LNH: Onion Lad #9

[martinphipps2 at yahoo.com]

Tom Russell wrote:

>  As it stands, Teryaki Chick has
> less use and affection for Onion Lad than Master Blaster has for
> WikiBoy.
>
> If those stories of mine work (and the fact that other authors have
> picked up on it and started using WikiBoy pretty much exclusively
> paired with Master Blaster), it's because it's comedy.  Master Blaster
> does not act like a hero in those stories, and sometimes his behaviour
> is a little... extreme.

Well, to be honest, Master Blaster's behaviour sometimes goes beyond
the pale.  Like calling an entire country "lame". :/

One good thing about the LNH is that we try to be inclusive.  Somebody
writes a story where Ultimate Ninja gets drunk.  Um, Ultimate Ninja
doesn't drink.  He only drinks soda and water.  wReam said so.  (Can't
remember if that was posted or private e-mail.)  Hm.  Actually, Hubert
had him drinking tea.  I guess it was green tea.  That's supposed to be
healthy.  Anyway, the point is somebody writes a story with UN drunk.
So what do we do?  Retcon it?  Say that UN would never behave this way
and simply ignore it?  Or should we use this as a jumping off point to
retcon UN's origin so that he isn't just wReam himself swooping down
and assuming a persona he'd seen in a movie?  (And, yes, boys and
girls, there is a movie with the title Ultimate Ninja.  See
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202032/  It's not an original concept.
For that matter, there was a Master Blaster in Mad Max III: Beyond
Thunderdome.  See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089530/ )  So now
Ultimate Ninja doesn't drink on the advice of his sensei and not simply
because wReam himself was brought up that way.

The point I'm trying to make is that, as much as I don't like MB going
around calling things lame (although it is a good catch phrase) and
tormenting Wikiboy (although it is funny), the fact is that I'm not
going to ignore what other people write: I'm going to incorporate these
things into my own future use of that character.
>
> But I'm not writing superheroes.  I'm writing character-based comedy,
> and I think meanness can be forgiven if it's funny.
>
> It's not funny, here.  And Willey is not writing comedy; he's writing a
> superhero story, part of a "crossover event", at that.  Willey's take
> on certain characters-- making them, basically, immoral and
> unsympathetic-- wouldn't be so bad in an actual comedy; hell, they'd be
> attributes to be cherished!  But as it is, he writes straight
> superheroics (and nothing's wrong with that: that's exactly what I do
> over in Eightfold), and in that genre, making the heroes as bad as the
> villains is _not_ a good idea.

I agree.  It's like when he said Psykeye was "the dark side of Deja
Dude".  Actually, Psykeye is the dark side of Martin Phipps, and then a
little bit beyond that when I realized that even my dark side wouldn't
make for a particularly scary villain.  I'm such a nice guy. :)  Deja
Dude is, or was at least when Psykeye was around, meant to be a true
hero.  He didn't have a dark side.  Okay, so in a sense Psykeye WAS his
dark side.  Really, though, they were meant to be mirror opposites.  In
the end, Deja Dude had to accept that Psykeye was a really bad guy and
had to be stopped for good.  Haven't we had experiences like that?  We
meet a guy so much like ourselves and with all the same interests and
then we find out he's a complete @$$hole and we end up, briefly,
wondering about ourselves?  Maybe I should stop hanging around
alt.sex.* groups.  Anyway...

Anyway, the point is that the hero and the villain need to represent
opposite viewpoints, at the very least.  If the heroes and villains are
the same then there's no reason to sympathize with the heroes.  Unless
you make the villains so villainous that they come across as
unmotivated cartoon villains.  Which Jesse does.  A lot.  It's all a
symptom of the same thing.  If he made his heroes more heroic then he
could afford to make his villains more sympathetic and complex and not
have to worry about the readers wanting the villain to win.

A good example of what I mean is Jesse's characterisation of Vel in
this issue.  Vel won't help Onion Lad because he doesn't like him, even
though Onion Lad faces certain death at the hands of Dr. ICBINB.  What
an @$$hole.  And he's supposed to be the hero.  UN doesn't like ANYBODY
but he'll still save them.  That's his job.  Next time Vel faces
certain death (although his series is over so he's safe I guess) I want
the villain to win.  Let somebody else save the universe.

Oh and, by the way, my understanding was that Charles Fitzgerald did
explicitly give permission for aLLiterative Lass' cameo appearances.
When aLLiterative Lass' limited series had been on its second issue,
people asked him if that meant that aLLiterative Lass couldn't make
cameo appearances.  Charles said it was okay.  I wouldn't have ever
used LLL otherwise.  (Compare the situation with Kid Chivalry whose
miniseries was never completed either and who presumably never returned
to the LNH and, thus, faded has probably from your collective
memories.)  I know this contradicts what Eagle once told you but, an
all fairness, after doing a Google search I never found the post by
Charles I was refering to above so you only have me to say that it ever
existed.

Martin

PS: There is enough food on Earth to feed everybody in the world today.
 The source of starvation is oppressive governments who make it
difficult for people to get the food they need.  Then radical
insurgents start up civil wars, make the situation even worse and
eventually take over and form their own oppressive governments that
ignore the needs of their people.  There.  6 billion people offended.
Most offensive thread imaginable! :D