This week: Excelsior! Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Spider-Man has always been a huge part of my life. I love the movies. I love the comics. And I always just wanted to be Spider-Man.
-Tom Holland
I got taught a lot of great lessons by superhero comics as a kid about virtue and self-sacrifice and responsibility. And those were an important part of imprinting my DNA with ethical and moral values.
-Mark Waid
If you look at Stan Lee and the Marvel comics, yes, there's a lot of awesome, serious and dramatic action that takes place.
-David Dastmalchian |
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If you do what you really want to do, you feel like you're playing. - Stan Lee (1922-2018)
Stanley Martin Lieber wanted to save his real name for literature, so when he got started writing the supposedly lowbrow stories for which he'd later become famous, he used the pseudonym we've all come to know well.
As I've said before, I've always hated the term "genre fiction," and I never use it (except to revile it). It's intended, I think, to distinguish fantasy, science fiction, horror, supernatural and other stories from what they call literature. But all stories have a genre - some, more than one. I noticed that yesterday's science fiction, fantasy, etc. become today's literature - Mary Shelley, Poe, Twain, Stoker, Verne, Wells, Burroughs, etc. - and I see no need to wait for time to pass to appreciate fiction with otherworldly elements the way that I do.
When I was a kid, I tried reading comics, and I tried reading The New Yorker. The former stuck. The latter... well, I figured when I got older, I might understand and appreciate that magazine's post-modernist, rambling, allusion-laden, snobbish style.
I never did.
I did like the cartoons, though.
Comics are a strange blend of genres - so much so that they have become a genre of their own. From the outset, which for the sake of argument I'll place at the first publication of DC's Action Comics 80 years ago, they have always blended science fiction and fantasy. I've mentioned before that I have problems with stories that get the science wrong. Boy, do comics get the science wrong - but the best of them are internally consistent; hence the fantasy aspect.
They are, you might say, modern fantasy; or, as I prefer, modern mythology, the stories of those with powers far beyond those of ordinary men and women. Gods, in a sense - gods who walk among us. Or fly. Or teleport. Or run really, really fast.
Even those comic book heroes without identifiable powers have honed their skills in ways that make them greater, but whether human, alien, mutant, or irradiated, most of them share one trait: the desire to do good, even if the heroes themselves are just as flawed as we - or their creators, writers, and artists - are.
They urge us to become the best that we can be.
Apparently, for me, the best that I can be includes an abiding love of comics: in their original words-and-pictures format, in their TV and movie adaptations, in books, in behind-the-scenes interviews. I guess you can call me a fanboy, even if I've never dressed up as Spider-Man or gone to a comics convention (I have been to general F&SF conventions, but none of the big Comic-Cons).
These past 10 years or so - the time since Marvel's Iron Man first exploded onto the big screen - have seen a renaissance of comics adaptations. Some people are tired of that. I get it - it's not everyone's vial of super-serum. Comics movies were made before 2008, though, and will continue to be made until they're no longer making money for the studios, which probably won't be anytime soon. Personally, I'm tired of rom-coms, but my solution to that is to simply not go see them. Problem solved.
I can say with some certainty that if it weren't for comics, I wouldn't have had the urge to write, or to appreciate science (even if the latter was out of the curiosity to see just how bad they did science). I wouldn't be the person that I am.
I never did get a taste for The New Yorker's snobbery, but look at this.
That's an article in the most snobbily literary of art-snob magazines post-modernistically deconstructing a movie based on a comic book character co-created by Stan Lee - and unabashedly praising the film.
And the man - The Man, as he was known - lived long enough to see his "lowbrow" life's work join the ranks of literary fiction in being analyzed, scrutinized and reviewed by that magazine, and in a positive manner at that. Turns out he never had to use his birth name to write "serious" prose; instead, he helped transform his medium from popular fantasy into sophisticated storytelling.
So if you're wondering why so many people have been remembering this one guy for the last few days, well, it's because he's one of the great ones who actually changed the world for the better, inspiring millions of people and adding to the world's body of great literature.
Not a bad life's work for a writer. |
Not a lot of comic books on Writing.Com, but here's some fantasy to keep you going:
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Last time, in "Genre" , I discussed fantasy and science fiction.
Graham B.  : I couldn't agree more with this post. Unfortunately, science fiction seems to be sadly neglected here on WDC, which is why I'm inhabiting Critters.com to get my sci-fi fix. I propose that sci-fi get its own newsletter so that editors don't need to post under fantasy, or at least post both under the banner of "Speculative Fiction."
There have been unofficial science fiction newsletters here on WDC. Of course, anyone just looking for SF to read can usually find it with the search functions. The Official Newsletter formats are unlikely to change anytime soon.
Paul  : Hi,
The quotes at the front are great. I’ve pretty much lived my life with Bradbury’s. Science Fiction is the most important form of writing. It can do anything the others can do, but the reverse is not true. Any story can take place on a space ship or alien world, but that makes it SF.
I taught myself to read with SF, The Wizard Of Oz, well, my mother sounded it out for me 3 times and I was off with books. I grew up with John Carter. As a teen I was jealous as hell of him and Dejah Thoris. I lived on thousands of alien planets as homo-sapiens or many other very strange alien life forms.
I Became those aliens for a time. It changed how I think. Jose Farmer was one, Heinlein, Asimov, a plethora of others too and living in all those fantasies helped me understand a lot about who I was, what I wanted to believe in and what and how I wanted to think, which was not what others wanted of me.
I think that if you can’t hold it in your hand it’s fantasy. It exists at that moment Only in your mind. SF is fantasy, it only exists in our minds. The only type of SF I totally disbelieve is the current concept of time, I do not believe in the future or the past.
Everything occurs on an infinitesimal moment of time, then it’s gone. Whatever comes before is not an existing future, but something that effects that infinitely small point. The past is a persistence of something that happened, we call it memory, that fades as the Present continues. I am working on that idea as a story. I’m not sure it would carry a book.
I enjoy reading and writing about time travel, I just don’t believe it. All the rest are possible in an infinitely expanding universe. Jeff Goldblums line in Jurassic Park is absolutely true, “If it can happen, it will.” I don’t believe in absolutes either.
That’s my definition of F&SF. A small bite of what I got from it and how it helped me make my life. I had a subscription to Fantasy & Science Fiction and other pulp-mags’ for as long as they published. In my life I’m never seen, except in the shower, without a book. I’m still looking for waterproof books. Now it’s an iPad Pro, but it’s still just a book with a writing tablet. Now, at 76, I’m using it to learn the writing craft. It’s just much faster is all.
Thank you for your article. It prompts many thoughts and memories. I learn from every other persons thoughts I read or hear.
Thank you.
Paul🐸
Thanks for the comments! I enjoy reading (and writing) about many things I don't believe in: magic, the supernatural, honest politicians... it's all part of a "what if?" experience.
That's it for me for November! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: November 21, 2018 Issue [#9232]
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