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As said before, I'm more a fan of war comics than superheroes...but even now, there is a bizarre dichotomy in our pop culture as to what the youth demand from war stories--and what the entertainment media are willing to provide.

I came up with the following idea little by little. It's not a conventional war story as such...and that's what gives it its potency. It starts with 150 pre-adolescent boys, who go to bed in their comfortable homes one night...ExpandRead more... )

I'd love to write it. But it'll never happen because of American censorship rules that make it impossible for stories of actual child soldiers to be told to children, let alone fictional ones.

FP

I never wanted Army life!
Gee Mom!--We wanna go home!
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An idea for a movie that's a couple years old.

It starts with a poor, out-of-work actor in L.A., who's looking over his Actors' Guild dues notice and trying to decide whether to pay.ExpandRead more... )

FP
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Written a little before I really got going on the internet, say about 1996 or 1997...

TIDBITS FROM A FANATIC:
THE CONVERSION THAT WOULD NOT DIE (HORNET 2000)

At the end of 1987, McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing—-go figure) proposed to the Defense Department and the Western Allies a plan for further development of the F/A-18 Hornet called "Hornet 2000". Five new subtypes were offered, from a minimal change version with increased fuel capacity [Dash 2] to a radical delta-and-canards high-performance fighter meant to compete with Dassault-Breguet's Rafale and the multinational Eurofighter [Dash 4]. The picture in Aviation Week and Space Technology [December 21, 1987; page 20] only fueled my desire to build a model of at least one of these machines.

So I went to Kay-Bee just after Christmas '87 and bought a remaindered AMT (ex-ESCI, now Italeri) "Force 1" F-18A in 1/72nd scale. And I honed my razor saw. Has anybody seen my goalie's mask?

First I cut apart the wings by removing the leading edge slats, then the flaps, and finally the tips at the fold line. (My first concept was to extend both the span and chord of the wings, by 24mm and 8mm respectively.) Then I cut the upper fuselage in two places, just aft of the wing's trailing edge and then the forward section just ahead of the two top antennae. I cut the LEX (Leading Edge Extensions) off this unit and mated the remainder to the assembled forward fuselage (hey, I did the first three stages of the assembly "stock"--isn't that enough?). The underside rear fuselage was chopped just forward of the arrester hook housing. My attention then went to "stretching" the fuselage...10 mm in the aft portion and 14 mm in the forward section, for a scale grand total of 68 inches added to the length of this bad boy. I was halfway through reassembly when life got in the way...fast-forward nearly ten years...

In the meantime, Hornet 2000 vanishes into the ghostly limbo of phantom warplane projects. Reality sends forth the F/A-18E, with its enlargened LEX and new ramp intakes. I look at this vicious, terrible beast (on TV, a whole program on PBS devoted to it) and then this model kit rises from its grave in my closet...

So the stock intakes come off. Just as well because part of the forward fuselage "plug" has become warped and must be removed as well. And then a fit of boredom overwhelms me and I saw off the remainder of the wings, since for the Dash 4, the wings are further aft than on the "conventional layout" Hornets. Suddenly more possibilities appear on this machine...could I build an FSW (Forward-Swept Wing) version (I'd already done on in 1/144th scale...a "Python Patrol" Conquest from G.I.Joe--nah), or a mutant Dash 4, or even a VSTOL (Vertical/Short Take-Off/Landing) version. Still, this bug has a relentless thirst for white putty and super glue and a ruthless hunger for more and more styrene.

So what's a poor fellow to do, short of an exorcism? I'll redesign the wings...but I need new E-type intakes and LEX. Plus I need to know if anybody has developed a vector-thrust exhaust for the General Electric F404 engine...there is an X-29 and an F-20 Tigershark also lurking just past the county morgue. Maybe someone has those thrust paddles as seen on the X-31...either way, the fanatic will continue to hunt down more and more elusive parts for this monstrosity and others that lie, resting in pieces, throughout his laboratory. Please forgive me if, as you present your Verlinden catalog at an IPMS meeting, something comes over me and I transform into a rabid, crazed ghoul. There are forces at work that mankind will never fully fathom.

FP
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Hey.

More "Dirty Laundry" but this time concepts that I didn't really put so much thought towards.

The Blitz: A variation on the old War of the Worlds theme but with the twist that the invaders are the descendants of humans who were enslaved by a starfaring exterrestrial race many hundreds of years past. The invaders refrain from using their more dangerous weapons because they want a liveable planet, and so a very long and in-your-face war ensues. Some nations on Earth take advantage of the chaos to settle old scores.

Endless Days, Endless Nights (E.D.E.N.): A science-fiction daytime drama concept...the first season would take place on a spaceship bringing settlers to a Martian colony, the second season would have them arriving and establishing their new lives.

The Four-Effs: A mecha genre story about a group of people, with the common thread that they were all rejected/excused from military service for one reason or another, now test crews for a mecha factory during a war. The war takes an ugly turn and now for the survival of the factory, they must become soldiers themselves--or die trying.

The Hero Hunters: (In a world where superheroes and supervillains do battle...) ...The Government has gotten so disgusted with the chaos that to restore order they have sanctioned a hit squad--with the purpose of liquidating villains and even superheroes who get in the way.

Marque Operatives: A story about a future sleuth and his team of assistants, including a former jock turned attorney, a disgraced war veteran, a techie inventor, a psychically gifted woman, and others.

Merlin: An American, descended from a Knight of the Round Table, visits England and finds himself swept into a search for Merlin the Magician--who is NOT dead!

Peace Dividend: The Stormbombers: An international squadron of scientists and expert aircrews find ways of attacking typhoons and hurricanes--in the hopes of reducing the storms' severity so lives can be saved.

Retrograde: A thirtysomething loser suddenly finds himself rejuvenated to teen age--and so he goes back to high school (under an assumed identity) to do things that he never thought to try when he was a teenager the first time.

Rumble Reserve: Members of street gangs from cities around the world are sent to a remote desert location--for the purpose of a no-holds-barred treasure hunt.

The Statistic: The story of a demon accountant. He leaves Hades in order to "audit" the souls of the wicked--and make the "books balance". I was going to push the envelope in the comics by having a central character who is never seen clearly until his last issue.

FP
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DIRTY 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.ExpandI Was A Teenage Iron Man! )

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
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DIRTY LAUNDRY 3

"A Recipe for Sour Mash"

Two of the most attractive genres/subgenres for young people in the late 1970s/early 1980s were the revived space opera (Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Space: 1999) and the car chase-intensive "dramadie" (Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, Corvette Summer, etc.). Of course, a mass media-addled brain like mine could easily see the possibility of combining the two...

In some technically advanced but politically corrupt star system in the Milky Way, a Captain and First Mate of a space freighter see their ship confiscated by the local authorities due to a loophole in the Stellar Navigation Act the government is exploiting out of pure greed. When their court appeal to reclaim their ship goes nowhere, the two men (yeah, they're Good Ol' Boys of the Spaceways) go outlaw, steal a (Star Trek: DS9 runabout-sized) shuttlecraft and hot-rod it with new engines and weapons. Then they raid the authorities' enforcement assets all over the galaxy, leading wild lightspeed chases through space and causing interstellar havoc.

No, I had no illusions that this was going to be Hard SF. This was lowbrow SF at its stupidest, and I would have been damn proud of it at the time I was concocting it.

DIRTY LAUNDRY 4

"The War That Never Ended, But Should Have"

I had an unnatural fascination with World War Two since about first grade. Relatives of mine (heck, relatives of just about EVERYBODY) served in the military then. Movies about the war still played on TV frequently then. War comics were plentiful, in spite of it being just after the Vietnam war. People were beginning to feel a little nostalgic about a time that seemed to be the apex of American nobility and idealist desires. As somebody who never lived through the troubled time, my view of the conflict was naively skewed.

I tried several times to invent a World War Two-setting comic. Like all of my other projects, these stunk to high heaven. The main thrust of these came from the time my brother and I would play epic rounds of Carrier Strike! (a Milton Bradley board game--which I still own). We played House Rules; I let my brother play the Americans and almost always let him win. The resulting story, then, was about a flotilla of American aircraft carriers in the Pacific War and the pilots of their embarked squadrons--a proto-Top Gun without the love interest or the rock soundtrack. Or to look at it another way, a revisionist Buzz Sawyer. The central characters would be two brothers...assigned to different ships but often participating on the same missions. The younger brother would be a hotshot ace with one of the fighter squadrons, the elder brother a long time veteran of the attack bomber forces.

A second concept was a mishmash of dozens of influences, set in the China/Burma theater (ala Terry and the Pirates). A Southerner American expatriate (serving in a British colonial fighter squadron because his criminal record back Stateside forbid him from joining the Army), gets involved in a plot involving the betrayal of his unit by a profiteer in the officer ranks. Likewise, he has a relative (a cousin) serving as a bomber pilot in the American forces in the same theater. A subplot of the story dealt with an ancient evil power the Japanese were exploiting against the Chinese.

Of course I realize now that what I was doing was cliche and politically incorrect. I'm a big fan of Ted Nomura these days; I doubt I could do anything like he does. Knowing is half the battle.

FP
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Presenting another aghast from the past:

DIRTY LAUNDRY 2

"Too Derivative"

The problem with being a budding writer is you need original ideas to succeed. Original ideas are not easy to come up with, and the temptation to just outright rip off successful properties is impossible to avoid. And I for one, have failed time and time again in temptation avoidance.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was drowning in mass media and everything I tried to create was feedback from whatever was on TV or whatever I had been reading. Looking back, it was incredibly stupid...but when you are enthused about something, you don't have the inclination to step back and look upon it in a critical manner. Not that anything I was doing could stand to be looked upon in a critical manner anyway.

Superhero #1--Lightning-Bolt: Lightning-Bolt was undeniably derived from both the live-action Shazam! and live-action (and Filmation/Hanna-Barbera animated) Batman. TV serials. L-B (for short) was a middle American whitebread young man who was being watched over by a mysterious and wealthy benefactor, who would reward good deeds of L-B's by adding items to L-B's wardrobe/arsenal. Each item had techno-magical powers on its own, but the sum costume was naturally more powerful than the parts. L-B, despite his detective skills and increasing awareness, never knew who it was who was making these incredible garments and gadgets.

The core of the costume was a blue shirt with a red stroke of electrical lightning across it. (Which I more recently learned was the initial color scheme for Shazam!--BEFORE DC bought him from Fawcett!) It gave the wearer a boost of power to all the muscles of his/her body, and was also bulletproof. Next came gauntlets that threw "power punches", boots that gave super speed, a helmet/cowl with built-in sensors and long-range hearing, and so on and so on.

So unoriginal was my concept for this guy that I never even invented any master criminals for L-B to fight. Looking back at the time from which L-B came, the nemesis should have been a villian named "Blackout". You don't need much imagination to guess what he would have had for powers.

FP
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"CONCEPTUAL NECROMANCY" (OR JUST "DIRTY LAUNDRY")

Part 1: The Concept With No Title

This is the first part of what I expect will be a pathetically long series in which I'll pull out some of my round-filed story ideas to show you. I've been a poser and a loser for longer than I care to admit...the world of comics has changed everything of itself since I started reading them. Back in the eighties and early nineties, I had been actively submitting--and brownnosing--with publishers big and small, and to this date I have gone exactly nowhere. So to start, I must start at the beginning.

I rarely read superhero comics as a kid...war comics were more my speed, as I was attracted more by hardware than by physique. I loved airplanes and fast cars, and my oldest surviving artwork (if you want to call it that--more like awful scribbles) reflects this fact. I still love airplanes, and hold a pilot's license in desperate need of a renewal. My very first concept comes from this era--in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Bicentennial...

It is a dire time for America. A war of insurrection has broken out in the Rust Belt, with militant gangs and rebel former National Guardsmen attempting to overthrow the establishment. The Federal forces are besieged on several fronts, with the heaviest fighting happening along the Ohio river valley.

The central character is a young, idealistic, and gifted fighter pilot flying for the Federal Air Forces in the Ohio theater. The airbase from which he operates has been cut off from the rest of the army by the fighting, and since the base is also home to both a stockpile of atomic warheads and an aircraft factory, the orders are to hold off the enemy at all costs. The war is steadily getting worse for the pilot and for the ground crew keeping his plane functional...and little by little he sees his squadron getting whittled down by combat losses. But he never gives up hope for an eventual victory.

I reused this concept in some measure in a short story/comic book one-shot called "Heat Seekers", which I submitted to Antarctic Press' "Mangazine" and saw rejected.

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Stephen R Bierce

March 2022

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