Something about this image of Opale Suicide just perfectly encapsulates the fleeting nature of time to me. Copyright SG.
As I continue to try and push for more time on my current writing projects (book three of Lightweight and my Kindle Worlds G.I. Joe release), I have found myself losing time to keep updating here and abroad. Because of that, I figured it was time to announce a few days away from posting on Super Powered Fiction.
Don’t worry too much though. My plan is to only be away for two weeks as on June 8 I will return to start ramping up for the release of the collected Lightweight: Black Death on June 12.
So keep reading. Keep loving superheroes. And keep fighting The Good Fight.
Here are a few of the things I have been up to in the last week, in handy link form. Of course, it doesn’t include my usual Lucha Underground viewing nor does it cover the excellent SCW I went to on Friday night. But it is a nice cross section of several quality products that I think are worth checking out.
With the impending release of Lightweight: Black Death it seemed only fitting to travel back to this classic character profile I wrote up for the character on the old site. Learn a little bit more about Kevin Mathis and his costumed identity ahead of his second book’s release.
LIGHTWEIGHT
Real Name: Kevin Mathis
Occupation: High school Student
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Mary (mother), David (father), unnamed maternal aunt, unnamed cousins
Group Affiliation: none
Base of Operations: Federation
History: Kevin Mathis isn’t exactly superhero material.
Born and raised in southern Minnesota, he moved after his father’s business brought him down to the massive Midwest city of Federation. He joined his class in the ninth grade and immediately became friends with two people, Andy Case and Millie Bryant. They formed a strange group in the ever bustling world of Reagan High.
Each had their own diverse interests. Andy loved cars and weed. Millie focused on computers. Kevin loved video games and wanted nothing more than to play them. An average student, he certainly could score much higher with just a little bit of applying himself.
Then came the dreams. Every night, he received another vision of floating high above the city. And those dreams set him on a path that could make him the world’s greatest hero.
Or maybe the world’s greatest villain.
Height: 6’ 1”
Weight: 183 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Dark Brown
Strength level: Lightweight possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height and build that engages in moderate exercise.
Known superhuman abilities: Kevin Mathis possesses the ability to manipulate the personal gravitometric field of any non-living object. He can use this ability to make things lighter or heavier. He can also use it to move objects through the air by manipulating their relationship to both other objects and the planet.
When Kevin exerts his powers, his body begins to expel light. At greater levels, this light actually becomes almost blinding.
With power over an essential force in the universe, Kevin’s abilities seem to have only brushed the most infinitesimal of their potential as he first dons the costume of Lightweight.
Other abilities: Kevin also has basic hand to hand combat training as well as a vast knowledge of video games with special expertise in obscure independent games.
Tens of thousands of words have floated through the nether of the internet over the last few years about the mining of the childhood of all of us kids from the 70s and 80s. Most of it find the idea bad, that remakes and decades past-sequels often just stomp on our images of our childhood.
Case in point, the newest talking point:
The upcoming Jem & the Holograms film clearly isn’t the original series. No Misfits, for one. Nor is synergy anything other than a buzz word they apparently say at the beginning of the show. And it looks like no actual holograms were hurt in the making of the film.
So it isn’t the Jem film that updates the Jem we knew from the 1980s. It takes away some of the uniqueness of that show and replaces it with modern cinema tropes about the Youtube generation. It makes you long for the evil of Pizzazz.
And I will be honest here, it really isn’t anything to complain about.
When media is converted to another form of media, things change. Nick Fury stops being a World War II soldier. Juggernaut and Professor X apparently don’t no one another. Galactus is a cloud—okay, that one may not be the best example. But for the sake of brevity in storytelling, the sake of making something fit into a different time period or just because the creators’ vision for the film is not quite the same as the original, things change.
Here is the news flash. They should.
So many fans seem to think they want shot for shot adaptations of the work they once enjoyed. But I am here to say that does not a good film make. The first Sin City succeeded despite some incredible painful lines and goofy visuals solely because Robert Rodriguez devoted so much time to make the visual aesthetic work. And Gus Van Sant’s Psycho shot-for-shot remake failed miserably despite having a much stronger cast than the Hitchcock original. And much of the distaste for either film usually spins out of the fact that they are too close.
Sometimes are love for the old clouds interesting changes in the new. Which is why I always say: despite the changes I will give it a chance. Jem & the Holograms might turn out to be a horrible film, but I will not let the simple changes made from the original rip me away from something that looks like it has some great visual cues and a great young cast.
Look, I hated G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and find the second and third Transformers movies to be seemingly unending garbage. But let’s be honest: both are bad films even if you pull the license away. Neither put the effort forth to start with even a halfway decent story nugget. Painfully coincidental relationships between the new unit member and their threat isn’t something most people can suspend disbelief for. And racist robots are bad whether they were Transformers or GoBots or Orbots or whatever. Jem may have equally bad writing, but a single trailer isn’t enough to show that.
Hey, director Jon Chu was also the guy that made the
GOOD G.I. Joe film!
So the next time you find yourself commenting about how “they ruined your childhood”, stop and consider what you’re saying. Your childhood has not changed and the great show you had fond memories of is almost certainly available on DVD (but probably is way more painfully written than you remember.) These movies may want to draw you in, but they are made for a far wider audience. Even if that audience proves not to be you, do not hate it for the changes. Let it go and hope for something better in the future.
It is strangely rare for folks from the new pulp community to fund their projects on Kickstarter, but Scaldcrow Games has already funded one game in that genre. Now they seek to build on the success of Worlds of Pulp to make Cape Noire. Set in the fictional city from Ron Fortier’s always excellent Brother Bones stories, it will serve as a sourcebook to Ron’s work while also giving the world a great game setting.
Projects like this are the backbone of developing markets, so it is very exciting to see that it just passed its goal. With some awesome stretches as well, it looks well worth continued support over at Kickstarter.
It has been a week of reading some great G.I. Joe action as I start my own story in that milieu, while I also took a look at some classic Hulk comics, watched a bit too much of a modern superhero mistake, all in between my regular writing projects and continuing my attempt to catch up on Lucha Underground.
So check them all out through the handy Amazon links below:
Here is what else I have written on the internet this week. You may notice it is a bit wrestling focused. (Okay, totally wrestling focused.) But if you haven't checked out The Wrestling Weekday yet, these articles are your chance!
For the first time in too long, I have started to make progress on some work. The last few weeks have been hectic ones in my life and offered little time to focus on the creative process, but as of this week I am back in the saddle to produce some great new stuff.
The next chapter of Lightweight is now under way fully. This one will bounce around the universe quite a bit and unlock some secrets of the Quadrant U long in the works. I'm genuinely excited to see this one come to fruition, but it's still got a ways to go before it is ready to head to Kickstarter.
I have always liked to bounce between projects to keep things fresh. And I have been eyeing Kindle Worlds for awhile now. So I have started my first tale set in one of those worlds. Anyone that knows me will not be surprised to learn I am going to take on the chance to write some G.I. Joe. I have big plans for the franchise as I would like to tell the entire fifty year history of the characters in a series of interconnected adventures. The first will start some interconnecting tissue between the classic character, the Adventure Team and the Real American Hero line before I continue the development over subsequent books.
[caption id="attachment_299" align="aligncenter" width="287"] This guy certainly wasn't joe Colton. Now it's time to learn his history.[/caption]
I really am serious to see this expand into a real epic. After the first story focused on the early era Joe, I want to do tales of all the later eras: Adventure Team, Super Joe, early RAH, sub-team era RAH, Sgt. Savage, Extreme, Valor Vs. Venom and Sigma 6. If I finish them all it will be a true epic. For now I am starting small with a story of the second man to carry the name G.I. Joe and his rescue of a man named Mike Power from enemy hands....
But more on that in the future. In the mean time, keep reading folks and I will keep writing!
While it isn’t anywhere near super powered fiction, I can never deny that I am a sucker for some good steampunk. So when I first saw Airship Enterprise on Kickstarter I was intrigued. A parody of Star Trek as steampunk was intriguing enough, but with an artist the caliber of Brian Denham aboard, I knew I needed to give it a try.
If you don’t believe me, head over to Kickstarter and check out the amazing art. Then help Brian make a great new graphic novel.
It has been a weird week capped off with a weekend devoted to Free Comic Book Day and a little movie called Avengers: Age of Ultron. But I am sure I will talk more about those in the near future. Before I get to that though, I think it is time to focus on some of the great things I have been up to for the last week. I have some Kindle Worlds action, a recent Marvel release and my latest pick up from Graphic Audio among others. Check them out below.
Out There is a new weekly column where I sum up everything else I have produced on the internet while you have been reading this fine blog (or not as is the case with this week’s posts; more about that in the future.)
So without any more ado, let's take a look at some other posts, all of which this week come from my new blog: The Wrestling Weekday.
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