Ghostbusters 2016 Fan Theory

Okay, so you’re still with us so we shall dive straight in.

The theory is that this movie is, in fact, part 4 of the Ghostbuster’s Cinematic Franchise.

I hear you saying “Wait, you two morons, there was never a ‘Ghostbusters 3’.”  First off, rude.  Be nice.

Secondly, many fans of the film series widely accept Ghostbusters: The Video Game released in 2009 is in fact the missing 3^rd film, due to its quality, addition of the original cast voicing the characters, and its adherence to cinematic cannon.  The game was set in 1991, three years after the second film wherein they are still riding the hero train, working as city contractors and training new recruits.

Our theory begins between GB1 and GB2 where the city of New York has some sort of amnesia about the events of the first film, despite there only being a 5 year difference.   You would think seeing a marshmallow man the size of an apartment building would have been ingrained in the minds of the populace, but sometime after the events of GB1 the Ghostbusters are sued by the city for the damages to the apartment building and surrounding area and are force to shut down.  Ray even comments about the very issue in the film, pointing out how nobody seems to remember what they did.

If the game is GB3, and for the sake of this theory, we’ll say it is, that means there’s 25 years between it and the film of 2016.  In 5 years, just 5 years the city forgot what they did, what would they forget in five times that?  Sure in GB3 they still remember but they’re still under the oversight of the city, and specifically Walter Peck who has gone right back to not believing in ghosts.

Now for some interesting coincidences.  It’s quite a coincidence that as this new team of Ghostbusters is formed, the same old faces from the franchise pop up again?  Literally all the surviving Ghostbusters and Dana Barret, now calling herself Rebecca Gorin, pop up along their journey.  Bill Murray is trying to debunk the new team, Dan Aykroyd is driving a cab and Ernie Hudson is Leslie Jones’ uncle, a funeral director.

Mentor to budding scientist, paranormal debunker, cab driver, funeral director, all of whom just happen into the path of a new team of Ghostbusters right as they are coming into their own…how very convenient.

But the real telling point to build this theory is what the mayor does at the end.  He publically denounces the Ghostbusters, but privately funds their research.  This is a very weird compromise unless you consider:

The people of New York are going to forget about the events soon.  There is something inherent to the paranormal that makes the human brain write it off as myth, something that likes the stories but cannot accept the reality.  The events of 1984, 1989, and 1991 all fall into the depths of urban legend and everyone except the people directly involved in the matters completely forget about it.  It’s the paranormal so anything is possible.

But what about the original Ghostbusters: Well they went into a form of witness protection.  Egon and Ray were both respected scientists so they probably wrote books about their adventures, but as public memory started to fade people completely forgot about these events.  Its hard to maintain your reputation when the collective consciousness says it never happened and you’re written off as frauds.  But someone with the city or federal government knew what was going on and assigned them new identities.

Dana Barret became Rebecca Gorin, her eccentric nature being a byproduct of being victimized, twice, by ghosts.

Winston Zeddemore move in with family and became a funeral director, something a little more down to earth.

Ray Stantz just needs money to fund his little experiments and probably is very happy living as a cab driver.

Egon Spengler probably went to work directly for the government.

But then there’s Peter Venkman.  He became a paranormal debunker because 1) he loves the lime light, and 2) who better to debunk the paranormal than a guy who’s faced it in combat.

Rebecca/Dana figures out what Kate McKinnon’s Holtzman is working on, or where her research is headed, and notifies Egon.  Egon, already watching Yates and Gilbert closely arranges events to force the three together over time.  Ray, a cabbie, can drive by the area any time and keep an eye on them.  Winston discovers his niece is in now involved with them and loans her the car.  During all of this they call in Venkman who goes in “debunking” them but really getting a good look at the work they’re doing.

They are still active but due to injunctions from the government and the ravages of time they can’t bust ghosts anymore.  Gilbert and Yates had to use some kind of material for research, why shouldn’t it be dusty old copies of Ray and Egon’s books?

So there you have it, a theory that connects all four installments of the Ghostbusters.

Hope you enjoyed.

If you get a chance, check out The Lake Haven Chronicles by William Dilbeck

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Dead-Lakehaven-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00JLPG8HE#navbar

thanks for reading.

Legal Advice: Ghostbusters Edition

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you know that there is a new Ghostbusters film on the horizon.  Before that film hits theatres, let’s take a look at Ghostbusters of yesterday and how they would be thrown into a prison so deep and dark they’d never see the light of day.

Flash back to 1984 and the Ghostbusters are working on their little kickstarter business working off the money Ray Stantz borrowed against his mother’s house.  They proceed to start “busting ghosts”, which we’ll address directly in a moment.  What is the equipment they are using.

“Each one of us has an unlicensed nuclear accelerator strapped to his back.”  Bill Murray’s performance makes that sound like a very funny line, until you start thinking about the implications of that.  First off, it’s a miniature particle accelerator, like the one at CERN (which is licensed).  Now I understand that the Ghostbuster tech is all fictional, so I thought I’d take a look at what their specific fictional universe said about the proton pack.

Fudging of science aside, the tie in media states very plainly that each one of these things has a self-destruct blast radius of ½ a mile.  That’s roughly a six city block radius from ground zero.  See the map for details.  Destruction of that magnitude would be very similar to the Oklahoma City Bombing only with the destruction being almost all inclusive.  A typical explosive device has directionality to it.  Any explosion will always follow the path of least resistance.  The afore mentioned bombing shows half the building destroyed, because the explosion, as it expands found the weaker materials to be the path of least resistance and affected them more profoundly.

 

A nuclear explosion is a different kind of event though.  Its far more powerful.  The blast radius may “only” be ½ a mile, but the destruction in that half mile will be far more severe.  On top of that, there are four of these things.  Now that’s not saying the radius would be 2 miles, but rather in that half mile the rather than charred people and crushed buildings you’d probably just have a crater.  Even then, that’s only if the packs were sitting next to each other.  If they were spread out over half a mile in radius from the pack that exploded, each of those would have a blast radius of half a mile.

But the Ghostbusters are scientists, I hear you say.  Well they are, but they aren’t exactly “ethical”.  There’s a very good reason why Peter Venkman stonewalls the EPA lawyer and they packs are unlicensed, what they are doing is very illegal and they could go to jail and no licensing agency with even an atom of common sense would authorize them to build or carry those things.  The proton packs along promise a major fine, confiscation of their equipment and a potential of 10 years in prison, which explains part of the legal case against them in the beginning of Ghostbusters 2.  Why they still had physical access to the proton packs I have no idea, unless due to their “saving the city” warranted them the right to keep the devices but never turn them on.

Imagine a 10 year prison sentence for flipping on a switch.

Now about the containment unit, or “busting ghosts”; this is where we get into some fun “unknown” laws.  Specifically we are going to talk about the “Undiscovered Species Act”.  What this boils down to is if a scientist in the field locates a creature nobody has ever seen before, like bigfoot, and captures or kills it without just cause (ie they were defending their own life), they could face up to 10 years in prison and or have lose any money you received for it because you removed such a rare creature from its habitat.  While this is a county law almost exclusive to Skamania County, Washington this sets what prosecutors can use as a legal precedent to base their case off of.  The ghosts would actually fall under the protection of this act.  They are a rare creature, so rare that we have no way of knowing if they can reproduce.  They seem to consume some sort of fuel to stay active, they have a general habitat, and they are rare enough that most people don’t believe they exists.

In the Ghostbuster’s first real case, in which they capture Slimer, they charge the hotel manager $5,000.  By law, they have to turn that money over to a university, probably the very university they were fired from, along with Slimer for proper scientific study.  They are not an accredited institution, and therefore cannot keep the creature.

But ghosts are just dead people, I hear you say.  Are they?  What do we really know about them given the context of the films and television show?  They are basically energy based life forms.  They have a degree of sentience, an ability to identify and react to danger, an ability to choose based on available data.  At best this is an “Undiscovered Species Act” issue, at worst you are looking at a civil rights suit.

So yes, for their first act as the Ghostbusters, they would be facing terrible fines and possibly up to 20 years in prison.

Who are you going to call, indeed?

 

Thanks for reading.

Ghostbusters Pt 2: Patty Tolan vs the Double Standard

Apparently I have a lot more to say about Ghostbusters than I initially thought.

One of the more controversial moments that came from the first trailer centered on Leslie Jone’s character, Patty Tolan.  When the trailer opens, its shown that she works in the subway, where presumably she encounters something seriously paranormal.  From there she teams with the Ghostbusters and they begin their plan of attack on the supernatural.  She even provides the team with a vehicle, borrowing a car from her uncle.  Of course she states that it’s a Cadillac, but fails to disclose that it’s a hearse.  (Trivia: The original Ecto 1 was a refitted ambulance, not a hearse).

The next few lines she has, in the trailer is upon witnessing a character possessed are “Oh the devil is a liar.” “Get out of my friend, ghost!” she then slaps the character, followed by “The Power of Pain compels you!” accompanied by another slap.

Admittedly if this was going to be the character for the entire movie, that would be extremely annoying, but it was less than a minute of screen time, hardly enough time to get to know a character.

Yet therein lay the problem, the trailer is designed to give you a quick hit of each character so you can determine if you like them or not, and this particular trailer was not flattering to Leslie Jones at all.  At best she came across as dim witted.  At worst a black stereotype.  Unfortunately critics immediately latched onto the latter, with Akilah Hughes of Fusion referring to the character as “a minstrel show”.

Real quick, what is a minstrel show? The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American form of entertainment developed in the 19th century. It was a form of entertainment that required payment to attend. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in make-up or blackface for the purpose of playing the role of black people.  Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, happy-go-lucky, and musical.

To say the least this is an unfavorable comparison for modern black actors, especially since the stereotype set down by the minstrel shows reached all the way into movies being made in the mid 1950’s. 

That comparison, of Jones’ performance to a minstrel show, actually is right where the double standard starts.  If you compare Patty Tolan to, say, almost every black, male side kick character ever made, starting from Chris Tucker, into Busta Rhymes from the “Shaft” film, to almost every character played by Kevin Hart and even Anthony Anderson’s character from “Transformers”, you see that she’s not that far from the standard.  You can go so far as to look at Tyler Perry’s Madea series and the assorted characters that litter the background.  The major difference is that she’s female.

It’s highly likely that if the character had been played by a male actor, it would have slipped under the radar of scrutiny, but that is the double standard we have for women and Leslie Jones caught the brunt of it.

Leslie Jones is an attractive woman, but she’s not “conventionally attractive” so she can’t get away with portraying what some see as a stereotype.  Even if she was “conventionally attractive” they would have given her scrutiny because society will want her to be a “role model for young black girls.”  If every actor I just listed doesn’t have to be a role model to young black boys, why does she have to be one?

Leslie Jones famously shot back on Twitter by stating "Why can't a regular person be a ghostbuster?", and I pointed out in a previous blog that a regular person WAS a ghostbuster in the form of Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore, but that he could be a regular person without falling into the stereotypes set down for black sidekicks of the 1980’s.  But what is “a regular person”?

I won’t speculate as to what Leslie Jones’ social or familial background is, but it’s reasonable to assume she knows at least one person with traits similar to Patty Tolan.  I don’t say that to pigeon hole her into a particular demographic, the fact is that everyone who’s ever stepped out their front door and worked in the work force knows someone with similar traits.  I do, and she’s a mover and shaker at a sheriff’s department so if you tell me that a person like Patty Tolan couldn’t get anywhere in the world, I’d have to call you out on some serious narrow mindedness.

The point is that, to an extent, Patty Tolan is a regular person who has a lot of potential as a character and its 1) unfair of anyone to base judgement on a total of 1 minute of screen time stretched across two trailers and 2) unfair to hold any one to a standard that we don’t set for everyone across the board.

Going back I found the character annoying because that kind of person annoys me.  I don’t like yelling.

Ghostbusters 2016 Breakdown

The 1980’s gave us lots of things to be nostalgic about, but one of the crowning achievements of that era was the original “Ghostbusters” film.  It stands out as a “must see” on almost every film fan’s list.  That alone is enough to label any attempt at a reboot of the franchise as a horrifying cash grab.

It doesn’t help that for the last ten years or so we’ve been hip deep in reboots of classic films.  Some of them have been soulless and shameless; some of them have been heartfelt and even improved on the original.  I think that may be the starting point to the controversy of the new “Ghostbusters” film. 

The History

The original film was collaboration between Dan Aykroyd, Harlold Ramis, and Ivan Reitman.  These were the concept creators, the writers, and the polishers of the story.  As the film grew into a reality and changes had to happen, they happened organically because these three guys were involved all the way.  They shaped the world of the Ghostbusters first hand.  That is a very big deal because under normal circumstances you have one person submit a story idea and they either bring in a script or the script idea is farmed out to writers who submit multiple drafts until one is picked, polished and printed.  The studio hires a director, they cast the characters and the final product can feel very manufactured.  Its and assembly line process really and the original film was not this.  It was something that grew and the people who started it were the ones who finished it.  So, “Ghostbusters” as a film feels alive, like it’s a person and for a lot of fans, that person became a friend.

I grew up with the franchise.  I wore out two VHS copies of the original film; I saw the second film eight times while I was laid up from an injury in the 4th grade (my dad rented it for me).  I watched the original cartoon in its entirety and yes, I even watched “Extreme Ghostbusters”.  Right about here is where a lot of fans get divided.  There was very big push for “Ghostbusters III” but that was on the heels of “Extreme Ghostbusters”, and it was with that series that you could see the quality really flake away from the original concept.  With the lack of quality, so went the interest.  Ghostbusters is a franchise that lives off of its fan base.  It needs a strong foundation in order to support quality work.  The final result of “Ghostbusters III” was a result of a lack of interest in studios would have translated into a bad movie and the creators didn’t think the fans that stayed the course deserved a bad move.  So Ghostbusters faded from theatres and television and lived on in comic book format.  But in its legacy it maintained that friendship with its fans.  It still felt very organic very alive.

“Ghostbusters 2016” does not feel that way.  It feels very manufactured.  At least that’s what the first preview would have you believe.

The Warning Shot

When the first trailer for “Ghostbusters” circa 2016 dropped I honestly started off confused.  Text at the beginning referenced the original franchise, and they played the key cords to the original theme, and then seemed to forget that those events ever took place.  The jokes showcased in the trailer on the raunchy side, bordering on inappropriate because I guess that’s funny.  Then came Leslie Jones’ character.  This was the moment that I think made a lot of fans just cut ties from the move all together.  She was loud, she came across as “hood” and the trailer made her look incredibly stupid.  The portrayal of the character in the trailer made her look like every negative black stereotype imaginable.

Leslie Jones took the back lash personally and even commented “Why can’t a regular person be a Ghostbuster?”

Well, a regular person CAN be a Ghostbuster.  A regular person WAS a Ghostbuster.  Winston Zeddemore played by Ernie Hudson was a guy who came in off the street and applied for the job.  He even had the purest of motives, a steady paycheck.  He grew into one of the most respectable, grounded, and conventionally wise characters of the 1980’s.  He was a role model, he was someone kids, no matter your race, but especially if you were black, could look up to and say “I could be like him.”

The way the first trailer portrayed Jones’ character was the exact opposite of Zeddemore which for many fans spelled disaster.  This was just another slapped together studio film.  And the ghosts on screen didn’t help the image.

Ghostbuster’s ghosts have a very specific look.  They are semi solid but translucent with a very faint glow about them.  These ghosts were bright, loud, neon colors with significant glows that hurt your eyes.  On top of that they invoke a very bad memory as many of them look like they escaped a screening of Eddie Murphy’s “Haunted Mansion”.  Anything that triggers a latent memory of that movie is going to garner a negative reaction.

Studios Need to Reevaluate

So remember I keep specifying “the first trailer” and “give the impression”.  That’s because that’s just the way the first trailer was cut.  When the second trailer came out there was a very different tone.  There were more dialogs about what was actually going on, smarter jokes and the balance was shifted.  Leslie Jones actually had more screen time in the second trailer and it made her character look a lot better.  There was more wit about her.  Where the first trailer made her look like a screaming fool, the second one made her more down to earth, more aware of the situation and more reasonable in her responses.  Basically they turned her from a screening of “Soul Plane” into an actual person, someone you could have a conversation with.

Toned down also were the gross out jokes.  Frankly I didn’t need to know where Kristin Wiig need to scrub slime out of on her body, and thankfully the second trailer did not retread that material.  Yes, the ghost vomits slime on her but that’s it.

Kate McKinnon comes across as a character that speaks when it’s actually needed but gives great reactions to events going on around her, even when it’s just two characters accidentally talking over each other.

Melissa McCarthy is a great comedic actress, but a lot of times it feels like she’s just playing herself.   Regardless it’s very clear she’s having a blast.

In short the whole tone of the films was elevated from one trailer to the next.

The Fallout

But was this tonal shift enough to get fans interested again in the film?  Well, for some it was.  For some it just drew some harder criticisms.

Having a gender swapped cast did not sit well with feminist, which some people found ironic until you realize that feminism isn’t about putting girls first but rather evening the playing field between the genders.  Feminists wanted a mixed team, men and women working together on equal playing fields.  Having Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the hired on eye candy very much hurt the message feminists were trying to get out there.

Ultimately the damage is done because the film, for better or for worse is in the can and slated for release with no time to adjust or reshoot or recast to meet the criticisms.  But ultimately that is fine.  Sony is standing by their product and that’s what they need to do right now.  They need to say “like it or not, here it is.”  The big question is whether or not the film will earn enough to justify a sequel.  As we saw with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” a sequel can be an opportunity to fix flaws in the first of the series.  If they decided to make the cast more inclusive they can either expand the number of Ghostbusters or rotate in new characters and out old characters.

When I came to understand that the film was, in fact, a reboot, I felt that was shortsighted on the part of the studio.  I personally think it would have been great to have the “Ghostbusters” as a business lying dormant for two decades, and have these women discover something serious going on and need to revive the spectral fighting service.  They could go to the remaining 3 Ghostbusters, past their prime to be any help or shell-shocked from their last adventure and they sign over the rights and equipment to the new crew and then the new crew build and improve on that technology.  It would be 5 minutes out of a movie that could have satisfied the fans of yesterday and given the movie a stronger foot hold.

But that didn’t happen.  So what you could do in a sequel is expand the cast by at least 2, include two guys to aid the team  and make them just as important, not more important, just as important to the group.

Also wash out the colors of the ghosts because that’s really painful to look at.  The designs are alright, but they are hard to look at.

Casey at the Bat: A Ninja Turtles Retrospective

I do a lot of talking about Marvel and DC, but given the hit new movie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows” I thought I’d branch out and talk about a character that has ties to neither of the major comic book studios.

His voice from the 1987 cartoon is forever embedded in my brain, and that remains the quintessential version of the character, a version that none has been able to live up to…Casey Jones.

He was without a doubt growing up my favorite character.  I am a child of the 80’s and, like all kids, I loved the ninja turtles cartoon.  As I’ve stated before, I grew up in an area where I did not get a lot of comic books, so I had no idea who the lean mean green team were until they were brought to my television set.  So here I was enjoying the adventures of four mutant reptiles with ninja skills, but let’s face it, there’s only so far you can play as the ninja turtles until you run into an imagination wall…you will never actually get to be a ninja turtle.  Then came Casey Jones and he was awesome.  Not only was he human, like me and most of my classmates at the time, he was incredibly easy to play as.  You may or may not have been able to make shift ninja weapons as a kid, but almost everyone I knew had a baseball bat.  I managed to even get my hands on a hockey stick.  Long story.  So while everyone was Raphael or Michelangelo, there I was, sports equipment in hand, paper plate cut into a mask on my face, ready to lend aid to the team.  It was also great since he wasn’t always with the turtles, I could go off and have my own adventures.

So here we go, a brief retrospective of the character of Casey Jones.

Originating from the comics, he was portrayed as basically a lunatic who almost never took off his signature hockey mask, and this was directly translated into the cartoon.  He was more than a little militant about his vigilantism, especially in the cartoon, as he would come down hard on jay walkers and muggers alike, putting him not only a an ally but also at odds with the turtles who felt some restraint somewhere was a good thing.

 A man with exactly 0 chill and 0 eff's to give!

Coming to life on screen, he was voiced by Pat Fraley, a veteran voice actor who took a “Clint Eastwood” touch to his voice.  Like I said, this voice was embedded in my head as THE voice for the character.

When the turtles translated to the big screen in 1990, Casey Jones played by Elias Koteas came right along with him and, frankly he did a great job in the role.  I like that Elias could play literally anyone, he has that every-man look that would let him blend into the crowd.  This time the character had more of a “Taxi Driver” feel to him, and one of the best things about the character is that he had, like in the comics and cartoon, no real backstory to him. 

Albeit he looks bored half the time.

The comics portrayed him as a guy who became a vigilante because he watched too much tv.  That’s it.  All the film did was add that he at one point played professional hockey.  As we will see later…sometimes less is more.

The 1990 film did, however add one thing to the character as he soon became the love interest of April O’Neil.  This concept has been referred to by some as the “Forced Romantic Interest” or FRI.  Reasonably speaking, there’s no reason these characters should ever hook up, but because every action movie needed a love story  tacked on, these two characters were paired off.  Granted if April had hooked up with anyone else in the story it would have been weird and wrong…and disgusting.

But that set a new tone for the character and the romantic sub-plot carried over to the third live action film of the 1990’s franchise where Koteas once again took on the role in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Turtles in Time.”

Oh god, that movie was bad. 

Let’s move on.

The next time we see Casey in the franchise proper is in 2003 when the turtles get a “4Kids” makeover on Fox.  Their look and storylines were updated, with darker plot lines and more character development, and Casey was given a backstory.

Uhh...

His backstory is terribly generic in that he and his family had been wronged by a street gang called the Purple Dragons, led by a guy named Hun, and that tragedy led him to a life of vigilantism.  Once again he’s the FRI for April O’Neil.  As much as I like that they included him, and Marc Thompson did a great job of portraying him, I felt like he was just over used.  He was placed as a member of the main cast and almost muted down to make him more appealing to April (and thus young girls) and less awesome than the turtles.  I can understand why they did that, but I felt it short changed the character and restricted Thompson’s flexibility with the character.

Casey surfaces again in 2007 on the big screen in the animated adventure “TMNT”.  The movie was alright, but not great.  It was beautifully rendered, but the tone was a little harder to place.  Casey is practically neutered in this film with him being portrayed as the average boyfriend to April rather than a guy who could hold his own against ninja’s.  He gets a few action sequences here and there, but the character is played as kind of dull.  It didn’t help that for the feature they wanted to hire name-brand actors rather than voice over experts, so he’s played blandly by Chris Evans.

Chris is an amazing actor…on screen.  Voice over-not so much.

That leads us to the 2012 Nickelodeon TV series, portrayed by Josh Peck where his character is damaged almost beyond repair.  He’s now a teenager with aspirations of being a gimmick superhero.  Gone, just completely gone is the edge that made the character stand out in the early days.  He’s played as a self-important jerk who, through reasons that completely baffle me, still has a romantic relationship with April O’Neil.

I don’t like this character at all.

There was one glimmer of hope in all the scaling down of Jones.  That came on YouTube in 2011 when an independent movie was released detailing an origin story for Casey, one that better meshed the "tragic past" with the "kind of crazy" background of the character.  Here Hilarion Banks plays the titular character and the whole thing is amazingly done.  My one issue, my only issue, is that Hilarion is relatively small in build so he doesn't carry an imposing presence.  That can work to the characters advantage as those he comes across underestimate him.

He remembered that his mask is suppose to be ON his face!



But if you didn't like slender Hilarion Banks, web series Super Power Beat Down grants your wish by casting John Hennigan in the role as he battles street superhero Kick-Ass.  Being a professional wrestler, Hennigan had the moves to bring Jones to life, but don't expect to much from him by way of acting.

Crazy-Check, Sweaty-Check, alright...ACTION

 

So, that brings us back into the theatre where Casey Jones is now portrayed by Stephen Amell in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows”.  Again, he’s not edgy, he’s not damaged, he’s a corrections officer who lost prisoners during a break-out staged during prisoner transport.  He allies himself with April and the turtles to see justice done.  Stephen doesn’t do a bad job in the role, but he’s not playing Casey Jones to me.  He’s playing Steven Amell in a hockey mask.

You have failed this cit...wait, where am I again?

 

 

Honestly none of the actors have done a bad job, they’ve just been playing the characters they were given, and like so many franchises as it evolves and changes hands, so will the characters.  So many traits of the characters past have made it down through the years it’s a shame that Casey lost so much of what made him memorable in the first place.

Hopefully through it all, you found a Casey Jones that appeals to you.

Thanks for reading.

 

The Sword of Superman: A Retrospective from someone who was THERE!

Oh the Pre-Crisis era.  For those of you who don’t know, the Pre-Crisis era refers to any event that happened before “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, the first and arguably best revamping of the DC comic book universe.  It was an unprecedented event whose sole purpose was to cut the wheat from the chaff, as it were, and clean up the history of the shared universe that had characters doing all matter of crazy things, sometimes in two places at once.  Basically, continuity was Swiss cheese at the time and nearly impossible to follow.

During the pre-crisis era, Superman had a wealth of wonky powers, some of which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  One element however sticks out in my mind from way back in the ancient days of 1984.

Growing up in Portland, Texas, a sleepy little town on the Gulf Coast, just north of Corpus Christi, comics were not in great supply.  I was five, and if I wanted comics, I had to hitch a ride with my parents whenever they happened to go to Feudos, a neat little market in one of the quiet shopping centers in town.  Feudos had them all…at least to a five year old’s perspective.  Spider-Man and Superman are the ones that stick out in my head.  One specific comic stands out in my memory of this time, and if you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad.  It became part of the chaff that was Crisis on Infinite Earths.  It is, of course, the Sword of Superman, ala “Superman Annual 10”.

Now during the pre-crisis era, you would get several explanations for one single event, and the most famously confused event ever was “Why the ‘S’ shield logo?”

Well NOW we all know that it was the family crest for the House of El on Krypton, but back then it apparently had a more significant meaning.

According to the issue, during the Big Bang some primordial matter and energy came together and formed itself into something like an English broadsword.  Because reasons. 

 

This sword, bearing the “S” shield just existed in history since the dawn of time and when Ma Kent was making Superboy’s first costume, the sword reached out to him telepathically to place the “S” emblem on his suit, apparently because the sword knew he would be important one day.

Later Superman would come into contact with the sword and it would turn him, basically into a god.  I mean more so than he already was.  He became an all knowing, all seeing protector of good, truth, and righteousness.  Think the Infinity Gauntlet, but for good guys.

But there was a price that came with all this power.  The populace he was sworn to protect feared him.  Granted he’s wielding a sword, something that’s generally identified with cutting and stabbing, not something you want to associate with the defender of life.  That’d be like giving Superman a gun…

Yep, that happened too, but that's for a different blog.

So Superman rejected the sword in a sequence of panels that was so weird it may have permanently scarred my young psyche.  Not enough to make me stop reading the comic. I read it till it fell apart, not unlike what happens to the sword!

                       

 

Spoiler alert, don’t let a pre-teen handle comics without educating him on how to properly care for them in the even they are worth money one day.

So Superman rejected the sword’s power, and it seemed pretty cool with it.  It wasn’t mad at all as it left back into the cosmos and, a year later, was seemingly wiped from history.

But why?  With all the stuff that has trickled through the veil of time over the years, why has Superman’s Sword remained off limits?  Well, at the time it was written out of existence we had Superman and Supergirl, and a slew of super-pets.  That limited who could wield the sword to exactly two people.  Its not like the Infinity Gauntlet or the Cosmic Cube, who could potentially be wielded by anyone.  Its tied directly to two characters and pretty much halts the story all together.  If writers thought it was hard to write around Superman’s powers before, giving him the potential to have infinite power makes it very difficult.

Then there was the growing cast of Team Superman, involving Steel, Superboy, Supergirl, the return of Krypto, and so forth.  Now you could bring in the Sword and let it have some options on which to present that power to, but then how do you get rid of it to let the characters have normal stories again?  It’s been around literally since the dawn of time.  It’s not getting destroyed.  You could put it in the Fortress under lock and key, but then, how can you have cataclysmic events when you could just pull out the sword and fix everything?  How do you justify the Death of Superman if the Sword could have taken care of Doomsday in short order?

I think, personally, from both a nostalgic point of view and from a story telling point of view, you could justify bringing the sword back into continuity.  Tweak it’s origin just a bit, where it became the symbol of Hope on Krypton and later was adopted as the crest for the House of El, and leave it “out there” waiting for Superman to prove himself again.

Just a thought.

Thanks for reading

 

 

Draco Malfoy and the Plot Convenience

So they were showing a bunch of Harry Potter movies over the course of the Memorial Day weekend and I watched a few with my oldest because, frankly it’d been a while since I had seen the films.

In “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” we see early in the film Draco being a general dick and tearing a page out of a book.  That scene right there sparked a huge fan theory that Draco slipped the page to Hermione because he secretly had a crush on her and…well it spools off from there.  But I have a slight variation of that theory.

The torn page Hermione ends up with in the film is the one Draco tore out, but he didn’t give it to her.

Draco’s early characterization, wonderfully performed by Tom Felton, shows him being a selfish dick most of the time.  Okay, all the time, but prior to going to school this year his father engineered a plot to restore Voldemort by way of using Tom Riddle’s diary.  So we know, obviously, that the diary was in Lucius’ possession and probably accessible to a disrespectful punk like Draco.  Draco, one way or another gleam from the diary that the Chamber of Secrets houses a basilisk, and his dad is going to unleash the beast in the school, but doesn’t learn any more than that.  In going back-to-school shopping, he comes across a book about various monsters, including a page on basilisks.  Why buy the book when you only need one page?  He knows that thing is going to be stalking students and he likes being alive so he wants to know everything he can.  He’s selfish, not stupid.

So he goes into school with torn page in pocket.

Now Draco doesn’t know a lot.  He has no idea who the heir to Slytherin is, nor does he care, he just knows what he needs to know.

While Ron and Harry are off having their spider adventure, Hermione goes looking for answers from the restricted section and comes back petrified but with a torn page from a book clutched in her hand.  The book on the other hand, is nowhere to be found, and this would normally be way out of character for Hermione as she would feel physical pain if she destroyed or defaced a book.  So where did the page come from?

I think Draco either discarded it feeling he had enough info to survive, or she saw him with it and swiped it when he was distracted, which given that she had botched her own portion of the polyjuice potion and couldn’t help Ron and Harry with the interrogation, it seems likely she would have taken more direct measures to find out what he knew.

That’s one theory.

The other theory is Draco is just being a little prick and the page Hermione had was just notes she was taking while in the restricted section.