[LNHY] Matthew Almighty II

[Tom Russell]

Of course, he could just erase their memories of the No-Joke City ban
on jokes-- but then there wouldn't be a story, would there? :-)

This was great, Martin-- the kind of inspired silliness that makes me
want to get up in the morning.  I especially liked:

>   So he went to Mars.  Matthew Petrie had always
> wanted to go to Mars but, in the excitement of
> creating 554 thousand wikicopies of himself, all with
> the purpose of saving the world, he completely forgot
> about wanting to go to Mars.  So with all of the
> people in Tel.isay having been declared either "fine"
> or "fi-i-ine", Matthew Pauli decided to transport
> himself to Mars.
>   Mars was cold.  So he made it warmer.  Mars was dry.
>  So he made it wet.  Mars didn't have enough air.  So
> he planted trees in the warm, moist soil and then got
> impatient waiting for photosynthesis to do his thing
> and just added put oxygen and nitrogen into the
> atmosphere.  There.
>   This all took a while.  Well, actually, only a few
> days.  But these had been eventful days.

I love the whole tone of the narration, the very casual, almost "oral"
way you have of telling the story, the way the narrator corrects
himself here and also--

>   Having realized that the maneouver did not go
> entirely according to plan, Matthew subsequently
> teleported Swell Boy back to from whence he had come
> and then altered the memories of everyone in City Hall
> so that they would forget Swell Boy ever having been
> there in the first place, thereby diverting suspicion
> away from himself and forcing the denizens of No-Joke
> City to consider the said mysterious incident
> mysterious once more.  Yes, I know it's deus ex
> machima.  Yes, I know it's cheating.  But that's what
> Matthew did.  Really.  Deal with it.  Accept it and
> move on.

--that last bit just cracks me up, and also adds to the oral tradition
vibe I get from the story.

What I like about this Matthew, and, in fact, all the other Matthews
from the first story-- is that they are very intelligent characters.
In this case, things don't quite turn out the way he wants them too--
but he stills come out alright in the end.  Most of the time, a story
about an incredibly intelligent and wonderfully competent man embued
with god-like powers would make for a boring read.  But Matthew's
solutions are so entertaining, and the stories are so much fun, that
"boring" is the farthest thing from a reader's mind.


>   To solve this problem (and give himself someone to
> talk to so this entire issue wouldn't be an internal
> monologue like something Tom Russell would write) he

:-P

--

Tom Russell
Director of MILOS,
LIFE AND TIMES OF
A DREAMER

"If a comic book, book, movie or novel is not somebody's fantasy then
who wrote it and to whom does it appeal to?  In order for a shared
universe to have a widespread appeal, it has to appeal on a primal
level.  If somebody says superhero comics are just 'wish fulfillment'
then he needs to explain what is entertainment that doesn't satisfy our
wishes and what satisfaction at all you can get from it." -- Dr. Martin
Phipps