Fraggmented

Why Goldfinger Works

2009-11-24T16:51:00.000-08:00

About five seconds prior to writing these words, I had literally no idea what I wanted to write. I knew I had to write something, because this blog entry is already a day late and while I sometimes nudge the goodwill of my select readership ("select" sounds better than "tiny"), I have no wish to actually push it and no excuses not to blog. But seriously, I had nothing. I cast my eyes around frantically, looking for inspiration...

And decided to write about James Bond, on account of the empty DVD cases in my room. I'm watching the whole series from the beginning, up through "Die Another Day", and in some cases, it's my first coherent viewing of the movie (I watched them as a kid, but when you're six, all James Bond movies blur together into "sexy woman, explosion, fight scene, chase scene, sexy woman.") And in the case of "Goldfinger", what struck me is how curiously unimportant the plot actually is next to the clash of personalities between Auric Goldfinger and James Bond.

They do say that the perfect recipe for a story is two people who don't like each other stuck in the same room, and "Goldfinger" is basically nothing more than an epic pissing match between two people who have taken an instant and inexplicable dislike to each other. Bond's first action, when assigned to watch Goldfinger unobtrusively, is to steal his girlfriend and make him lose at gin rummy. Goldfinger's response? Have his manservant kill the girl with Bond in the same room, just to prove he can.

At that point, it's on. The actual plot, a scheme to irradiate Fort Knox's gold supply, doesn't even turn up until more than three-quarters of the way through the movie. Most of it is just Bond and Goldfinger, getting in each others' way and stepping on each others' toes, like a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoon with more slinky babes. And it all works for the same reason that a good Bugs and Daffy cartoon works--Sean Connery has that same mischievous smile of someone who knows he's probably going just a little too far in ticking the other person off, but just can't help himself, while Gert Frobe has a wonderfully pop-eyed, frustrated expression on his face every time Bond outwits him. Bizarrely, I think this is the only Bond movie that could be made into a series.

There's a lot not to like about the film as well, of course; like all Bond movies from this era, it's eye-blisteringly sexist and misogynist when viewed through modern eyes (the big climactic plot twist seems to be that after he rapes Pussy Galore, she suddenly decides that she likes him so much she betrays Goldfinger for him.) But that central personality clash that powers the movie is so strong that it became the template for the series--Bond, and a villain just as larger-than-life, locked in a hatred so epic that it transcends whatever schemes the villain has planned and becomes a force all its own. When it works, that's a pretty marvelous way to make a movie.

Pet Peeve of the Day

2009-11-19T10:29:00.001-08:00

OK, I still must be at least a tiny little bit sick, because my brain just stopped dead to consider how funny the word "Peeve" looked, and wonder if it was somehow etymologically related to "reeve", and now I'm trying to remember what the heck a "reeve" actually is, but I'm too lazy to wiki it...

Anyhow, my pet irritation of the day: Science-fiction authors who insist they aren't science-fiction authors. Of course, the grand champion of them all is Kurt Vonnegut, but there are a few others (Margaret Atwood comes to mind, and even Harlan Ellison preferred to be called an author of "speculative fiction".) But let's face it, Vonnegut provides the perfect example of the author who says, "No, no, my work isn't science fiction. My work is literature."

Kurt Vonnegut's work has time travel, dystopian governments, spaceships, and ray-guns. While science fiction is a hard-to-define, mutable genre label, I think it's pretty safe to say that once you have aliens from Mars invading Earth in their rocket ships, you have written some science fiction. There are really only two reasons you would say anything else, and neither reflects well upon the author.

Reason Number One: "My stories just use the trappings of science fiction to tell deep, meaningful stories about the human condition. They aren't really sci-fi." (This is the one they usually say out loud.) Of course, the big problem with this statement is that everyone writing in the science fiction genre can say it. Nobody actually writes about rocket ships and ray-guns because they really believe them to be up-and-coming future developments in the field of transportation and weaponry, and want to describe them in detail. They use them because science fiction is a genre that speaks in the language of allegory far more potently than any real-world story ever could, and so can describe its symbolism in larger-than-life terms. So to say that your work is different from science fiction because it's intelligent and allegorical is both ignorant and arrogant. It betrays your lack of knowledge of other intelligent writers in the genre, and places you on a self-constructed pedestal; you're so much better than other sci-fi writers that you don't even think you should be in the same genre as them. (Presumably the next step would be to claim that you don't write books, you construct memetic paradigms or somesuch.)

Reason Number Two: "Science fiction isn't taken seriously as literature, and if I admit that I write sci-fi, all of the literary critics will dismiss me as trash and I will lose all of my intellectual cachet." (This is the one they really mean when they give Reason Number One.) This is actually something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since all of the great science fiction writers take pains to explain how their science fiction novels aren't really science fiction, it makes it hard for fans to convince people that sci-fi is a genre capable of producing respectable literature. If some of the "literary" sci-fi writers would use their intellectual credibility to argue for the credibility of science fiction as a genre, it might change some opinions...but unfortunately, they take the path of least resistance, preferring to escape the sci-fi ghetto instead of opening it up and bringing people in. So we're in the circumstance we're in today, where twenty-nine of the top thirty box office films of all time are sci-fi or fantasy movies, but people still say that science fiction is a niche genre.

Which is why this remains such a pet peeve of mine...ah. Back-formation of "peevish", as opposed to "reeve", which was a sort of medieval superintendant. So no, not related at all. I hope this has given you some closure.

Short Thought For The Day

2009-11-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

I'm currently kind of sidelined with H1N1 (I know, it's the virus everyone's talking about. I feel like such a name-dropper.) This is why the blog's been a little quiet. But I did have a thought, and I figured I should write it down before I take some more Tylenol Cold and Flu and it goes away.

The reason that the Christmas season seems to start earlier and earlier each year is because Thanksgiving just isn't an exciting enough holiday to command people's attention. Sure, we all enjoy it, but it's got no charisma. Nobody spends the three weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving eagerly anticipating the blessed day and all it brings...it's a feast and an occasion to get together, and since that happens a lot around Christmas anyway (how many Christmas parties do you go to weeks before Christmas?) it's easy to let Thanksgiving just blend into the general "holiday atmosphere" around Christmas. Pilgrims just aren't compelling enough to separate it from Christmas, so it just becomes sort of a waypost on the way to the even better holiday to come.

What does this mean? Only that Christmas Creep isn't going to ever get any earlier than November 1st, despite some people's worries, because Halloween's got the muscle to hold its spot and command attention. Nobody's going to get out the Christmas lights when they can decorate their house with skulls and spiderwebs. (Now Halloween, that could wind up creeping back a bit. It already commands all of October, but I could see it engulfing September without too much trouble. What does September have going for it, anyway? Labor Day? Ooh, yeah, color me interested.)

Your comments will tell me whether this is insightful, or whether I should really just lie down for a while and let the medication do its job.

Fun Games With Old Comics

2009-11-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

The old "Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe" used to list all sorts of information about every single Marvel character, good or bad. And when I say "all sorts", I mean all--they listed every single bit of trivia they could find, no matter how irrelevant. Height, weight, eye color...

And oddly enough, they listed "Profession" for every single Marvel character. All of them. This leads to a fun mental game you can play if you get a hold of back issues of the OHttMU--picture the guy who makes business cards for Marvel comics characters.

"Yeah, make mine 'Criminal'. No, make that 'Professional Criminal'--I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm an amateur or something."

"Doom's order shall read, 'Ruler of Latveria'. Can you have those ready in time for the embassy ball tomorrow?"

"Just put 'God'. The Odinson would like that embossed, too, please."

"Um, let's see. 'Professional photographer', of course, and...hmm. 'Superhero' is probably too much of a giveaway, and I've already had to make a deal with Satan once to hide my secret identity. How about 'Adventurer'? With any luck, they'll just think I'm one of those D&D geeks who still lives with his aunt."

"How about 'World Conqueror'? What do you mean, 'You haven't conquered anything yet'? No, no, fine. Put 'Would-Be World Conqueror'. You are so going to be in trouble when I conquer the world, buddy..."

Games Past: Grave Robbers From Outer Space

2009-11-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

I won't call Z-Man Games' "Grave Robbers From Outer Space" the best game ever. I won't call it the smartest, the best-designed, or even the most entertaining (since I firmly believe that entertainment comes always from the players, never from the game. There is no game so dull that you can't enjoy playing it with good friends, and no game so fun that a rules-lawyering, hyper-competitive jackass can't wreck it.) But it certainly is the funniest.

For those of you who've never played it (or its various stand-alone, fully compatible sequels) "Grave Robbers From Outer Space" puts you into the role of a B-movie (or perhaps Z-movie) producer, casting your own horror movie. You put Cast Members into play (like The Old Priest, the Small-Town Policeman, or any number of teenage stereotypes) at various Locations (like the Cabin in the Woods, the Cemetary, the Back Seat of the Car)...then your opponents "help" out your movie by playing various Monsters into your film to bump off the cast, one by one. Whoever winds up with the most surviving cast members when the credits roll is the winner. (There's actually a "Credits" card.)

The hilarity comes when you start getting into the various card combinations. When you actually have the Old Priest and the Spunky Young Kid together in the Back Seat of the Car, and suddenly they're attacked by a werewolf, well...let's just say it's possible to laugh so hard you shoot pop out your nose at some of the way these games play out. (When we first played the game, at the GenCon where it debuted, we were asked by hotel staff to kick out anyone who wasn't a paying guest and confiscate the liquor. This was particularly amusing, as it was only four of us and we were all stone-cold sober.)

And the stand-alone sequels add a lot to the fun. Each one takes on a different genre, like 70s kung-fu flicks, giant monster movies, or sword-and-sorcery epics, and so the mix-and-matching can produce some genuinely awesome results. "My Sorority Girl uses her Bullwhip and Preying Mantis technique to stop your Horde of Orcs!" That sort of thing.

Oh, and the best part is that every card has a word on the bottom, just a random B-movie title type of word like "Evil", "Invasion", "Blood", et cetera. At the start of the game, you draw six random cards and turn the six random words into the title of the movie you're making. Any game that starts out with you deciding that this round will be called, "Blood Beasts of the Forbidden Temple of Doctor Hate!" has to be officially considered awesome.

Unlike some of the other games I might mention in this series, "Grave Robbers From Outer Space" is still being produced by Z-Man Games, along with all of its spin-offs and sequels. Z-Man is a great company, "Grave Robbers" is a great game, and I've talked games with owner Zev Shlasinger enough to be able to say that he's a genuinely nice guy. (And no, he didn't pay me to say that. We share a common love of the Shadowfist game, but we've never been in business together.) So this one is well worth tracking down, if you enjoy giggling like crazy with a group of friends. And really, who doesn't?

Storytelling Engines: Sub-Mariner

2009-11-02T05:31:00.000-08:00

(or "Ix-Nay On The Estroying-Day The Urface-Say Orld-Way!")

When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four, arguably one of the world's greatest comics magazines (for evidence to this effect, see "Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comics Magazine!", Lee, Stan and Kirby, Jack) they made a conscious effort to tie in the modern Marvel Universe to the Golden Age Timely/Atlas universe. It makes sense from a sales stand-point (kids might have heard about the Timely heroes from their parents, and be curious) and from a writing stand-point (the more characters you can throw in, the better the chances are that one of them will spark a story idea.) And since there was a new Human Torch in town, and since one of the old Torch's sparring partners was the Sub-Mariner, it's no surprise that Subby turned up pretty quick.

Of course, when you've already got four protagonists in the book, a new character works much better as an antagonist. So in no time flat, a rationale was worked up to explain why the Sub-Mariner (a good guy in World War II, albeit a spiky, arrogant one) became a bad guy in the modern world (he was ticked off because nuclear tests destroyed Atlantis while he was off being an amnesiac homeless guy.) And before you can say, "Hey, where'd you even get a giant bipedal whale from, anyway?" He was off to conquer the surface world.

But something kind of strange happened along the way to Namor's becoming a big-time super-villain. He became kind of, well...cool. Popular. Readers responded to his tortured nobility, his romantic gestures towards Sue Storm, and his habit of betraying the bad guys when they crossed his code of honor. He was sort of the Angel/Wolverine/Dinobot of his day, and as with so many anti-heroes and noble villains, he wound up getting his own book.

Well, his own back-up feature. There, his adventures focused on a long-term, epic struggle with his own warlord Krang for control of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis (and when I say "epic", I mean "epic". Namor's quest to regain his throne and defeat Krang lasted eighteen issues, practically a lifetime in an era where the average story was an issue long, tops.) It introduced all sorts of supporting characters, from his Grand Vizier to his lady love, Dorma, and most of his primary antagonists--Byrrah, Krang, and Attuma.

But the key change came when he finally graduated to his own series. There, he discovers that it wasn't nuclear testing that devastated Atlantis after all--it was an evil psychic named Destiny. (No, not the frail old lady who spent most of her free time writing books that Chris Claremont would use as plot devices years later. Different Destiny.) Why the big shift?

Because for all that Namor's tortured anti-hero schtick is integral to his character, he needs to be sympathetic to attract readers. And a hero constantly trying to destroy New York City and crush the hated Americans for their crimes against his people is, well, kind of a tough sell. (Imagine trying to sell "The Bombastic Bin Laden!" as a comic, and you'll get the idea pretty quick.) So he needed to be softened just that tiny little bit, much like years later, other hero/villains like Rogue and the White Queen would be softened in the same way. Still gritty enough to keep their edge, but not actively evil anymore.

And ever since, Namor's trajectory between "loveable jerk" and "outright villain" has pretty much followed an easily chartable path, depending on whether or not he has his own series. When he's a protagonist in a book that needs to sell, he loses his hatred of the surface world and becomes a good guy. When he's needed as a villain, suddenly the surface world must pay! (John Byrne even worked this into continuity in the 90s "Namor" series, explaining that he's got a bi-polar disorder due to his hybrid condition.) It's an interesting "dual role" for a character who is a reliable second-tier cast member in the Marvel Universe, providing him with versatility...perhaps at the expense of his ability to truly carry a book for a long run, but he makes up for it by giving writers on other series a fun, fan-favorite villain to bring in whenever they need one.

The Diamond Pillar: A Fable

2009-10-29T07:06:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, a group of very wise men built a city underground. They excavated a vast cavern where before, there was nothing but stone, and said, "In this place shall we build Paradise." And they knew that because the city was so deep underground, that at any moment, the pressure of the earth overhead could cause the roof of the city to collapse in and bury its inhabitants, so they reinforced the roof with an enormous diamond pillar, right in the very center of the town square. (They were very clever men who knew how to balance it properly so that it wouldn't crack or shatter under the weight. Don't quibble about details, here.)

And so many came to the city over the years, and the decades, and the centuries, and though some people fought and bickered and grew angry (because they were people, after all) they all lived securely and safely under the earth, with the diamond pillar holding everything upright and stable. Children became parents, parents became grand-parents, the founders of the city passed into history and then into legend, and still the pillar supported their creation.

Until one day, some of the inhabitants of the city said to themselves, "That pillar is made out of pure diamond; surely, nobody will miss it if I chip out a little piece for myself. Even the tiniest little piece of that pillar will make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, after all, and I don't see what damage a little chip will do." Because even in a city that was Paradise, some people always wanted more than they had.

And so those people went to others, and said, "Why is it that the greatest part of our wealth should be wasted simply sitting there in the center of town? Surely there are better things it could be used for, aren't there?"

And some people said, "It is not wasted! It holds up the roof over our heads, and keeps the city safe and intact by its very presence! Surely you would not wish for the rock to collapse upon us?"

And they responded, "This city has stood for time immemorial, and it shall always stand, because we are just and great and the people believe in us. I simply cannot imagine that taking away some of that pillar will make that great of a difference." For these were people who had lived all their lives and all their father's fathers' lives in a city where the roof did not collapse, and they could not believe that roofs just fell down all of a sudden. (And they also did not believe in using contractions.)

And some people said, "We think you must be very greedy people, to covet the wealth of this town so."

And they said, "Not at all! We do not simply covet this wealth for ourselves!" (Although they did.) "We simply wish to make sure that everyone gets a share of the value they put into making this city the great place that it is! By taking the diamonds out of the pillar and putting them in your hands, we will give you the freedom to spend that wealth the way you think wisest!" (While all the while, they were dreaming dreams and scheming schemes to cheat and connive the diamonds out of the hands of others, so that they might have them all.)

And the debate went on for a long while, but these men were single-minded in their greed, while others had other concerns. And so every day, they talked and talked and talked about chipping away at the pillar, while every day a few of the others who opposed them gave up or were distracted or were swayed by their agreements or simply grew old and died (for these greedy men were so single-minded that they passed on their greed to their children.) Until eventually, they managed to convince lots of people that yes, their greed was not a vice, but the virtue of "self-interest", and their carelessness was not folly, but "liberty". And so, with some trepidation, they chipped away a bit at the pillar and collected the fragments of diamond.

And nothing happened.

As is not surprising; it was a very, very big pillar, and a very, very small chip. But when nothing happened, people eased their opposition further. After all, one chip meant nothing next to such a big pillar. The roof did not fall. Things seemed to go on as normal, except that the people who got the pieces of diamond became very, very rich. (But somehow, never quite rich enough.)

And so they chipped away again. And again, and again, each time gleeful at the seemingly limitless wealth that the pillar provided and the seeming lack of consequences to their acts. Fewer and fewer people worried about the roof now, and those who did were derided as foolish and "out of touch". Town criers talked about the "new wisdom" of the diamond-cutters, and how they had discovered a "new paradigm" of "leaner, more efficient pillars."

And then one day, one of the greedy men was chipping out another piece of the pillar...and a rock the size of a football cracked loose from the ceiling and crushed his skull like a grape. Suddenly, the whole town was filled with panic. More stones came loose, and soon every townsperson was looking up at the ceiling anxiously every day. In great haste, they called for an architect.

With one look, the architect surmised the problem. "The pillar is no longer strong and stable," he said. "We must return the diamonds we took out, or we will all surely perish." (He was a really good architect who knew how to glue diamonds together really well. Don't quibble about details, here.)

But the remaining greedy men were very, very greedy, and no wiser now than they'd ever been. "This is simply a natural correction in the weight distribution of the roof! It is in no way the result of our diamond mining! These sorts of things have probably happened before, and the roof has survived. We are surely in no danger."

"No," said the architect simply. "We must replace the diamonds, or we will all die." (He stopped using 'perish', because it was too important to mince words now.) Even as he spoke, more chunks fell out of the ceiling, injuring some, killing others.

And the greedy men found an architect of their own, and told him what words to say. He said that he had an alternate plan, one which involved taking more diamonds out of the pillar in a very clever way that would make it sturdier. He said this new plan would make them safer and richer. But some townspeople noticed that the greedy men were slipping a few chips of diamond into his pocket every time he spoke.

They said, "We are tired of being endangered! We see now that you simply wanted diamonds, that you cared nothing for our safety! Even now, you care more about your diamonds than about our lives!"

And the greedy men said, "No! Not at all! This is not about the diamonds!" (Although it was.) "This is not about us!" (Although it was.) "This is about you! Think about it! If he wishes to take diamonds from us, what might he take from you? We must stand together, here, against his unwarranted taxation, or surely he will render us all poor!"

And some agreed with the greedy men...while some wondered what kind of men would rank "poor" as below "dead" in a list of ills...and still others decided it was none of their concern, just another argument in a long line of many. The roof would no doubt stand, because it had always stood. The architect must be wrong, because the consequences of his being right would be unthinkable. The city could not fall. It was Paradise, was it not?

Nobody knows what happened to the city. Some say it fell, its people crushed as the pillar finally collapsed. Others say the pillar was restored, and it lives still, deep below ground. Still others say that the greedy men were right, and the city survived without the diamond pillar...but there are always those who wish for free diamonds, and who will believe that the roof cannot collapse.

Storytelling Engines: Warlord

2009-10-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

(or "The Kitchen Sink Must Show Up In Issue #29")

At first, when reading Mike Grell's classic series, "Warlord"...oh, let's all be honest. At first, when reading Mike Grell's classic series, "Warlord", we all ooh and ahh at the spectacular art. Arguably, the black-and-white reprints are even better than the original color issues of the series; color is almost a distraction from Grell's crisp, clean, gorgeous lines. But once we start actually paying attention to the story, it seems a little...well, cliched. It's got a hero who winds up finding a hidden "hollow world" at the center of the Earth, with living dinosaurs and barbarian tribes, and sorcerers, and secret Atlantean technologies, and time moves differently in different parts of the world (allowing for him to be gone a few months inside Skartaris, but years and years outside) and, and...

And then you start to notice that what seems to be a lack of originality at first is, in fact, a calculated effect. Grell isn't just being lazy, he's deliberately trying to evoke the tropes and themes of an entire genre of adventure stories. He includes elements of "John Carter, Warlord of Mars", bits and pieces of "Tarzan", chunks of "Buck Rogers" and "Flash Gordon"...the series actually tries to create a sense of familiarity, like a painter deliberately aging one of his works to make it look like one of the Old Masters. The intent isn't forgery, but an attempt to create a novel work that fits, stylistically, with a different era.

And because Grell is trying to evoke as much of the atmosphere of those old adventure stories as possible, he has a huge advantage in setting up his storytelling engine; anything that doesn't directly contradict a previous storytelling element is fair game for inclusion. So when he's stuck for a plot, he can have Travis Morgan relive his previous incarnations (a la Alan Quatermass) or bring in creatures of dark magic from pre-human Earth (a la Conan.) He's got a veritable cornucopia of ideas to draw on, and the more he piles on the old pulp tropes, the more authentically "pulpy" it seems. After all, those guys weren't averse to sharing ideas back and forth themselves. Perhaps if Lovecraft, Howard, or Burroughs were alive today, you might see a few references to Skartaris in their stories.

How well did this genre pastiche work? Well, it ran 133 issues; pretty good work, for a series that steadfastly refused to tie in with DC continuity for much of its run. Even now, it's fondly remembered; while a Bruce Jones reboot fared poorly, Mike Grell himself is returning to the series he created and seems to be getting positive press for it. And with decades of pulp (and pulp-inspired) stories out there, it's doubtful he'll run out of inspiration anytime soon.

Games Past: Battletech TCG

2009-10-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Something that doesn't really get a lot of play on this blog is my deep and abiding affection for games. Card games, board games...sure, I've mentioned RPGs and "City of Heroes", but I don't think I've talked much about my love of "Grave Robbers From Outer Space" (a game that almost got us kicked out of a hotel room, once.) Some of this has to do with the aforementioned "City of Heroes", which has been the addiction of choice of our gaming group for quite some time now, but I'm hoping to rectify that a bit over the next year...and I think it starts in my attitude. So I think I'm going to add a new, intermittent feature where I discuss games--good games, bad games, games no longer being published and games I just haven't played in a while. Games Past.

Today, I'm going to talk about Battletech. Not the miniatures game, although I've taken a few spins around the hexfield...no, this was the trading card game by Wizards of the Coast that they launched in 1996. This was Richard Garfield's third game, after he'd struck gold with Magic and struck out with NetRunner (which was a good game, but got, um, lost in the shuffle as competitors to Magic flooded the market.) It had a great property as its inspiration, one of the classics, and a strong fanbase. How did it do?

Very good, at first. The mechanic of the game felt different to Magic, but not so different that you couldn't relate to it. Instead of an abstract "life meter" that you attacked, your mechs romped around the playing field attacking actual targets--other mechs, Command cards (like assembly lines that put out mechs, or important characters from the Battletech universe) or your opponent's deck, where every point of damage dealt was a card chucked into the Scrapheap. (No, literally, that was what they called the discard pile.) Defeat came when you had to draw a card and couldn't--which would happen in 27 turns, if you took no damage, or two, if your opponent got out a few Masakaris or Mad Cats and started going to town on you.

Game balance was solid--the different factions all got plenty of useful, playable cards, with the Clans getting big, nasty, stompy Mechs but the Inner Sphere getting cheaper, durable Mechs and some seasoned pilots. The mechanics of combat were understandable, but provided depth, and let's face it, giant robots have a lot of appeal. (It also had plenty of dice-rolling, a big draw for just about any game. You could have a whole lot of fun creating a "missile Mech deck" and rolling big handfuls of six-siders for damage.) It was hours of fun for myself and my friends (I still have my cards, up in the Big Closet of Games), and we really looked forward to each expansion.

But the expansions were the big problem. Because if you're a fan of the minis game, and a fan of trading card games in general, you're probably anticipating the tough part. Every expansion to the card game needed to feature a lot of new Mechs. Mechs were the bread and butter to the game, the all-purpose attacker and defender. Unlike Magic, where you had instants and sorceries to destroy permanents in play, Battletech was all about taking your Mechs over and stomping whatever you didn't like into a greasy spot on the ground. Mechs were the lifeblood of the game, and an expansion without lots of new Mechs would wreck the game balance and design. The miniatures game was the same way, of course. FASA needed to sell new figurines just as much as WotC needed to sell new cards. But the schedule for miniatures releases was maybe three or four a month. The schedule for new expansions was a full new set every three months, with perhaps 40-50 Mechs in it. Clearly, something had to give.

And that something was "Arsenal", the set that destroyed the Battletech TCG. It introduced "Vehicles", which were a fairly sizeable part of the minis game (Mechs were still kings of the battlefield, of course, but mixed-forces groups could be devastatingly effective) but which had not featured significantly into the TCG until then. Arsenal changed all that, introducing loads of new vehicles that fought like Mechs, but were significantly cheaper to build and came with a built-in downside. Whenever they took damage, there was a one-in-six chance they'd go kaboom.

The problems with this were twofold. One, they were all significantly undercosted. That "one-in-six chance" turned out to be a much smaller downside in actual play than in playtesting. Which was a problem, but it wasn't The Problem. The Problem was that they'd just introduced a whole new card type, four expansions into the game. So a card like "Temporary Cease-Fire", which "removed all Mechs from combat", now had a glaring weakness when someone with an all-vehicle deck used it against someone with a mixed-forces or Mech-heavy deck. In fact, vehicles turned out to have lots of rules loopholes, since they could attack like Mechs or block like Mechs but weren't Mechs.

No problem, WotC says. We'll issue a new ruling: All cards that say "Mechs" actually mean, "Mechs and Vehicles".

People then pointed out the logical inconsistencies of this, like hovertanks now being able to have their Hips Shattered, or jeeps being able to lash out with a Vicious Kick.

No problem, WotC says. We'll issue comprehensive errata for every card in print, so that all you'll have to do to figure out whether a card refers to "Mechs", "Vehicles" or "units" (Mechs and Vehicles) is to look it up on your handy print-out of changes to every single card in the game up until now, all five hundred or so! Or you can just buy the new edition of the game, coming out soon!

It's surprising how fast that can kill the enthusiasm of a fanbase.

The game limped along for another expansion or two, but eventually it had to be put to bed. You can probably still find a few packs floating around out there in online card stores, or perhaps by digging around in discount bins (or, of course, there's always eBay.) It's actually well worth doing, particularly if you abandon WotC's "official rulings" and just play the game as it was intended, with Mechs, missiles, and friends.

Of course, friends make every game better.

Storytelling Engines: Dollhouse

2009-10-20T18:41:00.001-07:00

(or "So Why Is It About To Be Canceled, Anyway?")

So a while back, I made a post about how Fox had badly mishandled the publicity campaign for "Dollhouse", creating audience expectations that weren't fulfilled when the series went to air. This proved to be #2 on the list of Most Controversial Things I've Ever Said, ranking well behind "Marvel should go back to writing comics for kids because there's not a big enough market for comics for adults to sustain a major publisher" but significantly ahead of "Gee, '300' really sucked." There are some people who just do not like "Dollhouse" on the face of it, and can't imagine why anyone would like it. And apparently, judging from the ratings, there are enough of those people out there that it's hard to believe the series will get a third season. (Fox has, at least, pledged to show all of Season Two.) Why doesn't "Dollhouse" work for these people? Well, some of that is inherent in the set-up of the series.

Which...man, love it or hate it, you have to admit, it's ballsy. Really ballsy. The idea of a sinister, clandestine organization that kidnaps people and wipes their memories and identities is a pretty well-worn fictional trope, which is part of what the show has counted on. At every turn, as Eliza Dushku begins to remember the woman she once was, our collective familiarity with the tropes of science-fiction and action-adventure practically leaps out of our hindbrain and demands that she go on the run from faceless, sinister agents of the Conspiracy while trying to find the proof that will bring down the evil (yet suave and debonair) woman in charge. It's an idea so well-worn it's practically carved a groove in our skulls.

But that's not what "Dollhouse" does. "Dollhouse" doesn't treat the evil conspiracy as "faceless" or "sinister". (Well, maybe "sinister".) It's a show that asks the question, "What sort of actual human being could or would do that sort of thing to someone?" It's following the conspiracy as much as it's following Echo, taking the characters who would normally be two-dimensional bad guys and trying to make them into the main characters. This is a very risky choice. As I've commented in the past, in a long-running series, you don't have to make the protagonists "good", but you do have to make them "sympathetic", and this show has a lot of spiky, damaged people running the show. From Mr. Dominic, who's angry, humorless, and violent; to Topher, who's glib and callous about his treatment of human beings as lab rats; to Adelle, who is simultaneously worldly-wise, shockingly naive, idealistic and ruthless...these are a collection of messed-up people. Which they'd have to be, to do the sorts of things they do, but it's hard for an audience to sympathize with them. Even the three audience-identification characters (Echo, Boyd, and FBI agent Paul Ballard) each have their own tremendous flaws that led them to the Dollhouse in the first place. It's a show that constantly flirts with making you hate its characters.

That's unbelievably dangerous for a TV series. When the series' plots fail (and while "Dollhouse" has a great "go anywhere, do anything" premise in its concept of people who can become anyone for a few days at a time, every series is going to have dud plots now and again) you can always fall back on your characters, the good will they've built up and the chemistry between them to get people to continue to watch. Think of a show like "House", which is basically the same plot every week--it thrives because Hugh Laurie is electric, and the character he's playing is mesmerizing. You don't go back to see how he'll solve this week's case, you go back to see what he'll say and do while he solves it. "Dollhouse" almost dares you to care about its characters, and that's a tough sell.

And then Joss Whedon, as he sometimes does, pulled a game-changer out at the end of Season One. Not "Omega", for those of you who don't generally buy TV shows on DVD--there's an additional episode to the first season that never aired. This show, "Epitaph One", completely changes the focus of the show--instead of, "What sort of person would design a machine that can rewrite a person's mind?", it becomes "What are the consequences of the existence of a machine that can rewrite a person's mind?" It takes the show from the realm of a character study into that of speculative fiction, and does so with gripping intensity. In fact, it's arguable that this is going to make it even harder for Season Two to get a foothold, ratings-wise, because even the fans of "Dollhouse" are now split. While some want to keep watching the edgy, twitchy staff try to sort out their moralities, others would just like to skip ahead ten years and find out what happens to everyone. Can the show handle this balancing act successfully?

Probably not, judging by the ratings. But love it or hate it, you have to admit, this show is going to be memorable.

Review: The Crazies

2009-10-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

So I was looking through trailers today on "Rotten Tomatoes" (I love trailers. Absolutely adore them. There's just something so magnificent about a really good trailer, the way it distills down the essence of a movie into these sharp, smart, two-minute micro-movies. Seriously, I could watch a full hour of trailers, and in fact have.) And they had a trailer for a remake of "The Crazies". Which reminded me, naturally, of the original Romero film...and that reminded me that Halloween is coming up, and people might be looking for some horror films to watch that they haven't already seen. Little cult gems, that sort of thing. And "The Crazies" fits that bill perfectly. So let's talk about "The Crazies".

The premise is brilliantly simple. A contagious virus gets into the drinking water of a small town. The only symptom of the virus? Murderous insanity. As various townspeople go nuts and start killing people, the government arrives to try to control the situation. But (surprise, surprise) they're also the ones who developed the virus to begin with, so while they're trying to find a cure and quarantine the infected, they're also covering up a secret and trying to hide the evidence. The net result is a military occupation of the town, one which turns brutal with shocking speed.

What you quickly wind up with is four factions. Insane townspeople, townspeople who have a justifiable fear of the soldiers occupying their town and using lethal force indiscriminately, soldiers who aren't sure who's insane and who's just shooting at them, and soldiers who are succumbing to the virus due to inadequate bio-hazard precautions. And the brilliant thing is that there's no way of knowing which is which, and Romero rarely signposts it for you. (This looks to be a mistake on the remake's part--they're turning the victims of the virus into stereotypical zombies, hunting in packs and looking all "infected".)

So as the pressure ratchets up, you find yourself uncertain as to whether any given character's actions at any given moment are the result of the virus...or just the kind of very human response to a tense, angry situation we see all the time. When the town priest sets himself on fire, is he crazy? Or is he protesting the military's actions (a la the Buddhist monks in Vietnam)? Or is it crazy to protest like that? (And, of course, the unspoken question...aren't the people who created the virus the craziest ones of all?)

It's not a particularly cheerful movie; this is Romero at his most nihilistic, during the Vietnam era, suggesting that maybe insanity is endemic to the human condition and if we really were being driven mad, we might not notice the difference. But it's also clever, tense, and filled with some haunting and evocative imagery, and it has some good acting from the principals. I recommend it.

Storytelling Engines: Leverage

2009-10-13T07:03:00.000-07:00

(or "Churn 'n Burn")

First, an apology for the day's delay--here I skip blogging last Monday to set up a Monday Storytelling Engines entry, then I don't post it until Tuesday! What can I say, long weekends always screw me up.

Now, on to a discussion of "Leverage". For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it uses the basic structure of the "caper" movie (a team of experts in various fields of criminal activity assembles for a crime that would normally be impossible, and then pulls it off due to their brilliance and gets away with the goods.) But "Leverage" has a twist--the crooks are all wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and pull off their scams and capers against corporate crooks who use their power and money to ignore, flout, or occasionally change the law. The kind of people who should be in jail, but never will be.

This brilliantly taps into the zeitgeist of the post-Bush era, where it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cronies used patriotism as a cover for some of the most egregious graft and corruption in the history of this country (and that's saying something.) Some episodes are even direct parallels; Castleman Security, the villains of "The Homecoming Job", are obviously meant to be Blackwater USA (parallels that became all the stronger after real-life Blackwater CEO Erik Prince became entangled in murder charges a few months after the episode aired.) There's a lot of general anger towards rich guys, big corporations, and the seemingly different code of justice for the wealthy and privileged in America, and that makes it all the more satisfying to root for the honest crooks.

So it's a strong concept for a series, especially now. But it does take a risk--apart from the five protagonists, they rarely use recurring characters at all. Likewise, there are very few ongoing sub-plots from episode to episode; each hour-long show tends to be one self-contained caper from beginning to end. They set up an entirely new crime with every episode, and pull it off by the end. This means they're churning through an enormous amount of storytelling material with each episode, with very few safety nets when they get stuck for an idea. This is, to say the least, a daunting prospect for a series that has to come up with a new plot every week (and one that hopes to have at least a 100-episode run, presumably. TV shows need a stronger storytelling engine than just about any other medium, simply due to the way that the profits come in on a series. If you last at least five seasons, you're going to be raking in dough. If not, you better hope for a strong DVD audience.)

So is "Leverage" doomed to run out of ideas by Season Three? Probably not, because while they take a big risk, they also have a strong advantage. They use real cons, heists, scams and capers as their inspiration (something showrunner John Rogers talks about from time to time on his excellent blog, Kung Fu Monkey.) And if there's anything you can count on in this world, it's that the human race never ceases trying to find new and inventive ways of cheating money out of one another. It's doubtful that "Leverage" will ever find a shortage of corrupt, greedy bastards to pastiche as their bad guys, and it's even more doubtful that they'll run out of clever, sneaky cons for the heroes to run on those bad guys. In short, they're relying on human nature to provide their stories for them, and as long as there are humans, they'll always have a ready supply of ideas.

But if the human race ever dies out, they'll probably be in trouble.

Head To Head Cage Match Review!

2009-10-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

In one corner, we have "Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema", by Jamie Russell! Weighing in at 352 pages, this covers the entire history of the zombie film from its origins in Haitian folkore all the way up to 2005! And in the other corner, we have "Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide", by Glenn Kay! Also weighing in at 352 pages, this book reviews virtually every zombie movie made from "White Zombie" all the way up to 2008! But let's face it, fight fans--only one of these guides has what it takes to sit on your bookshelf! Let's look at the tape.

Kay's "ultimate guide" does, in fact, have some ultimate-ness going for it. He covers loads of obscure zombie movies from all over the world, including Hong Kong and Japanese zombie cinema, Italian and French zombie movies, and even some TV shows with zombie episodes (albeit some more thoroughly than others.) But unfortunately, he doesn't seem to like any of them. His introduction says that unlike certain other pretentious guides (a not-too-veiled attack on Russell's book, which came out first), he's not afraid to have a few laughs at the cheesier of the films. But the "laughs" mostly take the form of pointing to low-budget film after low-budget film and saying, "Hey, doesn't this one suck too?" He gives Romero a free pass (citing film after film for "cheesy zombie makeup", but ignoring the slapped-on gray paint in "Dawn of the Dead"), but anything else that isn't a major release (or something he watched as a kid--certain 80s films get far more love than they probably deserve) is something to look down one's nose at. I'm not saying that a film like "Hell of the Living Dead" is an instant classic, but if you can't find joy in quirky, low-budget films, you probably shouldn't be writing a zombie movie guide.

Plus, he's oddly slapdash about his criteria for a zombie movie. The "Evil Dead" trilogy is put in the back of the book, because they're not "real" zombies, just victims of demonic possession (I got news for ya, Glenn. Henrietta was buried in a cellar for two weeks before the start of "Evil Dead II". If she wasn't a zombie at first, she sure as heck is one now.) But "28 Days Later", with its decidedly not dead undead, is put in the main guide. Similar inconsistencies plague the whole book. (Plus, he gives "Slither" a bad review. This is not only a sign of his lack of taste in zombie movies, but also a sign that he secretly hates babies and kittens.)

On the other side, Russell's "Book of the Dead" suffers just a tiny bit from being dated--it ends right around the point of "Shaun of the Dead", which was really when the recent wave of zombie horror kicked off, and so there are a lot of fun recent movies it omits (like "Quarantine", "Slither", "Diary of the Dead", et cetera.) But it more than makes up for this by being just as comprehensive about the period it does cover as Kay's guide, if not more so, and by covering the entire history of the zombie in cinema instead of simply covering each of its movies piecemeal. The shot-on-video trend in zombie cinema is covered in depth, along with the way that different landmark zombie movies (such as "Night of the Living Dead", "Return of the Living Dead", "The Evil Dead") transformed the genre. Yes, he does get into the symbolism of the zombie, an act which some might see as "pretentious". Others of us like to think of it as "intelligent". Best of all, he has passion for the zombie film--silly low-budget movies like "City of the Living Dead", "The House By the Cemetary", or "Zombi 2" are held up and examined for their good bits as well as their bad. He's not indiscriminate, but he's no snob, either.

Ultimately, I think if you can only afford one, go with Russell's "Book of the Dead". If you can afford both...then buy Russell's book, and save your money to go buy some of the DVDs he recommends. You won't really be missing anything if you skip Kay's book. It may be "ultimate", but it's not actually much fun.

Heist, Part Sixteen

2009-10-05T04:51:00.001-07:00

The grand finale! Sorry for the delay, I'm trying to resynchronize posting for another round of Storytelling Engines.

Corvus, Winter explains, was in her employ all along. She hadn’t imagined that the Doctor would have chosen him for this little enterprise, but since he had, it meant that she knew everything he was doing even as he did it. She didn’t have the criminal resources to steal the Key, but the Doctor did…and now that he’s brought it to her, she will use the Doomforge Fleet to make herself Empress of the Galaxy. The Doctor tries to convince her to stop, using every weapon in his arsenal of rhetoric to try to sway her from inserting the Key, but it’s of no use. In fact, one of his casual mentions gives her an idea on how to dispose of them creatively—she bundles Ace, the Doctor, and Amanda into an escape pod, now that they’re no longer of use to her. Although the fleet won’t shoot at its own escape pods while on stand-by mode, they can rest assured that her first test of the destructive capabilities of the Doomforge Fleet will be to order the flagship to reduce the pod to atoms. She launches the pod and proceeds to the deck to bring her goals to fruition.

Inside the pod, with only minimal engine power and no weapons, Ace angrily wonders why the Doctor could possibly have brought Corvus in on this to begin with. What help could he possibly have given them that they couldn’t have gotten from someone who wasn’t an utter slimebag? The Doctor sighs, in an ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ sort of way. “He was devious, treacherous, and certain to sell us out to Baroness Winter at the first opportunity. That’s exactly what I needed for this particular enterprise.” He rummages through his pockets and pulls out a cricket ball, smashing it against the hull of the escape pod to reveal the Key inside it.

At that moment, the Baroness places her Key into the control socket. The Key, which the Doctor created and switched with the one Amanda stole, transmits a self-destruct code to the entire Doomforge Fleet. From their escape pod, the Doctor, Ace, and Amanda watch as the entire fleet annihilates itself…and, not incidentally, the unfortunate Corvus and the Baroness.

The Doctor goes on to explain that he knew that the Baroness had uncovered the truth about the Key. He knew that unless he forced her hand, she’d be able to steal it herself in less than a year, and that with it in her possession, she would be an unstoppable force for chaos and destruction. By stealing it himself, and switching out the Key with a duplicate he’d made that ordered the fleet to self-destruct, he’d eliminated the threat of the Doomforge Fleet forever.

Amanda is almost awe-struck. “You mean you arranged all that—you knew how Corvus would react—you knew how the Baroness would think, you tricked her into putting us into the escape pod…all this was your plan?” The Doctor nods. “You’d have made an amazing criminal,” she says, half in admiration and half in disgust. “I think I already have,” the Doctor says, watching the last echoes of the destruction of the intelligent ships, and the deaths of the people he’d tricked into ending their own lives.

Ace, unaffected by it all, points out that they’re stuck in a small escape pod with very little chance of reaching civilization—not less the point that the civilization they’d reach has warrants out for their collective arrest. The Doctor smiles and pulls out a pocket watch; and right on time, Eileen O’Donnell, the only pilot in the galaxy capable of outmaneuvering the Doomforge drones, spots the pod and arrives to pick them up. This time, it seems, the Doctor really has thought of everything.

The Topping Problem

2009-09-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

No, this does not refer to my somewhat guarded attitude to 'The Devil Goblins From Neptune'. (Yes, I have things up on the Internet other places than here. Don't worry. What you and I have is special.) No, this is more about a problem that happens in comics, something related to my issues with metastory (which I have ranted about in the past.) Specifically, it's the tendency of comics writers...and probably editors too...to want to write the "ultimate" story.

Actually, the Ultimate universe is a good place to start. "Ultimatum" is, by all accounts, an over-the-top, Grand Guignol, Ragnarok-style finale to the Ultimate universe. (I have no direct, first-hand observations of this, because I no longer buy comics that I think I'll really, really hate.) It features dozens of deaths of major characters, a bloody finale to the rivalries between Professor X and Magneto and Doctor Doom and the FF, tidal waves crushing New York, and generally is a sort of be-all-and-end all super-hero epic.

Except that a few months later, they're publishing "Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man" and "Ultimate Comics: Avengers". You see the problem. In an industry that relies upon the income generated from long-term fan loyalty, and specifically on long-running series that have stable, devoted fanbases, you can't do a "be-all-and-end-all" story because you have to follow it up next month.

This problem started all the way back with the original "event", 'Crisis on Infinite Earths'. At the time, Marv Wolfman and the DC editorial team didn't think of this as an "event" comic (although they were pretty quick to capitalize on the sales excitement it generated.) They thought of it as a painful, necessary one-time adjustment to the fifty-year-old DC universe that would set it up for fifty years of new stories. But once fans got to see a thousand universes perishing, a battle between every super-hero and every super-villain ranging over five Earths at once, and a titanic struggle at the dawn of time for the fate of the multiverse, it was hard not to want something more...and more crucially, once writers read 'Crisis', they had a natural instinct to try to top it.

But the nasty part about trying to go out and top the last "event" story every time is twofold. First, it means that you're constantly having to top the last event story. The amount of shocking, not-to-be-missed, amazing once-in-a-lifetime developments you need for each story keeps going up and up and up, and it's easy to lose the thread of an actual story in the need to outdo the last one. (It's like the Spinal Tap joke. "Our crossover goes to eleven.")

And then the next crossover will have to outdo yours. When you title a story, "Final Crisis", you're creating the expectation among the fans that this is the ultimate, the untoppable, the literally final crisis that ever there is. When the actual story turns out to just be, "Darkseid takes over the world, Superman stops him and fixes everything, be sure to pick up next month's comic for more exciting adventures!" ...well, it's anti-climactic. That's the issue in a nutshell with "ultimate" stories. Everything after that is anti-climactic.

In the end, and I do keep hammering on about this but I think it's the core truth of everything that's gone wrong with the comic book industry, the emphasis has to be not on "important" but on "good". At every level, fans, writers, artists, editors, and all the way up to editors-in-chief, there needs to be less of an emphasis on, "You must not miss this shocking change to the status quo!" and more of an emphasis on, "You'll really get your money's worth in terms of enjoyment if you buy this comic!" Because there is a law of diminishing returns to shock and awe, and for many people, comics hit that point over a decade ago. And with every passing year, more and more fans become too jaded to care about the big events. But nobody ever becomes too jaded to care about good stories told well.

Fun Fact!

2009-09-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

"You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords," from the movie 'Serenity', is a great thing to say to someone right after they tell a joke that bombs.

"You are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity," from 'Toy Story', also works, but is gender-specific.

Insane Comics Moments, Part Six

2009-09-25T04:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm now reading "Showcase Presents Supergirl, Volume Two", and if there's anything that a vast collection of black-and-white reprints of Silver Age comics has taught me, it's that the Superman titles are second only to the Wonder Woman titles in terms of sheer, wall-to-wall insanity. Case in point: The first meeting between Lex Luthor and Supergirl.

Luthor finds out about Supergirl's existence the same way everyone else does; Superman breaks into every TV show in the world for a special broadcast saying, "Hey, everyone! I've got a cousin!" (If I had a machine that let me interrupt every single TV signal in the world, I'd probably use it all the time to talk about my personal life, too. I'd be all, like, "Hey, world. Kinda had a sucky day at work. Could use some hugs." It'd be awesome.) On hearing about this, Luthor immediately suspects that this is a trick of some sort on Superman's part. He breaks out of prison (fun science fact! Combining mouthwash, aspirin, orange juice, and some old radio parts will make a fool-proof invisibility formula that works whenever a siren goes off!) and goes to defeat what he assumes is a robot Supergirl.

Of course, she's not a robot (not that this would be out of the question in a Superman title; she actually has robot impersonators of her own) and Luthor realizes that she is, in fact, a woman with all of Superman's powers. He remains confident, though; Luthor says, "I'll use her feminine nature against her!" He pulls a bank robbery, using a shrinking beam to steal the entire bank (hey, Silver Age Luthor might have been crazy, but he had style!) and sets up a trap for when Supergirl shows up...one that will use her "feminine nature" against her.

Specifically, he has an accomplice waiting with a baby carriage, and when Supergirl shows up, they shove it down a hill and tell Supergirl that she's got enough time to save the baby or stop Luthor, but not both. As it turns out, the baby carriage actually has a midget with Kryptonite in it, but that's not the point. (As difficult as it is to avoid puzzling over, it's really not.) The point is, Luthor apparently believes that the big difference between a man with Superman's powers and a woman with Supergirl's powers, the "feminine nature" he's using against her, is that Supergirl will let Luthor escape to focus on rescuing the baby.

The clear implication is that Superman wouldn't. "Screw the helpless infant, Luthor! You've got a date with the judge!" That's right, Luthor clearly knew that only female super-heroes care about children's lives! Or just that Superman is a dick.

Anyhow, Supergirl escapes from the midget and actually saves Luthor's life in the process of capturing him (mainly, according to her, because Luthor's got a life sentence in prison to serve, and she's not going to let him get out of it by dying young. Which is actually a pretty impressively badass thing to do. It sort of feels like what Judge Dredd might do to a perp who's doing life.) Afterwards, Luthor resents her bitterly for saving him, thus cementing her position in the Superman family. And cementing this story's position in the canon of crazy Silver Age stories.

Heist, Part Fifteen

2009-09-24T04:56:00.001-07:00

This is the penultimate section, so for those of you who are looking forward to the end (for one reason or another) there's only one chapter to go!

On Tinaria, relationships among the gang get strained quickly as they hide out, evade the law, and prepare for the theft. Although Amanda prefers to work alone, she finds herself quickly befriending Eileen and Ace (even though none of them trust Corvus, and wonder why the Doctor involved him)—Vorimar, though, remains utterly terrified of all of them and hates being forced into what he sees as a criminal enterprise. He has no choice, however; the Doctor revealed his old identity, and the only way to avoid recapture and a life in prison is to go through with the theft, after which Corvus will set him up with a new life at the Doctor’s behest. He wants no part of the money that the theft will bring, and will consider being left alive to be a reward. Corvus, in turn, has problems re-establishing his criminal contacts. Everyone believes him to be a turncoat, since his capture was so well-known among the criminal community, and he quickly comes to blame the Doctor for his fall from grace. Joachim, meanwhile, deals with his nervousness through drugs and alcohol. And the Doctor? He’s busy running errands, making preparations, and constructing a duplicate Key that can pass close inspection—the plan is to substitute the fake Key for the real one to avoid alerting the authorities as to its true value. (It’ll also keep the Baroness from trying to snatch the Key away from them, since she won’t know it’s been stolen until they have the Fleet itself.) The duplicate Key is just as beautiful as the real one…a twelve-sided crystal roughly the size of a golf-ball, shimmering through all the colors of the rainbow as it waits to be inserted into the control deck of the Doomforge flagship.

The heist itself is brilliantly planned. First, Vorimar uses his unique powers to create a precisely localized electromagnetic pulse. The pulse crashes the museum’s electronic systems, while leaving the gang’s perfectly intact. Then, using equipment procured by Corvus, Joachim hacks into the remaining shielded systems of the museum and brings down the rest of the security…leaving the Doctor and Amanda to enter the museum and make the switch, while Eileen waits in the getaway hovercar.

Everything goes as planned at first, but then disaster strikes. Over-medicated and a little bit too drunk, Joachim makes a crucial error in judgement while navigating the network. He attempts to use the emergency cut-out the Doctor had Corvus obtain for him in order to escape the network, but it fails and security programs fry out his brain from the inside, killing him. The museum’s core security systems re-activate, bringing some of the detectors online…a fact not noticed until Amanda picks up the Key, triggering alarms everywhere. Panicked, they are forced to depart before the Doctor can plant the duplicate Key, which means that Winter will know they have it. Fortunately, the Doctor says as they reach Eileen and outrace the police to safety, Winter doesn’t know where they are.

After the theft, the Doctor mourns the death of Joachim. He examines the emergency cut-out, and discovers it was sabotaged; someone set Joachim up to die if he made a mistake. Amanda has an immediate suspect in Corvus, who helped the Doctor procure and set up the equipment, but can prove nothing—and the Doctor appears unwilling to accuse the blackmailer. Instead, he continues with the original plan, and apologetically releases Vorimar. He explains that Corvus has used his contacts to set up a new identity for the Dyna, and thanks him for his help. Vorimar scorns the Doctor’s thanks, but goes to his new home hoping to put this whole incident behind him. He finds three people there waiting for him, though. The first, a blonde woman with icy blue eyes, is Baroness Winter herself. The second is her personal bodyguard, a massive, heavily armed man. The third, of course, is Corvus. They’re there to tie up a few loose ends…

After a night of cautious celebration, the Doctor prepares his (now five-member) crew to go and claim their prize. They fly out to the sector of space where the Doomforge Fleet awaits, but as they approach the Doomforge Fleet, Baroness Winter uses her own ship’s transmats to beam the four of them to her and her retinue of jackbooted thugs. The Baroness hasn’t reached the perimeter of the Fleet’s territory yet, but unfortunately for Miss O’Donnell, their ship has. It’s unfortunate because the pilot’s compartment is scan-shielded, meaning she couldn’t come along, and without the Key on board, the Fleet has just released drone ships to kill her, just to clarify. Winter brought them all along because she doesn’t know who has the Key, and didn’t want to take chances. Fortunately, after a quick search (with the Doctor having his usual assortment of useless junk), she finds it on Amanda’s person, and the group docks with the Doomforge ship without incident.

The "Vote With Your Wallet" Fallacy

2009-09-21T04:54:00.001-07:00

So I was thinking about writing about DragonCon (which I attended, as I plan to do next year) and the way that certain people feel like their passion for a particular actor, the distance they traveled to attend the con, or the money they paid to get in somehow gives them special rights over other attendees...but then I thought about it, and realized that trying to correct the behavior of the entire science-fiction fan community felt a bit like tilting at windmills. So instead, I'm going to rant about comics. This is also tilting at windmills, but is less likely to lead to me flailing about with blunt instruments next time I attend a convention.

Specifically, I'm going to rant about an oft-heard phrase that rears its ugly head every time a lazy, slapdash, poorly paced crossover filled with random deaths and random resurrections all to try to generate some sort of "shock" in the jaded comics readership. (*cough* 'Blackest Night' *cough*) (Although really, the biggest problem with 'Blackest Night' is that even by comics standards, it's hard to believe this crop of gruesome deaths will be permanent. This is Geoff Johns we're talking about, a man who has spent his entire career trying to bring back every single Silver Age character and a good 47% of the Golden Age heroes. He is not going to kill off Hawkman, not after he lobbied for the better part of a decade to bring him back. No, 'Blackest Night' is going to end with loads and loads and loads of miraculous resurrections, which makes it pretty hard to care about the endless gore-porn sequences that have substituted for plot so far.)

But what do people always say after a rant like that? (A rant which is, of course, purely for demonstration purposes.) "Vote with your wallet! If you stop buying that stuff, they'll stop publishing it!"

The problem is, people have been voting with their wallets since the mid-1990s. The end result of over a decade of voting with their wallets? 'Blackest Night'.

The logic is simple and inexorable. Comics are, with a few extremely rare exceptions, only sold in comics stores. This means that comics only sell to active, engaged enthusiasts of the medium. If you're not a comics fan, the chances that you will wind up buying a comic as an impulse purchase is as next to nil as makes no nevermind.

So if you vote with your wallet--if you decide not to buy comics anymore because you think they've become grotesque exercises in padding, short-term shock value, dreary and unpleasant characters doing ugly and unlikeable things, and destroying everything that was once fun about the superhero genre in order to show the guys who used to make fun of the writer in high school that comics are too for grown-ups! (...again, for example...) then you're no longer going to the comics stores. You are no longer engaged with the comics community. You are, to all intents and purposes, invisible to comics.

And vice versa. Let's say, for example, that Marvel says, "Gee! We've gotten a lot of letters from readers saying that they're giving up on our comics because they're nothing but Norman Osborn being evil and the Hood beating up women! Let's try to publish some fun, positive, engaging comics for those readers, filled with all the things they missed about comics over the years!" Those readers will never see them. Because they have walked away from the industry. They're not going to wander into a comic store every week for ten years, hoping each time that this will be the week that someone finally publishes something decent again. They're going to move on with their lives. (A few will, of course, discover some of the good indie comics out there and stay active within the hobby enough to know about Marvel's new series, and maybe some of those few will go back and pick it up. But "a few" is not a readership base.)

So Marvel now publishes its new, fun comic...and it doesn't sell. It sells even worse than the crappy misogynist dialogue-fest that their hot writer of the week is working on, where nothing can't be solved by long sequences of characters sitting around the table and having halting, paused-filled conversations and actual fight scenes happen about once every three years. (Again, hypothetically.) What does Marvel do then? They shrug, they look at their remaining fanbase, and they say, "Hey, this is what the audience wants right now. They're voting with their wallets. So let's give it to them...only, since there are so few of them, let's raise the prices to the maximum they're willing to pay without screaming, and have every comic cross over into every other comic so they have to buy them all."

It's a vicious circle. The comics audience has become self-selecting, with any potential new fans totally locked off from getting into the hobby, and the remaining fans utterly contemptuous of anything that smacks of "kiddified" stories. The only solution is to aggressively market new and different books to new and different audiences...but that requires capital that nobody's willing to expend on publishing comics, not without some tangible evidence that it'll produce returns. (Which they won't get, because every time someone looks up the sales records on fun, upbeat books like 'Blue Beetle', they get "canceled after thirty issues." That kind of thing isn't an inducement to executives to go and spend more money.)

And of course, the worst part is that DC and Marvel are the bread and butter of the modern comics store. For all that people encourage buying indie comics as a way to vote with their wallets, if DC and Marvel (possibly even just Marvel) got out of the publishing business and decided to focus on their movies and videogames, it would be an utter apocalypse for the comics industry. All the other companies combined do not sell enough copies to keep a comics store in business. And without comics stores, indie publishers have very few places to sell their stuff. So voting with your wallets...might actually mean buying DC and Marvel books you hate just to keep the store you like in business.

The business model of the comics industry would drive Warren Buffett mad.

Heist, Part Fourteen

2009-09-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Amanda knows exactly what the Doomforge Fleet is, and her reflections inform the reader. The Doomforge Fleet was assembled ten thousand years ago by a race of powerful, brilliant aliens that constructed ships for the highest bidder using technologies now lost. Each ship in the Doomforge Fleet is capable of devastating an entire solar system, and the Fleet contains seven hundred ships. Anyone possessing it could easily set themselves up as ruler of the galaxy—they wouldn’t even need crews, in fact, since the ships are intelligent and can be commanded from the central flagship.

That’s where the whole story started. The designer of the ships, though too proud of his creations to consider destroying them, also couldn’t bring himself to give control of the ships to anyone. He ordered the ships to standby status, and then removed the flagship’s control core. Without that core, the Key to the Fleet, the ships would remain on standby forever. They would destroy anyone without the Key who attempted to violate their area of space, but would otherwise be dormant. Nobody knows what happened to the designer or the Key.

The Doctor, though, says differently. He claims that the Key lies in the Museum of Antiquities on the planet Tinaria, in the heart of the empire. The Tinarians don’t know what they have, but the Doctor does…and so does a wealthy and ambitious woman, Baroness Alexandra Winter. Winter would pay vast sums for even one of the Doomforge ships, let alone the Key. The six of them, working together, could steal the Key and become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

Corvus sarcastically points out that none of them can do anything, because the Doctor’s gotten them all consigned to Nirvana. The Doctor smiles in response, and explains that they’re not on Nirvana yet. They’re still in a transport ship, which can take them to Tinaria just as easily is it can take them to Nirvana…and that his accomplice, Ace, is currently in the midst of hijacking it. Once she gets control of the pilot compartment, she can use the pacification systems to take out the guards and unlock their cells remotely. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve thought of everything.”

Just then, three guards enter, holding a wildly struggling teenage girl. She stops struggling as she sees the Doctor, and gives him an apologetic grin. “Sorry, Professor,” she says. The Doctor’s face falls. “Oh, dear.”

Three hours later, the seven criminals are firmly ensconced in the inescapable prison of Nirvana. The prison has a perfect record—in 250 years, nobody has ever escaped from Nirvana. It’s not that it has brilliant computer systems, since there are dozens of hackers who can crack those. It’s not that it has unpickable locks—Delacourt knows herself that no lock is unpickable. It’s not that the guards are incorruptible…Peter Corvus could find out the guilty secrets of any of them within days. No, Nirvana is inescapable because psionic boosters continually broadcast a telepathic field that renders the prisoners apathetic and disinterested. As long as the boosters function, the guards can leave the doors open and the starships unlocked, and the prisoners won’t bother trying to escape. They don’t, of course. They have some mundane security measures, but for the most part, they rely upon the psionic fields. Even the Doctor isn’t immune to the telepathic invasion—although he tries to fight it, soon enough he doesn’t care about the universe outside any more than any other prisoner. Only the guards, who are authorized to leave and hence don’t want to “escape”, can leave the prison.

Fortunately, the prison was designed to hold the Doctor, Delacourt, even Vorimar…but Ace’s 20th-century human brain proves to be incompatible with the psionic boosters. After a few days of learning the routine of the prison and pretending to be suitably lackadaisical, she gets the gang to wait near the prison transport, which has returned with a fresh load of criminals. Then she goes to the booster room, and switches off the psionic dampeners (easy enough to do, but utterly impossible for any of the prisoners under its influence.) With the dampeners off, the Doctor recovers his sense of purpose and helps the rest of the group escape the prison and hijack the spaceship while the guards react to the first prison riots in the history of Nirvana. Despite a bitter, angry argument between the Doctor and Corvus about whether to wait for Ace or blast off before the rest of the prisoners try to hijack the ship from them, seven criminals head out to Tinaria to steal the Key.

The Seuss That Keeps On Giving, Marvel Vs. DC Edition

2009-09-14T04:24:00.000-07:00

(or "Zzzax in Sacks")

When Mogo battles Ego, it's a Mogo-Ego battle.

And when Chemo fights Chemistro and they fight it out on Mogo, who is battling with Ego, it's a Chemo-Chemistro-Mogo-Ego battle.

And when Bibbo helps out Chemo and gets conked by Brother Voodoo while Chemistro's helping Ego who is getting beat by Mogo...it's a Bibbo-Voodoo-Mogo-'Mistro-Chemo-Ego battle.

And when Fin Fang Foom and Xemnu join the side of Brother Voodoo, but they're now opposed by Lobo, who in turn helps out Eclipso, 'cause he's been punched by Bizarro (who's mistaken him for Frodo) as they duke it out on Ego, who's in orbit around Mogo...it's a Xemnu-Voodoo-Lobo-Ego-Frodo-'Zarro-Chemo-Bibbo-'Mistro-Mogo-'Clipso-battle with Fin Fang Foom, too.

Now I say the battle's done sir, thank you for a lot of fun, sir.

Heist, Part Thirteen

2009-09-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

And here, we begin the home stretch--the synopsis, which explains the bits of the plot that I never got the chance to write in prose form.

‘Heist’
A Past Doctor Novel
This novel features the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and is set between the televised episodes “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” and “Battlefield”.

On the far distant planet Claris, in a sector of the galaxy ruled by the Tinarian Empire, legendary cat burglar Amanda Delacourt prepares for another theft. She already possesses more than enough wealth to live her extravagant lifestyle, and she plans to give the profits from this heist to charity just like the last three. For her, the thrill keeps her in the business, and tonight, as she plans to steal a priceless medallion from a wealthy dowager’s estate, is just another night on the town.

This time, though, things go differently. The police are waiting for her; the medallion was a trap, the entire job a set-up. Someone wanted Amanda Delacourt captured…and despite a valiant attempt at escape, they got their wish. She’s tried, convicted, and sentenced to the prison asteroid Nirvana. Nobody ever escapes from Nirvana.

Even more startling, she finds out that she wasn’t the only person to be set up that night. The prison transport taking her to Nirvana holds five other criminals—legends in the shadowy world that Amanda traverses nightly. The capture and arrest of even one of them would be a shock…to discover that all six of them have been caught shocks Amanda to her very core.

She sees in front of her the infamous computer hacker Joachim Velasquez, capable of breaking into any system and stealing its precious data. Next to him, smuggler and crack pilot Eileen O’Donnell fumes at her predicament—her own mechanic sabotaged her warp drive, forcing her into realspace in the midst of a police blockade. Beyond that, she recognizes the infamous fence, blackmailer, and “procurer” known as Peter Corvus. The person beyond him isn’t known to her personally, but she recognizes the species—and that’s enough. For a Dyna, existence itself is a crime punishable by a life sentence on Nirvana. The Tinarians fear their abilities to manipulate electromagnetic energy, and refuse to take the chance that the pacifistic Dynae might rebel against them.

The sixth prisoner, though, is the most shocking of all. He’s an infamous terrorist, an immortal shapeshifter who’s possessed at least three different faces in his criminal exploits. On seven different occasions over the past three centuries, this evil genius has thwarted the expansionist aims of the Tinarians, always eluding their pursuits and defeating their goals. It was for this man that the Nirvana facility was constructed, and Amanda Delacourt isn’t surprised that the transport’s maximum security cell was reserved for him. After all, the Tinarians have always wanted to get their hands on the criminal mastermind known only as the Doctor.

With little else to do on their journey to Nirvana, the criminals begin speculating on who it might have been that got them all caught. Corvus wants revenge, while Amanda is merely curious as to who might have the capability to ensnare them all. Vorimar, the Dyna prisoner, is confused and terrified at being trapped with all these criminals—he’d thought he’d concealed himself well enough to escape suspicion. Eileen states her determination to escape, despite its impossibility (which draws fatalistic scorn from Corvus, a military officer in the Tinarian Corps himself who knows exactly how escape-proof Nirvana is.) Joachim, unused to any sort of physical threat or punishment for his virtual crimes, laments his fate, and swears that if he ever does get out of Nirvana, he’ll never hack again.

“I hope not,” says the Doctor. “I went to a lot of trouble to get you all here, and I’d hate to see it all go to waste because you got cold feet.”

Needless to say, that bombshell sets the rest of the prisoners against the Doctor, but he manages to calm them with his explanation of exactly why he threw them all together on the prison transport. He needs them, he says, because he’s recently discovered the whereabouts of the Key to the legendary Doomforge Fleet, and in order to recover it, he needs the services of all six. He knew that they wouldn’t agree to a meeting—Corvus is too suspicious, Joachim prefers to meet using computers as a buffer, Amanda works alone, and Vorimar wouldn’t go along with a criminal enterprise. Hence, he explains, this necessary bit of manipulation—but he’s sure they understand that the Key to the Doomforge Fleet is worth it.

With Apologies to Cinematic Titanic

2009-09-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

(So yeah, "Tuesday" didn't happen for posting, but Wednesday is a nice day of the week too, right? Oh, and it turned out that the "Star Trek" post was actually my 400th post on this blog. Feel free to say nice things about my stick-to-it-iveness. Yay!)

Now, gentlemen, allow me to welcome you to Fisticuffs Society. The first rule of Fisticuffs Society is: It is impolite to discuss Fisticuffs Society.

The second rule of Fisticuffs Society is: It is EXCEEDINGLY impolite to discuss Fisticuffs Society.

Third rule of Fisticuffs Society: Should a gentleman request disengagement from fisticuffs, whether verbally or through some form of hand signal...or in the event of incapacity...the other gentleman must desist immediately from battle.

Fourth rule: It would be inconsiderate for more than two gentleman to engage in a single bout.

Fifth rule: It would also be inconsiderate to engage in a bout of fisticuffs while other gentlemen are doing so.

Sixth rule: A gentleman disdains the wearing of anything other than proper attire while engaging in bare-knuckle fisticuffs--this implies full dinner dress, gentlemen. Anything else would be quite uncivilized. And I should not even need to mention that the use of weaponry is quite, quite unsporting.

Seventh rule: Naturally, no member of Fisticuffs Society should even dream of interrupting Fisticuffs Society due to other obligations; please clear your calendar for the evening in order to ensure that bouts can continue as long as they are obliged to continue.

And the eighth and final rule: If this is your first time at Fisticuffs Society, etiquette requires that you engage in a bout of fisticuffs yourself.

Sorry!

2009-09-07T18:10:00.001-07:00

Just got back from DragonCon 2009; I didn't mention I was leaving, because I really did think there might be a chance I would blog from the con, but that was a wildly optimistic thought that was immediately swallowed in the infinite chaos that is always DragonCon. So no blog entry Thursday; I might, however, try to post something tomorrow (once I've recovered--the last day of the con is always exhausting) to make up for the lack of substance in today's post.

I will mention that the Shatner/Nimoy panel was hilarious. They bicker like an old married couple.

Some Thoughts On Star Trek

2009-09-01T08:25:00.001-07:00

For a long time, I forgot that I was ever a Star Trek fan.

If I thought of Star Trek--and I didn't, much; I wasn't a Trek hater, just not a fan--it was with a sort of vague, indifferent contempt. The show would be on, sometimes 'Next Generation', sometimes 'Voyager' or 'Enterprise' (I never seemed to catch episodes of 'Deep Space Nine') and it would always have a sort of dull sameness about it. A bunch of people in uniforms would speechify about some contrived moral dilemma...or worse, about some technobabbly crisis that was threatening to destroy the ship...and then at the end, it would all get resolved either when Picard/Janeway/Sam Beckett made a particularly speechified speech, or when Geordi/Seven of Nine/the Vulcan in the skintight outfit came up with a particularly long and incomprehensible string of technobabble. (I found out somewhere along the line that Trek writers would actually just write "[TECH]" into their scripts, and let someone else fill it in later. This came as absolutely no surprise to me.) None of it ever seemed to even stick in the memory. I'd watch an episode, and five minutes later I couldn't tell you what I'd seen. (With a couple of obvious exceptions. "The Inner Light" is just damn fine TV and I would never say otherwise.) I not only wasn't a fan of Star Trek, I couldn't even imagine being one.

A couple of things changed that this year. First, I watched the excellent J.J. Abrams movie. Actually, it was more than just excellent. It felt like...it felt like when I sat down, my ten-year-old self sat down next to me and said, "Here. All those times you used to watch Star Trek as a kid...this is what you were seeing, in your head. Bigger-than-life heroes, exciting battles, great one-liners, fun fight scenes, and characters that just seemed to be so much fun to watch. Oh, and your imagination filled in good special effects for all the bad ones, too." I remembered how much fun I used to have, watching Kirk and Spock and McCoy banter. I literally didn't even remember that I ever enjoyed the original series until I saw this movie; it had been covered with the dust of dozens of gray, lifeless episodes. This movie blew that dust away.

Second, I read Wil Wheaton's book "Just A Geek", about what it was like to work on 'Next Generation'. Oddly enough, I found more emotion in his passion for making the series than I ever did in watching it. I remembered how much I liked all those actors, Frakes and Burton and brilliant Brent Spiner (was he ever not funny in his guest shots on 'Night Court'?) and especially Patrick Stewart, in everything else they ever did. And it reminded me that even on a series I never managed to like, I liked the chemistry that the cast had.

And thirdly, someone directed me to Wil Wheaton's blogs about the first season of 'Next Generation'. Going back and reading his thoughts, simultaneously from the perspective of an intimate insider and someone who hadn't seen the show in so long that it was basically new to him...it brought me back to that time in a way that only good writers can. It reminded me of the excitement I felt when they announced a new Star Trek series! (Hell, it reminded me that I actually felt excitement at one point for a new Star Trek series.) And as I read his disillusionment with the scripts, his discussions of the rough going behind the scenes, his critiques of a series he deeply wanted to love and do well on, it reminded me...it was hard to love Star Trek for a long time. It was hard to sit through "The Naked Now" and "Code of Honor" and "Lonely Among Us" and still find enthusiasm for Trek. And then they went and did seven years of 'Voyager' on top of that.

It was so hard for so long that I stopped caring, that I forgot I ever did care. But I'm glad I remembered.

Those are some of my thoughts on Star Trek.