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NEWS AND VIEWS - SEPTEMBER 2023
WRITING NEWS Made some pretty good progress on the Sam Fortune sequel this month -- I've got it up to about 28,000 words now, with four and a half chapters left to go. I got most of that work done around the beginning of the month, though; my insomnia came back with a vengeance a couple weeks ago and I've been struggling with it ever since. Urgh. Anyway, it's starting to look like Galatea and the Dupe and this new Sam Fortune novel will both be ready for publication around the end of October. I don't want to release these books right on top of each other, however, so Galatea and the Dupe will probably come first, followed by the new Sam Fortune a few months later (maybe February or March of next year). I'll have over one million words of fiction available on Amazon when these two most recent books are released. That's nine Signalverse novels, two Sam Fortune novels, the three books of The Chemical Empires series, Playground Noir, the four Azuraan novellas, and The Complete Guide to the Signalverse, which is mostly background information on the series but which also includes a short story. That's about as many words as George R. R. Martin's first three Song of Ice and Fire novels. The nine Signalverse novels represent approximately half of that total, or about 480,000 words. In terms of pure wordage, I've probably written more superhero fiction than many major comic book writers at this point. So I guess that's a pretty nice little milestone. * * * * * * * * WHAT I'M READING/PLAYING/WATCHING I finished reading the first volume of the deluxe edition of the Berserk manga this month. It went about like I expected; it only took me a couple hours to get through all 700 pages (when reading comics, and manga, I tend not to linger over the artwork -- I'm usually just jumping from one word bubble to the next). The artwork is fantastic, though, with incredible draftsmanship and attention to detail. As for the story...well, I'm intrigued, but these deluxe editions are very expensive (about $40-$50 right now) and I don't know whether I liked it enough to buy any more volumes. This dark, gritty, nihilistic stuff is not really my cup of tea. I also read Twilight Falling, the first volume in Paul S. Kemp's "Erevis Cale Trilogy", which is set in the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dragons. I've never had much interest in Dungeons & Dragons and have avoided these kinds of tie-in books in the past (the only other D&D book I've ever read was this one, which I read back in high school when I was just devouring all the fantasy I could get my hands on), but I decided to give this one a try, after reading on 4chan that these are pretty much the best D&D novels out there. So what did I think of it? Well, the plot was kind of simplistic, but it was a solid fantasy with some interesting characters and scenes. As with Berserk, though, I haven't decided yet whether I want to continue the series; if I'm being honest, I was never really all that invested in it. And I also started reading Eckart Frahm's new history of Assyria, which is excellent so far. As for games, I started playing the new Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, this month, along with the PC Engine CD fan translation of the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna sequel. Zelda has been fun so far, even if the mechanics are essentially identical to Breath of the Wild, and Galaxy Fraulein Yuna is amusing. Turns out I love these kinds of games; it's a shame there aren't more of them available in English. And I started watching some new (to me) Korean dramas this month: Abyss, which is a complicated murder mystery in which characters are being reborn into new bodies all the time, and Go Back Couple, from 2017, which is about a divorced husband and wife who are sent back in time to relive their college days. I'm enjoying them both, but Go Back Couple is especially fun. (Jang Nara, who plays the female lead on this show and was around thirty-six when it was filmed, is actually pretty convincing as a twenty-year old. The male lead, less so, but hey.) * * * * * * * * BLAKE HUNTER, THE TIME MACHINE MAN Back when I was in high school I used to draw these really lousy comics starring a trigger-happy superhero called Blake Hunter (that's him at the top of the page). I've think I've already told the story of how the character came to be elsewhere on this site, but in case you missed it, here it is again: I was in art class with a couple of friends, Ant and Manley, and we were discussing the origins of our first names. I mentioned that my parents had gotten my name from a character in an Andre Norton novel, Quest Crosstime, but I misremembered the character's name as Blake Hunter, instead of Blake Walker. (Incidentally, my brother Ross's name also came from an Andre Norton novel series, The Time Traders series. My dad was reading a lot of science fiction back then.) I'd never read the book, but I knew something about the plot, because I'd seen the paperback lying around the house. "It was about time machines or something," I said. My friend Manley, for no apparent reason and to the amusement of myself and Ant, suddenly and inexplicably burst into song: "Blake Hunter, the Time Machine Man!" And then he started to ad lib all these awful lyrics, which didn't rhyme or make any sense: "He flies through space and never comes back...he's Blake Hunter, the Time Machine Man! And there was a lady on an asteroid who said, Help Me!, so Blake Hunter helped her...he's Blake Hunter, the Time Machine Man! Blake Hunter, the Peter Pan Man!" Etc. Ant and I thought this was hysterical (maybe you had to be there), and a few days later Ant started drawing these comics starring Blake Hunter, who was kind of a goofy, dimwitted spaceman hero. I thought they were pretty funny, so I started drawing them myself (despite the fact that I'm a terrible artist) and pretty soon we were drawing these things every day, usually in class when we were supposed to be doing other things. 
Blake Hunter started out having all kinds of cosmic adventures (his archenemy was Mr. D, a robot character based on Manley), but eventually the comics just turned into pure comedy, with Blake Hunter becoming an ordinary high school student, obviously based on me, with Mr. D and Ant (who drew himself into the comics) as his classmates. The comics followed our day-to-day lives; we used them to make fun of our teachers, and to make fun of each other, and to sort of parody the things that went on at our boring small-town high school. It was pretty silly stuff, but we really got into it, and because we were huge nerds, we started to create this whole superhero universe around Blake Hunter, making up all kinds of new characters, including some who were based on the kids we knew at school. Here's some of them: Ross Murdock. Named explicitly for the character in the Andre Norton novel mentioned above, Ross Murdock was a Mr. Miyagi-like martial artist based on my brother. Depicted as an oblivious and vaguely perverted old man. We had a lot of fun with this character. Ninjaman. Ross Murdock's evil counterpart, who looked just like him except he wore a black outfit instead of a blue one. This character eventually evolved into Sho Matsumoto, the leader of the Dark in the Signalverse. Ninjawaka. Ninjaman's finest student, who evolved into the Signalverse character Edge. Mr. McRib. We knew this kid at school who could suck in his gut so much that you could see his entire rib cage in terrifying detail. So we called the superhero version of this kid Mr. McRib. In the comics, he was depicted as kind of a gun-toting Rambo-like guy. Big Al of the Universe. Named after this kid we knew, whose name was Allen; we depicted him as a planet-eating giant, kind of like Galactus I guess. I went on to use the name Big Al for another Signalverse character. K-Boy. Ant liked to come up with random characters and have them introduce the stories, kind of like the Crypt-Keeper or the Old Witch in EC Comics. One of these was K-Boy, a bald-headed fellow with the letter "K" sewn on his shirt. Another was Feets, a little guy with huge feet, and another was the Genie, a genie with a long black beard who carried a sword for some reason, and who emerged not from a lamp but from a magical jewel. 
The Indestructible Turd. An anthropomorphic turd who wore a red mask and a huge grin. He later gained a companion, the Indestructible Dog Turd, who was considerably more misshapen. Trashman. An evil trash can with arms and legs. In the Signalverse, the "Trashmen" are robots built out of trash cans, which the Junk Jockey uses for surveillance. Billy the Butt-head. We knew this kid named Billy, who was kind of annoying. His Blake Hunter character became Billy the Butt-head, who literally had a butt for a head. Dead Ed. A zombie character based on this kid we knew, Ed, who was one of the biggest and meanest kids in the class. Whenever we'd get beaten up by upperclassmen, we'd say, "Wait till Ed gets here!" And then Ed would get there and get beat up, too. We always got along with Ed. He later went to jail for domestic battery for violently sodomizing his wife with a broomstick, but hey, nobody's perfect. Anyway, I turned Dead Ed into a Signalverse character as well, and a fairly important one -- he plays a major role in the two Jack and Miracle Girl books. Uggletree. An ugly tree. BoogerBooger. A grinning, imp-like monster. 
Darylman. There was a kid in our class named Daryl, so we called his superhero counterpart Darylman. Another kid had the last name Feldman, so we called him Feld-Man. We didn't put a lot of thought into some of these. The Fight Patrol. A team of heroes, including King Mustache and Ninjoe, who take it upon themselves to "fight people who are fighting" regardless of whether the people fighting are good guys or bad guys. They just liked to fight. Mr. Atmosphere. A hero who could control the weather. This character evolved into the Signalverse character Stormchaser, who actually called himself Mr. Atmosphere early in his career. Reptileman. A guy in a lizard costume. This is another character who eventually evolved into a more serious Signalverse character; he became the hero Nightdragon. Other characters included Swamp Spitter, Obnoxious Man, the Giggler, Farmboy Mike, Feelerman, Pyro-Nerd, Flyguy, Mastermind, and the demonic Dark Christian, although most of these characters only appeared in the actual comics once or twice. Ant and I continued making Blake Hunter comics after high school, and a few years ago I drew a few dozen three-panel comic strips (which I occasionally posted on this site), but except for my repurposing some of the characters for the Signalverse we never really did anything big with Blake Hunter. The original comics are very poorly drawn, the humor is sophomoric (there's a lot of toilet humor), and we put so many in-jokes in these things that they're virtually impossible for outsiders to understand. Heck, I can't even remember what we were joking about in some of these comics. But whatever. We had a blast making these things. Blake Hunter helped make high school just a little bit more bearable. 
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