[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #66 - June 2009 [spoilers]
Saxon Brenton
saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Sun Jul 12 16:30:19 PDT 2009
[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #66 - June 2009 [spoilers]
Reviewed This Issue:
Easily-Discovered Man #50 [LNH]
The Forgotten Vigilante [Misc] {contest}
Also posted:
Coherent Super Stories #17 [ASH] {contest}
Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #29
The Forgotten One [Misc] {contest}
One More Day [Fic] {[Misc] contest}
Ten Word Masterpiece Theater #18 [LNHY] {contest}
Thunderclap #14 [Pincity]
Well, that's annoying as all get-out. I had the EoMR for June all
typed up and ready to post for Sunday (that would be Saturday for all
you people on the other side of the Time Crapper's Iron Curtain of
International Date Line). But now that I go to look for the file, it
seems to have been deleted/gone missing/been eaten by Shub-Internet.
Quoth the raven: "Bugger!"
Recreating the review of _Easily-Discovered Man_ #50 will be
trivially easy, since I'll just go back to my hand written notes (why,
yes, it is often the case that I write up stuff on the bus travelling
to and from work, and then transcribe them later; doesn't everybody do
that at some point or other?). However the extensive sequence of
compare and contrast between the various entries for the high concept
contest was done on the fly, and I don't think I have the time or
inclination to recreate them in full.
Anyway, let's get the administrivia out of the way. Tom announced
another of his writing challenges in mid June. This one was cast in the
form of a full blown contest: write a story based on the high concept he
provided. In this first instance the concept was 'the Forgotten Man', a
depression era character who is forgotten every 24 hours. Full details
may be found in the original post:
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/2009-June/005439.html
The contest closed on the 3rd of July, and voting for the six stories
that were submitted is now underway up until 18th July 2009 at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=3nY3a_2b2gBV_2bROieRhHJ_2bhw_3d_3d
The winner gets the honour of nominating what the high concept for the next
challenge will be. So: go, read, vote. Meanwhile, I've marked the relevant
five stories in the lists above with {contest}. The sixth one (mine,
typically) ran over into July.
Anyway, spoilers below:
====
Easily-Discovered Man #50
'Easily-Discovered Man No More'
A Legion of Net.Heroes [LNH] series
by Rob Rogers
I dunno. On the one hand it always gives me a satisfied feeling
looking at a new post from a series on RACC that's reached a substantive
issue number. It kind of feels like an affirmation that there are people
hereabouts plugging away for the long haul. Which is a profoundly
superficial and stupid reaction, because as a long time resident I also
know there are people like Martin Phipps and Tom Russell who have huge
oeuvres, even if only some have reached the tantalising and deceptive
high series numbers. And this is before taking into consideration any
artificially high series numbers created for parody purposes (Hubert
Bartels produced an impressive run of stories for Panta, but let us not
forget that the _Tales of the LNH_ series was created ex nihilo at
issue 278.), or series such as my own _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ which
succumbed not once, but twice, to the error of thought that it could
skip over planned story arcs to get to the meaty bits and then come
back and fill in the gaps later.
So, what can we say about _Easily-Discovered Man_ #50? Hmm. Well,
the long term story arc continues to be shaped by the death of the Waffle
Queen. For example, a new villain called Dessica attacks EDMan, Lite and
Substitute Lad in an attempted audition as the replacement Waffle Queen;
then, allegations are aired that the Waffle Queen and her assistant Mrs
Butterworth were murdered by Screensaver. However, in this issue there
are also a number of crossover elements coming into play as events of
the 'Infinite Leadership Crisis' from _Legion of Net.Heroes Comics
Presents_ and _Beige Countdown_ raise their heads and begin to shape the
plot as well. Adamant-Authority-On-Everything has been ticked off at
Lite's pranks during the ILC, and arranges for Lite to be drummed out of
the Legion; Frat Boy conspires to aid Adamant as a way to protect Lite
from the obsessive vengeance of Mynabird; and Cynical Lass announces she
about to leave on the space mission depicted in _Beige Countdown_.
All these events are quite clearly sign posted in one way or another.
Nevertheless, as I think back and try to recollect the events of the
previous few issues I realise that I'm going to have to go back and reread
those issues, in much the same way that I had to go back and reread _58.5_.
In this case it's not so much the large number of issues with attendant
plot twists that I'm worried about keeping track of. Nor is it merely the
long periods between issues. Rather, it's because the series acts like
Lite himself: with aggressive insouciance, with its plot taking its sweet
time and wandering wherever whim takes it. It's not quite as bad as the
self-deprecating comment that Lite makes in the prelude, that any story
involving sex, romance or consistent storytelling isn't going to involve
him. Demonstrably _Easily-Discovered Man_ is quite good storytelling in
terms of characterisation, dialogue, pacing of individual issues, and
bringing the funny. However across multiple issues the 'plot' of
investigating the Waffle Queens murder has become less of the A-plot and
more like a theme or a recurring motif.
The Forgotten Vigilante
A Miscellaneous [Misc] posting {high concept contest}
by Scott Eiler
Rather than recreate all four posts for the high concept contest,
I'll just focus on one and also use it as a dumping ground for general
observations. _The Forgotten Vigilante_ gets the nod as the venue
because as far as I can determine this is author Scott Eiler's first
story on rec.arts.comics.creative, which also means that he's eligible
for the door prize in the 'Best new Writer' category at next year's
RACCies awards. (Grumpy voice: not that I expect you people are
actually paying much attention when I do that sort of nitpicking. Last
year I did a test and for once did *not* compile and submit a list of
all the new writer eligibles. And guess what, nobody else did either.
Grump grump grump grump grump.)
Ahem. Anyway. One thing to keep an eye on as you read these stories
is the way that each one does or does not handle the interplay between the
explanation of how the curse of being recurringly forgotten comes about,
how the protagonist explores the mechanics and implications of the curse,
and how well those two explanations are integrated into the basic
storytelling structure of setting up an unusual situation and watching the
protagonist struggle his way through (and interestingly, all the authors
involved took Tom literally in making their forgotten man figures as
males.) Each story handles these factors in different ways.
For example, in _The Forgotten Vigilante_ the exact cause of the
mnemonic rebooting is never solidly explained, nor is it in my _The
Forgotten Man_. A possible explanation may be hinted at, but in these
two instances the important factor is not how the character got where
he was, but instead how he handles his situation. Edouard Morowiecz
in _The Forgotten Vigilante_ takes up the task of tracking down Nazi's;
the vigilante in my story goes a bit insane and wages a war on crime
conducted at any price.
By comparison, for Colin Surry in 'Dear Diary' in _Coherent Super
Stories_ #17 the reason that he suffers from recurring exo-amnesia is
critical to his motivations and actions. He was a corrupt cop who feels
responsible for a massacre, and whose latent powers have manifested in
this way as a function of punishing himself (shades of the cod-psychology
of the old Wild Cards series), and who has since deluded himself into
thinking he's under an external curse from Hawaiian deities. Moreover,
it also acts as incentive for him to info dump his situation as a form
of confessional, so that his origin is covered by both the 'tell' and
'show don't tell' aspects of storytelling. A further comparison on this
point comes from the protagonist of Martin's _The Forgotten One_. Unlike
all the other high concept stories this one shows the origin of the
character and his exploration of how his curse works, even though the
story itself is told after the fact. This could make for dry reading,
but Martin takes the time to add little incidents to keep audience
interest, such as the hilarious episode at the halfway mark where the
actions of Clarence the angel in granting the status of recurring
forgetability was revealed to not be well-meaning carelessness but
rather the deliberate malice of a fallen angel, or several run-ins with
the law during the protagonist's exploration phase in the second half.
A different story aspect to note is the variance in how much it
affects the protagonists. Edouard seems not particularly affected by the
inconvenience at all - but at the risk of reading into the situation, it
seems that he's at the end of his career, and consequently had decades
to learn to manage and use his affliction/ability, or at least grow numbed
by it. The other forgotten man figures are all in the thick of things,
such that even those who have learnt to cope aren't reconciled with their
situation - with one other exception, as the protagonist of _The Forgotten
One_ seems to be rather cold blooded in taking advantage of his situation.
(In fact that particular character seems to have a disconnect in
motivation, since at the start of _The Forgotten One_ he's about to
commit suicide, whereas after he's been cursed by the demon Clarence he
doesn't fall further into despair and instead begins exploring and
exploiting his condition. The only explanation I can think of is that
perhaps at the start of the story he's pragmatically and thoroughly
concluded that he has no further options in life, a situation that
changes when Clarence intervenes. But this is me rationalising.)
This aspect has a final interesting wrinkle in the way it plays out
in story mechanics. In Andrew's _One More Day_ Michael Moriarty is a
time traveller whose damaged technology and irradiated body cause reality
to reset every day so that his actions are made to unhappen. His
situation is critically different from that of all the other forgotten
men, in that he has the option to simply deactivate or destroy the
offending flux drive should he choose, albeit at the cost of giving up
any chance of returning home. In simple terms, the struggle in the
stories of all the other forgotten men is 'how do I cope with or
overcome this situation?', whereas Michael's struggle is 'do I want to
pay the cost of overcoming this situation?'. This, incidentally, also
allows Andrew to engage in his forte for emotional characterisation.
----------
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
The Eyrie Archives of Russ Allbery which collect the online superhero
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http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/
http://archives.eyrie.org/superguy/ or
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