The Fractal Hall Journal

Dead Space

Holy crap, is this game terrifying. And that’s just the intro. Sure, the creepy nursery rhyme theme is a little derivative but I think that’s something computer games are actually really good at. You take the really good bits from genre work (films mostly) and you squish it all together (see Halo, amongst many others). It’s not art, but it’s fun. And this game is packed full of blood-squirty dismembering fun.

The only possible hiccup is that like Condemned and Call of Cthulhu before it, it may be too scary to finish.

Why yes, I am a scaredy cat.

Fallout 3

Depending on what mood I’m in, I could well call Oblivion my favourite computer game. It’s certainly the game I’ve spent the most amount of hours on, by a hee-uge margin. I got it years ago, and because of the finding time thing, I still haven’t completed it. So I’m very much in the target market for a post-apocalyptic version.

Not spent loads of time on it yet because I really do want to finish Dead Space, but I should imagine a lot of ‘09 is going to spent on this one. And, hopefully, Elder Scrolls V in ‘10.

The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire

I’ve been meaning to get this one for a while. The follow up to Deadly Genesis (reviewed here previously), and like the previous story an entertaining yarn. Brubaker’s an excellent writer, and very good at doing a Claremont-style story in the modern Marvel house style. I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but that’s not the intention. To be honest, it’s nice to read a superhero comic that doesn’t irritate me on any level.

Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror and Cthulhu Tales

Sorry, that last one got a bit catty.

A couple of Mythos comics were added to the haul this year, and although I haven’t had chance to read them yet I’ve skimmed through. The MAX title is the hardcover of Richard Corben’s straightforward Lovecraft adaptations, and looks gorgeous. The second is the first paperback collection of BOOM! Studio’s ongoing anothology title. BOOM! Haven’t made a single misstep yet with their Cthulhu titles, and I doubt they’re going to start here.

Arkham Asylum 15th Anniversary edition

Really needs a post to itself. In short: brilliant, better than I remember it. Unfortunately the good bits were all left in Morrison’s original script, so this is the first version I’ve ever read that makes a damned bit of sense. A flawed masterpiece.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Late to the party on this one, as I’ve only just upgraded to a graphics card that can handle the game. I assume we’re all geeks here, and we’re all familiar with the Games Workshop property that is, perhaps, nerdness incarnate.

Let’s just say, if Fallout 3 doesn’t suck up all of my time, then Dawn of War will be getting the rest. Hoo boy, I hope you’re all ready for another dip in productivity. Damn shame I’m fucking awful at RTS games.

The Steel Remains, by Richard Morgan

Britain’s best SF writer tackles fantasy. Half way through this, and it’s very good.

The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom

Picked up at random for being a haunted house book on the cheap at Asda. Last book I got from there was Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box, and that one was fantastic.

Again, only half way through it. Good points and bad points and I haven’t made my mind up about it yet, but it’s entertaining and it cost about three quid so I shouldn’t really complain either way.

That’s that faint praise thing again, isn’t it?

Anyway, turns out there’s a competition running in connection with the book, and the first prize is a weekend in that haunted hotel in Ludlow (Ludlow?) that’s been mentioned here before, more than once. The town’s obviously cornering the market in this kind of thing.

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In a recent interview in the Independent (found, I think, via Neil Gaiman’s journal), Terry Pratchett makes a great point about fantasy fiction:

“When you were a kid,” he says, “you’d have a paint box and you’d take it to school. But there was always the rich kid, and he’d got the paint box with the silver and the gold and possibly the turquoise as well. Instead of doing the best you can with the colours you’d got, you really wish you had the colours he’d got. Fantasy gives you the silver and the gold and the turquoise.”

I think that’s true of all the things we’ve talked about here at the Hall, whether it’s fantasy, or SF, or heroes in tights. Sure, it’s possible to get overloaded now and then by the silver and gold and turquoise, but overall you wouldn’t want to make do without it. And that’s why I like the things I like. A story about a wealthy engineer with a drink problem could be brilliant in the right hands. An alcoholic engineer who gets kidnapped by terrorists could make a decent action film. An engineer who then fights back by building powered armour that can fly is, surely, the best option of them all. That’s the gold and the turquoise (or, indeed, the gold and the hot-rod red).

Which isn’t to say Option 1 wouldn’t be fine. Certainly the only option that would ever approach ‘literary merit’, a definition that conceals the metaphorical multitude of sins. Sometimes more grounded work does us some good, and sometimes we need the fantastical.

I can understand completely why someone wouldn’t like any genre stuff. Some people just aren’t set up to have their suspension of disbelief suspended that far. But I don’t really get it when people who have a particular genre thing, but really dislike another branch. Some SF fans dislike fantasy, while there are a lot of fantasy fans who don’t read any SF (just take a look at the balance of books in any given book shop’s SF&F section.) I mean, they’re really not that different. At all. Same goes for the bizarre loathing seen between some comic and manga fans, even taking into account the distorting effects of internet lunatics.

Of course, I would say that. The Journal is something of a broad church, in that if it’s nerdy, I probably like it. I may prefer certain fantasy authors over others, but that’s a writing style thing and I have no objection in principle to the odd elf.

One of the reasons I bring this up is that the fantasy genre’s been on mind. I started re-reading Terry Brooks’ Shannara series again (I think I’ve written about the series before here), and I don’t think I realised before quite how much he gets thing wrong. Thing is, I still like the books, but there doesn’t seem to be a way of describing why without it all sounding like a back-handed compliment.

The Sword of Shannara, the first one, has been taking longer than expected, and part of that is because it is the roughest. And it hits every thing that fantasy authors are criticised for doing; characters lifted wholesale from Tolkien and/or roleplaying tropes, lots and lots and lots of adverbs, odds are good he drew the map before he wrote the first word, and so on. Despite this, I still like it. In fact, it’s exactly the thing I was in the mood to read, because sometimes what you’re in the mood for is an elf belting stuff with a magic sword.

The thing is, if I hadn’t read so much criticism all over the place about adverbs and maps in fantasy novels, I doubt I would have noticed. It underlines how the majority of dos and don’ts when it comes to this kind of thing are purely matters of personal preference at best, and a hoary load of old cobblers at worst.

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Marvel’s big gun, and hugely important to both companies in that it was with Thor that Jack Kirby started to cut loose with concepts that would end up shaping both respective universes.

Core Genre: Fantasy. Very much so. There are always the SFish cosmic overtones you get with Kirby’s work, but the bottom line is he’s a magical viking.

Anyone remember the Books of Magic ongoing, the one that followed Neil Gaiman’s initial miniseries? Great little title, with a very spooky atmosphere. It managed to have a distinctive voice that wasn’t a slavish recreation of Gaiman’s style.

Tim Hunter, the main character, was a kid with great magical power who would create creatures without realising it. One of these creatures was the Wobbly, a squiggly monster with a bird’s skull, an imaginary creation that lurked in a disused plot of land and disposed of things that Tim threw away. The Wobbly’s trapped there, but when Tim needs it to take away the broken-down car that his mother died in, he gives him permission to leave. “You can always come back, you know,” says Tim. “I’d just as soon you did.”

But this isn’t possible. “To go from a small here to a greater,” says the Wobbly. “That is to be living. But to go from the great to the small? That is death.” It’s a great little bit, in a great standalone issue (#14). John Ney Rieber wrote a lot of good stuff in the course of his run, and Peter Gross after him. The minis that followed the end of the ongoing series were a little ropey, but that’s more due to DC’s need to take the character in a less than ideal direction after Harry Potter pissed in the Bespectacled Young Wizard pot than any fault on the part of the talent.

To go from the great to the small; that’s what Marvel’s Thor is all about. To be diminished, to be humiliated, to die a little. And then to learn from it.

There’s an obvious Christ metaphor here, but it’s one I’m not keen on. Partly it’s because the motivations are completely different, but also because Norse mythology doesn’t need any bed-wetting hippy shit to prop it up. We’re not talking about aspects of a single god, we’re talking about an army of the fuckers, dead-set on getting arseholed and thumping people.

Controlling factors:

A) Big hammer
B) Elemental powers (specifically storm/weather based)
C) Humbled human alter-ego (medical background preferable)
D) An accompanying pantheon

There are a few elements to this character that aren’t really common to other superheroes. Firstly, he’s probably the most popular superhero taken from pre-existing myth. I mean, there’s not a Robin Hood title that’s run for several hundred issues, and is currently bothering the top of the sales lists. The creator credit for this character’s going to be interesting when they get round to making the film, because while he’s undeniably Jack Kirby’s baby, you can’t exactly say he’s created by the King.

His special powers are self-evident. There’s probably room to define his weather abilities, but he’s meant to be an all-powerful storm god so it’s best not to get too hung up on his limits. More important is an alter-ego that humbles him, that both raises and diminishes him. With Donald Blake’s recent return, it’s probably safe to suggest it has to be him, although I have to say I liked the Jake Olson EMT identity in the early days of Dan Jurgens’ revamp, and thought it was quite an elegant modern twist. Unfortunately then it got a bit silly and a lot confusing, and I’m certain there must have been some behind the scenes shenanigans because the first 12 issues were intriguing and consistant and the ones after just seemed to contradict things that had been set-up.

Also, JR Jr’s art was gorgeous.

I think the medical background is essential. First of all, it’s a contrast to the more barbaric image we have of viking berserkers, a civilising influence. Secondly, it suggests Thor would have to have spent a long, long time in the Blake guise, learning and training in a field that is, shall we say, somewhat tricky, requiring not a small amount of sacrifice. Thirdly, it’s seen as a selfless, humanitarian vocation (to which, considering some doctors I’ve dealt with, I say ho ho). It’s a deliberate role meant to inform the thunder god’s character, to give him a reason to protect humanity instead of the more attractive pursuit of pillaging his way across the cosmos in a goat-drawn shagwagon.

I think Thor is also unique in that the context that defines him isn’t as dependent on his rogue’s gallery. Instead, the facets of his character become illuminated by his relation to the other gods that surround him. His supporting cast are largely made up from the mythical Norse pantheon, with a few invented gods thrown in for good measure. There’s scope for decent stories in his search for them when they go missing (which seems to happen a fair bit), but a Thor series with them completely absent would be unthinkable, or at least so divergent from the average that it wouldn’t really be a Marvel Comics’ Thor story anymore. It would, however, still be a Thor story, in that the character has existed for a very long time prior to Marvel’s take, and it’s worth noting here that obviously there is a distinct difference between the two.

By incorporating the mythological pantheon, a different spin is given to the usual superhero template. It makes the non-mythical rogue’s gallery less important (which is good, because that side of things tends to be weak), but gives the character a strong supporting cast, and some absolutely cracking mythological bad guys. I mean, elsewhere in comics we see a lot of myth-based evildoers, but are any of them as good as Loki? Surely Thor’s arch-enemy is up there in the list of all-time great comic book baddies. The practical result of the pantheon’s existance is that there’s less of a need for the comic to deal with Thor locating these antagonists. At the simplest level, he knows them because myth tells us he’s been engaged in battle with them for centuries. Thor didn’t need to ‘discover’ Loki, or the frost giants, and neither does the audience, because of the pre-existing literature (which isn’t to say the writer shouldn’t still define them within the context of the Marvel U, of course).

Finally, one aspect of the character that always interests me is how, considering his all-powerful nature, Thor is the Marvel character best suited to deal with the theme of death. A lot of that is inherited from the mythology, of course. Norse culture was very clear that all stories had to have an ending, and that a hero’s tale wasn’t complete without his or her death. With Ragnarok, the people of the north made it very clear that not even the gods could escape from this. What’s fascinating is how the Marvel version of the character embraces these themes. As I said at the beginning of this post, to diminish Thor from god to human is in one sense to kill him. The Marvel U not only incorporates Ragnarok, but has inflicted it on its characters several times (and not even the vikings were that cruel to their gods). Death becomes just another element of a cycle, a reflection of an overarching superheroic theme: our heroes die, but they always come back. And Thor becomes Donald Blake, yet always returns to godhood.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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This is a difficult one, because in terms of the Big Three she’s the character I know the least about. That said, I think there’s enough about her that’s commonly known, thanks to the TV series, to make a useful analysis without being a hardcore fan. In fact, I’d say one of the reasons that the character’s been so mishandled over time is that too much time is spend exploring elements that are unfamiliar to anyone but hardcore comics fans (like her secret identity, or lack of) rather than the elements that made her popular in the first place.

Core Genre: Fantasy. And with that in mind, can someone tell me why Fantasy outsells SF as a genre by a significant amount, yet the most obviously fantastical character DC has can’t get any traction? Something’s going wrong somewhere, and I suspect it comes down to gender disparity within the marketplace. As I understand it, and as I observed back when I worked as a bookseller, Fantasy novels sell incredibly well to female readers. Why on earth can’t DC try and angle a WW title towards them? Of course, last time they got a big name female author to write for them, they screwed the pooch with the Amazons Attack nonsense. You look at that and you can’t help but feel that someone deliberately spoked that storyline.

The Bad: I don’t tend to like mythological-origin characters, Thor excepted (because Norse mythology through a Kirby lens is senses shattering). Mostly, this is because magical characters tend to be associated in some way with Camelot, and by now you should all have guessed I have a real problem with cultural appropriation of Arthurian myth.

Greco-Roman mythology, while interesting, I find to be somewhat played out. I think it’s because so many of the building blocks of what we in Europe consider to be story or story-telling (drama, tragedy, comedy, the theatre itself) owe so much to this tradition, that any modern adaptation is already fighting against the weight of history, in danger of appearing dull, dusty and quaint. To expect anyone to freshen this kind of thing up is asking an awful lot.

On the other hand, that’s probably just me.

The Good: So, what makes her work?

A) Truth. Truth truth truth truth truth.
B) The hunt.
C) Magical gadgets
D) Super-strong, super-fast.

Factor A is more subtext than explicit, but I think it’s fair to say that any Wonder Woman story has to have a theme of honesty or a counter-theme of dishonesty to it. I say this is because a lot of her stories can be a bit unfocused; she needs something to define her. It’s unfortunately easier with the others in the ‘Trinity’ thanks to their admirably efficient origins (baby in a rocket, super-rich orphan). I’d argue that B is absolutely essential, although we don’t seem to see much of it in Wonder Woman stories. Yet it’s right there in her name: the goddess of the hunt. It’s what superheroes do, and Wonder Woman should embody it. Hunting crooks- uncovering the truth of their deeds- make A and B her method of putting her antagonists into context. C and D become her method of interacting with them.

A sub-factor, I believe, is her ambassadorial mission, her way of teaching or rehabilitating the world beyond Themyscira (do we really still refer to it as “man’s world”?) Some may say this element is essential to every Wonder Woman story. I’m not sure of this myself, but I do think it’s a reoccuring theme that should crop up now and then, in the same was that while not every Batman story needs Alfred, he should be seen more often than not.

Whether or not she can fly is another interesting consideration. I think it’s an important development for the character in that it gives her parity with Superman, but at the same time it takes away from the whole “invisible plane” thing, which is far more of an essential factor, as much a part of the character as spinning around while transforming, getting the truth out of people with the magic lasso, and deflecting bullets with her bracelets.

That argument aside, what she absolutely has to be is strong. Stronger than Superman, in fact. Certainly more ruthless, in that she’s born to a warrior culture that would have given her far more training that a Kansa farmboy would ever have received. Also, if you’ve written a Wonder Woman story where she’s been saved by someone else, you have FAILED, completely and irrevocably.

Other factors: Unfortunately, her rogue’s gallery is lacklustre to say the least, and her supporting cast needs to be beefed up. But that’s a practical consideration for the writers and editors. Characters need to be consistant across multiple writing teams to become established, which doesn’t tend to happen with the revolving door of creators on certain titles.

Conclusion: From a practical point of view, there’s got to be a market for the character that’s just waiting to be tapped. In terms of the character herself, in actual fact there’s nothing there that needs to be fixed. Maybe what she needs is a change of context. A year-long Conan-style story? No, I know- a year long Mercedes Lackey story.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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I brought Citizen Kane up yesterday as one of those films that you can’t quite believe didn’t get a best picture/director Oscar. It’s got a funny old reputation, that film, and it’s not helped by the constant “bestest film ever” title it’s given on endless lists and articles, not just in places like Empire magazine (where you expect that kind of thing) but in the general media. That’s not to say it isn’t one of the greatest films of all time, because it is. Much like music recording technology and pre-CGI special effects, Orson Welles and his crew had to put an incredible amount of skill and effort into crafting the techniques to create shots and set-ups we take for granted in movies these days because technological advancement has made it so much easier for us. The sheer craft of what the crew had to pull off is mind-blowing. They were using what was essentially state-of-the-art special effects just to frame shots correctly. And it’s not just the technical prowess, but also the script and the acting. There’s nothing about the film that isn’t engaging and exceptional.

Problem is, that kind of weight it carries around can be discouraging to someone coming to the film for the first time. There’s an expectation that if the film-student crowd like it then it must be unpleasantly challenging and hard to watch. God knows it made me reluctant to watch it, and if me and a buddy at University hadn’t happened to catch it one lazy Saturday afternoon, we probably wouldn’t ever have seen it. Much like Raging Bull, in fact; another film rated so enthusiastically by The Critics to be off-putting. And the thing about both of them is that I was completely blown away when I finally got round to watching them, not because of the dazzling artistry but because, first and foremost, they were both excellent stories, completely engaging and never boring.

Tangentially, the film-maker today who (in my subjective opinion, as always) is probably Welles’ spiritual heir? Peter Jackson. Seriously.

The thing about Welles isn’t just that he was a great writer and actor (because he was), but that he put so much skill and craft into the job of directing. It was all about prep and craft at a technical level. As far as I’ve observed, today’s art-housey films are very minimal, viewing the techniques of film-making as secondary, as a way of distancing themselves from the nuts-and-bolts side of things, technical achievement (and technical achievement alone, sometimes) being the defining characteristic of the Summer Blockbuster.

Regardless of what you may think of Lord of the Rings (book or script), the sheer amount of effort, care and design that went into Jackson’s trilogy was awe-inspiring, which by itself would have been a thing. What made it truly great was the addition of a fantastic cast to an excellent script. That’s Welles, and that’s Citizen Kane, through and through.

And another thing, you know who doesn’t help matters? The Things Used To Be Better brigade, who want us all to realise how far the Cinematic Arts have fallen. Horse-shit. If anything brought down the amazing cinema of the 70s, it was the creators themselves, devolving their own work into a self-indulgent mess. It’s no-one’s fault but Scorcese’s that he’s been crap since Goodfellas, and Jesus Christ is that an over-rated film. The fact is, Scorcese has never made anything as good as The Wire. Do I wish there were more grown-up films like Gone, Baby, Gone out there? Sure. But it’s not the end of the world, because I’m perfectly fine with the rise in quality of everything else we’ve had in recent years.

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The Incredible Hulk

Much like Iron Man, I’ve got nothing to say that hasn’t been said. I thought it was fantastic, everything I wanted in a Hulk film, and with a really consistant tone to the previous cinematic Marvel U film. There’s so much potential here for an Avengers series, and I’m pretty excited about that. In comments here not too long ago, the possibility of the Hulk being the bad guy in the Avengers film was mentioned. I’m not sure that’s quite what will happen (the theme of this film was the possibility of the Hulk being a hero, after all), but the Stark cameo could suggest that they’re putting a team together and they either want the Hulk to join, or they want to take him down. If I was to make a guess, I’d say the Avengers film will have the team hunting the Hulk in Act One, only for them to need him in the climactic battle.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the shot of the cylinder holding the Super Soldier serum that shows is labelled “Weapon Plus”. I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere (but then again, I wouldn’t have because I’ve been avoiding spoilers), but wasn’t this Grant Morrison’s name for the various iterations of Weapon X, in that Wolverine was part of the Super Soldier programme’s 10th (”X”) generation? A sneaky connection to the contractually isolated mutant movies is pretty cool, but then the whole film is packed full of injokes.

Roundtable

Brian K. Vaughan has apparently sold a film script for a huge amount of dosh that deals with a resurrected Merlin trying to gather a group of modern-day knights in order to, and this is the quote from Aint It Cool News, “defend England against a magical foe.” Hmm, yes. Defend England. Of course.

I’m a big fan of Vaughan. And I’m sure the script is brilliant; it’s already being described as having a Ghostbusters style vibe. It’s a great concept, as modern-day knights are, of course, athletes and businessmen and actors, not exactly dark age warrior material.

Some of you may remember a post a little while back about my problem with adaptations of Arthurian legends (here, in fact). What it amounts to is cultural theft, willful ignorance on the part of writers and film producers regarding the Welsh origins of these myths. Look, I know it’s a dumb thing to annoyed about, really I do. In fact, I may be about the only person who does get irritated by this. But it really, down to my bones, pisses me off.

Put it this way: imagine a hugely successful series of books and films based on Native American legends (or, for that matter, African legends, or Chinese legends, or whatever), jam packed full of Native American characters, yet these characters were never once played by, or referred to as, Native Americans. In fact, every character is played by a white American, and the very tales themselves are attributed to the colonists.

Well, that would be an ignorant thing to do, wouldn’t it?

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I don’t know how many people out there have seen this yet (I’m guessing, a lot of you), but just in case I’ll drop a cut in.

(more…)

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You may spot a theme to the posts this week, but I have been watching a lot of X-Files episodes so it shouldn’t be surprising how much of it is filtering through. The world is beginning to feel distinctly out of joint. It’s not as bad as the time when I tried to read Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time series in one month (I managed six volumes in two weeks before I started dreaming about the characters and feeling queasy every time I picked up volume seven), but it may well get there by the end.

Dana Scully is one of the best characters in SF. The fact that there are very few female characters as strong as her to come along in the years since the programme began is a shameful indictment of not only genre work but popular culture as a whole.

I’ve seen it written that Scully was the kind of character who tended to get tied up, kidnapped, or generally into situations where Mulder needed to save her. This is bollocks. She gets Capital A Abducted in the second series (famously due to Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy), but a similar abduction/medical test/mindwipe happens to Mulder in the very second episode of the show. Both main characters get knocked out and chucked into car boots so many times it’s a miracle they don’t have brain damage. And more than once Scully frees herself rather than waits around to be saved. Hell, for most of the first season it’s her who’s saving Mulder from whatever idiotic situation he’s managed to get himself into. And it’s him who’s breaking down into tears all the time. Every single time someone mentions his sister. In passing. Like a little baby.

Anyway, apologies for the shortness of posts the past couple of days. Tomorrow’s will be one great big block of text.

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Before we carry on with today’s post, I just want to direct you good folks to the new blog of a dear friend, Paul C’s More Fun Comics. Please head on over and share your comments, and also the love. As for the Journal, fingers crossed but regular updating should resume on Monday.

Tim Burton’s Batman was marketed as a return to Batman’s darker roots as a sinister, pulpy vigilante. The last Bond film was a heck of a lot closer to the literature than any of the others, and I’ve written before about how much I like the original Golden Age Superman. But it’s actually a different kind of superhero that I really get fandementalist about, and a uniquely Welsh one: King Arthur.

Health and safety warning: This post has come out a little angrier than intended, so feel free to step around the thoroughly misdirected anguish.

I have bored my nearest and dearest rigid over the years while ranting about the common perception of the character versus his earliest roots. The bits that authors and screenwriters have picked up and run with over the years all seem to be later additions (Camelot, chivalry, stoned swords, knights in armour, fucking Lancelot), with the really interesting Celtic backstory largely buried. Good grief, you should have heard me whine when the last Hollywood outing decided Arthur was a Russian. First Knight? Scottish. Or John Boorman’s Excalibur: why of course Arthur was from the West Country! Anything at all, as long as he’s not a Welshman.

I used to get het up about it. Not so much, anymore, because five minutes on any given superhero message board is enough to pull me back from the edge. It’s all about interpretation, after all, and some stories become too big just for one world view.

That said, it would be great if the original legends were recognised once in a while. After all, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote Arthur as a Brythonic war leader, propaganda that was almost a plea to preserve Celtic history in the face of cultural colonisation by Saxons, Norsemen, and whoever else took a fancy to Geoffrey’s island. The tragedy is that so much of this early culture, the language, myths and tradition of this group of people, were lost, through deliberate suppression and a lack of a coherent written language. What fragments we have, of poetry in Old Welsh, the four branches of the Mabinogi, Arthurian tales that predate Geoffrey, all seem to point to a richer vein of stories we will never be able to retrieve.

There is so much great stuff in the early stories. Arthur’s army was jam packed full of people with super-powers, for a start. Seriously, they were like the fucking Justice League. One guy ran faster than anyone else in the kingdom, another guy could see further than anyone else, one of them was a superb marksman. And instead, what we get is an endless retread of fucking Lancelot banging the king’s wife. Want to know how that part of the story came about? The bit about Lancelot, a French knight, stealing away the wife of the man perceived at the time as the greatest English king of them all, was cut-and-pasted into the legend by a Frenchman. Well, I know which film I’d rather see, and it doesn’t have Richard bloody Gere in it.

But the two characters who get the biggest shaft are the two original ‘knights’, Cai and Bedwyr. Through the various mutations of the story, they go from being Arthur’s closest companions and greatest warriors to the treacherous, obnoxious and ineffectual Sir Kay and Bedevere, the weak-willed buffoon who can’t bring himself to fulfil Arthur’s dying wish. Who do we get instead? Fucking Lancelot.

Anyway, this post should be enough to convince you that not even the passage of a thousand-odd years can quell the flame of fanboy outrage. But my final point is that some things really are better when taken back to their roots, when the accumulated bullcrap of successive iterations are scraped away, and that maybe the original Welsh superhero should get the second chance that reinvigorated so many of his 20th Century descendents.

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Some time ago, I was brewing a post on the thematic relation between the Punisher and Doctor Who.

Let that sink in a moment, because I can see you’re overwhelmed by my god damned analytical genius.

It does make sense of a kind. The kind you get when you’re flat on your arse drunk and talking crap to your mates about how you just innately understand how Harry Potter is a Marxist parable of emancipation from mental slavery, sure. But sense nevertheless.

My point is that both characters are aspects of the “trickster” archetype, the unstoppable outsider that enters then forever changes a specific state of affairs. A character we all identify with, that sometimes we even wish we could be, but one that is ultimately alien to us, next to impossible to understand.

Of course, there’s one obvious difference between the two: Frank Castle would probably have a breakdown (erm, an even breakier breakdown) if he killed someone he considered innocent. Who knows how far the Doctor (some of his incarnations, that is) would go for the greater good?

Anyway, poking the Whovian nest with a pokey stick isn’t really the purpose here. Obviously the above musings don’t go much further than a surface interpretation, so I doubt there’s much to gain by going deeper. But the whole “trickster” spin is a fascinating one; after all, it’s pretty rare that protagonists of any stripe get to be as ambiguous in their motives as, say, John Constantine used to be.

Here’s a question, though: How many female characters get to play the trickster? And out of them, how many get to be a trickster without having to seduce anyone?

Take the first two that spring to mind: Typhoid Mary in Daredevil and Deadpool (maybe Elektra, although she’s probably more of an anti-hero) and the Enchantress in Thor. And let’s face it, their archetype is Evily Sexy Seducer Who Wants To Make With The Sex. The only character that kind of fits is Jenny Sparks in the Authority, though at a stretch her archetype is Cynical Arsey Old Man Ellis which is practically a category all of its own.

Maybe I’m missing someone obvious; I probably don’t read enough in the fantasy genre to be certain, as that seems to be the area where that kind of character would turn up. But it seems to me that a female character from that mould hasn’t been done much, and would have a fair bit of story potential.

[EDIT, 9/2/08: It turns out that yes, I am indeed missing someone obvious. In an astonishing twist that brings the whole god damned analytical genius thing into question, it turns out Marvel's Loki is currently a woman. Oops. Many thanks to timeismine for pointing this out in the Comments.]

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