28 April 2021

Review: Secret Origins of the Golden Age by Roy Thomas, et al.

In the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC began publishing an ongoing series of origin stories, clarifying and adjusting the histories in the wake of the new universal history. Especially in the early days of the series, it alternated between Golden Age heroes and newer heroes; our man Roy Thomas of course edited and wrote most of the Golden Age ones. All of the JSA ones were collected in Last Days of the Justice Society, and I enjoyed reading those ones interspersed with Infinity, Inc., so I decided that when I read The Young All-Stars, I'd intersperse all the non-JSA stories.* (I did also read the non-Golden Age story in each issue, if I hadn't read it already.)

I would say there's sort of three genres here. One seems to basically re-present an old story, but with a new artist and slightly spruced up dialogue. The Superman one is a good example of this: you know all of this because you've read other Superman stories. How can anyone compete with Action Comics #1, even if you do get Wayne Boring and Jerry Ordway to illustrate it? For most of the others, even when you haven't read the original story, you can tell that you're reading a not very tweaked version of something that isn't very interesting: being a slightly better version of a dumb Golden Age story is still a dumb Golden Age story. Doll Man, the Whip, Doctor Occult, Black Condor, and the Grim Ghost were all hard to slog through even though they were just 20 pages long.

The second genre is the continuity solution: the story that fixes a problem, and sews some old stories together. Sometimes this is interesting if it's done deftly. The Batman story, for example, does this. Thomas weaves together some backstory elements from a few early Golden Age Batman stories to make a coherent story about a young Bruce Wayne figuring out if he can love and be Batman. Plus, then, he gets Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin to do the art, a team that has nothing to do with the Golden Age Batman, but who were responsible for one of the best Batman runs ever. The Manhunter story does a good job weaving DC's many Manhunters (four, I think) plus an alien space robot cult, into a coherent history in a way that nicely sets up the Millennium storyline and fleshes out the world of All-Star Squadron/Infinity, Inc./Young All-Stars. The origin of the "Golden Age" Fury is designed to solve a problem created by the changes to Wonder Woman's continuity, but works nicely on its own as a story that ties into both Infinity, Inc. and Young All-Stars.

On the other hand, it can feel like you're reading a bunch of exposition solving a problem you didn't particularly care about. I think probably there's potential in Miss America, for example, but her tale here is one part origin, one part explanation of how come she's alive when she died in All-Star Squadron, and one part explanation of how she fills Wonder Woman's place in the JSA. Like, this isn't going to get me interested in reading more about her-- and even if it did, I couldn't, since she just puts in small appearances in Young All-Stars. Of course this is Roy Thomas's specialty, but it's not just him; the Power Girl story by Paul Kupperberg is just a really long and convoluted explanation of how she could think she was Superman's cousin, but actually be an Atlantean princess, since in the post-Crisis universe, Superman was supposed to be the only surviving Kryptonian.

(And like many retcons done for the sake of retcons, rather than the sake of story, they didn't stick. I am pretty sure that basically no post-1989 JSA stories actually used Miss America as a Wonder Woman analogue, and as far as I know, no post-Crisis Superman stories really acknowledged that supposedly Superman thought he had a Kryptonian cousin for several years.)

There's a third genre here, though, and it's one Roy Thomas is the master of: the historical period piece. Probably my two favorite of all these origins were the ones for the Crimson Avenger and Midnight. Both of these Thomas suffuses with period detail and flair, fleshing out largely forgotten characters by making their worlds feel more lived-in and real. The Crimson Avenger story was a neat tale taking place on the night of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast, fleshing out the Crimson's role as a newspaper editor in a time of war-- but before America had entered it. Gene Colan and Mike Gustovich's art is atmospheric; you can see why the strength of this origin ultimately lead to a Crimson Avenger miniseries (which I will read after finishing Young All-Stars). Similarly, the Midnight story embeds him in the world of old-time radio, though as far as I know nothing much came of the character after this story. Len Wein's Uncle Sam story was also pretty good, giving an explanation (albeit a weird one, even by comic book rules) to a character I had seen in a lot of things, but didn't actually know how he really worked.

There are about 400 pages of story here; it could make a nice two-volume collection were DC so motivated (but I doubt they ever will be). I am happy I read even the weaker ones, because the good ones made it worth it, and I appreciate the extra context I got for the appearances of these Golden Age characters in various Roy Thomas productions and (I assume) future stories. Though I doubt I'll ever read something that makes me glad I read the Doll Man one!

Secret Origins of the Golden Age originally appeared in issues #1, 3, 5-6, 8, 11-13, 17, 19, 21-22, 26-30, and 42 of Secret Origins vol. 2 (Apr. 1986–July 1989). The stories were written by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, Paul Kupperberg, Len Wein, Robert Loren Fleming, and Sheldon Mayer, and co-plotted by E. Nelson Bridwell, Ehrich Weiss, and Roy Thomas. They were pencilled by Wayne Boring, Jerry Bingham, Gene Colan, Marshall Rogers, Murphy Anderson, Mary Wilshire, Tom Grindberg, Mike Gustovich, Howard Simpson, Arvell Jones, Grant Miehm, Tom Artis, Gil Kane, Sheldon Mayer, Mike Harris, Stephen deStefano, and Michael Bair, and the inking was by Jerry Ordway, Steve Mitchell, Mike Gustovich, Terry Austin, Murphy Anderson, Mary Wilshire, Tony DeZuniga, Bob Lewis, Greg Theakston, Bob Downs, Howard Simpson, Damon Willis, Grant Miehm, P. Craig Russell, Fred Fredericks, Gil Kane, Sheldon Mayer, Mike Harris, Paul Fricke, and Michael Bair. Colors were provided by Gene D’Angelo, Carl Gafford, Marshall Rogers, Shelley Eiber, Julianna Ferriter, Tom Ziuko, Anthony Tollin, Liz Berube, and Helen Vesik, and the stories were lettered by David Cody Weiss, Carrie Spiegle, Albert De Guzman, Agustin Mas, Milt Snapinn, Jean Simek, Helen Vesik, Gaspar Saladino, Duncan Andrews, Sheldon Mayer, and Janice Chiang. The series was edited by Roy Thomas, Robert Greenberger, and Mark Waid.

* The full list: Superman (#1), Captain Marvel (#3), Crimson Avenger (#5), Batman (#6), Doll Man (#8), Power Girl (#11), Fury (#12), the Whip (#13), Doctor Occult (#17), Guardian (#19), Uncle Sam (#19), Black Condor (#21), Manhunter (#22), Manhunter (#22), Miss America (#26), Zatara (#27), Midnight (#28), Red Tornado (#29), Mr. America (#29), Plastic Man (#30), Grim Ghost (#42).

This post is fifteenth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers The Young All-Stars. Previous installments are listed below:

  1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
  2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
  3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
  4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
  5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
  6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
  7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
  8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
  9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
  10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
  11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
  12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
  13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
  14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)

26 April 2021

Review: Mistborn: The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

Originally published: 2007
Acquired: July 2020
Read: December 2020

The Well of Ascension: Book Two of Mistborn
by Brandon Sanderson

The second Mistborn picks up a year after the first, and clearly the conceit is to consider the question of once you defeat the evil overlord.... how do you create an effective government to rule in his place? The book follows Elend and Vin's attempts to transition from well-intentioned renegades into viable government. It doesn't go well. I enjoyed this aspect of the book.

The problem, I think, is that it's also a book about someone who is embracing a magical destiny. This ultimately turns out to be a subversion, too, but I feel like the book's two purposes pull against each other rather than work together. Vin thinks she's supposed to go on a quest... but she spends month not going on the quest because to do so would disrupt the political plot line.

Like last time, I think Sanderson does a good job with the slow unspooling of character. The changes Elend and Vin go through are handled well; I continue to like Sazed, and this book gives Breeze some great scenes as well. I think Sanderson balances the cast better than in book one. That one had too many crew members who did too little; here, the ones who aren't interesting just aren't there very much, instead of constantly turning up in scenes to "humorously" quip at each other. My favorite, though, was OreSeur, Vin's kandra who is legally loyal but perhaps not always emotionally loyal. His conversations with Vin and eventually transformation were a real highlight of the book.

In my edition, the story runs over 700 pages; I do kind of feel like it could have been at least 100 pages shorter... but that's easy for me to say. And the putting of pieces into position is effective, because once the enormous climax came, I was totally invested; the defense of the city is great stuff with lots of great moments for all the key characters. The revelation of what's really been going on is well handled, and makes a great cliffhanger ending. So getting to the conclusion is a little rough at times, but once Sanderson reveals how the political plotline and quest plotline actually do coincide, the book pulls it off.

21 April 2021

The World Shapers (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 8)

Collection published: 2008
Contents originally published: 1986-87
Acquired: September 2008
Read: January 2021

The World Shapers: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of  Doctor Who Magazine
by John Ridgway, Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, et al.

The Tides of Time gave us the strip's first run with a consistent writer but different artists for each story; The World Shapers gives us the reverse, in that John Ridgway illustrates the whole volume (with some inks from Tim Perkins here and there), but no two sequential stories share writers. The result is a somewhat odd feeling collection, without a consistent tone or ethos. Ridgway does his best to make it all hang together, I reckon, but I did often feel like no two writers had quite the same idea of Frobisher, for example. You can, of course, make this kind of thing work in Doctor Who, but I'm not persuaded this volume does...

Exodus / Revelation! / Genesis!, from Doctor Who Magazine #108-10 (Jan.-Mar. 1986)
script by Alan McKenzie & John Ridgway, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
Alan McKenzie's short run on the DWM strips comes to an end with a story that feels all too typical of his work. Exodus actually gets off to a good start; the TARDIS accidentally materializes around a refugee spaceship, and Peri and Frobisher have to talk the Doctor into helping them out. It's a slight but charming story, and would be perfectly enjoyable... except it leads into the last two parts. These, like a lot of Alan McKenzie stories, give the impression of having been completely made up until he ran out of pages, and don't really deliver on their promises. There's some attempt at a murder mystery, but the culprit is introduced so late in the game one barely remembers who he is! The Cybermen are in it, but don't really amount to much. I'm not sure I've really enjoyed any of the DWM stories based around tv monsters thus far, actually.
The end has this weird little stinger where Frobisher reveals he has mono-morphia. It's just two panels, and I found it kind of awkward, but it does finally make explicit something that only implied by Steve Parkhouse in Voyager. Frobisher says, "It's been coming on for a while," presumably to explain why he could shape-shift in some of the earlier Alan McKenzie stories.
from Doctor Who Magazine #111
Nature of the Beast! / Time Bomb / Salad Daze, from Doctor Who Magazine #111-17 (Apr.-Oct. 1986)
scripts by Simon Furman and Jamie Delano, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
Here we have three stories that I struggle to say much about. Nature of the Beast! is a plodding werewolf runaround with little sparkle; it's interesting because at the same time he wrote his two stories here, Simon Furman was coming into his own as the primary writer of Marvel UK's The Transformers comic, but there's little sign here of the personality-based writing he used so effectively over there. (At the time this came out, Furman's stories "Robot Buster!", "Devastation Derby!", and "Second Generation!" were being released in The Transformers;* these aren't works of high art, but they're more interesting than this.) Jamie Delano's Time Bomb was also a struggle; there was some neat stuff like the Doctor and Frobisher running around on primordial Earth, but really what was this story even about? I can't really say. Furman's last contribution (in this volume) is a one-part story about Peri imagining she's in an Alice in Wonderland scenario. Furman seems to have grokked that Ridgway can sell the surreal like few others on the basis of Voyager and Once Upon a Time-Lord, but this is boring surreal, not interesting surreal.
from Doctor Who Magazine #118
Changes, from Doctor Who Magazine #118-19 (Nov.-Dec. 1986)
script by Grant Morrison, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
This, I think, isn't a particularly great story. It would be a bottle episode if this was a Star Trek show: a shapeshifter is loose on the ship and attacking the crew. But of course, this is a comic so it doesn't mean anything to save on sets and casting, and this is Doctor Who, so the TARDIS interior is in fact very extravagant. But Grant Morrison and Ridgway work well together to capture the sense of whimsy and wonder that go with the TARDIS interior. Is Grant Morrison a Doctor Who fan? I always had the impression of "not actually, really" but isn't the trick the Doctor pulls at the end how he gets into Chronotis's TARDIS in Shada? That seems like a bit of a deep cut for 1987. One of the nice touches that keeps this kind of generic story interesting (aside from a Ridgway TARDIS interior) is that he has a very good handle on the voices of the TARDIS crew; the Doctor's bit about "van Gogh" was spot on. (It's not necessarily a quality one needs from the DWM strip, but it's nice when it happens.)
from Doctor Who Magazine #128
Profits of Doom!, from Doctor Who Magazine #120-22 (Jan.-Mar. 1987)
script by Mike Collins, pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, letters by Annie Halfacree
In his intro to Voyager, John Ridgway complained that once Steve Parkhouse left the strip, it became much more like the tv show. This, I think, is not actually a complaint you can level at the work of Alan McKenzie, who often seemed to be trying to do something interesting even if I never particularly enjoyed reading what he actually did. The script by Mike Collins (who still works on the strip to this day!), though, does seem like one that could have aired on tv. Maybe because of that, though, I found it the most enjoyable story in this volume thus far. I think if I outlined the plot you wouldn't be wowed: what works is that Collins has a good sense of the whole TARDIS team, and the world he builds feels real and lived-in, in a way true of much 1980s sf film... but not really the glossy sci-fi stuff they gave us on the BBC. Like Morrison, he has some good Colin Baker bits, and he even remembers Peri is a botanist, and both his Peri and Frobisher are pretty smart and resourceful, and I liked the story's only real significant guest character, Kara McAllista.
from Doctor Who Magazine #123
The Gift, from Doctor Who Magazine #123-26 (Apr.-July 1987)
script by Jamie Delano, pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, letters by Richard Starkings
This, though, was my favorite of the book. It's pretty nuts. The Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher go the planet Zazz looking for a party; instead they find a mad scientist trying to build a volcano-powered rocket ship. He gives them a gift for his brother, the Lorduke of Zazz; they attend an all-night party with the Lorduke (the Doctor is a great dancer), and when they open the present, it turns out to be a self-replicating robot. The Doctor must investigate the robots origins while a seemingly hungover Frobisher gets the scientist to help them and the Lorduke-- who models their whole society after the 1920s-- holds Peri hostage and forces her to sing. It's bonkers, none of this should go together, but it's a delight to read, because for the first time in a long time this feels like the madness of Doctor Who the comic strip, not Doctor Who the tv show. Profits of Doom! might have worked by hewing closely to the tv show, but this works by being nothing like it. It has a sense of humor, for one thing! One of my favorite bits is how the Doctor uncovers the history of Zazz's moon in a series of short hops through history, essentially watching it on fast forward.
from Doctor Who Magazine #127
The World Shapers, from Doctor Who Magazine #127-29 (Aug.-Oct. 1987)
script by Grant Morrison, pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, letters by Richard Starkings
The sixth Doctor bows out of DWM with this atmospheric but ultimately pointless tale. Grant Morrison takes the opportunity to explain a throwaway line from The Invasion and tie the Cybermen together with the alien Voord from The Keys of Marinus. This is, I think, based on them having handlebar heads, which I actually kinda buy. It's vaguely clever and has some neat bits (such as the role of the Time Lords, and the dead Time Lord's TARDIS... though I didn't care for it talking)... but why? The actual story is just that the Doctor hears a bunch of exposition, and then Jamie dies. I dunno, I found this weird. It's going for epic, I guess, but it ends up being just kind of a jumble of possibly interesting ideas where nothing interesting is done with them.
Stray Observations:
  • Genesis! gives the writer credits as "SCRIPT: ALAN McKENZIE (ADAPTED BY JOHN RIDGWAY)," while the table of contents labels the whole story how I did above. In the introduction to Voyager, Ridgway explained that he rewrote the script as he drew it, putting the Cybermen in it more because the editor felt the magazine was wasting the money it had paid to use them with how little McKenzie had actually used them, and it was also Ridgway who added in the first explicit confirmation of Frobisher's mono-morphia.​
  • Peri is not in Time Bomb, except for one panel at the very end; Salad Daze came out between parts one and two of The Trial of a Time Lord and debuts the new look she had in that serial.​
  • Mel debuted as the Doctor's companion in The Trial of a Time Lord Part Nine, broadcast 1 Nov. 1986, between issues #118 and 119 of DWM. Peri, however, continues as the companion in the strip all the way to issue #129, released some ten months after she was written out of the show.​
  • Changes establishes that the TARDIS's occasionally-mentioned state of temporal grace only applies when the TARDIS is in temporal flight: when the engines are off, so is it. I am too lazy to go back and see if this matches up with the way it was used on the show.​
  • The ending of Profits of Doom! seems to set up Seth as a recurring villain, but unless it's not mentioned on the Tardis wiki, he never appeared again. Mike Collins has illustrated many, many Star Trek stories-- but written just one Trek tale, and it struck me that like this, it features a group of rapacious capitalist scavengers as the villains!​
  • Speaking of whom, I usually do little "what did they go on to do?" summaries when someone who is famous for subsequent work (e.g., Dave Gibbons) makes their last contribution to DWM. I cannot do this for Mike Collins because he has never not worked on DWM! Last year's Mistress of Chaos graphic novel featuring the thirteenth Doctor includes strips drawn by him; he has worked on seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth Doctor comics! But on the side, he has carved out a career in American comics, illustrating much of DC's The Darkstars, as well as Star Trek comics for DC, Marvel (especially Early Voyages), and Wildstorm. He also did the covers for over eighty Star Trek ebooks, including the S.C.E. series. And he worked as a storyboard artist on the Doctor Who tv show during the Moffat years!
  • These are Jamie Delano's only Doctor Who stories, I think; he is best known as the first writer of the Hellblazer comic book, a spin-off of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.
  • Richard Starkings makes his Doctor Who debut here, lettering the last two stories. He is still lettering Doctor Who comics thirty-plus years later, working most recently on Titan's new Doctor Who Comic this year!​
  • Steve Moffat would actually reference The World Shapers on screen in World Enough and Time, as one of the multiple Cyberman origins the Doctor has experienced. I think I yelped when I heard that; even before reading The World Shapers, I knew the significance of the reference.

* All of these are collected in The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two; see below. My parallel reading is not quite in sync.

This post is the eighth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four. Previous installments are listed below:

  1. The Iron Legion
  2. Dragon's Claw
  3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
  4. The Tides of Time
  5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
  6. Voyager
  7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three

19 April 2021

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 7)

Collection published: 2012
Contents originally published: 1986-87
Read: January 2021

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts

Written by Simon Furman, James Hill, and Lew Stringer
Pencils by Jeff Anderson, Will Simpson, Ron Smith, Geoff Senior, Martin Griffiths, and Lew Stringer
Inks by Jeff Anderson, Will Simpson, Ron Smith, Geoff Senior, Tim Perkins, and Lew Stringer
Colors by Tony Jozwiak, John Burns, Gina Hart, and Steve White
Letters by Richard Starkings, Annie Halfacree, and Robin Riggs

Each volume of Transformers Classics UK is more confident and more distinct than the last; it's hard to believe that these stories overlap with what I think was one of the less interesting periods of the US title.* Imagine going from battling Galvatron to save the timeline in "Target: 2006" to the Bob Budiansky story where the Decepticons' big threat is painting graffiti on the Washington Monument.

Mostly this volume contains two big epics. The first is "Target: 2006," where Galvatron and his minions travel back in time from 2006, during the events of The Transformers: The Movie. Galvatron, feeling stymied by Unicron's control, plans to build a giant gun and bury it, so that he can return to the future and defeat Unicron. Because of that, Optimus Prime vanishes (if you jump back in time, you dimensionally displace an equivalent amount of mass) and so Ultra Magnus makes a risky spacebridge jump from Cybertron to Earth to find out what happened to him. And because of that, a mission Magnus is supposed to go on with the Wreckers to unite the Autobot resistance on Cybertron is put in danger. So we follow these three parallel threads of Galvatron, Ultra Magnus, and the Wreckers. Furman has continued to grow as a writer, and here he weaves it all together expertly. The time travel stuff is kind of nonsense (like, wouldn't the Autobots have two decades to disable Galvatron's cannon once he returns to 2006?) but it's glorious all the same. I enjoyed this now, but I wish I'd read it back in high school when I was eating up Transformers temporal machinations on Beast Wars and Beast Machines; this is more of the same, and back then I would have found it the pinnacle of epic storytelling. The way Galvatron is portrayed as a fundamentally unbeatable bad guy is neat, and the way the Autobots ultimately foil his plan is a clever one.

If you haven't grabbed some hapless local and demanded, WHAT YEAR IS THIS!?, have you really had the full time travel experience?
from The Transformers #78 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson)

Furman does have this one storytelling tic that is clever but I don't like. Each issue usually incorporates some recap of the previous, which makes sense, but reading them back to back, I usually skim those a little bit... except that so these recaps aren't pointless, he usually folds in new information, bridging the gap between the previous installment and the current one. So, if you are skimming the recaps, you quickly get confused when you miss the new information! No matter how often it happens, I keep skimming and having to jump back and reread the recap once I get confused about something.

I think Skids is still gone by the end of this volume. Does he come back...?
from The Transformers #101 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

I also really enjoyed the sequence of linked stories that finishes out the volume: "Prey!", "...The Harder They Die!", "Under Fire!", "Distant Thunder!", "Fallen Angel," and "Resurrection!" Through a series of convoluted machinations, Optimus and Megatron end up on Cybertron. Megatron has to answer to Lord Straxus, who has taken over the Decepticons in his long absence; Optimus has to go on the run from his own people when a Decepticon misinformation campaign convinces the Autobots he's an impostor. Seeing the two match wits is fun, and Optimus gets some of his best material of the whole UK run, as he teams up with Outback, the only Autobot who believes him, a pessimist who believes he's doomed. I really liked this guy, and am disappointed I haven't seen him elsewhere that I remember. The way Optimus ultimately proves himself to the Autobots is great, too.

Megatron's body is invaded by Lord Straxus's mind. It's interesting how this (I suspect) recontexualizes things Bob Budiansky wrote in the surrounding US issues; I'll be curious to see what is done with this in the next volume.
from The Transformers #103 (script by Simon Furman, art by Will Simpson)

Both of these stories have a broader canvas, with bigger gaps between US tales than earlier in the run, and they really use that to their advantage, weaving together a number of subplots into a coherent whole. They also pop a bit because they introduce original characters not being used in the US stories, such as Ultra Magnus and the Wreckers, which allows them to not be constrained in character development. I always liked Magnus in More than Meets the Eye and Lost Light, and his first comics incarnation here is almost as good, a determined but overly single-minded warrior; the Wreckers are always good fun.

I didn't mention this in my body text, but I did find the celebratory 100th issue a bit weird in its choice of topic. It's a good story, just not the one I'd've done here!
from The Transformers #100 (script by Simon Furman, art by Will Simpson & Tim Perkins)

The James Hill story might be out of order, but I did like the existential angst of Jetfire, who feels out of place as the first Earth-born Autobot.

Plus some comedy strips from Lew Stringer, who thirty-five years later is still working for Marvel UK's successor Panini, drawing strips for Doctor Who Magazine! What's not to love?

What joke can I make about this that it didn't make itself? Stringer was (and is) a pun king.
from The Transformers #97 (script & art by Lew Stringer)

It's interesting, reading these in parallel with DWM prior to when they will converge in the seventh Doctor era. (I'm not reading them in publication sequence; I thought about it, but since Transformers UK put out so much content so quickly, I would have been reading two or three Transformers volumes in a row between Doctor Who ones, which didn't appeal.) There's not really a distinctive style: the approach of Voyager and "Target: 2006" is nothing alike. But what does shine through is that in both cases, the Marvel UK comics chart their own course, taking the ingredients of the parent series but remixing them to do something all their own. Voyager is nothing like Colin Baker's tv adventures; "Target: 2006" is nothing like Bob Budiansky's Transformers. But that's what makes these series sing.

* The stories in this volume still overlap with those contained in volume two of the US reprints. I suggest the following order: UK #78-88, US #21-22, UK #93, US #23, UK #96-104, US #24-25. It's one of the easiest periods to follow, except that for some reason this volume reprints UK #93 between UK #100 and 101, where it absolutely does not go.

This post is the seventh in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The World Shapers. Previous installments are listed below:

  1. The Iron Legion
  2. Dragon's Claw 
  3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
  4. The Tides of Time
  5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
  6. Voyager

14 April 2021

Voyager (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 6)

Collection published: 2007
Contents originally published: 1984-85
Acquired: January 2008
Read: January 2021

Voyager: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of The Official Doctor Who Magazine
by John Ridgway, Steve Parkhouse, and Alan McKenzie

After souring on Steve Parkhouse's approach to Doctor Who across the course of The Tides of Time, I was pleasantly surprised by this volume. I don't know if it's because Parkhouse found his enjoyment of the series revitalized by a new Doctor, or if it's because he was now writing toward the talents of John Ridgway (in the introduction, Ridgway discusses how Parkhouse tailored the strip to his interests), but suddenly the whole thing feels fresh and energetic in a way entirely unlike 4-Dimensional Vistas.

The Shape Shifter, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #88-89 (May-June 1984)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree

This picks up right from The Moderator; the Doctor, having regenerated between strips (it's this kind of thing that makes the strip feel like a parallel universe to the show rather than something that slots in between it) is tracking down whoever hired the Moderator to kill Gus. But it doesn't just pick up in terms of plot but also style and tone: just as The Moderator was dominated by colorful, humorous narration from its title character, so too is The Shape Shifter. This story introduces us to Avan Tarklu, a shape-shifting private investigator who decides to find the Doctor for Dogbolter and turn him in for the reward money. The narrator is a delight, and yet again, I found myself wishing Big Finish's comic strip adaptations lasted longer than a single box set, because I would have loved to hear Robert Jezek read some of this aloud. The story is filled with a lot of genuinely humorous shape-shifting antics; I laughed out loud more than once. This is definitely one of those strips where story and writing are totally simpatico. Avan becoming a burger or hijacking the TARDIS, the panels where they imagine how Avan could make the Doctor's life hell hiding in the TARDIS, it's all a delight. After a number of one-off artists, John Ridgway has debuted as the strip's new long-term artist, and he nails it from the off; his Colin Baker isn't perfect, but otherwise, he has a great sense of tone, both grim and humor, and his storytelling is always clear.

I did find there was one big leap I didn't quite follow: why does Avan agree to collaborate with the Doctor to fool Dogbolter and split the reward money? We go from Avan having the Doctor over a barrel to the two teaming up to take down Avan's ostensible employer! But hey, it's a fun con, and I'll take it.
from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #90
Voyager, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #90-94 (July-Nov. 1984)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
In the time since The Shape Shifter, Avan has taken the name "Frobisher" "in deference to the Doctor's love of all things English" (and it's implied Avan might not actually be his real name, either); here he also adopts the penguin form that will become his default. His presence maintains the moments of humor that Parkhouse introduced with The Shape Shifter. (There's a great gag where Frobisher decides to disguise himself by putting on a fake mustache, for example, and I liked the bit about the gun the Doctor threatens Astrolabus with.) But otherwise this is very unlike what has come so far.

Reading The Moderator and The Shape Shifter, you might think the strip was moving off into a new storyline about Dogbolter in a sort of noir universe, but Voyager is a surreal, weird fantasy epic. The Doctor has a dream about being lashed to a doomed sailing ship, then he finds the ship, along with the mysterious Astrolabus, who's fleeing the strange entity known as the Voyager, apparently for a past crime.

It's weird stuff. I don't quite entirely get it. But it's excellent stuff, too; Parkhouse's occasional moments of surreality in The Tides of Time were great, and with Ridgway as his partner, this story leans into it completely. But unlike some surreal stories, you really feel a sense of danger and mystery. Astrolabus's da Vinci helicopter is awesome; the true identity of his TARDIS is awesome. This is Doctor Who as grandiose mythology, and I wish I got it just a tad more, but I otherwise enjoyed it a lot.
from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #96
Polly the Glot, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #95-97 (Dec. 1984–Feb. 1985)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
Ivan Asimoff of The Free-Fall Warriors reappears, having made his last DWM appearance nearly forty issues prior; I think this makes him the first original strip character to recur after an absence, and leads to a feeling of a DWM universe being built up. 
Shortly after Voyager, the Doctor and Frobisher bump into Asimoff at a busy spaceport; Asimoff asks for help freeing a spacefaring life-form called a zyglot from captivity in his capacity as treasurer of the Save the Zyglot Trust. The plan the Doctor and Frobisher come up with is to kidnap Asimoff and send off a ransom demand so that the public will donate to the Trust to help fulfill the ransom demand! This plan seemed a bit wacky, and I was feeling uncertain about the whole deal, but once the three of them go about an Akker zyglot-hunting ship, the strip sparkles with the kind of humor that has partially defined it of late; the dull Akkers are great, the janitor robot pretending to be a warrior robot is a delight.

In the end, the Doctor donates his share of the money he and Frobisher ripped off from Dogbolter to the Save the Zyglot Trust. It's not a total tonal shift into the humorous, though; the moment where Polly the Glot is freed from captivity is one of beauty, and Astrolabus turns out to the president of the Trust, giving the Doctor glimpses of doom throughout the story, and then kidnapping the Doctor at the end. I think it would be easy for a writer's approach to seem tired as he approaches the end of his tenure (Steve Moore's did after just over a dozen strips), but Parkhouse I think has totally reinvented himself as a writer to play to Ridgway's strengths. (In the introduction, Ridgway said Parkhouse had grown tired; he wasn't even scripting even more, he'd just call Ridgway on the phone and tell him what to draw on a panel-by-panel basis, and then he'd do the dialogue once Ridgway submitted his art.)
from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #98
Once Upon a Time-Lord, from The Official Doctor Who Magazine #98 / The Doctor Who Magazine #99 (Mar.-Apr. 1985)
script by Steve Parkhouse, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
Steve Parkhouse departs the DWM strip in a story that wraps up the Voyager/Astrolabus storyline. This one too is a delight, as things all get a bit meta when Astrolabus uses his storytelling powers to slow down the Doctor, converting the strip into a children's story book! Surely "Frobisher Eats a Worm" and "Frobisher Wishes He Hadn't" is a highlight of the strip. When Astrolabus thinks he's escaped, he literally escapes the confines of the comic page, running across a blank space with no panel borders. In the end, though, the Doctor turns Astrolabus over to the Voyager, freeing himself from the feeling of doom he's had, but leaving him unsettled. This one is a little too quick to be as satisfying as Voyager, but I still enjoyed it.
from The Doctor Who Magazine #101
War-Game, from The Doctor Who Magazine #100-01 (May-June 1985)
script by Alan McKenzie, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
Alan McKenzie, formerly editor of the strip, takes over as write from this story, which sends the Doctor and Frobisher to a barbarian planet where they meet a Draconian who crash-landed and set himself up as a local warlord. The comedy is the best part of it, my favorite gag being one where the Doctor and Frobisher get wine, but then reveal they don't have any money. The Doctor says, "I'm sure I can explain.... After all, what can they do to us?" Next panel: the Doctor and Frobisher are being auctioned off as slaves. In this story, Frobisher is back to shape-shifting, making himself look like a barbarian. When they attack a castle, Frobisher makes himself big... only to discover that makes it easier to be stabbed in the leg.

Outside of this, though, I found this one to be fairly dull stuff.
from The Doctor Who Magazine #103
Funhouse, from The Doctor Who Magazine #102-03 (July-Aug. 1985)
script by Alan McKenzie, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
The TARDIS materializes in a weird sort of space entity that takes the form of a haunted house; it feels like McKenzie trying to give Ridgway the kind of surreal stuff to draw that he did so well under Parkhouse... but I didn't really find it interesting, a couple nice moments aside. (I liked the Doctor's attempted use of an axe to resolve the crisis is fun; the use of string for the actual solution is cute, but feels like nonsense even by Doctor Who time travel standards.)
from The Doctor Who Magazine #106
Kane's Story / Abel's Story / The Warrior's Story / Frobisher's Story, from The Doctor Who Magazine #104-06 / Doctor Who Magazine #107 (Sept.-Dec. 1985)
script by Alan McKenzie, art by John Ridgway, letters by Annie Halfacree
I wanted to like this story. Alan McKenzie takes a stab at the epic, with a four-part story about creatures called Skeletoids invading the Federation of Worlds. The Doctor and Frobisher are among a team of six who unite to stop the invasion; most of the other characters have very detailed backstories and become the strip's viewpoint characters... only it's three-and-a-half issues of set-up and just half an issue of actual action! All the set-up is made totally irrelevant, and the way the Skeletoids are defeated feels far too easy; I think you're supposed to feel bad about one character's sacrifice, but you barely know or care about him. One of the six is the Draconian warlord from War-Game, but at an earlier point in his timeline. If I had cared about him in War-Game, I might have found that more interesting.

Another of the six is Peri, making her strip debut-- which makes her the first human-played companion to appear. Peri doesn't do much, though the way she's folded in is interesting; the Doctor goes to pick her up, where she's working as a waitress in 1985 New York; she says, "I never thought I'd see you again!", so whatever circumstances she left the Doctor under, it felt like a final exit rather than a temporary break. I don't think Frobisher knows here, though, based on how he answers Kane's question about who she is. I don't know where you would wedge the Doctor's travels with her into the strip's continuity; before The Shape Shifter, I guess, but that would disrupt the way The Moderator flows right into it. I'm curious to see what kind of use the strip makes of her going forward; it didn't exactly make great use of its previous human companion.

Anyway, this means this volume, which begins quite strongly, ends with a fizzle. But, you know, tell John Ridgway to draw an ancient valley, and he will draw the hell out of it.
Stray Observations:

  • Pedants should note that the first installment of Voyager claims the story title is The Voyager... but even I am not pedantic enough to do something like list it as The Voyager / Voyager. Interestingly, it is the first story where each individual part has its own subtitle ("It Was a Devil Ship.." / "The Light at the Edge of the World..." / "The Lighthouse" / "Dreams of Eternity" / "The Final Chapter"). Also, the cover of the first twelve DWM graphic novels usually used the title strip's unique logo as the cover logo, but the way "VOYAGER" is rendered on the cover is not the way it's rendered in the strip itself. These are the things that I notice and wonder about...
  • In part two of Voyager, the TARDIS materialization noise is rendered as "VOORP! VOORP!" Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
  • In the introduction, Ridgway talks about how Parkhouse gave Frobisher mono-morphia so he couldn't actually change form, probably because as a shape-shifter he had virtually unlimited power... Ridgway also complains that McKenzie ignored this, most prominently in War-Game. But as far as I noticed, the word "mono-morphia" is never actually used here! There are just a couple Parkhouse stories where Frobisher acts a bit awkward when someone asks him to shape-shift. I think if you weren't paying attention, it would be easy to miss. (Though, given McKenzie was editor on most of the Parkhouse/Ridgway strips, he should have been paying attention!)
  • There was a small reference to the Freefall Warriors in The Moderator, but the reappearance of Ivan Asimoff in Polly the Glot definitively ties The Free-Fall Warriors to the home era of Dogbolter and Frobisher, beginning the creation of DWM cosmology of sorts. There's a reference to Dogbolter's company, Intra-Venus, Inc., in Abel's Story, implying that sequence (and thus War-Game) takes place in the same era, too, which would make this the same time period where Davros is active as Emperor of the Daleks (i.e., between Revelation and Remembrance, though at the time these strips came out, that would not have been known).
  • I feel like on tv, the sixth Doctor was always bumping into old friends, so the appearance of Asimoff is appropriate. Except that on screen, they were always old friends we'd never actually met before (Azmael in The Twin Dilemma, Dastari in The Two Doctors, Stengos in Revelation of the Daleks, Hallett and Traves in The Trial of a Time Lord), but we actually Asimoff already!
  • Steve Parkhouse departs the strip after a venerable run as writer (and sometimes artist) spanning three Doctors! I will see as I go, but I suspect no one will repeat this feat. After leaving DWM, he would go on to illustrate DC/Vertigo titles such as The Sandman and The Dreaming. He would also make one small but important contribution to Marvel UK's Transformers strip, writing its first original story, which was also the only UK story Marvel reprinted in its US book.
  • For the last six strips, Alan McKenzie is credited as "Max Stockbridge." The pseudonym of "Maxwell Stockbridge" was first used back in 1981 according to the Tardis wiki, but this was its first use in the main DWM strip itself. Poking around in the Grand Comics Database informs me it was previously used on DWM back-up strips, in DWM specials, and in other Marvel UK titles such as Marvel Super-Heroes and Savage Action. I had thought the pseudonym was inspired by Maxwell Edison and Stockbridge, but given those didn't appear until late 1982, the pseudonym must have inspired them. (Tardis wiki also claims it was retired by 1984, but these strips were published in 1985.)
  • In Kane's Story, Kane suggests fixing the damage done to the TARDIS in Funhouse by replacing the busted temporal component with the intact spatial one; Kane says they'll only need the spatial one for their mission to defeat the Skeletoids. But then they promptly travel back in time to 1985!
  • Some people seem to think that Kane's Story indicates Frobisher had already met Peri, but I think it indicates exactly the opposite. The Doctor and Frobisher encounter an illusory version of Peri in Funhouse, which turns into a demon. The Doctor expresses concern for her but Frobisher says nothing to her; in Kane's Story, basically the same thing happens again. When Kane asks who Peri is, Frobisher says, "I just hope she doesn't change into anything more comfortable this time!" This makes me think Funhouse was Frobisher's only previous experience of Peri.
  • It is sort of weird to note that the sixth Doctor had about half as many tv adventures as the fifth... but twice as many comic ones! As a helpful GallifreyBase commenter elucidates: "Davison was squished at both ends as Tom Baker was the lead in the strip right up to December 1981 and Davison didn't start until Castrovalva was broadcast. However with Twin Dilemma on air at the end of season 21, Colin went straight into the strip straight after Caves was broadcast and remained the lead until Time and the Rani went out, so he got both the gap between seasons 21 & 22, the hiatus and after 23 went out. Giving him much more time as the current Doctor." Good fact!

This post is the sixth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three. Previous installments are listed below:

  1. The Iron Legion
  2. Dragon's Claw 
  3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One 
  4. The Tides of Time
  5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two

12 April 2021

Review: That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton

Originally published: 1971
Acquired: ???
Read: October 2020

That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton

The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now were among a box of books that my father gave me when I was a kid. A bunch of Asimov was in that box, which I devoured; there was also some Vonneguts and the two Hinton books, which I never did for some reason. But after teaching and enjoying The Outsiders, I decided to add That Was Then to my reading list, and I've finally got round to it.

That Was Then, This Is Now isn't exactly a sequel to The Outsiders, but it's set in the same unnamed city, and Ponyboy is among the secondary characters. It's narrated by Bryon, a kid who makes money hustling pool, and mostly concerns his relationship with his friend Mark, who moved in with Bryon and his mother when his parents died. It's a quick read-- just 150 pages-- but an affecting one. Hinton's good at capturing that most important part of growing up: that the world is more complex than you thought, and there's nothing you can do about it. Somehow this book manages to be sadder than The Outsiders; while The Outsiders obviously has some dark stuff in it, it manages to end semi-optimistically, I think. But by the end of this book, Bryon has lost many of the people he cares about, by choice or by circumstance, and he isn't going to get them back. Hinton may have created a genre, but unlike some early works in a genre, this maintains its power, even fifty years on.

09 April 2021

Myriad Universes: The Tears of Eridanus Composition

In my last post, I talked about the pitching process for The Tears of Eridanus. The book ended up having an overly long writing process, but that also ended up being for the best.

The pitch was accepted by Marco Palmieri at Simon & Schuster in Sept. 2008; in Oct. 2008 we got the go-ahead to begin working on the manuscript for a 2 Feb. 2009 deadline. (At some point this became 16 Feb., though.) The intended publication date was Aug. 2009.

Like all of our projects, it had a clear and logical split. In this case, Michael was keen to write the Demora-centric sections set on Vulcan; I was keen to write the Hikaru-centric Kumari sections. I think he has an interest in Vulcan culture, and I had long had one in the Andorians, so there was no dispute about who would write what. We would each write a chapter and then send it to the other; the other would then provide comments and edits. We had learned from The Future Begins that we were both over-writers, but Michael much more than I, so a lot of our edits were just cutting stuff that was unnecessary.

Despite that, the first complete draft (which was assembled 24 Jan. 2009) was 63,000 words, almost 15,000 over-length. I did some harsh chopping, but I also came up with the idea of a series of interludes depicting the Hikaru/Demora relationship over the years, and so those got added in. Additionally, one of beta readers had pointed out that the idea that Hikaru was out of place on Kumari in this timeline didn't quite come through, and so I wrote a whole new scene that emphasized it more.

On 4 Dec. 2008, however, we had received word that Marco had been laid off as part of a big downsizing at S&S. Our project was one of many handed over to Margaret Clark, and in a TrekMovie interview in Jan. 2009, she mentioned that the publication date of Shattered Light (the volume to contain The Tears of Eridanus) had been bumped by nine months, I think because of workload issues. We asked if that meant we could have a little more time; she said no. We submitted it on time on 15 Feb. 2009... and promptly never heard a thing. The publication date became Sept. 2010.

In Aug. 2009, we heard that Margaret Clark had also been laid off, as S&S continued to bleed financially thanks to the Great Recession. A bunch of e-mails went back and forth between us and Scott Pearson and David George, the other contributors to Shattered Light, wondering what was happening to our project; none of us had heard a thing since submission.

Finally, in Nov. 2009, Jaime Costas e-mailed us to say she had taken over as editor of Star Trek fiction at S&S (she had been Marco's editorial assistant before, I think) to tell us the book was now slated for Dec. 2010, and she literally knew nothing about it: had there been an approved outline? had we even begun writing it?

Yes, we said, and sent along the complete manuscript. But somewhere along the way, I had an idea: in the intervening months, I had become involved in a creative workshop in my graduate program, where we would meet weekly to discuss each others' writing. They had proven themselves incisive readers, and we ended up asking Jaime if we could do another draft of The Tears of Eridanus. She said sure, there was no rush. 

So my creative writing workshop-- none of whom had ever read a Star Trek book before, though some were casual fans, and others had never even seen a minute of it-- read it in early 2010 and provided extensive notes. These were incorporated into a new draft; I also realized the scene I'd added had accidentally vanished from the manuscript by the time we sent it to Margaret, so that got added back in. We submitted the new manuscript on 5 Apr. 2010 (alongside the outline of what would become our only full-length Star Trek novel, A Choice of Catastrophes). Despite everything that had been added, this final draft was just over 55,000 words long, so within the ±10% margin of error someone once told me to use when approaching word counts.

Jaime went on maternity leave in May 2010, meaning Emilia Pisani took over as editor temporarily on both our projects; this would become permanent when Jaime elected to not return to S&S at the end of her leave, and Emilia saw the project through. (Ed Schlesinger would become the editor of A Choice of Catatrophes, however.) Four editors from beginning to end! I feel sort of lucky it wasn't five.

first draft cover by Alan Dingman
(spot which mistake made me angry!)
The copy edit was kind of fun, in that the copy editor (a freelance Marco, I think) did something I never saw on any of our other Star Trek projects; the front of it had appended a list of every proper noun in the entire story, to use for checking spelling. In Sept. 2010, we signed off on the final typeset pages and gave notes on Alan Dingman's striking cover. (Demora wasn't on it originally, for example, and Shras was, despite appearing in just a couple scenes. I suppose someone wanted an Andorian on the cover of the book, which made sense, but no canonical Andorian has a very significant role in it, unfortunately.)

And that was that! The book came out in Dec. 2010, at long last, and though the delays were frustrating at the time, I think the revisions suggested by my writing group made it a much stronger book, and so in the end, we were both grateful for the extra time.

07 April 2021

Hugos 1962: Hothouse by Brian Aldiss

Collection originally published: 1962
Contents originally published: 1961
Acquired: September 2020
Read: October 2020

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss

In 1962, Brian Aldiss won the Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction for the "Hothouse" sequence of stories. 1959 had seen categories for Best Short Story and Best Novelette, but from 1960 to 1966, there was just a singular Best Short Fiction category. Even beyond that, the rules didn't work the way they work now; the five "Hothouse" stories have a collective wordcount in the novel range, and thus if the sequence was nominated as a unit these days, it would have to be in Best Novel. The same year Aldiss won the Hugo (there is a funny story about this in my Penguin Modern Classics edition), the five stories were published as a fix-up, and I decided to read it as one of my Hugo "bonus" books between the winners of Best Novel for 1958 and 1963.

I both can and cannot see why this won. There definitely are arresting, interesting images. Though not the earliest by far, Hothouse is still a pretty early example of the climate apocalypse subgenre. The warming of Earth (from natural causes) has caused a massive proliferation and evolution of plant life, and thus the downfall of the human race, which exists only in isolated pockets of depressed intelligence. The book follows one human as he journeys across his world, often at the behest of a superintelligent morel, and encounters different aspects of the amazing ecosystem. I would say the world was the best part, but I actually found reading the worldbuilding and scene-setting a bit of a slog. There is some neat stuff here, but it feels buried in a dull, aimless travelogue about dull, aimless people, and the exposition itself was often dull and aimless too; I was rarely excited to pick the book back up, and it took me a while to read despite being only 250 pages. I've liked some of Aldiss's short fiction that I've read, and he made good editorial choices in his Galactic Empires anthologies, but this is the first of his novels that I've picked up (for certain definitions of "novel") and it doesn't make me want to read another one. Not bad per se... but it never clicked with me. I kind of feel like I'd rather look at some illustrations of the world that Aldiss created!

I read an old winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel every year, plus other Hugo-related books that interest me. Next up in sequence: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

05 April 2021

Review: The Expanse: Auberon by James S.A. Corey

Published: 2019
Acquired: December 2020
Read: January 2021

Auberon: An Expanse Novella
by James S.A. Corey

The most recent Expanse novella was published after Tiamat's Wrath, but takes place before it, so that's where I read it. (Once the series is over, I'll do a post about my Expanse reading order.) This is one of the weaker ones, I'm afraid, though perhaps it will set up something in Tiamat's Wrath that will make me appreciate it more in retrospect. It's about a Laconian governor coming to grips with the difficulty of maintaining power outside of Laconia; too many of its beats seemed duplicated from the Governor Singh plotline in Persepolis Rising. They both struggle to apply their ideals in practice, they both have a situation spiral out of control, they both are devoted to wives in ways that make them impossible to live up to, they both are ultimately compromised. I liked the Singh subplot in Persepolis Rising a lot, but not so much that I had any interest in seeing it play out again in the very next book.

I read an Expanse story every eighty-ish days. Next up in sequence: Tiamat's Wrath

02 April 2021

Myriad Universes: The Tears of Eridanus Original Pitch

In 2008, it seemed like Michael and I had a Star Trek writing career that was going somewhere. Our S.C.E. novella The Future Begins had come out in 2006; the Next Generation anthology The Sky's the Limit had contained a pair of linked short stories by us in 2007. We began noodling around with novel pitches.

At that year's Shore Leave convention, we approached Marco Palmieri asking if we could talk; he was one of the editors at Simon & Schuster assigned to Star Trek fiction, and had been our editor on The Sky's the Limit. Marco is a very supportive and nurturing editor; I mean, he tells you absolutely when something doesn't work, but he is keen to develop new talent. A couple of the best moments in The Sky's the Limit had come from him.

We had lunch with Marco (I remember this being awkward, because we were awkward; Marco was great; I hope I am much better conversationalist-with-relative-strangers now than I was at 23). We ran one of our ideas past him, which was a novel set on the original Enterprise between Star Treks I and II, when Spock was in command. (I think when it was a training ship?) The Enterprise would come to a new planet of squid aliens.

Marco said that original-series novels set outside the bounds of the actual original series were tough sells if there wasn't something about the premise that made it uniquely suited to the era; classic five-year-mission stories were preferred. But he liked the idea of squid aliens (because of what he'd seen in the documentary The Future Is Wild, about possible future paths for evolution on Earth), and he invited us to retool it as a Titan pitch. Titan was an ongoing series of novels about Riker's command, and they had a strong exploration focus, in contrast to the more political/galactic crisis mode of many Star Trek books in those days.

Sometime after we sent him the pitch (called, I think, either Look Closer or Arts of Speech) and were waiting to hear back, we heard that he was soliciting pitches for a third Myriad Universe volume as well. These were collections of three novels in one trade paperback, each about a different alternate timeline. The first two collections had featured premises like What if Spock had died as a child? and What if Earth had never joined the Federation? and What if no one had discovered the Bajoran Wormhole? We hadn't been asked to pitch, but had heard about from someone who had.

One day, shortly after the deadline, I had an idea pop fully formed into my head: What if the Vulcan Reformation had never happened? The Vulcans would just war among themselves for millennia; the Andorians would be the major spacefaring power of the 22nd century; Earth wouldn't meet the Vulcans in First Contact; the Klingons would have no warlike rivals to keep them in check. I came up with an idea set on the eve of a Klingon War (when "Errand of Mercy" took place in the "Prime Timeline"), with the original Enterprise (which would have an Andorian first officer, Thelin from the cartoon episode "Yesteryear" instead of Spock) visiting Vulcan.

I wrote about half an outline and sent it to Michael, saying I was probably crazy (the deadline was Aug. 1, and this was Aug. 13!), but could he take a look? Michael was on a trip, actually, and so could only suggest that Thelin had just played a significant role in Geoff Trowbridge's Myriad Universes tale, The Chimes at Midnight, and so I should go with someone else. He suggest Janice Lester. I wanted a nonhuman, though, to fulfill the "Spock" role, and ended up picking Gav, as the most prominent Tellarite we'd ever seen on the original show.

I finished up the outline myself and sent it off to Marco. Here it is: (yes I really did title it "Mirror-iad" on the document we sent Marco...)


Star Trek: Mirror-iad Universes
Errand of Logic 

a pitch by Steve Mollmann & Michael Schuster

What if… the Vulcan Reformation had never happened?

The U.S.S. Enterprise is on a routine re-supply mission to Beta XII-A when a Klingon battlecruiser appears, claiming the planet as their own. Captain James T. Kirk is able to defeat the Klingon cruiser despite the fact that his first officer, Gav, is stranded on the planet below. The Enterprise is then recalled to the Federation’s capital—Andoria.

Kirk participates in a briefing by Admiral Shras: the Federation is about to experience the first war in its seventy-year history. The Klingon Empire has expanded about as far as it can go in every direction, and is now turning its sights on the United Federation of Planets. The Federation Guard is amassing its forces in preparation for an anticipated first conflict above Organia, but Komack has another mission in mind for the Enterprise, one that takes the ship to Earth. There, Kirk makes the acquaintance of a man called Sarek of Vulcan, from an insignificant prewarp planet orbiting 40 Eridani A. Sarek was an astronaut, on an orbital mission diverted from its course by a missile strike from a rival country. The expedition was fortuitously picked up by a passing Federation vessel, but could not return home—a nuclear strike had wiped out its country of origin. Sarek and the others resettled on Earth, and Sarek eventually married an Earth woman named Amanda Grayson, the linguist of the vessel that rescued him. The two eventually had a son named Spock.

Now, Sarek fears that his homeworld is in the path of the Klingon invasion, and the Guard is stretched too thin to defend a nonmember planet. His hope is to return and unite his people, bringing an end to the constant war that has plagued them for thousands of years. He and Spock journey to Vulcan on the Enterprise. Spock’s Vulcan blood leads him to be passionate and violent to a fault, and he tries his best to subdue it with his human qualities, but his excesses often lead him into conflict with the Enterprise’s chief medical officer, Leonard McCoy. Spock wants no part of his homeworld or the mission, however.

Kirk, McCoy, and Sarek beam down to a village where Sarek has some distant family—but it is in a rival nation, and Sarek is knifed by someone who recognizes his accent and they return to the ship. McCoy struggles to stabilize Sarek, but his knowledge of Vulcan anatomy is limited and Sarek is dying. Spock, overcome by anger, promises to take his father’s place on the mission, but it is only a ruse to enable him to gain revenge on the man who killed his father. Sarek passes away soon after.

The landing party is working to trace Sarek’s family—while Spock half-heartedly preaches his philosophy of peace—when a garbled communication comes in from the Enterprise. It is under attack by a Klingon ship, and Commander Gav is dead. Kirk orders Sulu to do whatever it takes to protect the ship, and not to worry about the landing party—and to Spock’s surprise, he elects to continue the mission. It turns out that Sarek’s family no longer resides here, but has migrated to the other side of the Forge. And there is a man who can guide them to their new location: Stonn, the man who killed Sarek. Spock will have to postpone his vengeance if he wants to survive his time on Vulcan.

Kirk, McCoy, and Spock make their way across the Forge, guided by Stonn. To Spock’s chagrin, he finds out that they are being followed by a number of younger Vulcans, including Xon and Tal, fascinated by who he is and what he is saying—despite the fact that he does not believe it himself. He does his best to encourage them.

The Forge brings many dangers upon them and proves quite trying, but Kirk and McCoy always enable them to pull through—Spock soon realizes that humans are no less passionate than Vulcans. The difference between the two species is that humans have managed to subsume those passions into something else, not just giving into them at a moment’s provocation. They are attacked by raiders, but rather than fight back, Kirk and McCoy figure out what they want, and stop them peacefully.

Spock begins to actually believe the ideals of the Federation more and more. At one point, Stonn is attacked by le-matyas and Spock saves him, though whether out of genuine feeling or simply a desire to kill the man himself, he cannot say. 

They finally reach their destination and make contact with T’Pau, the matriarch who is a distant relation of Sarek’s. It is their hope to use her influence to spread their message—Sarek had believed she would be sympathetic to their cause. She is indeed, but is not convinced that such a thing could actually work, and unwilling to endanger her own standing on something that could fail. Spock tries to preach peace and begins to gather a group of youth around him, but his turmoil is continuously increasing inside him, making it harder and harder, as is Sybok, a man who claims to be Sarek’s first child, and the leader of the local war clan. 

But Kirk and McCoy support him with their own perspectives, Kirk’s a sublimated passion, McCoy’s a medical, clinical one. They too are coming to admire the keen insight of this Vulcan. But eventually, things reach a boiling point—he commits an act of violence against Sybok. McCoy realizes this is no simple anger and talks to the Vulcan healers, learning that Spock has entered the Vulcan phase of mating, the pon farr

Spock must take a mate or die. He had known it could happen, but only distantly—Sarek had hoped his son’s human blood would spare him this. A young woman in Spock’s movement named T’Pring volunteers to become his wife… but she is betrothed to Stonn. 

Stonn is supportive enough of the cause to let T’Pring marry Spock… but there must be a koon-ut-kal-if-fee if the switch is to be binding, and he has no desire to go through with that. Kirk volunteers to stand as Stonn’s proxy… and fight Spock. What Kirk does not know, however, is that the fights typically end in death. McCoy thinks this is emotional madness and tries to talk Kirk out of it, but Kirk enters the arena. He tries to give Kirk tri-ox, but Kirk refuses, pointing out that Spock needs to win. Of course, he is no match for his half-Vulcan opponent. He is beat to within an inch of his life, and McCoy pleads with T’Pau to end to fight, but she ignores him. It is Spock who finally snaps out of it, seeing his new friend so wounded, and he ends the fight. 

Sybok, who has been observing this entire time, is outraged at what he thinks is a farce of Vulcan ideals, and he enters into the fight against Spock. The two brothers battle, and Spock, depleted from his first conflict, fairs poorly. Stonn realizes that Spock’s words have been influencing him more than he thought, and intervenes to stop the fight—his right as the challenged. But Sybok refuses, and a confused three-way fight breaks out, Spock barely recognizing who is who in the throes of his bloodlust. He manages to incapacitate both of them, but T’Pau pronounces that someone must die if the ceremony is to be completed. 

Spock looks between them: he can kill Stonn and gain his revenge, or he can kill Sybok and eliminate his greatest enemy in his cause. His Vulcan half wars with his human half. His choice hangs there, until a comment from McCoy makes him realize that his greatest enemy is nothing other than himself. He must not kill at all. He submits himself to the mercy of Stonn and Sybok. 

Sybok is flabbergasted—he has never seen such a thing. And he is intrigued by an idea so powerful that it could overcome a Vulcan in the bloodlust. He and Stonn make an appeal to T’Pau, who agrees—the marriage can go forth without a death. 

Thus Spock is married to T’Pring, and Spock’s peace movement begins to take shape. The Enterprise manages to make it back to Vulcan, and Kirk and McCoy depart, noting in their report to Starfleet that Vulcan might make a candidate for Federation membership one day, if the peace movement were to succeed. And perhaps an army of battle-hardened Vulcans could come in handy in the war against the Klingons… 

BACKGROUND

If the Vulcan Reformation never happened, not only would the Vulcans not be logical creatures, but the Romulans would have not come into existence either. I think it was Duane who observed that just as the Vulcans subsume their passions into logic to stop from destroying themselves, the Romulans do the same with their games of treachery and honor. So, without Surak as that catalyst, the Vulcans would just war among themselves for millennia. 

Without Vulcan assistance to clean up the postatomic horror, Earth took about twenty years longer to really expand into space. Still Cochrane in 2063, of course, but the NX-01 didn't follow until the 2170s. With no Vulcans to conflict with, the Andorians dominated "local space" at that time. The Federation is still formed, but in the 2190s, and not out of war, but simply an idealistic desire for cooperation. Its capital, however, is on Andor. 

Without a Romulan Star Empire, the Klingons have much more room to expand (into the planets that are "really" Romulan), and there is never open conflict between the Klingons and the Federation. In fact, the Federation never engages in a war of any sort. 

But by 2267, the Klingons have reached their point of maximum expansion in most directions and have turned their eyes onto the Federation. There are thousands of Klingon worlds, teeming with warriors, and the Federation Guard has little experience in combat. 

Spock still exists in this world, however. Sarek was a Vulcan astronaut, whose capsule was sent adrift by a missile attack from a foreign country. It was rescued by a passing Earth ship, but Sarek could not return home because his home nation had also been destroyed, by those who feared that his capsule was an attack of sorts. (The Federation has a Non-Interference Directive in this universe, but it is not as strict as "our" Prime Directive.) He fell in love with the ship's linguist, one Amanda Grayson, and eventually they had a son named Spock. 

The Enterprise exists in this universe much as it does in ours. Kirk and all the others are still there, maybe just a few small differences. McCoy in this reality is much more reserved, allowing him to spar with Spock, just the other way round than what we are used to.


The first draft had Admiral Komack, by the way; I replaced him with Shras at the last minute, but apparently missed a reference.

Marco got back to us about a week later, on Aug. 25, rejecting both pitches. Of Errand of Logic, he wrote:

The Myriad Universes pitch has a great premise; your historical extrapolations are interesting, the themes you propose to explore are great . . . but I think there’s too much “The more things change, the more they stay the same” going on. (The Enterprise and the human characters being essentially unchanged; the paralleling of “Amok Time,” etc.) I can’t help but feel that the lives of these characters, and indeed, their civilization, ought to be much less like the mainline universe, given the premise. And in some ways, what you have here is a little too reminiscent of A Less Perfect Union [Bill Leisner's story from the first Myriad Universes volume], in the sense that you have the political course of known space hinging on the TOS crew and their adventure with an atypical Vulcan expatriate. 

There are some things I quite like about the pitch, but he was of course utterly correct.

A lot of my e-mails from 2008 are gone, so I don't know exactly what happened next. I do know that we e-mailed Marco another pitch on Sept. 7, so we must have spent a couple weeks rethinking. I am pretty sure the new take was basically all Michael's idea, as was the idea to send it off even though we knew his deadline had been Aug. 1! The new version was about a parent and a child, both Starfleet officers, the child being stationed on Vulcan as an observer, and the parent commanding a starship that comes to the rescue. The new Vulcan wouldn't be called Vulcan; the starship would have a predominantly Andorian crew. Both of these would allow us to play up the new universe more.

Of course this was Matt and Will Decker.

(Matt Decker is the doomed captain from "The Doomsday Machine"; Will was the intended commanding officer of the Enterprise in The Motion Picture, who gets pushed aside by Kirk's ego. Their father-son relationship was intended, but never stated on screen.)

This was the element that gave me pause: surely the appeal of Myriad Universes was unfamiliar versions of familiar characters? Did anyone want to read about alternative versions of two guest characters? But we wracked our brains for other classic-era parent-child Starfleet pairs and came up with nothing, and so sent it off. I don't seem to have a copy of this version, called Warring Passions, anymore.

Marco got back to us very quickly, accepting the pitch with a couple suggestions, the biggest being, "I’m okay with your using the Deckers as your main characters, but the brief mention of Sulu made me wonder if the reader would be more invested emotionally if you set the story three decades later and made the protagonists Hikaru and Demora?"

This seemed very obvious to us once he made the suggestion, and I think is a big part of the reason the final story works as well as it does. As I think I will discuss in a future post now, I wrote the Hikaru sections, and my way into the character was based on the fact that in the second pilot, Sulu was actually the Enterprise's astro-scientist; he apparently transferred to helm when the series went into regular production. I liked this idea of a guy who had wanted to be a scientist, to go into space for knowledge, but had ended up doing something different and more "practical." Prime Sulu seems fine with this-- but what if a Sulu in a more Andorian-centric and thus more martial space fleet was not so much?

He made a couple other suggestions we were happy to adopt, including replacing our invented Vulcan philsopher with a character from the show; we opted to use Soval, the Vulcan ambassador from Enterprise. He also worried about a line from Spock in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," that Vulcans would have gone extinct without logic, so how could they have survived another two thousand years of war without Surak? We suggested this workaround:

Let's say they very nearly crossed the brink 2,000 years ago. Perhaps a nuclear war erupted (as we saw it sort of did in the flashbacks in ENT's Vulcan trilogy) and devastated a lot of the planet, and the species spent its time pulling its way back up - and is now on the brink again. It may have taken them that long to populate the planet again, with some isolated clans still living simple lives in the desert. Radioactive contamination probably prevented them from spreading out for a long time, and only recently they managed to solve that problem.

Finally, he thought the title was too obvious. My first idea for a new title was The Fires of Vulcan, but that's also a Doctor Who story. I liked the idea of a mythological angle, though, and I discovered Eridanus (Vulcan's real astronomical designation is 40 Eridani A) was a mythological Greek river made of tears, and thus came up with The Tears of Eridanus.

Some small elements of the original pitch did have an influence: Gav remained the Enterprise's first officer in backstory, and I think we killed off Amanda in the new version specifically as a contrast to the original. Instead of marrying a Vulcan, she was killed by one!

Also there was an Aug. 15 e-mail where I wrote Michael, "There definitely needs to be a scene where Kirk is fascinated by some Vulcan's use of this substance vel-kroh." (The Enterprise episode "Carbon Creek" had established that velcro was brought to Earth in secret by a Vulcan in the 1950s.) And yes, I wrote the scene were Demora is amazed by the idea of velcro in the final version. It's so dumb, I love it.