|
Post by dans on Sept 6, 2020 2:02:10 GMT
Here's a potential writing challenge. Find a story about an obscure public domain character who is poorly conceived and/or poorly written. Rewrite the story and make it better...
Or we could make it a collaborative effort, with several of us working to improve a selected character / story...
Just some thoughts on what might help someone break through writers block...
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 7, 2020 0:43:36 GMT
Okay, let's try this out on Crimebuster. Secret Identity: Charles ("Chuck") Chandler. Origin: Teenager Charles' parents are abducted by Nazis. His father, a heroic war correspondent, is killed right away, and the Nazi-affiliated supervillain Iron Jaw kills his mother while she's in Nazi custody. Abilities: None, other than athletic agility- Chuck was a military school attendee. Uniform: No mask. A makeshift cape over a hockey outfit, with a shirt emblazoned with a C and athletic shorts and sneakers. Following adverse input, he abandoned the makeshift outfit in December 1950 (Boy Illustories 60: December 1950). Enemies: Iron Jaw- Nazi supervillain with (well) an ironclad lower jaw. The story here is that Iron Jaw ("Von Schmidt") is an old friend of Adolf Hitlers, whose jaw was blown apart in an assassination attempt that went awry. When Hitler came to power, Von Schmidt blackmailed him into becoming the apex Nazi agent in the United States. When Hitler grew tired of Von Schmidt's everlasting failures, he sent a disfigured agent called the Rodent (who could control rats) to kill Iron Jaw (Boy Comics 15, April 1944). While it seemed that the Rodent had succeeded in eliminating Iron Jaw, the latter resurfaced in 1950. He had switched sides to become a Communist agent after the fall of Nazi Germany during his six years of inactivity. He also became associated with a group of gangsters called the Deadly Dozen. Supporting Cast: Jay Loover, head of the New York FBI provided logistical and forensic support (Boy Comics 8: April 1943) until July 1955 (Boy Comics 107). Thereafter, enrolling at Curtis Technical Institute, Chuck Chandler gradually abandoned his superhero persona, becoming a civilian college student until the end of his run (Boy Illustories 119: March 1956). Duration of adventures: Boy Comics 3 (April 1942)-Boy Illustories 119 (March 1956)
Suggested modifications: A better outfit, including a mask. The New York FBI angle could logically provide forensic and logistical assistance to Charles. Iron Jaw may have been driven insane as a result of the post-traumatic stress disorder associated with the assassination attempt. He may be one element of a Nazi metahuman research project, which is logical if one considers that the Rodent was sent to assassinate him. The Rodent is clearly a mutant with enhanced telepathic control over rats. Over time, and given the turn of events in the latter stages of World War II, Iron Jaw gradually becomes disenchanted with the Third Reich and decides to lay low until after the war. He's an opportunist, judging from his subsequent enrolment as a Soviet agent. Rename Jay Loover "James Louvre" and put him in charge of an OSS Specialist Unit that used metahumans as covert agents during the Second World War. Crimebuster is just one of a number of such agents, dealing specifically with organised crime and Nazi affiliations within the underworld. After many of his wartime colleagues have been either incapacitated, killed or retired, Crimebuster decides to retire from active duty, following a case that leaves a sour taste in his mouth, associated with Cold War Macarthyism and scapegoating. He still uses his combat experience when Iron Jaw or the Deadly Dozen show up, but covertly. Because of his home front activities, Crimebuster lacks the post-traumatic stress disorder that other OSS Metahuman Unit affiliates in frontline combat experienced. Also, let's assume a shared universe in this context. Other Lev Gleason characters might be appropriate- Captain Battle, Daredevil (Bart Hill), Silver Streak, Olympian Gods (Apollo, Pan, Bacchus, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Vulcan), Blackout, Miracle Man, Meteor, Mr Midnight, Pat Patriot, Spirit Man, Thirteen, Wasp (Burton Slade), Young Robin Hood (Billy Lackington). Most of the Lev Gleason rogues gallery of this period appeared to be adversaries of either Silver Streak or Daredevil.
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 7, 2020 1:24:17 GMT
So far it looks like this isn't going to be a collaborative project, Red... maybe you can write this and post in the Infinite Earths board. I'm planning to give Master Mystic an origin, so I will post it there...
|
|
|
Post by johnreiter902 on Sept 7, 2020 2:14:25 GMT
I may get into this, if I have time. I'm trying to concentrate my energies on my current story and projects right now.
|
|
|
Post by DocQuantum on Sept 7, 2020 8:06:25 GMT
I like the idea. If I took up this challenge, I'd pick a character who has very few appearances at all, and might even look ridiculous at first glance, like the Fiery Mask. This was an obscure Marvel Comics character from the old Timely days and was brought back in The Twelve in recent years, where he became a more interesting character than in his golden age appearances.
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 7, 2020 11:51:18 GMT
I like the idea. If I took up this challenge, I'd pick a character who has very few appearances at all, and might even look ridiculous at first glance, like the Fiery Mask. That's my thought too, Doc. It may be another way to spur writing creativity....
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 9, 2020 1:24:55 GMT
My entry is going to be a telling of the origin of Master Mystic, who appeared in one story in a single shot comic. It will be a very Golden Age style origin, deliberately with echos of Green Lantern's origin. But, I gotta finish the Sunbeam story first...
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 9, 2020 3:06:28 GMT
Actually, Crimebuster doesn't grab me all that much, so I'm doing a story about Black Owl, an evolved Green Lama (Enlightenment), Atomic Man, Fighting American and Speedgirl*, his adolescent crimefighting companion. It's set on Earth-66, which never evolved jet aircraft, nuclear energy or crewed spaceflight. Black Owl (Walt Walters) lost his sons Yank and Doodle in the Third Great War (against the Patriarchate of Holy Russia) and meets his old comrades in a New York bar...
*Yeah, I know it was originally Speedboy, but frankly, the original was too much like Bucky, so I decided to pull a convenient gender switch.
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 9, 2020 19:10:07 GMT
Maybe you can explain why the Black Owl always wore blue...
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 11, 2020 3:38:29 GMT
I've managed a solution to that question. It's currently on display in my Infinite Earths story, Crisis on Earth-66.
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 11, 2020 13:14:43 GMT
I have just finished re-reading a couple of Golden Age origin stories. One of the biggest writing problems I have is that I want everything to make sense, be connected, and flow logically from one thing to the next. But when you go back and read the GA stories, the writers rarely worried about things like that. For example, the writer of the Green Lantern story didn't say how the Lantern got from Asia to the train Alan was riding in, it just disappeared from one place and showed up in the other. in the Master Mystic story I read, it didn't say how the villain got from Europe to the US, although you are supposed to think he swam.
So in my upcoming reimaging of Master Mystic's origin, I'm going to look for all those places where I normally get bogged down and just leave them out!
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 11, 2020 23:59:45 GMT
I think there are logical interpellations that could be deduced here. In the case of the Golden Age Green Lantern origin story, it seems probable that the Green Lantern lamp was excavated from an archaeological dig in China and was being transferred to a US museum on the same train that Alan Scott was riding in. As for Rango, it may be the case that his metamorphosis gave him water-based superspeed, which assisted his arrival on the East Coast of the United States, although that would have also resulted in tsunami activity within the Atlantic, which we don't see in that story. Perhaps Master Mystic used temporal manipulation to travel back in time and erase the consequences of that passage before they could impact on either side of the Atlantic.
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 12, 2020 1:01:30 GMT
Of course, we can always fill in the details. But when I do that in a story, the story become unbearably long. So I'm just going to leave some of the details out. 'Why did the Star Rovers of Nyngenus come to Earth more than 3 million years ago?' 'Why did they never return?' 'Why was the priceless ancient statue available for purchase in a common merchant's stall in the bazzar?' Because the story says so, that's why!
|
|
|
Post by DocQuantum on Sept 12, 2020 1:20:21 GMT
The Alan Scott Green Lantern story in Secret Origins fills in most of those missing details.
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 12, 2020 3:10:22 GMT
There are also easy replies possible for the question of the priceless statue being available for purchase in a bazaar merchant's stall. The merchant probably had no idea that this was an authentic artefact and sought a quick sale on what he may have wrongly concluded was a knock-off of the original. Or the artefact had been either stolen or carried off as loot by barbarian raiders or had been auctioned off in a job lot when an earlier owner died without descendants available to inherit it, or it had only recently substantially appreciated in value due to related archaeological discoveries. Any of them could be plausible explanations for how Master Mystic came into possession of the object in question.
|
|