The first story in it was called "Fourth Wall" and it was a fun romp with comic books. There was basically a Superman-type hero who's trapped by a mad scientist Lex Luthor-type villain. He's hit with some radiation and wakes up as a puny little first grader named Sarah.
The even stranger thing is when Sarah reads a comic book to find what happened to her is related in the book. There are even drawings of her and her bedroom and mother and everything. Which freaks out her and her mother.
They eventually seek out the writer of the comic book at a convention. The Scottish writer very loosely based on Grant Morrison agrees to help Sarah get back to her "real" world in the comic book. They can't do it straight off because that would be jarring for the comic's readers. So what happens is Sarah grows up over a few issues and regains all her superpowers, which is a bit dangerous when she starts breathing fire and floating into the air.
Then there's trouble at a supercollider and Sarah goes to lend a hand. She winds up getting caught in an explosion that catapults her back into the comic book world, where she's a man again. He defeats the villain and all is right again. But it's a bummer in the real world where Sarah's mother has lost her daughter.
This was one of those fun stories to write. It was a little bit experimental in all the reality bending and stuff. Definitely not your typical gender swap story, which is probably why if people didn't hate it they just didn't ever love it enough to say anything either. But really, sometimes you have to take chances and try something different or it gets really boring.
Tony Laplume would know this, but the reason I used Grant Morrison as the basis for the writer is that he's done fourth wall-breaking stories similar to this in comics like Animal Man and The Multiversity. Just saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment