In Independence Day, aliens with giant spaceships that can devastate whole cities not only lose, they lose after having already devastated most of the planet.  You would think after wiping out billions of human lives and destroying billions of dollars of vital infrastructure that they would have a lock on victory.  And you’d be wrong.

In Cowboys and Aliens, not only are the aliens technologically superior, they’re physically superior.  In the climactic battle, the aliens are slaughtering humans by the dozens, while the Earthlings are lucky to kill one or two in return.  At the end of the day, the aliens still lose.

The invaders of Skyline are more invincible, and there’s no indication the human race has much of a chance.  But then we remember that this was supposed to be the first chapter of franchise, which meant that inevitably, the aliens were going to face defeat if the film had been successful enough to warrant a sequel.

On the surface, it might seem like humans are pretty awesome, but then along comes Avatar, where we get the spaceships and the laser cannons.  And proceed to lose the battle.  Granted, the natives of this particular world are fairly fierce and they do have the ability to call in space rhinos as backup.  Still, there’s no reason the humans can’t just come back later with more troops, bigger guns and better prepared.  Heck, they could probably bomb the planet from orbit.

But they won’t be back because they know what we already know.

Caveman beats Astronaut, every time.

If there’s one thing fiction has taught me, it’s that a technologically superior invader will generally lose against sticks and spears (or rockets and fighter planes) as long as the heroes have enough pluck and courage (and access to a bit of deus ex machina).

The Death Star will always have a ventilation duct.  The aliens will somehow forget to filter the water.   The blue cat people will have dragons at their disposal.  And the most powerful weapons in the universe tend to explode at the drop of a hat.

So if and when aliens do invade the earth, my plan is simple.  I will immediately throw away all my electronics.  I’ll dig a hole in the ground, carve a spear with my own two hands, and I’ll wait for the ten foot bug warrior with power armor and a death ray to make his move.

Poor bugger won’t stand a chance.  Almost makes me feel sorry for him, but that’s what he gets for invading my planet.

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It’s not an exact science.  E.T. was bald, but then again, he wasn’t a monster.  He was just a little lost guy from outer space.  If an alien or otherwise bizarre creature is in your story and doesn’t eat anyone, their fur (or lack thereof) is less important.

In the classic film Alien, a ruthless predator kills the crew, one-by-one.  Sure, the xenomorph is terrifying from top-to-bottom.  Its reproduction method, its acid blood, that weird little mouth that pops out of its bigger mouth, these are all things designed to make it a strange, unearthly beastie.  But when you get right down to it, the xenomorph is just an animal.  It isn’t malicious.  It’s just doing what comes naturally.

Our visceral reaction to the xeno changes though when you replace it with a tiger.  If somehow a great cat got loose on the Nostromo and did the exact same thing as the xenomorph, we’d be far less likely to rejoice with its death.  True, tigers don’t have acid blood, but the end result is the same.  Both are predators.  One just has a little more cuddle factor.

Sully from Monsters, Inc, is a fuzzy good guy.  Randal, his chief rival, is the bald bad guy.  But, in fairness, the monsters in the movie come in dozens of different varieties, and most of the bald ones are presented as likeable and friendly.  So kudos to you, Pixar, for breaking the fuzzy barrier.

The cuddle factor applies to terrestrial animals just as well as fictional ones.  It’s why there are (roughly estimating) 1000 more killer shark movies than any other animal.  It’s not the teeth or the cold dead eyes.  It’s the baldness.  Although I’m sure the teeth and the eyes don’t help anything.

Most horrifying cosmic monsters lack fur.  From Lovecraft’s Cthulhu to DC’s Starro the Conqueror to anything and everything in-between, you’d be hard pressed to find a thing from another dimension with fur or hair.  If Yog-Sothoth had a nice head of hair, we’d probably still fear him.  But we’d also relate to him better.

Even bald humans tend to get the short end of the stick.  Lex Luthor’s shiny pate stands as the polar opposite to Superman’s lush, black hair.  And if a guy gets blasted with radiation and mutates into a supergenius, you can almost always tell if he’s going to be good or bad by how much hair he retains on his giant head.  This isn’t quite as true as it used to be, as baldness acceptance has gained some traction.

But still, no sympathy for sharks or squids in sight.  Maybe scientists will breed a fur-bearing shark one day.  Until then, I guess they’re just out of luck.

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This is why Alien is a horror story, and Aliens is an action adventure film.  In one, a crew of poorly armed, non-combat astronauts are slaughtered by a sneaky predator.  In the other, a squad of soldiers blasts scores of aliens.  It’s true that the soldiers in Aliens are facing some long odds, but though they are in desperate straits, they can still fight back.  They might all die, but they are sure as hell going to take a lot of the enemy with them.  And in the end, it all boils down to Sigourney Weaver in a power suit grappling with the alien queen.  Certainly, not an easy victory, but a victory nonetheless, through guts, determination, and a handy dandy airlock.

A lot of people think gore when they think horror, and it’s true that, especially with monsters and chainsaw psychos, that’s often part of the deal.  But it doesn’t have to be.  I’ve always believed the scariest thing about Jason Voorhees was his unstoppable nature.  How he kills you is less important than the inescapable doom he represents.  You can only slow him down, but if he is after you, you’re pretty much screwed.  Unless you’re lucky enough to be the hero, who can usually manage to survive.  Considering how many people Mr. Voorhees tends to kill in these films, the odds of you being the hero are slim to none.  But if you happen to find yourself in the woods, being chased by a guy in a hockey mask, then you might as well stick it out.  You could be the lucky one.

But cosmic horror ratchets this notion of powerlessness up to true terror.  If you’re attacked by a vampire, you can survive.  Maybe even triumph.  If you are stuck in a death trap engineered by an evil genius, you might be able to find a way out.  And even if a natural disaster sweeps across the planet, you can be one of the fortunate few who cling to life, get aboard the giant ark, and live to see another sunrise.

It still won’t matter.  The universe will kill you eventually.  Maybe Cthulhu won’t rise out of the ocean and destroy the world.  Maybe Nyalarathotep won’t appear to you one night in one of his terrifying forms and offer you a deal you can’t refuse.  Maybe you won’t end up being fed to a giant slime monster that lives in the bowels of the earth.  Congratulations.  You’re still going to die with probably not much to show for it.

I am not a horror writer, but this theme has always intrigued me.  It’s what drew me to write Chasing the Moon.  It was a chance to ponder what it means to be human and non-human, to reflect on how vast and indifferent the universe can seem.  And to write a scene where our hero discusses the meaning of life with a fluffy, green eating machine before she must away to battle a werewolf cult that is trying to sacrifice the moon to their god.

It’s cosmic horror.  Just not quite as depressing as we’ve come to expect.  Does that make me a genius?  A madman?  Or possibly just a guy who empathizes with tentacles monsters way too much?  I guess that’s up for the universe to decide.

Although I’m fairly certain it doesn’t actually give a damn one way or another.

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A. Lee Martinez's latest novel, Chasing the Moon, out this month

H.P. Lovecraft suggested that reality as we know it is all the deranged fever dream of an incomprehensible horrific monster sitting at the center of creation.  The monster’s named Azathoth, and he’s the closest thing to a benevolent force you’ll find in the Lovecraftian tradition.

The entire premise of Lovecraftian horror is built on this notion.  The universe is too large and mysterious for the human mind to ever understand, and those who do understand even a piece of the real “truth” will eventually be driven to madness.  And they’re the lucky ones.  Insanity or ignorance.  These are your choices, according to Lovecraft.

Choose wisely.  Or whatever.  Not like it really matters in the end.

Cheerful fellow, that Lovecraft.

It’s always struck me that dread cosmic horror, as a genre, is still written from the human perspective.  This makes sense.  It’s horror by humans for humans.  We aren’t generally interested in the horror that a turkey must face when the normally friendly farmer (who feeds and tends to the oblivious bird) comes calling with an axe.  We don’t empathize with the dying sun as it fades into oblivion.  And when the ants war, we tend to ignore these miniature battlefields, littered with their dead.

And what about Cthulhu?  Who thinks about Cthulhu?

Probably the most famous of the horrors created by H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu is that giant green squid faced monster that most people associate with the incomprehensible.  It’s truly a paradox of the human mind that we can create an archetype for the incomprehensible, but that’s just one of our talents.  Cthulhu, sleeping under the ocean in his vast sunken city, waiting for the stars to align and to claim the earth for his masters once again.

It’s often forgotten that Cthulhu is just a working stiff.  He bears no malice toward the human race.  He’s just doing his job.  He’s a combo caretaker / exterminator, and you and me are just scurrying across this planet while he’s off taking a nap.  When he finally does awake, he’s probably going to be very disappointed to see how much we’ve spread.  Like leaving a bit of food on your kitchen counter, only to discover a swarm of ants have popped up around it.  So he’ll clean the place up and hope it takes this time.

But, like our war against roaches, it probably won’t work.  Even if he managed to exterminate all the humans, something else would come along.  It’s an endless struggle, a trudging uphill climb.  Even if you’re an eternal monster spawned from the stars themselves, that has to be frustrating.

Yes, I am saying I can feel a little sympathy for the big, green guy.  And while I’ve never read a story where Cthulhu rose from R’lyeh, looked around, and said, “Screw it.  I’m going back to bed.”, I’m pretty sure the thought crosses his mind now and then.  So the next time you’re spraying some insects with bug spray or crushing a beetle that dared to invade your garden, take a moment to think of poor old Cthulhu because he’s going to have a hell of a mess to clean up when he finally gets around to it.

And, regardless of the number of tentacles you may or may not have sticking out of your face, I think we can all relate.

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I go into fantasy with eyes wide open, knowing that reality can be, will be, discarded if it allows a human to teleport or an invasion of space robots.  I don’t need a justification beyond this is fantasy, and that’s what makes it awesome.

I know writers who work hard to justify fantasy.  Just the other day, someone told me that if they were going to write a story with someone who turned invisible, they’d have to come up with a reason why that person wasn’t blind at the same time.  It’s a legitimate question, or it would be if becoming invisible was something that could actually happen in real life.  But it can’t, and unless the goal of your invisible man story is to make someone think being invisible would stink, then it’s counter productive.

This is the “Superman would kill Lois” fallacy.  It comes from a well-meaning place, but it misses the point.  Superman (and much of fantasy) isn’t meant to be realistic.  Superman, like most superheroes, is not intended to be a horror story about a superhuman who accidentally crushes to death everyone he loves.  It’s a mistake to approach it from that angle, even if to do so is with the best of intentions.

This is why I prefer fantasy to science fiction.  Even my science fiction stories are fantasies.  I can’t give you a reasonable excuse for death rays, robots, and alien life forms.  I just know that they’re neat, and that’s really all I need to know.

Fantasy elements should have limits, but those limits don’t need to come from reality itself which already has the biggest limit of all.

I’m sure if I tried very, very hard, I could come up with a semi-believable reason for why getting bitten by a radioactive spider would give someone superpowers.  I know there are writers who strain to justify integalactic travel against the unforgiving limit of the speed of light.  And if anyone thinks there will ever be an even remotely scientifically plausible justification for telepathy, Hulking out, or dragons breathing fire, they’re more optimistic than I.

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But here I am.

I’m certainly not a household name, but I’m doing all right.  Better than I ever expected.  I have seven published novels (when the heck did that happen?).  I have three of books optioned for movies, and even if none of them end up going anywhere, that’s still pretty damn cool.  Just getting a book optioned amazes me.  I never planned on that, never even thought it worth considering.  But there it is, and I have the check stubs and fan mail to prove it.

Like all aspiring writers, I took some time to consider just where I should put my efforts.  Should I write something that spoke to me?  Or should I try to be commercial?

Initially, my choice was to write something that would satisfy me.  My first manuscripts were experimental, awkward beasts as I learned to write.  I figured they wouldn’t be any good, and that would be okay.  I gave myself permission to just write for me and see where it went.  After I got the hang of this storytelling stuff, then I’d worry about whether I was commercial enough or not.  A funny thing happened along the way though.  I never really tried to be commercial.

Writing is a tough biz, and being an aspiring writer is a rough, discouraging endeavor.  Inevitably, you will be told you aren’t doing it right or that your story is difficult to sell.  Never mind that all first manuscripts are a hard sell and that every trend had to start with someone saying something along the lines of, “Hey, maybe people will want to read an epic seven novel series about a boy wizard.”

People tend to forget that Harry Potter didn’t instantly set the publishing world on fire, and I can guarantee you that Rowling’s powerhouse success was preceded by plenty of rejection.  I don’t know for certain, but I do suspect that at least one of those rejections said, “Not Commercial Enough.”

When it comes to commercial success and marketability, I’m not sure anyone knows anything.  It’s all just guesswork.  Writers, agents, editors, artists, and marketing departments all work hard to try and figure it out, but I think everyone’s just digging in the dark.  Sometimes, you strike gold.

If we set aside the tremendous luck factor that is necessary for even the greatest artist to achieve recognition (much less commercial success,) I think there’s a false dichotomy in the entire premise that one can only be financially successful at the cost of one’s own artistic vision.  If we remove the nebulous definition of what constitutes “quality writing”, we find, more often than not, commercial success comes when an artist does what they want to do.  The quality of the Twilight novels might be up for debate, but I don’t doubt that Stephenie Meyer was writing something she felt worth writing.  James Cameron’s Avatar isn’t a surprising story, but I know that Cameron was invested, as an artist, in telling it.

Personally, I hate the question of commercial VS artistic.  I hate it because it assumes there’s a wall between the artist and the audience, that there’s an innate difference in people who fill each of these roles.  It’s true the artist’s job is to connect with the audience, but this doesn’t have to mean dumbing it down.  Commercial success doesn’t have to mean “stupid” or “soulless”.  Just as commercial failure doesn’t automatically mean “avante garde.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to editing my moon monster novel.  Not only do I fully expect it will make me a billion dollars sometime in the near future, but it’ll also touch your soul.

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“Avert your eyes, mortal.  For I am a blessed demigod with muses whispering sweetly in my ears.”  Then I usually throw a smoke bomb, ninja-style, and vanish, leaving the questioners to ponder the imponderable.  Sometimes, if I’m in the proper mood, I’ll leave a haiku poem folded in a paper crane and maybe an autographed photo emblazoned with the wise words, keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars! I’m cool like that.

Okay, let’s get real.  I like what I do.  I’m good at it.  It’s true that I am creative, but being creative isn’t some gift from above.  It’s work.  And, if I can go ahead and let the cat out of the bag, it’s work almost anyone can do.  Just as long as you’re willing to put in the time.

Stories in general, and novels in particular, are a great assembly of pieces, and it’s impressive to take a look at all those pieces once they’ve been assembled into a whole and marvel at how beautifully they fit together. This is the illusion of order, of plot, character, scene, and narrative thread, created by plenty of hard work behind the curtain.  If it’s done right, then it shouldn’t look like work. The seams should be invisible, and all the effort should remain unseen. But this doesn’t mean that the work wasn’t done, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the obvious stuff, like creativity and originality, should be assumed to be the hard part.

Storytelling is innate to humans. We’ve been doing it forever. Every culture ever to rub two sticks together has a rich history of myths and legends, of heroes and villains, parables, fables, tall tales. The form varies, but the result is the same. Stories are everywhere, ever-present. They always will be. Yet for such a ubiquitous activity, it strikes many of us as mysterious and almost magical. Probably because we’re so distanced from it.  We’re given our stories now. They’re pre-packaged and pre-sold to us, just like our music, television shows, and movies. We love stories, sure, but most of us are so removed from the act of telling a story that it might as well be magic.

Television, movies, and music at least involve props.  They’re usually a great group effort.  Writing books, on the other hand, is something any of us can do.  (Although I’d like to take a moment here to thank all the editing, marketing, booksellers, etc. that make any commercial publication a success.  I might be a genius, but I couldn’t do this without all your hard work and support.)  But if you want to tell a story, all you really need is a pencil, a notebook, and you’re good to go.  Honestly, you don’t even need that.  Oral storytelling works just fine.  It might not be the commercial commodity it once was, but if you want to test your storytelling ability, it’s the bee’s knees.

The parts of a story are available to everyone, and, to take my house-building metaphor to the next step, they are infinitely malleable and user friendly.  To build a modern house requires you have a blueprint and that you know where every piece goes before hammering a nail.  If you screw up along the way, it’s usually not so easy to fix the problem if you don’t catch it right away.  Yet the parts of a story can take a beating and bounce right back.  Don’t like a character?  Get rid of him.  Usually no one will even notice he was ever there.  Don’t like where the plot is going?  Give it a good shove.  Realize that you shouldn’t have done that?  Shove it right back.  Everything in a story can be worked and reworked without fear of damage or irreversibility.  Everything can be done and undone to your satisfaction.  In the end, whatever story you wind up telling will be just fine.

I’m not suggesting that anyone can tell a good story or that storytelling isn’t an art.  I’m just saying that anyone who thinks the creativity, the Where did you come up with that idea? question, is the hard part of storytelling is mistaken.  Just as suggesting that the hardest part of building a house is buying the lumber is underestimating the real efforts that make it happen.  Anyone can buy lumber, and anyone can come up with an idea.  Or even a thousand ideas.  You’d be surprised at how easily one idea leads to another to another and another.  Putting those ideas together, driving the nails into them, making sure they all fit together properly, that’s the real work of writing.

At this point, I would probably use my grappling hook, Batman-Style, to swing away now, leaving you all the wiser for reading this, but this is the internet, so you’ll just have to imagine me doing it.

Novelologist, Away!

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If I want to blow up the universe, I can.  If I want to glue it back together immediately afterward, I can.  If I want to write a scene where two gods sit on a couch and talk about dating, no problem.  Done.  And if I want to make a giant space squid eat the moon, no one can stop me.  

It’s easy, relatively, because I don’t have to worry about budgets or special effects.  And readers are a versatile group.  For the most part, they don’t mind watching a good conversation take place or an exploding universe.  And they don’t mind them in the same book.  Just as long as these elements fit together and are engaging.

That freedom is a beautiful thing.

But it comes at a price.  Just because you can write something, that doesn’t mean you should.  The burden of the novelologist is self-control.  Not just the self-control to make yourself write at a reasonable pace, either.  I’m talking about the ability to take a good idea and not use it.  Movies and television have a natural control mechanism.  They have budget and time constraints that make some things impractical.  The original Star Wars films are infinitely better than the prequels, and it’s not because of the writing (which has never been the movies’ strong point).  It’s because the originals were made with a budget, without CGI.  Just because someone could imagine it that didn’t mean it could appear on screen.  And that made the original Star Wars trilogy stronger versus the prequels, which are overindulgent, so crammed with visuals and ideas that none of them really get the time they deserve to get us invested.

It’s not easy to put aside a cool idea, but sometimes, you have to do just that.  I use Star Wars as a shining example, but really, it’s all over the place.  CGI has allowed movies a freedom that previously only novels and comic books enjoyed.  Personally, I love CGI and that ability to make amazing monsters and worlds right on our screen.  But I hate it too because it can become an obstacle.  So if I might offer a bit of advice from a pro who has had to wrestle with this freedom with every book . . .

Don’t overdo it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to write a scene where a Neptunian supervillain and his pet giant centipede fight some death cult assassins from Atlantis.  But, really, it makes sense in context.  I promise.

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Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoyed it.  I thought it was pretty good for what it was.   But can we just admit that it was a decent sci fi animated film and leave it at that.  Honestly, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a better movie.  It was funnier.  It was more creative.  It had more heart.  It wasn’t melodramatic.  It didn’t have long, boring segments reminding us that nature is good (a message I do happen to support by the way).  And, of course, Cloudy had Mr. T, who is even cooler than a twenty foot tall battle robot and a space jaguar combined.

Some people think Avatar isn’t good because its story is predictable and cliched.  They’re wrong.  People don’t want unpredictable.  People like cliches.  They think they don’t, but most people would rather watch something that’s safe and easy to understand than anything too radical.  And that’s okay.

Some people think the acting is bad.  It isn’t.

Some suggest that the dialogue is clumsy.  I don’t know about that.  It’s certainly not going to stick with you after the film is over, but it gets the job done.  The mark of truly bad dialogue is dialogue that is quoteworthy.  But what’s there to quote about Avatar?  What line sticks with you after all is said and done?  Nothing really.  So it can’t be that bad because, as a fan of the bad movie genre, I know bad dialogue when I hear it.

Avatar has its flaws.  It’s way too long.  Easily half-an-hour could be trimmed from the film.  But at least Cameron doesn’t overindulge in the slow mo too much.  Although, really, once you’re movie is over two hours, you really shouldn’t be allowed to use slow mo at all.  That should be a law.  Lobby your congressperson today.  Together, we can stop slow mo abuse for a brighter tomorrow.

For me, it’s too long because I’m not really watching the film to get to know the characters.  I already know them.  The natives are nice people.  The invaders are jerks.  Nature is nice.  Shooting people to take their land is wrong.  This is all pretty standard stuff.  Rarely, if ever, is the low tech alien the bad guy.  Whether it’s Ewoks in Star Wars, the natives of Avatar, or even the humans of Independence Day, the guy with the gun and spaceship will always be the villain versus the guy with the spear and space dragon (or fighter jet).  That’s just in the cosmic rulebook, set down before the beginning of time.

The story is fine, but the point of the film, just as in Cameron’s Titanic, is to get to the spectacle.  Titanic is about watching a ship sink.  How do I know that?  Because I’ve never seen Titanic.  But do you know what I have seen a million times?  That scene of the boat going into the water, and that poor guy who falls, hits his head on the railing, and hits the ocean like a dead fish.  I’ve never seen the protagonists kiss.  But I sure as heck have seen that guy fall to his death enough to know it by heart.

That’s why I’m watching Avatar.  I am there to watch a space rhino step on a battle robot.  Or to thrill as a space dragon knocks a hovercraft out of the sky.  It’s outer space, and outer space is supposed to be filled with cool stuff like that.  Avatar delivers on that, but it takes too long to get there.  By the time it happens, I’m almost too bored to care.  Maybe that’s just me though.

As for my final criticism, I’m just going to suggest that Avatar isn’t groundbreaking.  It’s a friggin’ cartoon!  It’s Tron with a bright new coat of paint.  It’s Monsters Inc with a few live-action people thrown in to make it seem legitimate.  But if you consider that 95 percent of what you see on that screen was created via animation, then you have to admit that this qualifies it as a cartoon.

I like cartoons.  That’s no secret.  I think animated films have consistently been some of the highest quality, most underappreciated films of the last few years.  I’d be plenty cheesed if Avatar scored a nomination and Up didn’t.  But Up did, so my rage is quieted.  For now…

Avatar is a cartoon that doesn’t have the guts to be a cartoon.  See Beowulf for another great example of a cartoon that refuses to take the label, even though it’s even more of a cartoon than Avatar.  Still, as a cartoon, Avatar isn’t groundbreaking.  Many recent animated films have succeeded in creating ultra realistic environments that can fool the eye.  The scenery in Kung Fu Panda is breathtaking.  The ruined earth of Wall-E is almost indistinguishable from the real thing at first.  And even the largely forgotten Surf’s Up(that surfing penguin movie that’s better than most people give it credit for) has a lush, tropical island environment that I found every bit as inviting and beautiful as anything on Pandora.  The only difference between Avatar and these films is that one hobbles itself with realism while another takes full advantage of its limitless possibilities.

Avatar is a good film, but it isn’t unique.  It isn’t even particularly original in what it accomplishes.  It’s just a good animated film, and that’s a worthy accomplishment.  But, all things considered, I’d rather watch the latest Justice League direct-to-DVD movie (“Crisis on Two Earths” is fantastic and highly recommended by this humble writer) than sit through a film like Avatar that ends up taking itself a little too seriously.  Both movies create fantastic worlds.  Both tell larger than life adventures.

But only one has a man dressed like a bat fighting a man dressed like an owl for the fate of the universe and has the bravado and integrity to do so without apology.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

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This is why I used to like comic books.  The Fantastic Four are good guys.  Doctor Doom is a bad guy.  I know this going in, and I’m cool with it.  I might respect Doctor Doom (more than I really should probably), but I also know that no matter how awesome his robot army is and how justified his egotism (the guy does build time machines in his spare time), he’s a jerk and evil and deserves to get his armored butt handed to him.

This is why I hate Watchmen.  It’s not because of the writing (which is rock solid) or the character studies (which is masterful).  It’s because it ruined what I used to love about comics.  Namely: good guys vs. bad guys and thrilling adventure that I can enjoy without having to realize that life is complicated and messy and has an irksome lack of doombots.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I do enjoy sympathetic villains.  I like bad guys with complex motivations and interesting personalities.  And I don’t mind if a good guy has a dark side but in the end, I like it when the good guy, no matter how flawed, is the guy I’m rooting for over the bad guy, no matter how justified.

I know it’s not fashionable.  I know even admitting this will label me as naive to some.  But this doesn’t come from a denial of the complexity of the world, but rather as a bit of colorful escape from it.  Escapism is not a bad thing.  Escapism is not automatically dumb.  And a villian who deserves to get smashed in the face isn’t always worthy of disdain.

I honestly don’t get it when we decide to ruin perfectly good characters in the name of sophistication.  My Batman might have some emotional baggage, but at the end of the day, he’s just a guy trying to make a difference.  If that difference means throwing batarangs and driving around in a cool car, well, good for him.  My Superman isn’t a dim-witted boyscout.  He’s just a man with extraordinary powers who elects to fight the good fight because, when a giant asteroid is hurtling toward Metropolis, somebody’s gotta take care of it.

Of course, I love Lex Luthor.  I really do.  How can you not?  He’s ruthless, charismatic, and he’ll do whatever it takes to win.  He isn’t a cartoonish villain who wants to destroy the world because he’s Evil with a capital E, but he’s still a jerk who I love to watch get his comeuppance.

Life is gray, but fiction doesn’t have to play that game.  Of course, I’ll never win a Pulitzer with that attitude, but I can live with that.

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