4.0 Sleeve Notes

So thats it. Thats how the story of the Strangers would have finished up. But what did it all mean?

At the time I assembled all this, the idea was that me (The Architect, and in many ways the other Fundamentals) surrender their role as creators and hand over the creative engines to their clients. The obvious interpretation is that I was sick of writing games and wanted to just play them again, this is symbolised by the Fundamentals becoming simpler fictional entities. The creative engines that are handed over could be seen as FFX. This all ties in with the metafictional elements of the Navigator, where the bug tracking system (The Scintilla) overwhelms the creator and takes on a life of its own. I guess this was just me super-dramatising my own problems with getting FFX to work, just like any other piece of code.
It all pretty much happened like that in real life. I now lead a balanced life making games at work (such as the PSP version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed) and at home do other stuff or play games, like City of Heroes. I think about drawing comics or making stuff at home again, and churn characters and ideas out regularly, but dont have any wild overriding project chewing up all my spare time.

Writing this down now, a couple of other interpretations struck me. The original creator hands power over to his characters. This is like the way that characters often come to life in your head and start writing themselves. I've experienced this more than once - the dialog style and motivations for a particular character all sort of act like a separate subroutine in my head. I've heard other writers say this too, which is reassuring.

Third, I've just finsihed a book called "Cyburbia" talking about the rise of peer-to-peer communications. The old model was that a centralised entertainment agency (say the BBC) would broadcast and we the people would listen. This century, thanks to FaceBook, YouTube, Google and so on, people spend more time in this sort of cybernetic information loop where they take part in both broadcasting and listening. The ending to Strangers II kind of struck a chord with that. In many ways thats appropriate, in that the Strangers itself is an example of a publicly produced piece of work that grew up around a virtual community rather than coming from a central agency. As such it was able to indulge itself in the greatest excesses of the genre and not have to cater to a lowest common denominator like commercial work does. Several years later, the age of bedroom coders making their own games is back with a vengeance, with XBox Live and the iPhone offering solid publishing arenas for small time enterprises.

The other thing I'd like to go on about is the ending where we get a Universe where everyone's a superhero. Why do I think this is such a hot idea? Navigator kicks off as a critique of the Strangers, saying that it was too sloppy and disorganised. Throw in vampires, mermaids, other dimensions, demons, magic and anythig else you fancy and you get a big wobbly mess who's logical consequences are terrible. My critical faculties (The Beautician) cannot help but agree.

So in counterpoint to this we get the trident arc, with three sort of pared down universes - the magic one, the tech one and the mutant/science accident one. All of them are grossly unfair in their own way, and all kind of limited and boring. Sure, fiction like that can work - millions of Harry Potter fans aren't wrong, but to me it has little place in Superhero fiction, and thats what I'm writing about here. I guess the whole thing is me thumbing my nose at anyone who says that such and such a depiction of a character is the definitive one, or that one spandex universe is more realistic than the other. To me, one of the joys of the genre is the over-the-top nonsensical breadth that allows a Norse God to fight alongside a man in a "believable" high tech suit of armour and the daughter of a mutant terrorist and her android husband. I grew up with Watchmen and the anti-superhero backlash that came after, and it took me a while to realise I was actually more of a superhero fan than a comics fan, and it was exactly this hyperbolic excedss that drew me in.

But some things about the genre have always bothered me. It's elitist. I guess all fiction is, in that we know the hero will inevitably save the day, and not the bystander on page 57. But superhero fiction does pander to this idea of an elite who can while most others cannot. Given the choice, would you live in the Marvel universe? Where you have a 0.001% chance of being one of the lucky ones, otherwise theres not much you can do if the Scorpion robs a bank on your way to work. Or Galactus shows up. I wouldnt trade this world for that one. But how about a world where everyone gets a share of the orgone-powered pie? I'd be there like a shot, hoping to grow strange new third eyes or telescopic limbs or whatever goodies the world would throw at me! (actually, I am there like a shot, I cant stop playing City of Heroes some days..)

Superhero fiction is also violent! I hate violence in real life, so whats the draw? Its violence at its worse, sexy cartoony violence with no consequences where people routinely stab each other, set fire to each other and even just punch the crap out of each other to prove a dubious moral point. Why is it a good thing that the Punisher shoots drug dealers? Beats me..

I've always felt we all too rarely get to see superheroes doing other stuff. Superman himself does fairly regulalry, eg taking a bus load of kids with cancer for a sightseeing tour of the pyramids in All Star Superman #10. But the average superhero often seems to do little other than fight other superhumans. I understand that violence is within us biologicaly, we are part predator, and that a safety valve is always a good thing. But anyway, I wanted the last shots or descriptions of the "everyone is super" future to show people using their powers for healing, teaching and art rather than police or army work like they normally do. I guess Chaos and Anemone and their crowd are part of that too, especially the Pharoah, a man with socio-economic superpowers that have minor combat uses.

And finally, I am written out. Thank you all for playing and listening.