[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #35 - November 2006 [spoilers]

[Saxon Brenton]

Mooshing three replies together:

On Monday 11 December 2006 Jamas replied:
>Saxon Brenton wrote:
>>                                         I'm guessing that the number of 
>>drabbles is directly related to the current DC Comics series anthology 
>>series _52_, although there doesn't seem to be any significance beyond 
>>that so far.
>
>That's what I said in the ad for this series...

Oops.  Worrying how I can remember that Haiku Gorilla had four
story arcs but not the contents of a recent advertisement.

>>    It's a cute concept, and makes clever metatextual use of the 
>>limitations of the drabble as a form of superpower.  However, I do think 
>>that the confrontation in the Wordinator's dimension in issues 8 through 
>>13, with all the random words floating around, was a little bit too much 
>>of an obvious easy way to get the postings to one hundred words.
>
>First rebuttal point: The Wordinator has a particular speaking pattern 
>which happens to use a lot of words 'cos that's the nature of the beast.

In no way, shape, or form do I dispute the distinctiveness of the
Wordinator's speech pattern. Nevertheless my observation stands:
the transcription of the Wordinator's speech pattern (and possibly
even the Wordinator's speech pattern itself) involve a number of
random words surrounding the actual cogent content of it's dialogue.
It would be easy to add or subtract one or a few of these random
words to make up the balance of the drabble's word limit after the
narration, Drabble Girl's dialogue, and ther Wordinator's cogent
dialogue have been worked out in advance.

>Second rebuttal point: It also makes it harder to get story points 
>happening when I have this creature gabbing away all my words!

To be honest I was assuming that the Wordinator's gabbing away was
one reason why you were planning a 52 issue maxiseries.


===
Martin replied:
>Saxon Brenton 
>
>>And then... well, if Extreme was one of the main protag- onists and a 
>>focus character then his confrontation with General Zon would be a 
>>standard fight scene.  But Extreme isn't a focus character; the 
>>non-powered criminal investigators are

>Yeah.  Superfreaks is almost a kind of constrained writing.  It's like 
>"Tell superhero stories but tell it from the point of view of detectives, 
>cops, medical examiners and lawyers and try to include all these 
>non-superpowered characters in every storyline, if not every issue".  It's 
>actually very difficult.  In a sense, the latest release (#18) fails in 
>this respect because while all the non-superpowered characters appear, they 
>don't have anything to do with the main story

Kurt Busiek has made similar comments about doing Astro City, which
also a series about non-supers reacting to the superhumans around
them.  Apparently he finds it takes a lot more effort to write a
story about the feelings and reactions about superheroes than a
straight story featuring superheroes, and so when he was sick with
mecrury poisoning from his bad fillings he was able to still churn
out some stuff for (IIRC) Avengers but ha his Astro City writing
grind to a halt.


===
Tom replied:
>I seriously hope no one actually nominates "The Strangling At Howell's 
>Manor".  But thank you for taking note of it, all the same.
>
>Now I have to debate whether I should use it at the tail-end of the Death 
>of Pants Rabbit Lad TEB, or give its own. ;-)

In all fairness it could go one way or another, but I think your
best bet would be to include it as a coda in the second TEB 'The
Death Of Pants Rabbit Lad'.  That way you thematically have HG
joining the LNH and a small sample story of him working in the LNH.

[...]
>>  The first tale, while good and with an interesting twist on a boy and 
>>his guilt complex about his bratty younger sister, didn't particularly 
>>grab me.
>
>Well, it doesn't really fit, either, does it?  While it could be called a 
>sort of fairy tale or at the very least a wish-
>fulfillment story, it's too close to actual homes and modern day life.  I 
>considered cutting it many times, and the only reason it stayed in is 
>because it gets the reader's feet wet. If I had started with "A 
>Thousand-Thousand Snowflakes" and Santa romancing Arielle, it might have 
>been too much of a shock, too blunt.

I concur.  On an intellectual level I think the first story was
necessary, but it also stands apart from the rest of the Annual.
I'm not sure how that could be changed other than by making the
tone of each story different to every other one, and that, I
think, might be working in the wrong direction.

---
Saxon Brenton   Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia

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