Author: John Ostrander

JOHN OSTRANDER: Fighting The Good Fight Scene

Bless Mindy Newell.

I was suffering from the condition she described so well in a recent column – being blocked – and she supplied the cure as well. She talked about the difficulty in writing fight scenes in superhero comics and then claimed both I and Denny O’Neil know how to do it. I’m not always sure that’s true with me but it did give me this week’s topic. Thanks, Mindy!

On the surface, writing a fight scene might not seem that difficult. You have two steroid queens pounding the poo out of each other, right? What’s the big deal? Actually, there are a number of things to keep in mind.

Let’s start with the pragmatic. As with movies and television, fights in comics are depicted, not simply described. In the credits for both film and TV, you can find the position of “fight choreographer” and, yes, it’s very like a dance choreographer. Think of fight scenes as very violent dance. Rhumbas with a right hook. Cha Chas with a karate chop.

The fight needs to be imagined in steps so as to be clear, effective and – in movies and TV – safe for the participants. The fight also has to build in intensity. There’s a great film by Walter Hill called Hard Times (1975), starring Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Strother Martin about a bare knuckle fighter working pick-up fights around New Orleans during the Depression. There are several fights in the film and not only do they have to build individually but overall the fights have to build with greater physical and emotional intensity throughout the film to the climax.

In comics a fight scene needs one clear, definable move per character per panel. Also, for best impact, the blow is begun in one panel and then completed in the next. When possible, you end the page with one character about to strike and start the next page with the blow connecting or the other character blocking or dodging. Part of the magic that happens in between panels is that the reader “sees” the motion but only if the action in both panels is clear.

You also want to think of variety. Punch, block, counterpunch, block gets old real fast. In boxing, a boxer will go for the head, the ribs, stomach and so on to mix up the blows. In comics, you can include head-butts, kicks, leaps, martial arts moves and so on. You can also imagine a variety of different settings. Where the fight takes place can determine what fight can take place.

Different characters have different fighting styles. Spider-Man is an acrobatic fighter; the Hulk… well, Hulk smashes. Unless your character has made a change in their fighting style as part of the story, have them fight the way they are supposed to fight.

Just as important as the moves is the fact that the fight is a scene in the story you’re telling. All the rules for a scene apply – what does the character want, how badly do they want it, how far are they willing to go to get what they want? What does it tell us about the character, what does it tell them about themselves? What is revealed, what is concealed? How does this scene move the story ahead? The story is not there to justify a fight scene; the fight scene is there to advance the story. If it doesn’t, it wastes space.

There should be an ebb and flow in a fight scene. The outcome should not be a foregone conclusion for either party. Motivation will play a key factor in any fight. Maybe your character keeps getting knocked down but keeps getting back up. Keep in mind that the opponent is not always another person; it can be time, it can be physical obstacles, it can be the weather, it can be something inside of the characters themselves. All these should be factors in a good fight scene.

Finally, leave room for the artist to work their magic. When working plot instead of full script, I often just gives the basics to the artist – what’s at stake, what are the beats in the action, what is the outcome – and let them choreograph it. The artist is not your hands; the artist is your partner.

It boils down to this: you’re telling a story and that involves conflict. Conflict reveals character – who someone is as opposed to who they think they are. A fight scene is that conflict in its most physical, graphic form but it’s still part of the story. When in doubt, tell the story.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Prognostications 2012

Crap. Crappity crappitry crap.

It’s New Year’s Day. If it was New Year’s Eve I could look backwards and wax philosophic about 2011. But here we are smack dab in the middle of New Year’s Day, Day 1 for the year 2012, so I really should be looking ahead and prognosticating about what the year will bring especially for comics and related media.

I’m a crappy prognosticator.

Years ago, I read a squib in a newspaper about how a Japanese cell phone company had worked out how to add a camera to their phone and I thought, “What a stupid idea. They’ll have these crappy little photos and how good could the lens be and so on. Who would want that?”

Well, everyone, as it turned out.

Before that, I read another little squib about how the Dean of St. Paul’s cathedral in London was going to do a controlled jump with a parachute from the top of the church to bring attention to a rock opera that was premiering called “Jesus Christ Superstar.” And I thought, ‘What a stupid idea. A rock opera? About Jesus? Who would want to go see that?”

Well, gobs and gobs of people, as it turned out.

So I’m not the world’s foremost prognosticator. The Great Criswell I ain’t.

This year, however, it may not matter. The Mayan calendar ends with 2012 and some people predict that means the world is going to end in 2012. Heck, they’ve already done a big, loud, lousy movie about it. How you can take such a potentially fantastic event and make a lousy movie about it is beyond my – wait. The director was Roland Emmerich, wasn’t it? He’s also the one who directed Anonymous which says Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s play (piffle, I say!). And the producer/director of the heinous Godzilla remake. Never mind.

Okay, I grant you that maybe this isn’t real strong evidence. I mean, just because the calendar I have on my wall ended last night didn’t mean the world ended. Not if you’re reading this. I bought another calendar. And if the Mayans were all that sharp as prognosticators, why didn’t they chop up every single Spaniard they met into tiny little pieces?

In 2012, we have The Avengers movie coming out, the new Spider-Man movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and even the first of The Hobbit movies. The first of The Hunger Games movies, the next James Bond movie (Skyfall) will also make their appearances. Heck, based on the latest trailer, I’m hyped to see John Carter. This doesn’t even include the stuff that I don’t know I’ll want to see yet. I didn’t know about Hugo until relatively late this year and that may be my favorite film of 2011.

Seriously, would any sort of just and loving god end the world before Mary and I get to see The Hobbit?

Wait, That’s right. I’m agnostic. Said so last week. Doesn’t matter; I’m not going to believe in the Mayans either. We’re going to have 2012 and it’s going to be fun. Despite the Mayans, despite the elections, there are good times waiting out there.

As Stan (the Man) Lee himself was known to say: “Face front, True Believers! Because that’s there the future’s coming from!”

Words of wisdom for us all. Happy New Year, folks.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

JOHN OSTRANDER: An Agnostic’s Christmas

I always loved Christmas or, perhaps more accurately, I always loved the anticipation of Christmas. I loved the possibilities of Christmas. What would I get? Would others like what I gave? As a boy, my family had an Advent calendar that we used every year; each day you would open another closed window, revealing a picture or text, leading to Christmas Eve. With the one we loved best, the window would open onto another sentence of the Christmas story and that helped build the rising sense of anticipation.

My Mom created a Christmas ritual every Christmas Eve. We would have our own Christmas parade from the top of the stairs, singing a carol, bringing the Baby Jesus figurine to the Nativity scene under the tree. We got more resistant to the cheesiness of it as we got older but Mom was right and we were wrong. We would read The Night Before Christmas out loud, each taking different stanzas. My Dad would read aloud the Cratchit family scene out of the Ghost of Christmas Present sequence in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In later grade school, my brother and I were off to Midnight Mass because we sang in the boy’s choir.

The day itself would then come with all its attendant hysteria and afterwards – it was done. The thing is, Christmas Day never matched up to the anticipation I felt for it. I don’t think it could have. What I loved most was the idea of Christmas, its possibility rather than its reality.

So here we are, years later, and things have very much changed. I’ve become an agnostic and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. I’m used to others telling me what I mean by that and it’s never quite right. I’m uncertain that God exists although I won’t tell you that a Supreme Being doesn’t or cannot exist. I’ve seen atheists who are every bit as evangelical in their disbelief as born-again Baptists are in their faith; not only does god not exist for them but they have decided you can’t believe in one either. I simply say, “I don’t know and its beyond my knowing.” If God exists for you, great. I do miss he certainty I had as a boy. Sometimes my heart yearns for what my mind can no longer accept.

What I don’t believe in is Institutional God especially the Christian one. There is no one Christian god in any case; different churches and sects get into versions of “my Jesus can beat up your Jesus.” The gospels differ and contradict themselves and the institutional churches ignore any gospel except the four official ones. There is, in fact, no “gospel truth.” Not to me.

So – what am I doing with Christmas? What am I supposed to be celebrating, Doubting Ostrander that I am.

I’m celebrating the idea of Christmas, which I have always loved most in any case. I love story and I love this story – that God so loved humanity that a part of him, his “Son,” came to Earth and became one of us, even as a newborn baby, defenseless and vulnerable.

I love the idea of that, I love that story. Story doesn’t have to be factually real to be true. If our minds have created god, then I love the idea that our minds created a loving god, one who could know what it feels like to be us. I don’t know that a god created us in his or her likeness but I believe that we have created a god – an idea or image of god – in our likeness. In this case, it’s bound up with love and kindness. I feel as Scrooge does at the moment of his transformation: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

Honour Christmas in your heart and in your own way and may you have joy of it, today and every day.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Hits and Misses

Like everyone else, I watch too much TV and see the occasional movie or read a book or two and I have my own reactions to them. Here’s some of what I’ve seen, good bad and indifferent.

Boss, on Starz starring Kelsey Grammar as a tough mayor of Chicago. I’m an old time Chicago boy and a series set in Chicago, dealing with its mayor, and using actual Chicago locations, will always attract my eye. I was so looking forward to this. However, by the third episode, I was taping it and I haven’t gotten around to watching those episodes and then I just stopped. I didn’t care. Too much melodramatic bullshit.

The main character, Tom Kane (obviously named for Tom Keane, a formerly very strong alderman in Chicago, later imprisoned), is diagnosed in the opening moments with some sort of brain disease that can’t be cured, can’t be operated on, and is going to mess him up royally before the end and, of course, he opts to tell no one. We never get a chance to see who he is without the disease; it’s part of what defines the character from the beginning. His wife is an ice queen although very supportive politically. They have a daughter who is now an (I think) Episcopal minister. The parents are estranged from her because she has also been a junkie in the past and looks like she’s going to be that way again. The mayor also has a young female aide who is pretty and has sex with inappropriate men apparently in semi-public places because, you know, ratings.

The creators have a good cast but they don’t apparently trust the setting enough to generate real material because they saddle it with all the nonsense above. You only have to look at political drama in Chicago and Illinois in recent years to find plenty of material. The prison bound Rod Blagojevitch alone could have been a stunning model for a TV series if some of his doings (real or alleged) didn’t appear so preposterous. He sounds too made up. He’s also a hell of a lot more interesting to me than Boss turned out to be.

You want something of Chicago that has real snap and bite? Max Allan Collins has released a volume collecting his Nate Heller short mysteries called Chicago Lightning. I recommended his Nate Heller novel, Bye Bye Baby, earlier and I’m equally enthused for this. It runs the gamut of Nate Heller’s career and is great reading. Highly recommended.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve gotten heavily into Westerns. I’ll plug myself by reminding folks that DC is releasing The Kents historical western miniseries that I wrote. It was originally done in twelve monthly issues and then gathered into a single TPB. This time they’re releasing it in three 100-page spectaculars, each gathering four issues (it was written that way, every four issues an arc). The first two of these are now out and the third will be out next month. Some of my best stuff, I think, and my artists – Timothy Truman and Tom Mandrake – have been my partners-in-crime for a long time.

Anyway, this is really a prelude to my looking in on AMC’s western Hell On Wheels. Another series I was looking forwards to and, again, I started taping it and then abandoned it. Very violent (which is okay but it seems violent for the sake of violence) and I haven’t gotten into the characters. You could spot who was going to be dead early on. It wants to be Deadwood which, even with its faults, was superlative. I may give it a try again at some point but I’m just not feeling drawn to it right now.

Finally, to end on an up note – Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Saw it and loved it. It’s a love letter to the movies from a master film maker who loves movies. It drew me in from the opening frames. There’s a long tracking shots (who does long tracking shots these days? How many directors can?) that pulls you right in. I’ve seen some grumblings about its length and pace, but you won’t hear that from from me. Scorsese loves movies but he also loves story and he weaves a wonderful, rich, emotional story with a wonderful cast and an eye towards detail.

We saw it in 3-D and that’s how it should be seen. Simply one of the best uses of 3-D I’ve seen, and I’m including Avatar. This is what happens when a master filmmaker gets a new tool – not a gimmick, but a tool – and figures out how to use it. Every effect is to tell the story and make it more real, more immediate.

I also know a lot of people who are waiting to see it on DVD or their iPhones or iPads or whatever and that would be a mistake. It’s meant to be seen in a theater; if I could find it somewhere near me in IMAX, I would go see it that way. I’ll own the eventual DVD but it will simply remind me of the experience I had at the movie theater. That’s what Hugo was for me – an experience and one I’m so glad to have had.

All the above are just my reactions. Your mileage may vary.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Completing The Circuit

I love reading. Central to my being a writer is the fact that I love reading. I’ve always wanted to give back the pleasure I’ve gotten from it. I love when a writer pulls me into the world that they’ve created. It’s a magic act; words are used like spells to stimulate the senses. I see, I hear, I feel, I can even taste or smell depending on how adept the writer is and the words they use.

I love television and movies and other media as well but, for me, reading demands an active level of participation on my part. My imagination gets engaged, I think and I feel, heart and mind are involved. I feel I am in a conversation with the writer when the work is good.

Think of a toggle light switch. In the off position, the current doesn’t flow and the lights are not on. Flip it and the connection is completed and the light shines. Writing and reading are like that. The work exists but it is only when it is picked up and read that the circuit is completed.

The reader brings him or herself to the work, just as the writer does. What the readers take out of it depends on who they are. I have people write to me about the stories I’ve written and I always find it interesting; sometimes they find things here that I didn’t know was there myself. More often, they tell me things about themselves and that’s fascinating.

There is something alive in the work. Shakespeare is performed all over the world every day; Someone once said somewhere in the world he’s performed every hour of every day. The key is that his words still resonate on topics that are vital to our daily experience. They impact and influence people, change the way life is perceived. Shakespeare’s mind reaches us through the centuries and talks to us. The circuit is completed.

It’s not just Shakespeare. Charles Dickens lives as well and never more so than in this season. Don’t just watch A Christmas Carol – read it. I have yet to see any version – film, television, or stage – that captures the social commentary within the written work. It’s almost contemporary in its question of wealth, class, and our responsibility to our fellow human beings. One of the most powerful yet least used portions in the story is how young Scrooge, stuck at school for the holidays, finds comfort in books and how they come alive for him.

It’s not only with the writers who are dead. Think of contemporary living writers that you know, that you love. You may never meet them in person and yet you feel there is a bond between you and that writer, that you know them. When you read a good book, when it swallows you in, there is a now that you experience, that you create with the writer. The connection is complete; the current flows.

Make your life richer. Go read.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Christmas Treasures, Part 2

Last week, I told you about the first Christmas for my late wife Kim Yale, and myself. Now I’ll tell you about our last.

That night Kim really wanted to go to Christmas Eve service at our church. Redeemer held it at 8 PM to enable those who were very young and very old to attend. We got an evening pass from the hospital so Kim could go and the church made arrangements to accommodate her – they had a bed, a screen, and some members of the church who were trained nurses took over. In fact, once I got Kim there, all was taken out of my hands and I only had to sit there.

We left before the service was over; Kim’s energy had flagged and I needed to get her back to her hospital bed. Joe and Mary were there as well and we planned to open presents and then watch A Charlie Brown Christmas together. I had spent a lot of time and thought and some expense trying to get Kim the best gifts I could but about half way through it, Kim abandoned the present opening. She no longer had the energy or interest; it has been expended on the Christmas service.

She wanted to see the cartoon and Mary and Joe took her into the TV room. I told them to start without me.

Truth is, I was angry. That’s not something they tell you about when you’re a cancer patient’s caretaker. Sometimes you get angry – at the situation, at the cancer, and even with the patient. You wind up giving a lot to them and they may not have a lot to give back. Kim took the energy she had and spent it on that Christmas service and had nothing left for me and I was hurt and I was angry and I was exhausted and I, by God, was not going to watch that damn TV special with her. It was mean and petty of me; not my finest moment.

Mary came back to say that they were waiting for me and I gruffly said I was not coming. They were to start without me. Mary carried back the message.

A little later, Kim herself came in, very tentative, very fragile. She said she couldn’t watch the shows without me. “Aren’t you coming?” I looked at her and she was so sweet and scared and brave. The anger melted away. How could I be mad with her? What was I thinking? This was Kimmie, this was my love, this was our last Christmas together, and she wanted to watch Charlie Brown and Grinch with me just as we always did. What the hell was I thinking? How could I be so petty and spiteful and mean? It was Christmas and it was all the Christmas we would ever have together. I put my arm around Kim and we went to watch our Christmas traditions, her head on my shoulder.

We spent Christmas day together as well, the four of us, and around dinner time Joe and Mary and I went out to see what we could find to eat. All that open in downtown Morristown was an Indian restaurant. I thought of the end of A Christmas Story, where the family winds up at a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Like them, we had a very fine Christmas meal of foods that I never had for the holiday before. All was calm, all was bright that evening. I had friends; I still had Kim. It was the worst and sweetest Christmas at the same time.

After the first of the year, I insisted that the doctor give Kim the prognosis himself or I would tell her. She and I never kept secrets like that from each other before and I wasn’t going to start now. He did, she did decline, and by the first week in March, she was gone.

Physically. She was and is still in my heart.

The traditions we make are important. Not simply the ones that are handed down to us, although those are important as well. It’s the ones we choose for ourselves that are the most important and the most memorable, I think. No Christmas, no Holiday season, is more important than the one we have now because now is all we really have – tomorrow is only a hope, not a promise. Whatever the season means to you, celebrate it. Even when it seems dark, there is still something to celebrate.

Io Saturnalia! Happy Hanukah! A Splendid Kwanza!

Merry Christmas. May your days be merry and bright.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Christmas Treasures, Part 1

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… or so the song goes. Except when it’s not.

I have my Christmas favorites on DVD or TV that I watch every year. They include A Christmas Carol (the Reginald Owen version and the much better Alastair Sim version as well as, oddly, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol which adds songs and does a pretty fair job of summing up the story in less than a half hour), It’s A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and the cartoons – How The Grinch Stole Christmas (Karloff beats Carey hands down) and, of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

And, a day or so after Christmas, I add in Bad Santa just to wash all the treacle away. Your choices may differ and that’s fine – these are mine.

My best Christmas was probably the one when I proposed to my late wife, Kim Yale, on Christmas Eve. I had bought the ring and I was pretty sure she would say yes but I was still nervous. Kim and I opened presents on Christmas Eve so I mapped out my strategy. My gifts included a Tim Truman sketch of GrimJack (one of Kim’s faves and part of our becoming a couple), signed by Timbo and carrying the Gaunt message: “You’ve done right by my pal so far, sweetheart. How about makin’ it permanent?”

Then she got a specially made teddy bear (Kim was huge on teddy bears) that was a  GrimJack teddy bear and he was holding a poem from me, a sonnet that would up with my proposal (I made her read it aloud) and as she finished reading it, I brought out the ring. Kim took a dramatic pause (she was great at dramatic pauses) that were the longest seconds of my life but then she said “Yes!” and we off to the races.

That was our first Christmas together. The hardest one was our last.

Kim had breast cancer and she was dying of it. I knew that but she didn’t; her cancer doctor had called me with the news but insisted I not tell her. It might make her give up, he insisted. So, for a while, I went along with that.

Kim was in the hospital a lot at that point; her immune system was in bad shape from the chemo and the radiation. She didn’t like being there alone so I spent a lot of nights there with her. It wouldn’t have been possible without our friend, Mary Mitchell, who spelled me many nights. We were joined later on by my friend Joe Edkin, who would spell us both.

It was trying some times. People would come to visit and Kim would rally her energy, putting on what we referred to as “the Kimberly Show.” This is no criticism of our visitors, who gave lovingly of themselves and were very welcome, but afterwards Kim would have no energy left for me, Mary, and Joe, and sometimes that was hard.

It came to a boil at Christmas. Holidays bring out the best and worst of us. Kim’s final Christmas brought a bit of both in me.

More next time.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Eating Broccoli

In my circle, my disdain for broccoli is pretty well known. I call them “tiny trees” and I don’t like their smell, their taste, or their texture – but I have eaten them. That’s how I know I don’t like them.

Recently, Dark Horse Comics finally announced the new Star Wars project that Jan Duursema and I are working on. Jan and I have worked on two other series together – Star Wars Republic and Star Wars Legacy – to the praise of a lot of Star Wars fans. This is in addition to my already announced Star Wars spy series, Agent Of The Empire. (plug plug plug plug)

The new series is Dawn Of The Jedi and it goes back and tells the origins of the Jedi Order which, we hope, will have some interest even to the fans who have only watched the movies. We’re doing our best to make it accessible even to those who are not conversant with the large Star Wars story known as the EU (Extended Universe). However, even with all that effort, I know some readers won’t even try it because it’s Star Wars.

And that sometimes makes me scratch my head.

(more…)

JOHN OSTRANDER: The Joy of Writing

I love writing. Most days.

There are days when it’s a job – and it is my job. It’s how I make my living. It’s how I pay my bills. Most days.

Sometimes it’s a grind. It’s not working for some reason. I stare at the blank screen or the empty page and wonder why I ever thought I could do this. Creative constipation. It’s affected every writer I have ever heard of.

Some days, however, it’s a joy. A lot of days.

I most enjoy it when I’m working in my journal. I have a bound book of lined pages and that’s where I go, black ballpoint in hand, to figure out the story or the characters. My thoughts seem to flow into the pen and the ink flows onto the paper carrying my thoughts and they take a form. It’s a physical, sensual thing.

That’s something I teach in my classes. Everyone has ideas but it doesn’t mean anything until they write them down. You incarnate the thoughts and feelings. Putting them into words gives the ideas and feelings a form and then you can do something with them.

If you want to do something with it, you have to write the idea down. You can’t just tell it to someone; that releases the energy. It lets the steam out of the engine. You’ve already told the story so you don’t need to write it down. You have nothing.

It doesn’t matter that what you’ve written is imperfect. It’s always going to be imperfect. I know people who can’t write because it’s never as perfect when they write it down as it was in their head. For them it has to be perfect. For me, that gets in the way. Incarnation is messy. I like that. I like that it takes on a life of its own.

The work in my journal especially is going to be imperfect but that’s all right because I’m the only one who is going to see it. Given my handwriting, even if you did see it, odds are you wouldn’t be able to read it. I myself rarely go back and look at what’s written. It’s the act of writing that’s important. It clarifies what’s in my head and then I can proceed.

I was working in the journal a little earlier on a plot for a series I’m doing. As I wrote, the ending of the arc revealed itself to me. Having a resolution is so important when you’re developing the story; it allows you to focus it and the characters towards that end.

It felt right. That’s how I know it’s going to work. I still have to do all the structural stuff and then I have to hope that the editor likes it as well as I do. Right now, the story has a heartbeat. It’s not fully realized yet but there’s something there.

That’s when it’s a joy. Today, tonight, I love being a writer.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Comics Lied To Me!

I’ve had some medical tests recently. Seems I have heart palpitations; lordy me, Ah do seem to be a swoon and mint julep away from being a Southern belle. (Hm. Wonder if they make chocolate mint juleps?) It means that my heart skips a beat every so often.

So I went to a cardiologist and he set up a battery of tests to see what this all means. In the first one, they injected a radioactive tracer so they could then do X-rays of my heart from different angles and see what’s going on.

I was ready. I knew the score. If comic books have taught me anything, it’s that radioactivity triggers a DNA change and gives you super-powers. Prime example is Spider-Man – got his powers from a radioactive spider, right? The Hulk got his from gamma radiation, which is a type of nuclear radiation, right? And it was a stress test, okay? What happens when you combine radiation and stress? The Hulk.

So I figured the radioactive stuff would combine maybe with X-rays and I’d get X-ray vision whenever I stressed out. Or maybe a bug might creep into the machine and I’d get X-ray and bug like powers. Spider-Hulk.

All I got was a bill. Not a duck bill. Or a goose bill. I received a financial statement saying I owed them money. What a rip off!

They also did what is called an “Echo Test” a couple of days later. It’s like when they do a sonogram for pregnant women using ultrasound only they do it for the heart. Ultrasound, eh? Okay, that could become something. Something ultra. I know the Ultra line was a failed bunch of comics for Malibu that Marvel bought up and forgot they had until recently… but it could maybe work, right? Combine ultrasound with the radioactive particle and the stress test and maybe I wind up with ultra hearing and X-ray vision. Add in any Hulk-like side effects and now we’re getting somewhere!

Zap. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. That’s what I’ve gotten. So far.

When they did the second part of the stress test, I had a choice. I could climb on a treadmill and get my heart rate up to a certain point or they could do it via an injection of chemicals that would also make my heart beat faster. Of course, some of the shots of the naked Scarlett Johansson – soon to return as the Black Widow in The Avengers flick – that popped up on the web would also probably do the trick but I wasn’t offered that option.

It was a hard choice. We all know about the treadmill in The Flash and how he uses it combined with his superspeed for time travel. Maybe being on the treadmill would combine with an increased heartbeat and would trigger the change. Seemed reasonable.

I opted, however, for the chemical version for three reasons. One – that seemed more likely to interact with the other events and convert my DNA to complete the change. Two – if I got superspeed and went back in time, I might change a little something that would induce a reboot of reality and DC just did that and it resulted in a skinny Amanda Waller. Third – I could do the test lying down. At my age, if you can do something lying down, that’s the option you take.

So I got the chemicals injected, waited forty minutes for them to travel through my system, and went back for more x-rays. I had high hopes for this one. I’d seen Captain America – The First Avenger and that’s more or less what they did with Steve Rogers: injected him with chemicals and bathed him in rays. That turned out pretty spiffy, right? Not only did he get turned into Captain America but it was a pretty darn good superhero film to boot.

SPOILER WARNING: There are no spoilers. You already can guess the outcome. I just got test results is all. They said I was normal. Normal. Since when?

I go in to see the cardiologist next week to get the findings. Friends have suggested that all I’ll get told is that I have an overheated imagination.

If there’s a cure for that, I’m out of a job.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

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