-off of Hal Jordan, with a similar ring. I couldn’t figure out how to make that work, post-Crisis, but I had another idea. In The Last Days of the Justice Society, the JSA had been written out of the universe, sent off to a limbo of sorts. I realized that Alan Scott (the Golden Age Green Lantern) didn’t have his lantern with him. Which meant it was still on Earth.

Aha!

I decided that the new Power Ring would be a petty thief named “Scat” McKane who broke into Alan Scott’s abandoned home. In the past, Alan’s lantern had been shown to be somewhat sentient, so I had the idea that it would go a bit insane when losing the ring to limbo. As a result, its motives become warped…and instead of looking for a fearless man to do good, it becomes attracted to a fearful thief. It directs McKane to carve a ring from itself and voila! A new Power Ring.

Johnny Quick — I hung this particular hat on a peg of obscure DC trivia. Flash’s enemy Reverse-Flash didn’t have inborn super-speed powers — his powers came from the costume he wore. At this point in DC history, Reverse-Flash was dead…but what had happened to his costume? It was, as best I could tell, in an evidence lock-up in Central City.

So I decided that John Despacio, a crooked cop looking to destroy evidence against him, would find and steal the costume, modify it, and become Johnny Quick. Simple, right?

Owlman — This was the one I planned to have the most fun with. I absolutely loved the pre-Crisis Lex Luthor. Smartest man in the world, with gadgets galore. The post-Crisis evil businessman-cum-Kingpin version left me cold. So, rather than set up Owlman as an anti-Batman, I decided he would be closer in spirit to the original Lex Luthor, a scientific genius with a criminal bent. He would be the de facto leader of the group by dint of his intellect.

Now I had my characters. What was I going to do with them?

Looking back over my notes, I see that the original plan was for a four-issue mini-series. The Crime Syndicate’s ultimate plan was to kill Superman and install Ultraman in his place, step one in a plan to — mwha-ha-ha! — conquer the world.

Issue One: “Double You”

The first issue would have basically recounted the origin of Ultraman and Superwoman, leading up to them escaping from Lex Luthor’s clutches. It would have been titled “Double You.”6 Best of all, it would have ended with a defeated Luthor telling a flunky to file the information on Superwoman “under W.” With a closing shot of a file cabinet, the W drawer open…and “under W,” of course, would be a drawer labeled “X.”

It was customary for comics to have a little blurb saying “Next issue…” and something about the following issue. I would have had something like this…

Cool, right? (Throw 15-year-old me a bone here, people — say it’s cool.)

Issue Two: “X”

The second issue was, according to my notes, “about things proscribed, taboos.” I don’t know where I was going with that, but I do know that it would have recounted the origin of Johnny Quick, how he became corrupt, how he gave up everything good in his life. In the present, it would also reveal that Owlman — well-known in the criminal community — has been hired by Luthor to track down the missing clones. Owlman brings in Johnny Quick and Power Ring for muscle…and when all five meet, they decide to hell with Luthor, they’ll just team up. No honor among thieves!

Issue Three: “Why”

See? See how this works? Genius, I tell you!

In this issue, we’d get to see Power Ring’s origin and we’d also get to see something I thought was very cool. See, it’s established that power rings run off of willpower…but what if you didn’t have a very strong will? So, we’d have thought captions of Power Ring when he’s in flight and all he’s thinking is “Fly fly fly flyflyflyflyfly!!!” and “Don’t fall! Don’t fall!” Stuff like that. It’s hard for him to use the ring. He has to focus intensely. At one point, he’s flying along and Ultraman says something to him. It breaks his concentration and he almost plummets to his death.7

Anyway, the team gangs up on Superman and manages to capture him. Power Ring creates a cage made of kryptonite and they all settle in to watch the Man of Steel slowly die…

I bet you think the final issue was going to be titled “Z,” right? Well, you’re partway there.

Issue Four: “Z (Now I Know)”

Owlman speaks to the dying Superman, lording his superior intellect over the Man of Steel, recounting his own origin story — impoverished genius, misunderstood child, grows up loathing the world he was born into. Decides that the only way to make the world worth living in…is to rule it. So on and so forth. Knowledge is the ultimate power — it’s right there at the end of the alphabet, after all. You don’t just finish reciting the letters; you conclude with a statement of understanding. (I was going for the idea that Owlman was so freaking brilliant that he could build entire philosophies on a bit of child’s doggerel…so imagine what he could do with actual knowledge! I don’t think I made it quite work, but to this day, I think it’s an interesting idea.)

Superman escapes, of course. (I had some lame notion that Power Ring — being an idiot — has forgotten to recharge his ring, so it runs out of juice. Pretty sure I’d come up with something much better today.) Ultraman, Superwoman, and Power Ring are arrested, but Johnny Quick super-speeds Owlman and himself to safety.

Ta-da! End of mini-series, with just enough lingering loose ends to keep the characters viable for the future.

Speaking of the future… Yes, of course I wanted to spin the characters off into their own ongoing comic book series. I figured the first few issues would involve Owlman and Johnny Quick breaking their buddies out of jail. And since the group didn’t technically have an anti-Batman, I was going to dust off the character The Wrath and have him join the group.8 I also had vague plans to introduce an anti-Hawkman of my own creation called The Windhover, but I don’t remember anything about him other than the name.

One last thing: I remember that one issue of this ongoing series would have been a battle of wits between Owlman and Batman. Basically, Owlman hacks into the Batcave computer and tells Batman “There are 6 million people in Gotham City. I’m going to kill one of them by midnight tomorrow unless you figure out who it is first.”

No more clues. That’s it. One in six million. Solve that, World’s Greatest Detective!

Batman spends the issue on a tear, trying to figure out who it could be, looking for old connections to Owlman, etc. By the end of the issue, it’s 11:55 and he’s no closer to figuring it out. Back at the Batcave, he slumps at the computer in defeat.

Then, at the last minute, he types something.

We see Owlman’s response: “Nicely done. You’re correct.”

Whew!

The last panel of the story would show us what Batman had typed: “The victim is ME.”

(Of course, people will ask: How was Owlman planning on killing Batman, especially since he was in the Batcave at midnight? Could he really have done that? And my reply is: It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Owlman showed that he could get under Batman’s skin.)

Anyway, that’s what I remember of my youthful attempt to reboot the Crime Syndicate of America. It’s a Story I Never Told…until now!

Crime Syndicate of America artwork by Paris Cullins & Terry Austin, from Who’s Who in the DC Universe Vol. V.

The fact that Earth-3 had only villains and yet hadn’t been conquered by them was, I think, a comment on the enduring power of Good.How cool is it that a villainous group has the same initials as the Confederacy?In the decades since, alternate universes became OK again at DC, and the CSA was once again returned to its status as an other-dimensional, evil version of the Justice League.One of the things I dearly missed after Crisis was the pre-Crisis version of Krypton. So I established that Ultraman’s memories of Krypton were mangled by the cloning process, causing him to remember the pre-Crisis version.Where did that name come from? Beats the hell out of me!Because it’s about clones. Get it? Get it? Oh, Young Barry…Years later — now years ago — Geoff Johns nodded toward this idea when he showed Green Arrow using a Green Lantern ring and becoming exhausted by it. I love it when my young self is proven a genius retroactively.This is another instance where something I planned as a teenager eventually happened in the comics, as The Wrath did re-appear decades later.

WiRL: Not 100% a Dick

Prepare yourselves, podcast listeners, for in this episode Morgan (gasp!) makes a comic book reference!

We finish (?) discussing the New York Times bestsellers list. Leia eats everything imaginable. “Lady guilt is heavy.” Parenting advice and anti-advice. High-chair condoms. Feeling like a one-hit wonder as an author. The tension between what readers like and what writers want to write. Lyga’s Law of Publishing.

Fixing Things with Spit

That, in case you are interested, is a picture of my TV, a venerable old Vizio 37″ model purchased somewhere in the desert wilds of Las Vegas back in November of 2007. It’s the only TV in the house and has served me (and now my wife and offspring) quite well.

Yesterday afternoon, my wife summoned me to the living room. The TV wouldn’t turn on.

It had turned on just that morning, so I thought maybe something was bollixed up with the signal from the remote. I use a Harmony Remote (it, too, is venerable and dates back to the days of the first iPhone) that sometimes gives my wife fits. I figured she’d hit the wrong button, but it turns out, yeah, the remote couldn’t turn the TV on.

I pressed the power button on the TV itself and it sprang to life. Problem solved.

Except, a few minutes later, she summoned me once again — the volume buttons weren’t working.

Time to put on my deerstalker and apply a little deductive reasoning.

I determined that the remote could control everything else in our entertainment set-up (Apple TV, cable box, etc.), just not the TV. Which led me to think that the problem was the TV, not the remote. Just to be sure, I dug up the original Vizio remote and tried it. It, too, could not control the TV.

Yeah, the problem was the TV. Damn.

I went to dig up the original manual, just to see if it had any troubleshooting suggestions.1 Nothing more helpful than recommending fresh batteries for the remote.

And then something weird happened. In a moment of frustration, I tried the remote again…and this time it worked!

I had done nothing different from five minutes earlier — same remote, same batteries. I tried power on and off, volume up and down… Yep, everything worked fine.

I shrugged and attributed it to the gods of modern electronics and went about my day.

But you know what happened next, right?

You betcha — once again, I heard the call of my wife. The TV was once again not responding to the remote. Nothing I did could get it to work.

The manual also referred to “environmental conditions,” but there was nothing blocking the signal and nothing had changed in the two or three hours since the morning, when the TV had worked just fine.

I decided to contact Vizio, on the off-chance they had any suggestions.

Via live chat, a very nice tech support guy walked me through the simple process of power cycling the TV. Unfortunately, it didn’t solve the problem. Apologetically, he informed me that my only option was service, and the TV was, of course, out of warranty.

The options for service were around $150. Cheaper than a new TV, sure, but also a hassle. I checked The Wirecutter, scoped out their best TV for $500, and ordered the TV for delivery in two days. Problem solved.

But then…

I don’t know what inspired me to do this. Maybe it was the mention of “environmental conditions” in the manual. Maybe it was divine intervention. I don’t know. But the next time I walked past the TV, I licked my thumb…and swiped it across the nearly-undetectable round bump of the TV’s infrared sensor.

I tried the Harmony Remote.

It worked.

And it kept working.

All night.

I canceled the new TV.

BTW, I don’t keep paper manuals lying around. For one thing, there’s no room to store them in a tiny New York apartment. For another, it’s just easier to download PDFs of them and keep them on my computer.

WiRL: More Ranting

Episode 28!

Barry tours with a movie star. Can authors write while on the road? The true authorship of Gone Girl…revealed! Leia takes her first steps toward super-model-hood. What is a good minimum for maternity leave? Plus: Some necessary follow-up on the New York Times bestsellers list…and Barry rants about the Oscars.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, read our show notes, and rate us on iTunes!

Megastory

Comes the news that David Lynch plans to shoot the Twin Peaks revival series as one massive movie, and then chop it up into episodes afterwards.

Oh, yes.

I am interested in this news not merely because I am a Twin Peaks fan of enduring passion and unhealthy obsession, but also because the artistic process fascinates me so. Especially this sort of “megastory.”

I find this tidbit of behind-the-scenes info particularly interesting because it’s a technique/tactic/stratagem I’ve considered in the past and, indeed, am still considering.

See, there’s a series I’ve always wanted to write. Even before my first novel was published, I was working on this series. It began as a lark, a fun little open-ended series that would spark the imagination and take you to another world for a few hours with each book.

But as I worked on it, it grew into something else entirely — a massive, sprawling epic with a complicated backstory and an interlocking continuity of its own.

So, as I’ve noodled with it over the years, despairing that any publisher would ever buy in based on the first book and my promise that “It all connects, trust me!”, I’ve considered doing the crazy, the mad, the insane: Writing the entire series as one enormous book, then cutting it up into book-length “chapters.” This way, I could be certain everything lines up properly and falls into place, and potential publishers could be sure I’m actually heading somewhere without just taking my word for it.

It would probably only be somewhere around 4,000 pages. *gulp*

Truthfully, I’m not sure y’all will ever see this series. It’s a huge undertaking and it’s a lot for any publisher to commit to, even if I took four or five years of my life and did nothing but write it.

Still, it’s heartening to see that David Lynch and I are thinking alike. I’ll take that.

 

Natural Fit???

Well, this is weird! According to Amazon…

Really? Who in the world could possibly be buying these two particular books? Especially “frequently!”

Weird world, man…

Peter Talks After the Red Rain on TV

I was traveling last week when this happened, so I couldn’t clue everyone in, but my co-author on After the Red Rain, Peter Facinelli, was on Live! with Kelly and Michael on Friday. He says some nice things about me and talks about the book. Check it out! (Book stuff begins at around 2:40.)

Unsoul’d: On Sale!

Are you looking for a book that doesn’t have a moral or a lesson, a book with bad people doing bad things and not feeling too guilty about it? A book where sex is a sport…and sports get dirty? More importantly, do you not want to spend a bunch of money for this?

Well, you’re in luck.

Unsoul’d, my “dirty little fable” about an author who sells his soul to the devil, is currently on sale at all e-tailers! For a mere $3.99, you can enter the sad, funny, perverted world of Randall Banner as he tries to write a bestselling novel, deals with a pain-in-the-ass devil, and has a metric ton of illicit sex.

“That day I had a bagel for breakfast and sold my soul to the devil. In retrospect, the bagel was probably a mistake.”

Randall Banner is thirty-five years old, a middling mid-list author who yearns for more of everything: More attention. More fame. More money. More fans.

Then, one quiet morning, he meets the devil while pounding away at his laptop at his usual coffee shop. Soon, a deal is made, a contract is signed, and Randall is on his way to fame and fortune unlike any he ever imagined.

What follows is a bawdy, hilarious, yet harrowing tale of one man, one devil, and a deal that could change the world.

Bestselling romance novelist Sarah Maclean says Unsoul’d is “Like Nick Hornby writing an episode of Californication!” And hey, she would know!

Here’s what some readers who aren’t Sarah Maclean have said:

Loved this book. Twisted in the right way.

That ending was just…I have no words. It was a great read and totally unexpected ending, in one word amazing.

Lyga’s take on the devil is as clever, and unique, as Twain’s or Lewis’s.

A laugh-out-loud, insightful, and sarcastic book about writers and writing, Brooklyn, LA, and what happens when you just say, “What the Hell…”

Buy the Book!

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