REVIEW: End of Month Reviews #86 - February 2011 [spoilers]
Saxon Brenton
saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 3 16:47:12 PDT 2011
[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #86 - February 2011 [spoilers]
Reviewed This Issue:
Modern Zombies [HCC] {high concept 17}
SW10: Deputy Ambassador to Another World
Superhuman World 2011: Zombies vs. Vice-President Corrigan! {HCC17}
SW10: December 2010 #1: Cauldron Book II, Part 1
SW10: December 2010 #1a: Cauldron Book II, Part 1
SW10: December 2010 #2: Cauldron Book II, Part 2
The Tribulations of Kid Review #5 [LNH/Review]
Zombies Don't Eat Living Flesh [StarFall] {high concept 17}
Also posted:
Academy of Super-Heroes #110 [ASH]
Coherent Super Stories #25 [ASH] {high concept 17}
How To Write: Kid Enthusiastic-Y [LNHY/META]
Just Imagine Saxon Brenton vs. Andrew Perron in the Return of the
RACCies! #10 [LNH/RACCies]
One Day at a Time #9 [MISC]
Team Xero #005 [Misc] {high concept 17}
Okay, yes, this is even later that usual. I left things until the
last moment (as usual) - and then the 'edible books' cake decorating
project at work got in the way. (And as things turned out I think I
should have put more gelatine into my cheesecake to keep it from sagging
the way it did...)
The theme for the 17th High Concept Challenge was 'Zombies'.
Spoilers below...
-----
Modern Zombies
A HCC [High Concept Challenge] and probably also Miscellaneous [Misc]
posting {high concept 17}
by Tim Munn
I liked this as a character piece. One way (but by no means only
way) of using a disaster situation is to examine how people react in
extreme circumstances. (Others include using it as a prompt for action-
adventure, and in the case of movies there's been a trend to use disasters
as an excuse for more expensive special effects as an end unto themselves.)
In this instance there's a zombie apocalypse that's been going on
for an unspecified period of time, with a twist that things are not
quite what as they seem, giving even more options for the way people can
react. Reilly and his companion Nelson are in some sort of military
group - possibly a survivalist militia or possibly something more
official like the National Guard - who have been sent out to a warehouse
to retrieve a serum. This serum turns out to be a way to increases
intelligence - or, in the case of mindless zombies, restore intelligence
and self-awareness. In the course of the mission going SNAFU Reilly
learns the properties of the serum from the intelligent zombies Terry
and Throckmartin, reports back to his superiors, and for his trouble is
thrown into a basement with no stairs to die. Faced with his own
eventual demise and probable reanimation as a zombie, Reilly arranges to
use the serum on himself.
Even under 'normal' circumstances it's strongly implied that in
this story-setting zombies aren't automatically going to eat everyone
(presumably they'll do so only when they're ravenously hungry, which
isn't all the time), and the added factor of the serum that increases
intelligence gives the zombies back a sense of self-awareness that makes
that sort of carnivorous assault even less likely. As a result there
are reactions all over the place, from the denial exhibited by Reilly's
superiors, through Betsey's horrified denial of being dead at all,
through to Throckmartin's emotion need for a hug ("I'm sorry, but you're
the only person that didn't want to shoot me in the head!").
Reilly's steady growth of hysteria is interesting but make sense,
because all through the story he's been at the receiving end of
revelation after revelation that things are not as they seem, while over
time increasingly loosing control over proceedings. He is the man with
the overview of what's going on, but rather than the knowledge
empowering him to give him more options, all he can see is an inevitable
death and undead, mitigated only by the choice of using the serum to
ensure that at least he retains his sense of self. It's as if he's a
protagonist in one of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos stories. No wonder he's
giggling hysterically; he must be loosing Sanity points hand over fist.
There was a minor point that made for confused reading; during the
argument between Reilly and Throckmartin about who has the silliest name,
Reilly doesn't actually give out his name until after Commander Terry
has interceded to calm them both down.
Speaking of clarifying things, showing Reilly give his report, or
even have a moment of quiet on-panel downtime to sort out his thoughts,
would have been useful in summarising for the reader what is know (both
correctly and erroneously) about the zombie situation as it stands. A
pity Reilly's growing hysteria plays against any such moment of
introspection.
And then there's Reilly's superiors. In the comments thread Andrew
pointed out that they seemed to be acting incredulously for the sake of
the plot. Yes, definitely. Of course, their disbelief is understandable
on the point of view of whether zombies could be intelligent and
occasionally non-dangerous; wrong, but understandable. Where their
common sense fails them entirely in the way that they leave the serum
with Reilly. Reilly was sent with Nelson to the warehouse to retrieve
the serum, and it's made clear when Reilly's in the basement Pit that
he told them he had a sample of it. So even if Zellig and General
Offerman didn't believe the serum could restore a zombie's intelligence,
why didn't they nevertheless take the stuff to test their initial beliefs
that it could be used to stop the zombie apocalypse?
SW10: Deputy Ambassador to Another World ;
Superhuman World 2011: Zombies vs. Vice-President Corrigan! {HCC17} ;
SW10: December 2010 #1: Cauldron Book II, Part 1 ;
SW10: December 2010 #1a: Cauldron Book II, Part 1 'The Obama Spiel' ;
SW10: December 2010 #2: Cauldron Book II, Part 2 and
A Superhuman World [SW10 and SW11] series
by Scott Eiler
These stories posted through February form a kinda-sorta group,
depending on how you look at the strength of the linkages. Normally of
course the Superhuman World stories move about all over the place,
chronicling strange events from across a world that's in crisis because
it got caught up in the machinations of the alien Trillions. To a casual
reader it could almost look like an anthology series, were it not for the
fact that there's only one writer.
In any case, the first two of the above stories (both as listed and
as chronologically published) flow out of the events of the story 'Beyond
The Door' from last year. In that story Wyatt Ferguson and his companion
Kristi Halsted travelled to a parallel Earth in another universe on a
mission to seek aid. 'Deputy Ambassador to Another World' follows up
when the counterpart of Wyatt from that world (and who is also Chancellor
of the Congress of Ordered Realities) contacts U.S. Vice President
'Crusher Joe' Corrigan on the situation. It's actually quite grim,
because once it's confirmed that the Trillions have actually landed on
Earth-SW10 the Council feels that it can do nothing to take in refugees,
instead blockading the 'mainstream' Earth of the Superhuman World story
setting. This in turn leads to the vice President deciding he needs to
blow off steam and head down to Indiana, where the events of the High
Concept 17 story 'Zombies vs. Vice-President Corrigan!' bring to light
new information about the 'corned beef zombies' that could be useful in
handling the famine crisis.
The events of the 'Cauldron Book II' obliquely tie-in to this, since
the (as this point unfinished) multipart story is set prior to 'Deputy
Ambassador' and is referred to in passing by the Vice President. Members
of the United States Insight Battalion are investigating events in
Nashville when they are ambushed, and one of them, Holly, is replaced by a
seal/dog-like creature called a subhuman ('Basically, a mermaid with
feet'). The efforts to rescue her sees the other members of the old Body
Up superhuman dance troupe that was recruited into the USIB resign - but
that's moving forward into parts of the Cauldron Book II story published
after February, even if it does help to explain part of the Vice
President's testiness in 'Deputy Ambassador'.
Now, I have to admit that I have a liking for these partly because
they take the form of stories rather than reports. Often the posting
for Superhuman World have taken the form of reports from one agency or
another. And while these have been excellent for overviews of the
situation (whether on a state, national or even planetary scale), and
have also the delight of being able to drop in brief, off-handed comments
about some weird and intriguing sounding event or thing, the fact remains
that often they make for dry reading. I'm pretty sure that Scott is
aware of this, since he's used several types of ways to mitigate this.
For example, 'Cauldron book II' begins with some of the dry reports by
the USIB to get it out of the way, and then moves on to the actual
narrative about Holly and Summer. Alternatively, a number of the posts
featuring stories from the World Journal Monthly try to flesh out their
reports to give more human interest (which makes sense, since as a
commercial enterprise they need a presentation format that keeps people
interested in purchasing their product). And of course number of
postings filed by Wyatt Ferguson have taken then form of daily blog
postings on his activities, which if you think about it forms an
interesting type of hybrid: it uses the pattern of ongoing narration of
events with dramatic buildup and release as the protagonists encounter
and then overcome obstacles - but it's delivered in summarised daily
chunks rather than continuous flow, thereby allowing it to jump over most
of the minutia except for the local colour that the author (ie, Wyatt)
thinks is really necessary.
There are a number of instances in these stories that particularly
struck me. The Vice President going on a fact finding mission simply
because he was feeling cranky was amusing. The speech given by President
Obama as an insert to 'Cauldron book II' read nicely, but I was
especially taken with the cliffhanger at the end of 'Cauldron Book II #2',
where Summer is lunged at by the subhuman which had replaced Holly. I
remember thinking on the first read-through 'Oh, now that's effective'.
However, I'll mark out 'Deputy Ambassador to Another World' as
being of particular interest on the scale of the entire Superhuman World
story setting. It gave not only a summary of the broad sweep of events
so far, it also upped the perceived level of peril with the blockading
of Earth-SW10.
The Tribulations of Kid Review #5
A Legion of Net.Heroes [LNH] and Review [Review] series
by Andrew Perron
Gah. I can't believe that I didn't realise this sooner.
Last year I had a grump about Dvandom posting 'The Flagsuit Memo',
which was ostensively a sourcebook/background information file for the
ASH universe, albeit one written in the form of an email from one
character to another. I reasoned that if it was written from an
in-universe perspective then it had enough elements of being a story to
be eligible to be reviewed. It only just occurs to me that the framing
sequences of _The Tribulations of Kid Review_ mean that it deserves the
same treatment - at the very least being listed as having been posted if
not necessarily being discussed. (I shovelled in _How To Write: Kid
Enthusiastic-Y_ in the 'Also posted' section at the last moment for the
same reason.)
So, here's the premise of the series. The Andrew Perron of
Looniverse-A has been chosen by the RACCelestials to be Kid Review, and
act as their agent. He has been empowered with the Review Force to do
reviews of various stories posted to rec.arts.comics.creative. But
complications keep getting in the way: the attacks by the Apathy Beast
and then the Cardoid, or even the presence of the cloud of Chartreuse
Retcon Hour Story, are all examples.
In this episode the RACCelestials warn of a crisis that is
unbalancing the forces of communication. They send Kid Review a device
by which he may travel into the Letters Page Dimension, and also they
change the format of the series. The notion of his reviews actually
shaping the rampant forces in the Letters Page Dimension, rather than
being used to overwhelm any opposition as it did with the Apathy Beast,
is a twist on the use of the review Force that I'll be interested in seeing.
Done. You've now got a review about another review title. But
I'm drawing the line on reviewing stories rather than other reviews, so
Andrew will have to post a *really* strange adventure before I'll let
myself get sucked into doing a review of a review of a review. So there.
Zombies Don't Eat Living Flesh
A StarFall [StarFall] story {high concept 17}
by Ted Brock
The author's note at the start indicates that this was written as a
stream of consciousness experiment with no editing. That being the case
it holds together quite well. For example, there's a few throw-away
lines (the comment about being consulted by the Jackson family, or about
combat training with her cousin Hugh (the title character of the _Silver
Arrow_ series)) that could have grown lengthy and unwieldy (and probably
would have if I'd been writing this as a stream of consciousness
exercise) but seem to have naturally cut short instead.
The story involves Miss Cleo, the self-styled Voodoo Queen of New
Orleans confronting and defeating the necromancer Gheda. She looks like
an interesting character, although that may be my fondness for magic
users talking. Meanwhile Gheda is someone who seems to have watched too
many Romero-style carnivorous zombie apocalypse movies, and can't seem to
get it into his head that zombies animated by the loa Papa Legba don't
have the craving - or apparently even the ability - to eat people. In
other words he's probably the type of angry nerd who's easily influenced
by pop culture and who is using that as the template for his actions when
he lashes out.
And on a more meta level, he's the type of flashy and overt super-
villain who's got a shtick and uses in a direct and non-subtle way
without thinking laterally. Now, in a short story written in stream of
consciousness style that's the type of villain you need. He represents a
direct and easy to grok threat that can be dealt with relatively quickly.
(No necessarily simply dealt with, although Gheda and his glass jaw were
easily dealt with, but quickly within the limitations of story length.)
I can well imagine Miss Cleo getting peeved with him not so much because
he's upsetting the loa, but because he's a minor distraction when she
could be doing something more important. It's amusing to speculate that
in a hypothetical return appearance Gheda would be carrying out a more
subtle plan, causing Miss Cleo to boggle: .oO(He's using his intelligence!
No, that's not possible. Somebody must be using him as a stalking horse.)
The only real problem with the story that I can see is that Miss
Cleo didn't get the opportunity come under much pressure. Specifically,
the brevity and stream of consciousness aspects of the story raise their
head again and makes me wonder about her repertoire of abilities. Mage
characters frequently have a wide range of abilities, and a character
with a title like 'Voodoo Queen of New Orleans' would be reasonably
expected to do so. Yet the brief nature of the story meant that Miss
Cleo walked through events, displaying one ability after another without
giving an indication of what - if any - limitations she might have. It's
even possible that if minimal preparation went into the character's
design before writing started that she was given abilities on the spur
of the moment as needed by the plot. Again, a hypothetical (longer)
return appearance would want to see her occasionally put in a situation
where she didn't have an ability or talisman on hand to overcome a
problem, and she had to think her way out.
----------
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
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