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).