1.  We usually respond to comments within a day.  If you think that we’ve forgotten about your comment, you can post another comment as a reminder, but please do not remind us more than once per day.

2.  No drama, please.  Also, please criticize ideas rather than people.  Something like “your dialogue was weak” is far more helpful and civil than “you suck.”

3.  We will delete useless comments, like “first!”  No one cares that you posted the first comment.   Congratulations?

What can we do for you?

Our main goal is to provide a venue for comments that are civil, intelligent and useful.

If you’d like to compile your comments into an easily readable document, please let us know.  We can do that very easily.

r. Berkeley: Something’s wrong with the sunscreen vat. I was wondering if you could explain a few things to me.

Jacob Mallow: Could I discuss this in the lab with you after-hours?

Berkeley: Sure…

That evening…

Berkeley: I’ve been doing some tests on the toxicity of the sunscreen…

Jacob: Those weren’t in your operational area.

Berkeley: The sunscreen would burn clean through flesh!

Jacob: I don’t think you understand how seriously we take our security procedures here, Dr. Berkeley. I see no alternative to summary termination.

Berkeley: You’re firing me?

Jacob pulls out a tranquilizer gun and shoots Berkeley twice, then pushing Berkeley into the vat.

Jacob: Something like that.

END

Agent Orange: Can you hotwire that car?

Lash: No, jackass. I’m a Harvard MBA. And there is no way you would ask a white…

Agent Orange: Just because you attended Harvard doesn’t necessarily mean you’re devoid of useful knowledge. Excuse me for giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Jacob Mallow: I’ve finally perfected the concoction. It will–

Paingod: No.

Jacob Mallow: What?

Paingod: I don’t want to know what it does, how it does it, or your vast and no doubt eminently disruptable deployment strategy. Telling me can only guarantee that your plan does not come to fruition.

Jacob: What? How would that matter?

Paingod: …

Paingod: You’re new here, aren’t you?

A Marine typist vs. the Chicago Manual of Style:

MARINE:  About two spaces after a period.  As a U.S. Marine, i know that what’s right is right and you are wrong.  I declare it once and for all aesthetically more appealing to have two spaces after a period.

CHICAGO MANUAL:  As a U.S. Marine, you’re probably an expert at something, but I’m afraid it’s not this. [sic]Status quo. [sic]

I think XHTML turns properly formatted periods (with two spaces after) into single-spaced periods.  That looks HIDEOUS, which is especially problematic for writers that upload large blocks of text, like novel chapters and lengthy reviews.  Whenever I edit a Word Press post, I have to go back and make sure that I’ve replaced the double-spaces so that it’s readable.

I think it’s pretty funny that we don’t put any spaces after periods in abbreviations.  Something like “he’s a U.  S.  M.  C.  drill instructor” would be painful.

European defense consultant: “You don’t think our marketing campaign will work?”

Captain Carnage: “You sure as Houston heat can’t be American. I reckon you got a shot at truth in advertising.”

Consultant: “What would you recommend?”

Captain Carnage: “If y’all can’t make something of France naming its toughest fighter a Mirage, y’all’re not tryin’ hard enough.”

Hello. In addition to my normal articles on writing, I now have Writing Case Studies.  Each entry will review a book and then describe what writers should take away from what worked and what didn’t from the book.

This makes it a bit easier to describe problems/successes in characterization and plotting that might otherwise be abstract.

So far I have:

• Soon I Will Be Invincible
• Empire of Ivory

I’d really appreciate if you’d like to suggest any novels, particularly ones with superheroes or high fantasy generally.  I focus on those kinds of novels because they often have the same challenges and audience expectations as Superhero Nation.

• Creating a world more or less by scratch
• Making a fantastic world serious enough that people won’t hear your premise and groan
• Combining action and non-action components into a workable whole.

Proving that, when you have 10,000 Marines in one place and nothing to kill, strange things happen.

I fiddled with Photoshop for an hour before picking a filter that made the flag look like a set of hard pencil strokes. Click on the picture and you can see the whole thing.

Some background knowledge that might help you understand his quotes:

• Captain America’s SHIELD agency had flying cars until late in the 20th century, when the comic book writers apparently thought that helicarriers were cooler and more exotic. The Avengers have always had a lavish NYC mansion, complete with a butler.
• Squids and devil dogs are slang terms for servicemen in the Navy and Marine Corps, respectively.
• According to Ronald Reagan, the scariest nine words in English are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
• 18 USC II § 3592 is the portion of US law that sets out some parameters for when the death penalty can be applied.

Gigas: The government admits it maintains a set of “breeder reactors,” reactors that make Chernobyl look like a Swiss clock. The government purposely exposes countless people to radiation to breed supersoldiers.”

Grim Trigger: I don’t think that’s what we meant by “breeder reactor.”

SIWBI is a first novel about a cyborg and her superhero team trying to stop a supervillain from taking over the world. Although it has redeeming qualities and the author is clearly very talented, I would recommend it only for writers.

Other reviews have been mixed. Here are some Amazon excerpts.

• “This book reads more like a first draft than a published work.”
• “This excellent novel reminds me more than anything of The Unforgiven in its deconstruction and reconstruction of its genre.”
• “Most dismayingly, the two narrators sound remarkably similar, except that Fatale’s utterly flat sections lack the occasional moments of inspiration that sparingly pepper Dr. Impossible’s narrative.”
• “Absolutely delightful.”
• “The heroes don’t even take part in the fight that beats Impossible, yet the book wants you to feel like they’ve proved themselves at the end.”

SIWBI is not awful. It was, however, poorly executed and suffers from many flaws common to first novels.

Characterization

Within the first thirty pages we were introduced to nineteen named characters and three super-groups. Most of the characters parrot a popular comic book character but without any kind of new angle, sort of like fan-fiction but with new names. These characters are so thinly-developed that you can only differentiate them by remembering who’s a ripoff of Superman and who’s Batman. For example, let me run down the eight (!) main characters.

1) Fatale. She’s the main protagonist and one of the two narrators. She’s a female cyborg and former NSA assassin, very much like Black Widow. That wouldn’t have been a problem, if the author had provided any personal spin or commentary or improvement on BW. Without those, the best she could have been was BW fan-fiction. She didn’t even get that far. Instead, she does remarkably little throughout the story. Instead of affecting the plot and making things happen, she does a lot of watching and ruminating, but neither her perspective nor her voice are interesting.

2) Dr. Impossible. He’s the villain and the other narrator. He comes closer to parodying Dr. Doom, which is a plus. Early on, his voice was engaging. Nonetheless, he still wasn’t nearly developed enough to drive a story.

3) Blackwolf, one of Fatale’s teammates. He’s a millionaire (or billionaire?*) martial-artist without any superpowers. He’s a clumsy homage to Batman, but a Batman with a curious penchant for waiting around as things happen. Even Batman fan-fiction wouldn’t inflict that on us. Shouldn’t he be, umm… Solving crimes? Running down leads? Figuring out Lily’s secret identity? Epic fight scenes? Emotionally scarring Robin?
*Pages 20 and 61 disagree.

4) Corefire (Superman/Reed Richards). Corefire is dead at the book’s start and still affects the plot more than any of the other heroes. His death makes more things happen than most of the characters do while alive. No, really.

5) Damsel (Wonderwoman). I can’t remember her doing anything but throwing up. I don’t know why they have this character.

6) Feral is Beast, minus the intelligence. He sounds like every other character, bizarrely like a high school student. (“This is all geek stuff”). If anyone needed a distinct voice, I’d say it’d be the mutant lab experiment.

7-9) Mr. Mystic (any magical hero), Elphin (a female Sir Justin), and Rainbow Triumph (Dazzler).

Fatale’s group has eight characters, hardly any of whom do anything. You might wonder what does happen. We learn a lot about another supergroup that has literally no bearing on Dr. Impossible’s villainous plot. Dr. Impossible gets beat up by another supervillain, who just lets him go and then never shows up again.

Inexplicably, we learn the origin story of one of the other supergroup’s heroes. Incidentally, it’s an enjoyable and funny play on the Chronicles of Narnia. But the only reason the author could have possibly wanted to spend a chapter on that character is to set up a sequel. I think it was a significant misuse of space. There were eight main protagonists. Surely one of them deserved that space more than a character whose only purpose was to set up a sequel. One excellent way to set up a sequel—perhaps the best way—is to develop characters that are interesting enough that we want to see more. DC/Marvel fan-fiction? Not so much.

Lack of Originality and Flavor

SIWBI looked so promising. The title and cover are outlandishly fun. The first few chapters felt fresh. But the last 80% of the book is painfully bland.

The plot went like this.

1. The villain starts his evil plot.
2. The heroes try to stop him but fail.
3. The villain raises the stakes.
4. The heroes stop the villain in the final climax.

Isn’t there supposed to be something more? For example, the Incredibles and Spiderman had interesting themes about specialness and responsibility. The Matrix and X-Men 2 had great action. SIWBI had boring action scenes (even for a novel) and, if there were any notable themes, I missed them completely.

Perhaps most notably, the villain’s grand plan is just absolutely lame. At one point, Impossible teases us by musing about his past attempts to seize world power with armies of mushrooms and termites and stuff. Termite armies would have been epic compared to this.

It wasn’t just the villain’s plot and the action. Pretty much everything about this story’s world was forgettable. Generic. Me-too. If I could use an example, I think there are 4 ways for a superhero story to show (or not show) how its superheroes interact with the government.

Model 1: The government’s missing. The hero ties up criminals and presumably the cops come along later, but we never see them. Or maybe the story mentions that the government has deputized the heroes, which is a generic way to make the characters feel more sympathetic than vigilantes without getting bogged down in politics.

Model 2: The government is a mild antagonist, like the cops that get in Spiderman’s way. This gives the heroes an obstacle to overcome.

Model 3: The government is a villain, like in X-Men. This gives stories a more ideological edge, but can be interesting because it takes more finesse to handle a hostile government than a hostile villain. (You can’t just randomly stab cops, unless you’re Wolverine).

Model 4: Very rarely, the government is a protagonist. The Hood uses two minor FBI agents and The Taxman Must Die rocks out with an IRS agent transferred to a super-crime unit.

SIWBI goes for option 1, mentioning that the government’s okay with the heroes doing their thing. That’s fine, if generic. Maybe no one else cares about the government!  But it feels like every aspect of SIWBI is the equivalent of option 1 writing, an easy and conventional way to build a comic book world. You can’t develop every aspect of your world, but no aspect of this world is notable.

Narration and Voice
Each chapter was narrated by either Fatale or Dr. Impossible. They monologue a lot. Sometimes SIWBI’s monologues parody comic books, but usually they felt like weak storytelling. More importantly, Fatale is a poor choice for a narrator.

1. Her back-story is cliché. She’s an injury victim-turned-cyborg, concerned about remaining human despite having mechanical parts. Boohoohoo.
2. She’s new and doesn’t know what’s going on. That wouldn’t be a problem if introducing her to the world immersed us at the same time. It worked much better for Harry Potter and Frodo.
3. She has no unique impact on the plot. Except for her inexperience, she brings literally nothing to the plot that other characters couldn’t replace.
4. Even though she’s a cyborg superheroine, her voice was frequently hard to distinguish from a male megalomaniac supervillain. These characters should not have sounded at all alike.

There were a few chapters where I read through a page or two and found that I had actually mistaken the identity of the narrator. In one case, it took five pages.

Your readers should know quickly and without any doubt who is narrating each chapter. My rule of thumb would be that it shouldn’t take more than two paragraphs.

For example, here are a few ways to help readers keep the narrators apart.

1. Write the narrator’s name right below the chapter title. This is 100% effective, though unsubtle.
2. Use demographic cues. If the narrator mentions how her arm reminds her of a 1950s radiator, we can guess she’s a cyborg rather than a supervillain. If his tail swishes, we know he’s not human. Readers might miss these cues, but they draw the reader into the story more.
3. Give them distinct voices! Making your characters sound different is definitely doable. It’s difficult, but it gets past the symptoms of voice confusion and addresses the problem, that your characterization and voice need work.

SIWBI attempted to identify the narrator by putting a graphic about the size of a gumball at each chapter’s start, a laser pistol for Impossible and an eye for Fatale. These graphics were too small to notice and I’m not sure why I would associate a laser pistol with a supervillain instead of a cyborg, or an eye with a cyborg instead of a villain.

All of the characters tended to sound alike. Here’s a multiple choice test: Who delivers these quotes from Soon I Will Be Invincible? Your choices are A) a mutant cat created in a lab accident, B) a genius millionaire gymnast-turned-businessman, and C) a whiny teen idol. (This should be easy, right?)

• “Maybe you should be at work, then. Spend some time on the streets.”
• “He always looks fine. I know you two kept in touch.”
• “Darkness? Crime, you mean.”
• “This is all geek stuff.”
• “You honestly think there’s something behind this.”
• “We haven’t seen a serious threat for almost a year. I’m almost bored.”

The first four are A and the last two are B. If you’re wondering why a mutated cat would use phrases like “geek stuff,” you’re not the only one. Notice that none of these lines actually came from the whiny teen idol, but pretty much all of them could have come from her.

Bloated Cast

I would recommend bringing in only as many characters as necessary. Each extra character is a liability.

1. Each new character makes it harder for readers to keep track of the other characters.
2. You have less time and space to develop each character.
3. Adding characters leads quickly to superficial and underdeveloped relationships.
4. Bloated casts ruin fight scenes. A book’s fight scenes are hard enough to visualize with two fighters, let alone SIWBI’s 7. (If you want to write epic fight scenes with many extras, could I suggest screenwriting?)

To paraphrase, redundant characters are reader kryptonite and should be removed. But how do we identify those characters? Generally, any character whose function/role in the plot can be performed by other characters can be axed.

SIWBI hit readers with eight characters whose only purpose was to represent a superhero archetype. For example, Mystic is the magical superhero and Feral is the mutated animal superhero. That’s not enough reason to add characters! Even if these characters were used well for parody/commentary– and they certainly were not– extra characters dilute every other character. If you absolutely needed characters like Feral or Elphin or Mr. Mystic to parody their respective archetypes, then it would make more sense to mention them as bit characters once or twice, rather than as Fatale’s teammates. That would have saved space for the few characters that did affect the plot.

I think SIWBI would have been much smoother and more coherent with only 3-4 characters on the superhero team.

1. Fatale (or your favorite narrator; I prefer Lily).
2. Someone to represent life before Fatale showed up (probably Damsel)
3. Someone that can develop the narrator, usually by playing the foil or providing comic relief.

That leaves us with a core of three protagonists: the main character, status quo, and the foil. That’s elegant and flexible. You can go Harry-Hermione-Ron or Laurence-British society-Temeraire, for example. Three is easy, but a “core” of eight protagonists is completely unworkable. Depending on how you define “character” (such as minimum number of lines), I don’t know if His Majesty’s Dragon even has eight characters.

“Pass me down the shark repellent, Robin!”

Which classes are best for you?

For applicants who want to BS future interviewers: Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, Computational Biophysics and Systems Biology

For applicants that don’t care what their interviewers will think: Hong Kong Action Cinema, Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, Introduction to Excel

For applicants to counterterrorist think tanks that wouldn’t object to cutting out a clause to, uhh, “save space” on their resumes: Cultures of Fear: Analyzing Horror Films

For students that are either unusually uncreative or terrible at geography: The West of Ireland: An Imagined Space

For prospective OSI Human Resources agents: Human Resources in High Performing Organizations, Business Intelligence, or Mammology.

For students not too concerned about job-applicable learning: Directed Readings in Physical Education

For students that probably need to study less and get out more: Sociology of Sexual Behavior

For students that hopefully won’t design any structure that I ever set foot in: Archaeology of Gender

For either open-minded non-Catholics or (more likely) students that need to attend mass more regularly: What Catholics Believe

For students that are unoptimistic about management-employee relations: Slavery, Captivity, and the Company Store in American History

For morbidly depressed students: Nuclear Warfare or Abnormal Psychology.

For students that want to be morbidly depressed: Reading “Ulysses”

For prospective entertainers: Game Theory. (Wait…)

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

I’m now reading through the course catalog for the third time, trying to find classes that will fit into gaps in my schedule.

I was sitting there, disappointed by our security offerings, when I caught a glimpse of Homeland Security: Surveillance, Terror… and I got excited.

Then I look through its catalog entry.

ENGLISH 40728 – Homeland Security: Surveillance, Terror and Citizenship in America

Close readings of various 20th-century African-American literatures, with foci on how “black subjectivity” is created; the relationship between literature, history, and cultural mythology; the dialectic of freedom and slavery in American rhetoric; the American obsession with race; and the sexual ideology and competing representations of domesticity.

I’ll admit that when I think of Homeland Security surveillance and American citizenship, sexual ideology/domesticity, black subjectivity and the dialectic of slavery are not the first things that come to mind. I find it hilarious that it mentions the “American obsession with race” when the professor has turned a class about homeland security into a discussion of slavery and black subjectivity.

I recommend, as a more honestly marketed alternative, the African Studies Department’s Slavery, Captivity and the Company Store in American History. I still have no idea what the Company Store allusion means, but that’s why you should take the course, obviously. J

Doctor Savant: “Do you know what the difference between you and I is?”

Lash: “I make this look good?”

Doctor Savant: “A Ph. D and 200 I.Q. points.”

This Youtube video has nothing to do with superheroes but is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.  It’s hard to describe, but it has something to do with a man’s growing obsession with The Delicious, which is a bizarre and ritualistic dance associated with a bright pantsuit.  The first minute or two are kind of slow but I promise it’s worth it.

[This is part 3 of the Catastrophe strand]

Journalist:  Do you feel discriminated against?

Catastrophe: Someone called me an egghead once…

Journalist:  Has anyone ever made untoward cartoonophobic comments, glared at you, suggested a government internment camp or secret holding/dissection facility, or shifted uncomfortably when you moved near?

Catastrophe:  Hmm, yes.

Journalist:  Really!  The internment camp, I hope.

Catastrophe:  I notice that children…

Journalist:  Yes, children, excellent… they haven’t learned to hide their prejudices yet…

Catastrophe: …have an unseemly tendency to approach me…

Journalist:  Out with it, man.  Out with it!

Catastrophe:  And ask if I’ll get around to killing the son of a bitch in the sequel.
Journalist:  …

Journalist:  …

Journalist:  What about stereotypes?  Do you find that people tend to stereotype you as a cartoon-American?
Catastrophe:  What, umm, stereotypes did you have in mind?

Journalist:  You know… stereotypes… of cartoons.

Catastrophe:  [???]

Journalist:  Christ, man, don’t make that face again.

Catastrophe:  What?

Journalist:  That face!

Catastrophe:  [???]

Journalist:  GAH!  It looks like you’re ready to cleave my skull open with the power of your mind and suck my brains out.

Catastrophe:  If I gave you a look as puzzled as you deserved, I think it would melt your face off.

Agent Black: The quintessential yes-or-no question of our times is not “do you want to win the war on terror?”  There are actually two: “do you feel safe in New York City?” and “Should you?”

[this is part 2 of the Catastrophe quote thread].

Journalist:  What about your superpowers?

Catastrophe:  What superpowers?

Journalist:  What do you mean, ‘what superpowers?’  How could you be turned into a cartoon character and not get superpowers?  Even effing frogs– not cartoon frogs, mind you– turn into super ninjas.  You wouldn’t happen to have developed something earth-shatteringly interesting, would you?  Strong proclivities towards violence, particularly with melee weapons?

Catastrophe:  Well, I don’t suppose I could rule out a superhuman intell…

Journalist:  Fine, fine.  I’ll just say you don’t know yet.

Agent Orange: “If journalism is really the first draft of history, we need some keen editors.”

Journalist:  Mr. Berkeley…

Catastrophe:  Doctor.  Bar-keley.  Doctor Barkeley.

Journalist: Well, if you have just a momen–

Catastrophe: Doctor Barkeley.

Journalist:  Doctor Barkeley, if you have a moment–

Catastrophe:  We’ve met before, haven’t we?

Journalist:  Yes.  Believe me when I say it was an unforgettable experience… one that won’t soon be forgotten, anyway.

Catastrophe:  Ah.  Was it the lecture on the relational degree of freedom in quantum mechanics?  I’ve also done work in noncommutative dynamics and I’ve been branching out into mathematics…

Journalist:  As fascinating as those undoubtedly are, I can’t remember what the topic of your lecture was.  But I’m pretty sure that you were a non-purple human at the time.  I think that I probably would remember if that had not been the case.

Catastrophe:  …and my thesis on combinatorial mathematics– I suppose the more accepted term is ‘combinatorics’– is coming along quite nicely.  Peer view has been favorable.  Do you need help spelling ‘combinatorics?’

Journalist:  Unless it has something to do with you taking on a startling resemblance to a cartoon character, no.

Catastrophe:  Well, there was, uhh… an unfortunate incident with a wizard.  He cursed me.

Journalist:  I can’t print that!

Catastrophe: Fine. Fine! I had been contracted to help produce a sunscreen that would permanently make skin more resistant to solar radiation. Or so I had thought! I discovered, to my chagrin, that the “sunscreen” was actually a weapons-grade mutagen.

Journalist:  How did you determine that?

Catastrophe:  An esteemed colleague threw me in it.

Journalist: …

Journalist: …

Journalist: …

Journalist:  What’s the name of this wizard, again?

Two questions.

1. Do you live outside of Austin or San Antonio?
2. Do you hate puppies?

If you answered no to both questions, look into the TSA’s puppy adoption program.

(Sorry, Oklahoma… this is just another reason Texas is cooler).

Everybody knows that ladies go nuts for puppies and Texan ladies swoon especially for servicepuppies.  Fortunately, you can get the ladies and save the day, thanks to the servicepuppy adoption program.

You don’t hate servicepuppies, do you?

CPT America will be featured in a Veteran’s Day comic sold at military base stores.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service asked Marvel’s VP for business development to include Captain America and he “agreed because no other character better symbolizes the heroism and patriotism of the American soldier,” the VP said.

That’s funny, kind of. I’d be kind of insulted… well, really insulted if someone said I were as patriotic as Captain Anti-America. Sadly, The Hood (a Marvel anti-hero that trafficks in drugs and blood diamonds and accidentally kills a cop) makes a far stronger case for being patriotic.  He gets extra points for a hilarious reference to Guiliani Time.  

In Marvel’s comics for servicemen, there’s a big two-page spread that puts America in a romantic pose in front of the American flag that wouldn’t have been ridiculous, say, decades ago, when Captain America actually supported the American military.

Posing CPT America in front of an American flag is horribly two-faced.

1. Well, he’s a traitor and/or rebel.  He couldn’t bring himself to be as enthusiastic about fighting terrorists and registering superheroes as the government and people expected, which is fair.  Retiring would have been entirely acceptable. Instead he took it upon himself to militarily prevent the government from doing so, which is quite solidly treasonous.
2. Even before he rebelled in Civil War, his plotlines almost always featured the US government as a nefarious and sinister actor.  The details are blurry to me, but for example he beat the crap out of a sadistic and villainous Navy captain.
3. He’s never been very enthusiastic about either fighting terrorists or, frankly, America.  National Review argues that CPT America’s New Deal comics show that he is a terrorist sympathizer.  I wouldn’t go that far, but his recurring criticisms of the Dresden firebombing are pretty unrealistically severe for a WWII veteran.  Real soldiers–particularly ones that fought the Nazis, I’d imagine– aren’t that squeamish.  My impression is that servicemen overwhelmingly believe that the WWII bombing raids were justified on the basis of shortening the war and reducing casualties on both sides.  It seems a lot like Marvel’s writers have a certain set of views and they use CPT America as a mouthpiece to voice them, no matter how wildly implausible it would be for a WWII-era soldier to have them.  It would probably be more appropriate, I think, to have a younger America replacement make the revisionist case that the Dresden bombing is wrong;  I think that having the original America justify the bombing is probably truer to the source material, at least Captain America circa 1945. 
4. There is a major disconnect between the civic values of America’s servicemen and Captain America. America doesn’t seem to mind very much attacking Americans whenever he thinks it’s his duty to do so, which is unsettlingly often.  

Perhaps I should rest assured that “AMERICA SUPPORTS YOU”!  The comics are selling well, I guess, so maybe I’m looking at this too cynically.  I wonder who would admit to buying a comic book on a military base ;-).  I’ll have to ask around at Parris Island this summer.   

On the other hand, Spiderman is pretty kickass.  I’d be OK with his support any time.  Even Wolverine and the Fantastic Four seem to know how it is. 

Office of Special Investigation’s Retroactive Continuity branch mission statement: “Fixing history, one day at a time.”

A supervillain is easily identifiable because power is sexy.  That’s why we always get the best women (no one really wants to date a mild-mannered reporter or an inept freelance-photographer).  But superheroes are also easy to identify if you know what to look for: the bumbling factor.  The more bumbling someone is, the more superpowers he’s waiting to unleash. For example, the last time my henchmen attempted to break into a presidential convention, they got absolutely shellacked by Tucker Carlson. If you have ever wondered whether someone that looks that bumbling could only get on TV because he was really a superhero, you’re not alone.

There’s really no way to know how many of my plots have been spoiled by Carlson and Alan Colmes, but I’d feel pretty confident saying that they’re the main barrier between me and global domination.

I’d give you two guesses whether it’s Hannity or Colmes that’s the bane of supercriminals everywhere. Remember, people that look bumbling are dangerous. And anyone that looks as bumbling as Colmes can strangle your best assassins with his mind.  Interestingly, Sean Hannity is also a superhero, but any supervillain that fears a conservative diversity hero should reconsider his line of work.

Unsurprisingly, the talk radio guy doesn’t know how important it is to keep his appearance secret.

The Refrigerator of DOOM

Doctor Savant: “Before we open my refrigerator, you better take this.”

Lash: “What the hell, a flame thrower?”

Doctor Savant: “Just in case.”

Lash: “Just in case of what?”

Doctor Savant: “Exactly.”

Captain Carnage: “I reckon I’d be plum crazy if I didn’t say Texas is the doggoned smartest place in South America.”

Captain Carnage: “We have a Department of Defense. We need a Department of Offense.”

Hello. Today, I started running a Quote of the Day. I’ve already got the next two weeks covered.

Subscribe to my feed to get regular updates from my website.

This article will review Empire of Ivory (the fourth book of the Temeraire series) and focus on what beginning novelists should take away from it to improve their own skill.

Continue Reading »