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.

Numb3rs & Comics

This entry is a week late but the 11/23 episode of the CBS show Numb3rs revolved around comic books and a convention. The writers knew their material.

For those who never saw it (this was my first time), the show is about a pair of brothers. One is a typical FBI agent. The other one is a math genius who uses game theory, auction theory, etc. to help solve the crime.

In this case, a comic book investor announced that he had discovered the rarest of comic books - an ashcan edition of a 30+ year old favorite. Ashcan editions are cheap, black and white copies often printed on smaller than usual paper. They are only produced for copyright purposes and often the entire print run is thrown away (hence the name).

No sooner was the comic unveiled then a masked gunman appeared, shot a guard, and stole the comic. Later, dozens of fake copies of the comic appeared.

The show touched on several issues dear to the comic collector's heart. One was benefits for the creators. In this case, there was a possibility that the rare comic had been stolen from the creator's personal collection. He wanted to leave it to his wife to provide for her retirement after he died. This echoes a campaign in the 1970s and early 1980s for DC to provide benefits to Superman's creators.

The person who unveiled the comic was a collector, not a fan. All he cared about was the value of his collection. Fans hate this sort because they run up the price of back issues, keeping them out of the hands of people who want to read them.

The math angles included looking at how much ink seeped into the paper on the theory that forgers write slower, allowing more time for the ink to sink in, and an analysis of the forgeries which turned out to have a mathematical code buried in them.

The comic creator was played by Christopher Lloyd who has played an animated character in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The guy who played "Henry" in Eureka was also in it but I forget his name.

I preferred the comic convention episode of Psych (which I never blogged about) but this one was good for network TV. 

How to get your on-line fix

I got a comment asking for the best way to get comics on-line. Good question. I don't have a definite answer, just alternatives.

First, the Kindle doesn't do comic books. It is text-only. The same is true for Sony's reader.

The iPhone has wireless connectivity but it is slow and the display is pretty small. Also, you are still very limited on what you can store internally.

There are some PDAs running a version of Windows. Many of these support WiFi and some support wireless. They still have tiny screens.

If you search around you can get a laptop for the same price as the Kindle and it will have a color display. Most laptops sold now have WiFi.  This also gives you the option of downloading comics from the web for later reading or getting one of the CD-ROM collections. I have the X-Men CDROM. It has each issue in a separate Adobe file, complete with ads and the letters page (old Marvel letters pages were great). This is not the friendliest format but it would take days to read everything. Of course, current comics are not included and only a few titles have been released this way.

If money is no object then get a tablet PC and a wireless card. I have a wireless card for my work PC and response is pretty good.

On the low-end, new PCs are coming out to compete with the One Laptop Per Child. These have a small display but are cheap and durable and come with built-in WiFi.

Amazon's Kindle

Amazon announced a new e-book called the Kindle. E-book readers are nothing new. The idea is simple enough - build a small, light device that can display text and use it to store and read books. Science Fiction author Ben Bova wrote a humorous novel called "cyberbooks" around the idea in 1989.

So far the concept has fallen flat for a few reasons.

1) The reader is not good enough.
2) The e-books have DRM tying them to the reader.
3) Cost.

The technology on the readers has advanced. The current ones including Kindle are supposed to be very readable in good light, even sunlight. They are not backlit, though, so they cannot be read in poor lighting conditions.

The DRM continues to be an issue. Kindle promises that you will always be able to retrieve your book from them. Don't count on it. A couple of video download sites reneged or had technical problems on files that were only a year or two old. Further, they might well change the format forcing you to upgrade your reader. Microsoft does that every time they release a new version of Office.

But the real issue is cost. These things are expensive. The Kindle is $400. For that you get the ability to buy books, newspapers, and blogs over wireless (not Wi-Fi). The nearest competitor requires that you sync with a PC but still costs around $300.Keep in mind that you can buy a usable laptop PC for $400. For that much money you can buy a One Laptop Per Child PC for yourself and donate one to a 3rd world child. And you get a color display. Or you could buy an iPod Touch with money left over.

Then there is the cost of the book itself. The paperback I'm currently reading cost $7. If I bought it through Amazon for the Kindle it would cost $10. Presumably I'm supposed to compare the price to a hardback which would cost more. On the other hand, with a hardback I have a real, solid book. I can read it again or lend it to someone else. I'll bet that you can't lend an e-book.

The paperback is a better comparison, anyway. Most novels sold are paperbacks. They are cheaper to produce, ship, and store. They can be carried with you and they don't cost so much that you mind giving getting rid of them when you finish reading them.

E-books are even cheaper and easier to produce and ship. There are no overruns and no reason to do second printings. The publisher produces as many as there is demand.

So why don't they cost less?

The short answer is greed. The long answer is that publishers don't want to come up with a new business model. They prefer running the one they have now into the ground.

The music industry is being forced to change its business model because it is so easy to rip a CD into an MP3 file. If books could be scanned as easily we would already be seeing real choices.