A Rant & A Meme

Initiate Grumpy Bulldog rant!!!

First up, the rant.  I've been annoyed at the seemingly tepid response to some entries lately.  I mean it seems like no one's really cared about the last Two-Fer Tuesdays.  I'll probably have to get rid of that segment, though I have them all scheduled through the end of the year so that will give me until 2013 to come up with something new.  Wednesday's it took hours before anyone seemed to notice it, and then stupid Blogger marked that comment as "Spam".  Argh.  Even the trivia questions, where I'm literally paying you to answer them can take like a half-hour for anyone to answer.  This despite that I clearly announce the exact freaking time when it's going to be posted and in some cases I post days ahead of time to remind you when it will be posted.  That's why I had to have a poll to let people decide when they wanted the question to post so maybe I can drum up a little interest.

If I can't even get you people to take free money (or virtually free money) from me then I must really be doing something wrong here.  And while occasionally there are some different people who respond, it's mostly the same 4-5 people responding to everything.  On top of that I've only gotten one new "follower" in about three months.  Though part of that might be people just don't use that widget anymore.  I still see it as a prestige thing and wonder why so many other blogs (even ones that barely post) have hundreds of "followers" and I can't even get over 100.  Incidentally my Grumpy Bulldog blog still has more "followers" than this one and I haven't posted a new entry there since March 31!

I try to remind myself to be patient.  These things take time.  Maybe if the book ever gets released that will help drive more people to this site.  But I am not a patient man about most things.  Like most of America, I want it NOW!!!!

Then I wonder:  what do I have to do?  As the Joker said through Anthony Michael Hall in The Dark Knight, "What do I have to do to get you people off of the bench and into the game?"   I mean, what do you people want to see?  At this point I should just start screaming like Maximus in Gladiator, "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??!!!"

My philosophy was that I didn't want this to be another boring author's blog.  I didn't want to post a bunch of phony baloney writing tips about "show versus tell" and "cures for writer's block" and all that other crap.  I mean if you want that I think there are plenty of other blogs doing that and it seemed to me there was no sense in going along with the herd.  So I've been trying to do different things, especially with the rotating Wednesday posts.  With some like the Comic Captions and the Superhero Trivia I try to be more interactive so people can feel like they're involved with the blog, but as I said even that doesn't seem to rouse a lot of interest.

Anyway, if you want writing tips I can do that.  If you want me to talk about TV shows maybe I can start watching those.  Or maybe you want more personal stuff like vacation stories and such?  I can't promise those would be very interesting.  Do you want more rambling, sleep-deprived rants like this?

And I keep harping on this, but I keep these Fridays and Mondays open if you want to do a guest post.  You can post whatever the hell you want so long as you keep it clean.  I mean if you want to pimp your book or reveal your cover or any of that stuff you're more than free to do so.  Though if you want to write a love letter about Mitt Romney or extoll the virtues of the Tea Party I'd probably tell you to take a hike.  Otherwise all you have to do is Contact Me by Email or Twitter or just a freaking blog comment and I can set something.  I really don't get why more people don't take advantage of that, just like why no one ever asks ME to beta read their book or any of that; are you that intimidated by my awesomeness?  (Little joke.)

One thing I'm pretty sure of is you don't want me talking about old Batman comics, so I'm not going to do that for a while.  Anything else you want, just let me know because I'm not writing this blog to entertain myself.  It's supposed to be to entertain you so you think I'm all cool and witty and want to buy my book.  Cha-ching!

Or I can rip off more cute bulldog pictures:

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Maybe you want me to do more of these stupid "awards" or memes and crap.  I find chain letters annoying but people just can't seem to get enough of them.  So here you go, here's this "Be Inspired" one I got from Michael Offutt on Wednesday.  (There's nothing more inspiring than answering a bunch of questions everyone else is answering!)

I think you're supposed to talk about a book you're writing but I'm sort of between books right now so I'll just make it about the one that should (fingers crossed) be released next month.

1. What is the name of your book? A Hero's Journey (see that badge on the right with the cover and saying Coming in September 2012!?)
2. Where did the idea for your book come from?  This is a long story that began in 2002, though I had tried my hand at other superhero stories back in the 90s without much luck.  Anyway, I was actually trying to write a literary story about a TV show focused on a superhero, so I needed to come up with a character and for whatever reason I used The Scarlet Knight.  Though in that incarnation the Scarlet Knight was a man (Percival Graves) who I use in the current book as the previous Scarlet Knight.  No one of course wanted my wonderful literary novel but I reused the character in a dark, gritty novella that was kind of a modern Don Quixote, something Hollywood has now copied ad nauseum.  That also didn't do anything but I kept plugging away and wrote the short story Heart of A Hero in 2008.  That was when Emma Earl was introduced, though if you read that story in the Special Features section (did you even know there was a Special Features tab?  There is!) you'll see some differences.  Really that was more of a Saturday morning cartoon kind of story, at least at the beginning and then it goes all Quantum Leap.  Anyway, after my opus Where You Belong, I decided I needed a break from serious stuff and so I reread the Heart of A Hero story and thought, why not make it a novel?  Boom!
3. In what genre would you classify your book? Speculative Fiction/Urban Fantasy
4. Who would you pick to play your characters in a movie adaptation? No idea at this point. I'm not really sure who the "it" girl of the moment is who could do it.  Jennifer Lawrence?  But she's got all those Hunger Games movies (that they'll probably split now into 7 separate movies each) and other stuff so she might be too busy.  As a second choice and because I saw her name earlier I thought of Mia Wasikowska, who was in that Alice in Wonderland movie a couple years ago and also in "Lawless" that's out this weekend.  She could probably play a pasty nerd who is still tough enough to beat the shit out of some bad guys when called upon.  Though really this kind of question reminds me of "Free Enterprise" where Bill Shatner is discussing who to cast as Calpurnia in his epic six-hour musical of Julius Caesar and he's like "If we can't get Julia Roberts to do it then maybe we could get Sharon Stone (who was still a big deal then).  Or maybe Heather Locklear.  I know Heather, she's great!"  The thing is there has to be a book first and then that book has to be successful enough to sell movie rights and then they have to have enough money to cast any decent actors and in any case I will have absolutely no input on that decision.
5. Give us a one sentence synopsis of your book? A young woman finds a suit of magic armor and has to save the world.
6. Is your book already published? In theory it should be soon.  In theory.
7. How long did it take you to write this book? So picking up from question 2, I wrote the first draft in 2009 in like six weeks.  And it SUCKED.  There were a lot of plot holes it seemed to me.  So I regrouped and decided on how I could plug those holes.  The second draft then I wrote a few weeks later, and again it probably took six weeks or so.  The second draft is narrated by Marlin the ghost, which was fun but had some drawbacks, like how does Marlin know all this other shit going down?  It got to be cumbersome.  That didn't stop me from plowing ahead with 2 sequels!  Then I guess in the winter of 2010 sometime I adapted that into a graphic novel script.  That turned out to be pretty long so I cut it down and really if anyone's interested, that's still out there.  All I need is someone to draw it.  Anyway, about November 2010 I had finished the last of eight books in the series plus a prequel.  Then I thought I really ought to go back and redo the first one.  So by the end of the year I'd finished what would essentially be the fourth first draft of the story.  In spring 2011 I edited it and started sending it out first to agents (who were not interested because she doesn't sparkle or get raped up the ass by some hot guy or whatever).  Well I did have one agent ask for a full, which necessitated a lot of last second paring because to try and draw more interest I'd lied and said it was only 85,000 words when it was really 105,000.  See the Deleted Scenes to see a lot of what got cut.  Anyway, she said it was too weird and passed.  So I sent it out to small publishers.  I didn't hear anything until January 2012 when the people who are in theory publishing the book accepted it.  Then in March I had to turn it in for edits, which I didn't hear anything until May.  So I had to make their edits plus I had Mr. Offutt read it and he gave me some stuff to edit.  Long story short by the end of June I turned it in.  I heard they're having a "proofreader" looking it over before it goes online, so let's hope that person doesn't fuck it up too much.  Was that more than you ever wanted to know?  Probably.
8. What other books in your genre would you compare it to? I've read a couple of superhero-related books.  It's not quite like Soon I Will Be Invincible in that there's only one superhero and I'm not trying to parody all the comic book tropes and such.  I think it's better than this After the Golden Age book I read where the main character (the daughter of a couple of superheroes) gets kidnapped like six times by the villains in the book.  I mean I like to think Emma is a lot smarter than that.  But anyway, it would fit somewhere in that genre.  Of course I'd love to compare it to the recent Batman movies except my book involves magic armor, ghosts, witches, and a guy who lives in the sewers and talks to rats so there's not that much realism.
9. Which authors inspired you to write this book? I think reading Michael Chabon's "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is what made me want to do the literary book in 2002 that led in a circuitous way to this book, so there you go.  I think I should note I was not an avid comic book fan so I think that's about the only reason I ever got interested in this subject.
10. Tell us anything that might pique our interest in your book.  Sex!  Wait, there isn't any.  Damn it.  How about that the Scarlet Knight has lots of neat powers?  She can turn invisible, bullets can't hurt her, she can jump really high with her boots, and climb walls with her gloves.  And she's got an awesome samurai-type sword that glows and can be remotely controlled by her mind!  The Black Dragoon, her mortal foe, is no slouch either.  He's got these bad-ass Freddy Krueger claws, except he can shoot them like darts!  Or he can make them grow really long to use as a spear.  Doesn't that sound totally bad-ass?

I'm supposed to inflict this chain letter on other people, but I'm sure everyone else has already done it because I'm the last to do any of these stupid things.

Anyway, just to let you know (not that you people seem to pay attention) there might be a Labor Day guest post.  If not then there will be another Two-Fer Tuesday whether you want there to be or not.

Thursday Review: Batman: Venom

It's my last review of Batman Knightfall-related stuff.  We've already done Knightfall, Knightsend, Vengeance of Bane, and Azrael, so now I'm going all the way back to what really got things in motion, the Venom miniseries from 1991.  You can buy a paperback reprint of this from Amazon or other booksellers.  But since it was just as much, I bought the five issues of Legends of the Dark Knight this was featured in online from the DC Comics site.  Though it was kind of annoying because unlike other series they don't have the Venom series categorized by a storyline so I only stumbled across them while I was goofing around.  That site is fun for looking at the old comics, though there are still a lot of gaps in the older series and some, like Azrael, that don't have much posted.  I'm sure they're working on that.

Anyway, so this is kind of a prequel series, which is apparent because Jim Gordon is only a captain (unlike the movies he didn't skip from Lieutenant to Commissioner) and Harvey Dent is not yet Two-Face and only an assistant DA.

When it starts, Batman is searching for a kidnapped girl named Sissy Porter.  (What a terrible name.)  He finds her in a water pipeline or something but there's a problem:  there's been a cave-in that is blocking Batman from reaching the girl and also causing the water to rise.  Batman struggles to remove some of the huge chunks of debris out of the way, but he's too weak to get one last piece to move.  Sissy ends up drowning while Batman can do nothing.  (It's a little contrived to me.  I mean usually Batman would have something in his utility belt to shatter the rock, right?)

Batman is a lot more bummed about the girl's death than her father, who is a chemist working on a super-steroid not yet known as Venom.  Batman breaks the bad news and then goes to track down the kidnappers to break them.  Except he's injured his shoulder from trying to lift the big rock and so ends up getting beat up instead.

That's when he decides to go back to Dr. Porter and get some of the steroids.  These give him the strength to beat up the kidnappers with ease.  Afterwards he feels so awesome he starts to laugh like a manaic--like the Joker.

From there Batman keeps taking the pills until he starts to look more like Superman.  He gets so cocky about his new strength that he starts going around without his costume, instead wearing only a trench coat and fedora when he beats up random bad guys for no real reason.  Later we start to see that the Venom has pretty much turned Bruce Wayne into a doltish thug.  He's also turned into a junkie, who has to visit Dr. Porter every few weeks or days for his next fix.

Porter and a retired general he's working with figure this is how they can control Batman to do their bidding.  Their first assignment is for him to eliminate Captain Gordon, who's been sniffing around their business.  In order to get his next fix, Batman agrees.

Except of course he doesn't go through with it.  Instead he warns Gordon and then goes to apprehend Porter and the general.  When he gets there, though, Porter uses some of the pills to distract Batman long enough to escape.

Having failed to apprehend the criminals, Batman decides it's time to get off the junk.  I felt kind of gypped because the description of part 3 says Batman will have to confront his worst nightmares and stuff.  Except we don't get to SEE anything.  He just locks himself in the Batcave and all we see is Alfred checking the intercom every so often.  What a ripoff!

Meanwhile, Porter, the general, and his goofy son Timmy have gone to Santa Prisca, which as you might know by now is where Bane was born and raised in a prison.  The junta there have agreed to help Porter with his work.  First Porter makes a new, more concentrated formula, this time an injection instead of a pill, so it's pretty much the same stuff Bane uses later on.  He uses the general's son as his guinea pig (with the general's permission), turning sweet goofy Timmy into a brute, which seemed like kind of a parody of Captain America's origin story.  I mean Timmy could have passed for a taller Steve Rogers before the Venom gets injected.

After spending a month in the Batcave (doing God only knows what) Batman finally emerges and begins getting back into shape so he can go hunt down Porter and the general.

Some time later, Batman and Alfred go down to Haiti and then rent a plane to fly them to Santa Prisca.  Meanwhile Dr. Porter and the general have made a squad of Venom-ed-up goons.  The general's plan is to take the goons to Africa to whomp on some bad guys to prove to the US government how great Venom is so then he can get his job back.  As for Dr. Porter, we learn the reason he didn't show much interest in his daughter dying is because he's hopped up on a different kind of pills, ones to help stimulate his brain while suppressing his emotions.

When Batman and Alfred get near the island, the general shoots down the plane with a missile--guess they won't get that security deposit back.  On the way down, Alfred and Batman are separated, landing on different parts of the island.  Batman manages to elude capture but Alfred is taken in.

Since they can't find Batman, the general and Porter dangle Alfred from a helicopter and send out a message saying if Batman wants his friend back, he'll have to rescue him from the ocean, at the point where sharks congregate.  So a bare-chested Batman goes into the water to save Alfred.  He has to fight off some sharks too, which he does by using a broken piece of wood that had been holding Alfred down and...wait for it...shark repellent!  Though I don't think the shark repellent came out of his utility belt like in the 1960s Batman "movie" starring Adam West where he was attacked by a plastic shark.  Still, talk about jumping the shark!

When they get to the shore, the general sics his son on Batman.  In a foreshadowing of Knightfall, Batman is too weakened to defeat the kid.  Then Dr. Porter makes the classic villain mistake of keeping Batman alive so he can try to get him hooked back on the Venom.

Of course it would be easy enough at that point to simply inject Batman with the stuff.  But it would be much more fun to make it needlessly complicated.  So they imprison Batman in a dungeon with a bag of pills.  The only way of escape is a door that weighs 800 pounds and soon water will be coming into the cell.

The only way out is to take the Venom, right?  Wrong!  Instead Batman dips into the "MacGuyver" bag of tricks.  Or maybe the "A-Team" whenever they would cobble together some Rube Goldberg stuff to defeat the bad guys.

Once he escapes, Batman finds that the general has turned on Porter.  (Another classic villain mistake.)  He has Porter tied up and using some special interrogation methods that would make waterboarding seem tame, he extracts the Venom formula from the good doctor so he can make the stuff for himself and keep all the profits.

Batman easily bests the general and manages to keep him from ordering his mindless son to intervene.  As revenge, though, Porter uses a tape recording of the general's voice to order the general's son to kill his father.  Eventually then Batman takes Porter to Puerto Rico, where Gordon is waiting to bring him in.  The End.

Obviously this is more non-essential reading.  Though it is interesting if you want to know where the Venom stuff came from that helped make Bane so awesome he could snap Batman like a twig.  The last couple of issues descended into traditional comic book plots, which made for a kind of unsatisfying ending.  I mean, shark repellent, really?  Then the classic villain tropes of keeping the hero alive when it would be much simpler to just kill him.  And while they don't come right out and say, "Just Say No" or anything, the anti-drug message is pretty obvious.  Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

And obviously I've read and reviewed all this stuff in about the most half-assed way possible, starting with essentially the middle then the end and then going back and back even further.  Well, too bad.

Next month I suppose I should lay off the Batman comics and move on to other stuff.  I've read a little bit of the New 52 Superman and Action Comics.  You know, start with the classics, right?  Other suggestions?

Labor Day I might have a guest post (the author hasn't gotten back to me yet) and Tuesday is another Two-Fer...

A Hero's Journey: The Movie (Fake Trailer)

It's the fifth Wednesday of the month, which means I can post whatever the hell I want.  So I dug deep, back to something I posted on my first blog about 18 months ago.  I was trying to sleep and for some reason I got to visualizing a movie trailer for "A Hero's Journey."

I reworked that concept to make it better, I think anyway.  The obvious inspiration would be for the recent Batman movies:

Opening [after all the production company logos]:  scene from the flashback where Emma is 8 years old in the car with her parents.

EMMA'S MOM:  It will be all right, baby.

Cut to a card saying something like:

Bright light and then CRUNCH! they’re hit by another car.

Then we do a cut with a second of black and a burst of Hans Zimmer-like score that should probably accompany each cut.

After that a few seconds from near the end of the flashback where Emma kneels beside her mom lying facedown on the street in a pool of blood.

Do a quick cut to the front of the Plaine Museum of Natural History

And then inside, where Emma is in her lab and studying the evil black crate that looks like that thing in 2001.
            EMMA:  What are you?
Then she jerks back as the crate says in a demonic voice:  I am the one who can make them pay.

Another card that says something like:

Another cut to inside the museum during the fancy charity gala when there’s an explosion.

Another quick cut to when Emma is at the top of the steps to the third floor and sees the outline of the evil Black Dragoon.

Card saying something like: 

(because it's a blockbuster it has to be summer)

Another cut to inside the Sanctuary beneath the museum, where Emma is opening the red crate for the magic armor.   As she opens the crate and holds up the helmet
                  EMMA'S MOM (voiceover):  You have a great destiny ahead of you.

Card saying something like: 

Now we need a big final montage with dramatic music and action shots of Emma fighting various criminals and the Black Dragoon.

It ends with the Scarlet Knight and Black Dragoon squaring off in Executive Plaza
                 DRAGOON:  Your feeble plan has failed.
                 EMMA:  Not yet
Then she throws the Sword of Justice flying towards the screen and up comes the title:  A Hero’s Journey–in 3D! (Because everything has to be in 3D)

Throw in the final cards for credits/rating and the release date and we’re done!

Now tell me if I did that right you wouldn’t go see that movie.  Of course you would!  Unless you hate superhero movies, in which case it probably wouldn’t matter what it was.  If only I had a budget, I could film that for the most epic book trailer ever.

Fake poster too...

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Being real about release date

Just for fun I got thinking then of how to do a trailer for a novel I have yet to query, Chance of a Lifetime.  If you followed the Grumpy Bulldog blog you might remember that one.  It's the one I posted all these pictures from.  If you still don't remember, tough cop Steve Fischer is injected with an experimental drug and then killed by a gangster.  He wakes up later as a young woman, taking on the name Stacey Chance, and then going to get revenge.  So here's how it would go in my head:

After all the production company titles and ratings warnings (this would be R-rated) and such we begin with a shot of a man (Steve Fischer) descending through dark water, his body limp and trailing blood.
                   STEVE (voiceover): This harbor is full of ghosts.

Steve Fischer

A couple of quick shots of Steve fighting gangster Artie Luther on a boat, until Luther injects Steve in the neck with a syringe full of pink stuff.  Then Luther shoots Steve and tosses him overboard.

Then cut back to Steve hitting the bottom of the harbor.
                   STEVE (voiceover): I should have been one of them.

Then we cut to someone emerging from the water, onto a dock.

Stacey Chance

And then we go closer up to see it's a naked young woman, Stacey Chance.
                   STACEY (voiceover):  But I got another chance.

[The "teaser" version would probably end there.  The full version would continue like so:  ]

Cut to Stacey in the apartment of Dr. Clarita Palmer, looking at some notes about the experimental drug.  Dr. Palmer gives a real bare bones description of the drug (FY-1978) and what it does.

Then we cut to a car, where Stacey is sitting with Steve's old partner, Jake Madigan.
                   JAKE: What are you going to do now?
                   STACEY:  I'm going to make them pay. 

So then we get a bunch of quick images of Stacey in a nightclub (attempting to look sexy), Stacey fighting a dude in a limo, Stacey in a warehouse office with a machine gun, Stacey in an office building hallway firing a handgun...you know, action movie stuff.

We finish in Jake's study with him looking sternly at Stacey.
                   JAKE: I told you, no more of that Clint Eastwood stuff.
                   STACEY:  I promise.  From now on, I'll be a good girl.

And then we cut to one last shot of her driving the Madigan family station wagon wildly through the streets.  Followed by the title cards for whenever it would be released.

Doesn't that sound like a great movie too?  And another kick-ass book trailer.


Tomorrow I wrap up my rambling about Knightfall-related Batman comics with the Batman: Venom miniseries...

Two-Fer Tuesday #18: End of the Line

It's Tuesday, which means another Two Fer Tuesday.  If you're not acquainted with the rules, I use a random number generator to pick a page and paragraph to pluck two sentences from.  Let's see what we get this week.

Page Number:  41
Paragraph Number: 3
For once it's one I didn't have to fudge a little to find something interesting:

A fence topped with barbed wire blocked the other end of the alley, but he saw doors that led into a couple of old factories.  He could hide in one of those until the monster went away.

Tomorrow is the 5th Wednesday of the month, which means a mystery post!

Guest Post: Me: The Problem With Sequels

Today's guest post is by me!  Wait, that doesn't make sense.  Anyway, I'm bored and feel the urge to whine and since no one took up today's space (your loss, authors) I might as well use up this dead air.

OK, so I've been having some problems with the sequel to A Hero's Journey.  The problem is not actually writing a sequel.  I've actually written two drafts of the sequel already.  The problem is writing a sequel that doesn't suck.  Added to the problem is that I've already written a bunch of other sequels (six others total) and I did a little setup at the end of the first book, so I'm painted into a sort of corner.

The first version of the sequel I wrote in August/September of 2009.  I remember it exactly because it was the first story I wrote on my spiffy new Toshiba netbook, which is no longer new but still spiffy.  (I mean that 9 hour or so battery life was a godsend because no longer had to search Starbuckses and Panera Breads for outlets.)  Anyway, that first draft involved the mysterious Marie Marsh and even more mysterious Watchmaker going back in time to save people they care about, which screws up the timeline.  Worse yet is that the Watchmaker especially can't save the person he cares about so he keeps going back to try and fix things only to make things worse until Emma (with a lot of help from Marie) stops him and changes things back in sort of Back to the Future II style by going back to when Marie and the Watchmaker first went back in time and stopping them.

Anyway, I was never happy with how that turned out.  Then when A Hero's Journey got picked up by a publisher I decided I ought to rewrite the sequel.  I finished the first draft of that second draft a couple of months ago.  My beta reader got back to me with some concerns, mostly that Emma doesn't do a lot and reiterating my concern that the Watchmaker wasn't much of a villain.

So now it's back to formula here.  Then last Thursday as I was sitting in traffic it occurred to me that part of my problem is I was limiting myself too much by trying to just rework the first draft.  I realized that at the end of A Hero's Journey we know almost nothing about the Watchmaker (except his code name) and we don't know much about Marie Marsh either.  So I had a lot more room to maneuver than I was giving myself.

Anyway, this weekend I got to thinking of a third version.  This one takes parts from the first two drafts and also fuses it with the very first Emma Earl story, Heart of a Hero, which you can read in its entirety in the Special Features tab along with a bunch of other stuff you probably never thought to look at.

So here's a shorter version of the notes I wrote this weekend that ended up being 9 pages.  The fundamental difference is in the character of the Watchmaker.  In the first two versions he was this tragic character who wants to help Marie go back in time to save his wife, who fell from a building while trying to stop someone from jumping.  Anyway, this version gives him a much more villainous agenda.  Here we go!

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Not a real cover!

It's 18 months after A Hero's Journey and not a lot has changed.  Emma is still the Scarlet Knight and fighting evil.  Then she finds out from Detective Donovan that they may finally know who killed Emma's parents 13 years earlier, but those people are on the run from the cops and mob boss Don Vendetta.  (At this point if you don't know who anyone is, maybe go read the Character Bios.)

Meanwhile unbeknownst to Emma (but knownst to us) Marie is working with the Watchmaker to develop enough power in her funky pale blue eye so she can go back in time and save a little girl named Veronica Windham.  So far while Marie can manifest herself back in time as pretty much a ghost she can't make any physical contact.  She knows that eventually Veronica will die from a fever that would be easily curable in the 21st Century.

The Watchmaker is basically serving as her evil Yoda, or perhaps Darth Sidious, to instruct her on how to use her eye's true power.  They finally get to the point where Marie can manifest herself physically for a few seconds.  To strengthen the connection they need to rely on a little black magic.

While Emma is wasting a lot of time on revenge, Marie and the Watchmaker finally go back in time to 1876 and Marie is able to take Veronica with her back to the present.  The Watchmaker meanwhile goes to a nearby church and takes an old book that has some more black magic in it.  Then they go back to the present.

Because of chaos theory or the butterfly effect or whatever there are some slight alterations to the present.  In Emma's case she realizes they're fairly substantial alterations.  One minute she's a grown woman and a superhero interrogating the men who might have killed her parents and the next she finds herself as a seventh grader with no magic armor at all.  But on the bright side her mother is alive!  (Her father is still dead.)

Since she's so young and powerless, the pair of witches she's befriended, Agnes and Sylvia, tell her to let them find Marie and make her change things back.  So Emma tries to live as normally as possible, which isn't all that easy.  She does make a couple of fumbling attempts to help find Marie but they don't go well.

Meanwhile Veronica is recovering thanks to some 21st Century medicine while the Watchmaker looks through the old book he stole.  He finally reveals to Marie that he is actually a demon (or really has a demon inside him) and with Marie's eye and the book he plans to open a gateway to allow a lot more demons into the world so they can take over.  Marie doesn't really want to help with that but it's either she helps or Veronica dies.

When Sylvia closes in on them, the Watchmaker decides to call out a bunch of other demon buddies, who start terrorizing the city.  One of those demons terrorizes a field trip Emma is on.  Using some cunning and ingenuity she drives off the demon and saves her class, which helps her to realize that she's not as powerless as she and the witches thought.

So with some help from Becky, Emma retrieves the magic armor.  Just in time, as the Watchmaker is finally ready to open the gateway with Marie's help.  Emma teams up with Sylvia to fight their way past a demon army in order to get to Marie and stop her.  Eventually Emma convinces Marie to turn on the Watchmaker and get rid of him and the gateway.  Then she puts time back the way it was (not by turning the Earth backwards because that's just fucking stupid) so Emma gets to be a big girl again and has to make a big girl decision about what to do with the people who may or may not have killed her parents.

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Anyway, does that sound exciting enough?  There is a lull I suppose in the middle, but I think it has a bigger payoff at the end than previous versions.  What do you think?

Tomorrow features the most exciting Two-Fer Tuesday yet!

Thursday Review: Sword of Azrael & Azrael Issues #36-40

So after talking endlessly about the old Batman Knightfall and then Knightsend stories and reading the Vengeance of Bane stories, I kind of wanted to go back and read more about Azrael, who briefly subs for Bruce Wayne as Batman.  There's a slight problem, though:  I couldn't hardly find any Azrael comics to read.  The Knightfall prequel series, Sword of Azrael is the only Azrael story in paperback and that's out of print so it's going for $15 (or more) online.  I finally got a copy in the mail yesterday.  Hooray!  Besides that, the DC website only had 5 out of his series from 1995-2003, which I read since they were only 99 cents apiece on sale.  So that's all I have to work with.  That and Wikipedia and what I remember from the Knightfall novelization.

First off, you might wonder, who the hell is Azrael?  His real name is Jean-Paul Valley.  Without his realizing it, he was born into a society of assassins known as the Order of St. Dumas.  The Order avenges crimes using a costumed vigilante known as Azrael, who wields a flaming sword and wears red-and-gold armor.  (Does that sound familiar?  Except the Scarlet Knight's sword is not flaming.  It glows.  Take that!)

Anyway, Jean-Paul is just a nerdy computer science college student when one night his father shows up, dying and wearing the Azrael costume.  He tells his son that he has to open a packet he's left, which leads Jean-Paul to Switzerland and a chateau in the mountains.

It turns out that unbeknownst to Jean-Paul he's had all this subliminal training since before he was born.  It's a system helpfully called "The System" that allows him to completely immerse himself in the personality of Azrael and do things he'd never ordinarily do.  Helping him in this is a dwarf named Nomoz, who is one ugly son of a bitch and Azrael's trainer.  (Incidentally, the Scarlet Knight's trainer is a ghost, not a dwarf.  Ah-ha!  But they are both assholes.  So there's that.)

The guy who killed Jean-Paul's father is named Carleton Lehigh.  He embezzled funds from the Order to start his own weapons business.  One of those weapons was Teflon-coated bullets that could go through the bulletproof vest Jean-Paul's father wore beneath his robes.  Jean-Paul's father died in Gotham, which puts Batman on his trail.  Batman listens in to Lehigh's phone and finds out Lehigh is going to Switzerland, so he and Alfred go off in hot pursuit.

Jean-Paul is training to be the next Azrael when Lehigh and Batman show up.  Lehigh uses a rocket launcher to blow the chateau to hell.  But of course Jean-Paul and Nomoz escape.  Batman and Alfred are also unharmed.  During his escape, Lehigh's helicopter crashes and he suffers a concussion or something that causes him to go nuts and think he's the agent of Azrael's mortal enemy, the demon Biis.  He decides to get himself a costume and paint his face to look like a skull and then go out to kill the dozen or so remaining members of the Order.

Azrael and Batman leave Switzerland separately but both end up on Lehigh's trail to France.  They're too late to stop Lehigh and in the process Bruce Wayne is taken captive by Lehigh.  Azrael joins forces with Alfred to track them down.  They deduce that Lehigh is going west, which would next put him in London.

For whatever reason, Lehigh decides to kill the next guy wearing the Batsuit.  The material of the Batsuit must be pretty stretchy to accommodate Lehigh's gut, which kind of makes him seem comical instead of menacing.  Anyway, Azrael gets there just as Lehigh is escaping.  Azrael kills a bunch of guards but fails to catch Lehigh.

The next destination is Lehigh's oil refinery in Texas.  There he plans to kill Bruce Wayne as a sacrifice to Biis.  Azrael is again hot on his trail.  By the time he gets in there, a fire has already started.  Though Azrael does not rescue people, Jean-Paul fights back against the System enough to wrap Bruce in his fireproof Batman cape and get him out of the refinery before it goes blooey.  Hooray, Batman is saved, Jean-Paul has recovered some of his humanity, and the bad is dead...or so we think.

Since this was a scant 4 issue miniseries or about 112 pages, there wasn't a lot of time for deep reflection or anything like that.  I didn't really understand where Azrael's new suit came from, except maybe they'd had it lying around.  It would have been cooler if Jean-Paul had redesigned it himself.  I'm just saying.

After that, for a little while Jean-Paul kicks around Gotham, working as a security guard or something.  That is until Bruce Wayne is crippled by Bane.  Then he takes over as Batman.  He struggles with it, especially after breathing some of the Scarecrow's fear gas, which causes his old Azrael training to kick in.  Jean-Paul becomes increasingly isolated and insane, until finally a healed Bruce Wayne takes back the Batman mantle.

From there Jean-Paul goes back to the Azrael role.  Though this time he tries to be a kindler, gentler superhero, more like Batman.  It isn't working out so well, though, leading Bruce Wayne to get a little pissed at him, especially when Azrael accidentally breaks up an undercover operation by the Gotham PD.

But Bruce decides to give Jean-Paul one last chance to prove himself.  The evil Bane has been spotted in Florida and since it was Jean-Paul who defeated Bane before, who better to go apprehend him again?  Jean-Paul is eager for the chance to finally show he's worthy of Bruce's trust.

There's a little hitch though when a woman named Lilha shows up at his apartment.  If you could find the previous 35 issues of the series you might know who the hell she is.  Anyway, she has some kind of history with Jean-Paul and asks for his help in recovering some papers in Mexico City.

At first he thinks with his boner and agrees to help her.  Eventually though he changes his mind and runs off the plane and onto one bound for Miami.  (This was pre-9/11 where you could do that without being hauled to Guontonimo Bay.)  On the plane is Nomoz, Azrael's trainer. 

By the time they reach Florida, Bane has broken out his old buddy Bird from jail and with his help tweaked the old Venom supersteroid formula that made Bane so powerful before.  Azrael and Nomoz catch up to Bane and Bird on a dock.  Rather than take on Azrael directly, Bane first injects Bird with some of the new Venom, which makes him super-strong and crazy.

Azrael defeats Bird but it weakens him for the fight against Bane.  So the rematch goes to Bane, who captures Azrael and Nomoz to test the Venom formula on them.  It turns out not only is the new Venom powerful, it's also really addictive.  After being injected with the stuff, Jean-Paul has to fight withdrawal symptoms while resisting the urge to beg for more of the stuff.

Bane's ultimate destination is his old home of Santa Prisca.  There he plans to sell Venom to a general looking to take over the place.  With an army of supersoldiers who need Venom to survive, the general figures he can be the unquestioned ruler of the place, the same philosophy of the Dominion in Deep Space Nine.

Ultimately Azrael escapes and defeats some Venom-ed up dudes.  Then comes the final fight with Bane.  Except instead of going toe-to-toe, Jean-Paul borrows a little from Rocky Balboa at the end of "Rocky III" where he taunted Mr. T to keep hitting him in order to tire him out.  In this case Jean-Paul wants Bane to keep hitting him while he continually taunts Bane to show him how weak Bane is without the Venom.  Like Mr. T, eventually Bane is weakened.

The ploy works and Jean-Paul feels better about himself for having won not only with strength, but with cunning, like the Batman.  Hooray!

Issue #40 then picks up with Azrael taking Bane to Gotham.  Except his timing is lousy.  Just as they land there's a huge earthquake that rocks Gotham.  (This being part of the "Cataclysm" story which beget the "No Man's Land" story arc which probably beget something else because in those days they seemed to just jump from one extended story to another.)  Bane escapes in the confusion and Azrael goes after him, which is complicated by the quake and aftershocks.  They have a pretty lame fight during which Bane tries to convince Azrael to join him and together they will rule the galaxy, or planet, whatever.  Azrael wins again and drags Bane away, but Bane must escape at some point because he's loose again in the "No Man's Land" story arc.

Anyway, these were fun but obviously not essential reading by any stretch.  As they always do, the descriptions and covers tended to build up the actual stories more than perhaps warranted.  And as far as the art went, my big problem was sometimes from afar Jean-Paul looked like a woman.  I mean really the first time there was a long shot of him in civilian clothes I was like, "Who's that woman?"  He really should have cut his hair or something.  I'm just saying.

Dude looks like a lady!

As I've noted in a couple of places there are parallels between Azrael and the Scarlet Knight.  Superficially they have the same color scheme and both use a sword (actually Azrael has two swords, one on each arm) though the Scarlet Knight's sword is way better, as is her armor since both are magic.  They both have a fantasy-type trainer, unless you think ghosts are real, although Marlin is not at all like those "ghosts" you see on the Syfy Channel; he's more in the Casper mold.  Jean-Paul Valley and Emma Earl are both the latest incarnation of a long line of heroes, though obviously Jean-Paul's is by blood--or so he thinks for a while--while Emma's is not.  They're both painfully shy and awkward around the opposite sex, though Emma is a freaking genius while Jean-Paul is not.  As well, they both struggle to find their way as a hero. 

Zombie Azrael in Blackest Night #4

From reading Wikipedia I guess Azrael got cancelled after 100 issues.  There was some issue as to whether he was dead or not.  Then he shows up six years later as a zombie in the Blackest Night series, which confirmed he's dead.  Not that anyone ever has to be dead in the comic book universe.  There is a rebooted "Azrael" who looks more like the character you play in the "Assassin's Creed" video games.  I guess he shows up in the "Arkham City" video game and will probably be involved in the sequel.  Anyway, it's a different guy and a lame suit, so whatever.


To wrap up my obsessive compulsive rambling about Knightfall and its offshoots, I'll be going back to the Batman: Venom prequel series next week, despite that Venom is never mentioned in "The Dark Knight Rises" and so isn't that relevant.  But without the Venom there would have been no Bane in the comics and thus no Bane in the movie, so there.

Tuesday is Two-Fer Tuesday, where perhaps you can see more of where I shamelessly rip off comic books and comic book movies...

Practical Superheroism #4: Weapons of Choice

DISCLAIMER:  This column is intended for entertainment purposes only.  Actually trying to do anything suggested here will result in great bodily harm--for you.  Don't say I didn't warn you!

All right, so in Part 1 I suggested how to come up with a decent superhero name.

Part 2 dealt with how to make a practical costume.

Part 3 told you how to decide on a fighting style.

Now in Part 4 we're going to talk about weapons.  Fun!

Built-in weapons: how convenient!

A lot of superheroes luck out and don't need to go out and shop for weapons.  Superman's got his heat vision, Wolverine has built-in claws, and so on.  Others like Batman or Iron Man or Captain America have to obtain their own weapons, though the latter's was with your tax dollars.  (SOCIALISM!!!)  Still others like Thor or my own Scarlet Knight are provided their weapons by higher powers.

Scarlet Knight's Sword of Justice, courtesy of Merlin

The thing is, though, this column assumes you are not a billionaire weapons designer like Iron Man and you don't have a staff of weapons designers on your payroll like Batman.  Also I'm assuming you don't work for the US government like Captain America.  And you probably haven't had Odin or Merlin make any hammers or swords for you lately.  Remember, this is Practical Superheroism, not Pie-in-the-Sky Fantasizing Superheroism.  (Or is it?)

So we're shopping for weapons on a budget.  In the last column I talked about whether you should be more of a brawler or more of a ninja.  Either way, you know what you need:  a gun.  And you might say, "Well Batman doesn't use guns."  But again he has people to make him all sorts of cool Batarangs and non-lethal explosives and gases and whatnot.  Do you have that?  I didn't think so.

Look at this way:  most criminals have guns.  Hell, a lot of non-criminal people have guns.  I live near Detroit so trust me on this.  You go running into the mean streets with just a knife or club or something and you are literally bringing a knife to a gun fight.

In the wake of the Aurora, Colorado shooting it seems insensitive to suggest buying a gun.  But here's the other thing:  just because you have a gun doesn't mean you have to KILL anyone.  Just shoot people in the knee or something, if you can.  If you can't, then pray you have a "stand your ground" law in your state.  Or do like I saw in these "Wilderness Family" movies I saw as a kid and fire into the air a few times and then brandish the thing to get people's attention.

While we're at it, I'd suggest getting the highest-caliber, easiest to use weapon you can find.  I should also say not to get one that's so high-caliber it'll throw you back ten feet if you fire it.  If you're an average-height blob like me that might not be a problem but if you're on the smaller side, it's something to remember.  You really want something with some stopping power, unless you're Annie Oakley, in which case you've been dead for about 100 years.

Another way to go though is with a shotgun.  Then you don't get as much stopping power, but you get a wider coverage area.  That means you don't have to aim as well.  I'm sure on YouTube you can find a video of how to saw off a shotgun to make it more portable.  Yup.  Here's just the first one I found:

Really you might want to carry the shotgun on your back so you can use it in more crowded situations and then keep a smaller handgun for more limited engagements.  Also a shotgun makes a hell of a lot of noise (unless you have a silencer like in No Country for Old Men) so that might intimidate your opponents and send them running.  If it doesn't then you can still have a pistol. So really what I'd suggest is going to the nearest gun and knife show in your area.  Then you can look around, talk to dealers, and find something you like.  You'll probably get a better deal too than just waltzing into your nearest gun shop. While you're there, look for a knife or two as well.  Guns are great for longer range, but if things get in close you might want something to fall back on.  You don't necessarily need a Bowie knife or a Crocodile Dundee-type knife, just something you can carry and access easily.  Let's say a switchblade, maybe three inches or so?

You probably think it'd be cool to get some ninja weapons like a sword and throwing stars and that stuff.  You can go that route, but make sure you really know what you're doing with those.  That kind of stuff takes a lot of skill, which is why I recommend relying on more American weapons that are still probably made in China. Another awesome weapon would be flamethrowers like Azrael Batman, but that would probably be too messy. It should go without saying (but let's say it anyway) that you should PRACTICE using any weapons you purchase.  Get a membership at a local gun range.  Practice opening and closing the knife so you don't cut your damned hand off.  Practice a lot before you decide to hit the streets so you don't look like a dumbass and get yourself killed. So we have handgun, shotgun (optional), and knife.  Maybe get more than one knife.  That might set you back a couple hundred dollars, which is probably 1% of what Batman or Iron Man spend on all their stuff.   And it should go without saying (but I'll say it anyway) not to use your weapons against crowds of moviegoers or anything like that.  This is Practical SuperHEROism, not Practical SuperVILLAINY, that's the blog down the hall.

Next month, we'll talk about some other stuff to take with you during those lonely nights of patrolling the city. 

Meanwhile, tomorrow I ramble on about Azrael and his influence on A Hero's Journey...

Two-Fer Tuesday #17: A Mystery

It's Tuesday, which means another Two Fer Tuesday.  If you're not acquainted with the rules, I use a random number generator to pick a page and paragraph to pluck two sentences from.  Let's see what we get this week.

Page Number:  48
Paragraph Number: 9

Another mysterious (or just vague) one:

Emma shook her head.  This isn’t real, she told herself.   

Ooh, what's going on?

Tomorrow's Practical Superheroism talks about weapons--exciting stuff!...

The Dark Knight Rises: More Thoughts

I finally got the chance to see The Dark Knight Rises in real IMAX at the Henry Ford in Dearborn this weekend.  It is definitely worth the extra money.  They say the IMAX makes you feel like you're in the movie, which isn't actually true but pretty close.  In the opening scene where Bane is escaping from the CIA plane and the other plane pulls him out while the CIA one goes crashing to the ground, I actually felt some real vertigo.  Another shot where you're looking down from above on Gotham made me a little nauseous.  With 10,000 watts of sound you can understand Bane a little better, plus sometimes the floor beneath your feet will shake, and the soundtrack with all those Teutonic horns and drums sounds amazing.

There were some drawbacks too.  For one thing the screen is SOOOOO BIG that sometimes it's hard to pay attention to more than just the center of the screen.  A few of the scenes not shot in IMAX looked a little fuzzy.  And since the images are so big, people's little imperfections show more.  I mean the wart or boil or whatever on Christian Bale's nose and on Marion Cotillard's forehead were probably as big as my car.

Still, if you're close to a real IMAX theater you should definitely go soon before this movie stops playing there.  It is totally worth the extra money.  And really at the Henry Ford it probably wasn't more than going to an evening showing of a 3D movie in a normal theater.  Only hey no clunky glasses.  Sweet.

Some other random stuff that's come up since my last review:

• A few weeks ago Roger Ebert linked to this article by fellow film critic Jim Emerson where he was lambasting The Dark Knight Rises and most notably the camera work on it.  My thought was, "So the fuck what?"  Look, normal slobs like me don't sit around analyzing every shot of the freaking movie.  The only time I care about cinematography is if it's distracting in some way.  Like when I talked about "Jeff Who Lives at Home" I hated the herky-jerky zooming.  Not long ago I saw this "Rampart" movie where for a meeting between 3-4 characters they literally had the camera spinning for like three minutes, which would have been a thousand times worse on IMAX--I probably would have puked.  Otherwise no one except film critics or film students give a shit.  Stuff like that is actually why normal people don't like critics.
• I mentioned the soundtrack earlier, but I really liked the soundtrack to this one better than "The Dark Knight."  Bane had a cool theme with those big drums pounding and Selina Kyle had a neat theme too with the tinkling piano.  I can't really remember much about the music to the last one, whether the Joker or Two-Face had much of a theme.
• Something I was talking with Tony Laplume about on one of his blogs was how Robin (Detective Blake) is sort of a combination of different comic book Robins.  I pointed out how his background with his mother dying and later his father dying by gangsters was more like the background of Jason Todd, the second Robin.  Tony pointed out that Blake is a lot more focused than Jason Todd, which is more akin to Dick Grayson, the first Robin.  It also occurs to me that Blake goes to Bruce Wayne after figuring out that he's Batman, which I think is more like Tim Drake, the third Robin.  I'm not sure how much of that was intentional or not.
• While I'm talking about Robin, I think a Nightwing movie would be awesome.  All the pieces are there to keep the Nolanverse going, with Robin Blake taking over.  Of course since Batman is "dead" he'd want to take a new identity and it probably wouldn't be that hard to modify the Batsuit into a Nightwing suit.  You could still have Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox, even Alfred if you want.  Come on greedy studio execs, make it happen!
• Something Tony Laplume mentioned on my Vengeance of Bane post--and other people have said--is how the twist at the end where Miranda Tate is really the mastermind of the scheme marginalize Bane as just hired muscle.  I tend to disagree with that.  I mean we don't discount the bravery or heroism of soldiers on the ground just because a general back in Washington made the plan.  Bane was the one who had to really sell the plan to Daggett, his henchmen, and the people of Gotham and make it work on a tactical level, which makes him more than just a hired thug.  And the relationship between him and Talia/Miranda then is kind of sad and tragic.  BTW, do you think him and Talia ever got it on when they were in the League of Shadows?  How weird would Bane sound in bed?  I mean imagine dirty talk through that Darth Vader mask of his.  There's probably already a YouTube video on it.  If not there should be!  And while I'm at it, how does Bane shave with that thing on his face?  If it hurts so much to take it off, what does he do?
• Something my sisters, Jim Emerson, others have complained about is why they lied about Harvey Dent in the first place.  Why didn't they just tell the truth eight years ago?  Well really if you think about it, thanks to the Joker, a bunch of people had already died because Batman wouldn't come forward with his true identity.  Do you really think then the people of Gotham are going to believe that Batman was the hero and Harvey Dent--the White Knight--was the villain?  Oh but people can handle the truth, right?  Um, yeah, right.  We're talking about the same country where people still think President Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya.  The lie at the time was better for all concerned.  My sisters also posited why anyone gives a shit about the DA anyway.  I would say in a city as corrupt as Gotham was, any public official who isn't on the take is a breath of fresh air.  When he looks like Aaron Eckhart too, you can see why people were swooning.
• Another thing people talk about--including me--is the lack of the Joker in the movie.  Someone even drew up an elaborate way they could have worked the Joker into the Blackgate Prison scene, which involved his door being stuck or something.  I think they could have done it a lot easier and just had Gordon or Foley or Blake or someone say, "Whew, I'm glad we transferred the Joker out of Gotham years ago!"  Then the Joker's non-appearance would make sense.  (And seriously, where else but Gotham does a city keep all these violent prisoners for the better part of 8 years anyway?  Most should have been transferred to maximum security prisons upstate a long time ago.)
• The Chubby Chatterbox Stephen Hayes lamented how little Batman is actually in the movie.  That's a criticism I can understand.  It's also a criticism about the sequel to A Hero's Journey.  I'd like to have Emma doing more Scarlet Knight stuff and less Emma Earl stuff, but that's not really the story, so it's kind of problematic.  The same deal with The Dark Knight Rises I suppose.
• The Geek Twins pointed out how you should have been able to figure out Bane was not the one who escaped the prison from when he says he didn't see real light until he was already a man.  Which is true.  Why didn't I think of that?  I guess I wasn't paying enough attention.  I pointed out you also get a clue as to Miranda Tate's identity when at the fancy party she tells Bruce Wayne how she wants to bring the world in balance. That was the goal of the League of Shadows if you remember your "Batman Begins."  So if you are paying attention you can figure it out ahead of time.
• My sister said there are people out there who think the whole end is a dream and Batman actually dies.  What morons.  Someone else decried that the part at the end in the cafe is amateurish because Alfred's fantasy comes true.  Well do the math here.  Alfred told Bruce the fantasy, so Bruce knows Alfred will presumably be there, so what better way to safely show his old butler that he's OK?  I mean phone calls or text messages might be able to be traced.  He could maybe send a letter, if he knew where Alfred was staying and since Alfred is no longer taking care of Wayne Manor, maybe he didn't have a steady address.  My problem with the end is that when they're getting the bomb hooked up there's like 90 seconds left on the clock and somehow Batman gets the bomb all the way through Gotham and safely out of range in that time.  Another example of "movie time" as opposed to real time I suppose. 
• Someone else (who I guess is an expert on the subject) complained about the prison pit.  Since the rope seems to go almost all the way up, why doesn't Bruce (who's in awesome shape) just climb up the rope to almost the top?  Hurm.  They went on to say that there were plenty of other holds, making the jump pointless.  Well even on an IMAX screen it's hard to judge how sturdy those holds might be or if they're really as prominent as they might seem.  Let's just trust the people who are actually on the ground there in real life.  My problem with it is why does everyone try to make the jump from a complete stop?  Why not go all the way to the far end of the ledge and then run to make the jump?  That always worked in Super Mario Brothers.  I'm just saying.

Anyway, who else has any great observations?

Tuesday is still a Two-Fer, but it's not a very interesting one.  I'm just warning you.

Guest Post: Andrea Buginsky: Characters Coming to Life

I’d like to thank P.T. for inviting me to his wonderful world of superheroes to introduce my own group of superheroes, The Chosen. This group of brave warriors is derived from an online role-playing game I played with my family at the time I wrote the first book, “The Chosen.” I wanted to take our characters on more quests, and develop them more along the lines of how I saw them.

The easiest character for me to develop was Halli, as she’s mine. But I found that as I started writing the story, Halli showed me sides to her I never knew; as did the others. I’ve always heard authors speaking about their characters taking over and writing their own stories, but I hadn’t experienced it until I began writing “The Chosen.” It’s a wonderful feeling.

Now that the second book in the series, “Nature’s Unbalance,” is published, my readers can learn more about the characters as well. I feel they’ve grown since the first book, as have I. I have just completed the first draft of the third book, and they are continuing to grow, as, once again, am I.

From book to book, story to story, these characters are coming to life more and more, and I am coming to love them more and more. I love to see where they take me from one storyline to the next, rather than where I am taking them. it doesn’t matter how many notes, outlines, or ideas I make for each story; they eventually start taking over and the book comes to life right before my eyes. It’s amazing!

I also love hearing from my readers how much they are enjoying getting to know my characters. My plan is to continue to develop them individually and as a group from book to book. I don’t want to just focus on one or two of them, with the rest being background characters. I want each of them to shine. I want my readers to be able to point to one of them and say, “That’s me. That’s who I am like.”

For me, I can tell you right now: I am Halli through and through. This wonderful character is teaching me so much about myself, and opening up my eyes to more and more possibilities of what could lie ahead for me.

Which member of The Chosen are you most like? Your choices are:

• Halli, a female dwarf paladin with the power to heal who is shy, friendly, loyal, giving and heartwarming.
• Silvorhawk, a male goliath mage who is fun loving, caring, respectful, and protective.
• Striker, a male elf hunter who is a natural born leader, fatherly, protective, and respectful.
• Kaidyla, a female elf hunter who is stubborn, protective, and a true friend to those she lets inside.
• Lumina, a female elf druid who is carefree, charming, loving, and giving.
• Redsham, a male goliath shaman who is warm, fun loving, caring, funny, and outgoing.

So, who do you see yourself as? Comment below.

Andrea Buginsky is a freelance writer and author. “The Chosen” was her first book, and was followed by “My Open Heart,” an autobiography about growing up with heart disease. “Nature’s Unbalance” is the second story in THE CHOSEN series. Andrea plans to write more in the series. She’s already done with the first draft of book 3 and has a concept for book 4. You can find Andrea on her website, Andi’s Realm. Her books are available at Amazon.

Thanks to Andrea for allowing me to host her here today.  Of course you too can write a guest post to plug whatever you want to plug.  All you got to do is contact me and let me know which Monday or Friday works for you.

Tuesday is another Two-Fer.  And remember starting today is the eFestival of Books online.  You can chat with me (and others) about female heroes 6pm EST Saturday and about short stories 1pm EST Sunday. Click HERE to sign up (it's FREE) and show your support.

Thursday Review: Vegeance of Bane

UPDATE:  If you remember Monday's post, I talked about the online book fair where I will be this weekend.  I found out if you want to go you have to register with the site by Friday at noon (EST I assume) so even if you want to drop by for a few minutes, be sure to register TODAY! It is FREE, so what the hell, right?  Link to the site!

Now on with the show!  I'm going to continue my walk down memory lane with old Batman comics.  Because I can.  I remembered seeing the Vengeance of Bane comics on Amazon but I never bothered to buy them.  I mean anything I needed to know about Bane was in the Knightfall novelization.

Just before "The Dark Knight Rises" came out though I went to the DC website and they had both Vengeance of Bane comics on sale for 99 cents each.  So what the hell, I decided to read them.

The first part is set before the Knightfall storyline.  It details Bane's origin story.  On the island of Santa Prisca (a made up Caribbean island) the evil junta have recently crushed a rebellion.  Bane's father was part of it but not captured or something.  (That part isn't explained.)  According to the island's law, his son then has to serve the sentence.  Except he doesn't have a son--yet.  His wife is pregnant and when she gives birth to a boy, the infant is forced to live in the prison.

A couple of years later, his mother dies in captivity.  The cruel warden releases the young boy into the general population of the prison.  After one inmate hassles him, the boy kills the inmate in brutal fashion.  The warden gives the boy the name Bane since he considers the child a bane to his regime.  Then he throws Bane into solitary confinement for years.

While in solitary, Bane envisions himself becoming a perfect being, both strong and wise.  His only enemy is fear, epitomized by a giant bat.  So Bane sets himself to ridding himself of fear and perfecting his body.

Years later he's released back into the general population, but now he is a big strong man who also devours books to improve his mind.  Then a scientist shows up at the prison to conduct some experiments on inmate "volunteers" with a supersteroid known as Venom.  The warden sees how the Venom has killed everyone it's injected into, so he signs Bane up in the hopes of getting rid of him.

Of course it doesn't kill him.  Instead it only makes Bane stronger.  Not only that, but some plastic armor shields are grafted beneath his skin to help make him more impervious to damage.

An inmate named Zombie who works in the infirmary and who remembers Bane from his youth swipes some of the Venom and figures out how to replicate it.  With the formula in hand, Bane breaks out of the prison with the help of two other buddies:  Bird and Trogg.

Bird was a low-level player in Gotham City and he tells Bane that Batman runs the city.  So Bane decides he's going to destroy Batman.  First, though, he goes to the city to see about getting some Venom made and helps Bird settle a score.  This draws the attention of Batman.  Bane stays out of sight, observing his prey and waiting to strike...

This was an interesting read though as I said it's not really essential.  Bane's backstory is probably implausible in a number of ways, but this is a comic book, so whatever.  Still, this first part might be good reading if you want to see the origin of the character in the movie.

There's also a Vengeance of Bane, Part 2.  This takes place after Knightfall.  Bane is locked up in Blackgate Prison, where he's in terrible pain from a lack of Venom.  After getting beat up by another inmate, Bane decides it's time to break the Venom habit and get back into shape.  First, though he kills another inmate to get thrown into solitary, where again he works to improve himself and begins plotting his escape.

After getting out of solitary, he puts his plan into action to get out of the prison.  Once he's free, his plan isn't to take revenge on Batman, who at this point is back to being Bruce Wayne.  Instead Bane wants to find the people making Venom and destroy the drug once and for all.  Then he plans to go back to Santa Prisca to take revenge and to perhaps find his father, who might be alive.

Bane locates the people supplying the city with Venom, but as he's fighting them, Batman shows up.  They work together to take on a couple of dudes hopped up on Venom.  Strangely Bane has no interest in fighting Batman, while Batman is very interested in fighting him.  You think Bruce took getting his back broken a little hard?  But the roof starts to cave in before they can fight and Bane escapes to head back to Santa Prisca, which is the subject of another series of comics, which I didn't bother to read, at least not yet.

The second part wasn't all that interesting.  I suppose I didn't really care about Bane redeeming himself and becoming less of a villain.  It was kind of like "Godfather III" in that way.  Then of course you get gypped of a Bane-Batman rematch.  That does happen years later but whatever.

I wouldn't recommend buying these on Amazon, where they can go for $8-$10.  I mean for what they really contribute they aren't worth more than a couple of bucks.

Friday is a guest post that for once isn't written by the Grumpy Bulldog!

Everyday Heroes #4: My Personal Superhero

The Everyday Hero for this month was pretty easy to pick.  I didn't have to go looking for it online at all because it came to me.  When I needed a hero the most, one ordinary person rose up and became my superhero.

The prologue to this story is that I was going to Auburn Hills, over by the outlet mall to get lunch and eventually do some writing.  Plus I wanted to check out the Bargain Books store for a certain book I'd been pursuing.

Perhaps I should have considered it a sign or omen that thanks to construction, traffic was backed up for miles.  It seriously took an hour to get about 3 miles on the highway.  I should probably have turned around somewhere and gone someplace else, but I'm nothing if not stubborn.

I went to this Chinese restaurant I've been to numerous times over the years.  Everything was going pretty smoothly, although perhaps I was eating a little faster than usual (which is still fast) because of the traffic jam messing up my schedule.  I had gotten some of these fried shrimp they usually had, though I noticed they seemed a little overcooked so they were pretty hard.  I started breaking them up with my fork to make them easier to chew.

But I didn't break up one piece enough!  One moment everything was fine and the next, a piece of shrimp had become lodged in my throat.  We've all had times where something has a little trouble going down, but this was different.  This was completely stuck in my windpipe so that I could not breathe.

The first thing I did was get up to try and summon help.  So I'm standing there wheezing and clawing at my throat.  But no help was coming it seemed like.  People just kind of stared and sat there.

To my credit, I did know what to do.  I turned around and tried to get it out myself with the back of a chair.  The problem was these chairs had these really high backs, so I couldn't really get the right spot.  I did manage as well to wheeze "HELP!"

At that point I didn't see my life flashing before my eyes or visions of Heaven or Hell or anything like that.  Mostly my thinking was, "Oh shit, I'm going to die and all these people are just letting it happen.  Why don't these slack-jawed yokels DO SOMETHING!?"  (I mean not in so many words, but that was my feeling.)

Then finally, cue the heroic fanfare, someone grabs me from behind and starts giving me the Heimlich.  I don't think it was exactly the textbook Heimlich maneuver, but after four or five tries it got the job done.  The piece of shrimp didn't come shooting out of my mouth like a slapstick comedy, but it did finally vacate my windpipe so I could breathe.

But it's funny how the mind works in a crisis because as he's giving me the Heimlich all I can think is that my pants are falling down.  So I grabbed onto my belt so they wouldn't fall down.  Because I guess I wanted to die with dignity or something.

I was saved!  I thanked my hero (twice) and then he returned to his seat in the back of the restaurant.  In the great superheroic tradition I didn't get his name.  All I do know is if he'd just sat there like everyone else, I'd have most likely died that afternoon from a little piece of shrimp.  Life is a fragile thing indeed.

So obviously that anonymous hero had to be this month's Everyday Hero.  I mean it's pretty automatic that if you save my worthless hide you get this award.  So if you ever want to be an Everyday Hero just find me and save my life and you're in.

Now the obvious message in this is you should really know the Heimlich and CPR.  If it's been a while, you should probably sign up for a class.  Whatever you do, don't just sit there and stare while someone is DYING!!!  Trust me, that feels really lousy.  I mean dying is bad enough but when you have all these people standing around doing nothing?  That really sucks.  All right, so be like my hero and learn what to do so you too can be an Everyday Hero when the time comes.  If you're too lazy for that, here's a YouTube video on different ways to do the Heimlich.

If someone has saved your life or that of someone you know, you can always nominate them for recognition.  Isn't that almost the least you can do?  I'm just saying.  

BTW, this is completely off-topic, but if you want four free ebooks for the Kindle, just go here between now and Sunday! 

Tomorrow instead of heroes we talk about a villain with the Vengeance of Bane comics...