Another Filler Bit Thingy
Jun. 15th, 2005 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frustratedpilotDIRTY LAUNDRY 5
"Write Them Funky Comics, White Boy!"
One of the depressing things about becoming a fan of Japanese cartoons and comics after childhood is the discovery that ideas that you thought were your own are suddenly revealed to you as already being achieved by others. Case in point: Bubble Gum Crisis. A superhero who is also a pop musician? Nobody's ever done that before! Or so I thought.
We go back to a day in Florida, sometime in the middle 1980s. I have a keychain, and I notice a little pattern in the plastic fob link that the steel ring has worn into it...it is like a FACE...sort of like the digital faces on the cover of the Police album Ghost in the Machine. I doodle that face on a sheet of paper and file it.
Little by little that face becomes the face of a suit of high-tech armor initially called Tekanaut, but would soon drop that in favor of Halcyon. Little by little, his origin and adventures emerge.
Halcyon was constructed by the prodigious inventor/musician Jackson Taylor, in response to seeing one of his friends getting mortally wounded in a drive-by at a club where his band played. (The band was called Astro-turph, and was made up of a diverse circle of friends from high school or college.) Like Iron Man before him, Halcyon would be a technological marvel, tough enough to shrug off all but the heaviest weapons and powerful enough to rip open a battleship if it needed to. It was powered by a small aneutronic powerplant (yes, Omni was a favorite magazine at the time) and had an electronics suite that could match that of any jet fighter. It could fly, it could operate in the deep ocean waters, it could operate in the vacuum of space. And it had space inside for a guitar case.
One of the subplots of the story would be the band beginning to see success...and Jackson having to balance his thirst for revenge (against the gangs and drug cartels responsible for his friends death) with the need to make it to the next gig without blowing his cover. I even had the idea that at one point his cover WOULD be blown--and blown in such a way that he'd have to retire from both heroism and rock-n-roll. But even so, I decided that Jackson would close the show in a blaze of glory, challenging his ultimate foe (a cartel enforcer named "Iron Felix"--who by this time would have a powersuit of his own!) to a public reckoning.
By this time, Halcyon would also have a band of its own: a power trio in powersuits. Backing up Jackson would be his girlfriend Tricia (in Winged Victory), a reformed car thief buddy named Niven (in Hotwire, a transforming sports car) and a former gangland smurf out for revenge of his own called M.Dew (in Blue Ruin). Facing them would be Iron Felix's terrible "Metal Victory Army".
By the time I was shopping this to publishers, the main part of the story had been completed in my mind, with Jackson (now ten years older, his mission completed, and married to Tricia) in semi-retirement. I had read Miller's The Dark Knight Returns about then and it was somewhat influencial in that regard.
I became an otaku in earnest about 1990. It was about then I saw Bubble Gum Crisis for the first time...man, how can I do better than THIS?
I close with a semi-filk...a song from the soundtrack, as it were. A "song" in Jack McKinney's Robotech novels inspired this song.
Pushers in the hood putting dopeheads on the wire.
Bangers in the night setting half the town on fire.
A little poor kid takes five bullets in his chest...
A rich man loads and locks--and you know the rest!
Victory! Oh Yeah! Victory!
Any way you look at it the house is haunted.
It don't matter what way you want it.
I've got a weapon, I'll never pawn it...
I've got a bullet too--and your name is on it! [Yeah.]
Survivors in the morning get carted off to jail.
Losers never get the chance to hear the sirens wail.
Most everyone is armed 'cause now it's total war.
The Crosstown Freeway's running red with gore!
[That's why we say...]
Victory! Oh Yeah! Victory!
So you ambulatory urban blight
Stay out of my line of sight!
These streets are ours, by divine right!
Here we are--we come to fight, again!
If you're looking for protection,
You're in the wrong direction.
I just can't help you, hon.
Maybe it's my playing,
I can't hear what you're saying...
But I'd rather hear the sound of my own gun!
Victory!
[extended instrumental]
You might think you have an armor-plated skin...
But you don't realize how big your mess is in!
Don't believe the situation is just temporary.
The hottest-going real estate is in the cemetary!
Victory! Oh Yeah! Victory!
It don't matter what you do or say.
It don't matter where you are today.
All the sinners are due to pay...
So don't sort them out--they're dead anyway!
[closing instrumental]
FP
"Write Them Funky Comics, White Boy!"
One of the depressing things about becoming a fan of Japanese cartoons and comics after childhood is the discovery that ideas that you thought were your own are suddenly revealed to you as already being achieved by others. Case in point: Bubble Gum Crisis. A superhero who is also a pop musician? Nobody's ever done that before! Or so I thought.
We go back to a day in Florida, sometime in the middle 1980s. I have a keychain, and I notice a little pattern in the plastic fob link that the steel ring has worn into it...it is like a FACE...sort of like the digital faces on the cover of the Police album Ghost in the Machine. I doodle that face on a sheet of paper and file it.
Little by little that face becomes the face of a suit of high-tech armor initially called Tekanaut, but would soon drop that in favor of Halcyon. Little by little, his origin and adventures emerge.
Halcyon was constructed by the prodigious inventor/musician Jackson Taylor, in response to seeing one of his friends getting mortally wounded in a drive-by at a club where his band played. (The band was called Astro-turph, and was made up of a diverse circle of friends from high school or college.) Like Iron Man before him, Halcyon would be a technological marvel, tough enough to shrug off all but the heaviest weapons and powerful enough to rip open a battleship if it needed to. It was powered by a small aneutronic powerplant (yes, Omni was a favorite magazine at the time) and had an electronics suite that could match that of any jet fighter. It could fly, it could operate in the deep ocean waters, it could operate in the vacuum of space. And it had space inside for a guitar case.
One of the subplots of the story would be the band beginning to see success...and Jackson having to balance his thirst for revenge (against the gangs and drug cartels responsible for his friends death) with the need to make it to the next gig without blowing his cover. I even had the idea that at one point his cover WOULD be blown--and blown in such a way that he'd have to retire from both heroism and rock-n-roll. But even so, I decided that Jackson would close the show in a blaze of glory, challenging his ultimate foe (a cartel enforcer named "Iron Felix"--who by this time would have a powersuit of his own!) to a public reckoning.
By this time, Halcyon would also have a band of its own: a power trio in powersuits. Backing up Jackson would be his girlfriend Tricia (in Winged Victory), a reformed car thief buddy named Niven (in Hotwire, a transforming sports car) and a former gangland smurf out for revenge of his own called M.Dew (in Blue Ruin). Facing them would be Iron Felix's terrible "Metal Victory Army".
By the time I was shopping this to publishers, the main part of the story had been completed in my mind, with Jackson (now ten years older, his mission completed, and married to Tricia) in semi-retirement. I had read Miller's The Dark Knight Returns about then and it was somewhat influencial in that regard.
I became an otaku in earnest about 1990. It was about then I saw Bubble Gum Crisis for the first time...man, how can I do better than THIS?
I close with a semi-filk...a song from the soundtrack, as it were. A "song" in Jack McKinney's Robotech novels inspired this song.
Pushers in the hood putting dopeheads on the wire.
Bangers in the night setting half the town on fire.
A little poor kid takes five bullets in his chest...
A rich man loads and locks--and you know the rest!
Victory! Oh Yeah! Victory!
Any way you look at it the house is haunted.
It don't matter what way you want it.
I've got a weapon, I'll never pawn it...
I've got a bullet too--and your name is on it! [Yeah.]
Survivors in the morning get carted off to jail.
Losers never get the chance to hear the sirens wail.
Most everyone is armed 'cause now it's total war.
The Crosstown Freeway's running red with gore!
[That's why we say...]
Victory! Oh Yeah! Victory!
So you ambulatory urban blight
Stay out of my line of sight!
These streets are ours, by divine right!
Here we are--we come to fight, again!
If you're looking for protection,
You're in the wrong direction.
I just can't help you, hon.
Maybe it's my playing,
I can't hear what you're saying...
But I'd rather hear the sound of my own gun!
Victory!
[extended instrumental]
You might think you have an armor-plated skin...
But you don't realize how big your mess is in!
Don't believe the situation is just temporary.
The hottest-going real estate is in the cemetary!
Victory! Oh Yeah! Victory!
It don't matter what you do or say.
It don't matter where you are today.
All the sinners are due to pay...
So don't sort them out--they're dead anyway!
[closing instrumental]
FP
