A little gift for my Whovian friends: Monsters

Every now and again we stumble upon stuff, silly putty, penicillin, fish fingers and custard. We don't intend to invent something new, but sometimes in doing what we do we find ourselves making something useful. Doctor Who does this with it's monsters.

Doctor Who is famous for it's monsters, the phrase "hide behind the couch" has become sin-ominous with the show, which some might find funny in retrospect as many of the monsters are from an era where the best they had to scare you with were an upended trash can a plunger and an egg beater. Still they found a way to make those things to the now famous Dalek in the 1960's, and the Cybermen soon after. Those two stand out as the major monsters of the show, they both have been around for near on 50 years now, and they are still scary. How did that happen?

Things that last the test of time have something extra to them that help them live, something outside what they are that they tap into to refresh themselves for new generations that allows them to become iconic. For the Daleks that's how they act, they are essentially a fascists, space Nazis squids in a tin can with a creepy voice obsessed with "EXTERMINATE"ing those deemed less than them. In so being they represented the enemy of the past when they were introduced, one that many of those watching still had living memory of, and they have stayed in our zeitgeist because we've never had a better villain in the 20th century. 

The Cybermen, robotic men of metal bend on spreading their "upgrade" to the rest of the world and lead by a Cyber-controller were a perfect stand in for the then current threat of Communism. All will become like us or be deleted. It was the idea that you could be over taken and remade into something radically different
from yourself, that was the national panic at that time, the red scare made sliver. All were the same, all were emotionless and sure that their way of living was better, and they were coming for you to make you agree.

Most recently the show has stumbled on a new villain, a new icon for a new show in a new age. The Weeping Angels, statutes that would come alive when you were not looking and either snap your neck or displace you in time to then feast on what would have been in your life. They are a wonderful mix of the mundane and creepy, grey angels in a pose as if they are weeping, but look away just for a second and they will be right on top of you with sharpened teeth and a hungry glare. They don't talk, they just take you away. The fear that they represent is that of Terrorism. That one day you could be walking about, not playing attention and BAM, your life could be taken away. The idea that we constantly need to keep an eye out for them and an eye on them is also a telling part of modern cation or paranoia depending where you fall.

I would love to write a Weeping Angels episode, I have one in my head right now. So far the Doctor has advised men on how to avoid them, has cast them into a void, and has survived them, but he has yet to stop them in a way in which he wins his way. He has yet to understand them, to fight them in the way they need to be fought, and he has yet to truly beat them. I would love to give the Doctor that victory, a victory where he faces our fear and once again does what he was made for, shows us that its OK to be afraid and OK to live with that fear because that fear isn't so big that it can't be beaten with the right set of wits about you.

Stay Tuned and Merry Christmas.

Agents of SHIELD

Some of you may know that last year I made a little movie, I made it in the hopes of getting a job with Joss Whedon on the new Marvel universe show we now know as Agents of SHIELD. This was before the show was announced by the way, all I knew at the time was they were making a show set in the Marvel Universe, from there I knew it either had to be Shield or Heroes for Hire, and they had already introduced Shield in the Avengers so I took my gamble there. I made my villain Ultron, who is one of the great Avengers villains and because robots are cool, and I turned out to be right there too because low and behold the next Avengers film is going to be Avengers: Age of Ultron.  I had a budget of about 400, I had friends who knew what they were doing, or at least were willing to help me. I made this.


Sadly I think there are large parts of it that are better than the ABC show that now exists. I mean I know it's rookie film but if you consider the budget and talent pool that the Disney corporation have to draw upon and compare it to 400 dollars and some people I know, I did more than alright here.

There have been plenty of people writing articles on how to fix this show, the characters are uninteresting, the plots are harmless, it doesn't seem to be adding anything to the universe. Some of these are problems that come with making a show like this, it's fair to ask people to watch some movies, but to keep up with an extra show as well may be too much. Still none of these are anything more than story problems, and those can always be fixed. Its not like the show is always bad, there have been some that I would even call good, the bionic eye was good, the trapped behind enemy lines one was good. Then there are others which are just bad, like tonight's which featured a "ghost" and a weepy girl and a ruminations on God which were harmless.
They told the story of Melinda May, but they didn't show us it, it felt lazy that they did that, "oh yeah the mystery of the angry girl, here's what that's about"

So this is all really disappointing, so what am I going to do about it?

First I am going to find a better title for my Film, Hydraed is terrible. I don't know what I was thinking. I think Agent of Shield may work better.

Then I guess it's my job to write a better script for them. Try my hand at it. There is no point in back seat driving by saying what should be fixed, may as well just build that better mousetrap myself and see what I catch with it. 

How Man of Steel should have ended, but didn't.

Superman is fighting Zod, they are in the train station and Zod is firing his laser eyes at that family. Superman has his neck in a choke hold but the beams are still slowly making there way towards those helpless people. In voice over Superman hears Zor-el, his fathers words. "You can save them, you can save them all."

INSTEAD of snapping Zods neck he flies up, through the roof, into the sky, flying higher and higher, and taking Zod with him at incredible speed. We see below them the smoking hole that is Metropolis, about a six block chunk of a major city has been destroyed with various smoking parts in the rest of it.

"Nobody dies today Zod. Not even you"

Zod gets free of Superman somewhere in the clouds and they fight, their punches so powerful they dissipate clouds as they land. Zod tries to go after an airliner but Superman won't let him get to it. Flying under and up at Zod, pushing him further from the surface. It's a game of keep away with the planet.

They are now far above the clouds, Zod fires his eye beams at Superman, Superman meets his gaze, the lasers pushing against each other in the middle. From earth we can see it as a close star in the sky. They are at stalemate.
Superman breaks his gaze flies quickly to Zod and punches him again. Then he speaks.

"I'm the Last Son of the Krypton you are sworn to protect and preserve. If you want to get to these people, you'll have to kill me first."

Zod angry. " You think I can't"

Zod flies at Superman in a rage, his eyes with flame in them.

Superman lands a mighty punch, standing like a wall where Zod was flying to meet him, sending Zod reeling.

"I think you won't. Leave. Go and find our people."

Zod tries again. This time moving fast to other areas, Superman moves just a little faster and meets him every time. Zod never gets closer.

"Leave. Don't come back."

Zod tries a third time. Superman repels him a third time.This time he says nothing because they are now too high for words to be heard. Superman is just standing there. stern. His arms crossed. His eyes say it all. You are not getting passed me. Leave.

Zod, turns flies off, towards what we see is the the small remains of his ship. He leaves, as his ship opens to the phantom Zone and disappears.

Superman flies down to earth. To the smoking wreckage of the city. He picks up a large support beam that is trapping people and reaches down to help them out.

" I'm sorry about this. I'm here to help."
The person takes his hand.

Then you do the rest of the movie.


What makes Superman super isn't his powers, or the sense of Hope that he stands for. He has one job, he saves us. Not just friends and family, not just the people in the way, not just himself, he even saves the bad guy.

"Nobody dies today Zod. Not even you"

Myself as a student.

I'm going back to school, and for once I'm going to do it right. I've had an interesting academic career, I didn't follow the model, was shifty and to be honest I did it all wrong, but I still feel as though I have found for myself an amazing education, more than going the usual route could have ever provided. Still I am without the one thing that matters about going to college and that is a degree, it's been the great shame of my twenties, the reason I feel uncomfortable when I meet peers or have to talk about my life with others, it's a glaringly incomplete part of myself. People who know me expect that I should have already completed it a while ago because I seem like the type that would, I'm smart and I pride myself on my wit and passion for the thing I studied, English. I may have fallen out of the school structure but I never stopped learning, never stopped teaching myself, because at some point along the way I discovered how to do that, in so doing I've given myself a masters in comic books and storytelling with minors in film, philosophy, and comedy. On paper that isn't true, on paper I'm a failure. I would like to change what's on that paper.

My start was at a seminary at a very nice school in Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas. I had convinced myself in High School that I was never going to be good enough for marriage or love and so therefore should stick to the one thing I saw myself as good at which was church. Upon arriving there I discovered that somewhere buried in my low self esteem was a desire to be loved and have a family which I was ignoring, and so I eventually left the school. That school wasn't so much about schooling as it was about discerning my vocation, but I did love the academic part of it. I loved writing papers and was astounded that I was in school at all, college seemed like such a cool place and I liked the pretension of the ideas and professors and the chance that I might write something big and meaningful.

I had to leave there once I decided that I wasn't going to be a priest, and ended up going to Louisiana on the invitation of a friend. At this point I thought that all schools were the same, my professors would prove that wrong almost immediately, not that it mattered since I arrived there 10 days before Katrina hit, so the school year was a thrown into chaos anyway, but also because at that time I had the existential dilemma of not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up anymore. I knew I liked English in high school and comic books so I just started there, I wanted to write comics, but that's not an easy profession to find yourself in and I knew that. I was just studying for the love of it, and living in post Katrina Lafayette was enough adventure to keep my mind busy. Still I ended up leaving after only a semester because I knew I wanted a higher level of learning than that school was capable of offering.

Benedictine College is where I did the best part of my learning and where I was truly a student. It was a small school in Kansas, had a decent English program and offered a strong campus faith life, "the college experience" and also the chance to make my first comic books. I was truly challenged there, both educationally and in my faith. I got along very well with the English department there and was even head of the English club, which wasn't much of a club but I did organize some events. I immersed myself in the classes and readings there, and outside of classes worked on a project that I received funding for through the school, the first ever comic book music video. I said I was also challenged in my faith and that is true too as taking a class there on proving the existence of God caused me to lose my faith and I found myself a non believer in a world built by believers. So I left. I admit this was a mistake.

I came home to Colorado depressed. All things which I had thought true, which were the bedrock of me had been disproved. I felt defeated, and yet still had to finish my degree, and so I turned to the University of Colorado Denver, as my sister was going there and I didn't have any better ideas. I thought at the time that the comic I had made would get me noticed. It didn't. I still didn't really know where my major was headed, or what my future exactly was. So at that point I was just going to school for schools sake, for the sake of the degree that would help me do....I wasn't quite sure. People had told me I should teach, but I felt that was giving up on a dream of being a writer, that to teach was a cop out for greater things, I felt I could be more than just a teacher. I went to school and in the process found a full time job, did the thing I was supposed to do. Then I had a bad semester, I had a girl friend, the first really meaningful relationship, and she left me suddenly and without warning on my birthday. This was heartbreaking. Then a woman at work fell down some stairs and I ended up getting all her hours. Then the economy crashed. I tried to save my semester by doing something big and important, because I thought that would be impressive but I buckled under the weight of everything and it was all terrible. I felt like I had to choose between school and my job and at that point, with the economy where it was I wanted to keep my job. I still have that job like a noose or yoke around my neck. Anyway, that dropped my GPA like a stone and it took a couple years to get back in.

My problem so far has been this. I was walking towards nowhere. I had no purpose to what I was doing at school, and so I underperformed, or would try to over perform in a spectacular way so as to be noticed in the hope that would spur on some kind of opportunity but would fail at it because that's not what they were asking for. So there is the second lost semester, though not as bad as the last. Then came more time in the wilderness. I made a short film, in that time, which has so far predicted all of what the Marvel Film universe is doing. It was a short for Agents of SHIELD, which at the time wasn't a show and hadn't been announced yet. The villain I picked for the piece is going to be the bad guy in the next Avengers film. It also went nowhere thought and hasn't really been noticed. What that film was, was an final attempt to break into film. After it went unnoticed I fell into a depression again and finally found my way out of it with the help of a friend and spiritual director, who eventually said the same thing that other people had been saying but I had steadily ignored, I should teach. I had never allowed myself to consider that before, because I super focused on storytelling and basically wanting to be Joss Whedon. Once I allowed myself to consider that as a possibility my brain exploded with ideas of how I would do it, what it would mean, and I liked the idea.

So now here I am, with a strange history and a goal of becoming a teacher. I used to sit and think about how to tell a story that I would never get the chance to tell, and now I sit and think about how best to teach the things I love. I'm a lot happier, but now comes the hard part, I have to get that degree and I'm not sure who is going to allow me to do that. So basically prayers are something I'll take now. 

How to Fly

"Leonna we don't have the trust of the public anymore!"

"GET IT BACK!"

roll credits

I like Aaron Sorkin, he's a good writer. For all the people who don't know he wrote The Social Network, A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and that little snippet I opened with was from his current show "The Newsroom". A lot of people like Sorkin because he writes smart people walking and exchanging witty dialog, in fact that's what most of his shows are about, but that's not what I like most about him. I like that he writes aspirational characters who are trying to do their best to make the world a better place.

It's easy to be cynical, It's easy to get upset when they miscast batman, to think the Obama administration only wants to go into Syria to get back at Russia for the whole Snowden thing, it's easy to see the whole system we live in as mostly bull shit and to write about it as such, but Sorkin doesn't do that. Sorkin writes about a world full of very smart people, who know a lot of things, are witty, capable, and most of all moral, so its fair that the detractors of Sorkin's writing usually say that his characters are unrealistic and to be fair that is true, but it also misses a point. Aspirational characters are not there to be someone you relate to, they are meant to be someone you look up to. Aspirational characters set an example for us all, they set a standard to live up to, Superman is one such character.

You want to know what my biggest problem with Man of Steel was? It was that he killed the Zod in the end and got in a fight that killed who knows how many. Why is it a bad thing, because if anyone of us had powers and were put in that situation that's what we would have done. I want Superman to be better than me, I want him to be the guy who finds a way to save us all from the big bad and does it in a completely morally perfect way. Seeing that is the thing that gives Superman his luster, it's the thing that makes us as impressed as we once were with the idea of a man flying. They didn't give us that, they thought that the reason superman isn't as popular as they want him to be is that he is too powerful, he's too nice, he's too much not like us, but that is the soul of what makes him so important, and they chipped away at that a little in that movie.

I like Aspirational characters and writing, I like believeing that even if I'm limited in what I can do, in what I would do, maybe out there is someone who is doing the right thing and that if I was in that situation I might do the write thing too.

Joy at the Worlds End

I've had a strange week of highs and lows. On Monday I got a chemical burn on my eyes and was blinded for three days until I got glasses. I was stuck in my apartment without the ability to see, watch TV, or write. I have exceptionally bad eye sight so for three days the world was just a bunch of blurred points and sounds. I had to put my surrounding together from context clues. I lost my freedom, couldn't drive, couldn't go to a shop and buy food, couldn't express myself online, go to work or even for a walk because who knows what I could have walked into. So that was hellish and boring.

Then there was today. Today I went to work, meh, not that great....but then I went to the Drafthouse to watch the Cornetto Trilogy. Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The Worlds End. All three of these movies are great, and worth many viewing, they are funnier than even the above average comedy, smarter and most of all more joyful than any other movies. Each of them takes on the form of a genre piece, the Zombie movie, the buddy cop action film and the latest one, a science fiction end of the world alien invasion film, but none of them are actually about those things, ones a romantic comedy, ones a film where the main character discovers "whats most important in life", and this last one is about nostalgia, addiction, and choosing who you are going to be. The one thing that strings them all together though is the thing that made my night. They are Joyful films.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ZOMBIES GUN FIGHTS AND ROBOTS!!!!

I've often been told that I'm a joyful person. Joy is a strange term, it's overly spiritual, which is why my mom likes to use it so much. It fits me though, I have a sort of enthusiasm and sense of wonder at good things, as a girl who I like a lot once said "Like a puppy", I think she was half annoyed and have in admiration when she said that, and maybe if we are lucky she'll post in the comments about it. She wasn't wrong though, I am very much like a puppy, and that can sound immature, but seeing as I haven't pee on my carpet ever, I feel OK about it. So I'm joyful, puppy like, I'm OK with that but it has to mean something more than happy, they are different words they have to mean different things. I'm not happy, I've been stuck in the same job for too long, in a life that is stalled, though I've finally started on a way out of it, life is hard, it's lonely, I was at that movie alone tonight surrounded by others who had people to enjoy it with. None of that makes me happy, it makes me frustrated, upset, anxious, but none of that takes away from the joy of a great experience like I had tonight.
Tonight I had a night where I got to enjoy people having fun, I got to revel in humor, good food and beer. I got to be enraptured in something I wanted everyone to share in because its so much fun, and in all those things it doesn't matter if I'm happy or anxious or fearful or annoyed, because that pure enjoyment of whatever is at hand is what matters, and that feeling at least for a moment makes you happy, even if your not or have no reason to be. Joy is finding that worth while thing, that amazing thing in whatever mundane piece of life and really letting it affect you and being happy in that moment. I had that Joy tonight in sharing in the Joy of the makers of The Worlds End, and the enjoyment of the audience I saw it with. It was a good night.




THEY GOT WHO TO PLAY BATMAN? HAVE THEY SEEN DAREDEVIL?

Elysium Shrugged

I just got back from a showing of Elysium, the new Neill Blomkamp film, he did District 9 for those who don't recall. I don't know what it is about this director but whenever he releases a film I have a bad day. I watched District 9 on a day that had so many things go wrong I went to the theater as a refuge more than a source of entertainment. Today wasn't a particularly good day either, but it's more that my mood is sour and has been for about a week, I can't really tell why, and that's not the point.

When watching Elysium I couldn't help thinking of Atlas Shrugged, a story that shares the exact same plot but from the other angle. The smart and rich people of the world, the 1%, decide they are sick of dealing with all of the people they don't like, they don't like being told what to do by governments or rules who they think they know better than and so they leave. They find a place where nobody can bug them and they go away and the rest of the world suffers for it. Sort of like a kid running away from home, you'll be sorry when I'm gone and then you'll respect me type of thing. So the world falls apart, just barely able to keep everyone from killing everyone else, it's sort of a society but one in which everything is terrible, meanwhile the rich are all enjoying themselves in there little valley.

I've always thought it was a dumb idea.

If the rich were to do this than other smart people would make there way into those places of power which had been vacated, if the king decides to leave his kingdom others will rule instead and he will lose his kingdom. The whole idea also seems to discount that there are smart people with good ideas in the lower classes of society, who just don't have the resources of the rich to get noticed, sure a bunch of rich people could do that, and for the sake of the story lets say they all do, at most the chaos would last a generation before new people would rise and start doing things that would threaten the rich, and eventually remove them.  It doesn't take a super rich person to make a government run, which this world seems to lack. You can tell that the director hates the ideas of Atlas Shrugged but at the same time he does buy into it's premise that if the rich just up and left, everything would suck and there is no way that the poor could or would ever pick up the pieces and find a way to make it work instead of just settling for living in a terrible world of near anarchy and chaos. It makes no sense and it admits the central point which the movie is against, that the rich are amazing people who deserve everything they have, and that the poor are less than they are and also deserve what little they get because they are incapable of doing anything good.

The problem I have with Elysium is that the main point of the film is that the rich are just dicks. They have this tech that can cure anything, but they don't share that tech with the rest of the world....why? I have no idea. They even have ships, multiple ships full of these things, but they have no intention of ever using it to help the people they seem to be designed to help. Elysium isn't just a gated community in the sky, it's a gated community that is withholding the cure for cancer from the rest of the world, and shooting down those who would reach for it. Makes no sense, for one thing there is a lot of money to be made in a machine that can cure anything, why would they not want to make that money? Also what are they doing up there the whole time, we see the same Asian woman sunbathing a couple of times and there is a cocktail party at one point, but what is the point of these peoples lives? Elysium itself is underdeveloped as a place and the people who live there are never given a chance to be people, they are just mannequins wearing sweater vests holding cocktails, surely these people have lives and opinions on things which are worth exploring, but we never get to know any of it.

 Can the rich be dicks? Yeah, I work for them, they live in a different world most of the time, their expectations are way different from those of the rest of the world because for some of them it's rare to be told no or want something they can't have, there are also some of them who are very nice and normal. Are the Rich dickish enough to willingly let people die from cancer and every other malady? I don't know any group of people who is willingly that dickish.

And now for something completely different. a bike ride

We live in a story saturated world, or at the very least I do. I constantly surround myself with movies, books, tv shows, video games, I'm one of those people who loves to tell stories of what happened in their day, even if it's a minor occurrence. For example I went on a bike ride yesterday and had two fun things happen to me, First was while I was on the path I came upon a kid of about 6 or 7 and his dad who were out for a walk, for some odd reason seeing me coming at him the kid froze, put both his hands up in the air and stood in the middle of the path, slightly moving from side to side as if he was trying to block me from passing. I could tell this wasn't the case because of the look of pure panic in his eyes, he just couldn't tell which way to go and was constantly second guessing himself on which way to get to safety. Eventually his dad pulled him out of the way, but there was this moment where me and the kid where I was just staring into this kids panic stricken face, his eyes getting wide and red as if he was about to cry, his brain clearly working overtime as he tried to work out which way he was supposed to go, while he foolishly stood right in the middle of the path bouncing from side to side in the exact place where it was impossible he wouldn't get hit, all he had to do was move a foot to either side and he wouldn't have been in any danger at all. Silly boy.

The second little adventure was far more awesome. I was crossing a street with some other bikers, for some odd reason we all ended up crossing at nearly the same time in opposite directions, and in order to get back on the path I had to go around this guy in a tight curve where you have to lean into it a little bit and you end up tilting to your left which works fine as long as you don't hit gravel. I hit gravel, my bike started going out from under me, continuing it's slide horizontally without me,  and I had a moment where I thought "well, I'm going to crash", but I caught myself with my left leg, kicked up and somehow got the bike back under me and saved it. Then I yelled out a loud yell of excited inappropriate words because I am clearly a bad ass mother trucker. I caught the back of my right leg on the gears and I couldn't see if I was bleeding or not, (I wasn't even cut but it hurt like I may have been.) I just kept on going.

History of comics part two, I'm so sorry.

I've learned a lesson with this two part post thing. Don't do it. There are so many other things I have wanted to write about but I had the second part of the comics thing I was doing earlier to write, which I'm going to write now just to get it out of the way, and because it's awesome.

So when you last read I was telling you about how basically comics had turned to movies as a way of getting out of bankruptcy and in so doing had made majors companies who cared  lots and lots of money, which caused them to take notice and buy those comic book companies. Marvel is now owned by Disney, and DC has been owned by Warner Brothers since sometime in the sixties.

It seems like the major change over of major corporate owership happened in about Steptember of 2011 when DC relaunched everything. I used to have this crazy dream of writing Action Comics 1000, which I thought was do able since it was somewhere around 877, near 8 years away, I thought that was enough time to become successful, but that dream was shattered when they decided that history didn't matter, that large numbers scare away new readers, and that 1 was a friendly inviting number, so they rebooted everything with a big old 1 on it. It's cool, who needs goals and achievements to motivate them anyway? DC is now for the most part like season 4 of Community, sort of like what you loved before but it's as if the whole thing is being acted out by people who don't really know what they are talking about. There are people who get the characters and then there are people who run things, right now it's in the control of the people who run things. A lot of people are leaving/ have left because 30 year vets of writing don't like being told they don't get the character because they wrote him in a seated position for a panel.  "Batman never sits down, and Jesus never poops. Everyone knows that!"

So what are the people who run things running this thing towards? Market testing for one. When DC relaunched they had 52 titles some of which I had no idea why they existed, there was no demand for an I Vampire book, that I knew of anyway, there was no reason for a Justice League Dark, or a Grifter series or Red Lanterns. Not that these were all bad books, but they were inexplicable at the time they came out. Come to find out thought that they would like to make Justice League Dark into a movie, that right after a flash animated film comes out showing off how freaking cinematic his powers are, there are now plans for a Flash film leading up a Justice League movie. Before the model was this, the publisher put out a bunch of comics over years and every now and again there was one that was really inspired, and years later it was adapted into a film, and in this way good comics made some hit and miss movies. Now they are trying to drum up interest with the comics themselves as part of an already existing movie property which they plan to make into a thing that people are going to love. This is a terrible plan, but it's not like it can't work.

The public likes what it likes, you can't control what people see at the box office. as much as you try. Right now the philosophy in Hollywood is big investment makes you big money back, so they budgets of films have become cartoonishly big in the hopes of making a billion and a half dollars like the Avengers and The Dark Knight did. This is always a bad idea as bigger budgets don't equal better movies, just louder ones, and people get annoyed by loud things. Not all loud things mind you, but movies are like music, they should have ebbs and flows and rhythms to them, if they don't it just becomes noise.   Those ebbs and flows are the difference between making a great film like Pacific Rim or a terrible loud one like Transformers or Red 2. So money isn't the key to a big hit, good stories are, and you nearly never get a good story from a corporate plan for a big movie launch, because there can be no art in it. It's inorganic and unnatural, because you are forcing it to be likable instead of actually being likeable, like the nervous kid who wants to be loved too much and is trying too hard people are going to hate you. So DC is kinda terrible right now, which is really too bad because I like there characters a lot. It's like watching one of your friends put on a lot of weight and get into WWE wrestling on TBS hardcord, they think it's awesome but you want them to get there old job back and shower.

Marvel on the other hand seems to be on a simliar but more stable course. They just seem to want books out which are good, they even allow there artists to experiment and create new things on books like Young Avengers and Hawkeye, which are some of the better books on the market right now. Yes they are synergizing a bit but not in a way which I seem to notice at least. Maybe this is a failure on there part but I think it's a success because their stories are still readable. unlike this blog which is becoming increasingly inside baseball.


Just so you know this is the point where I am tired of talking about this and want to switch over to something new. I really want to write a review of Wolverine, or talk about how awesome my socks are, you know amazing things. 

Check back next time when I pick a more readable subject I promise.

A brief History of Comics.

So comics as we know them today started in the late 1930's with things like superman and batman and wonder woman. Then they got spooky and violent which upset this jerky psychologist named Wertham who said they were corrupting the youth so comics started policing themselves and were childish for til the 1960s when Marvel (Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers) came out and that became the big thing for teens and kids with the things that we think of when we think of comic books. In the 1980s they had a revolution where they got darker once again and more real world, less romantic, it seemed like they were growing up, this made them super popular for a bit in the late eighties to the early nineties when everyone thought that buying comics could make you rich, which was dumb. This bubble burst in the mid nineties and Marvel went bankrupt, sales dropped, there were shake ups and eventually better writing and stories. And Movies.

So the way that Marvel got themselves out of Bankruptcy was to sell the film rights to the characters they owned to 20th century Fox, Sony, Lionsgate, whoever would make a movie of their stuff, and that is why we saw the early part of the 2000's packed with superhero movies. Fox made X-men, which did well, and so Sony made Spider-man, which did better, so then Fox made Fantastic Four, which is a regrettable film and too bad because I love that team. Marvel then saw that these movies staring there characters were doing really well and yet they didn't get that much of a bump in comic book sales, I'm sure they did well in merchandise from toys and bath towels and Halloween costumes but all of that money was shared with the studio in a big way. Also they didn't have creative control of their characters anymore in the public consciousness which is a big deal to them, suddenly Spider-man had to have organic web shooters because it was in the movie, they had to conform to what another company was doing with their stuff, not cool.  So Marvel starts Marvel Studios, and as their first gambit makes Iron Man and a new Hulk movie. This was gutsy, because nobody knew who Iron Man was or cared at that point, add a little Downey Jr to the mix though and Marvel was able to make everything up to the Avengers off the hit they had in Iron Man and we get the movie landscape they have now with Thor and Captain America movies getting sequels and plans for an Ant Man Movie, yes that's happening, but let me blow your mind a little more.

You may not know this but Disney now owns Marvel, and I think this was planned since at least 2004 on Marvels part. They rebooted things, which is not uncommon for comics, started doing big blockbuster events and most of all really started trying to market their characters in a bigger way, particularly in a thing they did called Civil War in 2006 which featured all their characters fighting each other mainly featuring Iron Man and Captain America.  They did things that got them in the news and they made sure that everybody knew about it, Spider-man made his identity public, Captain America was killed, their was constant news reports of a book being so successful they had to do second and third printings.  They were prettying themselves up for a corporate buy out because it's safer to be with a big company than be on your own, as their bankruptcy had taught them. The movies were a part of this process too, they needed to prove they could make whoever bought them out big money, movies are the best way to do that. So eventually Disney comes along and buys Marvel for 4 billion dollars, that was 2009.

There are some things you should know about me, the 8th or 9th being that I love Parks and Recreation on NBC, but the first thing you should know is that I am something of a master at over thinking trivial things and coming up with systems around them (This is called being a nerd about stuff.). So here is where these two things mix.

This is the cast of Parks and Recreation.

And for those who haven't seen the show, it's about a parks department in a small town in Indiana and the super driven deputy director who wants to be the best public servant in the history of people. Also if you haven't seen the show its on Hulu, start with season three, trust me, you'll be fine.

The thing I see in the show, and I think a key to why all the characters are so likeable is because they are all grown up versions of High school stereotypes, with nice little twists. So what follows is a who's who comparison of Pawnee.

Leslie Knope- The student body president/Valedictorian.

                      Leslie is the main character of the show, it follows her slow rise to power by little successes in her life. She is a bottle of energy and fully committed to the things she does, and much like any student body president or valedictorian that thing being good and achieving something is the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD! "Oh God, lets panic, the water pressure in the drinking fountain is too high, what if they drown? What if it shoots someones eye out? We Have to fix this or people are going to go blind and drown." That's how she reacts, and it's because of this her projects tend to be such a success, well that and it's a show and it's heartwarming to see people do well when they really care, and that is the heart of Leslie, she cares way too much, and it's adorable.

Ron Swanson- The Principal.
                    Ron is the director of the apathetic head of the parks department, he is the man that man's man men look up to, he likes pretty brunettes and breakfast food. The reason he fits the principal model is he sits above all the things that happen, he's not ever willing a part of the drama that is Leslie's drive to be the best person who has ever lived, he could care less if the parks are fine, he would rather see them run by private industry like everything else. He doesn't seem to need anything that those around him have to offer, because he does tend to have the answers for everything. He is in this way the overseer and in a way protector of the cast, principled in how he lives and despite how he may feel about Government he does want everyone around him to succeed and since he is so super handy with pretty much everything he often facilitates that success.

Andy Dwyer- The slacker kid/ class clown

              Andy is the guy who never had any idea idea what was going on in class because he was too busy being awesome in his own head. He's joyfully harmless, a puppy dog of excitement and joy, he's a big kid, but...he's also thirty and doesn't really have a direction in his life or anything really going for him when we first meet him yet he seems to be mostly ok with that, because there isn't really a way to bring him down. He's sort of oblivious to the rest of the world because his world, where sometimes he plays Bert Macklin, FBI is just so fun for him....but then there is April.

April Ludgate- The Goth Chick
              She may not wear black all the time and dress freaky but her demeanor and lovable hatred of everything  but her husband Andy and animals, who she loves for not being people, totally puts her in the dark camp of the goth chick. She hates everything for being where it is, doesn't care about anything, and takes a certain amount of joy in things going terrible. Yet and this is the brilliance of the show, she is married to the happiest most bright character in the show. It's like having a cat and a puppy get married, or watching the class clown make out with the goth chick. they don't seem to belong together and yet they balance each other so incredibly well.

Ben Wyatt- The Nerd
              This almost goes without saying, He is everything a nerd is, socially awkward, very specific and with a tendancy to want to be right about even tiny stupid things that don't matter, and of course a fan of Game of thrones, Star wars, and Star Trek. and Lord of the Rings. He's got strange hobbies, basically the only thing he hasn't done is just come out and say he's played Dungeons and Dragons. I guess nerds don't change that much once they leave school because all the things they are he is. I love him.


Tom Haverford- The popular kid
                Tom is obsessed with being on the cutting edge and looking cool. That's the most important thing to him, being the cool guy with the cool things. if he doesn't have that, then life is sort of terrible. He's a schmoozer, a party person, and fairly shallow about most things. Being in the know, having the cool thing, and most of all having other people think he is cool is the most important thing to him. He is also very influenced by all those who are the setters of cool  in culture, almost being a wannabe version of all those people combined.

Ann Perkins- The Cheerleader
             She's pretty, but beyond that she is a little bland. She is the girl who goes from relationship to relationship and has been able to coast on her looks. Lets face it people are nicer to pretty people, but now that as she is getting older she is finding that she needs a drive and personality all of her own. In the past she has taken on her boyfriends personality and now that's not enough. I think Leslie likes her so much because in a strange way she takes loving pity on her for never having had to develop as Leslie did, in an inverse way to the way a cheerleader would to an unattractive girl in high school for not being as pretty as she is. Still not to make Ann sound terrible, she's at least grounded as a person which is needed for most of the group who have there head in the sky.


Chris Trager- The Jock.

                 He is obsessed with heath and fitness and he Literally the most enthusiastic person I have ever seen. I like him, because he thinks it's great and it is literally the best. He's a machine. There really isn't much more to say about him other than that except he has a big heart which is easily touched. Cry baby.








So there it is, the cast of the show. As you can see they all sort of fit these things that we've all known for years via High School archetypes. It's sort of sweet in a way because it gives you all these very different people yet they all seem to like each other and get along.

Alright lets get this thing started. My name is Luke and this is a blog I'm doing about storytelling, meaning making, prop creation, comic books, joke telling, and tutorials on how to tie a tie in less than 2 seconds with one hand. So you know...magic.

Things you can expect from me in the coming weeks in what I am calling, Chapter One of my blog:

1.  An essay on Parks and Rec, and how it's really a show about High School. 
2. Movies! including one I made once trying to get a job with Joss Whedon. 
3. Stand Up! including old and new shows I do. Can't make it to see me because you live in Texas? Watch here, it will be just like being in a small house in Texas watching a You Tube video. 
4. How to make cool props and replicas out of stuff. 
5. An essay on the nature of storytelling and how it forms the soul of spiritual experience. 
6. Why Superman is my Homeboy. 
7. Why the Flash is my Homeboy.
8. Why Doll Man is my Homeboy. 

 

Also I'll  take requests if there is something you'd really like me to write on, I'll find a way to write something entertaining on it. For example...Soap dishes...... "The first thing I want to know when I see a soap dish is who is eating soap?  Then second thing is what do you clean that dish with when you are done eating? More soap? 

Yeah, just like that. 

Now I'm going to drink beer and watch Parks and Rec. Welcome to my blog, may it be a long and fruitful one.