Everyone of course knows about Superman, the Man of Steel (though he is actually much stronger than steel or he would have long since been splattered over the landscape). The original Superman (not the comic hero) was actually a villain with aspirations of World Domination. He wasn’t near as powerful as the later comic version. And of course the DC version was a Boy Scout with the ability to fly, lift trains overhead, and bounce bullets from his chest. At some point he entered the absurd, gaining the ability to throw planets into each other and at one point blowing out a sun (like to see how many gas giant planets he had to suck in to pull that one off). It was always shown in the comics that Superman became such a straight arrow due to his rearing by Jonathan and Martha Kent in the very small town of, you guessed it, Smallville. With a kind voice and a firm hand they were able to rear the super-tyke to achieve manhood as a saint, willing to fling his invulnerable body into any situation that needed a helping hand. How realistic is this scenario? (Like being able to blow out a sun is realistic.)
Now I was trained as a child psychologist, and did all the coursework for the PhD, as well as twice the clinical work needed for pre-internship training. I left before getting the degree for reasons that had nothing to do with lack of competence in the field, and continued to work with children seven years after that, before getting into another area of social service. One of the things I remember from graduate school was you can not reason with small children. Talking to a two to five year old (and in most cases even with older children) is a waste of breath. Dr. Spock was wrong. That statement was drilled into me at the same time I was taught the use of Time Out and other disciplinary procedures that did work on the little creatures that someday would become reasoning beings. The fact is that children, while they do posses some reasoning abilities (as anyone who has seen a child figure out how to reach the cookie jar on top of the high cabinet can attest to), about as much as some apes and monkeys, they possess very little in the way of impulse control. They want what they want and they want it now. Only physical force, or the threat of it, can stop them. A firm no can work, if it is backed with a past experience of what it means to ignore the command, like some sessions in time out or a good spanking. Otherwise the word no will get a strange look and then be ignored as the child plunges on ahead with what its little mind is telling it to do.
So how does this concern little Superman, or Super Toddler? The question would be, how do you spank an invulnerable toddler? How do you force a tantruming child into time out? How do you keep a child who can punch out an Abrams tank from splattering you all over the living room if you attempt to discipline him? I guess you might be able to use Kryptonite, if some is handy. Otherwise there is no way to correct the behavior of this child, who, according to my experience, will grow up to be at least a brat, if not a complete Sociopath/Psychopath, and not the Boy Scout portrayed in the comics. This is a Superman who would be better called Disaster-in-the-Making-Man. I see two outcomes for this character. Either he will rule the world. Or mankind will find a way to destroy him. Given that in the comics we seemed to have attracted more than our fair universal share of Kryptonite, I would bank on the latter outcome. But wouldn’t he have made a great villain for someone like the Flash to fight?
Superheroes
When John Carter came out I was surprised to see postings on the internet about how it was a rip off of Avatar. This from a tale that was a century older than the James Cameron movie. It’s funny how things can be perceived in our culture. In this instance, anything that had even the slightest resemblance to something already out there is considered a rip off. Like everything that is ever done that is any good is totally original. I think that concept died when our caveman ancestors told stories of chasing a deer beyond the mountains and finding a horrible civilization, meaning one that lived in not caves, that was a threat to their cave dwelling culture. Then came the Greeks, who borrowed from everyone else to make their original stories, then the Romans, then on and on, everyone taking the stories of others and changing them in some ways to make something new. People ripping off others through the ages. Or if not ripping them off consciously, then doing it without realizing it. It has surprised me how many times during the years I have come up with an original idea, only to find it in some other work that was published after I came up with it (or before, but I had never read it). Now neither myself or the other person went into the mind of the other and ripped out the idea (or ripped it off). Ideas seem to come to groups of people when the time is right, based on the knowledge that is already out there.
I like to compare writing to music, which, in some respects, it is. Listen to your favorite piece of music. Let’s say it’s some rock with a heavy guitar solo. Now first of all it most probably follows some well known scale developed far in the past. Otherwise it would sound like a mishmash of noise that our Western ears are not accustomed to. The riffs might incorporate parts of something done before. The power cords may have been used a thousand times before, but are presented in a different order or time than something that has been done before. You may even hear parts of arrangements you have heard in other works, just arranged differently in relation to each other. But still it’s an original piece of music, not really ripped off from anyone. Still, some people may bring out the rip off tag.
In literature things are borrowed all the time, then rearranged into something different. Is the Hulk a rip off of Superman? They both have super strength, and are very difficult to hurt. But they are completely different characters. Is Conan ripped off by Brak, Kane, Fafnir or Elric? There are similarities, they all kill people with swords. But they are really completely different characters. Or Dominique Flandry, Poul Anderson’s future super spy, is a commissioned officer in the fleet as well as an intelligence operative, but is he really the same as James Bond? Probably the most used technology other than some kind of hyperlight travel is powered armor, first developed by Heinlein in Starship Troopers and then used in hundreds of books in different forms. I use powered armor in Exodus because it makes sense that we will have something like that in the future. Just like we will have multi kilometer skyscrapers in enormous cities, but they won’t be exactly the same as those in Star Wars. And the list goes on.
I am finishing up the first draft of a series called Exodus, which I hope to have coming out, book 1 and 2, in the Fall of 2012. The series starts with the human race fleeing from aliens determined to kill them all. They establish themselves in another section of the Galaxy and start growing an Empire that might have a chance of defeating the aliens. Now I mentioned the idea to a friend who replied that it sounds a lot like Battlestar Galactica. Sort of kind of, but it really is in no way like Galactica, which I happen to like by the way. I mention wormhole gates developed using a station around a black hole (actually stolen from my own earlier work, The Deep Dark Well) and I hear, this sounds a lot like Stargate. Not really, but there is that one superficial similarity, even though my gates are not created in any way that would look like something from Stargate. Mention a Galactic war and it’s like Star Wars. But not really. You see, like most writers I borrow ideas, and then change them, combine them, work with them, until they are my own and not really like this or that. Of course there are some similarities. I can either have enormous warships, or middle sized warships, or small warships. Not really any choices beyond that, and so they look similar to something else. I use lasers and particle beams, so they look like something that has already been done. I have developed my own imaginary method of faster than light travel, and use real physics in normal and hyper travel, so the strategy and tactics of space warfare have to follow the constraints of these technologies. Other ideas are left out of the book through either made up rules of nature or through man made laws, so there will be no immortality, cloning or self aware robots. It clashes with what I am trying to achieve, so they will either not be there, or there will be problems in the past that keep them from the mix.
In another series, Refuge, the first book of which is already out with number 2 coming this week, I borrow a lot of well used themes from other sources and then change them some. I have other races of humans, who have their own designations, Ellala, Conyastaya, Grogatha, Gimikan. The humans who see them have their own names for them, taken from our popular culture. High elf, forest elf, orc and dwarf. These are the names they are familiar with, and the names they will use, just as I call the Deutsches characters in the book Germans. And they use fire balls and lightning bolts, not because I can’t come up with something different, but because these are well known forms of magic, and so might come from the connection between the worlds into our own modern mythology. And because the magic system works for what I want it to do, in a place where many beings can work magic. The book concerns humans being transported to a dimension of magic, and yes, I am sure this has been done before. I am also pretty sure that tens of millions of humans being transported with their weapons to a dimension of magic has never been done. Yes, tanks against dragons has been done before (Dragon Wars), badly. Modern MBTs can hit another tank across kilometers of distance while both vehicles are moving at a good clip. Don’t see how they miss large dinosaur like creatures advancing in a straight line at a crawl only a couple of blocks away, but in some works that’s exactly what they do. So I am again pretty sure that my treatment is original. Is it totally original, like everything sprung from my imagination fully formed with no outside influence? No, and I challenge anyone to do something like that. For the rest of us, we’ll just continue to beg, borrow and steal to come up with something new.
I loved the Hulk as a child. I mean, what wasn’t there to like about the big guy? He was a bad ass, the Chuck Norris of the comics. And he was the typical Marvel character, troubled on many levels. Bruce Banner did not want to be the Hulk, it wasn’t a power he reveled in. But when he was the Hulk he became the most powerful can of whupass on the planet. No other super being could stand against him. Not Namor, not Ironman, not even Thor, though the hammer was quite an equalizer. Namor always got weaker out of water, while the Hulk never got weaker, so that fight was over as soon as it began. Ironman hit the Hulk with a jet, and probably got billed by the Air Force for destruction of Government property. And all it did was stun the big green guy long enough for Ironman to get out of Dodge. The Thing always wanted to think he was a match for the Hulk, but he never stood a chance. Because the Hulk had unlimited strength, the madder he got the stronger he got, and there was no limit to his rage. He was very good at smashing things that got in his way. He was even proficient as breaking things he really hadn’t set out to break, like the jet fighter he just happened to pass through on his way back to the ground after a leap. He broke things but didn’t really kill people, at least in the comics. In the modern movie version it was insinuated that he did kill people, but not out of any desire to kill. He was a bull in the china shop, and our fragile bodies were china compared to his muscular physique.
But the greatest thing about the Hulk to a child was his motivation. He was not really a hero, not really a villain, and a little of both. Sometimes he saved the world. But it was when he blundered into some situation and had to fight his way out that he foiled the plans of the villain based on world conquest or destruction. Mostly he just wanted to be left alone. And the bullies of the world, the militaries of the United States or Russia, or aliens, or evil people bent of conquest, would not leave him alone. Just as the bullies in school would not leave an intelligent child with a lot of imagination alone. But unlike the child, the Hulk could do something about it. He could smash, and drive the bullies away for just a short moment. They always came back, but he was always ready for them.
The other attractive part of the Hulk was the Bruce Banner character, who was always self sacrificing in his attempts to try and keep the beast from going on a rampage among civilization. This didn’t always work, because again and again the bullies tried to capture him in his weakest form, and would trigger the transformation into the unstoppable engine of destruction. Then afterwards Banner would calm down and the Hulk would revert to human form, with no memories of what happened. Sort of like a drunken blackout. But that’s another topic for another time.
There are a lot of heroes in the Marvel Pantheon, with a variety of superpowers. Some, like the Hulk and Thor, have strength so great they can demolish large vehicles with their bare hands. Not to mention that cool hammer of Thor’s. Others, like Spiderman, while not quite as strong, are still physically gifted to an extreme. Some, like the Human Torch, are so powerful that they have to tone back their powers some, lest the neighborhood and the people in it pay the price through incineration. But most of the Superheroes in the Marvel Universe fall into two categories. Those who gained their abilities by accident, and those who were born with them.
All of the mutants in the Marvel Pantheon were born with their abilities. The X-men, Wolverine, the evil mutants all came by their powers because of a genetic aberration. Some, like Wolverine, may have acquired other abilities like the adamantium skeleton, but the base powers were theirs by right of birth. Thor, Hercules and the other immortal heroes were also born with their abilities as members of other species. So was the Submariner. The Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Spiderman acquired their abilities due to circumstances beyond their control, i.e. accidents. Bruce Banner was exposed to gamma radiation that released the beast within, while Reed Richards and company caught their abilities from cosmic rays, and Peter Parker was bitten by the famous radioactive spider (updated to genetically engineered super spider). There are some Marvel heroes that developed their abilities through science and training, such as Captain America, Hawkeye, Giantman and Wasp. Giantman is a very powerful character, but kind of a peripheral one. Cap is very good at what he does with his limited abilities, while Hawkeye is merely a superbly trained archer. Which brings us to a very powerful Marvel character that developed his own abilities, namely the star of this essay, Tony Stark.
Tony Stark is an interesting character in his own right, even without his armored suit. A genius billionaire playboy, he would seem to have no reason to put his life on the line to become a superhero. Stark not only had no powers, accidental or born, he developed his super suit because he wanted to be able to right the wrongs he saw around him, some that were the result of the business as usual attitude of his own company. So Tony Stark used his genius to develop a super suit, powered armor if you will, that made him the equal of most of the other superheroes, and superior too many. And the suit gives him some advantages that can’t be matched by some of the other powerful Marvel characters. It is constantly being upgraded, making its wearer more and more powerful. And it can be configured for different roles that Iron Man might find himself in. The other heroes are kind of caught in the limits of whatever abilities they have, even if they are massively powerful, such as the Hulk and Thor.
But the greatest attribute of Tony Stark the man, and not just the Iron Man, is that he loves what he does. This has become even more apparent from the movies. Iron Man likes to play to loud music, to wise crack, while putting his life on the line. The only traditional Marvel hero who waxes comedic as much is Spiderman. But even Spiderman can’t override the music systems of nearby aircraft to have them play AC/DC while he battles. Iron Man rocks the world while he battles, and his appreciative audience cheers. Some of the other heroes, like Captain America, may doubt Tony Stark’s resolve, but not the audience, who watch a man who has everything put it on the line for the rest of us. Rock on, Ironman.
I went to see The Avengers the day after the Tallahassee Writer’s Conference. I had seen the trailers on Youtube, heard the hype, hoped it would be good, and prepared myself for the disappointment that the movie would not be as good as hoped. And it Rocked most excellently. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, at least not to this comic loving boy who grew up on the lore of the Marvel Universe. There was no way they could make it prefect, and if I wanted to I could have sat there and picked apart every little mistake they made about the Marvel Mythos. And there surely were a lot of them. Instead I went to the movie wanting to see the superheroes I had grown up loving brought to life. And were they ever.
Nick Fury was actually shown as the action hero he was when he was an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., not just a desk sitting director. The flying aircraft carrier did not just have a bit part as I feared, but was an integral part of the story. There was the obligatory battle between Ironman and Captain America versus Thor, just to show that testosterone powers the Marvel Universe, and Thor was show to have true super strength in this movie, maybe not quite as much as the Hulk, but in that range. The battle between Thor and the Hulk was a gem, in which the big green guy was the stronger, though Thor got in his licks, and the hammer equalized them. I loved it when the Hulk was shown incapable of lifting the hammer. Only Thor could do that in the comics, and that was shown in a great manner in the movie. Otherwise the Hulk was shown to be pretty much unstoppable once the anger got going. Loki appeared to be much stronger than he was in the Thor movie, but that might have been because now he was dealing with mere mortals. One of the more humorous parts of the film was when Loki reviled the Hulk, calling him beneath the Asgardian God that Thor’s brother was. The result was predictable but still very funny.
Even Hawkeye was shown to be worthy of the mantel of hero, even if not super. The little automatic arrow head attaching quiver system was very cool. Black Widow had her moments, although as a mere human, no matter how good at martial arts, I still felt that she didn’t really belong in the Avengers. The big four of Ironman, Thor, Hulk and Captain America definitely belonged. I really wish they had put Giant/Antman in the movie along with Wasp, but I guess since they didn’t have their own movie Marvel thought they wouldn’t do well in this one. Or the special effects budget was already too high, so they left out the growth and shrinking effects.
One of the complaints I had read about this movie was that it didn’t have enough action. Now granted, it wasn’t all action, and there was some plain old talking conflict. But not enough action? No way. The movie started off, after the introduction of the villains, with Loki invading a secret SHIELD lab that is destroyed. There is a fight with Captain America and Ironman versus Loki, then a fight where Thor takes Loki and Cap and Ironman fight him. Then the battle on the helicarrier, in which Thor fights the Hulk, Ironman and Cap fight some thugs while trying to save the ship, and Black Widow fights Hawkeye. Then the battle between the Avengers and the aliens that had to run forty minutes or more. That was a lot of battle scene, and probably took most of the non-actor salary budget. But then again, some people are never satisfied. All in all I found it to be a very good movie that I decided not to pick apart for its mistakes, but instead appreciated for its triumphs. They set up the sequel, and I for one can’t wait for it. I guess I will have to, as it will be at least a year before it comes out. Maybe they will have a chance to introduce Giant/Antman and the Wasp in that time.
This Friday the movie version of The Avengers is coming out, after a long way and much publicity building up to the day. At times I wondered if I would die of old age before this film actually hit the theaters. And no, this is not a remake of the British TV series, like the Uma Thurman vehicle of a few years back. This is the Avengers of the Marvel Universe, and while I have some problems with the choice of some of the heroes (Black Widow, come on now) for the most part they are staple superstars from the Marvel stable. And with the exception of Hawkeye, they have all starred in their own movies. Unfortunately I have a writer’s conference this weekend, but took Monday off to rest up, so Monday will be movie day.
The Hulk of course is the mightiest of Marvel’s superheroes, though he was always more in the mold of the antihero. When the Hulk became the opponent of any other super being that was basically all she wrote. Thor was almost as strong, plus had the really cool hammer that only he could pick up. Ironman was not really a superhero, but the ever evolving suit gave him all the abilities of a super being, and the movie version is just as good. Captain America was almost the Batman of Marvel. Sure, he was a supersoldier, and better than a normal human being in strength, speed and agility, but not in the class of his compatriots. He wasn’t even as mighty as Spiderman. But that was part of his charm. He fought hard with what he had (and the shield was really cool) and came out the winner. I would have liked to see some of the other Avengers featured such as Wasp and Giant/Antman. But such is not to be. I guess Wasp and Giantman didn’t have their own movie, so didn’t have the initial marketing the others had.
From what I have seen the movie looks like it is going to be really fantastic. They even have the flying aircraft carrier of shield for goodness’ sake. I followed all of these guys growing up, and even though they have changed with time, they are still essentially the heroes I knew and loved. Now I am sure that some of the critics will pan this movie, just as they did Thor and John Carter (see my earlier post, They Don’t Get It). They will rail about all the silly superhero stuff in the movie, and gush over the non fantastic parts. They don’t understand that we, the target audience, go to these movies to see Thor throw his hammer, Ironman use his repulsor rays, or the Hulk to smash. They would prefer to see Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner sitting around discussing their problems, and I don’t think they would really relate to Thor’s problems.
The times are great for the movie magic of superheroes. A friend recently posted a fan made trailer for the Avengers as set in the 1980s. Ironman looked like he was made of plastic and rubber, and was made in one of those vacuum former machines. Dr. Donald Blake (Thor) held up a hammer that looked like one of those rubber body shop instruments and turned into the God of Thunder. Captain America rode a motorcycle and had a Plexiglas shield. The Lou Ferigno Hulk was the best of the bunch, but even though that series was decent, it wasn’t the Hulk we fans wanted to see. Now we can see that Hulk, and a flying Thor and Ironman as well.
Like most lovers of the fantastic I love movies about the fantastic. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic heroes, James Bondesc spy movies, sometimes even big dumb Japanese monster movies. I loved them all despite the bad special effects which included guys in really bad monster suits and claymation dinosaurs. I suspended my disbelief to see the type of story that I loved brought to life. I saw Jurassic Park on the big screen, and fell in love with the new CGI dinosaurs. Never mind that raptors were actually smaller animals than portrayed in the movie. Technology had brought living breathing animals to the screen. And then I saw the first Spider-man movie and I knew that movie making had arrived. Here was my childhood hero on the big screen, and he was not just crawling up sideways walls like Batman did in the 60s. No, he was jumping, leaping, twisting with incredible, one could almost say super, agility. I was in love with the movie makers art. Now not all of these movies were action and suspense. There were some very human scenes as well. The old man discussing his dreams for Jurassic Park with Dr. Grant while they eat ice cream and the children are lost in the dinosaur haunted wilderness. Toby McGuire crying over his dead uncle. While these scenes were important to the movies in question, I would have walked out of the theater disappointed had these scenes been all of the movie. They would not have been what I came to the theater for that day.
This morning I read a critique of the soon to be released movie John Carter on a Site called Flick Filosopher or some such. They state that they watch the bad movies so you don’t have to, which to me seems to sum up their philosophy going in. They seem to feel that a movie like John Carter should be an emotional, tear jerker kind of movie that the critics all seem to love. She actually criticized the movie for having too much action. To me this is the kind of movie that fans of the genre expect to see. That they love. Of course no movie is exactly like the book. Most are not even as good as the book. It is still a treat to see them come to life, to suspend disbelief, to ooh and ah over the great backgrounds and ground breaking special effects.
Last year I remember getting ready for the Thor movie release. This had been a favorite character of mine while growing up. Of course the one in the comic didn’t have a beard, but I was willing to forgive that mistake. Before seeing the movie I read a review. The critic thought the superhuman scenes were over the top and kind of stupid. He thought that the scenes of Thor as a human trying to figure out the Earth were wonderful, and the movie would have been much better if there had been more of that. Sorry, but I didn’t pay my eight bucks to see a story about a young man estranged from his father, falling in love with a girl from a different class, while trying to reconcile with dear old dad. I came to the conclusion then that the critics just don’t get it. They don’t get the love of the fantastic that those who truly enjoy it bring with them to the movies. They watch those same movies without the joy and come to a completely different conclusion. That’s OK. They can have their opinion, just as I have mine. But I don’t pay much attention to their opinions anymore. If it looks good to me I go and see it, and most probably enjoy it.
Critics seem to love to criticize. And almost all of their negative comments are at variance with what I enjoy. I don’t have to pay attention to their blather, and neither do you. If the papers want to get it right maybe they should hire specialist critics just for the fantastic genres. People who grew up enjoying pulp fiction and comic books. People who get it.
