Alternative Guide to Alternative Reality 3... Comics!

Read Part one of the blog at Life in the Realm of Fantasy

And hop over like an excited Bunny to part two at Fresh Pot of Tea

 

And now for part three.....

 

If I were a dishonest man (and the admission that my previous Movember moustache makes me look like the Village People indicates I am utterly honest) then I’d claim that some awesome seminal sci-fi story created my interest in alternate reality. The truth is far from that- it was a combination of the awesome old-school Star Trek, and Marvel comics that take the blame.

For those who follow my blog that’ll come as no surprise. I’ve rambled about the key influence of comics in my fantasy writing before, and its impact on my current book, The Infinity Bridge, is glaring. The whole plot begs for a graphic novel, and the pace, dialogue and action is very comic book style in places.

One of the fundamental aspects of the book is the idea of alternate reality, that history/evolution/physical laws of the world could have diverged at some stage from our own. It’s a wonderful plot device—the possibilities are endless, and range from the divergences of individuals (think It’s a Wondeful Life and Sliding Doors) to entire worlds and their structure (think Wizard of Oz and Narnia in more extreme examples). So it is no surprise that the theme is a massive one in the world of comics.

The first mainstream use of alternate worlds was over in DC-world, back in the Wonder Woman and Flash comics. Wonder Woman kicked it off with our hot pants heroine falling through a dimensional rift and meeting a double called Tara Teruna (two Wonder Women... and so the fantasy begins...). But the Flash story, Flash of Two Worlds, was the seminal moment where we have a true ‘alternate.’ It used the great idea that the Golden Age Flash, a comic book character in our Flash’s world as well as ours, existed in a parallel world (called Earth-2 in later series). DC expanded this idea again and again, using the tool to resurrect Golden Age incarnations of their characters, and ones acquired from other publishers over the years.

It all got a little bonkers in the end, and DC started to wrap it all up with the series Crisis on Infinite Earths... and then rebooted and rebooted and wrote Infinite Crisis and 52 and... bleh...

But I’ve never been a DC boy (although my moustache again may infer otherwise), I’m Marvel through and through. For me the series ‘What If’, which was serialised in UK comics was my first exposure. It was a series where the light-bulb headed Watcher told a yarn about a reality that had diverged at a significant historical moment in the Marvel Universe. There were so many good ones, the memorable ones for me (probably because his was the most popular comic at the time) being the Spiderman ones: what if Aunt May had been popped instead of Uncle Ben?; What if someone else had been bitten by that radioactive spider?; What if Spidey joined the Fantastic Four?; What if the Spider clone lived? (it did, much to the groans of multitudes of Spider fans).

Yet those tales were only ever short spin-off ideas. The parallel worlds and alternate history as actual plot lines in Marvel comics really took off with the X-men. My era of the X-men was the classic Claremont-Byrne run, reprinted in the UK in wonderful monochrome which made some parts rather tricky to follow. Towards the end of their run together, the pair did a story Days of Futures Past, in which characters from an alternate future travel to the mainstream world of the X-men to try and avert a key event that created their divergent reality. It was massively and deservedly popular (not least because you got to see Wolverine toasted by a Sentinel...bub) and Claremont returned again and again to that alternate, often bringing characters and villains across (Rachel Summers Phoenix; Nimrod; Forge etc).

The idea grew and grew over the years, and there’s an awesome geek out list on the web with all the alternates numbered (from a 2005 summary I think). I found myself reading like a sad-o through it and nodding at the ones I recognised....

You can see the appeal as a writer, especially if you write a series. Alternate realities allow the writer to screw around with characters, about what we know or think we know about them, without upsetting the mainstream ones. It also allows the rather tired concept of evil versions of characters to be used (none may live up to the glory of evil-Kirk and his guy-liner).

It would be difficult to write anything on comics and how they influenced me without doffing the cap to Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Watchmen runs with the concept of how history would be altered if superheroes existed in our world—so how would the presence of a superhuman impact upon the Vietnam War, or international relations/politics, or day-to-day living, or technology. The influence of the Watchmen comic on the genre is vast, and it deservedly maintains its status in comic book history. If you are not a particular comic fan and wanted to see what could be done differently with the genre then this is a great place to start (the subtleties to the plot-lines are marvellous).

 

So that wraps up my ranting on alternate worlds, taking it back to where it all began for me. I haven’t broken any new ground in my book, using the alternate history model as an excuse for Steampunk fun. Oh, and its meant I could have an ogre pop up in some woods near York. In the sequels to the book I’m planning a few weirder ideas... and, yes, at some point I’ll need an evil version of a character. Its just got to be done...

 

The Infinity Bridge is up on t'Amazon, both in print and in Kindle. If you want a peek then click on the links...

 

Amazon UK

Amazon everywhere else, like the USA and Oz

 

 

 

 

On stretchy trousers, shark-repellent spray and ZOD

There’s a scene in the new Avengers movie where Captain America is sat feeling like a man out of time, not getting the cultural references around him. Then someone says a line about flying monkeys (as in the Wizard of Oz) and he smiles and says, “That one I get.”

It’s a scene slightly reminiscent of a great piece in the Civil War: Frontline comic where Ben Ulrich and Sally Floyd interview Cap in his cell and point out all the things about modern day America he doesn’t know about or doesn’t get. That’s an aside, as this blog isn’t about the comic (although I do love the Avengers franchise dearly)—it’s about the changing nature of superhero films.

When I came out of the Avengers last week, with my two eldest kids (9 and 8) we were buzzing about the movie. What was so special about it? My son hit the nail on the head as we drove home (as he often does). “Dad, that was awesome... it was just like the comic.”

And there you have it. The reasons it’s so good is that it was just like the comic. From the dialogue, to the plot, to the action, to the depiction of the Hulk. It was spot on. Now that’s no great surprise—Joss Whedon, amongst many things, wrote for Marvel (The Runaways was excellent, and his run on X-men was OK). But he carries something more to it... an understanding of how to translate what looks good on the comic page into something that doesn’t look like CGI cheese on the screen. It’s not simply a matter of special effects- Transformers 2 proved that. It’s the actors and the plot not coming across as too daft that makes it work.

Of course Avengers can’t claim to be the first to achieve that. There have been some amazing superhero movies over the years—but it made me think, when did they really start to reflect the comics? As I supped a glass of red wine I pondered the question, with the world becoming as fuzzy as a James T Kirk love scene

I grew up (well got chronologically older) in the seventies and eighties. It was an era where special effects really came into being, and marked the boom in sci-fi films and series (Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Alien, Buck Rogers etc). There were attempts at fantasy films that hit or missed (Hawk the Slayer, Excalibur, Sword and Sorcerer, Conan, Krull... a rather mixed bag). And there were superhero films.

 I adored the sixties Batman re-runs as a kid, and indeed the film, which was shown fairly regularly in the pre-VCR days. Ironically it reflected the comic at the time it was made, but by the time I watched it Batman the comic was undergoing a re-birth with darker stories and grittier characters. And I was never a big DC fan. Then the big screen played host to Superman, and the little screen to the Hulk and Spiderman.

They just weren’t right. Superman was a great film, as was Superman 2, and I got the duvet cover, the posters, the bubblegum cards, and so forth. Superman 2 had the super-villians (kneel before Zod!) but it still didn’t feel like the comic, which was far more cosmic and on a different power scale. Similarly the Hulk series gave us great lines about not making me angry, and the eternal debate about stretchable trousers, but it was a different kettle of (green) fish to clashing with The Leader, The Abomination, Doc Samson, The U-Foes etc. And Spiderman? Loved the wall crawling, could cope with chunky white bracelets, but here was a dude with the best roster of villains ever in comics. And he spent most episodes battling hoods with pistols. Sigh.

The effects, the costumes, the stories just couldn’t match the comics. When did that change? I’m tempted to say with Batman, in the late Eighties. Yet even with the wonder of Tim Burton, and I do love those first two films, there is a vibe of underlying campness to it, a sort of silliness, that didn’t reflect what we were reading at the time (Batman in late eighties had seminal works like The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One).

It was Spiderman who saved it for me. The X-men was close, and in retrospect probably turned the tide, but Sam Raimi’s trilogy was perfect. I’d loved Raimi’s Evil Dead films as a student, mainly for the brilliant Evil Dead 2, which has the best lines ever in a horror film... and a chainsaw grafted to a stump of an arm. With Spiderman he got it perfect—the effects, the story, the acting. The sense of pity you had for Peter Parker that pervaded the comics from day one was captured, as was the menace of the Green Goblin and the tragedy that follows. Spiderman 2 was even better—I can watch and re-watch the scene in the bank where he pulls Aunt May down as the vault door hurtles overhead.

And they’ve gone from strength to strength. The X-men trilogy was well done, as were the two prequels. The two Iron Man films were also great, and I loved Thor. Less certain about the two Hulk ones, Daredevil and Elektra and I’ve never been a big Batman fan so the Dark Knight style films have left me feeling a bit despondent. The prospect of a Spiderman re-boot isn’t thrilling me, I’ll admit, perhaps because I’m sick of re-boots and liked the previous films so much.

Of course, other (non superhero) comics have had the big screen flourish. They are a mixed bag too: Alan Moore’s have struggled notably, sadly as he’s probably the best comics writer alive (Watchmen was OK, as was V for Vendetta, but League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contravened the Geneva convention); 300 was cool, Wanted I’ve not even seen (although the comic was a let down). Kick Ass is on my to be watched list (the comic pushed the taste boundary for me too).

Now they’ve got it right, from a comics fan perspective, I hope they stay on track. The worst thing in the world would be to get carried away and let shite stories slip in. I’m hoping for an awesome Avengers 2, and given the popularity of the current film I’m certain they’ll do one. And despite all I’ve written, I loved those superhero movies/series when I was a kid because it was still a buzz seeing characters you love coming to life on the screen—even if they weren’t quite right.

Which would lead perfectly into talking about The Hobbit....

But that’s a blog for another day....

A funny Spiderman clip to finish with... Kenny Everett's take on the Web slinger...