A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 60

Walt Simonson, God of Epics

Apologies for not posting anything recently.  I have what appears to be an aggravated nerve in my jaw, and it isn't making life very pleasant.  If the 30 minute bouts of searing pain weren't enough, there's also the fact that I'm not eating much and wasn't getting much sleep.  But I've been taking some medication which have dampened, if not completely suppressed, the problem, and have an appointment with a specialist to take a look.  Hopefully, everything will get back on track soon.  In the meantime, I just wanted everyone to know that while some of the wind has been taken out of my sails, I'm still here and kicking.  I haven't forgotten about that Mack Megaton short story either.

So enough about my pain.  I'm not here to bum you out.  I'm here, as always, to enlighten and entertain.

Recently, I bought the second volume of Marvel Visionaries: Walt Simonson's Thor.  Thor was the first official superhero comic I ever bought on a regular basis.  He remains one of my favorite characters, even if modern comics haven't really held my attention.  And it's safe to say that Simonson is one of the biggest influences on my writing, which is strange when you consider that I am not considered by many to be a heroic fantasy writer.

But Simonson's run on Thor is a masterwork of epic storytelling, a fantastic battle of incredible forces, of high fantasy, of melodrama, heart, and solid characterization.  It's also great fun.  Admittedly, I'm probably biased, but I love these stories because they are just so sincere in their design, so unapologetic in their bold adventure.

Yet Simonson's run never really gets the mainstream praise it deserves.  Probably because it's not "literary" like Sandman or "mature" like Preacher.  Simonson's Thor is just a damn good comic book that juggles multiple plot threads, dozens of characters, and an epic quality that is too easy to take for granted.  Yet his craftsmanship is second-to-none, and everything counts here.  Simonson never seems out to impress you with how complicated he can make things or how far to the edge he can go.  He's there to tell a great story and bring you along for the ride.

Simonson's Thor is from a different era, I suppose.  Perhaps it's even a bit old-fashioned in that way.  But it's entertaining and fun, and full of grand moments.  The villains and heroes are larger than life.  Thor doesn't wrestle with existential dilemmas, with his own motivations.  He's a good guy out to beat up bad guys.  And the bad guys tend to be obviously bad.  Not in the uninteresting "I'm going to rape and mutilate because I'm evil" way, but in the "let's blow up the universe" manner that is so rare to find in comics these days.

It's cartoonish, but that isn't always a bad thing.  And underneath it all, there are still relationships going on, character arcs, personal triumphs and tragedies.  Just because the first story arc climaxes with all of Asgardians fighting an endless tide of demons in New York City while Thor, Loki, and Odin face off against Surtur at the gates of Asgard, that doesn't necessarily make it childish or silly.

I know I'm from a different era, and that any criticism of modern comic books I might have will be from that perspective.  But I really miss it when superheroes were about fighting bad guys and not about serial killers with ray guns.  I like that nobody says "bitch" in Simonson's Thor or that, even when a character dies, his death is usually melodramatic and free of gore.  Simonson's Thor is a comic that is eminently readable to anyone, and that's just not something you see much anymore.

I'm not suggesting that all comics need to revert to this style.  Or even any of them should.  Different eras.  But it's just a shame that, when comic book superhero fans look back on the masters, they tend to overlook Thor which is as worthy of praise as just about any other comic book out there, including Sandman, Fables, or what have you.

So if you happen to like what I write and want to read stuff that inspired me, you might just want to check out Marvel Visionaries Walt Simonson Thor because you might just see where I come from.  And while it probably won't make you laugh as much, it will define awesome in a whole new way.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Diced (A Game Tuesday Post)

As a tabletop gaming enthusiast, I have a whole lot of games.  I own a small Toys R Us worth of games, and have played even more.  I really do love games and could play them all day, all night.  If I was locked in a warehouse with every single board and card game made throughout the history of the world, I'd be in no rush to be rescued.  Provided I had some good company to play those games with.

I don't just love games because they are fun to play though.  I love them because they are a way at looking at the universe, of understanding the fundamental nature of this thing we call reality.  All games are just systems of rules, of balances of risk versus reward, of goal setting,  And aren't those all things that apply to this thing we call life?

And then there are dice.

For most people, dice are such a closely associated element of board games, they might be surprised at just how many game players hate them.  Really.  There's an entire class of players who hate any form of randomness.  They want games that are safe, predictable.  Where every strategy is equally viable and every path to victory as simple as following steps one, two, three.  They hate the idea that their most carefully laid plans will be destroyed by one bad roll.

Maybe it's because they're control freaks.  Or maybe it's because it sucks watching your army of little plastic soldiers get slaughtered by an unsympathetic die roll.  Or maybe they just hate the fact that the universe doesn't give a damn how clever you are.  Sometimes, it'll crush everything you've worked for, and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop it.

Einstein was wrong.  God does play dice with the universe.

The dice has always represented the random, the chaotic, the entropic nature of reality itself.  We are never in full control of our lives.  We are always plotting and planning and pretending like we can bend the universe to our will if we just believe it enough, work hard enough, have enough drive.  But it really only takes one bad die roll to remind you how our best laid plans can fall apart in a moment.  Or one good one to remind us that sometimes we succeed despite ourselves.

I embrace dice.  I love the dice, even if they don't always love me back.  But sometimes, they do.  Never consistently.  Their affections are fleeting, their wrath always constantly hanging over my head.  The dice remind me that I am not in charge of my own destiny.  At least, not fully.  And that life is full of random rewards and penalties.   You will lose through no fault of your own.  And win too.

Mostly though, I'm reminded that the dice don't care either way, and that there's neither malice or joy in their actions.  When everything is going my way and they turn against me, I curse their existence.  And when they turn defeat into victory, I praise them for their generosity.  And when they do exactly what they're expected to do, I don't even pay much attention to them.

It's foolish to rely on the dice, but it's just as foolish to ignore them.  Because at the end of the day, we all live with them.  Even when we're not playing games at all.

The Han Solo Factor

Ah, another Monday is here.  Where does the time go?  Time passes us by and soon enough, we'll all be mouldering in our graves.  So best make hay while the sun is shining.  A stitch in time saves nine.  A rolling stone gathers no moss.  He who hesitates is lost.  And various other cliches that may or may not apply.

Where was I?

Having previously tackled the subjects of racism, the trials and tribulations of fictional characters, and why dinobots are always awesome, I think it's time to talk about the paradox of being a fantasy fan.  It's a paradox embodied pretty solidly by my own career.

Fantasy is usually considered frivolous and childish by default.  And it's hard to disagree on the surface that jetpack gorillas and dragons are silly ideas.  The nature of almost all fantasy is built on this absurdity.  At the same time, fantasy doesn't have to be stupid, as in simple-minded, as in a bit of colorful distraction with no real meaning beyond that.

Yet the paradox is this.  The more fantastic something is, the more unapologetically fantastic it is, the less "serious" it's considered.  If gorillas suddenly become smart and rise up to attack us, it's silly, but still a serious piece.  If those same gorillas get laser guns and fight giant robots, it's goofy.  Nobody would take such a movie seriously.  I'd go to see Laser Apes Vs. Robots in a heartbeat, but I know I'm the exception.

The alternative to having your fantasy dismissed is to take it very seriously.  Have your characters stand around looking serious.  Have a tragic moment.  Be sure to remind everyone how important everything is.  Remind everyone that this is not "kid's stuff", and that if anyone's actually thinking of enjoying watching a dinosaur getting punched by an alien, then be sure to throw some blood on the screen or have a lot of really boring talky scenes around it.

Recently, I watched M. Night's live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender.  I've only seen a few bits, here and there, of the original animated show.  But what struck me most about the movie, aside from it's rather stilted and clumsy direction, was how Serious (with a capital S) it was.  A story about a fantasy world where people control elemental powers was absolutely joyless.  It's true that the animated series is about some serious stuff, but it also has moments of joy, of humor, of unapologetic "cool".  The movie forsakes all that.  I don't even remember a single laugh or smile in the whole damn thing.

As fantasy slips further into the mainstream, this happens more and more.  One of the things I disliked most about The Dark Knight is just how joyless it is.  It's true Batman has his share of noir-ish sensibilities, but he's also a guy who fights criminals dressed in purple suits, who wear tuxedos, and who can even shapechange or be werebats.  I'm not looking for a comical Batman, but I am looking for moments when I feel like I'm seeing something fantastic.  Instead, Batman is just a vigilante with a few gimmicks.  The Joker is just a killer without any sense of style.  And we are persistently reminded that being a superhero and living in Gotham City sucks.

Even the Star Wars prequels have this problem.  When you watch the original, there are certainly plenty of serious moments.  Especially between Luke and Darth Vader.  But the prequels lack their Han Solo, a dashing character who is there to have fun and be awesome.  I've always felt that Han was more important to Star Wars than just about any other character.  He gives us permission to enjoy ourselves.  Even when he's being lowered into the carbonite pit, he gives us a sly wink and a cocky grin, and we know that it'll take more than being frozen alive to stop Han.

The prequels don't have that character.  And they suffer for it.  Indeed, Han might just be the perfect example of fun fantasy that still has some teeth.  Jar Jar Binks is just stupid, a character with no redeeming qualities, who exists only to be goofy.  Obi-Wan and Anakin are both maudlin, mopey characters.  And there's good justification for that.  But without a Han to be both fun and serious, the prequels ends up either coming across as slight or angsty, depending on the scene.

A character like Han Solo can make or break a fantasy story, and thinking about it, Harrison Ford has made a pretty good career playing that type.  Indiana Jones has swagger and heart.  Even Ford's version of the President gets to fight terrorists.  It's just another small strike against Cowboys and Aliens that Ford plays the unlikeable version of Han Solo in it.  He's so grizzled and unpleasant and deliberately avoids any moment of his trademark smile that by the end, I realized just how much I missed it.

This is why I often struggle finding an easy sub-genre in my own work.  I'm usually writing about strange things without apology.  I don't feel the need to say THIS IS IMPORTANT every chapter.  And I even dare to have large chunks of humor scattered liberally throughout.  It has the twin handicap of making me seem too goofy to some, too serious to others.

Am I a fantasy adventure writer who uses humor?  Or am I a humor writer who uses fantasy adventure as a backdrop?  I'd like to think I'm both.  But the danger is that by trying to walk in two worlds, I might not be accomplishing as much as I could if I settled on planting both feet in one realm.

Even removing the humor though, when I write about robots detectives and space squid supervillains, I'm already working against myself as a "serious" storyteller.  When the plots of my stories hinge on raccoon gods dropping by to crash on the couch or about a fuzzy green monster that wants to eat the universe, one morsel at a time, I'm going to fall hard on one side of the spectrum.

If Mack Megaton was just a robot detective, I might get away with it as a "serious" writer.  But Mack lives in a retro-future city.  His best friend is a talking ape.  He fights aliens and giant slime monsters.  Regardless of the context, it implies goofy.  And it is.  But it doesn't mean it's slight or frivolous.

The paradox of my work is that, no matter how serious I might make it, the stories are always going to sound silly upon basic description.  The only way to offset that would be to write more seriously, to remove the smiles, the moments of joy.  And it wouldn't hurt to kill more characters in the stories and possibly blow up a city or two.  Heck, even the original Star Wars blows up a planet to make sure we realize how nasty the Empire is.  And it doesn't hurt the film to do so.

There's a similar moment in Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain (due out next year) that isn't played for laughs either.  But considering it's the climax of a war between a space squid supervillain and rock men from Saturn, it'll probably either come across as goofy to some or too serious to others.

And even as I write my current project, I find it's a story full of humor.  And I live with it because it's vital that it remain in there.  I'm not interested in backing away from the fantastic, from treating it as anathema to serious storytelling.  Fantasy can be fantastic.  It can be fun.  It can be every  bit as meaningful and worthwhile as any other story while still retaining humor and poise.  And it can do all these things while having jetpack gorillas and giant fightin' robots.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Flawed

A flawed character is not the same thing as a damaged or negative character.  In fact, a character can be good and noble and nearly perfect and still suffer from a flaw that keeps his stories interesting.

I think of Superman as a perfect example.  Superman is a flawed character.  His flaw is his unflinching morality, his absolute desire to do good.  Too many people seem to miss the point of giving Superman this quality.  Without it, he becomes supremely uninteresting.  Without a limitation, Superman is nothing but a god-like being who can overcome any obstacle.  His desire not to abuse his power is his most laudable quality, but it is also his most important flaw.

Too often, people mistake the idea of a flaw as being a negative quality.  But flaws need not be bad things a character carries.  Story-wise, a flaw is something that gets in a character's way in achieving their goals.  And a moral center can definitely be a flaw to contend with.

On the other side, having a negative quality that makes a character more effective is usually missing the point of why a flaw should exist.  If a maverick cop's flaw is that he "doesn't play by the rules", but that's exactly why he can catch the bad guy, he isn't flawed.  He's empowered.

A moral code is often the most basic flaw any protagonist must deal with.  It might make the character easier to root for, but it also places limits on what he's willing to do.  Without limits, all protagonists become increasingly less interesting.

The problem I have with "dark" and "gritty" interpretations of characters like Batman and Superman is that the first step is usually to deprive them of their moral center in some attempt to make them flawed.  But all the writer usually ends up doing is making a hero who is invincible and unfettered.  A Superman willing to kill anyone who stands in his way, who isn't distracted by a convenient hostage situation or a city about to be destroyed, is far less interesting than one who cares.

Yes, being a good person can be a serious character flaw.

My favorite interpretation of Batman is of a person pathologically dedicated to saving the world, to seeing that what happened to him never happens to anyone, to not just terrorizing criminals in some bizarre revenge fantasy, but instead, determined to strike at crime at its deepest levels.  His goal is to protect the world (or at least his city), and that extreme nobility is his most important flaw.  My Batman doesn't need to be messed up or damaged.  He's much more intriguing as a guy who bears the weight of the world on his shoulders because he sincerely wants to save everyone.  Even the bizarre criminals he faces on a regular basis.

It honestly bugs the crap out of me that Frank Miller said Batman is crazy, and most everyone decided to go with that.  Crazy, revenge-driven Batman makes no sense.  There are easier ways to get revenge.  And he certainly wouldn't have a code against killing.  He d be more akin to the Punisher than the methods and style of Batman.  But heck, even the Punisher has a certain code he follows.  Without it, he's just a guy who shoots people.

Being good is a flaw, and it's a flaw I enjoy in most of my protagonists.

Most characters have flaws though not all have flaws that get in the way of their stories.  Tarzan is technically an uncivilized savage, but it never really gets in his way.  He's still rich.  He still gets the girl.  He has all the skills he needs to triumph.  If he isn't perfectly civilized, it's not really an obstacle.

When Batman hangs out with The Justice League, he is a "normal" guy among superhumans.  But it never prevents him from contributing.

Scrooge McDuck is a greedy bastard, but he still goes on adventures and is rarely punished for it.

Conan might be a "barbarian" but it doesn't get in the way of beheading evil wizards and slaying monsters.

Flaws are funny things.  They require context.  And they don't always have to be crippling fears or psychotic rages.  They can be a touch too much arrogance, a dislike for the color yellow, being too tall or too short, or too "good".  In the right circumstances, anything can be a flaw.

But it's only a flaw if it gets in the character's way.  Otherwise, it's just another character trait.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Terrifying

I'm not a horror writer.  I do use elements of the horror genre now and then, but though I write about monsters, they are rarely "monstrous".  More often, they're characters who happen to be monsters.

While I'm not a big horror fan, I do believe though that monsters that are genuinely scary usually come in two types:  The Single-Minded and The Unknowable.

The Single-Minded monster is straightforward.  It exists for one simple purpose and lives to only fulfill that purpose.  It doesn't generally care if you, specifically, live or die.  It just wants to do what it does and if you get in the way, you're screwed.

The Blob is the best and most terrifying example.  It isn't intelligent.  It doesn't scheme.  It just stalks and eats.  And the more it eats, the bigger it gets.  It carries no particular malice toward individuals.  They're only food.  And unchecked, it would eat everything in the world.  The Blob is a known quantity.  It might not be very mysterious, but it doesn't need to be.  Because even knowing what it is and what it wants doesn't give you much of an advantage when dealing with it.  Other than to run away from the damn thing and hope someone, somewhere, manages to stop it.

Jason Vorheese is another example.  He lives to kill.  He has no other purpose.  And while he's appeared in so many films, it's hard to take him seriously as a monster at this point, it doesn't change the fact that he is one.  And that he's a pretty darned effective one at that, considering he is just as difficult to kill as the Blob.  Maybe more difficult.  Jason certainly has more movies.

Whenever animals attack, they tend to fall into this category.  Whether it's rabid dogs or crazed bears, birds or giant rabbits, they tend to be remarkably simple in their motivations.  And that single purpose is what makes them so scary.  Because if all the birds in the world just decided to attack us, it'd be pretty ugly.

The second monster type is The Unknowable monster.  The unknowable monster is trickier than the single-minded beast because the unknowable remains largely unfathomable.  It's a much harder monster to create and it's a virtually impossible monster to sustain.  The more often the unknowable monster appears, the less unknowable it is.  And the more we know about it, the more concrete its motivations and methods, the less terrifying it becomes.

Freddy Krueger started as an unknowable.  He was something that came in your dreams and killed you when you slept.  You couldn't really fight him, and why he chose you was a mystery.  But then the film explains that he's the ghost of a serial killer and he's coming back for revenge.  It takes something away from him then.  Instead of being an indefinable thing come to slay you in your sleep, he's an evil ghost out for vengeance.  While he's still scary, he isn't the same.

As the movies progressed, as Freddy became less of a nightmarish force and more of a serial killer with a gimmick, he became correspondingly less frightening.  By the time Freddy Vs. Jason rolled around, Freddy was more of an evil genius in ghost form than anything else.  Jason, though, remained a simple-minded killing machine who exists only to kill.  It's true that he loses some of his teeth when we see him as a frightened little boy under it all, but considering that in the real world, he is still a monster who slaughters everything he comes across, he's still fairly direct.

Cthulhu and most of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos suffers from this affect.  Does anyone really fear Cthulhu anymore?  While he once represented the inevitable doom hanging over our heads, he's instead become something of a mascot for fear, rather than an agent of it.  The more written about Cthulhu and his gang, the less terrible they are.  Oh, sure, they'd kill us all in a heartbeat, but they still seem to have motivations that make sense.

Cthulhu is just the janitor for much more powerful forces.  He's just a workin' stiff with tentacles.  He's the concept of abstract horror put in solid form and then made into stuffed animals.

In watching the trailer for the new Paranormal Activity 3, I couldn't help but be struck by how unscary the monster is at this point.  The first film was all about a monster that we never saw, that might have been a demon, might have been something else, that was lurking invisibly in the house.  What it wanted was never clear.  Why it existed at all was never mentioned.  And where it came from . . . hell, it could've been outer space for all we knew.  What made Paranormal Activity frightening was NOT knowing these things.

I get that Hollywood can't let go of a moneymaking idea, but I don't see why horror fans find this stuff frightening.  Because, aside from a few shock scares, the monster has lost its most terrifying quality, its unknown nature.

This is what made Cloverfield interesting.  There's a giant monster attacking the city, and because we view it from the perspective of just random citizens, we never learn much about it.  Just that it's big and frightening and it'll kill you by stepping on you and not even notice.  And those little things that drop off of it, what are they?  Is this an invasion?  Is it just a big misunderstanding?  Is the monster just as confused as we are?

Actually, all those questions have answers.  That was part of the marketing for the film.  If you looked, you could find the answers.  But why would a horror fan want them?  Why would I want to know more when, by knowing more, I rob myself of the mystery that makes the monster scary in the first place?

Maybe it's because, even when we embrace our fears, we are always striving to defeat them.  We like to be terrified, but only on our own terms.  And we also can't resist seeking answers.  We are terribly uncomfortable with the unknown.  The Blob might want to eat us, but at least we can comprehend that.  And Cthulhu might rise out of the depths to destroy civilization, but it's some small comfort to understand why he's doing it.  And if you give us a movie about a giant monster rampaging through New York, we can't resist asking "why?" and seeking out those answers.

The horror of the unknown so terrifies us that we can't allow it.  Not even in our fiction.  We need to know, and I think that's where H.P. Lovecraft was wrong.  We aren't frightened by answers, even answers that aren't especially comforting.  We're terrified by the prospect of not getting answers, of living without ever knowing.

That's why the prequel will remain appealing.  Not because they ever really give us good answers.  They don't.  But they give us answers, regardless, and answers are what we seek.  And even monsters aren't allowed to get away without supplying those answers.

The one horror we will always reject is uncertainty, and that isn't just why our monsters tend to lose their teeth.  It's why we tend to reject the abstract, why we become beholden to flawed philosophies of all types, and why we are so easy to lie to.  Because we'll take any answer, no matter how silly, over no answer.

The most horrific concept isn't found in blobs from outer space, slashers, or torture flicks.  It's found in three little words:

I don't know.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Why Race Matters

I love Tarzan.  He might just be my favorite literary character, and I love his stories.  But Tarzan comes with baggage.

The most obvious flaw in the character is that he's a white European who lands in the middle of the jungle and becomes its greatest warrior.  It's hard not to see that as contributing to the myth of the "superior white man", even unintentionally.  And those who are only familiar with the cinematic versions of the character will certainly have a point.  Tarzan movies are filled with ignorant natives and civilized Europeans.  Even Disney's animated Tarzan movie sidestepped the whole issue by not having any natives in it at all.  The jungle is teeming with talking animals and adventure, but there's not a single dark-skinned individual to make us feel uncomfortable at the notion.

In the books, Tarzan is certainly a superman.  He is the embodiment of the "Noble Savage", a term loaded with all kinds of troublesome notions.  On the other hand, Tarzan is clearly a superior being who is better than everyone.  Even Europeans are no match for his physical prowess, and while the natives don't come across as Tarzan's equal, neither do any of the supporting white characters.  Tarzan is tougher than everyone, and the books make no bones about this.  There also plenty of white villains in the books and black heroes.

Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars books have the same problem.  John Carter is a white man from a faraway land who comes to a strange world and conquers it with his sheer badass nature.  The Martians might be green, red, black, and, yes, even white, but nobody matches John Carter, the Caucasian transplant from Earth.

There is certainly racial baggage that comes with these characters, and it's all right to admit that.  They are characters of their time, and while I think Edgar Rice Burroughs was fairly enlightened on the subject of race for his time, it doesn't change the fact that he did live in his time.  And even if Burroughs had been a complete racial progressive, even if he had thought Tarzan would be more logical as a ethnic character, there was no way someone would've published the adventures of a physically superior African man who fought lions and defeated evil Europeans.  It just wouldn't have happened.

It's funny to remember that, at this particular moment, Caucasians were assumed to be better than ethnic folks at EVERYTHING.  So the notion of a powerful African man who could best all comers in battle would've been more ridiculous than the notion of a European doing so.

Of course, even if there had been a market for an African Tarzan, it would carry with it unfortunate implications.  A black man raised by apes who is lord of the jungle is fraught with cultural peril.  If Tarzan were black, not only would he never have existed in the first place, he would never have been popular.  And if he'd managed to make it to the modern world, he would only be relegated to a dustbin of curiosity, a relic of a less racially progressive time.

That's how race works.  It makes everything more complicated.  And you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.  You can't just ignore it because it does matter.  But you can't focus on it too much because then it often gets in the way.  Whether Tarzan was white, black, Asian, or you-name-it, he is a character that comes with baggage.  And it's unavoidable and something we just have to deal with as best we can.

And we don't usually deal with it well.

In Thor, two supporting characters were given an ethnic makeover to add diversity and some fans (and some people with nothing better to do) cried foul.  Putting aside the racists and the misdirected fanboys, without these changes Thor would have been a 100 percent Caucasian movie because, like Tarzan, he was created in a time when ethnic characters were a novelty and just didn't show up very often.

(And people who say the Norse gods were all white in the myths are just being silly.  The gods of the Marvel universe are, and have always been, magical aliens.  They only resemble their original counterparts as long as it serves the story.  To say that they need to be white because the originals were white just sounds dumb.  I'm pretty sure Odin didn't have a magic robot in the original stories.)

Spider-Man is a white guy.  As is Batman, Superman, the original Teen Titans, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Captain America, Ant-Man, Wonder Man, the Wasp, The Hulk, the Flash, the original original Green Lantern, the second "original" Green Lantern, Thor, Loise Lane, J.J. Jameson, Gwen Stacy, Iron Fist, Hawkeye, etc., etc., etc.

These characters, many of them created decades ago, are white because that was the default setting for characters at the time.  And as they continue to carry forward, they bring this tradition with them.  Comic books are a medium where characters less than twenty years old are still considered unestablished, so of course, comic books are struggling with this more than just about any medium.

But it doesn't stop at comic books.  Even movies in the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s suffer from this.

James Bond comes from the 60′s.  Star Wars is filled with white guys, aliens, two black guys, and maybe three women.  Indiana Jones has minority characters who mostly just serve as obstacles.  (Although I've always liked Short Round as a callback to the "scrappy kid" archetype, but even that comes with baggage.)  But all these established characters and universes, if not hostile toward ethnicity, certainly are not particularly welcoming to it.

Again, to be clear, I'm not calling anyone racist.  It's not about us as individuals.  It's about a society that is larger than us, that functions on a level most of us never even think about.  Society is like any system, and any large system  has a life of its own, bigger than any of its parts.

This is why swapping race is NOT equal and that context matters.  If a white supporting character in a predominately white universe is made ethnic it is NOT the same as when an ethnic character is made white.  Heimdall and Hogun are two ethnic guys in a world of white guys, and their world is better off for the change.  Changing nearly all the ethnic good guys from The Last Airbender to make it more "mainstream" is a change for the worse because we already have more than enough white heroic protagonists.  We don't need to add more, even if it's done in some misguided attempt to reach a wider audience.

(As a small aside, it is unfortunate that the villains in Airbender are allowed to keep their ethnicity.)

In Cowboys and Aliens, an otherwise entertaining film, the one important ethnic character in the film dies.  And at the end of the film, we have the three Caucasians surviving.  It's true that a lot of Caucasians die at alien hands, but it doesn't change the fact that if you have one important ethnic character, it'd be nice to not have him have to die for extra drama.

X-Men: First Class had two ethnic characters.  One joins the bad guys.  The other dies to show how bad the bad guys are.  And once again, at the end of the film, we are left with a team of white guys (even if one of those guys is covered in blue fur) when the dust clears.

Ultimate Spider-Man is killed and replaced by an ethnic kid, and some people can't stand it.  And, yes, it's a shame that an original ethnic character couldn't have been created instead, but there would have been no publicity, on interest, in that.  It's only by attaching his ethnicity to a mainstream white character (even an alternate universe version) that anyone cares.

Even in our "enlightened" world, we still think of Caucasian as mainstream and ethnic as other, as strange, as odd.  We're still carrying our baggage, and we have to be mature enough to admit and deal with that.  Race is still a problem in America.  It's a problem everywhere.  And it'd be nice to have an adult discussion about it rather than everyone wasting all their time defending themselves.

Race matters.  It matters because we are still carrying all the hang ups and problems our ancestors did, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Rune Age (A Game Tuesday Review)

I somehow got my hands on a copy of Rune Age, the new deck building type game from Fantasy Flight Games (www.fantasyflightgames.com).  Don't ask how (insider connections?).  Instead, ask is it good enough to stand out from the plethora of deck building games out there?

My answer is a resounding yes.

Rune Age starts with the same basic nature of all deck building type games.  If you're unfamiliar with this new genre of game, all the players start the game with a basic deck of cards.  Over the course of the game, they draft different cards to add to their decks while whittling away less useful cards until eventually the game is over.  The action is simple, and players strive to create the most effective deck as time goes on.

So what makes Rune Age different than its fellow deck builders?  Plenty, and that's what might just make it my new favorite of the genre.

To begin with, Rune Age has a real war game type feel to it.  Each player chooses a faction, and each faction has its own specific units to build its army from.  Each army type has its own feel, and each must strive to find a reliable balance of weak and strong cards.  Players send their armies to attack each other, siege city cards, and often, enemy objectives that will appear as the game progresses.  While it is an abstract war game, it certainly has that war game thrill of sending armies into battle.

Rune Age also has two types of commodities to buy cards.  It has Gold, used to buy your army cards, and Influence, used to gain more gold and powerful neutral cards available to everyone (though in limited amounts).  Influence is highly valuable and the only way to really get it is to control neutral cities.  But neutral cities are never truly secure.  While initially difficult to conquer (but predictable), once they are under your control, you have to be able to defend them or else, lose them to other ambitious players.

Like all deck building games, there's a balance to the cards you draft.  Draft too many units, and you'll without reliable Gold (and thus, unable to expand your army).  Buy too much Gold, and you'll find your army isn't big enough to come to your rescue.  But beyond this, Rune Age has tactical decisions to be made during your turn.  Do you siege an enemy city?  Use your influence to bring a powerful dragon to your side?  Or fill your treasury with more Gold cards to help build up your army?  Do you launch a diversionary attack, meant to weaken your opponent before attacking your real target?  Or do you go all in against a single objective?  And dare you risk attacking the final Objective card in a gamble that could win the game for you or end up crushing at your pathetic forces?

What makes Rune Age particularly interesting is that "weak" cards remain valuable throughout the game.  Even the lowliest foot soldier can remain worthwhile (if only to have a card to sacrifice on the front line), and sometimes, it's worth having a few cheap Gold cards in your hand to pay off your Manticore's special ability or power your Siege Engines.

A very cool rule worth mentioning is that Influence can be spent to hold onto cards at the end of your turn (which are normally discarded).  Thus, an influential player can develop a reliably stronger hand.  Especially if no one is attacking him.

Finally, the topper on this game is the Scenarios.  There are four different Scenarios, each with their own win condition as well as play style.  They are:

The Resurgence of the Dragonlords: a competitive battle to build a powerful enough army to repel the dragonlords.  Players are less concerned with attacking each other, though fighting over cities isn't uncommon in the struggle for precious influence.  However, the dragonlords are not sitting idly by, and if players fight too much amongst themselves or simply take too long getting their act together, the dragonlords can win and all the players can lose.

Rune Wars: the most directly antagonistic scenario where players are trying to be the last faction standing.  The event deck in this scenario forces aggressive play, and while players will once again struggle over Influence, they're ultimately out to destroy the other players and steal their valuable runestones.

The Cataclysm: a completely cooperative experience (though players can still attack each other's cities if they really want that Influence) in which all players must survive to the end of a certain amount of turns as the world itself falls into chaos.  If one player is eliminated, all players lose.

The Monument: a less directly competitive scenario where each player is racing to get enough Gold to complete their holy monument and please the gods.  More indirectly competitive since Gold is the key and direct confrontation is forbidden.  Though those precious neutral cities are still up for grabs.

Each Scenario offers something for everyone.  Not only does it give the game a lot of replay value, it also allows the game to be adjusted to whatever most suits your group of players.  Some players will love the direct confrontation of Rune Wars, while others will enjoy the more tense Dragonlords struggle where you can't trust the other players and the game itself is out to get you.  The options are very well thought out and a lot of fun.

Two of the scenarios are perfectly suited for solo play even, without having to really change the rules at all.

Rune Age is similar enough to any other deck building game that if you've played the genre, you will be able to understand it in a minute.  It's easy to teach if you haven't.  But it also brings enough new to the table that I have to give it my highest recommendation.  It's not just about building a great deck.  It's about fighting great battles, about making strategic decisions of how best to employ your forces, and about balance.

Bottom line: It's terrific and one of the best new games I've played in a while.  And I've played some really great games recently.  I give it my highest recommendation.  So if you've played a game like this before, you might want to give Rune Age a shot.  And if you haven't, this would be a great first step into the genre.

Check it out.  Thank me later.

Arc-Less

I miss tough guys.  Guys without character arcs.  Characters who who show up, kick some ass, and then go home basically unchanged.  They aren't shallow characters.  They're simple and direct, and they get the job done.  They aren't there to learn about themselves.  They're there to shoot aliens and stop supervillains and otherwise have daring adventures and keep bad guys at bay.

What happened to those guys?

It occurred to me while watching Cowboys and Aliens, an otherwise enjoyable film, that way too much time was invested in the character arcs for my own personal taste.  As always, this is subjective, but I didn't really need subtle motivations and character growth for a movie about cowboys fighting aliens.  I call it the Conan Rule.  Conan isn't there to learn any important life lessons.  He isn't there to make friends and become a better person.  He arrives to slay sorcerers and mad kings, to destroy monsters and ride into the sunset with a maiden on his arm and a grim smile across his face.  And that's just fine by me.

(Speaking of Conan, let's hope the new film understands this.  I'd hate to sit through a story where Conan wrestles with feelings of guilt and uncertainty.  It'd be completely missing the point of the character.)

Not every protagonist needs a character arc.  James Bond doesn't need a backstory.  John Carter of Mars doesn't have to contemplate the futility of living in a violent world.  And Wonder Woman can just be an Amazon crimefighter, here to lend a hand.

Recurring characters, in particular, suffer from the desire to give them arcs.  These characters weren't designed for it, and often, it comes across as strange.  I don't need to read yet another Spider-Man story where Peter Parker learns to live with his gift / curse.  I don't want to witness Superman coming to terms with his amazing powers.  And I don't care how many adventures Conan has, I don't need him to be anything other than Conan.

Perhaps that's why we've grown so fond of the reboots and re-imaginings of late.  Because the only way to give Peter Parker, James Bond, or Superman a character arc is to start over.  After these characters have learned their "definitive" lessons, established their defining philosophies, there's nothing new to be done with them on the personal growth front.  And because character arc seems to be required at this point, they become uninteresting.  But rather than just giving Superman robots to fight or moving onto new characters, writers instead decide to reset everything so that they can tell the same character arc again.

This is the problem with a recurring character.  If they continue to grow and change as time goes on, then logically, they should eventually become unrecognizable.  Writers are stuck between two opposing goals.  They want to write about the character changing, but they don't want the character to actually change.  Batman will never decide to give up crimefighting.  Spider-Man will always be broke.  And James Bond will always be a spy.  Because that's what defines them.  Even when it doesn't make sense.

Spider-Man, for example, is part of both the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.  But somehow, he's still broke and an outcast hero.  He was even married to a supermodel for decades before she was magically removed to make him more "relatable".  But I think she was removed because she didn't fit with Spidey's established character.  And writers, unable or unwilling, to explore new Spidey stories about a married man (and maybe even a father) who is a superhero, just reset the character.  And they probably weren't wrong to shy away from that development because it's not what most readers want out of Spidey.

Character arcs for recurring protagonists / antagonists are almost always going to be a waste of time.  And disappointing.  Once you get them to where they need to be, there's no need for them to grow and change, and it seems strange that characters exhibited the ability to change and then just suddenly stopped doing it.  X-Men: First Class showcases Eric's transformation into Magneto, which is fine, but once the film is over, we are given the final version of Magneto, the character who will now never change or grow again.  Charles has every single bit of his character development happen in the film too, including getting paralyzed.  Prof X is finished as a character, and further growth is impossible.

I miss adventure stories where the character doesn't learn anything about themselves and where the focus of the plot is less about what the characters are feeling and more about punching evil aliens.  Maybe it's deemed too superficial, but the other side is that the more time characters spend learning about themselves, they less time they have to fight bad guys and save the world.  And while I'm all for a good story of personal growth, I also really enjoy it when James Bond blows up a bad guy's secret installation or Captain America punches out Hitler.  And sometimes, a cowboy can just shoot the evil aliens because they're EVIL and that's what cowboys would do.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Reality-ish

I'm becoming a big fan of the concept of Reality unless otherwise noted.  It is a fairly new idea when it comes to modern fantasy, a natural offshoot of the Urban Fantasy genre.  Although it's actually much older.  H.G. Wells and Jules Verne usually set their stories in the real world unless otherwise noted.  It only seems like an otherworldly place now because of the passing of time.

Yet in the fantasy genre, your average person is often confused by the concept of a world where everything is the same as ours EXCEPT for a few fantasy elements.  An important distinction here is that there's no "masquerade" of normality, no hidden world of the fantastic.  The fantastic is just part of the everyday world and nobody is terribly surprised by it.  This is how DC and Marvel Comics universes work.  The history of their world is nearly identical.  It just has flying people and radioactive spiders.  And Hitler was killed by an android and came back several times, dying a horrible death each time.  But Hitler is still dead, and the end result of WWII, even with superheroes running around, is exactly the same.  There's a Metropolis and a Gotham City, but they haven't replaced New York or Chicago.  They're just additions to our universe.

My novel Divine Misfortune is set in a world where the gods are real, myths are true, and everything came out the same regardless.  Because that's the setting that works best for the story and allows me to tell the story I want to tell.  I wasn't interested in exploring how gods would change the world.  I was more interested in seeing how the world would change the gods.

The Automatic Detective takes place in a retro-future setting that actually occurs in some purposely ill-defined time between the 30′s and 50′s.  And while the world outside Empire City isn't important to the story, it doesn't change the fact that James Cagney is still a movie star in this world and Jane Austin's novels exist.  Because what's the point in creating a completely new culture when the story is about a robotic tough guy beating the crap out of mutants and evil-doers?

In Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, everything is normal except for absurd moments and the video game logic that pervades the film.  But nobody seems to notice that because that's the world they live in.  Shaolin Soccer is another great example.  As is Kung Fu Hustle, though that one does have a justification at the very end.  And Comedy Central's Ugly Americans lives and breathes this concept, taking place in a world where monsters and mutants are just considered minority groups in a familiar version of New York, aside from a things like the Grand Canyon being created by a demon and other bits of color that give us the same end result.

Worldbuilding is a great tool, and I'm not going to discourage anyone from using it.  But it's okay to admit it isn't always necessary and that it can even get in the way sometimes.  It's cool to say "This story is not about how WWII played out if magic was real.  This story is about gods sitting around on a couch, watching television, and trying to make a living."  It's not being lazy to say that.  It's being focused on the story that is trying to be told instead of the story you have been conditioned to expect.  Sometimes, the best thing in the world is to just say, "Here's our world PLUS X, and that's all you really need to know to enjoy this story."

If the story is good, if it connects with the audience, then regardless of how little world building went into it, it works.  And if the story fails to do that, then it doesn't matter how much fake history / geography / physics / politics went into it because I'm not reading a story for any of those things (though I know some people are).  World building is great if that's what you're going for.  But if its absent, it doesn't mark the writer as a failure.  It just shows his efforts are being placed elsewhere.

There is no default way to tell a good fantasy story.  There are only stories that work and stories that don't.  Regardless of whether or not the Axis had jetpack gorilla commandoes, Atlantis is still around and kicking, and some people have the psychic ability to control time.

Though, regardless of the justification, I'm always in favor of a good jetpack gorilla story.

Fighting the good Fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Scrumbrawl (a review)

Today, we begin Game Tuesday.  Every Tuesday, I'll post something about the tabletop and card game hobby I enjoy so much.  Perhaps too much.  But like any self-respecting superfan, I'm eager to infect you with my own passion.  So Tuesdays will be reserved for reviews and thoughts on the games that most people simply don't know exist.

There are plenty of great game sites out there already, but most people don't stumble upon them unless they are already looking for them, so if I can use my meager amount of fame to introduce hapless strangers to the wonders of traditional card and board games, then I might as well do so.

Today, I'd like to review Scrumbrawl from Vic-Tim Games (www.scrumbrawl.com).  I met the guys at Vic-Tim at a convention a while back, after I'd already bought and played the game.  I'd promised them a review at one point, and then life got in the way.  But better late than never.

Scrumbrawl's theme is that of a fantasy sport where various magical characters battle it out in a chaotic arena, trying to score points by getting the ball to the goal and defeating other players on the field.  Chaos is the operative word.  This is a game where everything can change in a moment and often does.  Perhaps one second, your team will get struck down by a lightning bolt or smacked by an angry ghost.  And teams will be cycling through players constantly, so no matter how cool that Chimera or Amazon might seem, don't bother getting too attached to them because odds are good they won't be long for the arena.

If you don't like randomness, stay away from Scrumbrawl.  It is this concept personified.  The game is meant to be sat down and played without concern for long-term strategy.  Instead, it's a fast and furious battle where players dive right in and start fighting for glory.  This is its biggest strength.  Not since the forgotten classic Battleball have I played a game where I can just jump into the action.  This means that Scrumbrawl is a great game for casual play and for introducing to players who are new to gaming.

In comparison, I really enjoy Privateer Press's Grind fantasy sport game.  It has more meat to it.  On the other hand, I've had trouble teaching people Grind, where Scrumbrawl is as simple as set a few tokens on the board, draw a few cards, and start playing.  The rules can easily be taught as you play, and that's a great thing.

Scrumbrawl is a terrific casual game.  It's fast and furious enough that it's always entertaining, chaotic enough that it discourages players from getting stuck in overthinking things, and easy enough that the rules can be learned without pain.  But this could be said about a lot of games, so what is unique about Scrumbrawl?

It has great presentation.  The cards and figure tokens that represent the various participants are all very colorful and fun.  The art, in particular, takes old standbys of fantasy and makes them pop with life.  Whether its the ectoplasmic vapor of the Ghost or the fearsome terror of the Giant Spider or the strange enchantment of The Stump, this is a game with a lot of personality.

Variety is another strong element.  With dozens of possible characters to be drawn from the deck, it's unlikely you'll see the same team combos over and over again.  Add to this the clever game mechanism of different type of balls AKA orbs to compete over.  There's the standard leather orb, which does nothing special, but there's also the chaos orb (randomly teleports its carrier), the unstable orb (has a tendency to explode), and the sticky orb (hard to drop, impossible to pass), etc.  There are countless random events to spice up the game.  Lightning storms and sudden multiple orbs as well as earthquakes and windstorms.  Scrumbrawl will never play out quite the same way twice.

This chaotic nature will be the biggest turn off to "hardcore" players who hate having an unlucky die roll undo their plans.  So if you are one of these folks, Scrumbrawl is not for you.  But if you can stomach a healthy dose of random madness to your fantasy sport board game, then you could do a lot worse than Scrumbrawl.  It's a solid, fun game, and worth your time if want to spend an hour watching a Dragon fight a Leprechaun for the glory of the arena.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee