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Glorious Spring Wednesday
Today was my idea of a lovely 💐Spring🌷 day. It was chilly, grey and overcast. Fantastic!
Fair Weather
In fair weather prepare for foul. ~Thomas Fuller
💐Spring🌷 is off to an odd start. Seventies, thirties, fifties…
The way I see it, there’s something for everybody.
The days that are sunny and in the seventies are lovely 💐Spring🌷 days for “normal” people.
The days that bounce between thirties and fifties are lovely 💐Spring🌷 days for me.
That’s what I call a win-win scenario.
I don’t know how long or how often it will be my kind of seasonable, but I’m grateful for each and every solemn, dreary day.
The sunny days have their conventional charm, but I’m looking forward to the famous April showers keeping things pleasant for the foreseeable future.
🌞Summer🔥 will be here all too soon.
🚣🏾 Before The 🇳🇱 Dutch ⛵
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In order for Peter Minuit to have “bought” Manhattan from the natives, there had to have been somebody here first.
The primary points of contact for the settlers of the New Netherlands colonies were the Lenape.
A bit farther inland were the Haudenosaunee, a confederation of indigenous nations.
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Things didn’t always go well between the early European settlers and the people they were quickly displacing, but sometimes they did.
Initially, there was an agreeable trade in beaver pelts and other local resources.
Needless to say, human nature being what it is, hotter heads prevailed and things went to crap.
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Add to this the fact that while settlers on the eastern coasts of North America were a nearly meaningless minority, their home nations were kicking sand in each others’ eyes throughout the world.
This led to what we now know as New York changing hands a few times before becoming solidly an English property.
Unfortunately, since the French and English had been kicking each other in the nuts for centuries, the native nations got pinched between two “great powers” and the rest is history.
Priscilla got to watch it all, as did some of the other members of The Conclave.
Imagine what that would do to a person…
How much of NYC histories happened to them and how much did they steer? How much of it could they have steered?
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Conflict Drives The Plot
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. ~Thomas Paine
So, what’s a superhero story without a big duke up?
It’s a required feature of the genre.
Sure, we need some well-crafted character arcs and thoughtful examination of themes, but we definitely need somebody to get punched through a wall or some kind of property damage done.
In stories, there are all kinds of conflict available to make use of.
The friction between the protagonist and the antagonist is the most conspicuous kind of conflict.
There is also the internal conflict that comes from the protagonist, antagonist and any witnesses needing to make some sense of whatever has happened.
Will the protagonist’s sense of justice rub off on the antagonist?
Will the antagonist’s jaundiced view of the world rub off on the protagonist?
Will the lookie-loos take sides? That’s actually a thing.
If you watch Joker or Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Part 1, you’ll see some prime examples of the protagonists swaying the crowd.
Gotham also did a great job of showing how people began to follow some of Batman’s most iconic villains.
In the classic Batman TV Series, the comic book villains had gangs of mooks willing to wear preposterous costumes that were themed to match their bosses’ schtick.
In that milieu, it was just given that random thugs would be willing to be seen in public wearing some of the stupidest-looking getups.
In theory, they’d have done it for the money but how much would you have to get paid to dress up like an idiot and get punched out by Batman and Robin?
In Gotham, they were still a bit more stylized than real life, but it approached believability.
The cult of Jerome seemed more believable than a gaggle of goons in sweater vests or dressed up as art students.
Penguin’s goons were mostly mob dudes in suits or street toughs in whatever they felt like wearing.
Most of the other villains worked on their own.
The Sentinels won’t be facing costumed crews of devoted mooks. The Conclave doesn’t do themes. They will have their own security staff, but most of their insidious army will be people who would do bad things even if they weren’t being manipulated by this secret cabal.
Since the first trilogy of the series will be based on Golden Age tropes, the main villains will be gangsters, corrupt politicians and The Conclave (as a substitute for the Axis Powers).
The Silver and Bronze Ages were more characterized by a proliferation of supers, both heroes and villains. This will reflect the effect of the Chaosians on the world in the wake of the climax of the first trilogy.
The Modern Age was more of a reimagining of the medium. This was when a lot of classic characters, teams and entire multiverses were completely rebooted.
My final collection of the series will be an examination of how things change in the wake of the Chaos War. The next generation of Sentinels will have their origin and growth arcs.
So, what I’ve got is broad strokes that need to be refined into a workable collection of stories.
That’s it for this glorious hump day. I’m about ready for bed. I hope you had as a lovely, dreary dad as I did.