Thursday, July 21, 2011

Number 5 "The Return of Dr. Light!" AFTERWARD

So...what did you think? I hope you enjoyed it. And even if you didn't, I'd like to hear feedback about it. It's not like I can use criticism to improve the product (as I have no intention of making NEW adventures, haha) but it would be nice to hear what you think worked or *didn't* work...

I have a few random thoughts of my own re-reading it almost 20 years (!?) later...
  • I *really* liked the way Dr. Light got out of jail. I was very proud of that trick. His lawyer says, "You're screwed. You had way too much confidence to make that video confession" and then he says, "Did you bring me my personal items or not?" and then promptly disappears. Good plotting, I thought. I'm sure I wrote that because I was not a fan of the "revolving door" idea of villains coming back again and again. If you had an escape plan already in place, though...!  (BTW, he eventually did come back, but not right away, so either he did some jail time this time or maybe he planned on getting busted again, haha!)

  • Everytime I read the chapter set around the Amazon River I flash-back to inking in all those trees, bushes, leaves, etc while my infant daughter was asleep in her crib. She had just been born recently and I was "watching" her while I was working at home. She'll turn 20 in August. :-)
  • The story has the classic JLA format: Find the menace, get contacted about the menace, break up into groups to face the menace, get back together at the end to finish off the menace. Classic JLA writer Gardner Fox used this format in most of his adventures and I copied it because it works! Each chapter allows each character to have one moment or so to "shine" but you also get to see your favorites team-up. As we get into more and more of these you'll see that I returned to this format several times;  while also trying to keep things interesting (for example, the next two stories won't use this format). 

  • The ending may strike some as too "Super Friends" everybody-laughs-as-they-walk-off-ish. I admit it was hokey (the whole idea of Dr. Light trying to sell odd Earth items for money was just totally out-there, anyway!) but it had a point: I was trying to establish that Green Arrow was NOT the same type of character as Batman and Superman. You have to remember that this was the first time my readers had ever seen these characters. So I wanted Green Arrow to make some joke about drinking, which I thought most of the other characters never would have. (You may notice he was also visibly concerned about his friends Green Lantern and Black Canary getting injured....) I wanted to establish that he wore his heart on his sleeve, much more so than the others. Whether the "laugh" at the end worked or not, I'm not sure, but he'll be the "butt of the joke" in atleast two more stories coming up soon.

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