Rish Outcast 230: Step-Dads & Adopted Fathers

 Marshal Latham joins Rish in talking about the depiction of step- and adopted parents.

To Download the Step-Episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, Step-Click HERE.

Step-Logo by Gino "Wicked Stepbrother" Moretto.

Blog 4/29 - 5/1

 4/29

Wow, I've come to the library five days in a row.  The people who work here must think I haven't got a life.  Pretty perceptive, the people here.

Comic artist Neal Adams died today at eighty.  He was an excellent Batman artist in the Seventies, worked on the X-men at the end of its run (when the art really got good), and was the artist on Green Arrow when it was revealed "My ward Speedy is a junkie!!!"  

He was very active at conventions, and I wish I had spoken to him more before he died (but he was before my time reading comics, and I was never much of a DC guy to begin with).  He was a co-creator of Ra's Al Ghul, Man-Bat, and was responsible for bringing the Joker and Two-Face into their modern, twisted versions (from the lighter, sillier Silver Age incarnations).

On the "Balms & Sears" front, I got to the part in the story I started writing in 2018 or '19 where a character says "faggot" and Alec's friend Chase (who is in the closet) tries to talk him out of using that word.  It's a difficult scene, because in my day, we used that word all the time, and the student that uses it doesn't mean it as hate speech, just as a casual angry word.  I'm not sure we live in a world where a character can say that and not seem villainous, you know?  And it makes me wonder if I'm a villain if I use it in my story, regardless of context.*

4/30

This marks six days in a row at the library.  But I don't know if today counts.  I was anxious to record a bit for a future podcast, so I took my microphone with me on the drive, and then I wanted to say more, so I just sat in the car with the windows closed for twenty minutes recording, despite the library closing in half an hour. 

When I finally came in, I had sweated through my shirt, which is pretty embarrassing.  But hey, maybe people just thought I didn't know how to work a drinking fountain.

The book now sits at 35,691 words.  But of course, only 34,000 of those are actual story.  To my horror, as I was typing this, I realized I had not emailed myself the work-in-progress.  I'd be logged out in two minutes (although they've screwed me twice before on that, logging me out before the timer reached zero).  I didn't do a great deal of writing today, but any loss is a pain, you know?

Gosh, I wish I were a better writer, and successful at it.  But it's something I love to do, so that's a huge point in its favor.

5/1

It's a new month, with a chance to start again, and get things done.  I wrote and/or exercised every day but one in April.  We'll see if I can do better in May.

May is a cool month.  Well, I'm a fan.

I mostly drove around, talking to Big Anklevich and podcasting today.  Guess all I can say about that is, Buh!

*Like that listener of my podcast that said I was basically a white supremacist for saying the n-word in somebody else's screenplay years ago.

August Sweeps - Day 570

Well, the sun is starting to set (a full hour earlier than it did in June, if I had to guess), and I'm done with my writing here at the library.  I blogged, answered a couple of emails, and did try to write, but mostly I just sweated (not sure what's wrong with me, but my hands are sticking to the keyboard--maybe the air conditioning went out in this place) and surfed the net.

I discovered this website called Quora the other day, where people ask public questions and experts (or just regular Joes) can get on there and answer them.  I've read at least a hundred of them over the past week, wasting hours that I could've been doing something else.  But I find it interesting, similar to the message boards and bulletin boards I've frequented since discovering the internet in 1995.

A great many of the Q&As on Quora are political in nature, and those seem to be the ones that are always "suggested" to me.  I've tried to stick to the Star Wars and Marvel Comics subjects, but the great majority of the Star Wars ones seem to be questions about the Prequel era or anti-Disney, and the even greater majority of the Marvel ones are "Who would win in a fight between Captain America and Red Guardian?" or worse, "Who would win in a fight between Thanos and Shazam?" (I HATE it when people mix Marvel and DC, or ask Star Wars versus Star Trek questions.  Maybe that's just me, but it's something I've always despised)

And I guess I can go into why.  The thing is, it's something very juvenile, that boys like to think about, and the comic creators learned early on that the only thing that comic fans enjoy more than seeing a hero take on a bad guy is seeing that hero take on another hero.  So, they come up with various ways to have the heroes duke it out with each other, most lazily (and most often) because of a misunderstanding.  And who will win largely depends on whose book this fight is occurring in.  But just as important is, who does the writer want to win?  A writer can come up with any B.S. reason the character he's rooting for can win a fight with the other guy, even if it's something as ridiculous as Punisher fighting Spider-man or Captain America fighting Wolverine.**

I refuse to answer--or even look at--questions like that, because the answer is, "Whoever Stan Lee says would win," or "Go outside and talk to another person, just for a few minutes," both of which are correct answers.

I have posted one question myself (in the DC Comics section), asking "What does Lex Luthor think of Amanda Waller? Does he admire her, fear her, loathe her, or consider her an ally?"  I asked this because I'm a fan of the Luthor character (I realize he's been written a dozen different ways by a hundred different writers over the years), and wondered, after seeing SUICIDE SQUAD 2 (what I'll be calling it from this point on), what the famous DC villain would think of Waller.  I honestly didn't know if he would like her or despise her.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In August: 2576

Push-ups Today: 70
Push-ups In August: 3010

Words Today: 684
Words In August: 16,930

*The best example I can come up with is the Superman/Spider-man team-up book in the mid-Seventies, where they contrived a strength-boosting ray to hit Spider-man with so that he'd be as powerful as Superman, at least as far as strength goes, and the fight wasn't over in a single page.  Even worse, though, is when they'll have Batman (who is a regular, unaugmented human being) fighting Superman (or Wonder Woman, or Solomon Grundy, or Darkseid), who is essentially a god.  That fight, despite how much I love Batman, should be over in a single panel.

July Sweeps - Day 520

This was a nice, lazy day, with not a great deal of work (I left that for the end of the day) and nothing to ship (no post on federal holidays).  I don't know if I'll manage today.  I just don't feel like writing.  Big deal, I know, but I got the cover art back from Big today for "Waffle Iron Man," and I made it a priority to get the story published (it was a goal for April, May, and June, I believe).  In trying to figure out the main character's name, I discovered that the text file on my computer was incomplete for some reason, once again having reverted to an earlier draft, or the program crashing before I could incorporate the final changes on the pass I did when recording the audio version.

Luckily, I had that audio version all edited (though I discovered two mistakes in reviewing it), and I was able to sit down and listen to it, typing in all the gaps in the final draft.  That ended up taking a crazy long time, though, partly because I found even more things I wanted to change, but realized they would only be in the text version (since the audio was recorded--and edited--months ago).

Oh, and here's the cover art, with text by Big Anklevich, that I ended up going with:

Finally, I've achieved one of those niggling goals that I was too lazy to tackle.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 522

I thought about cover art for the next Lara Demming story, "Made Just For You," which isn't quite ready to go, but ought to be soon.  I had a mock-up I had created back in March, that sucks quite a bit, but also shows what I had in mind:

I knew then--and still do--exactly what I wanted: a mushroom, very much like the one I used in the first story's art*, as a Christmas ornament on a tree.  And barring that, any mushroom ornament, if such a thing existed.

I found several that I liked, but none that I loved.  What do you think of these?

Then I got it into my head that, if not an ornament, I could maybe use a mushroom snowglobe (there is a reference to a snowglobe in the story early on).  I found three different photos of the same snowglobe, all of which were fine, but I'd much rather they had been blue mushrooms.

This I did instead of writing today, and I dunno, it doesn't really bother me.  

I also found this excellent shot of a blue shroom, in what appears to be a much more fatalistic image for a story:

So, I have utterly failed with the writing today.  So far, I only have "Lara" typed, which is only one word (I did a couple of rewritten lines earlier, but I forgot to do a word count for them, so I don't think they count at all).  

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In July: 559

There was some sad news out of Hollywood today.  Famed director Richard Donner passed away, at the venerable age of 91.  

Donner was one of my favorite directors, responsible for THE OMEN, the LETHAL WEAPON series, THE GOONIES, MAVERICK (1994), several classic "Twilight Zone" episodes, and as director of one and a half Superman films, was responsible for the best comic book movie of all time, at least until 2008.

I had the chance, in 2001, to meet Donner, at a signing for the DVD release of SUPERMAN (1978) at a laser disc store in Burbank.  But I was working on the series "Boston Public" at the time, playing a graduating high school student, complete with cap and gown.  As the day went on (and on, and on), I started to worry we would not be wrapped in time to get all the way up from the Torrance high school we were shooting at to Burbank.  And indeed, the shoot went long, which meant a check for the overtime, but also that I missed the signing entirely.

Luckily, Donner (and his wife Lauren) did a signing a couple of years later to promote the release of TIMELINE, and I bought a VIP ticket for that, to ensure that I'd actually get to meet him.  I got him to sign my copy of SUPERMAN, and shake his hand, and that was nice (since I had always regretted missing the 2001 signing, even though it was fun to graduate from school again).

Big and I saw Donner again in 2006, when he was at San Diego Comic-Con, promoting his director's edition of SUPERMAN II (which was a sort of precursor to this year's unbelievably expensive Snyder Cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE, except that they spent very little money on it).    Donner was one of the great directors, and I will always be saddened that the Superman franchise was taken away from him, especially as he and Tom Mankiewicz had said they'd be happy to make Superman movies for the rest of their lives (Donner once said he'd told Warner Brothers he'd be willing to do ten films for them, as long as they gave him creative freedom to do what he wanted--and that's a real loss). 

Words Today: 618
Words In July: 4471

*It's blue, but I had forgotten that it was actually a yellow shroom that I MADE blue, and not 100% successfully.  In my mind, there would be a blue mushroom on the art for every one of the "Lara and the Witch" stories.

March Sweeps - Day 404

So, I finished editing my story "Waffle Iron Man."  The plan has always been to run it on the podcast, but to have Gino Moretto on from the future, since he was there for the inception of the idea (when it was about Siren Head), and was interested in telling me about a Kiwi urban legend.  I'll make it a goal to get that episode (or episodes, probably two, since the story is more than an hour) recorded by April.

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In March: 1082

I wanted to remind you to go HERE to support me on Patreon.  They get the occasional exclusive episode, and the other episodes they get early.  For example, the episode that drops for you on Sunday was put out for Patreon supporters on December 6th. 

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1118

Back on Tuesday night, my cousin and I watched the first episode of the new Superman series on the CW, called "Superman and Lois."  It was pretty good.  

After the show, I talked his ear off about the Man of Steel, and it turns out I'm much more passionate about Superman than even I would've guessed. 

At one point, I said, there needs to be a rule set at DC and Warner Brothers, where they ask anybody who is in the running to write, direct, star in, or produce a Superman movie, cartoon, TV series, or comic book, "Do you think Superman is boring?"  And if they say yes, as SO many comic fans and creative people seem to believe, you shake their hand and thank them for their time, letting them know your secretary can validate their parking on the way out.

Superman is only boring to the most limited of people, those who could pigeonhole other superheroes to their most basic, myopic one word descriptions that miss the point completely, like "Spider-man is a geek, Daredevil is a lawyer, Wolverine is short, Black Widow is Russian, Spawn is a black guy, Captain America is old, Batman is crazy, Deadpool talks a lot, Wonder Woman is tall."  While all of those things may be true, they hardly encapsulate the characters they describe.  

Superman is many things.  He's a hero, a symbol, an example, a policeman, an unknown, a savior, an alien, a soldier, a leader, an immigrant, an All-American, a sex symbol, a loner, a Boy Scout, a threat, a philosophy, a god.  He's also Clark Kent, and all that entails (journalist, husband, thinker, bumbler, investigator, coward, everyman, friend).  There's a dozen different angles a writer can look at him, a dozen different ways he can be portrayed.

Yes, he's unbelievably overpowered, but any one of those powers can be interesting if well told.  But also, he's not omnipotent, and how does he deal with the knowledge that eighteen climbers in Tibet plummeted to their death because he was in Missouri putting out an oil fire?*  And there's always that thing of, what happens if the bullet bounces off of Superman and hits Perry White, or what happens if Jimmy Olsen boasts that Superman's his best pal in front of the wrong person?

Gosh, I could blog all day about Superman, how while he's not my favorite superhero, he's the greatest, most recognizable of them all, and he deserves to have his stories told by people who respect the character.  By people who love him.

I wonder if my cousin would even want to keep watching "Superman & Lois," if it means I stretch every episode out to two-plus hours.

Words Today: 1028
Words In March: 10,106

*My cousin often told me about a "Justice League" episode where Batman is incapacitated, so Kal-El volunteers to put on the Batman costume and patrol the streets of Gotham City in his place, and this lit up my imagination with the thought of: for one night out of the year, there were no murders in Batman's hometown, no rapes, no muggings, no drug overdoses, no domestic abuse cases, no one got hit by a car or fell from a fire escape or was run over by a subway car.  How glorious, no?
BUT Superman then considers that eleven people died in Albuquerque, nine in Baton Rouge, nineteen in Saskatoon, thirty-eight in Chongking, seventy-three in Anuradhapura . . . and three back home in Metropolis, because Superman was spending all his time in Gotham.  And he feels guilty about it, just as he always does any time someone suffers because Superman can't be in all places at once. 
That's what heroes do, apparently.