Tag Archives: superhero

The Flash is Superman in disguise

I’m the first to confess – I’m not a comic book aficionado. I haven’t picked up a good Archie comic since I was 12. I’ve never read superhero comics, though I  have to admit, I LOVE the upsurge in superhero television. I was sad to see Smallville go, and I look forward to my weekly dose of Gotham, Arrow and The Flash. I understand the hero and villain archetypes are at play here, but this week, The Flash patterned itself a little too closely after the Superman archetype  than the generic superhero one.

[Tweet “#TheFlash is patterned a little too closely on the #Superman #archetype.”]

In The Flash, Barry Allen is struck by dark matter lightning after a supercollider explosion. He is left with the ability to run incredibly fast (an understatement). He teams up with Star Lab’s Dr. Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon, and Dr. Harrison Wells, the scientists responsible for the explosion, to fight crime perpetrated by “meta-humans”, other people affected by the explosion in  Central City. Barry’s mother was killed when he was a child by a man wearing a yellow suit who possessed Flash’s speed, and his father was jailed for the murder. He was raised by his father’s friend, Detective Joe West, alongside Joe’s daughter, Iris. Barry’s in love with Iris, but because he’s too afraid to tell her, Iris is currently dating her father’s partner.

[Tweet “Iris and Barry ARE the new Lois and Clark! #TheFlash #Superman”]

This week on The Flash, Barry defeated a literal “Man of Steel”, the story of Barry’s mother’s murder was re-opened by Joe who believes Barry’s father is innocent. He suspects Dr. Wells was the murderer. He also reveals he knows about Barry’s attraction to his daughter. Meanwhile, Iris is penning a blog about “The Streak”, which puts her in danger. Barry and Joe try to dissuade her from continuing the blog and are unsuccessful. Finding his name in this episode, “The Streak” is renamed “The Flash”. He, too, tries to convince Iris to discontinue the blog. These are the scenes in which The Flash thinks it’s Superman.

In Superman, Lois Lane works with Clark Kent. Clark loves Lois, but he’s too scared to let her know. After meeting him, Lois falls for Superman. Seeing a chance to finally be with the woman of his dreams, Superman capitalizes on the situation. What he does is dishonest, but maybe Lois deserves it, seeing as she can’t see past Clark’s suit, glasses, and awkward social graces. Fans live for the moment when she finally uncovers his ruse.

In The Flash, Iris and Barry are friends. Barry loves Iris, but he’s too scared to let her know. After meeting him, Iris seems to be falling for The Flash. Seeing a chance to finally be with the woman of his dreams, The Flash capitalizes on the situation, flirting with Iris in a number of scenes. What he’s doing is dishonest, but maybe Iris deserves it, seeing as she can’t see past Barry’s geeky exterior and the fact that they were raised as foster brother and sister. Fans will live for the moment when she finally uncovers his ruse.

Get the picture?

[Tweet “Flash IS Superman. Think about it: Dr. Wells is Lex Luthor. Joe is Jonathan. Barry is Clark.”]

Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying The Flash. I can’t wait to see what Lex Luthor’s Dr. Wells’s plan is, and I love the fact that Joe has assumed the role of Jonathan Kent to Barry’s Superman. I just wish they stopped hitting us over the head with the comparison.

Kick Off Party for THE REVENANT Blog Tour!


going on tour

A number of really amazing bloggers and reviewers have opened up their blog sites so I can take The Revenant on tour this month. Check my itinerary page for stops and updates.

Remember, The Revenant is now available for purchase in hard copy on the Black Rose Writing (BRW)page, at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, both in paperback and as an eBook.

Once more, thanks to Reagan Rothe at BRW for helping to make my dream of being published a reality. Also thank you (again) to Dave King, Design Lead at BRW for his amazing cover design and endless patience through the revision process.

Even though we’re taught not to judge a book by its cover, most readers will tell you cover art is key. I’ve had my front cover posted on my page for The Revenant for about a week now, but here is the complete cover:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Thank you to Dave King for his work on the cover art.

On with the festivities…

giveaway

Use the form on my itinerary page to enter into a Rafflecopter draw for a chance to win one (1) of three (3) eCopies of The Revenant. The giveaway will run for the entire month of August. All you have to do for your chance to win is follow me on Twitter via the Rafflecopter form.

Also available as a giveaway, PDFs of The Revenant  study guide. Please request these via email at info @ eliseabram . com

 

fan page party wednesdayJoin me on Facebook for a Fan Party meet and greet every Wednesday in the month of August. Like people’s pages and get your page(s) liked as well.

throwback thursdayI’m considerably older than your sterotypical YA reader. My  mind might work a bit differently than them, too. On Thursdays I’ll be writing about how that particular challenge has effected me as an author.

 

new follow back friday

Join the party-hop as we move from Facebook to Twitter. I pledge to follow back everyone who follows me on Twitter on every Friday in the month of August @eliseabram

 

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter J

 

 

 

is for Juxtaposition

 

 

 

Juxtaposition is when two opposing and parallel characters, plot lines, images or themes are compared for the purpose of “etching out a character in detail, creating suspense or lending a rhetorical effect” (Literary Devices).

In The Revenant, Zulu fancies himself a modern-day superhero. The narrator draws this comparison using juxtaposition. Here’s an example:

Zulu used his super sense of sight to hone in on the man’s eyes, forehead, and nose bridge…Faster than a speeding bullet—and Zulu would have to be faster, given his distance from the man in the suit and the man’s distance from the advancing projectile—Zulu knocked the man from his feet…More powerful than a locomotive, he pulled the weapon from the man’s grip, bowed the shaft, and used the butt to shatter the window.

In this example, words from the opening narrative of the old “Superman” television series are used (“faster than a speeding bullet…more powerful than a locomotive”) to draw the comparison between Zulu’s powers and those of Superman. The comparison to Superman’s sense of sight, while not in the traditional narrative, are nevertheless well-known traits of the Superman archetype.

In a recent episode of “Revolution”, Sebastian Monroe was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Tom Neville. Scenes of this were interspersed with a simultaneous hand-to-hand combat scene between their sons, Connor and Jason. This is juxtaposed against a similar scene between “Bass” and Connor when they were pitted against each other in a fight to the death the week before.

Can you think of any juxtapositions that stand out in your mind? What were they? Did you make the connection between the two events? Did they bring another level of meaning to the story? Share your thoughts on juxtaposition below.

The Ultimate Battle of Good vs. Evil

The Ultimate Battle of Good vs. Evil

Superman is my favourite superhero, bar none. The last Superman movie, 2006’s Superman Returns, blew me away. I was so looking forward to another blow-me-away Superman movie in Man of Steel. Instead, I left the theatre entertained, but somewhat disappointed.

Man of Steel was an okay movie. The special effects were spectacular. Henry Cavill is an attractive choice to play Kal-El/Clark—he certainly has the looks and body-type for the role. Michael Shannon, he of Boardwalk Empire fame, plays General Zod with stoic menace. Kevin Costner is perfect as Jonathan Kent. But for me, that is where the praise ends.

 Part of Superman’s attraction is his humility, his relationship with his earth parents, and his internal struggle to be a normal human which will never be realized. Man of Steel’s Superman never fits in. He spends his entire life hiding the fact that he’s different. He saves strangers because he feels guilty seeing people come to harm. He feels responsible for Jonathan Kent’s death because he allowed him to die rather than expose his powers to save him. When Zod and his minions break free of the Phantom Zone, they want Kal to join them. The rest of the movie (which is most of it) devolves into a rehash of ET when Clark gives himself up to the authorities and then a good alien vs. bad alien scenario—similar to Transformers 3—once Zod tracks him down. The climax (if it can be called that) is Kal vs. Zod. At stake is the DNA of every future Kryptonian vs. the fate of humans on earth, a high stakes battle, to be sure, but one lacking the high emotional stakes an audience should have vested in the characters at this point in the plot.

In a break from the battle, Lois kisses Kal and says something like, “They say it’s all downhill after the first kiss.” This is also true of the movie. Sadly, the second half of the climax is anti-climactic at best. After they kiss, more fighting ensues. Metropolis is destroyed. Jenny (in lieu of a Jimmy?) is almost killed. The story ends with Kal-El assuming his position as Clark Kent, reporter at The Daily Planet. Lois is the only one who knows of his secret identity.

For a franchise re-boot, I expected more plot and better character development. While Clark’s youth is told with charm, the rest of his story is one-dimensional. I will, in all probability, see subsequent films in the franchise. Perhaps, like the Sherlock Holmes re-boot starting Robert Downey Jr. in which the second movie was much better than the first, I will be pleasantly surprised. If I could give one piece of advice to director Zack Snyder, producer Christopher Nolan, and scriptwriter David S. Goyer, it would be that instead of special effects for special effects’ sake, plot and character development must always be of paramount importance. 

Graphic from http://b-i.forbesimg.com/robertwood/files/2013/06/Man-of-Steel-Henry-Cavill.jpg

About the Author

Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

YA Novels

You’d think as a teacher of high school English in a school that requires students to read a young adult (YA) novel and in which I have to listen to presentations and read analysis of said novels, that I’d know quite a bit about YA novels. In reality, I know very little.

Is it folly, then, to take on a YA novel as my Nanowrimo challenge this month? Perhaps. But I’m going full speed ahead with it anyway.

I don’t remember reading many YA novels growing up, besides Judy Blume novels and Nancy Drew mysteries. I remember reading Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea in grade six (no teen issues to be found in that one). In junior high I read the then scandalous Forever and Wifey before a friend’s mother turned me on to Stephen King in high school. I also remember reading quite a few soap-opera-type novels, cast-offs of my mother’s reading, mostly about Jewish immigrants finding their place in the New World, but not many teen novels.

In university I read Bette Greene’s The Summer of My German Soldier, and a number of classics (Winnie The Pooh, Peter Pan, Anne of Green Gables, The Sword in the Stone, Wind in the Willows) in university. I’ve taught Crabbe (William Bell), A Night To Remember (Walter Lord), Dreamspeaker (Cam Hubert), and Monster (Walter Dean Myers). On my own I’ve read Shelley Hrdlitschka’s Sister Wife, Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine, Virals by Kathy Reichs, and Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Prachett. My intention here is to neither brag nor complain about the YA novels I’ve read. It is to establish that I am, by no means, an expert in the field.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that YA novels are those which are published for and market to young adults (i.e., teenagers). The main characters in the novels are young adults. Issues explored are of interest to young adults. Forever is about a young woman losing her virginity. Pooh, Peter and Anne are all coming of age novels.  Crabbe is about a runaway. Ditto Dreamspeaker. The perennial Go Ask Alice (of which I have a still unread copy procured in my own teenage years) is about drug abuse, Monster: crime and punishment—all things you’d expect a YA novel to be about. But wait. Based on what my students report, it is much more than that. The novels my students read are tales of suicide, rape, cancer stricken youth and parents, sexual disorientation and/or ambiguity, terrorism, sexual abuse, self-abuse as in cutting, and murder, quite weighty topics for someone that can’t comprehend the difference between karma and divine retribution, I think.

Which brings me to The Revenant, the YA novel I’m chipping away at this month. Repeating the mantra “hurt your characters” (1), I am doing my best to put my characters through the ropes. Every night I sit down and type away, watching the word count mount to my goal of 1,600 plus words as I watch the story take shape. My characters have to battle with the fact that they’re empaths, seers and the undead. The main character, Zulu the Revenant, fanaticizes about superheroes as he goes about righting wrongs dreamt of by The Seer, his father figure (whom I must eventually kill). He gets stabbed, shot, and has to deal with the fact that the love of his life died a century ago and isn’t ever coming back—or is she? I haven’t yet decided. The empathy feels people’s emotions and sees auras so she is able to pick bad guys out in a crowd. So far the only hurt she experiences is that she may be falling in love with Zulu who she’s pretty sure is a vampire. She also has to deal with a meddling mother. It’s possible she may lose her mother and Malchus, the necromancer, may have to bring her back, though the way things are shaping up, it would only be temporary. Malchus is the long dead brother of The Seer (an old man cursed with longevity) in possession of a teenager’s body. He has raised two from the dead so far (one of which he killed himself), but they keep decomposing. I think the coroner may have to call his childhood friend, now the priest in the girl’s parish for religious advice as to how people who have been dead for some time are able to walk into city centres before they die one last time. Malchus struggles to get his powers back and under control and then he will have to find his brother because he must exact revenge on him for killing him.

At any rate, I have about 24 hours to percolate the next idea before I must force it to gel.

16,095 words and counting.

Viva Nanowrimo!

(1) Chartand, James. Fiction Writing: Hurt Your Characters. Men With Pens. 2006-2012. < http://menwithpens.ca/fiction-writing-hurt-your-characters/>. 10 Nov 2012.