8FOLD/CONTEST: Journey Into... # 7, Glub Glub Glub

[Arthur Spitzer]

Tom Russell wrote:

>    One thing you get a lot of in amateur superhero fiction are
> analogues-- barely-disguised stand-ins for professionally-published
> characters in what often amounts to fan-fiction.  It's a tendency that
> I've taken some great strides to avoid in my own work.  Sure, working
> in a genre that depends and thrives on archetypes, there will be
> certain archetypical similarities.  My own GREEN KNIGHT story (which
> spawned the JOLT CITY series) began by examining a relationship that
> was not altogether dissimilar between that of Batman and the first
> Robin.  I think, however, that I did enough work with the characters
> to distance them from the archetypes and to produce an altogether
> different sort of relationship/dynamic/story.
>    And I tell you all this because I will freely (and somewhat
> guiltily, given the stridency of my dislike for straight analogues)
> admit that with this particular story, I am writing what amounts to
> Aquaman fan-fiction.  If I was, by some strange twist of cosmic fate,
> to be entrusted with the writing of Aquaman, I would set aside all the
> magical fantastical water-elemental Atlantean stuff, all the fighting
> on the surface world stuff, all the supervillains, all the angst, and
> all the ecological stuff.
>    It would just be Aquaman, talking to fish.  I'm completely
> serious.  Twenty-two pages of talking to fish about their problems,
> their hopes, their dreams, their lives.  Twenty-two pages a month,
> twelve months a year, plus an annual, of Aquaman just chilling out and
> making small talk with fish.
>    C'mon, just try and tell me that you wouldn't buy this every
> month.  Tell me that this isn't the most awesome idea for Aquaman that
> you've ever heard.  You can't.
>    God-damn thing would sell like gangbusters.

Maybe if it were Black Manta instead I would...

Arthur "Or if Aquaman had a chainsaw hand..." Spitzer