The first three were going to be the basis for long posts in themselves. But it’s been a while and I still don’t have anything to say, so I’ll toss them out as they stand.
Writing about her first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, NK Jemisin once said she’d always had trouble with the idea of Lord of the Rings that all the heroes should do is fix the world and restore it to normal: ” Yeah, sure, there’s a certain mental comfort food in the idea of putting the world back to rights. But there’s always a part of me that wonders, which rights should it be put back to? Did the heroes make the best choice, or just the easiest one? Who gets to answer that question? But such questions aren’t easy to answer, which is why I think a lot of fantasy simply doesn’t try.” I think it’s a good question even though Jemisin is wrong about LOTR — they don’t restore the world to normal, they end the Age.
2)Marvel editor-in chief Tom Brevoort had a post on his blog some time back about superhero morality particularly as it applies to the transition to movies. Comics are still widely seen as a kids’ medium so a lot of heroes carry an old-school don’t kill morality with them. Movies on the other hand, even superhero movies, aspire to an audience that includes a lot of adults and in action film that usually means killing as catharsis: the bad guy’s gonna pay for what he did.
3)My fellow Atomic Junkshop scribe Greg hatcher wrote the following about Batman writers who try to go excessively adult: “He’s still fighting the Adam West fight,” is how my friends and I refer to it. You can always tell when someone’s fighting the Adam West fight in a modern superhero story; mostly because there will be jarringly inappropriate sex scenes, the violence is way over the top, and everyone swears like a sailor…. But it’s still your basic chase, explosion, good guy hits bad guy, the end plot.”
Now, other links:
One problem with Batman adaptations is that the writers can’t make a mystery only Batman can solve which results in bad Batman plots.
A company launches a proposed YA rating system. Foz Meadows explains the problems with it.
Why one Sikh cosplays as a bearded, bespectacled Captain America.
The problem with autistic characters in movies.
“A romance story is a story in which a woman is the most significant damn thing in the book.”
Why it’s sometimes a problem to give a character a tragic revenge backstory.
There’s a popular legend that Bruce Lee created the concept for the Kung Fu TV series and the showrunners stole it. It isn’t true.
You may have heard this already, but the grown-up baby on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind is now suing them on the grounds the cover image is child porn.
It’s hard to be a fan when your faves can turn out to be monsters.
#SFWApro. Cover by Michael Kaluta, all rights remain with current holder.
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