WRITING NEWS

I finished my latest novel, Sam Fortune and the Wisdom of the Ancients, just a few days ago. This isn't a superhero novel; it's more of a straight-up adventure story, set mostly in Europe in 1925. The protagonist is Sam Fortune, a down-on-his-luck adventurer who gets caught up in a search for a missing history professor; Sam's fifteen-year-old ward Nellie Blue, a young sailor called Griff, and a hard-drinking dullard of a boxer named Joe Barlowe wind up tagging along.

I usually self-publish my books on Amazon, but I think I might try selling this one to a publisher for a change. Probably nothing will come of it -- I don't know that there's much of a market for old-fashioned adventure stories -- but I figure it might be worth a shot.

Next up? Well...I haven't quite decided yet. I'm leaning towards writing another Signalverse book, but all the fantasy I've been reading lately (An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, Brian McClellan's Powder Mage trilogy, Lawrence Watt-Evans's Stone Unturned) has inspired me; I'm thinking about working on something in that genre. We'll see.

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THE WONDER YEARS ENDING SUCKS

I've been watching some episodes of The Wonder Years lately. This is a great show, a classic show, better than anything that's on TV now. Unfortunately, it's also fatally flawed, because of the ending.

The Wonder Years is, ultimately, about Kevin and Winnie's relationship. (More broadly, yes, it's a coming-of-age story, but their relationship is the central feature within that story.) The first episode is about their relationship, the last episode is about their relationship, and every really important episode, over the entire six-season run of the show, is about their relationship. This is their story...and it ends badly for them. The final episode reveals that although they stayed in touch, they didn't stay together in the end.

This ending ruins the whole show. You can't tell a story like this, a heartfelt coming-of-age story about a romantic relationship, and then say at the end, "Well, things just sort of fizzled out for them, and nothing happened." It's bad storytelling. The whole narrative arc of the show was pointing in a certain direction; to swerve off in a different direction at the last second was a mean thing to do to the audience, a sort of cheap trick. "How clever we were, to subvert your expectations!"

As I recall, the producers defended the ending by calling it realistic. "Who ends up with their high school sweetheart?" Uhh, actually, lots of people do, and it was even more common in the late 60's/early 70's (when the show took place) than it is now. But who cares about realism, anyway? This is fiction. Telling a meaningful, coherent story is the important thing in fiction, not slavish devotion to realism.

Here's an example. Imagine you're watching a romantic comedy: the couple meet in a park, get to know each other, fall in love, overcome some obstacle, and finally come together in the end. The credits are just about to roll...and then they're both hit by a truck. This is totally realistic; bad things happen to happy couples all the time. Is this an appropriate way to end a romantic comedy, though? Is it good fiction? Of course not. The audience doesn't want this; they didn't come to the movie, and get to know these characters, and begin to cheer for them, only to see them get hit by a truck at the end. In terms of structure, in terms of story, that's not the correct way to end a romantic comedy.

"So every fictional romance has to have a happy ending?" No, every fictional romance should have a satisfying ending. No one complains that Jack and Rose didn't find their happy-ever-after in Titantic.

"It's not about the ending! It's about the journey!" Yeah. And The Wonder Years, alas, gave us a journey without a destination.

There's other things wrong with the Wonder Years ending. Kevin reveals that he kept in touch with Winnie for eight years after she went away, and when she returned, he greeted her at the airport with his wife and child. How did Kevin's wife feel about this, about him carrying on a sort of long-distance relationship with an old flame, over a period of eight years? She must have been pretty understanding, not to feel threatened by this.

Ah, here's what Bob Brush (the show's executive producer) had to say about the ending: "The mail is coming in now and everyone wants a real traditional kind of sitcom end, which is everyone hugs and everything is OK between Kevin and Winnie...[But] I never looked at us as being in the business of providing America with a happy half-hour." So I guessed right -- he deliberately avoided "the traditional kind of sitcom end" because he thought it was a banal or unoriginal way to end the series. Why did people want that "traditional kind of sitcom end" so badly? Are people just sentimental? Well, partly (mind you, there's nothing wrong with sentimentality). But they mainly wanted that ending because it's the only ending that makes sense, that fits, within the larger context of the show -- a show which, I remind you, is a heartfelt coming-of-age story about a romantic relationship.

It's unfortunate, but this one bad decision tainted the whole show -- for me, and probably for a lot of people.

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MY TEN FAVORITE MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 EPISODES

I’m a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I was a bit of a latecomer to the series -- I started watching it during the Sci-Fi Channel years -- but I've seen practically every episode now, some dozens of times. Here, for no particular reason other than I'm bored, are my ten favorites. (There's a strong bias here towards Mike episodes, simply because I prefer his style to Joel's.)

1) Prince of Space. A horribly-dubbed Japanese space adventure from the 1950's. Prince of Space is a silly, unintimidating hero with a ridiculous costume, and his nemesis, Phantom of Krankor, is the funniest character to ever appear in anything, ever. The best MST3K movies are the ones that are funny even without the riffing, and this one is absolutely hilarious.

2) Puma Man. This was the first episode I actually sat down and watched, back in the day. It's an awful Italian-produced superhero movie starring a dorky-looking professor-dude who becomes the Puma Man: a flying goofball with a stupidly bland costume and a sad, tired archenemy played by Donald Pleasance. Everything about this movie is funny, from the lousy acting to the atrocious special effects and the dumb story, but it was the music that really sold me on this one. I loved the riffing on the theme song: "When, you want, the flavor of bacon in a dip."





3) Space Mutiny. One of the most incompetent movies ever made. They simply didn't have the budget, or the talent, or the creativity, to bring the premise to life; unable to build a futuristic spaceship set, they simply shot the whole thing in a run-down factory, and wound up reusing a bunch of shots from Battlestar Galactica for the space-fighting scenes. Add to that the scenery-chewing Kalgan, Reb Brown's characteristically awful acting ("Let's get out there and kick some ass!"), the goofy floor-polishing carts, the obvious continuity errors, and man, this is a great episode.

4) The Giant Spider Invasion. A sleazy giant spider movie. The most terrifying thing in the movie isn’t the spiders, but Robert Easton's character, a surly jackass who wears a dirty back brace.

5) Deathstalker and the Warriors From Hell. A fantasy film -- this is actually the third Deathstalker movie -- produced by Roger Corman. It's got a generic fantasy plot, a really low budget, a smarmy lead, lots of weird little moments ("Potatoes are what we eat!"), and a great villain in Thom Christopher, who yells and screams and overacts like crazy. The riffing in this one is really terrific.

6) Werewolf. Bizarre little werewolf movie, starring a cast who all speak with different accents; only a few characters in the film are actually able to pronounce the word "werewolf" correctly (instead we get war-whilf, wir-wilf, etc.) This is another one with fantastic riffing: "Think of my family in Latvia!"

7) Skydivers. The doughty Coleman Francis directed three movies: Skydivers, The Beast of Yucca Flats, and Red Zone Cuba. MST3K tackled all three of these, but Skydivers is easily my favorite. It's a strange, dreary movie (actually, all of Coleman Francis's movies are dreary), with a bare-bones plot, odd acting, and confusing editing. Admittedly, it took a while for this one to grow on me; it can be pretty hard to get past the incredible drabness of the movie and enjoy the riffing.

8) The Creeping Terror. A very, very unusual alien-invasion movie, featuring a giant slug-like creature that very slowly creeps up on people and eats them (the people help him out by crawling into his mouth). The movie is strange in that it doesn't really have a soundtrack; practically the entire film is narrated.

9) Santa Claus. A holiday favorite (I watch it every Christmas), this is a Mexican fantasy film about a Santa Claus who lives in space, employs an army of children to make his toys, works with Merlin the wizard, and does battle (of a sort) with one of the devil's minions, a greasy-faced goober called Pitch. Lots of horrible dubbing, and full of strange little touches.

10) Samson vs. the Vampire Women/Devil Doll. Okay, I cheated a little on this one, but these two are basically tied for ten. Samson is actually an El Santo movie; in this one Santo faces a bunch of sexy vampire women and their "cheap thug" wrestling minions. Devil Doll is a British production about a creepy ventriloquist. It's a rather boring movie, actually, but the scenes with Hugo, the ventriloquist dummy, are a blast ("I can eat like you can! You are not the only one who likes to eat!")

Runners-Up: Jack Frost, Angels Revenge, Horror of Party Beach, Eegah!, Mitchell, Boggy Creek II, Track of the Moon Beast, Blood Waters of Dr. Z, Outlaw, and The Sinister Urge.

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THE SIGNALVERSE VERSUS...

I was thumbing through the DC vs. Marvel trade paperback yesterday, and because I'm a huge nerd, it got me to thinking about how the Signalverse would fare if its heroes had to square off against the heroes of the DC or Marvel universes. Honestly, I don't think they'd do too well.

Against DC, the Signalverse's heroes would be destroyed. Altair or Dead Ed might've been a match for Superman at one point, but as of 2017 there aren't any characters in the Signalverse that come close to Superman's power levels. Miracle Girl, Ataxal, Farmboy, Smash Hit, maybe Hollywood Gold...these are the Signalverse's toughest heroes, in terms of sheer strength, and I can't see any of them going toe-to-toe with Superman (I've always imagined Miracle Girl as being a weaker version of Supergirl; she's gonna have trouble lifting anything more than about ten tons). I guess the Quantum Man might be able to do something to Superman -- he's got some oddball powers -- but he's not super-strong, or super-fast, and he's not really much of a fighter. He'd have to get the drop on him or something.

As for the speedsters, well, the Flash can run at the speed of light; the Signalverse's fastest runner, Overclocked, tops out at about twelve miles per second. Considerably slower.

So Superman and the Flash, just by themselves, are going to represent a pretty serious problem; throw in Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, and the Kon-El Superboy, and you're looking at a blowout. Even Batman would be trouble for the Signalverse's heroes; the closest equivalent to Batman in the Signalverse is probably the Shadower, and he's really more of a detective than a fighter. Quarterstaff or Nightdragon might give him a pretty good fight, I guess.

Against Marvel...again, there really isn't anyone in the Signalverse who could plausibly stand up to the Hulk, or even Thor. That said, there are plenty of Signalversers who might offer Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, or Iron Man a run for their money: Shieldmaiden, the Ancient Greek, Ol' Hickory, Vermillion, and Flechette would probably be decent competition.

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BLAKE HUNTER

I keep meaning to explain who the guy in the pointy mask is (the one at the top of this page).

The character is Blake Hunter, and he's basically my mascot. My friend Ant and I created the character during our freshman year of high school; he began life as a goofy, trigger-happy superhero who owned his own time machine and fought bad guys like BoogerBooger and the Indestructible Turd (we were teenagers, so we thought this stuff was hilarious). We started drawing these crazy superhero comics starring him and his friends (guys like Feelerman, Bubbleman Bob, and the patriotic Freedumb), but after a while we more or less dropped the superhero stuff, and the comics turned into slice-of-life strips where we made fun of our teachers and complained about our day-to-day lives at school. Blake Hunter turned into a stand-in for me.

Although Blake Hunter was supposed to be the main character of these strips, the real star was Mr. D, a weird pointy-headed robot character based on our friend Manleys. Manleys was/is a very strange guy, who seemed to have no filter between his brain and his mouth; he was always making us laugh by saying these ridiculously crude, outrageous things. Ant made him my archenemy in the comics, probably because the two of us were always taking shots at each other.

We never really did anything with these comics, partly because they were really poorly drawn (Ant's not bad, but I'm a terrible artist) but mainly because they were so full of inside jokes that we were the only ones capable of understanding them. This was my first attempt at creating a superhero world, though, and some of the silly characters from those strips eventually became Signalverse characters: Dead Ed, Stormchaser (originally Mr. Atmosphere), Nightdragon, and a handful of other heroes were all based on Blake Hunter characters.

A version of Blake Hunter actually exists in the Signalverse as well -- he's a member of the Time League, with Lucy Wright. I haven't actually mentioned him in the novels yet, but maybe someday I'll find a story for him (he does have an entry in the Signal City Visitor's Guide).