Millennium Man

Back to drinking strong, black coffee from the same old familiar Starbucks mug in the morning. I’ve been drinking a ‘green’ blend lately, which, I’m assured, is apparently good for me. It’s not as overtly sweet as green tea latte, but it’s not as sharp as my usual coffee. Musically, I’ve been listening to a lot of Arcade Fire, thanks to a friend’s recommendation, but it’s more the coffee than the musique that has influenced the shape and feeling of the new book.

This isn’t to say however that musique hasn’t played its fair share in inspiring the new book because, in many ways, it’s more about musique and pop culture than anything else I’ve thus far done.

If it sounds like I’m being vague, it’s because I am. The new book doesn’t have a title yet so I can’t properly tag this post and am somewhat loath to go into too many details about its narrative. Suffice to say it is something different, something I haven’t tried before.

Regarding things that I have tried before, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the planned Artifice Comics novellas will not be happening any time soon. Initially, the plan was to craft four short books designed to deal with issues in AC continuity that I’d like to revisit – Millennium Man’s trip into space and his eventual return, an Artifice Albion ‘movie’ and a ‘year one’ type story dealing with a Bush43 reboot. Right now though, AC can’t really support such a plan and, if I’m honest, I don’t really have the time to commit to it. It’s a shame, but maybe one day the project will be resurrected (again).

It’s not all doom and gloom though. lecteur de tarot’s cover is almost complete, which means that the project will be well and truly out of my hands soon. We’re working hard to get this done before we move back to more civilised areas of the country, after which point I’ll keep you updated on when you can expect the book to hit the shops.

I’m also working on something for September – more on this later.

Until then, please look forward to both the new book and to lecteur de tarot.

One of the great things for me about writing genre fiction is the supporting characters. In a story where the normality of everyday life is counterbalanced by fantastic events, it’s sometimes hard not to find an archetype that doesn’t fit if you look at the world you’re writing in.

At present, I’m currently involved in a romance with the Silver Age of superhero comics, not so much for the individual stories or characters but more for the contrasting feel of those stories when held up alongside the kind of stories that are popular today. Whilst heronaut is set in 1953 and has become fraught with reflection on the reality of what the world was like for the British Empire following World War II, it’s hard to take advantage of some of the styles and tropes of that past era.

It is without further ado then, that I wish to introduce you to Grim Knight Jones as he appears in heronaut chapter two. Whilst this is not his first appearance in the book and whilst a strong line could be drawn connecting him with the character of Jet-Bastard from Millennium Man, this was the scene for me when the character really became one I wanted to write more about:

The dark green Triumph 6T Thunderbird let out a resonating throb of subsumed power as he brought the bike to a halt, silencing it calmly and gently, like a man wishing to pacify a much-loved pet. He swung his leg around and left the bike standing in the gravel car park as he cast his eyes about the lonely greyness abandoned in the middle of the Hertfordshire wilderness.

Before him, an ill painted building of primrose yellow boards and squandered holiday cheer rose up, a metal sign framed before the door and swaying in the autumn breeze. Behind the central café and its weatherworn loneliness stood several trailer trucks, canvas sides decorated with logos for familiar companies the young motorcycle rider had become too disinterested to even read.

With a customary look of derision, Grim Knight Jones turned his attention back towards the transport café, taking long strides across the car park as he reached into the pockets of his jeans and brought forth a carton of popularly branded cigarettes.

The tiny, dilapidated café, several years overdue for a new coat of paint, was located in a pitiful little village along the A10. Grim Knight Jones had travelled down from Aspenden on his bike, joining the snaking road through the desolate dead end village of Buntingford before breaking free of its atrophying orbit and joining the Old North Road towards Royston and King’s Lynn beyond.

He planned to ride the A10 until he reached Cambridgeshire, skirting along the surface of the A14 until he could turn into the city proper and waste time amongst the old scholarly buildings. Prior to such an excursion however, he felt the pangs of hunger, a dry taste in his mouth and a yearning for sustenance that he assumed was physical but couldn’t quite rule out the psychological implications.

Smoke flitted up from the top of his burning cigarette, a wispy vine leading up into the dull heavens above.

The door to the café opened abruptly, revealing three broad-set men, each one dressed in a uniform of grease stained t-shirts, open denim dungarees and donkey jackets.

“You the kid who came in on the Thunderbird?” sniffed the first of the three men, the leader Grim Knight Jones assumed.

He was a short man, dirty blond hair greased into the kind of quiff popularised by Jesse Garon Presley and his square jaw pocked with flecks of blond and black stubble, like pepper and salt upon his worn complexion.

“What if I am?” the younger man answered with false bravado, relieved to feel the reassuring presence of the flick-knife in his left hand trouser pocket.

The relief was short-lived as it dawned on him that, whoever the three bruisers before him were, they were each bound to be carrying knives themselves.

The man with the Jesse Garon imitation quiff smiled again, offering the darker skinned friend to his right a knowing look.

“Well,” he chuckled, “me and my boys here were just thinking what a nice bike it was you had. We were kind of wondering if you wouldn’t mind us taking it out for a spin, just up to Enfield and back or something, nowhere too far.”

Grim Knight Jones felt his stomach flip, anxiety souring to nausea.

“Sorry boys, that bike’s my pride and joy, I can’t just lend her out to any Tom, Dick or Harry,” Jones said, knowing what was coming next.

“Well, that’s too bad,” said the Jesse Garon imitator, his smile fading, “guess we’ll just have to convince you to come round to our way thinking, yeah?”

“What kind of music do you boys like?” Grim Knight Jones asked suddenly, aware of the movements of the bruiser’s two friends as they closed in on either side of him.

The older man’s face creased in a frown.

“What do you mean?” he asked slowly.

Grim Knight Jones offered him a smile and a shrug, looking slowly away.

“Well, me,” he said carefully, “me, I like music with a little bit of a kick.”

Before the older man could react, Jones had lashed out with his foot, knocking the legs out from under him and sending him crashing down into the gravel and dirt below.

Where do you go with a character who has staked his individual representation on a solar mythos that everyone now shares – or rather, what happens to Millennium Man when everyone else is also a Millennium Man?

This is the question that has been on my mind for some time now.

At the end of Millennium Man #24, I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go with the story despite feeling that I lacked the mental stamina to continue the book into these realms.

In my mind, it was clear that Michael Manly, the archetypal Superman of the Artifice Comics mythology, should go into space. There were two factors in this decision: firstly, I loved the idea of sending a human superhero into space and secondly, I wanted to pay homage/rip off Alan Moore’s work on Swamp Thing (second edition) #55 – 63.

The idea was that Millennium Man would go out into the cosmos and meet new cultures and races in a series of short stories that would help him grow as a character and rediscover what it is to be human when you’re able to wield the powers of a demigod. I was always a bit sketchy on how he’d return though.

One idea, since put paid to by how TetsuMan now fills the gap, was to focus on Manly’s return in the early 22nd century through the eyes of several pilots enrolled in a ‘Millennium Man Academy’ of sorts. Tension would have been brought to the storyline by the return of Ura God and an invading fleet of his people/followers.

original MM II synopsis from my notebook (page 1)

original MM II synopsis from my notebook (page 2)

The idea never took off, if you’ll excuse the pun.

So, the question remains, what do you do with a character who has built his reputation on a distinct image and style when, slowly but surely, ever other living human being is inheriting that image and style?

The simple answer, I guess, is ‘change it‘.

If Millennium Man was truly supposed to be a reflection of Superman, then the most obvious thing to do with a returning Michael Manly is to invert the comparison and transform him into Batman.

In a world of potential superheroes what kind of personality could possess the strength of character to place himself above others and enforce a moral law upon the world? One of the main themes during the end of Millennium Man was the idea of the ‘saved saviour‘, the man who has been through suffering and emerged with an understanding of what pain is and how he can prevent such things from happening to others. In a world where the rules have been changed completely, it might be that the saved saviour may also need to set himself up as the silent judge charged with ensuring the world continues without falling into chaos.

So, if the analogy sticks, what would Manly need in order to swap his role as ’super man’ for ‘dark knight’? Well, gadgets are a good starting point. Any technological theme is a good selling point for young readers and gadgets are always good for keeping the action varied and excited. You want modified Siege Engine power armour – you’ve got it. You want a jet that can transform into a car – again, you’ve got it. All of these kind of gadgets are often the icing on the cake to an action story, the style to progress the narrative. There are literally a million ways you could go with things like this.

So that’s technology covered. What’s next on the list? How about the Batcave and an ever trusty butler/confessor figure? Easy – how about Lundunaborg and Artifice Albion’s Joseph Dodgson? So far so good.

But what about the villains, you might ask? Well, that one’s the easiest of all.

In my experience, this type of story always benefits from a mix of new characters and old. In the case of the latter, these former characters always have new window-dressing so as to make them slightly more distinct and mysterious, a puzzle to keep the reader wondering how ‘X’ got from A to B in the gap between the new material and the old.

In the case of Millennium Man, the choices are obvious – firstly, an antagonistic new blonde haired Mysteria in her 30s, secondly, a former heroine turned villain, her personality shattered by her own ‘death’ and accordingly divided into male and female personas. I’m sure that there’s no need for me to use names here.

So, in conclusion, if all of this took me an idle five minutes thought whilst making tea, there really is no excuse for why these characters aren’t still amongst us and why someone isn’t pushing forward with new ideas and new angles to showcase the various ways in which they can be portrayed.

It really is as easy as all that.

Music is an important part of my life, possibly one of the most important aspects of my life. It has been there since I was a child, the familiar crackle and hiss of the family record player and the skip of the occasional line or beat in worn LPs. I wrote my first book almost entirely with headphones on and, ever since then have found music to be as significant part of my writing rituals as it is any of my other daily routines.

As I have grown older, many elements of the regime by which I write have been stripped away, I’d be tempted to say ‘refined‘ if I believed that, but in truth I don’t. Nonetheless, I still find it important to listen to music whilst writing, not all the time and not every time but I often find that the right song can set a scene or inspire an emotion with much better results than diving into something cold.

This type of writing is the second form that I find the creative act dresses in. It’s a little less inspired, a little less eager to confess its words onto paper than the spontaneous grab for pen and paper or the quickfire feed of paper in the typewriter or click on the mouse but it’s no less important.

As the weekend just gone was bank holiday, I took time to begin the first part of heronaut, a project I’ve promised to Adrian Watts for PSP’s Astonishing Adventures. The soundtrack for most of this has been a combination of My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade album and After the Goldrush by Neil Young – a fact that is evidenced in the prologue’s faux!Young lyrics.

The Love Amongst Strangers (Again) project has so far consisted of a variety of Paramore songs from their two studio albums, the Veronicas and a very specific song by American Goth revival band, ThouShaltNot whereas the playlist for the pretentiously titled lecteur de tarot side-story, 『天国のお嬢様』 has acquired two very specific Aly & AJ songs from their Insomniatic album and even a track from the original High School Musical.

These are still early days and, as I’m first admitting my obsessions with music here, I hope to go into detail later about the ’soundtrack’ of heronaut as it evolves, along with a possible breakdown of the library of tokusatsu songs that were used in my stint on Millennium Man.

By way of comparison, lecteur de tarot’s playlist is over 4GB of mostly orchestral music.