Now Destroy Your Multiverse

This image is likely copyrighted, but used here only for fair use purposes to illustrate the point of this blog entry. I will gladly remove it at its owners' request.

I need to talk to you about alternate realities, or what most writers now refer to as the "multiverse" concept.

Something that nearly all writers of superhero fiction have either forgotten, or if they aren't old enough, never knew in the first place: The concept of a "multiverse" was created as damage control.

When DC Comics reinvented the comics' "golden age" character The Flash in the 1960s, for a new generation's audience, they held on as long as they could leaving unexplained what had ever happened to Jay Garrick – The Flash whose title was published in the 1940s. The one with the silver Hermes helmet…?

The Flash was suddenly a modern chap named Barry Allen… whose costume was more of a one-piece space-age bodysuit than the traditional acrobatic outfits of the previous era's super-powered crimefighters.

Except for Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, most superheroes were suddenly completely different people behind their masks, getting strange costume upgrades in the name of modernity. And about the two main money-makers, Superman and Batman – weren't they getting a bit long in the tooth? Just how old was Bruce Wayne by 1969 – 30 years after he first donned the cape and pointy ears?

More directly… just WHERE THE HELL WAS Jay Garrick, now that this "Barry" was operating under the name The Flash?

Alan Scott… wasn't he Green Lantern? Who was this Hal Jordan dude? If Scott was anywhere around, wouldn't he at least have something to say about this modernized interloper? Even in the name of keeping his business cards relevant?

In the real world, the reason was simple – those old "super" characters had faded by the post-war years. During the war, most of them had been handed over to sub-par artists and writers who turned them into clownish fodder, while their original creators were, in some cases, aiming rifles at Nazis along the European front. Besides, nobody who still read comics cared for those caped poops anymore. There was a crying need to bring them up to date for the sake of attracting fresh readership, from a new generation that witnessed manned spaceflight, and cold-war paranoia.

By the comics' "silver age," Der Fuehrer was dead and everyone knew it. Real heroes in green had saved the day, not mincing domino-masked acrobats in caped pajamas.

Über-geeks will moan and kvetch that it was waaaaaay more complicated and nuanced, why superheroes underwent a mass-makeover that included a regime change of even their secret identities…

But it wasn't.

It was about money. Period. And so Barry Allen – a new Flash for a new demographic – was born.

But readers who still remembered Jay Garrick needed answers. Had Jay ever met Barry? Did they sign a contract of ownership for the name "Flash?" Did Jay get a royalty? Just for fun, did they have an informal footrace just to see if the title "Fastest Man Alive" would change hands? Did Garrick go on permanent vacation now that a successor had relieved him?

None of that would do. The mystery of Jay Garrick's fate hung like a storm cloud until the matter could no longer be ignored. Jay Garrick was still The Flash, somewhere else. In an alternate universe, one in which Barry Allen didn't exist… and vice-versa. It's a multiverse… and DC is bringing you stories from a different universe now. The one we covered in the 40s… it's still there, but no longer our main focus. That, by the way, conveniently answers a whole slew of pesky what-ifs.

Superman and Batman were too big as "major players" to have different secret identities. In this new universe, there's another Clark Kent, and a Bruce Wayne. They're far more important than Jay Garrick, who had to just hand over his job to a whole other guy.

The multiverse was created to solve the logistical problems of the march of time – to keep publishing stories about characters who were created so distantly in the past, that to just keep them young and flexible 40 years later would be truly absurd from an aging audience's viewpoint – or a league of comics purists.

A lot of comic-book – specifically superhero – lovers, may argue that this has all only served to create greater enjoyment of these worlds of imagination. It has exponentially increased the possibilities for over-the-top fantastic storylines and plot concepts. So what's the problem, you ask? Well, unfortunately, it's all being sold that way to budding writers.

And that shifts focus away from older concepts, like say, writing WELL.

Inspirational articles aimed at aspiring storytellers now have headlines like, "Creating A Plausible Multiverse," "Who Are Your Characters In A Grand Scheme Scenario" or even "Have You Considered Your Story In An Alternate Reality."

Really? All fiction is already, technically, alternate reality, but roadmapping alternate-alternates is a bit over the edge of competent tale-telling for new writers. Enormously better advice would be to hone one's talents (maybe for years, decades) writing about your 'original' universe, before pondering the what-ifs of characters that are likely not well-developed to begin with.

The writers of comic books have you laughably out-gunned, to quote Nick Fury from The Avengers movie. They have nearly an entire century's worth of backstory to work with and embellish upon, regarding many of the iconic characters they write about. Superman, Batman and a handful of DC's properties, for example, are pre-WWII creations – and even they were technically derivative then. (Superman was inspired partially by early 20th century pulp characters like Doc Savage, and Philip Wylie's protagonist in the novel Gladiator. Believe it or not, Batman was not the first action character to use a bat as the theme of his avatar…)

A new writer doesn't have that kind of ammo. Your characters do not have 90-year legacies of reinvention. You haven't really fully introduced us to them in the context of their current 'reality' yet. So why muddy the water beyond recognition by wasting your time re-creating him/her/it in regards to an alternate-universe persona with tweaked histories, quirks, etc?

You are defeating yourself as a writer. Don't do it. Interest us in your character. Period. If you can't do that well, nobody gives a shit about his alternate universe counterpart. We don't have time for the other him, anyway – we're still experiencing his original incarnation. Nobody cares. Only you – misguidedly – do. Get used to that.

Are you a writer? Or just a geek mentally masturbating? You are the 'god' of the universes you create on paper – bring about the apocalypse upon all but one of them, and describe it in ways that make others interested to read about it.

IT. Not THEM.

Destroy your multiverse. It isn't serving you.

Now Get Your Cape On!

Marvel just recently announced major re-thinks of two of its major characters.

Captain America is now black… and The Mighty Thor is now a woman!

Why am I not impressed? Because I conceived of a black patriotic hero, and a hammer-wielding superheroine first, a year prior, in fact. Here's proof.

My youth is where my heart is, and a big part of my youth was consumed by comic books. I drew comics. I read them. I was very particular concerning which story arcs I accepted. No, I never bought into the premise of multiple-titles, each with a different reality. That was a sign of poor writing, and "creatives" who couldn't formulate.

Now in the second decade of the 21st Century, where Superheroes are the current generation's Shakespeare (you may quote me), I find myself at personal odds with an industry I once loyally supported with the hard-earned funds of a youth that I now consider partially misspent – on most of those pulp-paper abominations.

Superheroes are the perfect balance between art and mind-rot. Treasure and trash. They may deserve preservation, but not worship.

Having created leagues of my own original super-folk – none of which saw publication before – I sat down with my creative cap on one last time, and put forth a whole new batch of them.

Only these were not based on the old conceptual glue, like justice, strength and purity, but on current societal lean-to's – money, technology, religion, gender identity. Heroes that embodied disparate cultural factions, forced to work together for a common cause, when the most powerful – influential – of them turns evil (or was perhaps evil all along, and suddenly unabashed about his real purpose).

You want diverse heroes? We got them! We got your straight hero, your gay hero, your Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Atheist heroes… your Technology-based heroes and Ethereally-based heroes… you're going to wind up rooting for somebody here!

Some of them are thematically informed by the classic comic book icons, certainly, but you'll see quickly that their actual symbolism goes much deeper. A serious fable, told with as much sincerity as any yarn about people with absurdly impossible powers can be. And yes, with stifled giggles along the way.

I think you'll want – need – to read:

OUTSUPERED, OR, I SAVED THE WORLD AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CAPE

Available in paperback, or e-book, as per usual, it's the odd-ball entry among the more mundane superhero fiction on your bookshelf!

Written with all the cliffhanging excitement that an aging comic book geek can channel, it even has a fairly decent plot to offer – with a post-modern edge, and a moral by the final page. Would you expect anything less from a bunch of costumed do-gooders?

And in keeping with the current trends, a sequel may be in the works. We'll see.

__________________________________

By the way, "Outsupered" is one of the few book titles one can type into most search engines and find no other competing books whatsoever – so don't tell me you couldn't find it. It's available from many online booksellers, in addition to Amazon.

Interesting vs. Deep

Among my current PIPs (Projects In Progress) is a science fiction anthology, focused mainly on time travel; a sort of modern spin on the old Amazing Wonder Tales genre of pulp writing.

What really galls me is that I switched to that descriptive out of desperation. It became obvious even to their soulfully dedicated author (me) that these supposedly intense, thought-provoking works tended to morph into comic-book yarns by their final chapters.

Time travel never lends itself to concise parcels of resolution. No matter how well constructed the double-crux or triple-crux or however-many-crux of the ending… there's always a "but if."

But if he killed the murderer before the murder was committed, and the person originally the victim lives, then there's no longer motivation for a travel back in time to kill the guy who murdered him since no murder actually took place. But if you don't…? But if…

No writer has years and years to cover every angle, snip every conceivable loose thread, or even think of all the potential double, triple and quadruple-crosses made feasible by tampering even just once with a given timeline. Even if the writer only writes one time-travel story and spends decades backtracking and rerouting every misstep, some other will come along eventually with a "but if."

Quick, flawed solutions are an author's only hope.

If you race back in time and accidentally shoot your own grandfather before your parent is born, do you blink out of existence? And therefor erase your own act of grand-patricide? Thereby causing yourself to be born anyway? And race back in time again, and accidentally re-shoot your grandfather… and re-erase the act by re-blinking out of existence… and…

Or if you shoot your grandfather before your parent is born, are you still only born with a different hair color? A different ethnicity? A different sir-name? Was your soul waiting to emerge into the world anyway, and merely stepped into the next available timeline after you eradicated the previously original one?

Comic-book quick-fixes are to where all fantasy author's turn. Even the most intricately woven tapestries, by such "infallible" pens as those of H.G. Wells and others, are unwoven by a tug of a thread.

Some only make the journey to that implausible final chapter more entertaining than others do. They may even predict future events along the way, but the actual, plausible-no-matter-how-ridiculous destination of the trip belongs solely to we travelers of unglamorous reality.

The title of this upcoming attempt at flawless time-tripping is yet to be final. But watch this space! It's coming in the future.

"The future is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives!" – Criswell

Ring-A-Ding…

Yes, we missed our cue entirely…

We post about a different book in the Fosterical Library every Monday… and last Monday was the birthday of Lenny Bruce!

We're ashamed of ourselves. It would have been the perfect day to post about…

MR. BRUCE, DO YOU SWEAR?

We cannot atone for this wrong.

But we will still unabashedly put this wild, thoughtful tribute under your nose for future consideration!

Brucephiles! Here is the script in its entirety – the stageplay that began the deluge of theatrical Lenny tributes in the mid-2000's! Many more hit the boards following the 2004 debut of this show – some got more publicity, some had larger audiences, but only here did Lenny Bruce literally retake the witness stand for one more chance to defend his life and his game-changing style of humor.

Other productions were merely staged one-man eulogistic monologues. Mr. Bruce, Do You Swear? is Lenny looking eye-to-eye again with his critics and accusers. Firing back. And yeah, recreating some of his legendary – and not so legendary – performances along the way.

He even steps out of the grave and talks right to the current era – where he sees that little has changed since his untimely demise.

A great addition to your Bruce bookshelf – in e-book and paperback!

Mr. Bruce Do You Swear?

Reviews from Goodreads.com

Continue Being Scared!

As we approach Halloween, there are few better reads than the works of Ambrose Bierce. His macabre stories ruled the late 19th century's horror and fantasy genres, as had Edgar Allan Poe's in that mid-century, when ghosts and the inexplicable were taken a bit more seriously than today.

Were their readers less sophisticated, or more tuned in, than those of the current era? Whichever they were, their taste in writers was above criticism. But exactly who were these tellers of strange tales themselves?

AMBROSE BIERCE, THE LAST STAND OF … attempts to clue in readers – and playgoers – as to the inner workings of one of American history's most mysterious and enigmatic minds!

No one really knows how Bierce spent his final night on earth, after he vanished beyond the Mexican border in 1913, in search of contact with revolutionary Pancho Villa. All communication with Bierce ceased in December of that year, and it could only be assumed that it was because of his demise on some northern Mexico battlefield, or that he was executed by federalé rifles.

Or did he escape?

What we know for certain is that the early 20th century's Master of the Literary Macabre – author of The Devil's Dictionary, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and The Damned Thing, among other other-worldly works, made good his promise never to lie beneath a tombstone – to this day, he doesn't.

Available in e-book and paperback, Rob Foster's 2-act play is just what you're looking for to sit by the eerie glow of the fire with, munching all the Halloween candy for yourself!

A Sense Of Humor Is A Babe Magnet!

Are You Read Up For Halloween?

Would you like a good late night lights-out book?

Does your theater group need a quick fill for an upcoming spot this October?

You may think the mystery of Jack the Ripper has been solved, thanks to the latest DNA research, but the macabre intrigue is far from over!

One man had the answer long before any laboratory scientist. He did it with the arithmetic of observation and deduction – and passed the answer on to a younger sleuth to solve the puzzle. The how and why of it may leave you spellbound at its deceptive simplicity.

26 HIGH STREET - A JACK THE RIPPER MYSTERY FOR RADIO OR READERS' THEATRE

… is still a great Halloween read, no matter what has allegedly been debunked! Whether you're alone on October 31st in the solemn ambiance of a single table lamp, or performing before an audience in the glow of a spotlight, this is a story that will fill your night with fun and excited trepidation.

Available in e-book format or paperback, 26 High Street is your ticket to share in the mystery that… may or may not… have been solved by a microscope!