Wild at Heart - A Wild Card's Retrospective -the Beginning

So, back in August, award winning writer George R.R. Martin, known mostly for Game of Thrones, publicly announced that there would be an upcoming TV series based on his long running Wild Cards series of super heroes novels. Admittedly, calling this series Martin's brainchild was a bit of an over simplification. Each novel in the series is a actually a group of interconnected short stories with multiple writers  that serve to tell a complete story.  The series began in 1986 and continues to this day, enjoying a resurgence within the last decade, due to the popularity of Game of Thrones.

Martin based these books on Superworld roleplaying game he was enjoying with several friends (many of whom were established science fiction writers). Superworld was one of many superhero table-top role playing game that proliferated during the 1980s. Playing the game, Martin was inspired to write a book about his character, an superhero called the Turtle who fought crime while piloting what was essentially a flying armored tank.

However, Martin found himself reluctant to abandon the characters created by other writers in the game and, instead, convinced them to contribute stories about their characters to a shared world anthology "novel." Although not as well known today, shared world anthologies were common in the late 1980's. These would be science fiction anthologies/novels set in the same fantasy world but worked on by multiple writers. Characters and settings from one stories would show up in stories by different author, crating a sense of continuity between each story.

The shared world of Wild Cards was Earth, albeit an Earth where first contact with an psychic humanoid alien race called the Takisians occurred in the late 1940s.  Due to Martin's insistence that the superhero characters should all get the power (with a few exceptions) from the same source, the Takisians bring with them the  a virus which they have invented to boost their own considerable psychic abilities.

Naturally, the aliens decide to test the virus on the genetically similar humans. Despite efforts to stop this, the virus is released above New York City and soon gets sucked into the jet stream where it spreads all over the word.

The results are catastrophic. Unfortunately, the virus kills most of the people who contract it and leaves the majority of the survivors freakishly disfigured.  The disfigured survivors are dubbed "Jokers" and reviled and scorned by society. Most of them are segregated into a Ghetto area in New York called Jokertown. However, a small number of survivors are not physically affected but instead endowed with abilities far beyond those of mortal men. These people dubbed "Aces" are often perceived as heroes by the public and enjoy a measure of celebrity as well as infamy. The virus is dubbed the Wild Card Virus due to the random disfigurement and powers it grants to to those unfortunate or luck enough to contract it.

News of the upcoming TV show reminded me of how much I loved these books when I was kid. I read the books out of order when I was a kid before losing interest. However, out of nostalgia,  I was finally moved to read the first book in the series and it was fun to reconnect with the characters. Because of this, I have decided to write up a retrospective on each book of the series. This retrospective will have no fixed schedule. Given that there are twenty-six book in the series (with more to come), I am going to have to take break just so that I don't burn out especially to locate the harder to find books. Hopefully, the few people reading my blog will enjoy this.

Next up, an introduction to the series important characters while I review the first book in the series called appropriately enough Wild Cards.

Villainy's Victors 88- Satan

88) Satan from The Adventures of Mark Twain-

Satan is a difficult character to dissect because he has appeared in almost every form of narrative media. After a while, it becomes hard to pick out a version or incarnation that is particularly memorable. But that's not always the case. Sometimes, some writer somewhere comes up with a unique take on the character.

I should clarify that I have never seen the obscure claymation film, The Adventures of Mark Twain, a loose adaptation of the writer's more obscure stories, in its entirety. However, this clip featuring Satan became popular on the Internet and, as it is the only part of the movie where the character appears, I feel qualified to discuss this.



(After watching that, keep in mind that the MPAA rated this movie G. I consider this proof that the MPAA hates children.)

This Satan is not so much God's antithesis but rather His doppelganger.  In the film, his actions are eerily similar to the God of the old testament. He convinces the main characters (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher) to make people from clay which he then brings to life. However, when his creations begin to annoy him, he destroys them  for their perceived sins. Furthermore, he does not see these actions as evil, as he himself defines his every action as morally right. He even identifies himself as an angel. This version of Satan is unsettling not because he opposes God but rather because he hews more closely to biblical conceptions of god than a viwer might care to admit.

A Continuity of Action

If there is one lesson I should have learned over the years of being online, it is do not read the comment section. It never ends well.  You come to realize  that the reason no one in any position of power listens to the things to people say on message boards is that, if it was of any value, people wouldn't say it on a message boards.

But anyway, I was reading the message boards comment section and I was struck by one poster.  This poster was complaining about how Marvel comics doesn't seem to respect continuity anymore. And it occurred to me that seven years ago I would have been this guy.

And I realized that my stance on comic book continuity had softened over the years and I hadn't even really noticed it. In large part, I blame the X-Men. I came late to the X-Men so I got most of my information from back issues. But for me the best X-men stories were either the original Lee-Kirby stories and Chris Claremont and John Byrne's later run.

I brought my first modern X-Men comic around 1994.  It really couldn't have been more new reader unfriendly if the ink used on the page was made of cyanide and hydrochloric acid. I still have it. The sole purpose of this comic was to clear up a plot point about Psylocke and Revanche and which of them was the real Betsy Braddock. If the previous sentence meant absolutely nothing to you, consider it from the point of view of a 7-year old kid in the 90s.

I had no idea who these people were and why anything in the story was important or what any of it had to do with the X-Men. Admittedly, I stuck it out but I was alway a persistent kid. How many kids my age read the comic, got confused, and gave up on the hobby?

And over the years, as I learned the material and I learned the minutiae of continuity, I came to forget how confusing it all was back in the day. I don't think I really remembered it until I had a chance to re-read some old 90s X-Men at my local library and I realized it was all terrible. Every line in the comic seemed to reference something that happened in another comic that you hadn't read. All the character's spoke in information dumps that were necessary to have even the slightest chance of following the story.

What I'm saying is that I understand the purpose of continuity: It creates a sense that the stories matter, that they impact the live of the characters we know and love. But it's not really worth it when that comes at the cost of good storytelling, is it?

Villainy's Victors 89- John Jaspers

89) John Jaspers a.k.a Faust from Faust: Love of the Damned

WARNING: I am talking about the comic book. Not the movie!!!. Under no circumstances, should you attempt to watch the movie. Should you watch the movie, this blog takes no responsibility for any side effects up to and including depression, loss of appetite, and obsessive desire to listen to the music of William Shatner.




You have been warned.

Now that that bit of unpleasantness is over, I should probably qualify that technically John Jaspers is technically the  "hero" of Faust: Love of the Damned. It should be further qualified that this is completely accidental. Jaspers is a schizophrenic artist who agrees to serve as an assassin for Satanist cult leader and crime lord, M, who may actually be Satan, in exchange for power and Wolverine claws. He grow an ego about the whole thing, which leads to falling out with M who has Jaspers killed. This doesn't take and Jaspers returns wearing a truly awesome superhero costume declaring war on M and his henchman.

This results in Jaspers being the hero of the story completely by accident. His motivation for opposing is a mixture of personal revenge and paranoid schizophrenia. He is constantly followed around by a Greek chorus of delusions who alternately egg him on and try to convince him that what he's doing is, in fact, insane. His brutal methods raise the question if he isn't actually worse then the evil he finds himself opposing.

The answer to that question, by the way, is no.  M and his cohorts are much worse. (It's not a very cheerful comic). But this character still gets on the list, if simply because in any other story, he would be the villain. It's a fine line between the god guys and bad guys and sometimes that line is completely arbitrary.

Assembly Line Heroes

It should come as no surprise that one of my chief complaints about DC Comics is that the comics they produce are not a lot of fun. This is because this is everybody's (or at least everybody with Internet access) chief complaint about DC Comics. The problem with DC at the moment is that every character must be dark and edgy and violent.

It makes a sort of sense.  I understand the appeal of dark and edgy characters. Audiences love badasses that play by their own rules. We fantasize about being these people, no longer bound by the petty rules and restriction of everyday society and strong enough to impose our whims on others. Nobody makes Batman do paperwork.

And that by itself wouldn't be so bad.  After all, power fantasies are pretty much at the heart of superhero comics. But its combined with another trend that makes these comics a chore to read. You see, it's no longer enough for the heroes to be badasses, they must also be tortured badasses.
They have to have deep psychological scars that explain why they are who they are and why they feel compelled to go forth and fight crime.

I suppose this create an illusion of depth. By giving a character psychological issues , you can create conflict and it allows for some compelling psychodrama. But it doesn't work for every character. I shouldn't look at Captain Marvel, a superhero who hung out with a talking tiger, whose most dangerous enemy was a worm who wore glasses, and fell like I'm reading an issue of Batman.

I'm not saying superheroes should be angst free. Done right, it could make for cool stories. Some of my favorite Batman comics were done with him in full on brooding avenger of the night mode. But it shouldn't -- it can't be every single character. Theres nothing wrong with superheroes being relatively light hearted and, dare I even say it fun. I wish the people who made the comics would remember that from time to time.

Still More Thoughts on an Inconstant World

You know that building is nice when the toilets are so well constructed and designed, most of your time in the bathroom is spent wondering if you're allowed to use them.

Unsettling realization of the week: I was reading TV Tropes the other day and I came across a reference to the mostly-forgotten Marvel comic, The Saga of Chrystar, Chrystal Warrior. The entry discussed how in the comics, Chrystar's brother Moltar is turned from a lava-man back into a human by the evil wizard Zardeth. This means that he can never have any physical contact with Lavour, the lava-woman he loves. The unsettling part came when I though to myself "Huh! That's funny, I was just thinking about the same thing the other day."

Is it wrong that I want Godzookie to be the new American Godzilla movie?

Yes. Yes. It is. On so many levels.

Actually Godzilla had at least three kids in his many appearances. Which begs the question, if Godzilla is the last of his kind, who in God's name was the mother?  This becomes especially disturbing when you realize that the only plausible candidate is Mothra.

Villainy's Victors- Hexxus

89) Hexxus from Fern Gully-

This is yet another villain whose inclusion on the list is based on childhood nostalgia. Fern Gully was one of those incessant Disney rip-off animated movies that came out in the early 90s with an ecological theme. The premise of the film is that the fairies who live in Fern Gully in Australia are threatened when logging operation accidentally releases Hexxus, a pollution spirit made of toxic chemicals and smog.

This character is on my list because he left a strong impression on me as a child in what is otherwise an unmemorable movie. The character's in the movie are really, really bland. Pretty much all of them are stock character from an average disney film. The young princess who is curious about the outside world (NOTE: Dear Fern Gully fans, her father is the village chief. She's a princess. As if any of you read this blog in the first place), one obnoxious good looking male lead, his rival for the princess's affection, and the elderly overprotective father. Really, you've seen all these characters before in better movies.

As a result, Hexxus comes off as the only character in the movie who has any force of personality. This is primarily the work of actor Tim Curry who also portrayed another character on the list when he essayed the the role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown in It. Curry is famous for his performance as the Doctor Frank N. Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Indeed, that character informs much of Curry's performance as Hexxus. Like Furter, Curry's Hexxus is an incredibly flamboyant and over-the-top, adding a sense of fun to a character that have could just easily been a one-note villain. This results in a high-camp character who is hilarious to watch while still maintaing a sense of menace. It also doesn't hurt that he gets the best song in the movie.