<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family:Tahoma
}
--></style>
</head>
<body class='hmmessage'>
[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #81 - September 2010 [spoilers] <BR> <BR>Reviewed This Issue:<BR> The Insidious Doctor Peru and <BR> The Wonderous Doctor Pillbox [BP]<BR> Silver Arrow #3 [Starfall] <BR> Team Xero #001 [MISC] {high concept 13}<BR> <BR> <BR>Also posted:<BR> Academy of Super-Heroes #108 [ASH]<BR> ASH Sourcebook: Elemental Planes [ASH]<BR> Journey Into... #14 [8Fold] {high concept 13}<BR> Journey Into #15 [8Fold] {high concept 13}<BR> SW10: August 2010 #1: Predecessors [SW10] {high concept 13}<BR> <BR> <BR> High Concept Challenge #13 was themed 'a legacy reclaimed'.<BR> This month's returning author: Tim Munn.<BR> Spoilers below:<BR> <BR> <BR>=====<BR> <BR> <BR>The Insidious Doctor Peru and <BR>The Wonderous Doctor Pillbox<BR>A Boring Publications [BP] story<BR>by Time Munn<BR> <BR> The plot in brief: the long-thought-dead Kensington Hesh goes to meet <BR>with his physician Doctor Peru in order to get his help for a bad case of <BR>dead which Kensington claims to be suffering from. In the second episode <BR>Hesh struggles with the problem of producing a urine sample before being <BR>kidnapped by Doctor Pillbox.<BR> These read like scenes taken from a much longer story. Considering <BR>the fragmentary nature of these vignettes, and most especially the date <BR>from three years ago that the first episode was written compared to this <BR>year's date on the second, I'm strongly tempted to think that Tim may have <BR>decided to simply finish the plot off and then clear it from his hard <BR>drive. Which is not to say it's without it merits. Not when an attempt <BR>to prove one's identity produces lines like:<BR>| "Damn! Only one man could draw fairies riding flying pigs that<BR>| splendidly-- <BR> It's comedy pitched at being wilfully silly. For the most part it <BR>consists of a conversation between different sets of people with moderately <BR>witty dialogue. However there are also elements of slapstick (the arrival <BR>of Hesh interrupts Peru's dallying with a nurse; Pillbox's arrival through <BR>the window of the bathroom creates the misdirection set up of a talking <BR>penis joke). More importantly though, there's an almost Monty Pythonesque <BR>abrogation of conventional common sense (Hesh has known the doctor for ages <BR>prior to his disappearance, but somehow takes seriously a false claim that <BR>Peru is a dentist rather than a physician? Bwa?). Things like that make <BR>it difficult to determine what the rules of a story's own internal <BR>consistency are.<BR> Or perhaps it's simply a story that hasn't been edited as fully as <BR>it could have been, and elements that I'm interpreting as deliberate <BR>surrealism are ones that would, in other circumstances, be altered so as <BR>to read better. Certainly lines like:<BR>| He held up the picture for Peru to peruse, Peru having a peculiar <BR>| look on his face.<BR>from context look like they should probably read 'for Peru to read, <BR>Peru gaining a peculiar look on his face'.<BR> I'm not fully sure what to make of them. There aren't quite as <BR>inchoate as say, the Honey Love Bunny stories from last year. Nevertheless <BR>they feel (and the final cliff-hanger) of going somewhere, even though the <BR>wider context suggests that they're one offs. So I guess we'll never get <BR>to find out if Kensington's newly awaken zombie urges will cause him to <BR>eat his kidnapper.<BR> <BR> <BR>Silver Arrow #3<BR>'Observatory of Danger'<BR>A StarFall [StarFall] series<BR>by Ted Brock<BR> <BR> {chuckles with laughter} Well, I guess that answers *that* question. <BR>The limitations of Silver Arrow's competence are how far he lets his own <BR>overconfidence run away with him.<BR> In addition, one thing I noticed was that the team-up and fight <BR>scene against the antagonists in this episode bring into focus the tone <BR>of this series. The casual way that Big G and Doorway are prepared to <BR>offer help for their own reasons, and which Silver Arrow accepts that <BR>help, and then they spent time snarkily bantering at each other, indicates <BR>that this is meant to be a fun action-adventure series. And for all of <BR>Silver Arrow's dissing of the plot devices in the Adam West _Batman_ <BR>episodes, it remains the case that someone who uses arrows tipped with <BR>circular saw blades is not in a position to be picky about how reality does <BR>or does not work - except perhaps as lampshading.<BR> <BR> <BR>Team Xero #001<BR>'Brassica Revealed'<BR>A Miscellaneous [Misc] series {high concept 13}<BR>by Jamas Enright<BR> <BR> This story takes the form of a video episode (created with the <BR>xtranormal service) rather than as a text piece. Jamas says he's <BR>experimenting with the software in order to get a grip on it before <BR>attempting a video episode of an established series like _Alt.Riders_. <BR>Now, I have no familiarity with either xtranormal or other video <BR>animation tools like it, so I have no real way of assessing whether some <BR>of the rather obvious problems with the execution of the pacing of this <BR>story came from a limitation in the software or from Jamas' inexperience. <BR>Nevertheless I'll risk stating the bleeding obvious and describe what I <BR>can see to the best of my ability, even if those observations won't <BR>necessarily be useful for improving the situation.<BR> So, the plot in brief is that Mantis is a villain working on his <BR>scheme for world domination (again) by sending out preying mantis minions <BR>who will devour everything (again). Then Brassica arrives to thwart him. <BR>Mantis is unimpressed, until Brassica reveals himself to be Mantis's old <BR>foe Broccoli Man - who in a flashback sequence reveals how he cunningly <BR>disguised himself as his own purported sidekick to lull Mantis into a <BR>false sense of security.<BR> In similarity to 'The Insidious Doctor Peru' story above, there are <BR>a number of moments of wilful silliness. For example, Brassica enters <BR>Mantis' headquarters without trouble because Mantis left the back door <BR>open, thereby allowing the hero to bypass the guards and traps; Mantis <BR>pauses in his villainous rant to worry about the proper plural of the word <BR>'mantis'; or the fact that Mantis doesn't recognise Broccoli Man when <BR>he's disguised as Brassica even though he's only changed his name and not <BR>his costume. However the humour also goes a bit further than random <BR>silliness, as Brassica takes the opportunity to points out one of the <BR>basic flaws of villainous behaviour: they could legitimately make millions <BR>with their supertechnology but instead waste their time on eternally <BR>doomed attempts at world domination.<BR> Now to the problems. It's very slow and the body language is very <BR>stiff, which makes it almost look as though it's a rehearsal read through <BR>of the shooting script just before filming rather than the final product. <BR>There are obvious attempts to get around this. For example, during <BR>Mantis' monologue at the start there's a cut from a medium distance shot <BR>to a close up. More change of viewpoints like this would help give a <BR>sense of dynamism, but I don't know how hard they would be to set up - nor <BR>how hard it would be to do other shots, such as extreme close-ups, jumping <BR>between left and right profile, or even overhead shots. Another thought <BR>that occurs to me is perhaps there may be some way to speed up the frame <BR>rate on (parts of) the action sequences - Brassica discovering the back <BR>entrance or Broccoli Man falling off the rooftop - so that they don't <BR>occur at such a leisurely pace.<BR> Then there's the speech generator. Ack! I remember listening to a <BR>radio interview something like five or six years ago where it was claimed <BR>that developers had produced a new generation of speech synthesisers for <BR>automated telephone answering systems, and that these systems were now <BR>able to speak in much more realistic way - placing emphasis on different <BR>parts of words rather than enunciating everything in a flat monotone. <BR>As a test the interviewer picked the word 'bugger' for the new software to <BR>try (because this is a word that we rude colonials settled from convict <BR>stock still use as a casual vulgarism here in the Antipodes). Guess what?, <BR>the software couldn't handle it - producing what sounded like two words <BR>(perhaps hyphenated): bug gher. As I was watching Team Zero I kept <BR>wondering if there was some way to trick the speech generator into placing <BR>stresses on parts of words - maybe by typing in the words phonetically, or <BR>typing those parts of the words in capitals, or perhaps even by adding <BR>punctuation marks in where they wouldn't normally go. That said, it can't <BR>possibly be left to the ingenuity of the users to try and tweak the voice <BR>acting. You'll notice around the 1:05 mark that Brassica asks what Mantis' <BR>nefarious deeds are, and it's only from context that I could tell that <BR>this was a question. I'm sorry, but even when allowing for differences in <BR>national accents, if the software can't handle something as simple as a <BR>typed question mark and translate that to a rising inflection in the voice, <BR>then there's something substandard about it.<BR> So, overall an amusing story marred a beginner’s use of the medium. <BR>It's entertaining as long as you use willing suspension of disbelief to <BR>look past the execution problems.<BR> <BR> <BR>---------- <BR>Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia<BR> <A href="mailto:saxon.brenton@uts.edu.au">saxon.brenton@uts.edu.au</A> <BR>The Eyrie Archives of Russ Allbery which collect the online superhero <BR>fiction of the rec.arts.comics.creative newsgroup and its sibling group <BR>Superguy can be found at:<BR> <A href="http://archives.eyrie.org/racc/">http://archives.eyrie.org/racc/</A> or <BR> <A href="http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/">http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/</A><BR> <A href="http://archives.eyrie.org/superguy/">http://archives.eyrie.org/superguy/</A> or <BR> <A href="http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/superguy/">http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/superguy/</A><BR> <BR> <BR> </body>
</html>