Batman & Willpower = Green Lantern Batman?

I’ve gotten bored waiting on the Comic World News forum sending me posting privileges, so I’ll post my response to Kurt Busiek’s answer to The Hooded Utilitarian’s question of why Batman (with all the willpower and intellect he displays) hasn’t been tapped by the Corps for a Green Lantern gig. The various answers about why he hasn’t received the ring are all valid, though there is perhaps a little too much “outside looking in” going on, with people justifying the non-ring status by way of saying that the books work better with Green Lantern (who is always Hal Jordan to me, no matter who else wears the ring) wielding the alien tech while Bats skulks around in alleyways and rooftops. True. But also true is the fact that the ring, when looking for a suitable replacement, would have the smarts to avoid those who would spur its’ offer.

I’ll play ‘What If…’ for a moment (even though the House Of Ideas lays claim to that particular title) and say that Batman is up against a foe who not only outguns him, but potentially outsmarts him: He’s on the rooftop, doing whatever he does between breaking the teeth of goons and mooks… Eating a sandwich perhaps, or checking Wonder Woman’s Twitter updates even. Then he hears the sound of a bank’s alarm ringing through the night, the wail of police sirens rushing to the scene, and faint screams in the distance. This is when he gets to do his stuff, rushing to the scene. But what if it isn’t just The Penguin, or some other rogue from his assembled list of walking, talking punching bags? Lets say there is a maniacal genius who has closed each end of the road with tanks. And there are a bunch of ex-military types brandishing FBG’s.

This is the point where Nightwing, or Green Arrow, or The Question, or any number of similarly non-powered characters would decide that making a call to the JLA for some serious back-up would be a good idea – 1-800-SAVEMYASS please. Not “Bats”, because he likes to like up to that nickname. He would see it as a challenge. He’s played the archetypal Badass Normal for so long that even thinking of wimping out would be completely unacceptable. Now, as he’s checking out the enemy he’ll probably spot the one critical weakness in the plan (because that is what he does), and he might let the merest trace of a grin flicker over his features for a second. But only ever in the shadows, because ‘Batman’ doesn’t smile.

Right at this moment, if it were in a P.J. Farmer novel, we would be gifted to a nice little description of a stretching of his underpants, nudging his utility belt into his stomach. Point being – Batman gets off on beating the shit out of his enemies without resorting to anything more than his brains and his fists. It is the defining aspect of the dark knight detective. And even if he did get tapped by the ring to bear the mantle of an intergalactic police force, he wouldn’t go flying off to some other planet to save little six-armed purple aliens, or talking horses, or… y’know, whatever…  when there are still pimps and drug dealers on the streets of Gotham waiting to get seven shades of shit kicked out of them. He would refuse the call to arms. C’mon, honestly – can you imagine him reciting the “In brightest day” schtick without dying a little inside.

So the ring wouldn’t approach him because he would refuse it.

And if it did reach him, he would refuse it anyway.

And if he really, really wanted a green ring (ignoring the current BN storyline) he would only have to ask GL for a loan of the damn thing. No, scratch that. He would have a plan in place whereby he would get it, even if he had to do pull some really nasty and amoral moves to get his hands on the ring, because he has plans for everything. That is who Batman is. He exists for the dank, horrible side streets of a city where you’re as likely to get gassed by the Joker, or eaten by Killer Croc, as you are to make it through the rush hour traffic in time for work. He is part of the city in ways that other heroes just… aren’t. Beyond the connection to Lois, Superman could be based anywhere on the planet. Same with Wonder Woman. Batman’s family is part of Gotham history, tying his existence as Batman to the place.

Those are the reasons why Batman wouldn’t become a Green Lantern in regular continuity.

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You’re still thinking of Batman’s boner though, right? All my points, laid out in logical fashion, and the Bat-stiffy is all that sunk in?

The Many Layers Of Adaptive Fidelity

As my brain still isn’t operating at full efficiency, I thought I’d revisit something which has been playing away at the back of my mind for a few years now, and has yet to be examined seriously. I haven’t cleaned up my thoughts much, but I’ll expand on this if there is sufficient interest.

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Something which bothered me whilst watching the 1989 Batman film has resurfaced in another – similar – way. The divergence between an original property and an adaptation has never been so great, with video games, films, books, comics and television shows depicting different versions of a few characters so differently that – to a casual observer – there seems little which binds the media together. That problem I mentioned with Batman – okay, it isn’t a big deal, but the fact that so many of his enemies died whilst he was going about his business seems at odds with the comic-book character who once stated “nobody dies tonight.” It is, in the bigger picture, a minor deal, but for me it was too great a leap to make to believe he would allow anyone to die.

The C.S.I. novel Double Dealer was sitting on the shelf in my local Waterstones and looked nice enough (the cover isn’t very ‘C.S.I.’, but the book was written by Max Allan Collins, and I liked his take on Dick Tracy so I thought I would take a chance. And the question of authorial responsibility to a character already in the public consciousness (which has been bugging me for years) was highlighted by the first few pages of the book – Sara doesn’t seem to be in-character, and the depiction of Warrick is off slightly. Is there a way to gauge how much someone will appreciate any given work in relation to the other media in which characters appear? I know some people like the slightly goofy Star Trek of the original series, but how do you reconcile that with Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of the film? Where Kirk has an implant in his head placed there by Starfleet? And when there are differences in a character’s behavior (look at the depictions of Batman for a good introduction to this), which is the ‘real’ version?

Tight Adaptation

Where the story is merely transposed to another media, such as the novelizations of X-Files episodes, I would consider it to be a Tight Adaptation. The Jackanory readings of Roald Dahl’s novels (replete with illustrations) are another good example, losing nothing and adding nothing (nothing important anyway – audio is expected), but this can be unfulfilling for those who want a deeper experience of the world the characters inhabit. I know that there are good examples out there, but most of the time these types of adaptations irritate me in that they are not doing anything to advance the characters.

Close Adaptation

Adaptations which shift moments around in the timeline whilst being generally accurate, or merging two characters into one for the sake of clarity, would come in here. The primary problem when something in an expansive medium (i.e. novels or comics) is shrunk to fit a defined length (a film perhaps) is that the complexity necessarily needs to be streamlined in order to make events comprehensible. It does, however, mean that events can be appreciated wrongly – did anyone who watched 30 Days Of Night completely buy into the fact that the film takes place over a month rather than a couple of days? Or a week? There are a couple of moments where I had to check how much time had passed because the events didn’t seem to follow on well.

The Lord Of The Rings films are perfect examples, omitting only the superfluous material, while staying true to the intentions of the original texts. One thing I don’t really mind is when historical accuracy overrides the preferred (original) text. This doesn’t apply to the film From Hell, but there are other places it can actually improve a story. I’ll try to think of some examples… Later.

Near Adaptation

Batman Begins would probably be placed into this category, because it doesn’t entirely follow the events of the comics, yet has enough ties to certain stories. Ra’s al Ghul, notably, is very different from established continuity, and there is no mention of the Lazarus Pit.  Overall it is a much, much stronger film than any of the four previous films, and that is entirely down to its’ grounding of the characters in the real world. Hellraiser (but not the sequels) would also fall into this category, and also Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining – ironically, a film which is much better than the close adaptation made by Stephen King in the nineties.

Loose Adaptation

This is where most adaptations fall, and where quite a few fail as well. Close enough to the source material to be accepted by the general public (who may or may not know the character well enough to tell the differences made), yet too far from the originals to appease the hardcore fanbase. This is also the category in which that troublesome Batman television series deserves a mention – back when I was too young to know better, the show was being run on (I think) Sunday mornings, and it was one of my first introductions to the characters. It didn’t seem too at odds with the Silver Age on reflection, but you have to remember that the comics were tweaked to reflect the series, not the other way around. It stands as testament to the damage a loose adaptation can do to the original.

Of course, many great stories have been told which twist the characters out of their regular appearances. The abysmal Judge Dredd and Tank Girl films are other perfect examples of why the scale of quality dips sharply once you get down to loose adaptations, though the redeeming factors include a bunch of Philip K. Dick stories being handled well – Blade Runner is a very loose adaptation, so it shouldn’t be assumed that simply because the best known examples from any category are awful that all media within the same category should be likewise. The Conan films are looser than I had hoped, yet they are equally as interesting as the stories they were adapted from. The Barry Windsor Smith comics are also quite different, though these have just as much legitimacy as the originating material.

Free Adaptation

In which little remains of the original. Hook Jaw, a staple of British comics in eighties reprints, is Jaws with a metal spear jutting from its’ jaw, and is as close to a defining example of how little you need to keep for a free adaptation. Mostly this category is made up of pastiches, rip-offs (the Asylum DVDs mostly all belong here), homages (Cerebus The Aardvark being one), and pastiches. I brought up Hook Jaw, though could easily have included Dredger (Dirty Harry By Any Other Name), Spinball (inspired by Rollerball) or a bunch of early 2000AD strips. Dredd is, himself, another Dirty Harry tribute, though quickly outlived that particular piece of informed inspiration.

The Golden Age of comics is rife with Superman pretenders, so there may be legitimacy conferred if enough distance is placed between the inspiration and the end result, though I’ll leave the finer points for others to untangle.

And I really need to think of better catch-all names for the categories.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

I’m barely getting the chance to sit down for five minutes at a time before something (or someone) interrupts me, so if I’m conspicuous by absence anywhere it really isn’t my fault. If you remember my irritation at possibly having my brother come to stay, along with his family, then I’m pleased to say they have found somewhere. It’s smaller than they wanted, but it will suffice in the interim. I’m less pleased to say they have roped me in to the idiotic rush to do everything over the course of two weekends (which is why I’m not in the best mood), and this decision means that, alongside the Herculean efforts I’m making to be everywhere I’m meant to be, I also have more work when I ought to be relaxing.

At this point I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to untangle myself from all my commitments once March rolls around – a month in which, historically, I have been able to catch a breather. I’ve already missed a doctor’s appointment, left books on a train (three, count em’, three), lost my chance to attend Angoulême, fried a classic games console, and mislaid a handwritten manuscript. Things don’t appear to be settling down any, as there is no time set aside next week for myself either. Is this a rant? I don’t know any more, because my short-term memory is fucked. My vision is also being affected by the lack of sleep or rest, though double-vision can be kinda fun if it isn’t permanent. Don’t ask me to re-wire anything though.

Ach. I’m ahead of myself. Backtrack to the last paragraph… The doctor’s appointment was for the nasty evil nipple on my wrist. I’m still thinking that it is needing taken care of, but as I can’t drag myself off to take a shit in peace, I don’t know when I’ll have enough time to take a couple of hours away from the neverending madness. The books I left behind – The Herald Of Coming Good by Gurdjieff, Newton’s Wake by Ken MacLeod and The Chemistry Of Death by Simon Beckett – which I have been half-reading on my journeys, were forgotten as I tried valiantly to stay on schedule. I was offered the chance to travel to Angoulême by a friend who was travelling South for the festival, but with everything that is happening I’m in no position to escape for a few days to read BD, as much fun as it sounds.

The games console… Oh man, that deserves it’s own paragraph. I got a hold of a small stand-alone unit a couple of years ago – a battery-powered unit with screen, controls and a single game loaded onto the hard drive. They were popular back in the eighties, and I thought it might make an interesting addition to the collection of games I’ve been amassing. It had (or had) it’s own adapter for mains usage, but there was something wrong with the unit and I decided to check whether the problem came from the unit or the adapter, so I used a multi-purpose adapter with various power outputs. Of course, being deprived of sleep makes even simple jobs horrendously complex, and I forgot to check the output before switching it on. Cue faint smell of burnt plastic and metal.

The manuscript is less important than you may think, mostly because it is (was, dammit, was – I keep using the wrong tense) a parody of eighties horror, teen comedy and action films. There were references to everything from the Stallone and Arnholt brain-dead canon, Hughes teen comedies, Freddy (Jason, Myers, et al) right through to the Stephen King novels of the era. I think I made point of a few television shows as well, because I vaguely remember writing a monologue about The A-Team. I don’t consider parodies less worthy than ’straight’ novels, and the reason I’m not cut up about the loss is simply because most of what I wrote wasn’t very good. It is also rather weird to consider an entire era worthy of parody, but if any decade deserves scrutiny for artistic and fashion crimes then the eighties is the decade I would turn to first.

I should mention Wednesday night here as well, because things started going wrong then. That is the night I spent four hours sitting, alone, in an empty apartment – no television or radio, no kettle (and thus no coffee), no seating of any sort… I was waiting on an electrician (or a plumber, or gas engineer, or someone else) to turn up while my brother sorted out other things. Needless to say the idiot never turned up, and I had to make my way home at an ungodly hour. The guy did show up eventually… After 8am the next day. I’m pretty sure that was around the point when my week went wrong. Having been unable to recover the time from such a pointless task has pushed everything else, concertina-like, into a time-frame which is impossible to deal with.

This is also where I’ll ask everyone to be patient. I know I’ve said I’ll do stuff (and I will), but there’s so little time that isn’t occupied by something else that I don’t know when I’ll be able to get around to doing anything. The epic lists – back when my spiralling OCD was out of control – are all still on compressed Win 98 disks. The dictionaries and media guides which I spent so long accumulating and indexing are going to be decompressed when I have the chance. I have the disk now (got one yesterday) but I have no way of knowing when I’ll have the chance to load the OS onto a spare laptop. There are so many things on the To Do list that it might be the middle of April before I’m in a position to think straight.

I mentioned the giant ice-trail down the side of my house, and the £210 it cost to get the drip repaired, but it seems that the idiot repairman sent to do the job was a bit hasty in getting me to fork out cash for the repair. It is back, and with a vengeance. There’s a growing puddle of water in the pot below the drip, and I’m getting a migraine just thinking about how much it will cost to get fixed a second time. The financial pressure on keeping this house from falling down around me is beginning to piss me off. If I had managed to get half-decent repairs done five years ago (when I spent upwards of £20k on the building) I wouldn’t be so annoyed, but it seems that all of the so-called experts in this country are taking liberties with their qualifications.

I’ll be busy, just in case anyone needs to get in touch. My mobile is on mute, the house ‘phone is unplugged and I’ve got half a mind to tape the letter box shut while I’m out. And don’t bother calling when I am home, because you’ll just get yelled at. Or water poured over you from an upstairs window.

[This post took five hours (on and off) to write. Don't think I'm slacking off here.]

Apocalypse: The Incident With The Car (One For The Road)

From my zombie WIP (currently laboring under the working title of Zombie Apocalypse) comes the first actual sighting of a ghoul. This is from the chopped-down version – and still comes in at around page fifty. It is still in very rough shape. There’s so much I’m meant to be doing right now that updating this blog has been pushed down the schedule a ways, though as soon as I get everything sorted I’ll be back to abnormal as usual.

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The Incident With The Car
(One For The Road)

Harold’s mind was racing as he turned off from the more familiar streets on to the long road back to Lumberton; a mobile ‘phone gripped tightly to the side of his face as he pushed the car on to greater speeds, desperately attempting to conjure a plausible scenario which could explain his absence and yet cast him in a good light. It was harder to fabricate balls-out lies than he remembered from his youth, the necessary neurons not quite firing in his brain due to a potent mixture of fatigue, stress and – crucially – alcohol. Simmons wasn’t born to move in lazy towns, the pace of life in the city had shifted his internal clock too far from the rural timeframes which others seemed to accept. “I’m on my way back now, and you wouldn’t believe the roads up here.” A pause. “Probably around three. Maybe a touch later if I can’t floor it down some of the dirt trails which pass for roads up here.” The line crackled and fell away for a moment. Dumb fuckin’ ‘phone he thought, and held it in front of him as he tried to focus his vision. The bars indicating reception quality rose and fell in a steady rhythm, mimicking the equalizer on the car’s radio.

The dull thud, as a shape hit the car, rolled over the hood then fell away to the side of the road – taking the wing mirror with it – was merely the punch line to the bad joke that Harold Simmons’ day had become. A sharp crack appeared in the windscreen after the fact. At no point did Harold’s mind dare to contemplate the possibility that he might have inadvertently caused the death of another human being. “Aw… You god-damned cock-sucking son-of-a-whore,” Simmons spat out. The mobile ‘phone had landed at Harold’s feet as he struggled with the steering, beeping once in protest at its’ treatment before deciding that things were too stressful to deal with.

Spun like a child’s toy, the car came to a stop facing back in the direction whence it had come, its’ journey’s end marked by black rubber laid into the surface of the road. The body lay twenty-five yards back, yet the most important detail of the night – at least in Harold’s mind – concerned one broken light, a dented hood and a certain missing wing mirror. Toting up the damage, albeit with four beers and an empty stomach hindering his math, the damage came to the somewhere in the region of a thousand dollars. “This is why I hate pissant, backwater, shithole, hicksville…” Harold’s tirade stopped mid-sentence when he realized Mr. Roadkill wasn’t as dead as he ought to be. Staggering along the dirt embankment, his victim haphazardly navigated his way towards Harold.

“What is it, you dumb sonuvabitch?” Harold yelled, stepping out of his car. “You want to swap insurance details or something?” No response. “I could’ve killed you back there, ya drunken bum.” Still silence. Bain damage, Harold pondered, maybe a mute? Too drunk to talk? The last thought hit a little too close to home. The man moved closer, agonizingly slowly, but moving closer all the time. Harold glanced at the man as he tried to reign in his anger. Average height, average weight and utterly unremarkable, even Roadkill’s clothing was forgettable. The checked shirt, blue jeans and heavy workboots didn’t help with his bland conformity. This guys wife couldn’t pick him out of a line-up.

Harold ran his hand over the hood, “Look at it. Just look at it.” The car was of no importance to Mr. Roadkill, who – it seemed – moved very fast for a man who could barely  put one foot in front of the other without having to comically readjust his center of gravity by waving his arms like a windmill. Harold turned back to the man in time to see the man lunge forward again. He seemed to hang there, mid stumble with his head cocked slightly too extremely to one side. Inertia, slow to take hold, finally caught up with him, and his full weight propelled him the two feet distance towards Harold. The full weight of the man had pinned Harold to the side of the car, time stretching as Harold’s brain tried to make sense of the surreal situation.

“Get off me ya pole-smoker.”

Mr. Roadkill sunk his teeth into Harold’s left arm, tearing away jacket, shirt and skin from the wound as he pulled back, trying to straighten his head. The man’s arms flailed, making him look even more like a certifiable bug-munching, shit-flinging looney tune than ever. Senses already dulled by alcohol, shaken by the crash and confused by the crazy idiot with a biting fetish, Harold tried to force his brain into action. Harold pushed back against the man with all of his strength, mentally calculating how much time he had wasted with the interruption to his journey. Roadkill, sprawled on the ground, displayed no sense of impropriety at his actions, moving his head to one side as Harold’s foot swung out at him, swiping at the leg once immediate danger had passed.

Moving backwards to the safety of the car, Harold was careful not to take his eyes off Mr. Roadkill for one second. Bite me once, shame on you. Bite me twice, shame on me. Slipping into the driver’s seat he brushed his right hand over the open wound, pulling closed the door with his increasingly painful arm. It burned, but as he could still move his fingers (enough to flip off the bitey idiot as he pulled away at least) he put the incident behind him. That’s gonna hurt in the morning, he thought.

The drive went surprisingly quick once Harold had gotten past the back-roads and on to the freeway. The streets were clear of heavy traffic, though the question of why didn’t register.

Icon Redux – RUR

There have been a few decent stabs at adapting Karel Čapek’s famous play RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots) to film and television, but one point has always fallen short – I have never believed that a company on the cutting edge of technology (as depicted in the play) would have such awful logo’s. Nobody has managed to capture the style companies look for in instantly recognizable designs, and I’m sure there are others who share my dismay at the lack of though which has gone into appropriately designing the future.

The first logo, seen on the cover of the play, is a typical (and very dated) television-company style logo. The BBC (before it added BBC 2) used a similar globe, although I’m pretty sure there are better examples.

There is really nothing to say about this particular logo other than the obvious – those R’s are hideous and the U looks like a V. I’m not sure what (if anything) can be salvaged from that, but maybe someone else has found a way to incorporate some of the elements into an eye-pleasing design. I, however, am ignoring it. The catalogue from an early performance keeps those letters from the original, but uses three blocks (don’t ask me why) for a “modernist” approach. It still looks awful, and doesn’t seem any better than the first stab at a logo.

The cleaned up R’s highlight something else which is slightly bothersome – they seem to have a hint of the SS logo in them. It may be an entirely coincidental design quirk, but I can’t help thinking that some may attribute the appearance to more than mere similarity. Another problem is the fact that reading the title of the play causes the eye to rise through three distinct lines (“stepping up” for each word), which is counter-intuitive. If the layout was done back to front (with the words falling off for each line) then there wouldn’t be so much work for the casual reader to do, and a mere glance at the cover would be all it takes to work out the title of the play.

A quick note about squared-bottom U’s, while I have reason to add it… I’ve never liked the cubist approach for the letter, especially when combined with a box around the letter. It doesn’t scan well while reading, and it annoys the hell out of me. I have no better argument against them than that, though my irritation with the use doesn’t quite match the bile and hatred I reserve for Comic Sans… A font surely designed by someone intent on stalling world peace.

Meanwhile, some attempts at design completely fail to observe even the basics of elegant or interesting typeface. It doesn’t encourage me to part with my money if the appearance of the adaptation isn’t given any thought.

But onwards regardless, to the revamped logo…

The simple act of switching around the first R gives symmetry (yay!), and also gives an overall impression of a ram’s head. Not sure what connotations that may bring up for a tech company, but it amused the hell out of me when I noticed it.

The original logo’s circle doesn’t fit the wider design, so I opted for an oval to hold the finished piece together, along with a nicely metallic feel that is suitable for a futuristic company. See? Not difficult in the slightest, and it is annoying to think that it took all this time for the company to receive the proper care and attention in giving it an appropriate logo.

Icon Redux – Wonder Woman

With the on-again-off again nature of the live-action Wonder Woman film (currently off-again), it might be a while before DC gets around to fixing the WW logo which has sporadically adorned the comic since the eighties.

There are a few niggling design elements which pop out from the basic design, and over the years I’ve trained myself not to look too closely at the logo for fear of having an aneurysm. Parts of the design truly annoy me, to the extent that I haven’t thought about picking up the title with any regularity for years, even though everyone else seems not to notice the little quirks Milton Glaser took when designing it. Or, should I correctly say, one of his staff. Even Todd Klein doesn’t know for sure if the logo was from the hand of Glaser personally or not.

Let’s start with the centerpoint of the uppermost W. It rises above the ‘wings’ just a little too far for my liking.

On the regular comic it isn’t so bad, but on oversized editions, posters and t-shirts it looks even more obvious. After the redesign of the DC “bullet” into something resembling a toothpaste logo I was sure someone would ‘fix’ the Wonder Woman “W’s”, but most folks seem to be able to overlook that section of the character iconography. I’m also unsure of the reason for the slightly rounded elements in the overall design (and the scalloped ends of the wings), making the “comic-book” style of the logo more evident than, say, a corporate logo would be designed.

The diagonal lines aren’t true 2:1 either (which causes the perfectionist in me to let out a silent scream every time it appears prominently), so that should be addressed as well when it comes time for the inevitable re-branding. As for the ‘wings’ on the sides… Those have always seemed stretched just a bit too far, but ‘correcting’ them so that they fall in line makes the overall image look too weird.

It isn’t “wrong” per se, just a bit too clunky on the eye. I’m never sure whether the current angled effect is a good thing or not, but it is still far better than a vertical line at each side.

One last niggle (I swear, I’m almost done complaining) is the red used for the center of the logo for some issues. I’m not sure where in the character’s history the color red took on such an important status, but it still seems ill-suited when used for a character inspired by Greek mythology.I would be much, much happier if someone involved with the character decided to go for a bronzed effect to mimic ancient art. It seems to suit the logo perfectly when the W’s are blacked out (go look at a Greek jug and see where that stylistic tic comes from), and doesn’t give rise to the question of why she is lowered in status to a ‘mere’ superhero.

I might meddle with other logos if I don’t get hit with a complaint from DC over this.

So… What Would YOU Do?

I got into one of those “what would you do if…” conversations today, mostly because people know I’m writing some nasty crime stuff and because of this. The question was simple – what would I do if someone committed a murder after reading one of my stories. I didn’t have to think about the question for long, because the answer seems entirely simple… I would do nothing. That may come across as rather more blunt than it should, but the process I went through to come to that answer follows entirely logical paths, disregarding emotional blackmail and (wrongly) presumed moral obligation. I would do diddly-squat because there is no way that a novel – or a video game, television show or film, for that matter – can have any possible input into a criminal act. It’s not possible. I’ll go one further than that, and claim that there are only a handful of books which have the ability to drive people to violence.

Before you bring up some infamous cases, you really ought to think carefully. Has a novel, or a game, or a crappy horror film, ever managed to bring someone to the point where they are so deluded that they are able to put aside morality and take the life of another? No. Everything you have read in newspapers, seen on television and heard on the radio about “evil” media is wrong. All of it. Even when someone famous has made the assertion. It’s all crap.

Lets go back to the early days of the comic-book industry for a historical perspective on this. Remember the story about the little boy who tied a red dish-towel around his neck, clambered on to the roof of his house and jumped, all because he read an issue of Superman? It’s a famous tale. Now, can you answer me this… What was the boy’s name. I’ll let you take your time; don’t rush to a conclusion. Think about it carefully. Stumped? Want the answer? That little boy never existed. One of the major incidents which brought into existence the Comics Code Authority is an apocryphal tale, no doubt woven by a bored journo who needed to fill a space between adverts for Red Ryder BB guns and Kooba Cola. The story has been successfully disseminated through hand-me-down accounts, embellished where needed (his shin bone popped straight out through his skin, blood spurting all over the back yard) and remains unquestioned in some circles to this day.

There was a shameful time in British newspapers after the James Bulger case when national newspapers lied their assess off to implicate the motion picture Child’s Play 3, a fairly unexceptional film, in the murder of the child. Their loose acquaintance with the truth didn’t merely stop at insinuation, but drew on artistic license rarely seen in ‘news’ to fabricate an elaborate web of “coincidences” to back up their lies. It was a mightily impressive distortion of the case, leading video rental outlets to pull the title from their shelves – presumably to stop any members of the public watching it and calling the tabloid editors out on their bullshit. I kinda admire the way that certain people in the public eye managed to keep a straight face while spouting some of the most blatant untruths heard during the nineties. Astonishingly, the owners of the franchise never stepped up to tell the gutter press that their observations and conclusions were cut from whole cloth.

The most audacious ’spin’ in recent memory was reserved for Grand Theft Auto, a game which deserves massive praise for elevating RPG games from the creatively bankrupt swords and sorcery sub-genre it languished in for so long. The most vocal opponent of the game was (and presumably is) the rather disturbed former American solicitor Jack Thompson – a man who is obviously ignorant of the First Amendment. Hell, he even had the balls to compare the game to Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, losing any respect he may have had before that incredulous statement. As of this date, there hasn’t been a single car theft, murder or misdemeanor committed which has, in any real way, been associated with a person playing the game. That salient point is, however, disregarded by the salivating, ratings-obsessed vultures on television channels such as CNN.

It seems that the only books which really have the ability to twist souls and drive people to kill are the ones which are off-limits to any eager ban-happy librarians. The Bible and the Koran, together, have caused more deaths than every other book combined… And then some.  Those two books are responsible for more atrocities than any political or social movement in the history of the human race, driving their most ardent followers into frothing blood-lust at the prospect of spreading their delusions across the face of the planet. I did point out that no novel had the power to drive people to kill, and my point stands. Those books have but the hint of structure, jumping all over the place. If I didn’t know better I would suggest that D*n Br*wn had a hand in their scratched together, half-lucid witterings.

But back to my original statement… I would say nothing, in addition to the reasons I have already given, because the families of murdered individuals really don’t need another voice spouting armchair psychology and platitudes. As you should be aware, we’re living in highly litigious times, and the prospect (even the slightest glimmer) that a novelist accepts some portion of guilt or remorse for their writing, can lead those left behind to consider the payday waiting if they decide to chance their luck in a civil court. It isn’t worth the hassle, so my take on the problem is simple. SAY NOTHING. If you remain silent, your words can’t be used against you.

I’m off to play GTA4. Screenshots of me popping a cap in a cop’s ass are forthcoming.

2010 – Not The Movie… The Year

You start with an idea in your head. You take the first step, then the second. Then you realize you’re up to your neck in something mad.
Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), The Vanishing (1988)

Lists

Waaaay back when, probably the early days of the 1990s, I began an OCD-fueled list of television shows. This wasn’t merely an attempt to catalogue every show ever made, but included the broadcast date, title of each episode, writer, director and guest cast. Each entry had a sypnosis, and as the thing grew in size and scope (daring to take over my entire life) I decided to stop. Cold turkey. Never again. It didn’t quite work out the way I had hoped, and the folders and folders of information may yet, if the proper place for the information is available, be of some use. I’ve been thinking about that list, and the way in which it ate up the best part of a decade of my life (interspersed with a few other lists and some fiction) , and have come to the conclusion that my data-mining and information sorting skills are one of my strengths. You might think that I have learned better, but no… Really. Just no.

There is a wonderful (if limited) blog – and forum – which deals with lists (Listverse Forums in case you were wondering), but my junkie-like addiction to lists is barely given a fix by the way the lists appear. I can’t sit back and smile when there are a maximum of fifteen or twenty things in a given list… Hell, I’ve created lists with twenty thousand entries before now. That is one of the things 2010 will bring to this blog, much to the horror of any psychiatrists reading. Yes, I’m giving in to the compulsions and embracing my weirdness. There will be a variety presented here, but I figure that for some of them I’m going to need to upload the files themselves (hundreds of pages of information will get really old, really quick for casual browsers) or create web pages for them. Some of the stuff I’ll be presenting has been seen in a limited fashion before, but most of it is brand new.

The zombie ones all need re-working to take into account the last few years of film and book output, and the comic-book ones probably need updating as well. There will be book lists (which will be listed over on Book Re:View – where I have also started creating lists), film lists, metafiction lists… which basically boils down to all my resources which don’t have prior dibs, and all the stuff I’m not actively pursuing. Tho the question remains – who needs to have a list of fictional magazines and newspapers which have appeared in books and in films? Or a list of talking gorillas who have appeared in fiction? Maybe those can appear later… When I work out the finer details you’ll be the first to know.

Fiction

Damn, I still have to look through my discs for all the stuff I was meaning to upload. Okay, here’s a promise… I will, absolutely, grab some free time to sift through the crap and find whatever isn’t too horribly overwrought to post. I’m having some time-management issues at the moment, but as soon as I manage to dust off those pieces fit for human consumption they will be up. I may even spend a week posting excerpts of random things if I find enough gems in amongst the endless rubbish. There is a lot on disc, so I probably don’t have to worry too much about finding suitable material. I’m gonna be digging through material anyway (for the lists) and may as well make use of the effort. There is a post-it with a small list of ‘must do’ items staring at me now, so I’ll have a reminder of everything which needs attention.

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I should have personal goals for the year ahead, as that is a common theme in the ‘new decade, new life’ meme which people have jumped onto. There are a few things I want to get away from, first and foremost being the endless hours. I used to think that being (technically) unemployed would be boring, with the sitting around and doing nothing part taking up most of everything. Nope. Not in the slightest. I’m working harder now than I have ever worked in my life, punching in up to twenty hours a day on a variety of things for money alone. No artistic freedom, no leniency, just “do the job and do it right.” This, ironically, is making me more money than I ever made whilst in one job at a time; I get the feeling that I would be tempted to stick at this way of living for a bit longer – if only for the money – though there is so little time for myself that it can’t be maintained.

There is more to life than endless work, which I’m slowly beginning to realize – even if I can’t help but answer in the affirmative every time a job is offered which falls within my abilities. This is madness, and it has to stop soon.

Another thing I intend to do, from this year on, is planning. I’m good at theoretical planning, and the organization (in hierarchies) of information, but actual sort-your-life-out-planning has always fallen short of expectation. There has always been a rollercoaster of things requiring my attention, and I’ve never sat down and made a realistic schedule to keep, though time is so short now (even with the extra hours I have during the night when I should be sleeping) that I can’t go without a schedule any longer. Maybe it will have to be a color-coordinated one, so I have a clear indication of when I should remember to eat, but I’ll have to do it before I burn myself out.

Some “Fun” Graphics For Bibliophiles

Off the back of a drunken argument in which I argued that, yes, the British government has gone overboard with their nannying behavior in the past few years, I find myself thinking of the ways in which warning labels have crept into everyday life. The ones warning of the obvious risks are bad enough, but with so many of the damn things popping up there is an important question which nobody seems to want to corner – does the proliferation of messages become a white noise after a while? You see them, but do they actually register? Am I the only person whose selective blindness has encompassed all of these warnings? I’m not sure I am.

They aren’t appearing on books yet, but it is only a matter of time before the government decides we can’t be trusted to read without attending a course on proper page-turning (y’know, so we don’t sue publishers every time we get a papercut). I’m slightly surprised that nobody else has had the idea that something like this might one day be all too familiar, though I am willing to concede that one of the triggers for this post lies in the Comics Code – a blight upon the industry for decades.

Enjoy label-free books while we have them.

A Quick And Easy Way To Create Comics Digitally

There are probably the better parts of twenty or so comics on various hard drives, so I have plenty of elements if I ever decide I really want to torture myself trying to pitch a title, but with the Commando character I’m in uncharted waters. I haven’t thought of trying to do a comic which harkens back to the old days of paper rationing and gung-ho national pride (because I get fixated on the irregular size) but I’m willing to see how well I can use the styles and distinctive mood to create something new. The main difference (‘cept for the shape of comics back then) is the text boxes and page layout in the better examples. I’m going to focus on elements rather than the bigger picture – no pun intended – to show my method through this.

First of all we are faced with the physical comic itself. Given the harshness of white paper, and when trying to recreate the feel of a Golden Age comic this is important, the look is completely off – so it is necessary to use a  suitable substitute. Yes, that is a Photoshop recreation of old paper… And the original is 2.7 GB in size and seven layers deep. Obsessed much? Probably, but I like playing with the software. The paper used on Fawcett and Fox comics are prone to browning (as are other publishers to greater or lesser degrees), but I don’t want the base image I’m building on to look too dirty. Off-white is enough to give the impression of age and distress without turning people off the idea of looking at it in the first place.

If you have never seen a GA comic, you might be surprised to find the name of the comic printed at the top of each page throughout the book (just like in some novels), and trying to match this is damn hard. The first attempt (using – appropriately enough – ‘Comic Book Commando’ font) is overlaid with a 50% fade of the background to break up the solid black. It ain’t perfect, but it’ll do until I can start scanning scratchier, hand-written fonts. There are many little details I want to capture, and some of the most distinctive elements are the stuff that isn’t considered important any more – such as letterboxes. But I’m getting ahead of myself… First there is the basic page shape to deal with.

I can’t work irregular shapes. I’ve tried. I’ve attempted three or four different shapes which correspond to GA comics, but each and every workaround is hampered by the restrictions which I need to impose on the underlying framework. Before I even consider adding any visual elements to the page, I start with a new Photoshop file 12cm x 18cm (at 500 pixels per cm – more than enough for b&w printing), and a white background. Onto the white background I drop in a layer that assists with scaling, being a grid of ½cm black and white cubes, and a layer of solid red (at 25% opacity) so I can pick out any stray pixels that need correcting. Yes, that does come under the heading of obsessive, but it works for me.

For anyone wanting to play along at home, this is what the image ought to look like thus far. Using the Magic Wand Tool (W) – add to selection – I select the four corner boxes from the grid layer, and then create a new layer. It is simply a matter of joining up the boxes to each other to give a border to work within – this is an easy way of checking how cluttered the artwork looks with text inserted – using the full page would look cluttered anyway, and this gives a better approximation of the printed image.

Save this, as it can be used and re-used for multiple images.

When I need to use grids, a rather outdated style these days, I have them set up as standard images ready to re-use when needed. The gutter width varies depending on the number of panels per page, but I like to keep them as close as possible throughout the length of the title.

The boxes are still red, being ‘layer via copy’ from my red layer, though putting in black borders this early seems as if I am rushing things. I like the images ready to use before I decide on how strong the borders are going to be rendered. Of course, my natural instinct would be to use as many quirky border effects as possible. The following element example is from a kung fu comic I started a while back, and demonstrates how unusual border elements don’t necessarily have to be complicated.

This, of course, is redundant with a Golden Age comic, so I’m having to treat every single panel as if it was fresh off the page. Too many clean lines will ruin the immersion, and it is complicated enough trying to work out the depth of image I can get away with as it is. The most complicated pieces of the puzzle (ironically) will be the text boxes, as some of the best examples hail from the early forties.  Yes, I know it looks awkward and too faded at the moment, but it should look okay once I have gone over it with several more layers of rendering, smoothing out the gray background and darkening the text.