I was looking for some clip-art to make some quickie-comics, when I realized that I had six panels of Comrade Cockroach talking to the reader. Much cooler than clip-art, and much more fun to write.
If you have a question for Comrade Cockroach, leave it in the comments.
More Cockroach:
The Official File of Comrade Cockroach
The Cockroach Speaks
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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How does THOR stack up against the 10 Rules of Quality Superhero Fiction? Let’s find out!
SPOILERS to follow, you guys, but the movie’s been out for awhile, so I figure it’s cool.
1) Start the story by showing how horrible the badguy is. THOR’s got not one, not two but three badguys. How does it set that up? Quite elegantly. Odin tells astory about about Frost Giants to Thor and Loki. Here our two main conflicts set up from the get-go. Two scenes later we get more Frost Giants, the Loki/Thor relationship is underlined, and we see our third badguy, the Destroyer, in action. All done in very organic way.
2) If you must have a damsel in distress, go out of your way to show how smart and capable she is. Jane Foster is unique in super hero movies. Not because she’s intelligent beyond her years and a driven career woman. Nope, it’s because she’s has a female friend to talk to. That’s right: this may be the first superhero film to unequivocally pass the Bechdel Test. It is also worth noting that Jane is never in danger by herself. If she’s in danger, so are Darcy and Erik.
3) Mentors are important, and full of wisdom. Speaking of Erik, Thor get’s a nice surrogate father when his own is down for the count. Erik gives Thor a direction when Odin only provided punishment. I mean, he bails the guy out of jail, for crying out loud. That’s such a Dad move.
4) When out of costume, your hero should have a leather jacket. Thor gets a series of flannel shirts and a canvas hunting jacket. However, the hunting jacket has some seriously sweet detailing, so I’m going to give it a pass.
5) Don’t explain how things work. The beauty of having a god as a superhero is you can just say “magic,” and move on. It’s telling that when Thor attempts to explain the Nine Realms, he draws a picture, and then the sound fades out. We have a diagram, time to move on.
6) Have some other people dressed similar to the hero. My favorite characters in the Thor mythos are his friends the Warriors Three (+ Sif), and they’re in fine form in the film. When they show up later after Thor has reconciled himself to his fate, it only underscores how different he is now than who he was.
7) Super-violence affects us all. Here’s where the film falls short. The small New Mexico town is sparsely populated to begin with, so there’s precious few “regular people” we see effected by the Destroyer. Plenty of property damage, and a lot of comic relief, but not a single emotional beat.
8 ) Evil looks evil. Frost Giants have creepy red eyes, the Destroyer has the fires of hell within him, and Loki has a giant horned helmet. Gold stars all around.
9) Sacrifice is necessary in order to triumph. THOR actually doubles up on this. Not only does he sacrifice himself to save the town, he also sacrifices the Bifrost bridge to save Asgard. That’s what being a man of two worlds gets you: two sacrifices.
10) The story is over, but the legend continues. Considering THE AVENGERS movie is just down the pike, Thor looking over the ruined rainbow bridge and musing about another way to Earth is downright expected.
FINAL SCORE: 9 out of 10. There’s a lot going on with Thor–perhaps too much, as everything feels like it happens much too fast. But I’d rather an ambitious story than a lazy one, and THOR gets props for having a friend for the female lead and villain who feels properly motivated. If anything, THOR feels emotionally hollow. There’s no real chemistry between Hemsworth and Portman, and the non-god drama isn’t really grounded.
THOR has the misfortune of being released in the same year as X-MEN:FIRST CLASS and CAPTAIN AMERICA, which have much stronger emotional cores. Still, a nice story in the IRON MAN mold, where our protagonist has to grow up before he can be a hero.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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It is my tendency to sprawl. I can frequently be found laid about in awkward angles over all sorts of furniture, pounding out wondrous fiction on my Son of Man laptop. Luckily, my wife is the same way (though she has her own laptop, which is René Magritte-free), so it came to pass that if this is how we live anyway, we might as well have the furniture to go with.
Hence, a massive amount of IKEA furniture was purchased, the old broken furniture was removed, and a new dawn of the Axelrod/Blackwell household was born!
Foyer!
How inviting is this? Answer: So inviting! And the table folds out to desks for some wonderful sunlight-dappled rough-drafting!
Living Room!
Also known as The Library! You will notice there is a sofa in this picture! That is not something this room has ever seen since we moved it! It is great for naps–I mean, edits!
The Dining Room!
As with all proper dining rooms, the table matches the sword-rack! Also, it expands for dinner parties (the table, not the sword rack. The sword-rack works quite well for dinner parties as it is)
All in all, a veritable plethora of furniture to lay around and write upon. Which is what we primarily use it for.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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Yesterday, the fine folks at Galileo Games put up an interview with me, specifically asking about my story for their zombie anthology GIMME SHELTER, which I have discussed before. You’ll have to go to the link for the questions–among them, “How do you get inside a zombie’s head?” which does not, as might expect, involve a pick-axe or some other bladed instrument–but they also put up an excerpt from my story and I see no reason not replicate that here. So, here’s a bit from my contribution, DON’T WORK SO WELL:
I know my brain don’t work so well anymore. It’s hard to think, to focus. I keep getting distracted. There’s all these smells around, so many smells. It’s easy to stand there, out in the street, catching all the smells as they slink past on the breeze. To just sway with the wind, taking everything in through my nose. But I’ve got to focus. I have to find Carla.
The wind smells so good, though. So good. It smells like…I can’t find the word. Words have become very difficult. They are always on the tip of my tongue.
I am trying to find Carla, Carla with her black hair. We need to find our house. Our house has white trim. I remember that. There are zombies everywhere, and I’m worried she’s been attacked, been bitten. I stay where the zombies aren’t. I have to find her. I have to find her and our house. And then, we’ll…do something. I’m not sure. I’ve never been a planner. Who can plan in a world like this? A world gone mad. Full of monsters. And smells and…
Delicious. That’s the word. What everything smells like. Delicious….
The interview is here. GIMME SHELTER can be purchased in PDF ($2.99) and paperback ($5.99) formats.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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Saturday mornings are full of sugar and potential, and are the perfect place for a superhero. When anything could happen. Men and women bouncing about in breakfast-cereal box bright costumes, their underwear outside their pants for all to see, crying out in rage and sadness and joy. There is no time for reflection. There is no need. There is only the energy and the enthusiasm, the rainbow blur of action and emotion. A sheet around the neck is as good as cape, and a leap onto the mattress careens over a skyscraper.
The world can built, destroyed and reborn in a matter of minutes. Such is the wonder of Saturday mornings.
Saturday afternoons? You could swing it, if the enthusiasm was there. If you were strong enough. But afternoons carry reflection and the question “Is it enough,†rears it’s head. Is it enough build only to destroy. Shouldn’t something last? Should something carry on, to tomorrow? It is it too much to ask that our legacy last longer than lunchtime?
These questions are the enemy of superheroes, more than any kryptonite or laser cannon. If the world is to last, you cannot destroy it. So, then, what is the point of punching through walls?
Saturday evenings takes the weakened superhero and kills him outright. The capes are put away. Even millionaire playboys have adult responsibilities. Â The primary-colored joy of the morning has faded. People to meet, on Saturday evening. And who wants to be seen in public with their underwear outside their pants?
They might think you’re a child, you do that.
Saturday evenings blend into Saturday nights, a shared cross-over event. The emotion and passion returns, and the clothes of the Saturday evening, the trenchcoats and glasses, the secret-identities we’ve worked so hard on, fall to the floor. We are there together, our underwear visible, our skin flushed and bright. The energy is uncontrollable.
Perhaps, on Sunday morning, we will repent. But tonight, on Saturday, we have done the impossible. We leap on to the mattress, the sheets wrapped around us like capes. We have built the world and destroyed it, and we lay exhausted.
Saturday night, we were superheroes. Lying in each other’s arms, I saved you, as you saved me.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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Way back in December, my wife and I decided to spend the days surrounding Christmas apart. She would be with her side of the family, and I would be with mine. We are not certain we’ll be able to spend the 2012 Christmas season with either side, so to be fair, we decided to be with both.
It did not work out well.
I mean, it worked out fine for out families–though mine missed J.R., and I was told the same was true of my in-laws and I–but we were unhappy. It was only a week, but we are so wrapped up in each others lives to not have the other around felt interminable. It was all very melodramatic, like a gothic novel or a comic book.
So, it is no surprise that one night I drew our personal supervillian constructs in a similar position of leaving and lamenting. The original sketch is here–I cleaned it up and re-lettered it for the blog.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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I will be honest: the ownership people feel toward characters–characters like Captain America, Sherlock Holmes, Marylin Monroe’s screen persona–has always baffled me.
I mean, it’s one thing to identify with a character, to yourself, or your idealized self, in that fiction. I am certainly not one to throw stones at that, what with my glass house and all. Rather, what confuses me in the anger and defensiveness people get when the character changes, or is reinterpreted, or the trappings of the character is appropriated for something else. There’s an element of “How dare they…!” that I’ve never understood.
I may have an inkling, though.
I watch a lot of CLEAN HOUSE, and in almost every show, someone says a variant of “I can’t get rid of this because of the memories attached.” And then Niecy Nash holds their hand and tells them that memories aren’t connected to objects, and that just because they are throwing out their learner’s permit, they will still be able to remember that crazy summer when they were 15. Or whatever.
“What you own,” Nicey says. “Is holding you back. It’s keeping you from moving forward with your life.”
I wonder if that feeling of ownership of character is similar to that. Fiction has transporting effect on us, so I wonder if when people say “___ ruined my childhood,” they mean to say it ruined their connection to that childhood state when they first enjoyed it. Even though the fiction has nothing to do with the point in their life that evokes such pleasant memories, there’s an attachment to it, as if it did. The character has become a talisman.
Perhaps when we see a new interpretation of characters that we believe are talismans, we are reminded of how little they are actually connected to our lives. Which only makes us want to defend that connection–non-existent though it may be–even more. “That’s not the ‘right’ version of the character,” one might say, but what they mean is “the correct version is the one that I have a connection with.”
There’s an element of entitlement here, for anyone but the creator to say one version is “more right” then another takes a massive amount of hubris. I but I don’t think it’s just entitlement. I think it comes from a very personal, emotional place. Just like on CLEAN HOUSE, when folks can’t rid of broken, useless debris that’s keeping them from living their lives. This is a place stuck in time, in a past that may or may not have actually existed. This sort of ownership is held up as the most dedicated way of being a fan, but it seems the worst to me.
It reduces a work of an art to a souvenir. Art is supposed to be conversation between an artist and the audience. This behavior silences the conversation. Because no one wants to talk with a hoarder.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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I’ve started taking pictures of what I’ve been wearing, not-so-creatively called “Today’s Style.”
There’s a lot of variety in December, more so than I thought. There was a period where the heat was broken in my office–hence the multitude of sweaters–as well as an extended visit to the milder climate of North Carolina. Good month for costumes, too, what with the Skyguard and a fairly decent 11th Doctor made out things I had hanging around the closet. December also contained the first Today’s Style Meet-up, as I spent an afternoon with no less than the Sinister Sartorialist himself, Nick Popio.
As you can imagine, we dappered all over the place.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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Attentive readers will no doubt remember my Immensely Talented Wife J.R. Blackwell writing a game called SHELTER IN PLACE,where one pre-inacts in the zombie apocalypse as both humans and zombies. Ultra-attentive readers will also remember that JR did a Kickstarter for it, and one of the rewards was a short-fiction anthology entitled GIMMIE SHELTER. And super-attentive readers will of course remember that in addition to Filamena Young, PJ Schnyder, Christiana Ellis, Peter Woodworth, Tee Morris, Mur Lafferty, Rob Wieland, David A. Hill Jr., Phillipa Ballentine, Chuck Wendig, and J.R. Blackwell herself, I contributed a story.
If you didn’t recall any of this, don’t worry. That’s what this post is for.
I bring all of this to your attention because GIMMIE SHELTER is now available to everyone, in handy-dandy PDF ($2.99) and
paperback ($5.99) formats.
If you’ve ever wondered what a Jared Axelrod Zombie Story might be like, here’s your chance to find out.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
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My incredibly talented wife, J.R. Blackwell, was recently asked to do a series of photos inspired by the book EMPIRE STATE, for Worldbuilder. If you are a frequent reader of her blog–and why wouldn’t you be?–no doubt you saw the series of tests shots, her model selection, and her location scouting. Perhaps you also saw a very particular entry into my Today’s Style, where I stood, helmeted and be-caped, ready for action. For I was. I was so ready.
Well, now you can see the fruits of such labors, as Worldbuilder has posted stills from the Empire State movie, for your viewing enjoyment. I am the gentleman in the helmet and cape. Also the one in the gas mask, but the helmet and cape, I think, is more striking. Because I designed it.
J.R. had enough on her plate organizing the shoot, so I volunteered to handle the most costume-heavy character, the Skyguard on my own. J.R. asked me for something in between the Rocketeer and Batman, but still looking like it came from a 1940’s film.
“So kind of like the King of the Rocketmen?†I said.
“Yes,†she said. “Except not at all.â€
With those references as my template—with a dash of the Spy Smasher thrown in for good measure—I set about gathering the elements from other costumes to put together a proper outfit. Steampunk jackets, utility belts, capes, everything a proper pulp/super hero needed was easily found. The only stumbling block was the helmet.
Not that we don’t have helmets. We have helmets. Just not the right one.
In the end, I decided it was easily to make one from scratch than to alter one we already owned.
J.R. was surprised at this. “Can you really make a helmet?â€
“In the sense that it will protect me from blows to the head? No.†I said, warming up the hot glue gun. “In the sense that something that resembles metal will cover my entire head? Yes.â€
The helmet is made out of my favorite crafting material: compressed foam sheets. It took two large sheets of the stuff to cover my head properly and add some nice art-deco details. Several coats of Nu-Life vinyl spray later and shot of chrome spray paint, and we had a helmet that any Skyguard would be proud to wear.
The result, as you can see, fits the world perfectly, as well as being a distinctive character in its own right. While we were shoot the Skyguard scene, a couple of passersby asked about the character.
“What superhero is that?†they asked, intrigued. “Is it from a movie?â€
Which, as you now know, it is.
The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
Pre-order available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble