Iron Man - the movie

I've made a couple of posts about the history of Iron Man in comics. Now the movie is finally out. It's very good. It also manages to hit most of the high point of Iron Man's history.

The origin is almost exactly as it was in the comics. The location was moved to Afghanistan instead if Viet Nam and the enemy is a Taliban clone instead of Communists but it works even better this way. In the comic, his first suit was cast iron. In the movie is it wrought iron and it looks like something that someone made in a cave. There is a twist on it that but that doesn't come out for most of the movie.

Other elements - Tony's relationship with Pepper Potts. It's complicated. His driver, Happy Hogan, who never actually gets to drive him is there, too.

In the comic his pilot and best friend is Jim Rhodes who eventually takes over the armor for a while before getting his own suit. In the movie Rhodes looks at a prototype and says, "Maybe next time."

The armor developed over decades in the comic starting with the primitive cast iron suit. The next version iced up if he flew too high. This was represented in the movie with three generations of armor.

In the comic, Stane was a rival businessman who took over Stark International in a leveraged buy-out. In the comic he is a mentor and second largest stock-holder and, yes, he tries a corporate takeover.

BTW, Stane uses the term "iron monger" to describe their business. This is a term for munitions manufacturers.

For years Iron Man kept running out of power during fights. Since his life-support used the same power system, this could potentially kill him. They managed to include this in the movie, also.

Early on Stark discovers that the Taliban-clone has weapons from his company and launches an attack to destroy these munitions. This is an echo of the Armor Wars, a plotline where Stark discovers that Stane sold controller chips that he meant to keep secret. Stark went on a mission to shut down all suits of armor using this technology regardless of who had it (some of the technology was being used by the US government).

What about the politics? I saw one complaint that the movie lapses into Ralph Nader corporate responsibility. Yes, there is some talk of this but it is mainly in terms of keeping the technology out of the hands of terrorists. After being shot with one of his own missiles, Stark's message seems to be that if he can't keep it out of the hands of the US's enemies then he wasn't going to make it. But it never really went much beyond talk. Stark never came up with a new corporate plan.

I think that conservatives would agree that selling weapons to the Taliban is bad so this doesn't bother me.

And this is the first movie to feature an action hero taking on a Taliban-style enemy. That has to count for a lot.

Marvel has been saying that casting Robert Downey jr. was a triumph. I can't argue with that. He is to Iron Man what Johnny Depp is to PoTC. Word is that Downey is a huge Iron Man fan and loved playing the character and would be quite happy to keep making Iron Man movies through Iron Man 15.

Iron Man Moves Up to the A-List

Back in the mid-1960s it was easy to tell which Marvel heroes were A-list and which were B-list. The A-list heroes got a monthly book all to themselves and a summer annual which was a double-sized comic. This was a pretty short list - The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Thor, Sargent Fury and the Howling Commandos, and the Avengers. The B-list heroes either shared a monthly book with someone else or were published bi-monthly. This included the X-Men and Daredevil in semi-monthly books and the Human Torch, Dr. Strange, Giant Man and the Wasp, the Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America, all sharing monthly books. Later the Submariner replaced Giant Man and Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD replaced the Torch. As sales increased all of these got monthly books and several mover up to the A-list.

In the early days Marvel has so few writers and artists that you couldn't tell A-list characters from B-list ones by the quality of the staff working on them. This changed over time. The more popular characters tended to get better talent with the B-list talent going to the B-list characters.

Iron Man spent most of his career solidly in the B-list. When he got his own solo comic he had Roy Thomas and Gene Colon, both very talented, but the comic was soon handed off to lesser creators. It had a run of several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s with some A-list talent. When they moved on the comic returned to its B status.

The other way of telling a comic's status was how much freedom the current team had to change things around. Changing Spider-Man's girl friend was a top-level change. Other strips worked the characters over several times.

There was a fad for replacing characters then bringing back the original. This started with Iron Man (and Green Lantern in DC at the same time). Tony Stark's alcohol problem overcame him and he spent a couple of years living as a homeless bum while Jim Rhodes took over the armor. Stark eventually sobered up and took back the armor. Later he died and Rhodes took over a gain for a short time until Stark was resurrected.

The comic was retconed and rebooted several times. Iron Man's origin moved from Viet Nam to China. He was turned into a teenager then returned to adulthood. He moved his base of operations from Long Island to California. His heart problems came back and were fixed a couple of times.

In the 1980s Marvel expanded the Avengers franchise with Stark founding the West Coast branch. This also introduced a new abrasive, manipulative facet to his personality that eventually became a defining trait leading up to his role in the Civil War.

With tomorrow's release of the Iron Man movie, Tony Stark finally moves into the A-list. Ironically his long-time status as a B-list character may help him here. Marvel grew tired of other studios licensing their characters then making movies that didn't do them justice (Ang Lee's Hulk). Iron Man is the first movie directly produced by Marvel and is supposed to usher in a new line of movies that are true to the characters. All indications was that they are off to a good start. Preliminary reviews have been very good. By all accounts, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. was a masterstroke. Not only does he have a history similar to Stark's but he manages to keep the character interesting throughout the movie. Ghost Rider was a success because Nicholas Cage did the same thing with Johnny Blaze.

Iron Man and Technology

With the Iron Man movie coming out soon, I thought I'd look back at how his technology has changed. No other hero is so intimately involved with technology  and the changes that have occurred over the 45 years since Iron Man was created are impressive.

Iron Man was a product of his time, the early 1960s. Tony Stark was an inventor and a patriot. His genius was in adapting transistors to armaments to be used in the cold war in general and in the hot war being fought in Viet Nam. He was separated from his group and triggered an explosive booby trap. The communists recovered his wounded body and were told that he was terminal in around a week. When Stark revived he was told that he had to create a new weapon for the communists within a week and surgeons would save him, otherwise he would die. Not fooled by the threats, Stark and an Asian scientist created a life support system for him. This included head-to-toe armor and a servo system that amplified his strength. The original suit didn't have any weapons built into it although it had enough spare components that Stark could improvise some weapons on the spot. The armor's strength wasn't that great. The communist warlord pinned him for a time with a dresser filled with rocks. Stark blew up the communist base and returned home.

He quickly started modifying his armor. He added boot jets so that he could fly and boosted the armor's strength. He also added a built-in radio with a shoulder-mounted antenna.

The original gray armor was given a gold paint job fairly quickly. Still, it was bulky and didn't project the hero image very well.

After a villain with a voodoo doll defeated him, Stark did a major rebuild of his armor. The new armor was close-fitting with a red and gold color scheme. With a few minor changes, this was what Stark used for the next couple of decades.

The new suit was exceptionally light and thin. It could be carried in a briefcase. The arm and leg pieces collapsed like fabric until activated. This led the the big question - how does something like this give the wearer strength and protection? Eventually a writer explained that the armor was polarized. Presumably it responded to his motions by re-polarizing itself to mimic his movements.

Iron Man's biggest problem in those days was his batteries. They constantly ran down. Since his life support system was powered by the same batteries, this was potentially life-threatening.

As time passed, the built-in weaponry in the armor was defined. His main weapons were repulsor beams in his gauntlets. He still had jets in his boots. He also had pop-out skates. His chest had a "unibeam" which was basically a spotlight. Radar and sonar were added fairly early as was an internal oxygen supply good for a half hour.

In the early 1970s Stark was the recipient of a different kind of technology - a synthetic heart transplant. This was only partially successful and he was back to wearing the armor to stop tissue rejection.

During most of the 1970s the writers wanted to focus on the man inside the armor instead of the technology. They were also embarrassed by Stark's background as an arms maker. Stark got out of the weapons business and spent a few years chasing a hippy passivist (who had an anarchist brother).

Things changed dramatically in the late 1970s. Iron Man got a new creative team - David Michelinie (plot/writer) and Bob Layton (plot/inker). They went through a few artists, most notably John Romita, jr. Under this team Stark went back to his roots as a millionaire, jet-set, playboy. They also introduced James Rhodes, his pilot and friend.

Under this team, Iron Man rediscovered technology. His armor had computers built in and he had a few more weapons. They also introduced the idea of special-purpose armor. Stark built suits for orbital travel, underwater work, and stealth. These had different strengths and weaknesses.

They also introduced Stark's drinking problem. I think that Stark was the first super hero to have a personal problem like this. Stark also made the first major change to his armor in over a decade - he built a red and white model.

Later, under different writers Stark's drinking problem reemerged and became worse. Within one issue he was a drunk in the gutter. That left a void while Stark was missing. Who would be Iron Man? This turned out to be James Rhodes.

Eventually Stark sobered up and built himself a new red and gold suit. Rhodes kept the red and white one for a while. The new suit was bigger and more powerful. This started a series of new suits of armor,all giving the same general impression but with minor differences.

At one point Stark was declared dead but he left Rhodes a new suit to replace him as Iron Man. When Stark returned from the dead, Rhodes started calling himself War Machine. Bulky and angular with a shoulder-mounted missile rack, the War Machine armor is probably the best example of what a man in powered armor would actually look like. Poor sales doomed the armor.

In 2000 Stark's armor made the ultimate upgrade. A combination of the Y2k bug and a lightening strike made the armor self-aware. Stark quickly found himself in conflict with his merciless armor. This was ended when Stark had a new heart attack and the armor sacrificed itself in order to give Stark an artificial heart.

For most of his career, Iron Man was placed in the same general class as Thor. Recently the two fought and Thor tore Stark's armor to pieces, prointing out that Stark is a man in a suit while Thor is a god.

In another few weeks we will see if Iron Man is a box office attraction.

Star Wars vs Lord of the Rings

TNT has been showing all three Lord of the Rings movies this weekend. Spike has been showing Star Wars 1-3. How do they stack up side-by-side.

Star Wars has more special effects - lots more, even counting the Hobbits and Dwarf. It also has more going on during the battles. Revenge of the Sith also has a bit of Greek tragedy going on. In trying to save his wife, Anakin sets in motion the chain of events that lead to her death and his own corruption.

On the other hand, LoTR has bigger battles.

Both have Christopher Lee.

Both have a pivotal scene involving lava.

In both, a central character loses a body part (Frodo loses a finger, Anakin loses a hand and later both legs).

Star Wars has actors with more notable careers prior to the movies. LoTR made its cast famous.

When all is said and done, LoTR is much better written. It is based on one of the great novels of the 20th century. Star Wars made it up as they went along based on stray comments from the original (and better) set of movies.

Lost - Season 4

I held off writing about season 4 because I wanted to see where they were going with it including how they would handle the writer's strike.

The good:

• Replacing flashbacks with flash-forwards was a welcome change. We know as much as we need to about most characters (too much about Jack).
• Increasing the percentage of time spent on the island. Especially in season 3, entire episodes would be spent on a flashback with only around five minutes of island-time to keep the story going.
• Less of Jack.
  

The bad:

• Two, maybe three episodes were mainly filler. Very little happened in the first episode and the episode with Desmond unstuck in time didn't advance the story much. This isn't so bad since they are going to finish the season but it would have been a real pain if they had wasted scarce air time ths way.
• The episode with Sun and Jin was a cheat. There were a couple of clues that Jin was in the past (his bulky cell phone and his general personality) but it was carefully cut to make you think that both people were in the flash-forward, especially when Sun said to call her husband and Jin's phone rang.

Other observations:

• My wife thinks that Locke has gone over the edge. I think that he is behaving reasonably when you consider that lives are at stake.
• The freighter people are a lot more interesting than the Others turned out to be.
• Ben's people says that Widmore planted the fake plane. Widmore's people say that Ben's people did. Is there a third group that the other two are unaware of? The bodies came from the same graveyard that had the polar bear skeleton. The bear had a Dharma collar. Are they still around and acting as a third player?
• When Desmond was in the past, Widmore was bidding on a painting of the Black Rock. At the time it seemed like a coincidence. Then we learned that he sent the freighter. Does that mean that he knows about the Black Rock, also.
• Speaking of the Black Rock, I still think that some of the Others are survivors from the shipwreck.
• We still haven't heard how Danielle could have had a child on the island. Or who the father is. Was it really Ben or is he just Alex's adopted father?

Iron Fist

Marvel's character Iron Fist has surfaced again. This seems like a good time to look at his original run.

When the superhero craze that marked the Silver Age of comics crested, Marvel was looking for something to keep it going. They came up with a combination of Sword and Sorcery, monster, and martial arts. This was fueled by a loosening of the Comic Code and Marvel's entry into the oversized black and white market. One trait during this period was that, if something sold, then they should create a copy. Marvel was full of these. The list of originals and copies includes:

Dracula/Morbius the Living Vampire
Werewolf by Night/Man-Wolf
Conan the Barbarian/King Kull
Shang-Chi Master of Kung Fu/Iron Fist

Where Shang-Chi was the some of Fu Manchu who had been raised by his father in seclusion and trained in the martial arts, Iron Fist was Daniel Rand, a westerner whose father was killed by his partner/best friend over Danny's mother who then sacrificed herself to hungry wolves so that Danny could make it to the safety of an extra-dimensional city called Kun Lun. Danny learned martial arts and performed a ceremony in which he killed a dragon by smothering it with his own body, branding his chest. He then plunged his hands into the dragon's glowing heart, gaining the power of the Iron Fist. Ten years after entering Kun Lun, Danny left it to get revenge on his father's killer.

This led to a high-energy plot involving a mystic ninja. There was little time for characterization and Danny never removed his ceremonial costume or mask. He did manage to pick up a supporting cast including Professor Wing, his daughter Coleen and her bionic partner Misty Knight. At the time Marvel had special titles reserved for premiering new characters. If they sold then they were moved to their own book.

In this case, Iron Fist wrapped up the initial plot just in time to start fresh in Iron Fist #1. The character went through several writers but Chris Claremont was assigned to the the permanent writer. It also had gone through several artists (it seems like it was a different artist each issue). It finally gained a permanent artist a couple of issues in. This was a young John Byrne in his first Marvel assignment.

Claremont started as an assistant editor who wrote a few text stories as filler for the black and white line. He progressed to fill-in writer before getting Iron Fist, X-Men, and a few others. Byrne came from Charleton where he had the reputation as a good story teller who could only draw one face (and that one was oriental). The team of Claremont and Byrne is famous for their run on X-Men but this is where they perfected their craft.

Iron Fist needed a new plot arc so Coleen Wing was abducted and Iron Fist followed her trail to London (Claremont was an Anglophile). He eventually returned empty handed. The London clue was just to distract him while Coleen was brainwashed to hate him. This was all part of a plot by the Master Khan who had connections with Eventually she was Kun Lun. Coleen was unleashed against Iron Fist in a battle to the death.

This is where the strip got interesting. By this point Byrne's art was pretty good but the character was in a rut. He would use his martial arts for most of a fight but he would finish things by using the Iron Fist - a "super powered punch". In order to end this fight he did something different with the power - he used it to force his consciousness into Coleen's. A few issues later he was dying from a poison and used the Iron Fist to heal himself. This opened a lot of possibilities.

Byrne started  stretching as an artist. He worked in several moving figure panels, something that acclaimed artists Steve Ditko and Neil Adams were known for. He also got over his trouble with faces.

Claremont was at his best when focusing on characterization. They did one issue where Danny was given the keys to his parents old townhouse. He spent part of the issue following memory/ghosts from room to room.

Danny also had one of comic's first inter-racial romances with Misty Knight. She was a black ex-cop who lost an arm to a terrorist bombing and had a bionic replacement.

A lot of the characterization focused on Danny's youth and inexperience in the modern world.

One issue is notable for featuring the first appearance of Sabertooth. At the time, Claremont and Byrne meant him to be Wolverine's father but things worked out differently. Later Iron Fist took on the Wrecking Crew by himself and survived (he needed Captain America's help in the next issue to beat them).

There was also a sub-plot about someone with a similar brand.

The 1970s were hard on comics. A lot of great strips were canceled. Marvel had confidence in the character. Claremont and Byrne finished the sub-plot in Marvel Team-up with Spider-Man. Then they created a new team - Power Man and Iron Fist.

Power Man stared as Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. He was basically a super-powered private eye working out of the then dilapidated Times Square. The comic changed the name to Power Man to boost sales which only worked for a while. Eventually it was merged with Iron Fist. The premise was that Danny needed the real-world experience that working with Cage would give him.

Sales were good for a while and the team took on a Bing Crosby/Bob Hope feel.

Eventually it just sort of ran down. After a return to Kun Lun, Iron Fist traded his green costume in for a red one and started talking in formal English. At the end a crazed super hero beat Iron Fist to death before vaporizing, leaving Cage wanted on suspicion.

Iron Fist was revived a couple of times. It turned out that an impostor had returned from Kun Lun. Danny was upset that no one noticed how different the impostor acted and figured it out.

With the latest revival it turns out that the current Iron Fist is one of a long line and is expected to fight champions from other mystic cities.

After Iron Fist was canceled, Byrne took over X-Men. The two made it the highest selling book of the time. Claremont continued with X-Men for years after that. Byrne went on to draw and write the Fantastic Four and then was tapped to recreate Superman.

Microsoft & Apple

Someone made a long comment to a post I made last November on Windows vs Mac. I looked over what I said and stand by my statements. I do want to make a few things clear.

I am not a big fan of Microsoft. They have plotted to take over the world (metaphorically) too many times. They have often gone out of their way to destroy competition. Back when Windows ran on DOS they put in some code to keep it from running on DRDOS. Later they bundled Windows 95 and DOS together as a single product in order to eliminate DRDOS as a competitor.

In fact, the whole launch of Windows 95 seemed designed to eliminate competition. The product was over a year late to market and companies stopped buying new software during that period. Microsoft which had deeper pockets survived but the competition did not.

More recently their Palladium proposal would have made them the gatekeepers of the world. This was a hardware/software encryption system that not only verified that you were running a trusted operating system, it could also act as DRM for nearly anything. You could even revoke access to a document after it had been distributed. Portions of that are embedded in the X-Box and Windows Vista.

I never cared much for Bill Gates or Steve Balmer, either.

I have spent used other operating systems when possible. During the days of Windows 3.1 I used IBM's OS2 Warp which was a nice multi-tasking operating system and ran Windows better than DOS. It was also a good game platform in the days when you have to have a separate boot disk for each game. It would detect the settings the game needed without user effort.

More recently I have used various versions of Linux.

But the Apple premium has always kept me from trying a Mac.

I pay attention to specs. Apple sells premium machines but they still charge a bit more than competitors for equivalent hardware. The extra charge is for the cool factor.

Apple has had some quality control issues, also. The Macbook air has cooling problems. The iconic iPod has had enough quality control problems that it got special mention in Wikipedia.

Then there is the control issue. Steve Jobs wants too much control and he refuses to license his software. Microsoft was recently fined for being too slow to release developer documentation. They are still ahead of Apple on this. Look at Fairplay, Apple's DRM. They refuse to license it to anyone. Suits are pending against Apple over this. They could well join Microsoft in being fined by the EU.

When the Apple II first came out it was as open as anything ever seen. The documentation included an assembly listing for the firmware - something now regarded as a state secret. By the time the original Macintosh was introduced Apple had become as closed as any company ever seen. Just hooking a 3rd party printer to your Mac violated the warranty. They have opened up a great deal on the Mac but closed down on the iPhone. Simple things like rearranging the icons or changing the wallpaper are not allowed.

Too often Apple's great innovations are the form factor rather than usability. If you don't agree with Steve Job's vision of how a workstation should look (or cost) then you are stuck since they control the hardware.

If you don't mind the Apple premium and you agree with Steve Jobs on everything then Apple is a great company. I know several people who are enthusiastic Apple users. In fact, my main hands-on experience with Apple has come from giving these people technical support.

But it is not for me. I would find it a constant source of irritation.

The n800 a Month Later

Last week Apple announced the SDK for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While I'm sure that a lot of cool stuff will come out of this, I still prefer my Nokia N800.

I'm going to quickly repeat the differences between this and Apple's offerings.

First, it is not a phone so don't compare it to the iPhone. If you really want to use it for phone calls then you can make using voice over IP on WiFi. If that isn't good enough then get a bluetooth enabled phone. The n800 will connect with it. If you shop around then the n800 and phone will cost less than an iPhone.

From here on I will compare the n800 to the iPod Touch although some of the comparisons are valid for both.

The biggest difference is how open the n800 is. You can store any file you want on it multiple different ways. The most obvious is through USB. If your PC can take a memory card then you can copy directly to the card. By default, Windows XP has a Shared Documents folder. The n800 will connect with this allowing you to copy and paste files through the network.

You can use an external keyboard, either through bluetooth or through a USB OTG cable. The OTG cable also lets you connect external disk and thumbdrives. I have to admit that I have not gotten this to work, yet.

Steve Jobs explained that Flash animations are too much for the iPod and iPhone so they will not support it. These work just fine on my n800. In fact, nearly every web site I have tried works including news sites with streaming video.

I have several movies, MP3s, and videos I converted from YouTube (this takes specialized but free software).

It is a pretty good platform for comic books. I have several comics as scanned images. The built-in image viewer is ok but the Quiver Image Viewer is better. I can see the entire page at once but too small to read. If I zoom one level I can see half of the page and can usually read the word balloons. If the lettering is too small then I zoom a second time and I can see a quarter page, larger and clearer than life.

Unlike the Apple SDK, programs developed for the n800 can run in the background. On the iPod Touch, you cannot switch to a new program without closing the current one. I usually let the Claws email run in the background while web browsing.

I could go on but you get the idea. The iPhone is a phone that also offers Internet. The iPod Touch is a media player that also offers Internet. The n800 is an Internet device that has been shrunken to pocket size.

Hulk

Warning - spoilers ahead.



I complained a few months ago about the Hulk disappearing from his own comic book. A few years ago he vanished for months thanks to a long-lasting tranquilizer given to Banner. When that plotline finally ended, the strip went back to featuring the Hulk. It was also a Hulk I rather liked - smart but anti-social. He spent a couple of years on a different planet, first fighting in an arena then leading a rebellion.

Then came World War Hulk and the title character was reduced to being a supporting character.

Now they've started the strip over again at issue one but something is missing - the Hulk.

There's a Hulk, but not the Hulk. Bruce Banner is sitting in a prison and is not changing forms. What we have instead is a mystery Hulk. We got a mystery story arc to go with it.

In issue #1 we never really see the Hulk clearly, just the set-up for the mystery. We finally get a look at him in issue #2 but he is a different Hulk. First, the new Hulk is red instead of green. It appears that he is both smart and ruthless but we don't know for sure. When he fights Iron Man he only growls. He does talk to She-Hulk but it is off-panel. He does finally speak in the last couple of pages - I think he got two word balloons. Rick Jones got more than that. So did She-Hulk and various SHIELD agents. Tony Stark got the most. He is featured so much that I had to remind myself that I was reading the Hulk and not Iron Man.

So that's problem number one - the Hulk is a supporting character. I stopped reading the last time they did that.

Problem number two is the plot, or the lack of it. There just isn't much there. The art tries to make up for it. There are full-page panels and double-page spreads. These look good but they eat up a lot of space. If the comic went back to a traditional format they could probably have squeezed both issues into a single comic.

I know that some people buy the comics for the art. I want a good story to go with the art. And I want the character on the masthead to be the featured player in the comic instead of making a cameo appearance.

Flight part 3

I've talked about super heroes fly but so far I haven't really talked about comic book heroes. In a static medium like a comic book, characters normally just fly. There are some variations.

Back when Superman was under different editorial control than the rest of DC, characters in the Superman universe pretty much all flew. There was no explanation. If you could fly then you could fly and probably at any speed you wanted to. Supporting characters in Superman often got the power of flight and kept up with Superman. Similarly, most people who suddenly "became super" got flight along with strength and invulnerability regardless of the source of the powers.

The Legion of Superheroes was similar. The big three, Superboy, Mon-El, or Ultra Boy (plus Supergirl but they seldom counted her) had pretty much equivalent powers. Ultra Boy could only use one power at a time and could see through lead. Otherwise they all seemed to be on the same level. The rest of the Legion used flight rings (originally they used rocket packs then flight belts). They didn't seem to have any trouble keeping up. Ultra Boy often used his flight ring to stay in the air while using other powers.

The rest of DC was slightly different. Wonder Woman originally could ride air currents. Presumably this was slower and more limited than real flight since she also used a transparent airplane. Hawkman, in his various incarnations, used artificial wings. Green Lantern had his ring carry him where he needed to go.

One interesting one was Deadman who was a ghost. In his first several appearances he simply walked where ever he was going. Sometimes he was walking through thin air, hundreds of feet off of the ground. Later he started flying more like a conventional hero. Since the artist was the great Neal Addams, I'm assuming that this evolution was on purpose. When he first died, Deadman still acted like a normal man even though he was weightless and immaterial. He was flying all along but he was mimicking walking. As he grew to accept his altered state he stopped acting he was still alive.

Over at Marvel, things were different, at least most of the time. Marvel's science may have been shaky but they at least provided some explanation for a character flying. The Human Torch was supported by the updraft caused by his flames. The Sub-Mariner had winged ankles.

During the Silver Age, Stan got creative with some of his characters. The Hulk didn't fly, he jumped. Thor threw his heavy hammer then caught the unbreakable thong on the handle and was pulled after it. Presumably, once he got going, Thor used his control over weather to created an updraft to keep him going and winds to change his direction.

Iron Man had jets in his boots. Doctor Strange had a cloak of levitation. The Wasp had actual wasp wings grafted to her body (they didn't grow when she did so they vanished when she was normal-sized). Ant-Man rode flying ants.

Stan put limits on his characters. The Sub-Mariner's wings were slower than other characters and only good for short-term flight. Iron Man had to stop and recharge his batteries and could freeze up if he flew too high. On the other hand, the Angel who had real wings, was the most maneuverable. This makes perfect sense when you remember that everyone else except the Wasp was rocketing through the air somehow. Angel was the only one with aerodynamic surfaces. He also trained more than the other heroes thanks to Professor X.

Marvel's Captain Marvel is an interesting variation. He started out with a rocket belt which was part of his Kree uniform. Later he gained some "negabands" which gave him strength and flight and became cosmically aware. He was the first hero I can think of to really use his flight during a fight. In a battle with the Controller he was using his flight to duck under the Controller's swings and outmaneuver him. Writer/artist Jim Starlin was thank for this.

A later Starlin character, Adam Warlock, did things a bit differently. He was being attacked by a giant artificial shark in space. He tried slugging it without success. Next he tried standing on a tiny space rock, using it to anchor himself. This makes sense depending on how strong his powers of flight are. What with action and equal reaction, standing on something would allow you to hit with your entire body with the force of your blow going down your legs to the mass below you. If you hit something while flying then your powers of flight will have to substitute for this. Not that it helped Warlock against the shark.

When the Marvel Handbook came out in the 1980s the editors made it their purpose to give a rational explanation for every hero's powers. It turned out that many people can harness gravitons to propel themselves. This was the first time that someone pointed out some of the obvious limitations on flight. Once you pass 300 MPH you can no longer breath. Faster speeds will cause friction heating.

DC heroes never paid any attention to this. They move faster than the eye can see without causing more than a tiny breeze and they violate the laws of physics at the drop of a hat.

One other character should be mentioned while I'm talking about flight - Neo from The Matrix. His ability to fly is easily explained since he can alter reality. The interesting thing is the wash of unreality that follows him like a jet trail. This was visible in the final scene of The Matrix. In the sequel he found himself hundreds of miles from where he needed to be so he flew as fast as he could. This either created a powerful wind or wave of unreality. Either way, cars were being scooped up in his wake.

Flight - Part 2

Superman's first screen appearance was the cartoon series by Max Fleischer. This was early enough that Superman didn't quite fly. He made tall leaps (and single bounds).

A Superman serial from the 1950s was shot in live action but when Superman flew the actor was replaced with an animated figure who zipped back and forth. I think that this was to maximize screen time for the flight which was never more than a second or two, anyway.

Hanna-Barberra did a long-running version of Superman but used limited animation. Most of the flying was with a fixed cell of Superman while the background moved.

When Chris Reeve took over the roll, he just floated up (up and away). The more recent Superman and Justice League cartoons did the same as did Superman Returns.

When John Byrne remade Superman in the 1980s, he said that he thought of many of Superman's power as some form of psychic power. He didn't actually use X-rays to see through objects, he used ESP. He didn't melt things with heat from his eyes, he used telepyronics. While he was tough, much of Superman's invulnerability came from a personal force field (which covered his suit but not his cape). By this reasoning he doesn't exactly fly, he levitates himself.

This would explain how Superman can carry things that should break apart. In the first movie Superman takes Lois flying. She appears to fly at arm's length. This is consistent with Superman flying psychically. If he was propelling himself by any normal means then Lois would have been trailing behind due to air friction. If he levitates himself and what ever he touches then Lois could easily fly at arm's length.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane!

Kids ask a lot of questions and I was pretty observant as a kid so I noticed several things when watching George Reeves' Adventures of Superman.

Superman could fly but he didn't just float away, he took a running start and leaped into the sky. Sometimes it was a long run. I remember one episode where he was inside a suburban house. He ran out the front door, across the yard, turned onto the sidewalk, then jumped into the air.

It was the same when he landed. He didn't float to the ground, he landed with a thump.

There were a couple of times that he did take straight off. When he did that it whipped up a wind that blew stray paper around.

When he was flying it was accompanied by a whooshing sound that could be heard a long way off. Often Lois heard it and had to figure out how to attract Superman's attention.

Put together, this gives us a reasonable model for how Superman flies, something the comic never did. It works if you think of an airplane or missile. It would appear that Superman had a stall speed. He didn't flitter around like Tinkerbell. He had to have forward motion to fly. His running and jumping was similar to a plane getting up airspeed, or at least running to get a kite in the air. When he landed, he couldn't break completely. He lost as much speed as he could by flying and used his legs as super shock absorbers.

I have an interesting explanation for how he actually flew without some sort of propellant. He must have manipulated the air, possibly using a static charge across his skin. That would explain why he needed to be moving in the first place, why he kicked up a windstorm, and why his flight was accompanied by a loud whoosh. It also explains why he couldn't just hover and descend slowly. He had to keep up the amount of air moving past his body and there just wasn't enough when he slowed down. The best example I can think of for this is driving up a muddy hill. If you keep your speed up you can make it but if you slow down you can't get enough traction and you start spinning.

Could Superman carry someone while charged? Yes, as long as they didn't touch anything else. The passenger would gain a static charge but with nothing but air around, there would be no place for the charge to go. As Superman cut his charge in preparation for landing, he would reabsorb it slowly enough that he wouldn't shock his passenger.

I can see two problems with this. Superman didn't always fly in the air. At least once he left the atmosphere to stop an oncoming meteor. He also propelled himself through the water. The meteor I can explain - he reached top speed while in the atmosphere and let inertia carry him the rest of the way. He was only able to deflect the meteor with a collision, not push it away which is consistent. The recoil from striking a huge rock bounced him back to earth.

Flying under water is harder to explain. Maybe he was actually swimming, kicking his feet so fast that it didn't show.

Of course, the real explanations are a lot less interesting. The original plan was to use wires and a flying harness but a wire broke early in the production and Steve Reeves refused to use a flying harness again. When he jumped it was onto an off-screen cushion. When he landed he was swinging on camera from an off-screen bar. The whooshing was a carry-over from the radio show which had to use something to let listeners know when Superman was flying.

The few times that they did use a flying harness they used a fan for the wind. I have no idea why they used it but it adds a nice tie-in with my theory.

Strange how it all worked together to suggest a real means of flight. This is something that none of the other versions of Superman have done.

I'll have more about superhero flight in later posts.

Nokia N800 continued

So, I've had my Nokia N800 for a week and a half. How do I like it now that I've used it more?

In general I'm more impressed than before. Except for a couple of web sites that stream tv shows, it has worked with every web site I've tried. For example, I was able to watch streaming video of a London fire from the BBC.

Movies that I have ripped from.DVD look fairly good. The frame rate is a bit lower than TV -I would guess 20 fps instead if 30- but youu have to look hard to notice it. Very busy shots can look a bit pixalated, for example, a motorcycle jumping a fire with firewoorks going off. Normal scenes look very detailed. This is pretty good when you remember that the screen resolutioned is higher than a TV. YouTube videos always look as good as on a fast pc.

I'm getting used to entering through a stylus. In fact, I'm writing this on the N800.

The N800 is best for casual web browsing which is what I wanted it for. I can have it close at hand in stand-by mode and available at need. The next time I go someplace for a weekend I will probably just take the N800 and leave my laptop home.

Battery life while it is being used could be better - its better than a laptop but nothing like my Sansa View.

There is a growing library lf free software available. Some it is very dated but still fun. You can play Doom or Quake or Monkey Island on it.

Most of the software installs with on click. Removing it is similarly easy. You just select the program through the Control Panel and click the Uninstall button.

There are some things I would like. The stylus is shorter than I care for. Right now I'm using one from an old Palm Pilot which is better.

It would be nice if the media player and PDF viewers had an option to resume. I have some books in PDF and I have to remember what page I was on. The same thing happens if I am watching a movie over more than one day. This is one factor that limits it as a dedicated media player.

The battery meter sucks. The estimated charge constantly changes up and down. For example, when I started this it showed 6 hours of "in use" time left. Now it shows 3 hours. I guarantee I have not used this 3 hours so far today.

Google maps does not work well with the browser. When I bring it up it resizes the map to take up a set portion of the screen which is too small to be useful. This is Google's fault and there is a free mapping utility that uses Google maps so I'm not map-less, but still...

The on screen keypad works better than I expected. It's not as fast as touch typing but I wrote this review with it. If you really want a keyboard you have several options. One is the higher-priced N810. You can also use a bluetooth keyboard or a usb keyboard connected through an OTG (on the go) cable.

Review: Nokia n800

I bought a Nokia n800 on EBay last week. This is an "Internet Tablet" meaning that it has WiFi and a built-in browser.

The n800 is based on Linux although the operating system is well-hidden from the casual user. It comes with the original release, OS2007, installed. There is an update called OS2008.

I only got a fleeting impression of OS2007. You have to charge the battery before upgrading so I used the earlier operating system while I waited for it to charge.

OS2007 uses the Opera browser. Other reviews said that it didn't render video very well. I checked YouTube and found that this was true.

The upgrade was easy. The instructions say that it takes 20 minutes but it seemed more like 10 before it was ready.

The n800 comes with very little memory but it has slots for two memory cards. I put in a couple of 2 meg cards. The manual warns that it is not compatable with all cards but it didn't have any trouble with the off-brand ones I used.

There was no question that the upgrade took. OS2008 has a different look. It also uses a browser based on Mozilla Firefox.

One pleasant surprise is that the problems with movies are fixed in OS2008. I've tried YouTube, videos that I have previously downloaded and converted, and some movies that I have ripped from DVD. All play perfectly (note - it takes special software to rip DVDs).

The n800 features a large touch screen. It is larger and has a higher number of bits per inch than the iPod Touch. The resolution is 800x480 - more than twice an many pixels as the iPod.

While you can get by using your fingernails, the n800 comes with a stylus. It also has two sets of navigation buttons on the front. I have barely used these. It has buttons on the top for zooming in and out and a button to toggle the current application to full screen.

The browser works quite well. I've checked several sites and they all render properly. You do have to scroll around a bit and zoom in on smaller text. This is easy enough.

You have three options for entering text. If you touch the stylus to a text field then a stylus type pad appears at the bottom of the screen. One of the navigation buttons opens a finger type pad with larger buttons. You can also print letters although this takes some practice.

OS2008 comes with several other applications including a usable media player and a PDF viewer. Other applications can be installed for free from Nokia's web site. Some of these enable features in the b800.

The n800 comes with a low-resolution, pop-out camera. By default this is set up for video conferencing but you can download programs to take pictures. It also has an FM radio which is enabled by a program.

Open source software has been ported from other platforms. I loaded ScummVM which lets me play classic LucasArts games like Monkey Island. Doom has also been ported.

The n800 is Bluetooth enabled. If you have a Bluetooth phone then it can use it to connect to the Internet and can take over as the phone's handset.

So, how does it compare with the iPod Touch? The two are very similar but they have different focuses. The iPod is a media player that can also access the Internet. Not all web sites work with the iPod and you are very restricted on what you can copy to it.

The n800 is an Internet device that also plays media. It is bigger and heavier than I want a media player to be and the interface isn't as good for playing music. For example, it doesn't support album art.

On the other hand, it does not need web applications to be written for it. Also that larger screen is nice when viewing movies.

The biggest difference is in the attitude of the manufacturers. Apple keeps total control over the iPod Touch and the iPhone. In contrast, Nokia already has a full development kit. It even has a command prompt as part of the operating system, something that Apple keeps disabling.

Between the larger screen and the amount of control that Nokia gives you over the device, I would rate the n800 higher. Those who prefer Apple's cool factor will be happier with the iPod.

UPDATE: I did find a couple of web sites that do not work on the n800. These are ones that do streaming video through Real Player or MicroSoft's Media Player. Sites that stream through Flash work fine.

The Future of Marvel

This is a misleading title as far as Marvel's characters are concerned. From recent moves that they have made, nothing permanent will happen in the Marvel Universe. Things will happen but will eventually get reset back to the status quo as of the 1970s or 1980s. This is probably a corporate move to coincide with the new Marvel Studio.

This is only a guess but I suspect that they are worried about the reaction of new readers who pick up a comic book for the first time after seeing a Marvel movie. The movies are usually based on a high point in the character's run. This is partly because the movies usually include an origin and partly because the odds say that the best issues out of a 500 issue run didn't come out last week.

So we have a young, unmarried Spider-Man. Johny Blaze is Ghost Rider. Daredevil is fighting Bullseye and Kingpin alongside Electra. Reed and Sue just got married and the Silver Surfer just came to earth for the first time.

Some of the changes over the last few decades can be glossed over or picked up as you go along. Other changes make the character seem like a different person.

So, at least for the characters that have been made into movies, the comic will be friendly to the movie audience. I can't think of any other reason for bringing back Harry Osborn. They wanted the continuity to be somewhere between the first and second movies.

I bet that after the Iron Man movie that the world somehow forgets that he is Tony Stark.

This makes it easier for casual readers. You can pick up a comic at any time. You may have to figure out what the current story arc is but you will know who everyone is and how they relate to each other.

Never the less, some of the magic has gone out of Marvel. When I started reading Marvel comics, back in the mid-1960s things did change, both small and large. Spider-Man graduated from high school, started college, move into an apartment, and switched girl friends. Reed and Sue got married. Rick Jones let out that Bruce Banner was the Hulk. The Sub Mariner found the city of Atlantis and regained the throne.

You didn't want to miss an issue because things might have changed when you read the next one. This was one of the things that distinguished Marvel from DC.

At least Superman is still married.

What is Spider-Man About?

Writing a blog entry, Tom Brevoort, Marvel's executive editor says

Spider-Man is about growing up. And the problem with a married Spidey boils down to the fact that, at that point, he's not growing up any more--he's grown.

This is a convenient rational but it isn't true. In many ways Peter Parker grew up in his first couple of appearances. From there it's been about responsibility. Spider-Man stories have never been about growing up. Yes, Peter has grown over the years. So have all of the younger Marvel characters (even Rick Jones).

Peter spent years complaining about the "Parker luck" - a complaint that has resurfaced. Back before this was a retro complaint Peter's real problem was that he was trying to do too much. The second movie touched on this same theme. Peter's personal life was a mess because he kept putting other people first. If he gave up helping other people then he got his own life together but other people got hurt.

But the powers that be have decided that Spider-Man is about growing up. At the same time, he will not actually grow up. Sort of pointless, isn't it.

This actually describes a different Peter - Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. In the book, Peter constantly forgot things and was, therefore constantly surprised (and hurt) by eperiences that were new to him.

The whole thing reminds me of post-Crisis Superman. I read it for a while but I never felt that it was really my Superman. It was a different guy in the same suit. He was nice enough but he just wasn't the real Superman. The new Spider-Man is the same thing. He is a Spider-Man but not the real Spider-Man.

One ray of hope - one of the comments speculated that this is all part of the countdown to issue 600 and that this will be undone, also.

Death to Batman?

DC has announced that Bruce Wayne will be killed and replaced as Batman. This sounds pretty familiar.

Most of the popular characters went through this sort of transformation around 1990. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America were all killed or somehow permanently disabled and replaced. All returned later.

A few characters' deaths stuck a bit longer. Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) died of cancer in the 1980s and stayed dead until last year. The same is true of Robin II (or was that Robin III?). Hal Jordan (one of the Green Lanterns) died after trying to destroy all creation only to be brought back a couple of years ago.

Between this and the recent reality-tampering in Spider-Man, the comic companies are looking pretty desperate for publicity. They are retooling their flagship characters.

Is anyone taking bets on how much longer Superman's marriage lasts?

The Absorbing Man and the Destroyer

These two character popped up in the last month which reminded me about their first appearances. Both came from a single, extended story arc in Thor.

It started in 1965. Marvel had already established several of its new innovations but in 1965 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started something new - extended plotlines. Previously stories were continued over at most a couple of issues. Starting in 1965 it seemed like the plots never ended. Just to be sure, Stan and Jack often had a second plot going, ready to take over when the current story ended.

In a story entitles "The Stronger I am the Sooner I Die", Loki decided to create someone strong enough to challenge Thor. He picked a brutal prisoner in a penitentiary and spiked his drink. The prisoner, Crusher Creel, gained the ability to absorb the properties of anything he touched. Using his ball and chain as a weapon he broke out of jail and confronted Thor. With his abilities, Creel could match Thor blow for blow.

Thor was called away from the fight. Loki had used Creel as a diversion and kidnapped Jane Foster (Thor's mortal identity was a doctor and he had a thing for his nurse but Odin disapproved). Thor journeyed to Asgard to confront Loki. Odin broke up the fight, demanding to know the cause. Loki claimed that Thor had brought Jane to Asgard, hoping to make her immortal. Odin decreed that there should be a trial of the gods but allowed Thor to go back to Earth to settle things with the Absorbing Man first.

Creel turned out to be too powerful for Thor to beat so Thor tricked him into absorbing the properties of helium. Creel floated away. Thor assumed that he would float until his powers faded.

Returning to Asgard, Thor and Loki began the trial of the gods. This was trial by ordeal. They were transported to a hostile dimension with the first back being declared the winner. They were not supposed to have any weapons (Thor had to surrender his hammer) but Loki cheated with the use of a bag of enchanted Norn stones. Loki won the trial but Thor was given permission to get proof that Loki cheated.

Loki hid the stones by sending them to Viet Nam (in the middle of the war). Thor recovered the stones and fought off some Viet Cong for good measure.

Desparate, Loki discovered that Thor was near the temple housing the Destroyer. Loki revealed the temple to a hunter who activated the Destroyer. Thor, seeing the temple open rushed to secure the Destroyer but instead of was first thing it saw.

It seems that the Destroyer was a creation of Odin. Not alive itself, it needed a living person's astral self to activate. Once it came to life it would kill the first thing it saw - in this case, Thor (later it was revealed that the Destroyer was created to battle the Celestials).

Thor was clearly outclassed. The Destroyer was made from the same metal (uru) as Thor's hammer and it was far stronger than Thor. It also had an array of other powers. One of them shattered Thor's hammer. In desperation Thor tried to levitate away using one of the Norn stones. The Destroyer pulled him back down by increasing gravity beneath Thor. The Destroyer trapped Thor by turning the floor into diamond. He then tried to do the same thing to Thor.

Loki quickly realized that the Destroyer was too powerful and that Odin would quickly realize who released it. No one but Odin could stop the Destroyer but Odin was in the Odin-Sleep and couldn't be disturbed. Loki was imprisoned for trying.

From a cell in Asgard, Loki saved Thor from the transformation ray by making him immaterial. This gave Thor a respite but the strain was too much for Loki to repeat. While Thor played hide and seek with the Destroyer in the huge temple housing the Destroyer, Loki contacted the Norn Queen. She used a spell to wake Odin. Odin offered aid to Thor who refused. Thor had a plan. He made his way back to the body of the hunter whose essence had activated the Destroyer. Unwilling to risk his human body, the Destroyer transfered his essence back to the hunter. Thor was sworn not to hurt mortals so he figured that he could duck behind the Destroyer then transfer back. Before the hunter could do this, Thor brought down the temple, pulling the hunter to safety.

Thor repaired his hammer and returned to Asgard with the Norn stones. Loki was given a humiliating sentence - to assist the royal alchemist.

Obviously this didn't last. Loki used the alchemist's supplies to bring back the Absorbing Man. This time Creel beat Thor. Loki appeared to Creel, explained where his powers came from, and took Creel to Asgard. Creel made short work of Odin's personal guards and the two of them forced Odin to turn over his scepter.

Loki and Creel fought over the scepter and who would rule Asgard before realizing that they were stuck to it. Odin pointed out that the power wasn't in the object, it was in Odin personally. He sent the scepter into space with Loki and Creel still stuck to it.

The following year's annual found Loki plotting from deep space. He sent his astral body to the mound where the Destroyer was buried and activated it. With an Asgardian's spirit in it the Destroyer was able to use the Rainbow Bridge and invade Asgard. Odin was in the Odin Sleep again (he did this a lot) but woke in time to deal with the Destroyer. Even Odin couldn't withstand the Destroyer's disintegration beam but Odin shut down Loki's mind before the Destroyer could strike.

Neither character appeared again under Stan and Jack although the Absorbing Man has become a mainstay. After being beaten multiple times he sort of reformed and keeps a low profile unless provoked. Most recently he tried to save his cousin from She-Hulk who is now a bounty hunter.

The Destroyer has remained exclusively a Thor character. At various times its shell has been inhabited by Balder, Sif, Loki, a retired army officer, Odin and the assembled spirits of Asgard, and Thor himself. He was even made a herald of Galactis for a short time (it was never explained why this didn't work out). The forces that empower the Destroyer are too strong for it to ever be destroyed itself. Even melting it into a puddle was a temporary measure.

As with many villains, neither character has been as threatening as in their first appearance.

Apple's War on Consumer Choice

There are two reasons I don't switch from a PC to an Apple. The obvious one is price. Apple charges a "coolness" premium. The other is their philosophy about how the computer should be used. The new MacBook air is an extreme example of this.

First - it has all the requisite Apple coolness. It will fit in a manila envelope. It looks good. It's "greener" than most computers but not enough for Greenpeace.

But it dictates how it will be used through what is missing. There is no ethernet connection, just WiFi. There is no DVD drive, not even a CD drive. And replacing the battery has to be done by Apple technical support.

The missing ethernet connection is a bigger deal to some than it might seem. For security reasons, we don't have WiFi at work so it would be useless to me there.

So how does it stack up as a personal and travel computer? It's small and light but most padded laptop bags are a lot bigger than the PC they contain. If I was a business traveler I might appreciate being able to stuff it in a briefcase.

When I travel I use my laptop for email, Internet access (especially news sites), and for media. Granted I have most of my music on a Sansa View but where do you think that came from? My laptop, of course. With the Air I would either have to have a second computer for ripping my music or I would have to buy everything fresh from iTunes (not really an option since most of my CDs are from obscure Irish musicians and many were purchased directly from the artists).

Then there are movies. I often play DVDs on my PC. The picture is better than on my TV and the mouse is easier to use than a remote. Even a second PC doesn't help much with the Air unless you buy a special program to rip DVD. These exist but are legally questionable under the DMCA.

Of course, I could rent a movie through iTunes. There are a lot of issues there. I don't always watch the DVDs I bring with me and you only have a month to play a rented movie. Also, sometimes I watch a movie over several days, especially a long one like Return of the King. Apple only gives you 24 hours from when you start watching. And all of this ignores the significant amount of time it takes to download a movie.

Then there is the battery. Like other Apple products, you have to send your Air in when the battery starts to go. You can't carry a spare battery and you can't buy a new one yourself when the old one starts to go.

I won't even go into the single USB connection.

At some point someone, probably Steve Jobs himself, decided that it was more important to have a really slim laptop than to include any of these features. He decided how you would use your expensive laptop for you.

In the meantime, I'm sticking with my Compaq.

The Current State of the Music Industry

The major entertainment companies are all releasing music on MP3s without DRM. Some people are calling this a victory for consumer demand. While I think that this is how music should be sold, the motivations of the music industry deserve some examination.

First some history for those who forgot it. The current MP3-oriented market has a lot of roots.

CDs are digital and computer-readable so the roots go back to the 1970s when the format was introduced. Of course, at that time there were no home computers that could read CDs. Even playing music was a major accomplishment for these early systems.

CD drives started become standard on PCs in the early 1990s on "multi-media" PCs. These could play a CD but they were too short on disk space to copy more than a track or two to the PC. That's where MP3s came in. They compress the .wav files. At first people were ripping CDs so that they could burn their own mixes with their favorite tracks. Apple even targeted this with their Rip/Burn/Play promotion.

Four other things happened around this time. One was the rise of the stand-alone MP3 player. They were fairly bulky and they were short of space. Still, they took up less room than a CD player and they were shock-resistant. The second was speed increases in the Internet. Even without broadband it was possible to transfer an MP3 file in a fairly short time. The third thing was the rise of music trading sites beginning with Napster. The final factor was the elimination of the CD single. If you wanted your favorite track you had to go out and buy the entire CD at $20.

At this point the recording industry should have recognized a potential new market. If they had come up with something like iTunes they could have saved themselves a lot of grief, especially if older tracks were available at impulse-purchase prices - say $0.75.

The executives knew that all of this was going on but they were afraid of the new technology. They were even more afraid that anyone they brought in to manage it for them would take advantage. They tried some subscription services but these had such a limited catalog that they all failed. Other than that, they spent a lot effort trying to legally suppress file sharing.

That's what happened although it took them years to recognize it. Steve Jobs came to them with a proposal for iTunes. The kicker to his sales pitch was that it would only be for the Mac so, even if they didn't like it, it would be available to such a small percentage of the population that it didn't matter, anyway.

Jobs' promise didn't last long. Around a year after the initial iPod launch he expanded it to the PC.

Along the way Jobs made a couple of choices that shaped today's market. He included a proprietary DRM in iTunes. Jobs refuses to license this to any other company so the only way that you can use iTunes is to buy an iPod first (I suppose you could buy a tune, burn it to CD then rip that but that's too much work for most people). At the same time, Jobs declined to license any other formats. This gave Apple a big share of the music market and, like most things that Apple touches, it is on Steve Jobs' terms.

Enter Microsoft and other MP3 manufacturers. The iPod is no longer top of the heap. Several other players offer better features for a similar price. SanDisk's Sansa line has more flash memory and FM radio. Microsoft's Zune has WiFi. While Apple still has the lion's share of the market, these other players are selling in the millions.

So how to sell to these new players and Apple? The majority of the players are still iPods so using Microsoft's DRM eliminates too much of the market. That leaves MP3 as the only format that will play anywhere. The recording industry doesn't like it but they want to break Steve Jobs' hold over them.

So the sales of DRM-free music have more to do with Steve Jobs than any other market forces. That means that there may be future attempts at enforcing non-Apple DRM coming.

Missing: 30 years continuity

If found return to Spider-Man c/o Peter Parker.

Marvel made it official (see the picture below), everything that happened in Spider-Man in the last 30 years is gone. Gwen is still dead as is Norman Osborn. No one knows Spidey's identity - period. Not even people who knew it since the 1980s.

Peter was never married to MJ. MJ is a Hollywood actress who comes to NYC sometimes.

Peter may have lived in an apartment once but he moved back in with Aunt May for financial reasons.

No word on Peter's college status but I'll bet that he is either a drop-out or an undergrad.

It's an ignominious change to a character who first introduced continuity and realism to comic books.

Continuity was easy at first. There was only the one comic and every issue was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Stories took a full issue and Marvel couldn't afford inventory stories so everything was printed in the order it was created. That made it easy to refer to the previous issue as "last month". Continuity showed up in little ways. Peter started dating Betty Brant. If they argued in one issue they might refer to it in the next. It showed up in big ways, also. Villains didn't just return. They were granted parole or revieled how they escaped from a previous certain death.

Spider-Man broke several rules. He graduated from high school and went to college. He broke up with a girl friend (Betty) and got a new one (MJ) then got serious with a third (Gwen Stacy).

By the mid-1970s Stan and Steve had moved on. Gerry Conway took over as writer and the strip got in a rut punctuated by some silly stuff (Doc Ock marrying Aunt May in order to inherit her nuclear reactor). In a decision that would be repeated in numerous strips, the solution was a new girl friend. Gwen was killed and Peter started dating MJ again.

Marv Wolfman got the strip going again in the late 1970s. In the 1980s it started breaking all sorts of rules. Peter started dating the Black Cat, a thrill-seeking villain. He even revealed his identity. After they broke up he got back together with MJ and eventually married her.

In the 1990s things went wrong. Arguably the worst plotline from the 1970s involved Peter's biology professor becoming a super villain and cloning Peter and Gwen. This was revived and stretched on for a few years. After that Norman Osborn was brought back from the dead.

New management felt that the marriage was a mistake so MJ left town and was assumed dead.

Just a couple of years ago the strip seemed have gotten back on even footing. MJ was back and reconciled with Peter. Aunt May finally found out that Peter was Spider-Man, a revelation that was decades overdue. Peter started teaching. The excesses of the 1990s could be easily ignored.

Then they started changing things again, piling them on too deep. Peter died and came back with new powers. He got a new costume. He revealed his identity to the world.

After letting things go to pot, Marvel decided that the easiest thing was to make it all away - everything that they considered a mistake. Essentially the strip was rolled back to its stagnant period in the 1970s. The main difference is that Peter doesn't even have his own apartment.

I can see rolling back the last couple of years. They went overboard with changes and the staff who came up with this junk is still around to take the heat for it. I have real problems with undoing 2/3s of the strip's run. Some of the best runs of the comic have been swept away and I don't think that the current management is as talented as the people whose efforts they invalidated.

I have only been reading Spider-Man sporadically since the 1990s. I see no reason to read it again.

Ralph and the Primaries

Last night's Simpsons marked a return to some of its best writing and was one of the top episodes. Not bad for the longest-running sit-com even on American TV.

The plot started with Homer accidentally blowing up the "fast food district". Naturally the people wanted it rebuilt but that would take a bond levy and would have to wait until the next election - the Spring primary. The simple solution was to move up the primary making Springfield's the first primary in the nation.

The political reporters in New Hampshire immediately abandon the state in favor of Springfield. In no time, Dan Rather is making strange similes while Krusty pumps Jon Stewart for material. When the Simpsons are identified as undecided, their door is broken down and their house filled with reporters and presidential hopefuls.

Homer comes up with a solution to all of this - cast write-in votes for the least qualified person possible (which turns out not to be Dennis Kucinich). This is Ralph Wiggam, a very special 8-year-old. Presented with an unexpected front-runner, the parties both decide to endorse him as their candidate.

Along the way the episode manages to lampoon both parties, Rush Limbaugh, Ariana Huffington (and her ex-husband), and the whole circus that the primaries have become.

After way too much Iowa coverage last week and too much New Hampshire coverage over the weekend, I wonder how many votes Ralph will get in real life?

The Future Ain't What It Used to Be

This article asks the question, Is sci-fi out of ideas? The author is referring specifically to movies and TV. His point is that nearly everything we are seeing is a retread of old ideas. With Star Trek being jump-started again and comic-book movies being mainly based on heroes created in the 1940s-1960s, he has a point but it is reflected in society as a whole.

My grandfather was born before airplanes. They were still flying bi-planes when my parents were born. I was born before Sputnik. For all of us, the world was changing at a fantastic rate. Technologies were invented then went out of date quickly. My parents grew up in the age of radio. TV was still black and white when I was a child. The switch to color TV in the 1960s and cable in the 1970s was a huge leap. VCR tape recorders were introduced in the 1970s and became ubiquitous in the 1980s.

Look at a similar period over the last few years. The switch from VCR to DVD meant better resolution and smaller storage space but it is nothing like the previous changes. I now have around 150 cable channels but there is less on that I want to see so the change isn't very pronounced there.

Cars have a lot of luxuries standard and several safety features that they didn't used to have but my 20-year-old van is still quite usable. You couldn't say the same thing in the 1960s about a 1940s vehicle. Jets have been standard since the 1960s. It doesn't matter much the size or shape of the cabin.

I remember my father saying that space travel had seemed impossible when he was growing up. Even so, he didn't think that we would actually make it to the moon. He was wrong about that but I doubt that I will see us land on Mars. Just getting back to the moon seems beyond us.

With so little change happening before our eyes we have stopped imagining how things will be different in the future. Space exploration now is mainly supply and repair missions in shuttles that were designed 30 years ago. No wonder we fall back on a vision of space travel crafted when each space mission broke new records.

Even the Internet isn't new any longer. Some people (like me) were doing things on-line in the 1980s through services like CompuServe and AOL. The Internet became well-known in 1993 (as the Information Superhighway). Web pages and browsers have been common for more than a decade. Not much inspiration there. Virtual worlds were beaten to death with The Matrix and even that was years ago.

Biology - genetic engineering, cloning, transplants - has become too common-place to inspire any wonder.

Not that progress has stopped but right now I don't see the big jumps that I saw growing up. Its the big jumps that inspire the best science fiction.

Happy Birthday Stan

I'm late in posting this but Stan turned 85 on Dec. 28th. I've said it before but it's worth repeating - Stan was the most important influence in comics in my lifetime. He took a medium that had been relegated to children and redefined it as something that would appeal to adults. Along the way he (along with Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby) created properties currently worth billions.

Not many people in the world have had such an effect on their profession.

Defending Star Wars

I've been reading Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics by Tom Rogers. Much if it is pretty good but I think that he is pretty hard on Star Wars. When ranking Wars vs Trek, he gives Trek the better grade, saving his worst grades for Star Wars. The thing is that there are major flaws in his figuring.

Rogers devotes a section to why it will not work for a large space ship (such as a star destroyer) to shoot a smaller ship (such as an X-Wing fighter). He points out that in WWII, a battleship could shoot a kamikaze or dive bomber and, if they hit it far enough out,  the plane would fall into the ocean. On the other hand, if you shoot apart a fighter in space then the parts will continue on and hit your spaceship.

I have a lot of problems with this entire section. The first one is that shooting down a plane seldom causes it to break apart. More likely you will damage control surfaces or cause a wing to lose so much lift that the plane goes out of control. Or you might kill the pilot. I mention this because Rogers makes similar complaints about movies.

My second problem is the mechanics of space warfare. You are dealing with three dimensions and vastly different relative speeds. A battleship cannot take evasive action because of a combination of its mass and the physics of moving through water. Ships can really only move in one direction because of water resistance. Spaceships have no such constraints and could conceivably change course much faster. Not that you see this happen in Star Wars. You do see it in Star Trek but they do it wrong, swooping like an airplane.

Anyway, chances are that the ship being attacked is under power and therefore accelerating. That means that the fighter must aim for where the spaceship will be. There are two ways of doing this. The fighter can do one short, strong burn (acceleration) or a longer, slower one. If you shoot a fighter while it is accelerating then it will fall short.

Rogers ignores this and seems to be going from the assumption that the fighter is not under power and will strike the larger craft through inertia. I will confine myself to that assumption. So you shoot a fighter and it bursts apart. Will the pieces continue straight on? This is not likely if it exploded. In space, every action  has an equal reaction. If a ship is hit with a projectile or it blows up for some reason then its trajectory will be altered.  At long distances it doesn't take much deflection to make a projectile miss its target (the book has a section on this).

Let's assume that you didn't use a projectile to shoot the fighter, you used a laser or other energy weapon that carved the fighter up into pieces without any impact. What happens next?

Rogers' assumption is that the pieces of the fighter will do as much damage as the fighter as a whole. This is an unfounded assumption. By slicing up the fighter you have converted it from a slug into a load of shot. While the two have the same mass, they do not have equal penetrating power.

Mythbusters proved this once with a frozen chicken. The myth involved testing the impact resistance of windshields of high-speed trains. The French borrowed an air cannon that can launch a chicken at high speeds but none of their windshields could withstand the impact. They asked what they were doing wrong. The answer was "first thaw the bird". The Mythbusters were testing to see if a frozen bird had more penetrating power than an unfrozen one.

This took several tests. At one point they used a high-speed camera and determined that both birds expended all of their kinetic energy int he same amount of time so they must have the same penetrating power. Fans objected and they ended up gluing multiple panes of glass together and shooting the bird at that. The unfrozen bird penetrated several sheets but the frozen one went through all of the sheets of glass. The conclusion - a frozen bird penetrates better.

The same will be true for a fighter that is structurally intact versus one that is in pieces.

But none of this really has much to do with Star Wars. Rogers singles out Star Wars as a bad example without specifying which scene offends him. I can think of four extended space battles (two in the original Star Wars, one in Return of the Jedi, and one in Revenge of the Sith). In three of them the target is too large to be seriously affected by the impact of a fighter. The object is to keep the fighters from delivering their payload.

The very first space battle is the only one where a collision would be disastrous. This is fought between the escaping Millennium Falcon and some tie fighters. The tie fighters are making strafing runs and the Falcon is dodging which invalidates the entire argument.

So why pick on Star Wars anyway? It has more to do with reputation than what you actually see on the screen. Trek had advisers who were supposed to keep things honest and sometimes wrote entire episodes around some obscure theory of physics. You can do that when you have hundreds of hours of programming. Star Wars is limited to a half dozen movies (I'm not going to count the games, books and other spin-offs for either).

In fact, one of the most accurate accounts of how physics actually work in a space battle is in a Star Wars novel - The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way by Walter Jon Williams. Williams also wrote the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy which has the physics of large-scale space battles as a main plot point. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know how it will really be done (assuming that space battles ever happen).

Scrooge

There are only two memorable Christmas plots - It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. Both have been adapted endlessly (so endlessly that the Muppets have done both). I though I would run through some of my favorite versions of Christmas Carol.

For a straight-out telling of the book, the 1984 version with George C. Scott is the best. I've never been a big fan of Scott but he hit just the right mix in this version. The costumes and sets look just right for the 1840s, also. After this version, the newer one with Patrick Stewart seems a bit flat.

The first version I ever saw was the Mr. McGoo version and it is still an effective version.

The Muppet version loses some of the depth while adding comic relief in the form of Gonzo the Great as Charles Dickens and Rizzo the Rat as himself. Still, it is a fun version.

Bill Murray's Scrooged is a fun updating of the story.

Jar Jar

Someone left a comment on my entry about George Lucas's influences asking about where Jar Jar Binks came from. I can make some observations and guesses about this.

First, Jar Jar's function was comic relief. This function was handled by C3P0 and R2D2 in the other movies but their roles were closer to cameo appearances in Phantom Menace. The movie followed the same basic formula as the previous three movies. Since they had comic relief characters, Phantom Menace had to, also. It is generally conceded that the droids were inspired by a pair of characters from The Hidden Fortress. Lucas himself has cited this film as a major influence on Star Wars.

Note - this contradicts Lucas's insistence that Star Wars was based on classical story-telling traditions. For the life of me, I cannot think of any comic relief characters in any of the classics.

So, Lucas needed someone who would lighten things up. What other influences can we find?

It might be heresy to say this, but Jar Jar was not the first local character with a funny speech pattern and a habit for getting into things in the series. That honor goes to Yoda. When we first met him, Yoda was playing at being a simple local. This also goes back to Japanese tradition where the teacher first appears to be a simple old man. But there is a depth to Yoda that Jar Jar does not have.

There is a long tradition in American fiction of the hero having a native side-kick. This character often speaks in stilted English. The Lone Ranger's side-kick Tonto is a perfect example. While Tono was not played for laughs, he did get into more than his share of trouble.

The comic strip hero the Spirit had Ebony as his side-kick. Ebony started as a short adult but morphed into a youth. He was drawn as an exaggerated black man with thick lips and he talked in what other characters described as a "minstrel show" accent.

Adventure movies often had characters typifying a stereotype. For example, King Kong has Charlie the Chinese cook. The title character Gunga Din played this part for much of the movie. The actor Sabu spent much of his career playing this sort of character.

Lucas would have been familiar with all of this. Remember, his original stated purpose with Star Wars (and Indiana Jones) was to recreate the adventure movies and serials from the 1930s when the comic native side-kick was stock-in-trade.

When Phantom Menace came out, many people noticed the similarity between Jar Jar and the racist characterizations of the past. It didn't help that Jar Jar talked like a cross between stereotype Chinese and African characters.

Lucas got the message. In Attack of the Clones, Jar Jar's role was reduced to the dupe of the future Emperor. By Revenge of the Sith he was down to a cameo role.

Is LoTR Trivial

Golden Compass writer Phillip Pullman says that the Lord of the Rings is trivial. Is there anything to this?

Granting that Pullman's books are about the death of god or the end of religion or something like that, this is a non-trivial subject. In contrast, LotR appears to be about melting a piece of jewelry in order to maintain the status quo.

I use the word "appears" because there is a lot more to it. The major theme is self-sacrifice. Frodo sacrifices himself in order to save the Shire. In an early draft, Tolkien had Bingo (the original name for Frodo) say that while he was leaving the Shire because of the ring, he would have had to go anyway since he was out of money and hoped to pick some up on the way like Bilbo did. Tolkien marked this out with a note that Bingo still had plenty of money. He didn't have to leave because of money, he chose to leave because of the ring.

Along the way Frodo is surprised by Sam's optimism. Sam has been saving food for the trip back. Frodo never thought that far ahead. He probably thought that he would die while accomplishing his quest (Gollum died in his place by accident).

But Frodo didn't return whole. His only visible injury was the loss of a finger but he had deeper injuries. The wounds he got from the Witchking and Sheelob never completely healed and he was sick twice a year on the anniversary of being wounded.

Worse, he had a piece of Sauron's soul tempting him for years. He was no longer wholly mortal and had to leave for the Undying Lands, normally reserved for the elves.

The elf lords faced the same choice. In helping Frodo they knew that they were bringing about the end of their time in Middle Earth. The alternatives were no better - submit to Sauron or take the ring and become an equally dark lord.

There is a subtext of temptation. Boromir succumbed to temptation but so did Frodo. The quest only succeeded because of Gollum.

Plus we see the passing of the physical embodiment of a demon-figure in the defeat of Sauron.

Is that substantive enough?

The Golden Compass and Religion

There has been a lot of talk about the Golden Compass's anti-religion message. After seeing the movie, I think that the controversy was over nothing. The anti-religion message just isn't there.

Yes, the villains are all in a group called the Magersterium but you have to be told that this is an analog for the Catholic Church. It isn't presented like a church. We don't see any services. There might be priests but they aren't identifiable as such. There are no churches pointed out, just a headquarters.

The word "heresy" is tossed around a few times but that's about it.

For a universe created by an atheist, it is a strange sort of atheism. Everyone has a visible soul. There are witches, prophecies, talking bears and other magic.

I will not deny that the author, Phillip Pullman, is a outspoken atheist. The anti-religious angle might be a lot stronger in the books but this is not the book, it is the movie and it has to be judged on its own.

A few years ago the complaint was that groups were trying to suppress The Passion of the Christ without knowing what it contained. Now the same people who complained are doing the same thing to a different movie.

The Mighty Thor

It's been a while since I've written about comic books. With Thor back in publication, I thought I would take a look at his history.

Thor started as one of Marvel's second wave of heroes. By this point Stan was using a cookie-cutter approach to new heroes. Look at Thor, Iron Man, and Daredevil. All three had a supporting cast that was limited to their co-workers. Each was secretly in love with his secretary (or nurse). Each had a personal defect that kept him from declaring his love (bad heart, blindness, or, in Thor's case, a bad leg). As a hero, each one also had a built-in weakness that allowed any run-of-the-mill villain to be a challenge. Iron Man constantly ran out of power. Daredevil kept having things affect his radar sense. Thor had to keep hold of his hammer.

It is also interesting to note that the classic Avengers - Thor, Iron Man, Giant Man, the Wasp, and Captain America) were all regular people who gained powers through technology or magic (except Cap who didn't have any powers). Contrast this with the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, or Spider-Man who always had their powers.

According to Origins of Marvel Comics, Stan wanted to create a Superman-style character but wanted him to be original. He solved this with a hammer. It also gave an easy substitute for kryptonite. Stan was overloaded at the time so he assigned the writing duties to his brother Larry Lieber. Larry was a competent but uninspired writer. Thor fought a wide variety of creatures including lava men, stone men, the Radioactive Man, and a guy from the future. Stories almost always included Thor losing his hammer and turning back to Don Blake.

As I mentioned, the supporting cast was limited to one person - Jane Foster, Blake's nurse.

Then something unusual happened. Up in Asgard, Loki escaped from centuries of imprisonment and went to Earth to confront his old enemy Thor. Loki never seemed to question why a human doctor was also Thor.

Not long after Stan took over writing. This is just a guess but I assume that Larry turned in a complete script. Stan was too busy for that so he usually had a story conference with the artist. They would come up with a basic plot but it was up to the artist to decide on the pacing and other aspects of the story. The artist for Thor was Jack Kirby whose imagination was infinite.

Between them, Stan and Jack overhauled the book. The whole Asgardian pantheon was added as the supporting cast. A Tales of Asgard backup feature was added featuring a young Thor. The class of villain that Thor was fighting became much better and he almost never lost his hammer. A number of Marvel mainstays were introduced including the High Evolutionary, Ego the Living Planet, and the Recorder.

Fans started wondering about Don Blake and Thor. What happened to the real Thor? By this point Blake couldn't confess his love for Jane because he was Thor and Odin objected. Why? If Blake was just a mortal and any worthy person who had the cane could become Thor then was was the problem.

Eventually it was explained - Blake was Thor and had always been Thor. Odin wanted to teach Thor humility and had made him think he was a mortal. Not long after Thor broke up with Jane and Sif was introduced as a replacement.

From that point on Blake became a minor character, mainly appearing when someone needed surgery.

All good things come to an end. Kirby left Marvel for DC. The strip continued on with Stan and John Buscema. The stories were still good but no memorable characters were introduced. A couple of years later Stan moved and Gerry Conway took over.

The strip quickly stagnated. Roy Thomas brought a little life into in in the late 1970s, first with Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods which turned out to be a false start. Later he adapted the Ring cycle. This was brought to a conclusion in a story arc that included the Odin Sword, the Destroyer, and the Celestials.

Jane Foster appeared again and merged with Sif for a while before separating again.

The strip really took off again in 1982 when Walt Simonson took over. He was a fan of the original sagas and brought Thor back to his Norse roots. Most of the supporting characters were revamped. Some villains like the Executioner and the Enchantress were rehabilitated. He also created Beta Ray Bill who became an alien version of Thor. Ragnarok came again.

When Simonson left the strip quickly stagnated again. The Powers that Be decided that Thor had to have a mortal identity (Under Simonson, Thor disguised himself as a mortal construction worker). Thor was merged with Eric Masterson, an architect and single father. Naturally, being a part-time god messed up Masterson's life.

There was a spate of replacement heroes. Thor's version of this had the real Thor's identity submerged so that only Eric Masterson existed. Eventually Thor was restored and Masterson given his own strip as Thunderstrike.

There was a short-lived group called the Thor Corps consisting of Thunderstrike, Beta Ray Bill, and a different Thor from the future. The real Thor was not included.

The restored Thor got off to a bad start. He wet crazy and almost destroyed the universe.

The strip faltered again. This time it was given a new direction - Thor became mortal. In a three-issue story arc, he lost most of his powers but was able to triumph with the help of the Enchantress. His powers were only restored for a short time before he lost them again. He went into the hero business literally with the Enchantress charging for his services. While this plotline was promising, many other Marvel titles had wondered. Tony Stark was a teenager, the Torch had married a Skrull, etc. Marvel "killed" them all - actually sending them to an alternate world in Franklin Richards' mind.

The heroes returned with new creative crews. Thor found that the Asgardians had vanished and he was merged with yet another mortal - this time a paramedic named Jake Olsen.

The strip slowly reestablished itself. Jake was given a supporting cast including Jane Foster who was now a doctor. He acquired a side-kick named Tarene who assumed the form of a female Thor-in-training. She even had her own supporting cast.

Then the strip embarked on a long-term story arc. First Odin died leaving the Odin Force to Thor. Thor decided that humanity would benefit by closer contact with the gods and brought Asgard into our dimension. After solving humanity's ills, Thor took over the Earth. The plot skipped forward a few decades to Earth under the Asgardians' rule. It should be no surprise that it had a dark side.

Eventually Thor came to his senses and changed time so that Asgard never conquered the world.

This was followed by the Asgard Disassembled arc in which Ragnarok came - again. With the Asgardians dead, Thor killed off a set of super gods known as Those Who Sit in Shadows. Finally he entered the sleep of the gods and wort of died.

Now he's back. Surprisingly, so is his Don Blake identity. The last couple of issues have been a bit formulaic with Thor visiting a disaster area to find a missing Asgardian. Still, the stories are intense. Issue 3 featured the fight we've been been waiting for - Thor vs Iron Man. Tony Stark cloned Thor during the Civil Wars and Thor was upset so he broke Stark's armor.

Where will this lead? Only time will tell.

Heroes - Chapter 2

Prior to the airing of the chapter 2 wrap-up, the producer of Heroes apologized to the fans for a lack-luster season. I wish that the Lost producers had that much honesty.

They took their time tying things together and it resulted in a rushed wrap-up. Too much time was spent on romance - Claire, Hiro, Sylar and Peter all got a love interest, and none of them turned out well. Two of them are in other times (what does happen when someone leaves you in an alternate future that no longer exists?).

It would have been more interesting if they had left Adam's intentions up in the air more. After all, the Company has been playing around with the viruses and could easily have been responsible for releasing it. All doubts about who wanted what were settled last week when we saw the COmpany stop Adam from releasing the virus 30 years ago.

I was never that fond of Niki so I won't miss her much. It would have been nice to have learned about her sister. They dropped some hints that she had actually merged with her twin instead of just becoming a split personality.

A bit of realism - Monica discovered that muscle memory doesn't help a tiny girl over come big guys with guns. It was an ignominious end to her story arc.

I know that the episode was rewritten at the last minute in order to wrap things up before the writer's strike shut down production. The fact that they had to do this shows how disjointed the wrap-up was going to be.

Here's hoping that the writers settle soon.