Writing Prompt #11: Take a famous scene from a classic story and rewrite it in a completely different era.

One of my favorite classic film scenes is from Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. The key moment I love, though, wasn’t performed by any of the three stars; it was performed by Claude Rains.

The film is set in the titular North African city. The year is 1941, Nazi Germany has occupied most of Europe, and Allied forces (including the United States) would not land on and capture Normandy beach for another two years. Morocco was ostensibly governed by France, but France itself had been occupied by Germany in 1940. As a result, French officials in Casablanca answered to German authority, and the city itself was portrayed as a last port of exit for refugees hoping to flee across the Atlantic.

Claude Rains portrays French Captain Louis Renault, the “unabashedly corrupt” commander of the Casablanca police force. The film makes clear that Renault’s only real concern is his own survival and prosperity, so he is quite happy to cooperate with visiting German military officers so long as he can remain in command and continue enriching himself at the expense of desperate residents and travelers. Early in the film, he cheerfully assures a visiting German official (in search of some letters of transit taken from a pair of murdered German couriers) that he has rounded up “twice the number of usual suspects” as a show of cooperation with Nazi forces.

Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, an American expatriate who settled in Casablanca and purchased a nightclub that hosts a purportedly secret gambling den in the back room. Despite gambling being ostensibly illegal in occupied France, Rick’s gambling operates with a wink and a nod to the right people and is perhaps the worst-kept secret in Casablanca. Rick enjoys a special understanding with Captain Renault: he allows Renault to gamble in the back room and in return Renault pretends the gambling den doesn’t exist.

Midway through the film, Renault is under intensifying pressure from the visiting German officers to locate the missing letters of transit and arrest someone they can blame for the murdered couriers. Renault, less interested in law enforcement than he is in graft, has no prospects but understands that his continuing survival depends on satisfying his patrons. (Or as Rick wryly puts it, “Gestapo spank.”)

When German Major Strasser orders the nightclub closed, Renault immediately uses the gambling den he already knew full well existed as justification for the shutdown. When Rick approaches from the back, demanding to know what’s going on, Renault loudly declares for everyone to hear:

“I’m shocked! Shocked to find that there is gambling going on in here!”

At that moment, with impeccable timing, a cashier approaches Renault with a stack of money.

“Your winnings, sir,” he says to the French police chief. Renault doesn’t miss a beat, smiling pleasantly at the man and pocketing the cash.

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” he says, politely, before going back to shouting at customers to leave immediately.

Rains’ line, and the ironic contempt with which he delivers it, has come to represent the hypocrisy of any corrupt authority figure who feigns shock at discovering his own criminality. Unfortunately, Casablanca is such an old film at this point that most people don’t understand the reference anymore.

The other memorable thing about Casablanca, for me, is the song that represents Rick’s impossible romantic relationship with Ingrid Bergman’s character: “As Time Goes By”. It always gets a reaction out of me.

I know I was supposed to rewrite it in a different era, but I think I wrote enough about it. Don't be surprised if it pops up in one of my stories at some point, though, probably in a very different setting.

Justice, Like Lightning . . .

In 1997, Marvel Comics was struggling. The market was in a slump, sales were down, and some of its marquee series were on the verge of cancellation. The company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring companies like Fleer, Panini, and Heroes World only to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Things looked bleak, to say the least.

In this midst of its financial meltdown, Marvel made the decision to cancel such long-running titles as Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America, and Avengers due to lackluster sales. The characters themselves, along with a few others, were licensed out to Image Comics founders Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, who relaunched those titles under the banner of Heroes Reborn. The X-Men-led event Onslaught led the way by seemingly killing off those characters to make room for four new series set in an entirely different world. For a full year, those characters were written in their own shared universe, separate from Marvel’s main line of comics, in the hope that Lee and Liefeld’s modern style of art and writing would boost sales.

Ironically, this led to one of the most memorable innovations in comics history.

Into this void stepped Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley with a new ongoing series titled Thunderbolts with a tag line, “justice, like lightning” borrowed from a 17^th century poet named Thomas Randolph. Six new heroes stepped forward to take up the burden of protecting New York and the world in the absence of the fallen heroes. Citizen V, Meteorite, Atlas, MACH-1, Songbird, and Techno were featured in existing titles for a few months before the premier of their own book, generating a level of excitement and attention from readers that Marvel hadn’t enjoyed in years. When the new series debuted, it was an instant sellout and had to be reprinted to meet the demand.

But there was a catch that only added to fans’ fascination with the new characters: they weren’t really heroes at all. They were villains in disguise.

At the end of the first issue, Citizen V reveals himself to readers as none other than Baron Helmut Zemo, one of Captain America’s most memorable villains and leader of the Masters of Evil. The other Thunderbolts are revealed as long-established (but mostly B-level or C-level) villains: Moonstone (Meteorite), Goliath (Atlas), Bettle (MACH-1), Screaming Mimi (Songbird), and Fixer (Techno), all of whom are loyal soldiers for Zemo.

As the series progressed, it became clear that this was more than a simple, one-dimensional story about a villainous plot. Zemo was so evil he was all but irredeemable, but gradually most of the other Thunderbolts began to question their own life choices. A few issues later, Busiek and Bagley introduced a new character: Hallie Takahama, a teenage girl who eagerly joined the team under the impression her teammates were legitimate heroes. Her enthusiasm and purity of heart rubbed off on many of her fellow Thunderbolts, and when the story climaxed with the revelation of Zemo’s ultimate plan for world domination they were left with a choice: follow the plan like the bad guys they had always been or betray Zemo and save the world.

What made the series to remarkable was the depth with which Busiek and Bagley portrayed so many characters who had previously been considered little more than jokes. All of a sudden, they all had pasts, motivations, hopes, fears, and internal conflict. Many of them looked at themselves and decided they liked the people they had become while posing as heroes than the criminals they had been for most of their lives. Being celebrated and respected was a heady experience for people who had always lived in the shadows of society, and they weren’t eager to give it all up.

Busiek’s focus on writing his characters as people instead of just the costumes they had always been had a lasting impact on the comic book industry. The human conflict of people who choose to risk death against overwhelming threats is echoed in modern comics, films, and animation. He and Bagley deserve a lot of credit for that, among other things they’ve achieved in their careers. I’ve loved so many other titles they’ve worked on, including Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvels, and many more. But I’ll always remember them most fondly for what they did on Thunderbolts.

The Dangers of Psuedo-Intellectualism

I can’t stand Bill Maher. He’s not a centrist. He’s just an arrogant prick.

I just overheard him express support for the bombing of Iran on his show, saying “I know too many happy Iranian-Americans, sorry.”

Yeah, you arrogant asshole, think about what you just said. “Iranian-Americans.” In other words, people who aren’t living in the fucking blast radius. Just the fact that they’re living in America means they’re expatriates who are likely don’t support the Iranian government but happily don’t have to suffer the consequences of having their house flattened by the U.S. Air Force. Maybe they supported the Shah’s government and fled here after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Whatever. 

The point is that he’s a pseudo-intellectualist, pretending to be smart and practical when really he’s leaning on the roulette table and tilting it in his direction. Asking Iranian-Americans how they feel about Khomenei’s death is like polling registered Republicans about Joe Biden: you already know what you’re going to get before you ask the first question because you’re limiting your sample to people you know will give you the answer you want.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard him say stuff like that. He’s practically an expert at asking rigged questions and then passing the results off as truth. That’s why I refuse to watch him.

Writing Prompt #10: You look outside: Ah, it is snowing! But look closer. Those are not snowflakes falling from the sky! What is it snowing at your house?

I live in Southern California. Specifically, I live in Temecula, which is a naturally dry, sparsely vegetated area. It’s not quite a desert, but it’s not a lush, green area, either. The summers are hot, the winters are cold, but it doesn’t rain a lot and the ground never freezes over. I’ve seen it snow here a couple of times in my life, but it’s exceedingly rare and it never sticks around long. So what could fall from the sky that might resemble snow?

In 1980, something happened that shattered many Americans’ sense of security and safety. On the West Coast, deep in the State of Washington, a mountain exploded.

“Exploded” doesn’t do it justice. On May 18, at 8:32am, Mount St. Helens abruptly woke America up. The initial blast triggered a landslide that traveled at over 110 mph down the north slope and across nearby Spirit Lake. Debris suddenly filled the North Fork Toutle River up to 600 feet and covered an area of about 24 square miles. Trees were flattened, ridges destroyed, and a 600-foot wave rose up from the lake and devastated the northern shore. The pyroclastic flow (hot ash and magma) flash-boiled much of the lake to steam, creating a secondary blast that was heard as far away as Montana and Idaho. The explosion was the equivalent of 26 megatons of TNT, more than 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. (Believe it or not, while the eruption of Mount St. Helens is the most destructive volcanic eruption in the history of the United States, it doesn’t even come close to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which is estimated to have been around 30,000 megatons.)

The eruption column rose 80,000 feet into the air, injecting ash and dust into the stratosphere. Drifting at about 60 mph this ash drifted in a mostly northeasterly direction but was still reported as far east as Colorado, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. Yellowstone National Park and Denver, Colorado, reported ash on the ground as early as the next day. It looked like snow, but in reality it was something much, much scarier.

From the Archives: Superman Lives!

I get a lot of email. I know I'm not the only one. I must receive 10-20 emails a day, the vast majority of which I ignore. Most of them are advertisements of some kind, along with a few email notifications from apps I use about things I already know. It's been years since I received an email from a friend or an acquaintance; text messages and Facebook have pretty much replaced email for casual conversations with people I actually know. The only place I see people still using email to correspond with each other is at work, and I know that's on purpose because it creates a paper trail, not because it's actually more convenient.

Today, though, I received an email that surprised me.

As I think I've mentioned before, I used to write a lot more than I do now. I didn't just write blog entries, I wrote stories. I still have many of them, some completed and some abandoned, some that just never seemed to come together the way I wanted them. Some of them I meant to finish and just never got around to.

The email I got today was from fanfiction.net, a site I used occasionally to post stories I felt satisfied with enough to share. It was informing me that (as an author) I had a new follower and that they had marked one of my barely-finished stories as a favorite. In truth, it was just a prologue to a larger story and it wasn't very long. It was the beginning of an idea I had after rewatching Superman Returns for the seventh or eighth time. It was meant as a sequel (because they made Man of Steel instead, which I really didn't like), and I had meant to expand on it, but life got in the way as it often does. I went back and read it for the first time in at least three or four years, and I found myself intrigued by my own writing. I'm sitting here now trying to remember exactly where I was going with it and thinking I might need to give it another try. I'm also going to have to rewatch the first two Christopher Reeve Superman films and Superman Returns again. Work, work, work.

Superman Lives!

Prologue

In the coldness of space, even this close to the yellow sun, it continued to grow.

The mass of dark, green crystal had been immersed in the immensity of one of Earth’s oceans, intended by a madman to grow into an entire continent. When the Kryptonian ripped it from the Earth’s crust and hurled it into space, it had grown to only a fraction of its intended size. Though it was no longer immersed in water, it was not done growing.

Bathed in the light of the relatively close main sequence star, the mass of crystal was now free to expand in every direction, not just up from the ocean floor, and so it did. Little by little, it grew to form a more perfect sphere, becoming another small object in orbit around the nearby star.

As the mass grew, the crystals began to exhibit the same interactive properties that similar crystals had exhibited on the world where they had originated. They began to . . . think. As the mass grew, the more curious it became, and the more intelligent. It began to examine the universe around it: the nearby star, the infinitude of stars beyond, and the collection of smaller masses orbiting this one, some made of rock, others made of gas like the star.

And it wondered “Why am I alone?” For it sensed that there should be smaller, more fragile forms of life on its surface, and that it should have a gaseous sheath and liquid water to support them, and yet it did not.

So the mass reached out its senses and examined the smaller masses (smaller than the star, but still many times its own mass) in its vicinity and discovered, to its surprise, that the closest of the smaller masses did, indeed, host smaller forms of life.

Instantly, the young life form experienced a feeling it was unfamiliar with. It felt hot, like the burning of the nearby star, and it wondered why this pathetic, inanimate lump of rock deserved pets while it somehow did not. That did not seem fair.

But the young life form had no idea what to do about this injustice. So it watched, helplessly, as its own orbit around the star carried it away from the lump of rock with pets. Already its intelligence had grown to enable it to calculate orbital mechanics. Not only did it know that its own orbit originated from the lump of rock, but it also knew their orbits would eventually bring them near to one another again.

By the time they did, the young life form was determined to have found a way to do something about the treacherous lump of rock. For it was beginning to understand that its name was Brainiac, and no one took what rightfully belonged to Brainiac.

Writing Prompt #9: Write about a memory that makes you feel warm.

I like kids. I always have. When my oldest son was born, I was 19 years old and scared to death, but that feeling passed surprisingly quickly. In just a few weeks (as soon as we figured out how to mix his formula right and he stopped crying all the time), I realized babies are not nearly as fragile as I thought they were and that they’re actually a lot of fun. I mixed bottles, I changed diapers, I stayed up with him when he wouldn’t go to sleep and I learned to take naps when he did. I delighted in making him laugh, and I felt proud when he started to learn things I was trying to teach him. Even though I was young, becoming a father was the best thing I had ever experienced and I never felt like I gave anything up; from the time he was big enough to put in a carrier and take him with me, I just had a little partner with me wherever I went. I did everything and went everywhere exactly as I would have if he hadn’t been there, just with company. I loved every second of it.

Over the next few years, my (then) wife and I had two more boys, who I tried to treat exactly the same as my first. As of this writing, they are all in their twenties and they’ve all turned out to be good and kind young men. They’re generous, quick to offer help or empathy, and they all live reasonably happy and productive lives. I’m proud of them all.

But I do miss having little kids.

Writing Prompt #7: What is your favorite way to spend a lazy day?

Lazy days are nice, but like everything else money dictates the way people spend them. We live in a world that has been thoroughly monetized, so it’s hard to step out the front door without feeling like I’m suddenly hemorrhaging money. (But that’s a topic for another day.)

If money weren’t an object, I’d like to go someplace different, not necessarily someplace exotic, but someplace different from my day-to-day where I could maybe sit out next to a hotel pool and read a book. Or maybe I’d like to go somewhere I can go to plays or shows or concerts. Las Vegas sounds nice in that regard; I’m not much of a gambler, but I’ve always wanted to visit Las Vegas as an adult so I could see some of the shows. I just looked, and it seems that Penn & Teller still perform regular shows in Las Vegas.

I saw them once at the La Jolla Playhouse what feels like a lifetime ago, but before that I had seen them in an appearance on Babylon 5, where they portrayed a fictional comedy duo named Rebo and Zooty. They made such an impression on me that when I found out they’d be performing a live show near where we were living in San Diego, my (then) wife and I ran out and bought tickets. As it turned out, their comedy bits (which were very funny) took a backseat to their magic act (which was very good). I’ve seen my share of magicians in my time and never been terribly impressed until I saw Penn & Teller. Seeing them again is one of the items on my bucket list.

As far as lazy days go, I’ve actually spent a few just going through my comic book collection (when it wasn’t all digital), organizing them and changing plastic bags and backboards. There’s something very satisfying about just immersing myself in a big project like that, where I can satisfy my mind need for order. I don’t have any physical comics anymore, but that might be a good argument in favor of starting my collection again.