The Shocker: Legit by Max Landis
Feb. 19th, 2012 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficOkay, before I start this review, I'd like to share an anecdote from my own writing, because it goes into my own philosophy of writing and I want you the reader to figure if my issues with Legit stem from legitimate criticism or "that's not how I would've written it." Not that the second one's illegitimate criticism, I guess, but it's a little bullshit if you didn't write it. If a rom-com comes out and I say "That's not how I would've written it," of course not, I don't write rom-coms. But I guess it'd be valid if Joss Whedon called out the Star Wars prequels on those grounds, since Serenity was a much better space opera than any of them.
So as long-time readers of this blog will know, I have this big Scott Free AU planned for if DC ever happens to be passing out series. It's set in a universe where God likes minorities and women more than the Silver Age, so instead of being "We're in Gotham, let's say hi to Batman and ogle Catwoman!" it's "We're in Gotham, let's say hi to Cassandra Cain Batgirl and ogle both Catwoman and Nightwing."
And of course, you've got the will-they-or-won't-they between Barda and Scott. So I thought in one issue, it'd be fun for them to be in a love triangle and have Barda fighting with another woman over Scott. But, y'know, that's a little sexist. It's not the worst thing ever, like Scott Lobdell, but in a comic specifically oriented to include all genders, it'd be inappropriate.
So this other thought I had was of making Scott and Barda childhood friends on Apokolips, to justify their relationship, but nah… that'd be just too "epic" for a romance that's fun because it's so weird and unexpected. I guess I just have a thing about the "epicness" of "oh, you played with a toy sword when you were a kid, YOU'RE THE MESSIAH!" Like none of the intervening years between then and adulthood defined you at all, you were right on course since before puberty. This is still relevant, I swear.
So make Knockout, everyone's other favorite Female Fury, Scott's childhood friend so they grow up to be platonic BFFs. Then Barda makes the mistake of assuming they're involved, because she's seeing Scott through her own can't-admit-it prism of "Scott is the most sexually desirable to me, thus Scott is the most sexually desirable to everyone because I'M NOT IN LOVE WITH HIM FEMALE FURY APOKOLIPS GREAT DARKSEID, thus Knockout is screwing Scott. That hussy!" And you get the comedic aspect of Barda and Knockout "fighting" over Scott without the offensive aspects of it.
I'm picturing an ending where Knockout kisses Barda, thinking this was all some crazy Apokolips flirting, and Barda is all "0_0… wait, you're gay? YES! …no, I don't want to go out with you. But it's awesome that you're… out of the… space closet." Yeah, I might've turned this all into an episode of Hey Arnold, so what? That show is awesome.
So as these five long-ass paragraphs have indicated, one of the things I'm cautious about in my writing is avoiding… touch-the-dick writing. You know, how when Geoff Johns writes Hal Jordan, you can clearly tell he wants to touch Hal's dick? "Oh, Hal Jordan is the best Green Lantern ever, all the ladies love him and he loves all the ladies, he can punch out Batman and have threesomes with previously strong female characters whose individual characterizations don't matter as much as painting my favorite character as a stud OH! OH! GREEN LANTERN! Uhh, I need a tissue."
Now, this is a particular problem in superhero comics, because of the Bildungsuperman subgenre. "What is that?" you may ask, since you already know where the Back button is if you're not interested. Well, if Bildungsroman is the literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (thanks Wikipedia!), Bildungsuperman is the same applied to the superhero power fantasy.
Now, I'm sure we all have a favorite character and stories we might want to see that character in. Everyone wants their fave to punch out Galactus instead of getting shot off-panel by the Punisher during Civil Invasion Time Fall of Sieging. If your favorite character is Superman, this'll be pretty believable. If your favorite character is Lady Blackhawk, not so much.
Bildungsuperman is the story that takes Lady Blackhawk from flying the Birds of Prey around to her "proper place" in the author's eyes of being a mover and shaker in her universe. When it's done right, this can be a very involving story, since it involves definite character growth and "leveling up". I mean, wouldn't you be kinda interested if I said "oh, I wrote this epic story that ends with Lady Blackhawk punching out Galactus"?
The problem being that if this transition feels unearned, it comes off as "the Owl could beat up Wolverine!" fan-wanking. And since you're writing about your favorite character and you have some blind spot there about how powerful he really is, you might end up writing "and then Lady Blackhawk wins by authorial fiat because she's the coolest!" instead of "and then Lady Blackhawk wins by hard work and determination, which is why I see her as the coolest."
Case in point: Brian Michael Bendis' writing of Luke Cage. Geoff Johns' writing of Hal Jordan. Just about everyone's writing of Batman ("Hey, Bruce, wanna stop beating up purse snatchers for a minute to help us stop this invasion of extra-galactic soul suckers? Your beating-up-purse-snatcher expertise would really come in handy there!")
Another problem that can crop up is jobbing. Think of it this way. If the President of the US, the Prime Minister of Britain, and the Secretary General of the UN all got together to discuss a world crisis, you wouldn't be surprised. If the mayor of a city in Brazil showed up, you might be wondering why he's there. The movers and shakers in the DC and Marvel universes tend to be well-established, veteran heroes. Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man have been around for many years, both in Marvel-time and in the real world, so it makes sense that they'd have the most wisdom and experience. Suggesting that a hero who showed up in the 90s has the same quality is hard to pull off.
(In fact, the opposite of this is the case for Spider-Man, who at this point you'd think would be a battle-scarred badass, but he keeps getting written as the annoying rookie of the superhero world in an effort to keep his "everyman" status. Screw Marvel and all that)
So it's easy to, instead of saying "this guy has pulled himself up to the level of Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man," to lower the two to our hero's level or lower. In fact, that's part of the genre by definition. If the accepted wisdom has Stephanie Brown as a class-C fighter and Lady Shiva as the best fighter in the world, then you show Steph holding her own in a sparring match with Shiva, you're effectively jobbing Shiva. When done well, it's at least mostly invisible. When it's done poorly….
Well, we'll get into that.
As you may have guessed, this is also related to Mary Sueness, which only makes sense. Superhero comics are power fantasies, so by writing a power fantasy, you're sorta writing a Sue by proxy. In fact, the difference between good Bildungsuperman and bad could come down to how Sueish the protagonist is.
Okay, we've gone a thousand words into this critique, just identifying the tropes we're dealing with, but I believe it's important. Since just about all of the Big Two comics at this point are just officially-sanctioned fanfic, it's important that we discuss these tropes and how their misuse can negatively impact a work, even one that's objectively well-written. Which brings us, at long last, to The Shocker: Legit, by JohnLandisson Max Landis.
Is anyone else ever surprised that John Landis has an adult son? I mean, who knew John Landis would so good at keeping children alive?
Anyway, you probably know Landis from writing Chronicle—this he did before he was famous—well, he's a writer, so less-not-famous. Hmm. I wonder what fanfics of mine people would go over if I got published?
She kissed Claire, her lips wandering over the other woman's face and throat. And Rain buried her face between Alice's shoulder blades, making her way downward, feeling Alice through the dress and enjoying the artistic swirls of dirt that her hands left. When she reached the hem, she pushed the dress up Alice's body and kissed her way back.
Kissing Alice's hip, she smelled the arousal welling in Alice's sex. She ran a short fingernail from Alice's clit to her asshole, watching a tremble shake Alice harder and harder. Then she bit down on the goose-pimpled skin of Alice's ass, slowly, but tighter, tighter, until her teeth were bruising the creamy flesh. It just made Alice moan louder into Claire's hair as the redhead sucked at her ear.
Rain let go, giving Alice a half-minute of peace before blowing on the indentation she'd left, licking at it, electrifying the engorged nerves she'd left. With the arm behind Claire's back, Alice beat the soil, the sound like a racing heartbeat as the three lost themselves in each other.
Note to self: Delete everything the moment you get an acceptance letter.
Alright, so Legit is sort of half-character piece and half epic. Herman Schultz, aka the Shocker, a perennial low-class Spider-Man villain, has the half-hearted notion to go legit after a string of unsuccessful robberies/run-ins with Spider-Man. It's when he stumbles across a supervillain rampage and intervenes that he both winds up pitted against a big-time criminal conspiracy and earning New York's respect as an actual superhero in fits and starts.
The story is told from the first-person, with a kind of Jim Butcher snark as Herman gripes about his lot in life, rants about the costumed superhuman scene, and gradually builds up some self-esteem. There are some impressive action scenes and Herman's a well-spoken narrator who's interesting to hear from, if not always pleasant. He's best friends with Rhino, who here is quasi-autistic in his intelligence; Herman's affection for Rhino is sometimes played for heart-warmth.
There's a definite alternate-continuity cast to the story, like it's a Marvel Knights or MAX title, if that makes any sense. Although it takes place around The Other story arc, it sticks to an old-school characterization of Spidey's classic rogue's gallery as crooks and thugs rather than cold-blooded killers and the occasional rapist. And yet fights involve grisly bodily damage, Herman pops some colorful language, and the Black Cat has a bit less of an objection to casual nudity than her canon characterization has. There's also a serious "retcon" that's revealed, reminding me of a plot device in a big Spider-Man comic from a few years back—I'm not sure if they're meant to be related or if it's just a coincidence. Either way, fanfic is a better venue to explore that kind of retcon than "EARTH-SHAKING REVELATION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MARVEL UNIVERSE—let's forget all about it and go back to fighting the Red Skull."
All in all, it's well-told enough that I'll try to avoid spoilers in case you want to read the thing yourself, which I'd recommend. But from hereon out, I will be discussing some of the later plot elements, which might ruin some of the mystery. So first off, here's a link to the story as hosted on a charmingly-Geocities-era website: Story!
Of my problems with the story itself, there's the minor thing that the plot kinda lost me as it went on and grew more epic. It started with a relatively small, but intriguing criminal operation and by the end, that had turned out to be a teeny portion of a vast conspiracy, like the scope of the story had gone from Shane Black to J.J. Abrams. I'm sure that works for many, since this is a case where a villain can say "You're just found the tip of the iceberg!" and mean it. Maybe this is just reflecting my distaste for some plot elements in the second half of the fic, but the more epic it got, the more it lost me.
In particular, the "you know this is going to be important later" mention that Herman's father was a general (!!!) in the U.S. Army and not just a fucked-up criminal as you might've inferred, had my eyes doing 360s. Like I said way up at the top of the post, that kind of "epic" quality, where people turn out to have personal, lifelong stakes in the apparently random evil plots they're fighting just bug me. It's one of the reasons I'm not looking forward to the Spider-Man reboot, where Peter being the right guy in the right place at the right time (and later, loses his uncle because of similar random circumstance) turns into his parents being IMPORTANT and him having a DESTINY and fuck, we're really making Gwen Stacy the love interest? Ugh.
I'll digress, in case Andrew Garfield is reading this. I hear that guy's a fan. Went to ComicCon.
Also, towards the end, those fight scenes I praised earlier start showing up like clockwork, with a C-list villain attacking Herman every other chapter. It just gets a bit wearying. And yes, I know how odd it seems to complain about super-fights in a superhero story, but they soon fall into a pattern of "C-list villain, Herman receives a new debilitating injury, regains the upper hand, FATALITY!" I get that it's a prose story and you can't show how hard people are getting hit, you have to underline it with how their ribs are breaking and whatnot, but it got to the point where it reminded me of a particularly cutting parody of Frank Miller's style. "I jump off the curb onto the sidewalk. Four of my ribs break and jab into my brain. Oww." At some point, it just got ridiculous that Herman was still peeing without a bag.
But I guess you could take it as a compliment that I wanted the story to get on with the mystery so much that I wasn't interested in thrilling heroics. It's like a porn movie making you go "C'mon, orgasm already, I want to know how Asia Carrera saves her business!"
(With sex, in case you were wondering.)
What I have an actual problem with, and not just a personal preference against, is how the story handles Black Cat. She shows up, gets involved with the investigation, you're thinking—"Alright, not so bad. We've got a strong female character, the story's using her to illustrate Herman's love life (or lack thereof), at least she's not getting raped by an author avatar like in most fanboy fics." Then she falls for Herman, and it really comes off more as a "Hero's Reward" than as a satisfying romantic subplot. I'm pretty sure that if you tried to retell the story from her point of view, it'd make no sense.
Here's a woman who's pretty much the sexiest person in New York, could have any man (or woman, she's not picky) she wants, is smart, funny, brave, fun, all the qualities any discerning non-asexual would look for in a lady. And she falls in love with an average-looking career criminal, one who's getting a new disfigurement every eight hours because of the aforementioned fight scenes, just because he's been acting like a decent human being for a whole week.
If I were in a bad mood, I'd pick on the scene where Black Cat asks to be held by Herman after Spider-Man "dies," but I think I'm already out of line with that dead kids crack. It's like a writing exercise from Writing Female Characters 101. "I'm so shaken by the day's events, Raylan Givens. Hold me." "I'm so shaken by the day's events, Han Solo. Hold me." "I'm so shaken by the day's events, Riddick. Hold me."
You see how any female character ever could be written that way? Couldn't she, I don't know, drag him along to rob a museum with her because she doesn't want to think about Peter's death? That would at least be a little more in line with the character and how she canonically processes grief.
I just kept getting the impression that the reason Felicia was in this story wasn't because she fit or was a good match for Herman's character, but because she was the hottest comic book character Max Landis could think of for that setting and he wanted Herman to do her.
But okay. It's not a romance, it's an adventure story, and it wouldn't be the first adventure with a lame romance subplot. I was willing to chalk it up to the Minus column and leave. Then, in the second half of the fic, Herman's in a bad place mentally because of finding out something which has him angry at Felicia, who at this point is in a relationship with him. So he handles the matter like a mature adult—calling her a whore, attacking her, and then going to try and kill her best friend. They next meet after Herman is imprisoned, with Felicia going "I'm so mad at you for calling me a whore and attacking me and trying to kill my best friend. But… I love you." Then he breaks out of prison while she plays cheerleader and the entire episode is never brought up again.
Now, here's the thing that separates good Bildungsuperman from bad. I can accept Herman fielding calls from the Living Tribunal, Uatu the Watcher, and the In-Betweener. I can accept him being a scientific genius who makes Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man wanna turn gay for him. I can accept him being best friends with the Punisher*. I can accept him having a never-mentioned supervillain hide-out that's better protected than Fort Knox. I can accept him turning out to be a supervillain George Bailey that manages to rally Spidey's rogues in the eleventh hour (those last two despite him supposedly starting the fic as a born loser. There's low self-esteem and then there's going "My life sucks!" while you're driving around a Lamborghini). I can accept him beating up the two dozen assassins that come for him. I can accept him scoring the hottest woman in the Marvel universe. I can accept him becoming the People's Champion (since the general public of the Marvel Universe is demonstrably insane). And it's a testament to the story that, until I put it all together like that, it doesn't sound so unbelievable.
What I can't accept, what makes this a Marty Stu story, is that he can fuck things up to that extent and suffer no more consequences than a time-out. This should be what sinks the character's tragedy, even if he does back down at the last moment. There should be "I never want to see you again" problems to his relationship with Felicia. People should spit on him in the streets. Superheroes should be bitch-slapping him from here to Tacoma. But the author isn't interested in writing that story, so the entire character arc aspect of the story gets shafted so Herman can continue to be a BAMF. It's eating dessert without eating your veggies first, and I don't care how unpleasant it is to write, Herman should suffer the consequences of his actions. That's the difference between a power fantasy and a Mary Sue story. That's the difference between a character piece and just wanking to how tortured and emo a character is without sticking him with anything to really be sad about.
And it wouldn't be that bad if this were the breakdown, the point where Herman shapes up and flies right, and if the intriguing Peter/Herman relationship the fic presents (no, not like that) came back instead of being shunted aside for the epic epic of epicly epic epicness. But instead, the mischaracterization of Felicia becomes a microcosm of my issues with the fic.
I guess it's just depressing to me that a story which is continuity porn like this, featuring a Trivial Pursuits answer like the Gibbon in a starring role, the author can't be bothered to get his one major female character right. Because it's a trend that extends from fanfic way into mainstream comics, where writers will be ecstatic to bring back a character that showed up for two issues in the Silver Age, but won't give two shits for a minority or a female character.
And yes, DC, you are racist for giving the Human Flame more panel-time in the last five years than Cassandra Cain. Own it.
So in the final verdict, the story is engaging but very flawed, and it at least provides discussion fodder for how tropes can affect quality writing. Would I have preferred a story with more positive tropes, but worse "sentence-by-sentence" writing? Maybe. Most studio films these days are slick and well-produced, but aren't the movies we fall in love with amateurish and silly, just with stories that get to us? Army of Darkness isn't going to win any special effect Oscars in a race with Transformers, but I think we'd all prefer our everyman more Bruce Campbell than Shia LeBeouf.
*The Punisher, in the Ennis books, was willing to kill his best friend for being a criminal, and even a fellow vigilante for killing an innocent person with a stray shot. Earlier in the story, Herman accidentally kills several people while riding a prototype of the Goblin Glider to an emergency. So I'm pretty sure, going by Ennis's characterization (and why wouldn't we?), that the Punisher would end up scraping Herman off his shoe, not clapping him on the back and going "Hey, don't try to kill anyone else or hit your girlfriend anymore, yeah?" Yes, I'm stuck on that whole "unstable psychopath" thing.
ETA: Oh, did I forget the explanation Felicia gives Herman for why she's not mad at him for calling her a whore and attacking her and trying to kill her best friend? “That sad puppy shit. I can see it in your eyes, ‘oh, wa wa wa, Felicia’s mad at me.’ You can stop it now; I’m not mad.” Okay, that one genuinely caught me off guard. “I’m used to violence from men I’m involved with; hell, I don’t know how many times Peter’s punched me out.”
So as long-time readers of this blog will know, I have this big Scott Free AU planned for if DC ever happens to be passing out series. It's set in a universe where God likes minorities and women more than the Silver Age, so instead of being "We're in Gotham, let's say hi to Batman and ogle Catwoman!" it's "We're in Gotham, let's say hi to Cassandra Cain Batgirl and ogle both Catwoman and Nightwing."
And of course, you've got the will-they-or-won't-they between Barda and Scott. So I thought in one issue, it'd be fun for them to be in a love triangle and have Barda fighting with another woman over Scott. But, y'know, that's a little sexist. It's not the worst thing ever, like Scott Lobdell, but in a comic specifically oriented to include all genders, it'd be inappropriate.
So this other thought I had was of making Scott and Barda childhood friends on Apokolips, to justify their relationship, but nah… that'd be just too "epic" for a romance that's fun because it's so weird and unexpected. I guess I just have a thing about the "epicness" of "oh, you played with a toy sword when you were a kid, YOU'RE THE MESSIAH!" Like none of the intervening years between then and adulthood defined you at all, you were right on course since before puberty. This is still relevant, I swear.
So make Knockout, everyone's other favorite Female Fury, Scott's childhood friend so they grow up to be platonic BFFs. Then Barda makes the mistake of assuming they're involved, because she's seeing Scott through her own can't-admit-it prism of "Scott is the most sexually desirable to me, thus Scott is the most sexually desirable to everyone because I'M NOT IN LOVE WITH HIM FEMALE FURY APOKOLIPS GREAT DARKSEID, thus Knockout is screwing Scott. That hussy!" And you get the comedic aspect of Barda and Knockout "fighting" over Scott without the offensive aspects of it.
I'm picturing an ending where Knockout kisses Barda, thinking this was all some crazy Apokolips flirting, and Barda is all "0_0… wait, you're gay? YES! …no, I don't want to go out with you. But it's awesome that you're… out of the… space closet." Yeah, I might've turned this all into an episode of Hey Arnold, so what? That show is awesome.
So as these five long-ass paragraphs have indicated, one of the things I'm cautious about in my writing is avoiding… touch-the-dick writing. You know, how when Geoff Johns writes Hal Jordan, you can clearly tell he wants to touch Hal's dick? "Oh, Hal Jordan is the best Green Lantern ever, all the ladies love him and he loves all the ladies, he can punch out Batman and have threesomes with previously strong female characters whose individual characterizations don't matter as much as painting my favorite character as a stud OH! OH! GREEN LANTERN! Uhh, I need a tissue."
Now, this is a particular problem in superhero comics, because of the Bildungsuperman subgenre. "What is that?" you may ask, since you already know where the Back button is if you're not interested. Well, if Bildungsroman is the literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (thanks Wikipedia!), Bildungsuperman is the same applied to the superhero power fantasy.
Now, I'm sure we all have a favorite character and stories we might want to see that character in. Everyone wants their fave to punch out Galactus instead of getting shot off-panel by the Punisher during Civil Invasion Time Fall of Sieging. If your favorite character is Superman, this'll be pretty believable. If your favorite character is Lady Blackhawk, not so much.
Bildungsuperman is the story that takes Lady Blackhawk from flying the Birds of Prey around to her "proper place" in the author's eyes of being a mover and shaker in her universe. When it's done right, this can be a very involving story, since it involves definite character growth and "leveling up". I mean, wouldn't you be kinda interested if I said "oh, I wrote this epic story that ends with Lady Blackhawk punching out Galactus"?
The problem being that if this transition feels unearned, it comes off as "the Owl could beat up Wolverine!" fan-wanking. And since you're writing about your favorite character and you have some blind spot there about how powerful he really is, you might end up writing "and then Lady Blackhawk wins by authorial fiat because she's the coolest!" instead of "and then Lady Blackhawk wins by hard work and determination, which is why I see her as the coolest."
Case in point: Brian Michael Bendis' writing of Luke Cage. Geoff Johns' writing of Hal Jordan. Just about everyone's writing of Batman ("Hey, Bruce, wanna stop beating up purse snatchers for a minute to help us stop this invasion of extra-galactic soul suckers? Your beating-up-purse-snatcher expertise would really come in handy there!")
Another problem that can crop up is jobbing. Think of it this way. If the President of the US, the Prime Minister of Britain, and the Secretary General of the UN all got together to discuss a world crisis, you wouldn't be surprised. If the mayor of a city in Brazil showed up, you might be wondering why he's there. The movers and shakers in the DC and Marvel universes tend to be well-established, veteran heroes. Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man have been around for many years, both in Marvel-time and in the real world, so it makes sense that they'd have the most wisdom and experience. Suggesting that a hero who showed up in the 90s has the same quality is hard to pull off.
(In fact, the opposite of this is the case for Spider-Man, who at this point you'd think would be a battle-scarred badass, but he keeps getting written as the annoying rookie of the superhero world in an effort to keep his "everyman" status. Screw Marvel and all that)
So it's easy to, instead of saying "this guy has pulled himself up to the level of Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man," to lower the two to our hero's level or lower. In fact, that's part of the genre by definition. If the accepted wisdom has Stephanie Brown as a class-C fighter and Lady Shiva as the best fighter in the world, then you show Steph holding her own in a sparring match with Shiva, you're effectively jobbing Shiva. When done well, it's at least mostly invisible. When it's done poorly….
Well, we'll get into that.
As you may have guessed, this is also related to Mary Sueness, which only makes sense. Superhero comics are power fantasies, so by writing a power fantasy, you're sorta writing a Sue by proxy. In fact, the difference between good Bildungsuperman and bad could come down to how Sueish the protagonist is.
Okay, we've gone a thousand words into this critique, just identifying the tropes we're dealing with, but I believe it's important. Since just about all of the Big Two comics at this point are just officially-sanctioned fanfic, it's important that we discuss these tropes and how their misuse can negatively impact a work, even one that's objectively well-written. Which brings us, at long last, to The Shocker: Legit, by JohnLandisson Max Landis.
Is anyone else ever surprised that John Landis has an adult son? I mean, who knew John Landis would so good at keeping children alive?
Anyway, you probably know Landis from writing Chronicle—this he did before he was famous—well, he's a writer, so less-not-famous. Hmm. I wonder what fanfics of mine people would go over if I got published?
She kissed Claire, her lips wandering over the other woman's face and throat. And Rain buried her face between Alice's shoulder blades, making her way downward, feeling Alice through the dress and enjoying the artistic swirls of dirt that her hands left. When she reached the hem, she pushed the dress up Alice's body and kissed her way back.
Kissing Alice's hip, she smelled the arousal welling in Alice's sex. She ran a short fingernail from Alice's clit to her asshole, watching a tremble shake Alice harder and harder. Then she bit down on the goose-pimpled skin of Alice's ass, slowly, but tighter, tighter, until her teeth were bruising the creamy flesh. It just made Alice moan louder into Claire's hair as the redhead sucked at her ear.
Rain let go, giving Alice a half-minute of peace before blowing on the indentation she'd left, licking at it, electrifying the engorged nerves she'd left. With the arm behind Claire's back, Alice beat the soil, the sound like a racing heartbeat as the three lost themselves in each other.
Note to self: Delete everything the moment you get an acceptance letter.
Alright, so Legit is sort of half-character piece and half epic. Herman Schultz, aka the Shocker, a perennial low-class Spider-Man villain, has the half-hearted notion to go legit after a string of unsuccessful robberies/run-ins with Spider-Man. It's when he stumbles across a supervillain rampage and intervenes that he both winds up pitted against a big-time criminal conspiracy and earning New York's respect as an actual superhero in fits and starts.
The story is told from the first-person, with a kind of Jim Butcher snark as Herman gripes about his lot in life, rants about the costumed superhuman scene, and gradually builds up some self-esteem. There are some impressive action scenes and Herman's a well-spoken narrator who's interesting to hear from, if not always pleasant. He's best friends with Rhino, who here is quasi-autistic in his intelligence; Herman's affection for Rhino is sometimes played for heart-warmth.
There's a definite alternate-continuity cast to the story, like it's a Marvel Knights or MAX title, if that makes any sense. Although it takes place around The Other story arc, it sticks to an old-school characterization of Spidey's classic rogue's gallery as crooks and thugs rather than cold-blooded killers and the occasional rapist. And yet fights involve grisly bodily damage, Herman pops some colorful language, and the Black Cat has a bit less of an objection to casual nudity than her canon characterization has. There's also a serious "retcon" that's revealed, reminding me of a plot device in a big Spider-Man comic from a few years back—I'm not sure if they're meant to be related or if it's just a coincidence. Either way, fanfic is a better venue to explore that kind of retcon than "EARTH-SHAKING REVELATION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MARVEL UNIVERSE—let's forget all about it and go back to fighting the Red Skull."
All in all, it's well-told enough that I'll try to avoid spoilers in case you want to read the thing yourself, which I'd recommend. But from hereon out, I will be discussing some of the later plot elements, which might ruin some of the mystery. So first off, here's a link to the story as hosted on a charmingly-Geocities-era website: Story!
Of my problems with the story itself, there's the minor thing that the plot kinda lost me as it went on and grew more epic. It started with a relatively small, but intriguing criminal operation and by the end, that had turned out to be a teeny portion of a vast conspiracy, like the scope of the story had gone from Shane Black to J.J. Abrams. I'm sure that works for many, since this is a case where a villain can say "You're just found the tip of the iceberg!" and mean it. Maybe this is just reflecting my distaste for some plot elements in the second half of the fic, but the more epic it got, the more it lost me.
In particular, the "you know this is going to be important later" mention that Herman's father was a general (!!!) in the U.S. Army and not just a fucked-up criminal as you might've inferred, had my eyes doing 360s. Like I said way up at the top of the post, that kind of "epic" quality, where people turn out to have personal, lifelong stakes in the apparently random evil plots they're fighting just bug me. It's one of the reasons I'm not looking forward to the Spider-Man reboot, where Peter being the right guy in the right place at the right time (and later, loses his uncle because of similar random circumstance) turns into his parents being IMPORTANT and him having a DESTINY and fuck, we're really making Gwen Stacy the love interest? Ugh.
I'll digress, in case Andrew Garfield is reading this. I hear that guy's a fan. Went to ComicCon.
Also, towards the end, those fight scenes I praised earlier start showing up like clockwork, with a C-list villain attacking Herman every other chapter. It just gets a bit wearying. And yes, I know how odd it seems to complain about super-fights in a superhero story, but they soon fall into a pattern of "C-list villain, Herman receives a new debilitating injury, regains the upper hand, FATALITY!" I get that it's a prose story and you can't show how hard people are getting hit, you have to underline it with how their ribs are breaking and whatnot, but it got to the point where it reminded me of a particularly cutting parody of Frank Miller's style. "I jump off the curb onto the sidewalk. Four of my ribs break and jab into my brain. Oww." At some point, it just got ridiculous that Herman was still peeing without a bag.
But I guess you could take it as a compliment that I wanted the story to get on with the mystery so much that I wasn't interested in thrilling heroics. It's like a porn movie making you go "C'mon, orgasm already, I want to know how Asia Carrera saves her business!"
(With sex, in case you were wondering.)
What I have an actual problem with, and not just a personal preference against, is how the story handles Black Cat. She shows up, gets involved with the investigation, you're thinking—"Alright, not so bad. We've got a strong female character, the story's using her to illustrate Herman's love life (or lack thereof), at least she's not getting raped by an author avatar like in most fanboy fics." Then she falls for Herman, and it really comes off more as a "Hero's Reward" than as a satisfying romantic subplot. I'm pretty sure that if you tried to retell the story from her point of view, it'd make no sense.
Here's a woman who's pretty much the sexiest person in New York, could have any man (or woman, she's not picky) she wants, is smart, funny, brave, fun, all the qualities any discerning non-asexual would look for in a lady. And she falls in love with an average-looking career criminal, one who's getting a new disfigurement every eight hours because of the aforementioned fight scenes, just because he's been acting like a decent human being for a whole week.
If I were in a bad mood, I'd pick on the scene where Black Cat asks to be held by Herman after Spider-Man "dies," but I think I'm already out of line with that dead kids crack. It's like a writing exercise from Writing Female Characters 101. "I'm so shaken by the day's events, Raylan Givens. Hold me." "I'm so shaken by the day's events, Han Solo. Hold me." "I'm so shaken by the day's events, Riddick. Hold me."
You see how any female character ever could be written that way? Couldn't she, I don't know, drag him along to rob a museum with her because she doesn't want to think about Peter's death? That would at least be a little more in line with the character and how she canonically processes grief.
I just kept getting the impression that the reason Felicia was in this story wasn't because she fit or was a good match for Herman's character, but because she was the hottest comic book character Max Landis could think of for that setting and he wanted Herman to do her.
But okay. It's not a romance, it's an adventure story, and it wouldn't be the first adventure with a lame romance subplot. I was willing to chalk it up to the Minus column and leave. Then, in the second half of the fic, Herman's in a bad place mentally because of finding out something which has him angry at Felicia, who at this point is in a relationship with him. So he handles the matter like a mature adult—calling her a whore, attacking her, and then going to try and kill her best friend. They next meet after Herman is imprisoned, with Felicia going "I'm so mad at you for calling me a whore and attacking me and trying to kill my best friend. But… I love you." Then he breaks out of prison while she plays cheerleader and the entire episode is never brought up again.
Now, here's the thing that separates good Bildungsuperman from bad. I can accept Herman fielding calls from the Living Tribunal, Uatu the Watcher, and the In-Betweener. I can accept him being a scientific genius who makes Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man wanna turn gay for him. I can accept him being best friends with the Punisher*. I can accept him having a never-mentioned supervillain hide-out that's better protected than Fort Knox. I can accept him turning out to be a supervillain George Bailey that manages to rally Spidey's rogues in the eleventh hour (those last two despite him supposedly starting the fic as a born loser. There's low self-esteem and then there's going "My life sucks!" while you're driving around a Lamborghini). I can accept him beating up the two dozen assassins that come for him. I can accept him scoring the hottest woman in the Marvel universe. I can accept him becoming the People's Champion (since the general public of the Marvel Universe is demonstrably insane). And it's a testament to the story that, until I put it all together like that, it doesn't sound so unbelievable.
What I can't accept, what makes this a Marty Stu story, is that he can fuck things up to that extent and suffer no more consequences than a time-out. This should be what sinks the character's tragedy, even if he does back down at the last moment. There should be "I never want to see you again" problems to his relationship with Felicia. People should spit on him in the streets. Superheroes should be bitch-slapping him from here to Tacoma. But the author isn't interested in writing that story, so the entire character arc aspect of the story gets shafted so Herman can continue to be a BAMF. It's eating dessert without eating your veggies first, and I don't care how unpleasant it is to write, Herman should suffer the consequences of his actions. That's the difference between a power fantasy and a Mary Sue story. That's the difference between a character piece and just wanking to how tortured and emo a character is without sticking him with anything to really be sad about.
And it wouldn't be that bad if this were the breakdown, the point where Herman shapes up and flies right, and if the intriguing Peter/Herman relationship the fic presents (no, not like that) came back instead of being shunted aside for the epic epic of epicly epic epicness. But instead, the mischaracterization of Felicia becomes a microcosm of my issues with the fic.
I guess it's just depressing to me that a story which is continuity porn like this, featuring a Trivial Pursuits answer like the Gibbon in a starring role, the author can't be bothered to get his one major female character right. Because it's a trend that extends from fanfic way into mainstream comics, where writers will be ecstatic to bring back a character that showed up for two issues in the Silver Age, but won't give two shits for a minority or a female character.
And yes, DC, you are racist for giving the Human Flame more panel-time in the last five years than Cassandra Cain. Own it.
So in the final verdict, the story is engaging but very flawed, and it at least provides discussion fodder for how tropes can affect quality writing. Would I have preferred a story with more positive tropes, but worse "sentence-by-sentence" writing? Maybe. Most studio films these days are slick and well-produced, but aren't the movies we fall in love with amateurish and silly, just with stories that get to us? Army of Darkness isn't going to win any special effect Oscars in a race with Transformers, but I think we'd all prefer our everyman more Bruce Campbell than Shia LeBeouf.
*The Punisher, in the Ennis books, was willing to kill his best friend for being a criminal, and even a fellow vigilante for killing an innocent person with a stray shot. Earlier in the story, Herman accidentally kills several people while riding a prototype of the Goblin Glider to an emergency. So I'm pretty sure, going by Ennis's characterization (and why wouldn't we?), that the Punisher would end up scraping Herman off his shoe, not clapping him on the back and going "Hey, don't try to kill anyone else or hit your girlfriend anymore, yeah?" Yes, I'm stuck on that whole "unstable psychopath" thing.
ETA: Oh, did I forget the explanation Felicia gives Herman for why she's not mad at him for calling her a whore and attacking her and trying to kill her best friend? “That sad puppy shit. I can see it in your eyes, ‘oh, wa wa wa, Felicia’s mad at me.’ You can stop it now; I’m not mad.” Okay, that one genuinely caught me off guard. “I’m used to violence from men I’m involved with; hell, I don’t know how many times Peter’s punched me out.”
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Date: 2012-02-20 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-02-20 07:10 pm (UTC)"Why do people keep forgetting that I'm really, really smart?"
-Spidey, Marvel Adventures
>I wonder what fanfics of mine people would go over if I got published?
There is a very good reason I plan to use a pseudonym when my Award-winning, NYT best-selling novel series gets published.
>Note to self: Delete everything the moment you get an acceptance letter.
Note: Download all of Srsfic's fic for blackmail material.
>the Black Cat
For some reason, I kept thinking of your version of her from that fic a while back.
>Amazing Spider-Man
In Ultimate, his dad was a researcher, and part of the reason he could bond with Ultimate Venom was because it was coded to his Dad's DNA. And in 616, his parents were CIA agents, personally recruited by Nick Fury, who never mentioned it to Peter.
Comic books!
Also, the movie seems to be giving Gwen an actual personality.
>At some point, it just got ridiculous that Herman was still peeing without a bag.
Comic books!
Seriously, he took a ridiculous amount of damage. You can hang all the lampshades you want, but it won't disguise the fact that Herman should be shut down, especially since much tougher guys, like Rhino, end up hospitalized over much less damage. I was literally waiting for someone to hit him with a Purple Ray or something. For all his "Let's get dangeous", there's basically only two times where Herman actually starts a fight.
At least Fallout Equestria mixed it up by cutting to the middle of fights and having our heroes use stealth and trickery.
>[Black Cat]
Canonically, she has feeling for a nerdy teenager. Who spends his free time as a superhero--okay, bad example.
As for the not being angry at him; I just chalked it up to her being nearly as messed up as he is. (I mean, what kind of healthy superhero goes around in skintight clothes that leave them half-naked? Okay, bad comparison.) This is a fic where the most stable person is the Rhino, and that's mostly because he's too dumb to get upset. I'm not sure it is supposed to be healthy for either of them.
As opposed to a romantic comedies, where a woman could beat up a guy, then go after his ex (obligatory catfight), and then somehow it's the guy's fault and he should apologize for not telling her about the ex.
Whereas here, Felicia and Peter are both perfectly correct to not tell him Peter is Spider Man because he'd probably flip out. And then he finds out, and guess what happens?
Speaking of which, I would've preferred it if he'd at least tried to talk to Peter, gotten nowhere (character development), left, and then started the sneak attack. Or just have a chat which escalates. So we can see how his emotions are affect his judgement better than his "They're all laughing at you" ham-handed narration in the previous scene.
>So I'm pretty sure, going by Ennis's characterization (and why wouldn't we?)
Because Herman probably isn't the first hero to accidentally get people killed. The only reason he lets him live in this fic, at first, is because he knows Herman is beating the bushes. Same result in the end if he gets killed.
You didn't mention the Watcher and Friends showing up to tell Herman how special he is, but he does that sort of thing all the time, for all his avowed non-interference.