REVIEW: End of Month Reviews #69 - September 2009 [spoilers]

[Tom Russell]

On Oct 30, 8:01 pm, Saxon Brenton <saxonbren... at hotmail.com> wrote:
> [REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #69 - September 2009 [spoilers]
>
> Jolt City #18
> 'War of the Balloonists!'
> An Eightfold [8Fold] series
> by Tom Russell
>
>      If you conceptualise the progress of this series in terms of ongoing  
> development of the status quo of its protagonists, then metaphorically  
> this would be the start of a new trade paperback.  Or perhaps more  
> literally as the start of a new novelisation, if Tom decides to publish  
> this story in deadtree format as well.  Anyway, it's a jumping on point.

::nods::

This is definitely intended as the start of another arc or story; if
the GREEN KNIGHT mini and JOLT CITY # 1-11 could be considered one
long story charting the evolution/growth of Martin Rock from the loner
vigilante to the brightly-clad and occasionally more gregarious Green
Knight, and if # 12-17 could be termed a somewhat shorter story about
anger and forgiveness, then # 18-25 is the story of... well, I'm not
going to say, just yet.  Though I think it wouldn't be too hard to
extrapolate some expectations from the end of #18.

But I definitely think your referencing Henley's argument about
superheroes being a "literature of ethics" is apt, and hints at what
I'm attempting to do with this next big story.  The more digressive
incidents in "War of the Balloonists"-- the guy with the cocaine, the
domestic abuse sequence, the blow-job scene-- are certainly meant to
reflect on those elements that are more crucial to the plot in a
thematic/moral/ethical fashion.  And there'll be more of that thematic
stuff in the remaining seven issues.

There'll also be more villains: one thing that bugs me about the
series thus far is, excluding the thirty-plus that debut in # 10,
there aren't really all that many villains in the series thus far, not
much by way of super-conflict.  And while I avoided that pretty
deliberately in #12-17-- instead mentioning villains and adventures in
passing so I could focus more on what Derek was going through-- I
fully intend to have each installment of this arc feature a different
villain or group of villains.  Next up, assuming nothing changes
between now and whenever I finish writing it, will be The Little
League of Doom. (Draw your own conclusions.)

# 18 was, as I'm sure many people noticed, a little long; it was, in
the end, as long as that particular story needed to be, and that'll be
the case for the remaining seven installments.  Which also means,
however, there'll be more of a wait between installments; I'll see if
I can't get two done next year.

> Pigs In Time #4-5
> 'Invasion of the DaLEDS'  and  'Bareback To The Future'
> A legion Of Net.Heroes [LNH] miniseries
> by Martin Phipps and Tom Russell
>
>      Well, crap.  My Geek cred is in tatters.  Despite my *decades* of  
> being a _Doctor Who_ fan, and musing on things like (LNH reference here)  
> how Occultism Kid could defeat the Daleks with a Monty Python skit, it  
> never *once* occurred to me that the Daleks should have nonexistent  
> depth vision because of having only one eye.  To the extent that their  
> poor shooting consciously registered at all I assumed that it was just  
> major character plot invulnerability.  Thanks a lot guys.

The thanks is all Martin's, as that was his extrapolation; he was very
generous to give me co-credit for two issues that were all his
writing.

==Tom