West Coast Avengers

One of my favorite series as a kid was the West Coast Avengers, which ran for a little over eight years in the late 80s and early 90s. The concept behind the series, as you might gather from the title, is that the Avengers decide to expand and set up a branch in California. The big idea is looking at how a more relaxed, easy-going, west coast branch would differ from the traditional east coast, business-like Avengers. Several of the West Coast members fit well into this idea: Wonder Man, Tigra, Hawkeye, etc. The first couple of years of the series, written by Steve Englehart, execute the concept well, with the highlight being a long story-arc in which Hawkeye's wife (Mockingbird) is drugged and raped by a super-villain. When that villain is about to fall from the side of a cliff, Mockingbird refuses to save his life, thus setting off a schism in the group between those who believe in the Avengers' traditional stand against killing and a group who rally around Mockingbird. Another great story-line revolves around Hank Pym and his continuing depression and near suicide. Around the middle of the series, John Byrne picks up the reins and focuses more on new additions to the team like the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and the (original) Human Torch. The stories are more traditional super-hero fare and lose the distinctive flavor of exploring how super-heroes on the West Coast might act. Not a lot stands out in my mind after Byrne leaves, though the addition of the ultra-conservative and right-wing U.S. Agent to the team added some nice character conflict in later issues. The series was cancelled at the strange number of 102 issues, ending in a story-line where Mockingbird apparently dies (just last year, she was resurrected in the whole Secret Invasion thing) and the East Coast Avengers cancel the West Coast charter. Marvel had set things up so that most of the West Coast Avengers team members would transition into a new super-hero book, Force Works, but that series sold poorly and was cancelled a couple of years later. There's never been a dedicated expansion of the Avengers since, unless one counts the recent rival teams (one pro-registration, one anti-registration), each of which considers it the true inheritor of the Avengers legacy.

Clone Wars Campaign: Recap # 8

This was the one-shot session directed by my sig-other, with me playing I-5. The the competition to rescue Arresta was a nice, light break from the regular campaign and we the players had a lot of fun being mean and sneaky to the NPC racers.

Episode 2.2 "The Ominous Silence" Session 4

The remote Ansion system seems to be a safe harbor from the Clone Wars that rage all around it. But these appearances are deceiving. Shadowy attackers continue to harass the Xoorzi Skyhook, the brooding presence of the Anomaly weighs heavily in the minds of those few who are aware of its presence, and Princess Arresta D'avilos has been abducted and offered as a reward in a sadistic competition.

With time running out, a desperate bid is made to rescue Arresta and solve the mysteries of the Ansion system before it's too late . . .

[70 AG] After a night in the safehouse, Tarn wakes and has Marpa explain the situation. Marpa activates I-5, and the three of them go to meet a contact named Proctor Gamble, an administrator friendly to the Republic. Gamble says that a local crimelord named Bel Sekand is the host of the "competition" for Arresta, and tells them to meet a man named Simon at the Hungry Farmer cantina. Simon says that the three can enter the competition as a team if they can come up with a 2,000 credit entrance fee. Marpa sells a blaster rife from the safehouse to cover the cost of the entrance fee.

[71 AG]

The trio is taken by a covered speeder to where the competition is held. The first contest, involving climbing to the top of the wall while being shot at, is won when Tarn scampers to the top. That night, I-5 plays some dirty tricks on the other teams and then searches the computer networks for information on Arresta--she won't be around until round 3. Marpa tries to bribe one of the opposing teams.

[72 AG]

The second contest involves a landspeeder race with extra points for shooting flags. I-5 and Tarn jump onto the speeders of the opposing teams, crashing one and running the other out of the course. Marpa easily drives to victory, giving the group a huge lead going into the third round.

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Slings & Arrows Comic Guide

Even in the age of the Internet, the best resource I've ever found for information on comics is the Slings & Arrows Comic Guide. Originally published in 1997, a second edition came out in 2003. The great thing about the guide is that it's not a price guide like Overstreet; it's a compendium of reviews of pretty much every comic, mainstream and independent, published in the last several decades. Some of the reviews are quite thorough, spanning several pages, while others are just a few words like this description of Image's 1993 miniseries, The Pact: "Mindless violence between preposterously proportioned individuals." The guide has even expanded my language skills by introducing me to great British slang like "Kack" and "Bog Standard". If they come out with a third edition, I'll definitely grab it.

My Amazing Race Fix

There are two things I find mildly annoying about one of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race.

First, the amount of time some episodes spend showing what happens in the airport as teams are trying to book tickets. The ability to find the best possible flight, although occasionally useful, is simply not that exciting to watch and, in the vast majority of cases, all teams will be on either the same flight or flights that land close together--which ties into the next problem.

Second, the problem of "bunching", where the the Amazing Producers arrange things so that all teams, no matter how ahead or behind they are, will be bunched together either through the requirement to fly somewhere when very few flights are available, or the requirement to go someplace to get a clue when that place doesn't open for several hours. Either way, the result is that all the teams end up sitting around and any lead gained from past success is lost. In other words, it makes the viewer feel that what went on earlier was a waste of time since it didn't impact the race.

Now, we can understand the producers' reason for bunching: the show has to (1) providing transportation, security, medical, and other production assistance to teams spread out through several countries would be an expensive logistical undertaking; and (2) show ratings would presumably decline if one team gained what looked like an insurmountable lead--imagine, for example, if during the end of Season One, both the Guidos and the Lawyers had been stuck in Alaska as the Bronx natives landed in New York for the final pit stop. It would have been a very boring finale.

However, this problem is not insoluble. Through the sheer processing power of my magnificient brain, I have come upon a way to resolve the airport and bunching dilemmas. The key is to always reward teams for doing well, while at the same time making sure the race stays competitive. Stay with me now . . .

The last team to arrive at the pit stop is eliminated, as usual. All teams after the first team to arrive receive a sliding scale time penalty: the second team to arrive leaves 5 minutes after the first, the third team leaves 5 minutes after the second, etc. The worst deficit a team could have (coming in tenth in the first leg of the race) would be to leave 45 minutes after the first team. The 5 minute sliding scale is chosen because it provides sufficient incentive for teams to jockey for position while simultaneously ensuring that no team is completely out of contention--after all, the only thing the team in last place needs to do at the beginning of a leg is make up a 5 minute deficit to stay in the race. Over the course of the race, teams might slowly move up or down the scale depending on how well they perform. Finally, all traditional bunching elements would be resolved between episodes--flights would carry all of the teams and only happen between legs of the race (and between episodes), challenges would only take place when sites were open, etc.

Quebec Blasphemy Cases: Translated

In the course of my dissertation research, I've made rough translations (with the help of my able assistant, Kelly McFadden!) of the three Quebec blasphemous libel cases that are in French. http://www.geocities.com/jhaeman/essays/quetrans/index.html

Cinematic Titanic

In an earlier post, I talked about Rifftrax, which is an interesting variation on MST3K-style riffing that uses new and popular movies. The true heir to the MST3K tradition, however, is the Cinematic Titanic series of movies. Led by Joel Hodgson, who is accompanied by the actors behind Crow, T.V's Frank, Pearl, and more, the series follows the classic MST3K tradition of taking an old B-movie apart, piece by piece. I've quite enjoyed the ones I've seen so far and it's nice to be able to watch them anywhere, instead of only on a computer like Rifftrax (assuming you want them automatically synched up with the Rifftrax player). The Cinematic Titanic movies are about twice as expensive, however, and take a while to download--but then again, on a per episode basis, they're still cheaper than buying MST3K boxsets . . .

Clone Wars Campaign: Recap # 7

This was a little bit of an unusual session in that, with the character of Ycram gone and the person who played Tarn absent for the night, I was down to directing for just two players. On top of it, I had to set things up for my sig-other's one-shot in the next session by having Arresta get kidnapped right at the very beginning. I was a bit nervous about how the session would go, but it turned out to be a lot of fun (like all of the two- or three- player sessions that have occasionally popped up). Now, a major mistake I made was allowing the reward for Arresta's rescue to stand at 250,000 credits--I guess I just didn't really think about how much money that was, but it made for some quite wealthy characters over the next few story arcs. Marpa's stunning the major villain with a single shot is something that still gets talked about a lot at the table--stunning was a lot easier in Revised Core Rulebook than it is in the newer Saga Edition Rules.

Episode 2.2 "The Ominous Silence" Session # 3

To the vast majority of citizens in the remote Ansion system, it seems like the Clone Wars are a distant rumor. There are no legions of battle droids on the ground or Republic fleets circling the stars.

But a rag-tag band of Republic operatives have brought the war with them. As they plummet in blood-soaked escape pods away from the Xoorzi skyhook, a partial success still leaves questions unanswered. Who's behind the raids on the facility? What's blocking transmissions and ships from leaving the system? What happened to the Jedi Knight sent to investigate weeks ago?
Battered and bruised, burned by radiation, they come ever closer to finding the answers.

Tarn, Marpa, and Arresta crash land outside of the capital city of Cuipernam. Tarn is knocked unconscious in the landing, while Marpa and Arresta are attacked by "talent scouts" who kidnap Arresta. Marpa soon encounters Lee, a Jedi Padawan sent to Ansion weeks ago with her Master (Sarigar) and a Clone Commando team to accomplish the same mission. Sarigar disappeared on a trip from Ansion to the Skyhook with one of the Commandos, while two others are in undercover roles. After returning to the safehouse, Marpa begins repairs on I-5 (and switches his allegiance) and then joins Tarn in a private hospital for bacta healing.

[69 AG] Marpa learns that repairs to the third level of the Skyhook are now underway and operations should be restored shortly. He has Delia's Ultimatum land at the city's spaceport and then sets off with Lee to investigate the surprising revelation that four escape pods had left the Skyhook. Using a radiation detector, Marpa and Lee, along with Trips (one of the Clone Commandos) track the escape pod and its inhabitant, the crazed Kaminoan Gemma Vous, to a residential area where she has taken up her experiments. Marpa stuns her and Gemma Vous is turned over to the authorities. Following a lead, Marpa and Lee then raid the kidnapper's warehouse hideout, only to discover that Arresta has already been "transferred" to her new "owner", who has made her the prize (along with 250,000 credits) in a competition.

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