[REVIEW/ACRA] End of Month Reviews #41 - May 2007 [spoilers]

[Tom Russell]

On Jun 18, 4:33 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think this is related to your feeling that you should "never leave
> the room" when you are writing suspense stories.  At yet I feel you're
> going a bit too far: from the beginning of this series, the focus has
> _always_ been on Martin Rock; you've never left his side, as it were,
> not even to the point of shifting -if only briefly- to the point of
> view of other characters.  As a result, the secondary characters (Pam,
> Danielle, the Priest) are only ever seen through Martin's eyes and we
> have no more idea what makes them tick than Martin does.  This is
> precisely not the sort of storytelling we would expect from a series
> called "Jolt City": one might expect the series to either have an
> ensemble cast and/or be an anthology of stories taking place in that
> city.

That's a fair point, Martin.  I originally intended to just carry on
with the GREEN KNIGHT as the series title, but I felt uncomfortable
doing so for two reasons.

One was that the ASH universe has a Green Knight character.  Granted,
he's different than mine, but I wanted to avoid any confusion, and
changing the name of the series, I found, afforded me an opportunity
to do so.  (Like Marvel having a series called "Captain Marvel" and
the DC/Fawcett Captain Marvel appearing in "Shazam!"-- the difference
being that I'm acting out of courtesy while DC's trying to avoid legal
entanglements.)

The second reason was that GREEN KNIGHT won best miniseries during
last year's RACCies.  I felt that since the group saw fit to give that
story that honour, it'd be imprudent of me to make it an ongoing.

And so I needed a name, and JOLT CITY just seemed to jump out at me.
Certainly better than something dry and colourless like MARTIN ROCK.

Granted, as you point out, it doesn't follow the same anthology-type
format of other "city" series-- Astro City, of course, and the one
about Gotham they had going for a while-- but I hope my readers aren't
too disappointed.

==Tom