February 18, 2026 · 5:15 am

No, zero to hero is not the universal theme of all fiction

In a recent substack post, Celeste Davis of Matriarchal Blessing discussed the many rich and famous guys who’ve gone from pudgy and nerdy looking to buff and muscular, including Jeff Bezos and Christ Pratt. I don’t find this terribly remarkable — while the pressure on men to look good isn’t as intense as with women, it does exist. In our modern world I don’t think it’s that far off from someone forty years ago getting rich and switching to bespoke suits.

Davis argues that what this is really about is becoming invulnerable: “The invulnerability arc shows up in just about every myth, story and hero we have for boys—be they modern or ancient, religious or secular. The story goes like this: once upon a time there was a weak, shrimpy boy, who eventually through pain and violence is transformed into a fortress of muscle and power. Now no one makes fun of him. Now he is a hero.” Cases in point, Disney’s Hercules, Harry Potter, Batman, Captain America. Davis goes on to argue that if your goal is a long, healthy life (and for a lot of these dudes, it is), becoming buff or paying for radical medical treatments won’t work as well as having a community of friends around you.

That conclusion I do not dispute. Davis’ interpretation of the “invulnerability arc” as the essential Boy’s Journey … not so much. Since she brings up the Marvel and DC cinematic universes, let’s look:

Iron Man: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. of course) discovers his munitions manufacturing has made the world worse. Sets out to atone. And far from being invulnerable, he starts the movie in good health, then ends up a guy relying on the world’s most advanced pacemaker. The comic book doesn’t start Tony out in such a guilty place, but does emphasize even more that he’s not invulnerable —drain his armor’s power, he’s dead. Jack Kirby cover below.

Superman: No arc. He’s an invulnerable child who grows up into the world’s most invulnerable man.

Thor: Arrogant jackass whose arc is learning not to be such a jerk.

Captain America: (Steve Rogers in the Jack Kirby scene above is saving a Cap imposter, by the way). No question his origin involves going from a scrawny 4-F into the perfect man. But I think it’s more significant that his quest isn’t to become strong, it’s to fight fascists. That’s why he applies in the comics (and IIRC in the film). That’s what drives him. And it’s not that he’s invulnerable —

— it’s his indomitable spirit, as in the Gene Colan image above.

Hercules? Disney’s take is an outlier, portraying him as a wimpy kid; in mythology, Hercules strangles venomous snakes while he’s still in the cradle. Marvel’s Hercules (at the bottom of Kirby’s cover) and most other pop-culture presentations are much the same — superhuman from the get-go.

Harry Potter is far and away the worst argument for her position. Her synopsis: “A shrimpy nerdy orphan is shunned by his family, forced to live in the hall closet and be beat up by his cousin. Eventually he fights in some battles and after securing The Deathly Hallows, becomes the master of death and savior of the world.”

Okay, that’s technically true, but only technically. The real story is a miserable lonely good gets away from his abusive caregivers, make friends, finds a parental figure who isn’t shitty and learns to be happy. The books are an endorsement of exactly what Davis says we need, community. Harry wouldn’t have made it to book two if he didn’t have Ron and Hermione (particularly, of course, Hermione) fighting alongside him. He wouldn’t have finished the series alive if he hadn’t trained his fellow students into Dumbledore’s Army.

Harry is all about community. In a sense that’s what makes him the perfect opposing player for Voldemort, who has no use for other people except as pawns or followers.

Likewise, few superheroes these days come without a supporting cast. Green Arrow and Flash on the CW have sizable backup teams, for instance. Movie Batman is probably the closest to what Davis talks about; I think he’s more an anomaly than a template.

Looking at pop culture more broadly, I think the post underestimates the number of characters who don’t have origins in a conventional sense. In cop shows we may get some backstory but a lot of the time they’re simply there, no origin. Jack Bauer on 24 ditto — his childhood and how he came to be a tough guy is never detailed that I recall.

In short, I don’t think the post nailed the zeitgeist as much as she thinks.

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February 17, 2026 · 12:15 pm

Republicans, the anti-science party

“We should be living in a golden age of scientific solutions to once-unsolvable problems. And, arguably, we are,” Adam Lee writes on OnlySky. However “Against a global backdrop of accelerating progress, some nations are nurturing science and technology and are poised to prosper. Others are rejecting it, and as a consequence, they’re falling further and further behind. One of the nations in the latter category is the United States.”

Case in point, rescinding the EPA rule that greenhouse gas is a deadly threat (which it is): “In scrapping the policy this week, the EPA will seek to erase limits on emissions from cars, power plants and other industries that release the vast majority of the nation’s planet-warming pollution.” Unsurprisingly they’re lying about the impact of relevant regulations. As Paul Krugman says, anti-environmentalism and anti-vax have a lot of overlap.

So let’s talk vaccines, the medical technology that ended the Covid lockdowns yet is now Public Enemy Number One. As Krugman says, in both green energy and vaccines, the Toddler Administration is not only refusing to support them, it’s actively working against other people supporting them. Case in point: “Ms. Manookian is a leader of the Medical Freedom Act Coalition, a new umbrella group of at least 15 nonprofit organizations advocating an end to state laws that codify what they call medical mandates, which largely pertain to vaccines. So far, bills have been introduced in at least nine states that would eliminate all or nearly all school requirements” I’m sure he’s cool with the fact 883 of South Carolina’s measles cases are unvaccinated.

Moderna has an experimental flu vaccine. Flu kills hundreds of people every year in this country (it’s also a horrible medical experience. Got it twice). The FDA isn’t interested. “Moderna noted that the agency did not identify any specific safety or efficacy issues with the vaccine, but instead objected to the study design, despite previously approving it.”

“I’m not scared of a germ, after all I used to snort cocaine off toilet seats.” — RFK Jr. Who’s authorizing a vaccine trial that “would withhold an established, safe, and potentially lifesaving vaccine against hepatitis B from some newborns in Guinea-Bissau, Africa.”

It’s not just vaccines under siege, though: “Unlike home birth – birth at home with a midwife in attendance – freebirth means giving birth without any medical support. FBS promotes a version widely seen as extreme, even among freebirth advocates: it is anti-ultrasound, which it falsely claims harms babies, downplays serious medical conditions and promotes wild pregnancy, meaning pregnancy without any prenatal care.” The article makes it clear this is way more radical than the regular “free birth” movement that arose in response to frustration with the way ob/gyn medicine currently works. And that the Free Birth Society reels in plenty of bucks, and teeters on the thin edge of ethics, as the phrase goes (carefully positioning themselves so that they’re not legally giving medical advice, even if it sounds like it). Oh, and the FBS leaders also reject gravity and germ theory.

Then we have Sen. Ron Johnson, happily endorsing a crackplot claim you can cure autism with bleach. Or the current secretary of health who thinks the keto diet can treat schizophrenia.

How to lie with statistics.

“Health officials in New Mexico are warning against consuming raw dairy products after a newborn baby in the state died from a listeria infection that they say was likely contracted when the baby’s mother drank raw milk during pregnancy.”

RFK Jr.’s FDA claims the covid vaccine has killed 10 children. Unsurprisingly they did not provide details or evidence.

During a recent Con-Tinual panel, Seanan MacGuire, who writes epidemiological thrillers as Mira Grant, said if she’d pitched a novel a decade ago portraying so many people rejecting covid vaccines, they’d have laughed her out of the publisher’s office. I suspect it only gets worse from here.

Cover by Irwin Hassen, all rights to image remain with current holders.

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February 17, 2026 · 5:05 am

Cover reveal!

Not yet for Southern Discomfort but they’ve picked my cover for Watching Jekyll and Hyde.

This is the poster for the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that one Fredric March an Oscar. It’s not what I suggested but it looks good — and I trust McFarland to pick the right image.

They seem to be moving quite fast on this. It may not be too long before I get the galleys to proof.

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February 16, 2026 · 5:15 am

The evil of Jeffrey Epstein and his friends is truly banal

A friend of mine made a good point on FB recently: “The most depressing thing about the Epstein files is how very very boring billionaires are. All the money that ever existed and they use it to perv on 13-year-olds. If I were a billionaire, I would commission the *HMS Surprise* with 24 guns of confetti cannons, and I would require the crew to wear Lord Nelson-era uniforms. If I wanted a second yacht, I would build the *Queen Anne’s Revenge* and have the crew dress and talk like movie pirates.”

How Karen chooses to spend her billions is not the way I’d do it but her point is still valid. These are men who could probably find willing, attractive partners; in many cases they have the income to hire adult sex workers. They can travel around the world, afford to live pretty much anywhere — Paris, Cairo, London — trek up the Amazon. Pay $50,000 to charity so Bon Jovi or Bad Bunny will give them and their friends a private concert. Or simply sit on the beach with a piña colada and a good book and chill. Instead, they opted to hang out with a notorious pedophile on Statutory Rape Island, write smirking birthday cards about how Epstein liked ’em young or tell Epstein how underage girls are slutty temptresses.

As several women have observed online, sexualizing underage girls isn’t something Epstein came up with. It’s common. Epstein’s inner ring weren’t uniquely depraved slimeballs. Rape culture is a thing and plenty of other people in the same boat would have looked at those girls and said “yummy!” That is not an excuse. That other men do what Epstein did and get away with it is not a reason to shrug and not care about him or his cronies. Nor, contrary to Attorney General Pam Bondi, should we stop worrying about the victims because the economy’s doing well (as noted at the link, not as well as she implies). Hey, at least some of Epstein’s BFFs are suffering consequences.

The web of connections around Epstein keeps spreading wider. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for instance: “Lutnick has in the past vehemently denied having any association with Jeffrey Epstein, insisting that he severed all contact with the pedophile ringleader in 2005. But even the highly limited, extremely redacted release of the Epstein files — everything we’ve seen reeks of a major coverup — shows that he was flat-out lying. Not only did he stay in close contact with Epstein, the two men appear to have gone into business together.” Steve Bannon gave Epstein advice on rebuilding his reputation, such as “crush the pedo/trafficking narrative.” You can’t get much more morally bankrupt.

Paul Krugman: “I believe (and hope) that only a small minority of the hundreds and hundreds in Epstein’s extended circle received sexual favors. A larger number of people were probably receiving financial favors, but most weren’t … I believe that a lot of his reach came from his skill at seducing people by providing them with a sense of exclusivity and privilege. To be associated with Epstein meant receiving invitations to participate in fancy dinners or to stay at one of his many luxurious residences in all the best places, including his private island. If you were chums with Jeffrey Epstein, you felt that you were a member of a glittering set of insiders. And that was enough to make you look away when the young woman pouring your drink looked just a little bit too much like your teenage daughter.” C.S. Lewis makes the same point about the appeal of joining the cool kids: “It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected.”

Or consider Valeria Chomsky’s account of her husband Noah Chomsky (yes, the Chomsky) and how Epstein charmed him: “Epstein began to encircle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas Noam has been working on extensively. We regret that we did not perceive this as a strategy to ensnare us and to try to undermine the causes Noam stands for.” That I can understand. However Chomsky sympathizing with him over the “horrible way” the media had treated Epstein — that’s getting sucked in further than I think is excusable. It’s along the lines of refusing to believe your buddy/father/kid/roommate could possibly have done what that chick says he did, regardless of the evidence.

It’s possible some of the people in Epstein’s orbit were genuinely unaware of his activities beyond rumors — I certainly hadn’t heard of him until about eight years ago. But others, as Krugman says, were willing to turn a blind eye for the chance to hang out at glamorous parties or suck up to Epstein for research funding. And some, judging from the jokes or the chatter in their emails weren’t that blind. Knowing about it or suspecting it and continuing to hang out isn’t as bad as having sex with Epsteion’s underage victims. But it’s bad enough.

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February 15, 2026 · 5:07 am

Three books about women

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.” That quote from Mary Wollstonecraft (from the Matriarchal Blessing substack) convinced me to read her VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN — but in hindsight I wish I’d looked for an annotated edition. She refutes authors I’ve never heard of and I often suspected that the two centuries since she wrote have altered enough word usage I may not be getting her meaning.

The gist of Wollstonecraft’s argument is that women are not shallow ninnies obsessed with fashion, incapable of deep thought and never accomplishing anything: this is, rather, what they are trained to be. They’re told their value is their looks, told their value hinges on landing a man, they’re discouraged from thinking, cut off from education — free the mind and the rest will follow. Her comparison point is the idle rich whom she sees as engaging in the same sort of frippery and shallowness. What happens to an uneducated woman if her husband dies and she has to care for the family? What will occupy her mind once she’s an empty nester? If a relationship is purely based on looks and sex, how long can it last?

This argument hasn’t aged — lots of people today would agree with Wollstonecraft about the effects of educating women but they’d think the effects are bad. However while it hit the late 1700s like a bomb, it’s not as radical today — at 300-plus pages I found it interesting but not compelling (though if I’d never read anything on this subject before …).

SHADOW OF THE GOLDEN CRANE by Chris Roberson and Michael Avon Oeming is a spotlight on BPRD agent Susan Xiang. As she investigates various cases (most notably involving a demon-possessed biker granny) she keeps getting visions of a Chines precursor to the BPRD, the Order of the Golden Crane. Each time she flashes back, she gets a clue to how to handle the monster of the issue and learns more about the society.

I like Susan and a series focusing on her should have been fun, but this was “meh.” Like several of these bounce-through-history Hellboyverse series, it doesn’t really build, it’s just four stories of Susan battling monsters, with the history stories. Can’t say I’d have missed it if it didn’t exist.

ARCANA ACADEMY: Book One by Elise Kova is a romantasy I picked up for this month’s Genre Book Club. It’s set in Oricalis, an oppressive kingdom where magic is channeled through the Tarot’s Minor Arcana and tightly controlled by the crown. All practitioners train in the eponymous school; practicing magic outside it will get you imprisoned or sent to the mines, where you’ll die fast extracting the minerals used for the magical card-inking (this reminded me of Diana Wynn Jones’ quip that in fantasy worlds, miners are always slaves).

Clara, the protagonist, was a rogue arcanist, imprisoned, but suddenly released by Kaelis, the sinister second son of the king. He passes her off as a lost heir to one of the great houses and his betrothed, part of a scheme to get her into the Academy and use her skills in his plan to remake the world. Clara soon finds he’s less of an ogre and more of a charmer than she thought, but can she trust him? Can his plan work? What about her missing, possibly dead sister?

The romance doesn’t play any bigger role here than in most fantasies; I’d have decided “romantasy” is purely marketing but the other members of the book club say otherwise. It’s definitely the weakest part — when they finally get physical (400 pages through a 500 page book) it feels like an absurdly rapid escalation rather than a slow build.

That said, I like the book. I love the idea of Tarot-based magic, the plot is complex, the characters are fun. I might have liked it better as a one-in-done rather than a series — the last 60-80 pages suddenly fling in so many twists, reveals and complications it felt rushed. Nevertheless I’ll pick up book two when the library gets it.

Covers by Oeming and Concorina, all rights remain with current holders.

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February 14, 2026 · 5:07 am

A slacker and an interrogator: one movie, one TV show

Another pick from the Leonard Maltin book TYG got me last year — AURORA BOREALIS (2005) stars Joshua Jackson as Duncan, a Minneapolis twentysomething who’s stubbornly resisting adulting: he works dead end jobs, sticks with the same group of friends he’s always had, and lets life continue in much the same vein it has since he graduated high school.

As the movie starts, however, Duncan’s just lost his convenience store job. His brother is using Duncan’s apartment to bang women without his wife knowing (inspired, Duncan says, by the Jack Lemmon movie The Apartment). And now his beloved grandfather, Donald Sutherland, is suffering both Parkinson’s and the onset of dementia. Can Duncan get his shit together enough to help both grandpa and grandmother Louise Fletcher?

Things change when Duncan meets Kate (Juliette Lewis), his grandfather’s home healthcare worker, a free-spirited vagabond who never stays long in one place. Sparks fly, they become lovers and she begins nudging him to become more than he is — but will the lure of keeping everything the same make a difference?

While I’m not fond of coming of age/New Adult books, I can enjoy the tropes in a movie and this was a good one, well-acted and well-written. The special features reveal it was based on a stage play which explains why, despite the title, we never see the Northern lights. Curiously, everyone insists the closing scene is open-ended because we don’t know how Kate/Duncan will work out in the long run; as you can say that about most HEAs, I don’t find this striking. Still, thumbs up. “Do you realize you sound like Don King when you use big words?”

A friend of mine used to be a huge fan of THE CLOSER, a 2005 TNT series staring Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Johnson, a former CIA interrogator turned head of a major-crimes unit in Los Angeles. As it turned up on Netflix recently, I gave the pilot a look; it’s solidly done but I don’t know I’ll bother to watch more.

Johnson’s team aren’t thrilled about having an outsider in charge, she has a messy personal life, and in this episode she’s facing a headscratcher: An unknown women has been found murdered in a prominent plastic surgeon’s office. The surgeon’s vanished. The victim’s fingerprints are all over his home while the surgeon’s are nowhere to be found. How does it make sense? Like I said, it’s a solid job, fitting into the subgenre of cops who have One Simple Trick for getting to the truth. The Mentalist and Lie To Me both have someone who can read people like a book; Psych has a guy who’s hyper-observant about everything, HPI has someone who’s hyper-observant and can match up what she sees with a storehouse of knowledge. Here, Johnson’s a genius interrogator; having figured out what’s going on, she calmly guides the killer to a confession.

The results are good and if I were more of a fan of cop shows I might keep up with it. If I had more time for TV (and lately I don’t seem to) I might try a couple more episodes. As neither of these is the case …

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February 13, 2026 · 4:32 pm

The camel’s hump is an ugly lump

(Title taken from Rudyard Kipling. I’ve used it before).

Wednesday is, as we all know, hump day — once we pass it, we’re on the downhill slide toward the weekend. Lately, however, I seem to be having trouble getting over the hump. My Wednesday is a slog.

Part of that this Wednesday was Plush Dudley (seen in an older photo while he was still on cage rest). Usually he sleeps most of the afternoon. For whatever reason, he was lively. Bark. Whine. Try to get my attention. Licking my feet. A lot. I finally had to give up getting work done for the last couple of hours, though I wasn’t able to read or relax much either.

He’s still my boy.

Even before that, I was struggling to write. I had a relatively simple article to write on Carrboro’s budget discussions but it turned into a plodding exercise, though I think the results were good. Reflecting on it, I realized one problem is Monday and Tuesday evenings. Monday I work into the evening to make up for us taking the dogs to PT during the day; Tuesday I often have my Zoom writer’s group. After I finish, it’s typically another hour to take care of the dogs. I end up going to sleep later than usual and I don’t usually make it up in the morning. This Wednesday that left me tired; I also woke up late (compensating for Tuesday’s late night) which always throws me off my game. Mentally that left me behind the eight-ball.

Monday and Tuesday were productive though. I worked on Savage Adventures, went through all the books where my manuscript was unclear (why did Doc Savage do X? What exactly was the villain’s plan?) and made the corrections. This draft is done!!!!!

Next up: rereading some of my Doc Savage reference books for anything worth adding, working on the bibliography, then printing the manuscript out and proofing it. Then the writing is done and I can look at indexing (sigh), finding a cover and I’ll be ready to rock.

Thursday I put in more time writing for The Local Reporter. I got in one good story about Chapel Hill’s budget decisions — they have $3 million left over from fiscal year 2025 to spend — but nothing else. Nobody returned my calls. Annoying. However I already have the materials for one, possibly two stories for next week, and there’s a Carrboro Council meeting. So I’ll be in good shape.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about mondegreens, the death of the Green Goblin and comic book writers as psychics.

And this blog is still getting lots more hits than average. Hi there, whoever you are. I hope you stick around. If nothing else, the pet photos are adorable.

Doc Savage cover by James Bama, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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February 13, 2026 · 5:10 am

A worm, a bird and a cat

Random photos I haven’t posted yet. First a caterpillar caught hanging from its silk (I think)

Then a heron.

And finally, a cute shot of Snowdrop.

Happy Friday!

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February 12, 2026 · 5:23 am

The good side of 80 percent, 10 percent, 10 percent

I’ve blogged repeatedly about the idea society is made up of 10 percent heroes, 10 percent villains and 80 percent who can go either way depending on circumstances. The first year of the Necrotic Toddler administration, seeing how many institutions caved to him, that was depressing: would the 80 percent simply submit to they tyrant and do nothing?

As we’re seeing in Minneapolis, I may have been too cynical and too lacking in faith. As Paul Krugman wrote last week, “moral outrage over the Trump administration’s brutality (and its corruption, but that’s a subject for another post) has exploded as a political force over the past two months. There was substantial resistance to ICE’s attempts to intimidate Los Angeles and Chicago. But the response since the invasion of Minneapolis (and now all of Minnesota) began in December has been on another level, a mass nonviolent uprising reminiscent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the color revolutions in the former Soviet empire.

MPR News reports that nearly 30,000 Minnesotans have been trained as constitutional observers, with another 6,000 volunteers registered to deliver food, give at-risk families rides, and so on. This is time-consuming, exhausting, dangerous activism. Yet ordinary Americans in large numbers are willing to do it.”

Adam Serwer: “Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

… No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.”

This does not guarantee victory. But as I blogged about Sunday, other countries have had resistance movements that persevered in the face of tyranny and won. And while I’m still horrified at how many people support the Necrotic Toddler, I’m not quite so despairing about humanity as a whole.

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February 11, 2026 · 5:06 am

Random writing/reading/creative links

“When a writer is rightfully outed as being abusive/hateful, I hate to see takes like “I knew there was a reason I didn’t like their work”. It only adds to the fallacy that equates quality of work with quality of character which is a HUGE part of how abuser artists are justified in the first place!”

“Artists are not vending machines of joy, obligated to dispense performance on demand. They are human beings. And their decision to step away from this moment is not divisive; it is a refusal to be conscripted into propaganda.” — Sharon E. Cathcart on artists refusing to appear at the Kennedy Center. There’s also the practical aspect that some artists perform and don’t get paid.

I’ve not seen Heated Rivalry but this seems like a good post on its success and why it baffles Hollywood.

Mo Ryan: “A thing that often makes me see red is execs saying “but we’re doing an elevated version of [x].” What if you… just did x? When an exec says “elevated version of” you can be pretty sure they mean “I think this is trash so we’re trying to not do the thing you want but make you think we’re doing it” Total agreement with this and the rest of the thread — as she notes, specfic gets a lot of this attitude (creators who sneer they’re taking some comic book character and Transcending The Genre).

Senator Eric Schmitt is horrified Netflix might buy Warner Brothers/Discovery because Netflix is too woke.

“The sweeping cuts this week that axed crucial reporting teams on the foreign, local and sports desks, eliminated all staff photographers and most of the video team, raised the prospect that The Post is on the brink of a death spiral as subscribers flee and advertisers walk away under Bezos’ ownership.” — from a look at Jeff Bezos choosing to kill the Washington Post as a functioning newspaper rather than put money into it (he could afford it) or sell it to someone he cares. As Josh Marshall put it, “What we’re seeing is something that should be familiar to any close of observer of the news over the last generation. Let’s call it the formulaic billionaire white knight press baron doom cycle.”

“Flaws do not define a character or make him boring: bad writing does that. Flaws don’t make interesting stories: conflict does. Flaws just provide one type of internal conflict; choices present another, and the best stories involving Superman and Dr. Strange are about the choices they have to make. (Or about external conflict, which is heaps of fun.) Superman has the “can’t save them all” story, which gets reused regularly (and is vitally important for understanding the character); Dr. Strange has the “must condemn someone to save the world” story (same).” — the Mighty God King blog on writing Dr. Strange (obviously it has wider application).

“Words like “wondered,” “believed,” “my mind,” “idea,” “might,” and “thought” place distance between the point of view character and the narrative. And between the narrative and the reader. You probably don’t use those words when you’re talking to yourself in your head.” — Barbara Ross.

Art by Gene Colan, all rights remain with current holders.

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