"Okay, Sean, I gather by your artwork at the side there that this is another post about your Wold Newton rip-off. But what the hell is propaganda of the deed supposed to mean?"
I'm glad you asked!
As you may know, I decided on a decent line-up for my team of fictional and real people last week. I was really happy with them as a group -- especially after a little more reading suggested that Joaquin was somewhat bigoted against the Chinese. (That should make for an interesting relationship with Sun Wukong!) But where I was having problems was coming up with a solid justification for WHY they would be together. Alice was something of a loner, Joaquin was keeping a low profile to perpetuate the belief that he was dead, Sun Wukong hadn't effectively been seen for centuries... what could bring them together in the 1870s?
In developing this, I was creating a timeline of real and fictional events to put things into perspective. What were people of the late 1800s actually dealing with? I was effectively giving myself a crash course in a fifty-year period of world history. Interestingly, I soon found that China was in a shambles. There was a plague pandemic, war after war after war, the Yellow River flood killed 200,000 people... plenty of reasons to get a character out of the country. And then I noticed Europe and -- to a lesser extent -- the United States were facing some unusual problems as well. I kept seeing incident after incident where a politician was attacked or killed by an assassin. Queen Victoria had several attacks on her, as did Czar Alexander II, King Adolfo XII and Kaiser Wilhelm I. Presidents Garfield and McKinley were both killed in office as was Nikolai Mezentsov, a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia.
Investigating further led me to an article entitled "Propaganda of the Deed" published in The Bulletin of the Jura Federation in August 1877. The author, Paul Brousse, was an anarchist who promoted the idea that the best way to effect change was through some sort of dramatic catalyst event. Blowing up Scotland Yard, for example, to try to coerce England to give Ireland its independence. (That actually occurred in 1884.)
This is brilliant! Not only does it give me plenty of story fodder to throw against the protagonists, it also has some fairly obvious analogies to the world situation today in 2006! Current social relevance and historical accuracy? Man, this is too good NOT to pass up!
My problem, of course, is that I'm not skilled enough as an artist to draw this myself. As you can see, the imagry I've used thus far for this has been limited to Photoshopping existing images together. I'd like to ask again that if there are any artists out there who would like to help put this together as a bona fide comic book, I'd be very eager to speak with you. I want to develop this as a complete (or nearly complete) package that could be shopped around to different publishers, but I need an artist to help me pull that off.
Admittedly, I am fairly biased here, but I think this is a great idea. I've had ideas in the past that I thought were good and seen others independently develop something similar while I was trying to get the ball rolling. I'd hate for that to happen with this as well, so please give me a buzz if you're interested in pursuing this project with me.
I'm taking a cue from Jim Roeg and his Double Articulation blog to rework things a bit here. Obviously, the color scheme has changed a bit -- hopefully, making things easier to read. There's also a better (IMHO) set-up for sorting through and finding older posts. Let's see if I can't make this place a little more inviting, eh?
Today is, of course, October 31 -- when most of the United States celebrates Halloween in some form. Children dress up in costumes and go knocking on neighbor's doors looking for handouts. Adults dress up in costumes and go to parties where they drink too much and act obnoxious. The opiate of the masses that is television is filled with old movies starring Boris Karloff and re-runs of Peanuts specials we've seen every year since 1966.
I've never been terribly keen on Halloween, as you might've guessed. As a kid, the free candy (and, more importantly, the parental waiver to eat it in excess) was enjoyable, but that's long since fallen by the wayside. A fair portion of my childhood was spent pretending I was a cowboy or Batman or a ninja or whatever already, so the Halloween tradition of dressing up and playing make-believe didn't hold that much additional allure.
Not to mention that my costumes always were left wanting. They were almost always kit-bashed with things we had around the house, and required more than a fair amount of imagination to complete. Something which became plainly evident as soon as I started knocking on doors and received a "Now who are you supposed to be" greeting.
Then, as I got older, the candy lost it's allure since I became in charge of my own life and could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. And dressing up in costume has taken a new air -- it's more accepted, but only if you spend more money to put together an almost Hollywood-style get-up. I can't bring myself to justify dropping $75 to get a costume for one night.
Also, my "responsibility" for Halloween has changed from being the child asking for treats to the adult handing them out. On the whole, I have a lot of difficulty relating to or understanding children. Consequently, I don't really like them. I'd just as soon never deal with them -- I'll wait until they're at least in their late teens so I can hold a somewhat reasonable conversation with them.
That's my preface to Halloween. It's not a holiday I tend to get excited about at all -- despite it reportedly being the second-most popular U.S holiday next Christmas. And herein lies my dilemma: it is a PRIME opportunity for attracting kids to comic books.
It makes an absurd amount of sense to me to hand out comic books to trick-or-treaters, rather than candy. There's absolutely no danger of poisoning (intentional or otherwise), it's healthier on the whole, and you can keep the comic indefinitely. It sounds brilliant to me! I make a point to get a good mix of comics that I can give out every year on Halloween, and we're known in the neighborhood almost exclusively by that. (We don't get out and talk to the neighbors much.)
So, starting at 6:00 tonight, I'm going to have to sit near the door, watching some dreadful television program because I can't stand the repeated doorbell interruptions while I'm reading, and hand out comics to kids with an artificial smile on my face. The Wife refuses to hand out comics because she... well, I'm not wholly sure why she refuses to hand them out. She claims that she doesn't know which comics would be appropriate to give to which children, but I think that's a cop-out answer. I suspect she's embarassed or feels awkward handing out something that no one else in the neighborhood does. So if I want to make sure comics get handed out in my neck of the woods tonight, it's got to be me minding the door.
And with that said, um... Happy Halloween.
One thing that strikes me as interesting is that I've been running my Fantastic Four fan site for a decade now, making a point of updating it weekly for at least the last eight or nine years, and I cannot recall a single week where I did NOT have some news to post. It's a web site geared exclusively around one comic book property, and there has been something news-worthy (at least within the realm of comic books) every single week for the better part of a decade.
I mention that today because I've noticed that several of my posts this past week have been focusing on this [insert sarcasm] brilliant [finish sarcasm] Wold Newton idea I've been toying with, which only relates to comics insomuch as that would be the venue I would like to utilize the property in. And I've been focusing on this idea because, in part, I haven't seen much in the way of news that really struck me or got my brain moving this past week. There was a notice last week about Nextwave being cancelled with #12, which prompted my quick review of this week's issue, but that's been about it.
That's not to say there hasn't been any news, certainly, but nothing that really sparked my attention and/or imagination for some reason. Lullaby is moving from Alias to Abacus, but it's already switched publishers once before. There's a new Marvel video game out, but I don't play video games much anymore. Stuart Immonen will be taking over Ultimate Spider-Man after Mark Bagley, but I'd already noted his excellent work in my look at Nextwave. Moon Knight be getting a TV treatment, but it's way to early to say that it will ultimately happen, much less how it might turn out.
Maybe it's because I was already put my mental energies towards my comic idea, but I haven't seen my interest piqued by any other comic-related news this week.
Okay, first off... I really need to think of a new name for this. "Wold Newton" is Farmer's bit in the first place, and in the second place, he calls it that because he ties everything together from an event that occurred in Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England.
In any event, I think I've assembled an interesting team here. I've added to the mix a gentleman by the name of Joaquin Murrieta. (Portrayed here by some guy in a relatively cheesey Halloween costume. I would rather have a shot of Victor Rivers' portrayal of the character from The Mask of Zorro but I couldn't find any decent shots of him.) Murrieta was a sort of Robin Hood type character from Mexico who, like some Mexicans today, saw better opportunities in the United States. Also like some Mexicans today, he couldn't find legal work in the U.S. and he resorted to robbery. The governor of California set up the California Rangers almost expressly to hunt Murietta down, and he was supposedly killed in 1853. However, there was at the time (and to this day) a lot of doubt about whether it was actually Murietta that was killed.
So, why this group? What do they bring to the table that make them interesting as a group?
John Watson -- This is before he met Sherlock Holmes, indeed, before he finished medical school. He's got intelligence, youthful enthusiasm and an interest in adventure. (He would later go on to join the British military.)
Alice Liddell -- Alice was, by most accounts, not a very cheerful person. She took the death of her sister in 1876 very hard, and the deaths of two of her sons during World War I was no less difficult. She brings a practical intelligence (to contrast Watson's book smarts) and a skeptism that should help them more than once. The down side is that she's more of a loner than a team player, so keeping her associated with this group will prove perpetually difficult.
John Henry -- John was a former slave, and thus has a decidedly different outlook on things than the others. He has some level of physical strength and endurance, certainly, but it will be his determination, persistence, and loyalty that are his strongest qualities. (BTW, I've updated his representation here with a picture of boxer Earl Maynard.)
Joaquin Murrieta -- Joaquin is about twenty years older than the others and has some life experience that they don't. He does understand suffering and being trodden on, but not quite to the extent that John Henry does. He's a man of action, certainly, but also one of great heart and character. If he feels the status quo is unfair, he'll fight to change it. Given that John Watson hasn't yet been trained in firearms, Joaquin also serves as the team's gunman. He's also got a cache of money saved up from his earlier adventures in California.
Sun Wukong -- Sun once was a mischevious imp of a character, trying to play tricks on Budda himself! He's learned his lesson and has been humbled considerably in the past few centuries, although that doesn't mean he's no longer above a few light-hearted deceptions amongst his friends! He's left China because of all the internal fighting going on during this time. For the most part, he intends to keep his true identity secret and play the part of a simple -- perhaps somewhat above average intelligence -- monkey. Although the rest of the group don't know it, he's their ace in the hole when their backs are against the wall! He can change shape and size at will, ride the clouds anywhere in the world, and wield a powerful staff that he normally has shrunk and tucked behind his ear. Not to mention that he's immortal! (Long-time readers might recognize, too, that I've been wanting to do something with this character since August.)
I really like that I've got a relatively diverse mix of characters here. Two British, one African-American, one Mexican, and one Chinese. Plus two are wholly fictional characters, one is quite real, and two more are somewhere in between. It should be easy to draw in contemporary parallels with a Mexican looking for work in the U.S. as well as with possible racial tensions and stereotypes all over the place. And, where I was running into problems at first, none of these characters have any copyright issues that I'd have to contend with -- they're all public domain.
I'm getting more excited about this idea. Seriously, if any artists out there want to take a shot at working on something like this, please do not hesitate to let me know!
I just wanted to drop a couple more quick comments about this image. Skip to the previous entry to read what I'm using them to represent.
I started with an image of a couple in Victorian costumes. The man was actually supposed to be dressed as Phileas Fogg, so he was right in line with what I was hoping to use. (My original photo used an actor who played Dr. Watson, but my Watson should only be in his early 20s. I would've liked to have used an established actor who's played Watson, but the only one I could find who looked anything less than 40 was the somewhat dorky version they used in Young Sherlock Holmes.) I did have to trim this gent's goatee, though, to keep the classic Watson 'tache, and I added the derby, again for the classic Watson touch.
The woman was, I believe, his wife. However, I've replaced her face with that of the real Alice Liddell. Yes, that's really Alice, age 20. I did give her a bit of a haircut, though to make the Photoshopping job go quicker.
Next, I added a golden snub-nose monkey. They're native to, among other places, China and the images I've seen of Sun Wukong tend to look something like this fellow. I think the scale is a little off here, but I didn't want him to get lost.
Then I noticed the time, and I had to bang out my John Henry quickly. I wanted to use a bald, muscular black man without his shirt so he would drop in fairly easily. For some reason, I had trouble finding a decent image. I wound up using a promo shot of early 20th century boxer, Jack Johnson. Ken Burns did a documentary on his recently, and there were a decent number of photos of Jack online. They were all in black and white, though, so I had to bang out a quick coloring job here. He definitely looks dropped in here, and looks VERY out of place. That's mainly due to the drastic difference in lighting from the other figures. I'll try to look for a better image later.
Unless of course, you're an (aspiring) comic book artist interested in the concept and want to whip up some slick concept art!
"Okay, Sean, I gather by your artwork at the side there that this is another post about your Wold Newton rip-off. But what the hell is propaganda of the deed supposed to mean?"
