Authors I Am Thankful For

Thanksgiving and Black Friday are over. Everyone, welcome back.



This is probably something that should have been posted on Thursday, but everyone was probably busy this weekend.



In my life, few authors have affected me in any way, shape or form. Most of it affected me in a professional manner. From Joseph Garber's Verticle Run, I learned how to start a thriller that didn't stop from start to finish, and while he was recently trumped by Matthew Reilly and James Rollins, Garber is where to start.



Few authors have ever actually had an impact on my life in general. And by few, I mean three. And, technically, I wasn't even the one who really felt the impact for two of the authors … it's a long story.





J. Michael Straczynski.



Way back in the 1990s, there was a television show called Babylon 5. It was a science fiction program that was less about special effects, latex masks and tight body suits, and more an epic about character. It was essentially a filmed novel. Like War and Peace, with one-tenth the cast. It was interesting enough that I would spend time with my family pondering what would happen next.



Along the way, when I was sixteen, I started writing what is unfortunately known as fan fiction. I had written stories based off of throwaway one-liners in the series. And while I touched nothing of the actual series storyline, I had a few concepts that the show didn't expand on, and spun that off into little corners of the universe, and aside from the first two books, it basically became its own series. I started rewriting what was a fan fiction quartet of over two thousand pages, and I'm now on book 6 of a possible 13 that I've outlined...



One of the artifacts I had picked up because of Babylon 5 is a leather bomber jacket. It had a great big gold embroidered 5 on the back, in the style of the show, and the show logo on the front. I have worn it every winter when the temperature dropped below forty, and there was no precipitation. This includes my days in college, when it was just too cold to wear a suit jacket.



One day, in 2001, I walked out of a class called the History of Terrorism, and one classmate had noticed the jacket. We walked and talked across the university's great lawn, past the library, an administrative building, and to the other side of the campus, until my ride literally started the car, pulled up behind me, and flashed his brights at us.



A month ago, I was a groomsman at his wedding.



A few years afterward, during my abortive attempt at a PhD in history, I drove down to a social in Manhattan, wearing the same jacket. Someone behind me said, “Cool jacket, I know that show.” He hasn't stopped talking to me since. Two months ago, I was the best man at his wedding.



Within the past two years, I have been adopted by a fan of Straczynski's comic book work. She was a fellow writer who merely contacted me because she wanted fans for her Myspace page for her own novel. She saw that Straczynski was part of my interests, and thought I might also be interested in her novel, Masks. We're still talking. It's … complicated.







Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman



Once upon a time, I had considered getting a friend of mine a gift for his birthday. The novel was Good Omens, which was essentially Murphy's law as applied to the apocalypse— losing the antichrist, for example. It was fun. Strange as all hell, but fun. Neil Gaiman still insists that he wrote some of the funny parts. I thought my friend would like it.



Meanwhile, in another part of the internet, a woman was trying to remember the title of a novel she had read once upon a time. She signed into her dating website of choice, and came across the novel in my friend's profile. The book was Good Omens.



That relationship culminated in the marriage from two months ago.....



 

I've heard people tell me that reading is an anti-social activity. Obviously, they've been reading the wrong books.

The Pirate King, a Story of Sean A.P. Ryan.

One of my characters in A Pius Man is self-described mercenary Sean A.P. Ryan.  He enjoys long walks on the beach, heavy caliber machine guns, and the screams of his enemies as he dangles them off the roof of a skyscraper.



This is one of his stories.



The Pirate King

"Erin Go Boom," a story of A Pius Man.

In the background of A Pius Man is a suspicious-looking priest.  Danger is not new to him.  Which makes you wonder .... he wasn't always a priest, was he?







Erin Go Boom

Philosophy, Religion, and Sex.

Dear Pope Benedict, I've been a fan of your career since you worked under John Paul II.  The press hated you because you were hostile to them, and for that I applaud you.  But you have to stop having statements come out so close together, it messes up my schedule.



Last week, I explained why the Catholic Church wanted to hire exorcists.



This week, because no one in the Vatican can shut up, I'm going to try explaining something else that was recently in the news.



The New York Times recently reported that, "Yippie, the Pope is giving in and endorsing condom use."



The old gray hag of The New York Times has, once again, gotten it wrong.  One day, they may actually try to get a theologian to explain theology to them.  Unfortunately, given most theologians, that may not help much.



Let's start at the beginning: Why does the Catholic Church have an issue with condom use?  Or any contraceptives?



It basically involves philosophy ... bare with me a minute, I'll keep it short and comprehensible ... and what is the function of "a thing."  In the case of sex, the mechanism of sex is "insert tab A into slot B."  The "function" of sex is procreation, and a darn good time, if you're doing it correctly.



Contraceptions mess with the natural function of sex by removing elements that are inherent to the act -- procreation comes with sex.  The Vatican position is, that if you mess around with it and start taking out elements, then you are messing around with things that are not yours to mess with.



If you are pondering what the Catholic church's advice is on STD prevention when you have sex with your boy/girlfriend, the Church's position is that you should be having sex with your spouse, only with your spouse, have a nice day, thank you.  Under this rubrick, STDs are not a problem, since if you only ever insert one tab A into one tab B, STDs are not an issue; pregnancy remains in effect, but in the Catholic church, marriage is a contract to have sex, have kids, and spread the spawn around the globe, carrying the faith with it.



You are currently up on previously held positions.



The NY Times said, on November 21st .....

“Pope Benedict XVI has said that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS . . . .”

However, George Wiegel, papal biographer and general Vatican busybody, corrected the Times report.  You can find the full text online, but since that will take forever for you to read, I'm going to translate it for you, gentle reader, into something easily comprehensible.



The pope's actual statement, in context, was during an interview.  The pope mentioned how the Catholic Church runs more AIDS hospitals, and stresses "prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment."  IE: The pope pointed out that, unlike pontificating reporters, the Church actually does something,



The pope even stressed that "we cannot solve the problem [of AIDS] by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease."





The pope continued:

.... people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence–Be Faithful–Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality .... the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

Short version: sex is important, has an effect on a person, and is also for the purpose of expressing love.  Throw in a condom, and you just make it another way to drug yourself into a stupor.




The part where the NYTimes gets confused is probably in the following section:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

When asked if "the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?"  Pope Benedict XVI answered that "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."



Short version: If it's someone infected with AIDS, yes, the Church would rather that they NOT KILL PEOPLE by infecting them further. 



Basically, it's like robbing a bank -- if you rob a bank, the Church would rather have someone use an empty gun; it'll lessen the risk of someone getting their head blown off.



So, despite news reports, the Catholic Church's position hasn't changed.



With luck, we can all move on to something important now.

A Pius Synopsis

The below is basically how the fly leaf of a A Pius Man dustjacket would look like.

*******************************



A Pius Man is a mystery with too many suspects.



In Rome, an old terrorist is blown out the window of a hotel and crash-lands on a car at the gates of the Vatican. A figure in a priest’s robes is seen running from the scene. But the body on the windshield is just the beginning for a team of six unlikely investigators from around the world. Each pair of hands on this case has a past, and a few secrets … and an axe to grind. They don’t want to work together. They don’t want this case.



And one of them just might be the killer.



Is it....



Sean Ryan, an American stuntman turned mercenary and self-described “cleanser of the gene pool”? He’s supposed to be in Rome to train priests in combat, and old habits die hard.



Then there’s Giovanni Figlia, a homicide cop for the Pope who fears only paperwork. He was best known for starting soccer games with bishops in the Borgia gardens … until the corpse landed on the hood of his Jetta.



Could it be a former U.S. Army chaplain who was meeting with the murdered man on a weekly basis? Did the Jesuit priest who’s killed men with his bare hands know that his weekly luncheon date had just murdered a researcher in the Vatican Archives?



And what about Scott "Mossad" Murphy of Israeli intelligence’s “Goyim Brigade”? He and his partner are in the middle of investigating another murder at the Vatican … this one a high-ranking Muslim leader with connections to al Qaeda.



Into this mix comes Maureen McGrail, an Irish Interpol agent with a bitter past with Sean Ryan. She’s working her own murder case, related to the controversial canonization of Pope Pius XII, sometimes known as “Hitler’s Pope.” And guess who Interpol wants to send to Rome … ?



And the final, most distressing suspect is Joshua Kutjok....aka Pope Pius XIII, a right-wing African pope with rumors of blood in his past and the stated goal of turning “Hitler’s Pope” into the “Hero of the Holocaust.” To accomplish this goal, he’s already let terrorists into the Vatican Archives … would he kill a man who stood in his way?



In A Pius Man, six unlikely heroes must work together to unravel a web of intrigue and murder that entwines one of the most controversial figures of the twentieth century. Was Pius XII a Nazi collaborator who deliberately let millions of Jews die? Has the Vatican covered up the truth for more than 60 years? Or has someone perpetrated a decades-long smear campaign? And what will happen to six strangers trying to finally bring the truth to light?

For Those of You Just Tuning into A Pius Man.....

[This is the Short version of how A Pius Man came to be.  The longer version is 13 pages long, in fort parts, and starts here]



In graduate school, I was a history major, and I did a paper on Pope Pius XII and his history during the holocaust—essentially: what did he do, what did he know, and when did he know it. I went through the standard procedure: primary documents (papers of the day), and secondary sources (books written later by people who weren't there at the time). Along the way, I came across non-historians, forgeries from convicted criminals, historians who had done jail time for slander, and deliberate liars (for example, one idiot said that “X person should have done Y thing”... but cited articles where it was STATED that X did Y, making him either brain dead or a liar).



One of the most interesting things about this is that one side of this conflict doesn't acknowledge the other. One side takes the opposition's statements and theories, vivisect them with a scalpel, the end result looking like shredded wheat, and the second side acts as though there are no alternate theories, interpretations or evidence.



Anyway, by the time I was finished, it was fairly clear who was right. I had enough primary documents to work on that alone. I left motivations alone, because I wasn't going to break out my Ouija board to ask a dead pope what he was thinking at the time. “These are the actual events; to the best of our knowledge, this is what happened, and this is how the people reacted to it AT THE TIME.”



The average reader is probably thinking “Duh.” The average reader would be right. No, I wasn't going for high intellectual value. Much of the paper was a simple narrative, and many of the conclusions were very “duh” worthy. I finished the paper, game over.



Shortly thereafter came some … other books. Novels where the history was so bad, it was painful to read. And people were getting their history from these books; in some cases, more than from actual texts. Did these inspire me on a rampaging crusade? No. I was bored, I moved on.





Then I read a completely different novel, also using historical events as a background to the primary action. Premise … nothing new, really. Evil Nazi Catholic church, blah blah, snore … "But, hmm, wait, I know that character's name. It's historical …" Skip to the back of the book to read the author's note, which collected the works used to create that novel. I had assumed that this author had read one side of the argument, and wrote another “evil Catholic church” story based on that. But, no, I had read these books. All of them. He had done his homework, and had completely and utterly screwd up the history. I could take it if he had just said “I'm writing fiction, not commenting on a historical debate.” But he took a side and even lied about facts that everyone agreed on.



Dominoes fell in my brain. People not only read this crap, they believed this crap. Most readers would have almost no intellectual background to separate the wheat from the chaff (seriously, how many people read about the religious and cultural activities of Europe in World War II?)



My reaction was somewhere akin to the quote of the eminent physician and research scientist, Doctor Bruce Banner: Hulk smash.



Fine. Two could play at this game. If people got their history from entertainment, I would take up the strangest project ever imagined. I would write a thriller that was (a) thrilling, (b) factually accurate about the Catholic Church in the Holocaust.



Now how the HELL was I going to do that?

**********

Before I continue, I should make something clear. I've wanted to write for a living since I was sixteen. By the time I had started A Pius Man, I had written almost a dozen other novels; a space opera; a thriller trilogy about a Secret Service Agent and a CIA assassin; a murder mystery in a Catholic high school summer camp, and another at a science fiction convention; a hostage novel; I won't discuss the short stories. They were not published, but I had other things to do—high school, two bachelor's in three years, a master's in one, I was generally busy.



My point: writing wasn't an issue. I had more or less taught myself keyboarding, and had developed a mental habit of innovation out of the weirdest little things, as well as the ability to write for thirty hours straight.



But now, a new project. Working on a thriller encapsulating everything I had learned about Pope Pius XII. So, when in doubt, the title had to be a bad pun. Title: A Pius Man.



Step one, where to set it?



A few years prior, I had wanted to make a murder mystery set in the Vatican. I had never gotten past page one, but I wanted to have the scene open with a dead priest and a knife in his back.



So, when dealing with the Roman Catholic church, go to Rome. Check.



We need a conspiracy—what fiction with the Catholic church in it doesn't have some kind of deep dark conspiracy? Not counting The Exorcist.... few. Who's behind it? Well, the standard options are the government, the Church, or intelligence agencies.... I came up with a fun combination of all three.



Next step: who was I going to use in this mischegas of a plot?



One character was someone I had already invented—Commander Giovanni Figlia of the Vatican Office of Vigilance. His job is to protect the Pope. But if the Pope is guilty of a crime, or of conspiracy to commit murder, then what can he do? And just how do you arrest a pontiff anyway?



… But what could possibly get him involved in a conspiracy going back decades?



Oh, that's easy. Kill an academic. Someone going through the Vatican archives. The “secret” archives, even though that's a bad translation error. Kill someone looking into Pope Pius XII.



Now, are we going to kill this guy in the Vatican? Really? Because I can't imagine how else we're going to involve Figlia...



Oooooh, wait, a bomb can fling a body a good distance, right? I can work with that.



Next, we need a fish out of water who we can explain stuff to, someone who fell down the rabbit hole of European Catholicism ... how about an American Jew? Enter Wilhelmina “Villie” Goldberg. Immediately, I had a vision of a short Italian acquaintance come to mind. She'd do for a physical model—about 4'11”. She'd have to be part of a security service, and making her American would make her a Secret Service agent. Though she would be a little short for a human shield … so, she's simply provided technical support. Have her be there when we drop a body on Figlia... or his general area, at least. Check.



But, if the Israelis wouldn't be interested in this subject, who would? So, send in Mossad. And have a dead terrorist with no confirmed killer—it looks a bit suspicious. And a second dead body connected to Pius XII, seriously suspicious.



The Germans would be involved anyway, given the subject matter—they are sort of touchy about the 1930s and 40s. So, throw in someone from German Intelligence. Two spies, check.



A neutral party would be good; someone who has no investment in Pius XII being guilty, innocent, or not guilty by reason of insanity … if the Pope were to tour the Middle East, there would be a security specialist to coordinate with Figlia. But it would be too easy to have him be visibly neutral and good. Hmm... oh, yeah, it seems that he stoned his wife to death. That'll work.



Check one investigative team: Papal Security, the Secret Service, and someone from, oh, Egypt.



And we need a wild card. Just to make everyone wonder what the hell goes on at the Vatican ... well, the man who shot Pope John Paul II was first jumped by a nun. And if that should ever happen again, I would sure as hell want to train the priests and the nuns of the Vatican … Enter mercenary Sean A.P. Ryan. Wild card, check.



And what good is a mystery without a murdered witness? They have Vatican trials for saints. Witnesses appear. Make it an Irish witness … I had another character all ready and sketched out: Interpol Agent Maureen McGrail. And I had given her a previous professional dislike of Sean Ryan. We get to have some more fun that way. And her arrival will confirm that the events were all about Pope Pius XII—a dead academic may be accident, a murdered terrorist coincidence, but a murdered witness is enemy action.



Now, we're in a thriller with the Catholic church, we must have a highly suspicious looking pope, someone so invested in the reputation of Pius XII, he'd do practically anything to see it's protected. Hence Pope Pius XIII, who wants to make the World War II pontiff a saint, make him a figure to rally around....for...? Oh, something. Make it Darfur. And make him somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. He's using Pope Pius XII as a banner, Pius XII as hero and saint.



But, the Pope needs something every good Evil Overlord requires—a lackey. We need another priest. Make him former special forces. He has martial training, kicks ass, and he has silver hair, and pale skin—no one would ever take him for an albino. Of course not. Suspicious looking lackey, check.



A three-layered plot with a wandering priest tying them all together. Conspiracy, check. Characters, check.



Now it has to be written … Oh, shoot me now …

*

During that winter break, I had gone through great pains to finish my thesis. That made up three credits of a semester where I had only two other classes, and no social life. The paper was mostly finished before the semester had even begun. I was even more finished when I pounded out two term papers before the first month was out. What part of “no social life” do you not understand?



I started writing A Pius Man in February, 2004. I was finished with it by April. There were a lot of nights where I was up until three in the morning. The story wouldn't get out of my head or leave me alone. For the first time in my life, instead of making it up when I went along, I did an outline. I drew sketches and diagrams. I even footnoted the darned thing.



And it all came naturally to me. The spies look into a dead terrorist research the Vatican archives, and they discover yet another dead researcher—a crime investigated by Giovanni Figlia. They would have to find Figlia and company. “Sinister looking priest #1” would have to keep up as well, to make certain that nothing inconvenient would be discovered. The Interpol cop from Ireland would have to fly in and confirm that all this was, yes, linked together to Pope Pius XII.



And, thanks to maps on the internet, I can make the bus terminal arriving from the airport be one point on a straight line from the Vatican to the Spanish steps. And for some reason, I couldn't get one image out of my head—an armored SUV going down the Spanish steps.



After that, the characters had to connect the dots, do the research, and most of all—what is worth killing over for a secret over sixty years old? If someone proved that Pope Pius XII was a Nazi, or that he was a hero, who would kill for that?



End result: the book was eight hundred pages long. Two hundred thousand words, when the average novel was only one hundred thousand. And I had brought in EVERY, SINGLE, CHARACTER I had ever written, over a dozen books, excluding the science fiction ones. Because what had started with a simple and straightforward murder turned into an all out war, and I needed every person I could conceive of to support what protagonists I had standing. A very small army of light against a large army of darkness, and I didn't even have Sam Raimi.



From 2004-2007, there were several variations on the story. The first had an additional character. One had a character introduced from the very beginning who was used to bring in most of the history; he didn't disappear, but he was shifted. One version took out about 50% of the story and made it around five hundred pages.



Then there was the easy version. Split it up into three books. One character gets deleted, one gets transferred into book two, several sequences get shifted so that the character moments aren't all in one place or another, and ta da, instant trilogy.



Two major plot points in the story became a matter of what intelligence agencies call “blowback.” Blowback means that an operation has come back to bite you on the ass: either an assassination went wrong and the target wants to return the favor; some dictator dislikes you blowing up his favorite weapons research facility and would like to bury you, that sort of thing.



If I used the blowback as the basis for completely different books, then dang, book one is only over a hundred thousand words. Excellent. Fill in details and character in books two and three, not to mention “previously, in A Pius Man” moments that I can use to pad the book.... or keep the audience up to speed. Either way.... I still had too many people. Book had nine characters— the opening cast of the Lord of the Rings. Book two had more to come. I still needed to take out people IN ADDITION to those I had already shot, stabbed, and blown up.



After looking through book two (tentatively titled A Pius Legacy), I looked for the person who had the fewest amount of lines. Who could disappear from the book with no problem at all? I found one character who had been mentioned a whopping half a dozen times. Suddenly, upon a review of A Pius Man, this character had a shiny new target on their back.

***********

In my usual description of A Pius Man, things slip through the cracks. It's a thriller. It's a war story. It's apologetics with bullets. It's a political techno thriller. There's a shootout down the Spanish Steps. We shot up the Vatican, blew up a hotel, blew up an airport, waged war against mercenaries, the Swiss Guard, killer priests, a dozen nations, have some fun with the UN, the World Court, and everything short of killer robots.



Oh, yeah, I have a love story in there too.



Don't look at me like that. I wasn't going to fill every page with shootouts, chase scenes, and explosions. None of my characters remotely resemble Bruce Willis. They all have hair, for one. Nor are they some sort of bloodless, passionless plot device—none of them look like Tom Hanks.



As strange as it might seem, I am a romantic at heart. That said, if someone hands me something that even has a mild tinge of a romance novel, it better have a fantastic, original plot, or I will smack that someone with the novel. And possibly make them eat it.



I am uncomfortable and suspicious of any book that has a hero and heroine fall in love inside of one book. It has to be done well, or take place over a good period of time. That said, there are circumstances I can believe. It's common knowledge that high stress situations can lead to intense emotional bonding. In Stockholm syndrome, it happens over the course of hours, if not days. And that takes place between terrorists and their hostages. It shouldn't be too unreasonable that it should happen between two allies.



I had one character I had designed previously—Scott “Mossad” Murphy, first member of the Goyim brigade of Israeli Intelligence. I wanted his attention dragged to Rome from a tip by a German intelligence officer.



Designing this German was easy—I wanted the exact opposite of Murphy. Scott Murphy, the perfect spy, was short-ish, pale, with almost no distinguishing features. Slap on some makeup, he's whatever he wants to be. Therefore, physically she had to be beautiful. All eyes could be on her while he slipped into the background.



But how do I create a woman who was believably beautiful without turning her into something out of a fantasy novel? Simple—I use the physical features of someone I know. And what do you know, the previous year, I had someone who had to match that description perfectly. Her name was Manana Kull.



Enter Manana “Mani” Shushurin of German intelligence... she was raised in East Germany, hence the last name.



Murphy could blend in and disappear. However, when I made him, he had a disdain for weapons. He was spy—he was not Jason Bourne, he was not James Bond, though he could pass for George Smiley. He didn't do weapons. If he needed a weapon, he wasn't doing his job.



Therefore, Shushurin had to be the expert in weapons and hand-to-hand combat.



I would bear no idiots in my books, so they were both smart, capable professionals, with complimentary skill sets and equal intelligence.



And somewhere along the line, two people who existed in a very lonely profession wound up falling in love in the middle of my thriller. Obviously, they weren't busy enough getting shot at. They were too good at keeping their heads down.



Ironically, this was part of the story I hadn't planned. The characters did it themselves.



Yes, for those of you who are wondering, writing fiction has been described as a form of schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder—usually by the authors themselves. Then again, when you generate an entire character biography in your head, have to decide what is perfectly in character for them to do at any given moment, make their reactions consistent... having another person in your head is the easiest way to put it.



Thankfully, I managed to tie the romance subplot into the overall story fairly easily. It even became critical to the book. How can two people falling in love save the world?



Well, you'll have to read the book to find that out.

Hey, it worked for Terry Goodkind.

The Catholics are Doing What Now? Exorcism and the Church.

The Catholic Church is running low on exorcists. Positions are now open for new applicants. Please register at your local parish, thank you.



Don't look at me like that, I'm not joking.



Okay, maybe a little.



Seriously, the Catholic Church is running low on exorcists. If you've been near a Catholic Church lately in America, then you may have heard the daily intentions going out for “vocations,” hopefully to the priesthood … there are some parishes who would like at least ONE priest who was born within the boundaries of the United States. Me, I prefer the ones from Ireland and Vietnam, but that's just me.



There are also similar calls within the priesthood itself for vocations ... to become exorcists. Why would they be running low?



Remember that funny look that you gave me at the start of the blog entry? That's pretty much how a lot of priests look at exorcists, especially in America, where we suffer from visions of Linda Blair every time we think of exorcism.



One thing that no one remembers is that The Exorcist was based on true story. There was case of an actual possession in Georgetown. The possessed in that case was a boy, not a girl, and he stills needs therapy to this day, and no priest was harmed during the performance of that exorcism. If you look at the credits of the film, there are several real-life priests involved in the movie; several of them were involved in the original incident.



But, at this point, you're probably wondering what sort of barbaric, medieval lunatic tries an exorcism nowadays.



If you're asking that, I would actually recommend that you read the book The Exorcist. You see, with the Catholic Church, unlike some other Christian groups, you have the largest collection of skeptics ever when it comes to supernatural events. During the European witch hunts of the early Protestant Revolutions / Reformation period, the Spanish Inquisition would listen to tales of people who confessed to being witches who went flying with Satan. The Inquisition politely told them all to get lost, a variation on CW Fields' “Go away kid, ya bother me.”



More recently, trying to get miracles verified requires a small army of scientists who can confirm or deny that something is a scientific impossibility. For example, Father Stanley Jaki, PhD, physicist and Catholic priest, once wrote about the miracle of the sun dancing in the sky over Fatima (early 20th century). Jaki concluded that the effect was produced by a rare, naturally occuring phenomenon of frozen ice particles in the sky that turn into a giant convex lens; this giant lens appears to make the sun jiggle around the sky, like looking at it through a a magnifying glass. Did Jaki conclude that it was no longer a miracle? No; because it is scientifically impossible for anyone to predict such a meteorological event, to heck with three small children in the middle of Portugal.



In the case of exorcism, the book The Exorcist catalogs what the subject has to go through in order to get a Cardinal to sign off on an exorcism. The movie covers it a little, but not as much as the book does. Blisters appear on the skin? The stigmata appears on their hands? Sorry, those can be psychosomatic. Do you smell strange odors around the “possessed,” even if they've bathed, and you've lined the room with car fresheners? That could be caused by mental suggestion. Can the symptoms be caused by schizophrenia? Tourette's? Multiple personality? Thank you very much, come back when you have a problem that can't be found in the PDR, the DSM-IV, and might look more akin to something out of Ghostbusters (“...[S]he sleeps above her covers... *four feet* above her covers.”).



The Catholic Church gets about 9,000 applications for exorcism per year. If they do two, that's a lot.



Just so we can all be clear on the terms, when I say possession, I mean a case that defies all scientific explanation. I don't mean “possessions” that are “cured” by every other storefront preacher in a backwoods somewhere.



If you're an atheist, you could have an argument for saying that what appears to be possession is just a form of advanced psychosomatic disease that we haven't figured out yet. It could be a variation of Clarke's law, only this time, any sufficiently advanced biology is indistinguishable from magic. Maybe it's some variety of alien head-cold out of Doctor Who that creates mood swings and personality changes and enables the cold victim to speak in tongues, cause visions, and other things that appear to be supernatural.



However, no matter the cause of possession (or “possession” if you like), they still happen, even under the strict Catholic guidelines. And exorcisms still work— Pope John Paul II performed a few of them himself. If you're an atheist, and think that cases of possession are some extremely bizarre disease that no one has discovered the cause of yet, just look at an exorcism as a case where one human being, through sheer force of will, can help another be cured of their affliction.



And if you're a believer, I promise you, the Vatican is not going crazy … well, not anymore than usual. I'm a member, so someone has to have a screw loose somewhere.

The Infinite Crisis of DC Comics.

Ah, DC Comics..... You didn't think I had a grudge with Marvel, did you?



Last week, I took a look at Marvel comics, and how they've tried for yet another Marvel “event” every other week.



At the other end of the comic book universe, in DC Comics, there has been a crisis or two … hundred. They had an Identity Crisis, an Infinite Crisis, a Final Crisis, and one, three year War of the Rings (a Sinestro War, a Corps War, a Blackest night).



Spoiler Alerts all around.



2004: Identity Crisis.  This was fun. It was a small scale, character-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC forever! It was essentially a murder mystery, where the wife of Elongated Man was murdered in her own home. In going through the lists of suspects, we discover dark happenings going on behind the scenes of the Justice League—our “B-list” characters have been altering villains, and even mentally “adjusting” allies among the League members. It first started with wiping villains of superhero identities, and then altering them so they became less dangerous, and ended by manipulating fellow League members, most of all Batman. At the end of the day, we discover that the culprit is the ex-wife of one of the League members (The Atom): by attacking one of their loved ones, she figured that all the superheroes would start staying home more often, including her own ex-husband.



It was interesting, and things shifted for everyone. Tim Drake (Robin) lost his father. We actually cared about the minor character of Elongated Man. As the villains go, it had some Retcon (retroactive continuity). It was the beginning of the end of the Justice League, and a setup for the next crisis.



2005: Infinite Crisis … A massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC forever! A sequel to the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths (which was the Retcon from Hell), heroes from that Crisis had come back as villains of this piece. It had universes created, cities ruined, and some additional retcon. Even if it was confusing to start with, it ended in a bang, resolved a few issues, and created 52 alternate universes. And it killed Superboy, who no one cared about to begin with (don't worry, he gets better).



2006: “52” … A massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC forever! Batman has taken a year off after nearly having a nervous breakdown in Infinite Crisis. Superman flew too close to a red son and needs to recharge. Wonder Woman is in temporary retirement. The A-list characters are out of the way, so now, practically every B-list character gets a starring role as they try to handle all the problems that arise during this particular crisis.



Overall, it was surprisingly well written. People die, countries get wiped out, and we get the pun “The Isle of Dr. Morrow.” It also spawns several other comic book lines, including Booster Gold. It shows how the major players in the DC universe took a year after Infinite Crisis to get their bearings. Minor Character of Elongated Man dies (has stayed dead thus far). Police Officer Rene Montoya of Gotham City becomes a superhero. The finale starts a War in Hell, and ties up any loose ends left behind by Infinite Crisis.



52 also starts an interesting line of inquiry: practically everyone in DC has come back from the dead at one point or another. Ralph Dibney (Elongated Man) asks the question: Why do they keep coming back?



2007: Sinestro Corps War … a Green lantern storyline with branches into nearly everything else in DC. The character of Sinestro has always had a Yellow ring, one that operates on fear like the Green Lantern Corps has rings that operate on will (But has no relation to Jim Butcher's wizard Harry Dresden, who also has rings of power, who also uses will to power his spells.... )



So, Sinestro starts his own Yellow Lantern corps. The premise is simple enough: “Crap, Sinestro has an army. We have a problem.” This is a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC for … the next three years, starting the War of the Rings.



The Sinestro Corps even ends with one of the characters (the Anti-Monitor, who is anti-life itself) being blown to pieces, and his remains turning into the Black Lantern (see 2009).



2008: Final Crisis … a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that … okay, forget it.



I can't even tell you the plot of this one. I'm serious. I read it. We have the New Gods of the planet Apokolips (subtle, no?). They killed the Martian Manhunter. Superboy came back.  Barry Allen as The Flash came back. DC didn't even pretend that they killed Bruce Wayne (Batman), but made him unstuck in time (just like Captain America, hmmm). Superheroes from the future were involved. That's about all I know. Even the Wikipedia article makes me go cross-eyed.



2008-2009: There was New Krypton … a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that seems to have had no impact on anyone. It even ended with the “War of the Supermen” … Right.



2009-2010: Blackest Night: is a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC like San Francisco, 1905. We have the War of the (Lantern) Rings come to a head as the DC writers unleash the Black Lantern Corps—which apparently operate on "death," as opposed to any emotion. Black rings take over the corpse of practically every interesting character who has ever died in the DC Universe, creating an Army of Darkness (quick, call Bruce Campbell).



Why are black rings animating corpses?  Since this corps doesn't have emotions (they're dead, after all), the members of this Army of Darkness are chosen to evoke emotional reactions in people they target, and when they are full of emotional goodness, the Army of Darkness rips their heart out and eats it.



And no, they don't want brains.



The best part of Blackest Night is that they turned the various and sundry resurrections of practically everybody into a plot point. The creature that lives within the Black Lantern, Nekron (again, subtle, no?), has declared that he has prevented everyone in the DC universe from staying dead, he has kept the door from death open for them, allowing them all to come back from the dead … and allowing him to control them! Which means, uh oh, the Black rings are taking over everyone who has been resurrected over the course of DC history. That's a lot of people.



In order to face this menace, various and sundry heroes and villains are drafted as temporary members of the rainbow coalition (um, the various colored Lantern corps). This ends in the creation of yet ANOTHER Lantern color, and practically everyone who has died comes back. And if they haven't yet, just wait for it.



I have just managed to tell you everything that has been happening in DC for the last five years....



Last week, I cited that, while my book is not about superheroes, or comics, I can at least comment on bad writing.  The epic of the week wasn't so much bad as ....



Well, let's try it this way.  One of the things about the Catholic church is that it has a tendency to think in centuries. You won't see another Vatican Council in your lifetime, or in the lifetime of your great-grandchildren, mainly because we're still fine-tuning the LAST council.



DC has decided to shake up their universe, which is admirable. It has been creative, and breathtaking, and all sorts of good stuff …



But in the name of all that's holy, can somebody stop the shaking machine for a minute? There is a massive, world-altering storyline every single month now. Can we wait five minutes for the dust to settle first? After Infinite Crisis, there was 52, and while that was massive, it was at least spread out over dozens of issues, and let the dust settle nicely from Infinite Crisis ...



Then DC was in permanent crisis.  Let's have "The Great, Giant, Massive, War Of The Rings" ... okay, that's nice, can we see if any various and sundry other regular villains in the DC universe earned a Rainbow Ring?  The subject was touched on in Blackest Night (preempting a future fan-boy debate of "What character would be offered what color ring?"), but not settling the subject on a more long-term basis for the previous years in the War of the Rings.



Right now, with their "Brightest Day" storyline, it looks like DC may just stop shaking up every last millimeter of their universe. Maybe.  We hope.



The point: you don't just shake up the universe like a snow globe and expect everyone to go back to normal.  There are things like character: how someone is affected by the Great Massive Storyline.  It's hard to do when no one has time to recover.  Raymond Chandler's idea of writing advice was, "When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."



The Crisis of the hour is the man with the gun.  It's hard to have a plot when the universe is one giant shooting gallery.  I like an action sequence as much as the next guy, but can we tone it down? Please?

Disasters to Marvel At: A Comic Discussion.

While I generally leave anything referring to comic books or superheroes to my esteemed friend and colleague Rebekah Hendershot, author of Masks, I am now stepping in.  The disaster known as Marvel Comics has become a wasteland of jibberish for years now.  Finally, there is a solution at hand.

Dear Disney, you own Marvel now. Have Joe Quesada walk the plank off the roof of 666 5th avenue. You can have Johnny Depp hold the sword that nudges him off, if you like.



Why do I say that? About five years ago, DC Comics started their epic of the week. Marvel, in perfect monkey-see-monkey-do fashion, has tried to keep up. In this effort, the result has been … nothing I can adequately describe using PG-13 language.



Let's see if we can all follow this round of abject stupidity.

Civil War

Marvel's Civil War is more or less where everything starts going sideways for the Marvel. Lets face it, it was a seven-issue arc that interfered in everything else in the Marvel Universe. To little or no purpose. Individual series sold as always, and Marvel should count themselves fortunate that those didn't hemorrhage sales during that period.



Premise: Amateur superheroes chase down badguy. Badguy goes critical, nuking school, and killing hundreds of poor widdle children. Washington issues edict: superheroes are to register with the government, because D.C. doesn't want every other random idiot who acquires superpowers by the luck of the draw to get any ideas about fighting crime and accruing massive property damage.



It's called the Superhero Registration Act (SRA ... not to be confused with the X-Men's Mutant Registration Act, always brought in with with Nazi-like implications, right? Of course not.)



Now, I'm not a great political thinker. Honest I'm not. I've said a few times how I hate politics.  And I mean seriously. The most political experience I've ever had is from watching every episode of The West Wing at least twice. However, when a law such as the SRA becomes a fait accompli, it would have been an easy matter of public superheroes taking up a petition to make a change to the new law.



What change?



Word the amendment to the law as follows: “All superheroes active as of Y date, with a history of successful superheroing, are automatically grandfathered in, under the umbrella of this law.” Or some such wording. I'm not a lawyer, that's the best I can do.



Simple version: “If you're a superhero who actually has experience and doesn't make a habit of wrecking the city, you're in.” Automatically, Captain America and Iron Man should make the list automatically, as well as Luke Cage, the Fantastic Four, all of whom should easily be listed under “They know what they're doing.”  Even Spider-Man had a S.H.I.E.L.D. file (New Avengers, Vol. #1). If it's a matter of protecting humanity from the stupidity of any random moron who gets himself a cape and some flashy powers, then target them accordingly.



Can't you imagine it? They make a Marvel hero, someone who starts operating locally, and S.H.I.E.L.D. comes down, says “Hello, my name is Nick Fury, we're going to bring you in for training, and give you a license, then you can go about your business. Thank you.”



I think that would have been rather cool.



Nope. Instead, they wanted a chance for everyone to talk each other to death. Instead of a classic “My hero can beat up your superhero,” contest (known to science fiction fans as “Who would win in a fight, Spock or Kirk?”), it was a rant. I think Mark Millar and Joe Quesada wanted to make it a political screed of some sort … but I don't even think it works well as that, either. As I've mentioned, I can take “save the whales” if you make it into a good story, but Civil War wasn't.



The sides of Civil War broke down into the camps of “Super-Patriot, Captain America,” fighting … against the government? Versus evil big businessman … Tony Stark?



Did I miss something?



Captain America, who had been created by the military, trained by the military, and all but living his entire life in some form of military structure, is the one fighting the government. And Tony Stark, who doesn't play well with others, who has a history of substance abuse, and has all but said, “Screw you, I don't need anybody,” is the one on the government payroll, leading a war of superheroes, and taking over S.H.I.E.L.D.?



If someone was trying to draw a parallel between Tony Stark and, maybe, Halliburton, I think this qualifies as a fail.



Also, I don't think these others talked to each other as they wrote their separate storylines.



“Front Line,” which was about a drunken newspaper reporter, made it look like Tony Stark was using the war as a method of making money (remember when I said “evil big businessman”?). Then, in Amazing Spider-Man #535, Peter Parker makes a comment to Tony Stark that “You're making a killing, in the stock market,” and you get the sense from Stark that he's too damn busy running a war.



One of the few people who actually tried to make Civil War into a discussion was J. Michael Straczynski, during his run on Amazing Spider-Man. We got to see Tony Stark, up close and personal, as tired, tiring, and all but falling apart, and even confessing that he hated the whole thing, he hadn't slept for weeks, but “The law's the law, damnit.”



At the end of the day, and seven issues of talking at each other, and waging war on the streets of densely populated New York City, wreaking havoc in residential neighborhoods, Captain America essentially concludes, “We're hurting so many people, we have to stop. I'm going to turn myself in to the justice system, and we'll work it out in the courts.”



Really? Work it out in the courts? That couldn't have been the thing to do five minutes after the law kicked in? There are at least two superhero lawyers I am aware of, Daredevil and She-Hulk; no one thought of this the first time through?  What was the point of all that that fighting?  Answer: There was a point?



People who have read Civil War have broken it down for me as “Blah blah blah,” destroy a city block, “Blah blah blah,” clone Thor, “blah blah” destroy Yancy Street. “Blah. Blah.” “Oh my God, we're hurting civilians.”



Then we shoot Captain America with a bullet that makes him unstuck in time.



This last part has nothing at all to do with the events of the rest of the year-long arc, by the way.  (Captain America writer Ed Brubaker had wanted to shoot him for a while, in order to make Buckey Barnes Captain America.  However, the geniuses at Marvel discovered that, when they started Civil War, they didn't have an ending, so the Powers from On High decided to pull the trigger on Brubaker's idea. No pun intended).



And, of course, amidst all of this stupidity, everyone missed an option. Civil War only works if everyone jettisons a third path. Marvel had to make it a matter of “Join the eeeeevvviilll government program” or be a fugitive, or else their "event" had no teeth. In addition to throwing character development out the window, they gave every character a lobotomy … and you thought that was obvious just from the “sudden” revelation that “Oh no, we're hurting innocent people!”



The third option: “Hi, I'm your friendly neighborhood hero. I'm going to retire rather than put up with this idiotic registration. I'm not a superhero anymore. The government's superheroes can handle all of my psychos. Let's see how well they deal with it. Have a nice day. Call me when you're tired of arresting Doctor Octopus for the fifteenth time.”



This third option would probably mean that any hero who tried this route would, undoubtedly, spend their time playing detective, without spandex, for the entire run of Civil War.  We could have watched said title character observe the big government heroes try to do the same job, with villains they've never dealt with before, and not handling it well.  Watch lone hero, without any overt display of powers, outwit the villain and outperforming "The Man".



If you think that wouldn't have been fun to watch, then you've never seen Murder, She Wrote.



But, noooooo, a hero without spandex would jeopardize the comic book run!  We'll ignore that Frank Miller did that for a whole story arc during his time on Daredevil.



Amusing tidbit: despite that the Superheroes Registration Act is almost a direct ripoff of the X-Men Mutant Registration Act, the X-Men were completely neutral in Civil War … funny, considering that this would have been a perfect time for any government official to absorb them into the universe. But Joss Whedon wrote X-men at the time, and you do not mess with Whedon, or he will sic Summer Glau on you.

Back in Black

A shameless tie-in with Spider-Man 3, Back-in-Black was a Spider-Man storyline where it's no more Mr. Nice Spider. During Civil War, Spider-Man unmasked in public. 



Parker then switched sides during Civil War, putting a target on his back.  The Kingpin put a hit out on him; the assassin shot Spider-Man's aunt instead. Then, Peter Parker puts on a cloth version of his black suit as a sign that he was out to go all Jack Bauer on everyone involved in the shooting …



Okay, I'm with them so far.



The scenario takes us with Peter Parker as he works his way up the chain of command, from the assassin to the Kingpin.  Back-in-Black ends with Peter beating the heck out of the Kingpin, with the proviso that “If my Aunt dies, I'm coming back here, and then, I'm going to fire my web shooters down your throat, wait for it to harden, and then literally rip your lungs out. Start praying.”



It was at least entertaining … if and only if you followed J. Michael Straczynski's Amazing Spider-Man arc, or perhaps Peter David's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. From what I've seen, everyone else gave Spider-Man whiny emo powers.  Now, I know that some things are popular, but I don't find anything entertaining about Peter Parker as Edward Cullen.

One More Day.

Now, as I noted, Peter Parker had unmasked in public during the civil war storyline. By the end of Civil War, Parker was on the run with his family, and everyone knew his name.



And this was the perfect time to show us a fugitive Parker and family.  Peter reels from the critically injured / death of Aunt May. Peter is hunted by his old friends, and his old enemies, and he can basically have a bounty on his head that anyone can claim, including former criminals.



Although Peter had outed himself during the Civil War storyline, there was little-to-no interaction with people from his old life. There was a brief tussle with J. Jonah Jameson in the rarely-seen or -read Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man run, as well as an issue with two ex-girlfriends, but that was the full extent of any blowback Peter Parker felt from the revelation.



But just consider what Marvel could have done.  Can't you imagine Peter Parker running into all sorts of people after he goes on the lamb?  Each of these people having a whole spectrum of reactions to the revelation of who Spider-Man is?  Or, for those who knew, that he came out in the first place? Old girlfriends. Old enemies. Doctor Octopus saying “Peter, I had you in class. You were beating me up for years? Damnit.”  Or, as a fugitive, on the run with his wife, MJ, asking for aide from his sometimes-fugitive ex-girlfriend Black Cat.  Etc, et al.



No, that would have been creative.



Instead, Marvel settled for a Deal With The Devil. Where Peter makes a deal with Mephistopheles to save his ninety-year-old aunt, at the expense of his marriage.



That giant snapping sound you hear is my credulity breaking.



Why did Marvel decide to end a marriage that has lasted for twenty years?



Because Marvel's editor-in-chief, the brilliant Joe Quesada, decided that he liked Peter Parker better when he was a bachelor. We will ignore that there are about two or three other series where Peter Parker is still single, but why ruin a good story with fact-checking?



Oh, and, conveniently, Parker's wife, Mary Jane, makes a side deal with the devil so that no one knows anything about who Spider-Man really is.



They honestly thought that this was a good idea?



You know something is bad when J. Michael Straczynski, who had written Amazing Spider-Man from 2001 to One More Day, left the series after this, and had expressed a desire to remove his name from One More Day entirely.



Later retcon (retroactive continuity) resulted in a storyline called “One Moment in Time.” 



When I heard about this, I thought “Great, a massive event that will show how history changed because the marriage never happened.” They try to explain why the marriage never happened (Spider-Man KO'ed during a fight the night before the wedding), and how no one remembered he was Spider-Man (Dr. Strange, magic spell, while Peter is aided by everyone hunting him during the Civil War... huh?).



 That was it.  No attempt at anything really innovative, merely an acknowledgment that some of their readers are still suffering from reality-shift whiplash.



 I believe that this sums up my feelings about the whole premise.

World War Hulk

One of the few things Marvel did well during Civil War was to have the Planet Hulk storyline. In order to get the Hulk to stop going on his occasional rampages (and from being a major player in Civil War), Tony Stark and company decide to launch him into outer space. The Hulk landed on an alien world, fought his way up from being a gladiator to being planetary leader, found himself a wife, had a son …



And then the planet was nuked, killing both wife and son, and it looked like Tony Stark and company might have been involved. Hulk comes to Earth to smash puny humans. We discover that one of the Hulk's alien buddies was responsible for killing off the wife and son. Hulk has complications arise in his life.





Overall, WWH was a simple, straightforward smashup. There's not too much to point out, except …



One question: Why was Spider-Man wearing his black suit, fighting the Hulk, alongside other people on Tony Stark's team? Back-in-Black was a storyline that (in comic book time) took place over the course of two days. His aunt was in a hospital in lower Manhattan, which the Hulk was busy trashing. And, oh, yeah, Spider-Man was still a fugitive during that time. I don't mind some temporal overlap, but could someone notice what they're doing in their own scripts?

Secret Invasion

Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens, come to earth, infiltrate all sorts of organizations, wreaks havoc.



Round one, fight!

Dark Reign

After the Skrulls have wreaked their havoc, Tony Stark is deemed ineffectual and thrown out of his position as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. So, they decide to install a new head of S.H.I.E.L.D. …



Norman Osborn.



In case you are not a comic book fan, or have never watched comic book movies, Norman Osborn is better known as the Green Goblin, a super villain that has been the closest that Spider-Man ever had to an enemy that was pure evil. He has been thrown in jail repeatedly, killed repeatedly, and has come back from the dead repeatedly.



And somehow, they put him in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D.?



To be honest, they took Osborn from another government-sanctioned group, the Thunderbolts, who are basically super villains who have been given a pardon if they work for the government. But, still, Hannibal Lecter would be a better director of S.H.I.E.L.D.  I wouldn't go to any of his dinner parties, though ....



Anyway, with Osborne in charge, there was Dark Reign, with Dark Avengers, Dark X-Men, Dark Wolverine (because he was so bright and sunny to start with), and Dark Spider-Man (starring Venom), and Bullseye, Dark Avenger, and the rest of the Dark League of Darkness.



Sorry, they lost me at Norman Osborn, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.



However, this had the makings of something interesting: “The Cabal,” which involved Norman Osborn working with Loki and Doctor Doom. Watch and see who stabs who in the back first. Muahahaha …

Siege

Dark S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. … Asgard?



To start with, the Dark League of Darkness immediately has a falling out, with Norman Osborn alienating Loki and Doctor Doom…



Let us pause here and digest that a moment.



Norman Osborn, whose biggest superpower is that he's a freaking psycho with fancy, high-tech equipment, has managed to piss off a Norse deity and the world's deadliest despot, two super villains in the Marvel universe with egos the size of the galactic core. Osborn even attempts to kill the good Doctor...



And, somehow, Osborn doesn't have a war on his hands with either of them.



In fact, Loki acts as an adviser to Osborn (but secretly driving him crazy … um... crazier?). Norman would like to take over Asgard because it's something that's not nailed down, and not under his direct control. Yes, because being a psychotic megalomaniac means that you kick over a hornets' nest of deities who have been leaving you alone, just because they don't answer to you. Right.



So … Osborn and his Dark League of Darkness take on Asgard, which is currently parked over New Mexico (long story).



Leaving it as the Dark Avengers vs. Asgard. This quickly turns into …



Dark Avengers vs. Everyone Else On The Planet.



In the middle of this story arc, there is a five-page sequence where Osborn goes postal on camera, which makes everyone decide that Norman Osborn is evil …



Wait. No! Really? Whatever gave you that idea? Everybody suddenly remembers: It's Norman Osborn, most evil psychopath in the entire Marvel universe. Lex Luthor looks normal compared to this guy.   What have you people been smoking?!



In writing terms, this is called a deus ex machina, which is usually what a writer does when s/he has written the heroes into a corner and can't get them out by any other means.  It's the writing equivalent of having a villain holding a hero at gunpoint, and having an elephant fall out of the sky and squash him flat.



At the end of the day, Captain America (no longer unstuck in time) is put in charge of the “Fifty State Initiative,” the government's teams of superheroes, formed under the Superhero Registration Act, and the registration act itself is abolished … so, what was the point of Civil War?

Shadowland

Meanwhile, in another part of the universe, the Dark League of Dark Ones extends to … the evil Daredevil.



Daredevil?



Ed Brubaker, who is now known for running Captain America, had been on Daredevil before that. He had shown a civil war within the Hand (ninjas + Yakuza + magic = The Hand), and this war ended with Daredevil taking over at least a part of the Hand, if not the totality.



The next person to write Daredevil decided that now, Daredevil had to be evil.

Daredevil kills longtime enemy Bullseye … superheroes pause and think that something might, just MIGHT, mind you, be wrong with Daredevil.

Of course something is wrong with him. Daredevil is taken over by a demon …



A what now? Quick, someone, call Joss Whedon, we need a Daredevil / Buffy crossover, STAT!



And so, Daredevil has to die, leading to a new comic line: Black Panther, Man without Fear.



Ahem … let us have a thought about this, shall we? One of Marvel's bigger black characters, an African King, is brought to Hell's Kitchen to clean up the mess of a rich white lawyer.



So they made their biggest black characters a janitor.



In Summation...



Civil War: Talk each other to death. Captain America “dies” (but gets better), Peter Parker outs himself (later goes back into the spandex closet). Net result: nothing happens.



Back-in-Black – One More Day: Find Kingpin. Beat up Kingpin.  Make deal with Devil to undo the marriage. Net result: nothing has happened since the eighties.



WWH: Hulk Smash. There is property damage.  Net result: everything that has happened to Hulk for the previous two years didn't happen.



Secret Invasion – Dark Reign – Siege: The Rise and Fall of Norman Osborn, who is replaced by Steve Rodgers. Superhero registration act abolished. Net result: Nothing has happened for five years.



Shadowlands – Daredevil will be reborn, again. Eventually. Net Result: What the Hell was that?



I say again: Disney, Joe Quesada is over there, make him walk the plank.



Now, what does this have to do with A Pius Man? Seriously, John, what are you doing? This is a page for a thriller novel, not a superhero novel, or anything else that tangentially touches on comics.



However, I can comment on bad writing.



I'm serious. Fans of Marvel, can we agree that the net result of their world-shaking, game-changing epic story arcs have resulted in … nothing?  Or, in the case of Spider-Man, at least nothing good?



If you say that “oh, they brought back some characters we thought were dead,” I will refer you to almost every other person who has died in comic books … which adds up to every other superhero in comic books.



I know that it is common practice in most franchises to have few things change until the last possible minute.  How many tv shows will keep a pseudo-romance going for years without a conclusion because to have the leads get together would finish the show?  How many characters should have died, but "you can't risk the franchise"?  Rod Serling referred to it as the Velvet Alley -- a trap where you are ensnared by your own success, and you can't risk changing something lest someone take the success away from you (be it the audience or the Powers that Be in the industry).



But it is now getting stupid.  Marvel has had five years of massive, epic wars, and nothing has happened.



Basics of story telling: you have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  The story order doesn't have to be linear, you can put the end first and the beginning last (not often, but it can work).  At the moment, Marvel is working with an eternal middle that goes nowhere.  The artwork is pretty, they have some cute moments, and look, this fight scene is shiny, but the plotlines resemble endless laps of a hamster on the wheel.



The philosopher Plato had a premise that stated that, out in the world, there is a perfect example of an object, and all other variations of that object are mere shadows of that perfect thing.  There is a perfect chair, a perfect tree, a perfect stick.  If we follow this to a logical conclusion, then out there, somewhere, is the perfect example of a complete and utter moron.



And he is currently running Marvel.  Into the ground.  With pointless fight-fests, Dark-everything, tossing character out the window, and arbitrarily rewriting Marvel history, someone should chat with management.  Possibly with a 2x4.



So, my conclusion is simple: Disney, Quesada, plank.  Assemble those words in the appropriate order.

Next week, we look at an issue at the opposite end of the spectrum: DC comics.



UPDATE (2-14-2011)

Joe Quesada is now "promoted."  We have some thoughts on that, here.