Heroes Never Rust #104: A Final Note

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Heroes Never Rust

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1985, Escapism, Mark Millar, Marvel

Heroes Never Rust #104 by Sean Ironman

A Final Note

With Marvel 1985 issue six, no reader will be surprised when Toby returns to the real world with the Marvel heroes, and the villains are soon defeated. Does anyone ever expect the heroes to lose in these stories? But just because the inevitable good-triumphing-over-evil occurs, the story does offer interesting developments.

In an effort to stop the villains, Toby’s father is gunned down by Red Skull. There’s a dark comedic vein running through the scene of Toby’s father confronting the villains, and Red Skull calmly taking out his pistol and killing the father. The story doesn’t end there. Nor does it end with the villains defeated, the heroes returning to their world, or even with Toby’s father’s funeral.

The comic ends years later, when Toby is an adult. He’s on his laptop writing a comic called 1985, and in the final two pages, his father wakes up in the Marvel Universe under the care of Jane Foster, a nurse and a love interest for Thor. Earlier in the comic series, his father said that he had a crush on Jane Foster, so years later, Toby gives his father his wish—his father asks Jane out on a date and she says yes. Marvel 1985 ends with his father looking out at the New York City of the Marvel Universe in anticipation for the possibilities.

This brings up an interesting aspect of superhero stories, and fiction as a whole—the idea of wish fulfillment. Why write fiction? Why write superhero stories? The superhero genre isn’t well respected. Even now, much of the respect it has earned is only because of the hundred of millions superhero films bring in at the box office. While comics have gained more respect in recent years, mainly by people who resist calling comics comics and instead refer to them as graphic or sequential narrative or other terms showing their embarrassment over comics, the superhero genre is still thought of in a similar way as fantasy YA novels are thought of in the literary community.

Superhero stories, though, serve an important function for the literary community. Due to many factors, like the rise of creative nonfiction and the focus on a global community, so much of writing is about our world. Even in fiction, our reality plays an important role. Stories must be real. Stories must show the world as it is, people as they are. Stories seem to be gritty and characters gray. But superhero stories offer a break from all that. Instead of showing the world as it is, readers (and writers) get to use their imagination and look at a different world.

But, this isn’t escapism.

I don’t like that word, escapism. Whenever I hear someone say they like a certain book or a certain film or a certain genre because it offers them an escape, I just feel bad for that person, that he or she lives such an awful existence or views the world in such an awful way that they must shut down for a couple of hours and escape. Superhero stories are not escapism. They can comment on what it means to be human just as much as any literary story. Does each superhero story do that? Of course not, but neither does every literary short story. Does Superman really save the day? Does Spider-man? Batman? etc. No, they don’t. Superman fights a man or a robot or a monster with his fists and he puts off evil temporarily. But, that’s not where the story is at.

Superman’s story is with Lois Lane, Perry White, the Kents. It’s the people and the effect Superman has on them as people. If literary means a focus on craft and that the story comments on what it means to be human, then superhero stories are literary. A story doesn’t have to comment on how the world is for the reader to learn about the world. You can learn about our world, not just by studying what it is, but by studying what it is not.

With all the technological advancements and heroics in a superhero comic, the world is not better off. The Marvel Universe still has the same problems as our world. There is still greed and selfishness. There is still violence. Kids still go to bed hungry. Sexism still exists. Racism does too. Superheroes are just window dressing on the same world. Even with the help of superheroes, them saving our lives, the human beings are still the same human beings as we are. The presence of a superhero doesn’t change what it means to be human. It just allows a different view of our world.

Many of us complain about mass shootings (rightly so). Many of us complain about space travel no longer being a priority. Many of us want something in place to stop the government from doing whatever the government wants to do. Yet, even in a world of superheroes, there are still mass shootings, people aren’t traveling freely to other planets, and government officials are still corrupt. A superpowered savior will not save us from being us. I think that makes a greater comment on humanity than many realist short stories and novels. We may wish for something magical to save us, some kind of easy solution to our problems, but superhero stories show us that that will never happen. We are who we are. Nothing will stop us from the faults of Man. Only we can do that.

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Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Heroes Never Rust #101: 1985 and Villainy

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Heroes Never Rust

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1985, Mark Millar

Heroes Never Rust #101 by Sean Ironman

1985: Villainy

In Marvel: 1985 issue three, Marvel villains continue to invade the real world. The Hulk was seen in the second issue, but no other Marvel heroes seem to be around, leaving humanity with limited support to fight off the bad guys. While this issue does feature Fin Fang Foom, a giant green alien Buddhist dragon and the Iron Man villain that has been sorely missing from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are no world-conquering plans afoot. So many times in superhero stories, and in summer blockbusters and other popular writing works, the stakes are raised for not only a person or a small town but the whole world. In the mainstream comic universes, there are very few serial rapists. There may be petty thieves Spider-man dispatches early in an adventure, but most villains have wonderfully complex and grandiose plans. While the audience gets to see a lot of destruction, with many battles toppling skyscrapers, the men and women caught in the middle rarely get much attention. This ends up taking the bite out of the violence. I’m not necessarily a fan of violence, but I do think that if a story shows violence than it has a responsibility to show the full ramifications.

Also, by focusing on such large, complex villainous plans, the reader, or viewer, is actually kept at a distance from the story. A few weeks ago, I read an article on the new Jurassic World and why the CGI looks bad compared to the original Jurassic Park. A lot of reasons were given, but one that hit me the hardest is that filmmakers, for Jurassic World and for other films like The Hobbit trilogy, go overboard, not with how many frames are CGI but with what happens with the CGI. Because filmmakers can do whatever they want, they do. But, the audience doesn’t really have a frame of reference for what’s going on. When the helicopter in Jurassic World gets attacked, spins out of control, breaks through a large aviary, crashes, blows up, and dinosaurs flee from the wreckage, the audience can’t process what’s going on. The scene is too foreign. I though back to that article when reading the third issue of 1985.

Here, the villains are truly terrifying. MODOK, probably one of the goofiest looking villains in comics, is incredibly creepy as he mind controls a group of townspeople and leads them to drown in the river. One woman even holds a baby, and everyone slowly walks single file into the waters. MODOK doesn’t kill a whole city. He’s not out to rule the world. The simplicity of the scene is why it’s creepy. I can imagine that scene, and because I can imagine it, the scene becomes horrific. I become afraid. If the villain’s plan becomes to ambitious and elaborate, if the action scenes have too much going on, then the whole thing seems cartoonish, and instead of building tension, the scene becomes laughable.

The issue ends with our protagonist Toby and his father driving down a road, and the Lizard, one of Spider-Man’s set of bad guys, jumps onto the roof and tries to claw at the boy and his father. The issue ends without a resolution, but the cliffhanger works because the scene builds terror and tension. The Lizard doesn’t have some crazy plan of turning everyone into lizards with some kind of new technology that readers have no idea how it works. The Lizard is a monstrous half-lizard half-man creature atop a car trying to kill, and possibly eat, the occupants. We don’t need anything else. If we care for the protagonist and his father, the danger doesn’t have to be incredibly complex with all these moving parts. The kid is in danger. We like the kid. We don’t want the kid to die. That’s it. We, as writers, or at least the writers of the usual summer blockbusters, are making storytelling more difficult for themselves. What difference does it make if our protagonist is going to be killed by a two-by-four or by some kind of alien technology? Well, the difference is that we can imagine what would happen if the character is beaten by a two-by-four. We can imagine it, and that’s why we don’t want it to happen.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic as I see trailers for Terminator: Genisys. The original Terminator still looks more terrifying, and I think it has nothing to do with the R rating of the original versus the PG-13 of the new one, or the CGI in the new film. In the original film, the Terminator walks into a police station and shoots a whole bunch of cops. The building doesn’t blow up. The Terminator isn’t flinging vehicles at the heroes. There isn’t some kind of domino effect of falling debris. It’s one man, or robot in this case, walking confidently down a hallway and shooting whatever is in his path. In the new film, the Terminator is jumping out of a helicopter into another one. A bus falls from the bridge with the heroes inside, clinging to each other to avoid falling to their deaths. The film is trying to be too big. Last year, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was released. Obviously there was a ton of CGI used for the apes. Yet, the film seemed more real than most summer blockbusters because the action scenes weren’t over the top. The audience was grounded. Our imaginations help drive tension. For me, a horrifying act for a villain would be to have the villain walk up to a person and shoot the person point in blank in the head. I don’t want to get shot. I can imagine what getting shot would do to me. I don’t know what being turned into a lizard man would do to me. And I don’t know what a MODOK is, but I can imagine being drowned in a river, and that is terrifying.

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Photo by John King

Heroes Never Rust #100: Adequacy is Okay

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Heroes Never Rust

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1985, Goodfellas, Mark Millar, Tommy Lee Edwards

Heroes Never Rust #100 by Sean Ironman

1985: Adequacy is Okay

At the end of issue one of Marvel’s 1985, Toby, the protagonist, runs into the Hulk one night in the woods. The second issue picks up from that point, with the Hulk asking Toby if he’s seen the Juggernaut, who is apparently causing trouble. To many people, the Hulk is thought to be the mindless alter ego of Bruce Banner, who is the intelligent scientist. While that is true in the comics, for the most part, there have been times where Banner has been able to control the Hulk and speak normally. The mid-eighties was one of these times. But, because many readers may be put off by a Hulk that speaks intelligently, the Hulk tells Toby, “Please, there’s no need to be afraid. My monstrous id has been completely suppressed by my academic super-ego.” The line has no bearing on the story. It furthers no plot, and it doesn’t even further that scene. It’s only role is as exposition, so the reader is not confused by the Hulk acting differently than the reader may expect. The line is not interesting, but it is inoffensive. The line is adequate, in that it does what it must, and then the story moves on.

The dialogue reminded me of a moment last week at the New Harmony Writers Workshop in New Harmony, Indiana. My workshop instructor was Stuart Dybek. During a discussion on one writer’s short story, Dybek told an anecdote (he seems to love anecdotes) of his son’s first novel. He recalled one section of prose and said that the section was not good but it got the job done. It was adequate, Dybek said. But, sometimes, adequate is the best we can do.

In university courses, I was taught each word must be perfect, must be chosen carefully. With my own creative writing, I pour over it dozens of times working out not only the characters and scenes, but every description, every line of dialogue, everything. I believe a writer must write good sentences, I do. And I also believe some writers spend too long concentrating on sentences and the story escapes them (one of the reasons I believe literary fiction is not very popular these days). Sometimes, though, I believe, as Dybek said, the best we can do is adequate. How many novels have at least one mistake in them? Or if you don’t want to call it a mistake, one thing that could be better? How many memoirs? Poems? Films? Comics? I’m not speaking about bad sentences, unclear constructions, or the reliance on clichés. I’m merely talking about the descriptions or dialogue or any other sentence that will not go down in history as interesting. These adequate sections do their job and are not so terrible to distract readers. I feel that I should avoid suggesting a writer should strive toward adequacy because I know that if every sentence is merely adequate, the story will suffer. But, perhaps writers should be happy with a story as long as it hits the emotional beats the writer set out for, even if a sentence or two will never be described as great.

Many years ago, I wrote mainly screenplays. I wanted to work in comics and in film. One lesson I was taught about screenwriting was that a good screenplay needed just three excellent scenes. If it had three excellent scenes, the audience would enjoy the movie. The other scenes couldn’t be bad, but they didn’t have to be great. At the time, I found it offensive, like the instructor was trying to say we couldn’t write a film filled with great scenes so to aim lower. But, I am starting to see the truth in that argument. When I think of a great film like Goodfellas, I don’t think of every scene, of every moment. I think of the long shot of Ray Liotta taking Lorraine Bracco through the club. I think of the montage set to “Layla.” I think of individual moments and lines of dialogue. That goes with any film, any novel, any memoir. Moments stick out to me but not the whole narrative.

Adequacy in small areas of a story should not be looked down on. Writer Mark Millar needed to tell the reader that the Hulk can talk, to not be confused. Perhaps he could have thought long and hard and come up with something amazing, but perhaps not. Not all parts to a car are beautiful. Not all parts to a house. There should be amazing moments in a story, as well as wonderful lines of dialogue and interesting descriptions, but don’t lose sight of what you’re trying to do. If the point gets across to the reader for something that doesn’t need a lot of attention, adequacy will do just fine.

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Photo by John King