An Ode to Retelling
I’ve mentioned that I’m a gigantic geek, right?
Lately, I’ve been reading all the back copies of Ultimate X-Men that the library has, which is all of them, which is pretty friggin’ great. Ultimate X-Men is a great fucking concept. Essentially, all of the characters and the history of the X-Men entirely retold, with characters’ relative ages and aspects of their storylines changed, and placed into a modern realistic context (Bush, Condi and Rummy all figure large).
What makes it so impressive to me is how well the series has maintained the essential nature of characters in this new narrative setting. Iceman is still irreverent and cocky, but now one of the youngest instead of the first X-Men, and the same age as Kitty Pryde and Rogue, whereas before he was significantly older. Colossus is still fatally flawed, but now it is his closeted sexuality and a Russian mafia past that will be his undoing. Nick Fury, cigar-chomping granite-jawed whiteboy hero of the American Right, has suddenly been cast as Samuel Jackson.
And, it all works. I’ve been deep in the X-Lore off-and-on for a looooong time, and have no problem settling into this new world in the out-of-order four book arcs I get delivered off my reserve list at the library.
I knew they could do this, as when they transformed the Marvel universe into an alternate reality for a four-issue Age of Apocalypse arc in the mid-90s, in which they also managed to maintain character integrity in a twisted narrative landscape, going so far as to swap hero and villain roles.
But, the ability to pull this off as its own narrative, strong on its own merits, is just tickling the shit out of me.
Theatre tries to do this all of the time, most often with Willy and the Greeks, and it tends to leave me cold. Much as the Ultimate X-Men would leave most full-grown adults cold. When there is an audience as engaged with characters, be they serial or just endlessly examined, why not start reiterating the story? Fucking with the permutations? There is something uplifting, something that smacks of the immutable nature of the soul, in seeing characters maintain essential traits through warping of their narrative contexts.
I’d like to know in what ways artists can make that experience more widely accessible, bring that joy to a broader audience than theatre geeks, comics geeks, or serial scif-fi and fantasy geeks. Which narratives would we warp? And how would we traits would we render essential, unchanged by context?
Speculative re-histories seems the obvious choice, but I’d rather go more meta-pop-culture, like a retelling of the 4077 with Frank as the company clerk and Winchester running the show when a young Lt. Pierce strolls in, or a bar run by an Iowa hayseed, who inherited it from his ex-catcher-coach uncle, where a former pitcher gets drunk and a mailman dispenses sage and measured advice. Or maybe Beetle Bailey as a record store clerk, holding a candle for his cousin Hi.
Fer chrissake, you’d think I could find something better to do with my time.
Lately, I’ve been reading all the back copies of Ultimate X-Men that the library has, which is all of them, which is pretty friggin’ great. Ultimate X-Men is a great fucking concept. Essentially, all of the characters and the history of the X-Men entirely retold, with characters’ relative ages and aspects of their storylines changed, and placed into a modern realistic context (Bush, Condi and Rummy all figure large).
What makes it so impressive to me is how well the series has maintained the essential nature of characters in this new narrative setting. Iceman is still irreverent and cocky, but now one of the youngest instead of the first X-Men, and the same age as Kitty Pryde and Rogue, whereas before he was significantly older. Colossus is still fatally flawed, but now it is his closeted sexuality and a Russian mafia past that will be his undoing. Nick Fury, cigar-chomping granite-jawed whiteboy hero of the American Right, has suddenly been cast as Samuel Jackson.
And, it all works. I’ve been deep in the X-Lore off-and-on for a looooong time, and have no problem settling into this new world in the out-of-order four book arcs I get delivered off my reserve list at the library.
I knew they could do this, as when they transformed the Marvel universe into an alternate reality for a four-issue Age of Apocalypse arc in the mid-90s, in which they also managed to maintain character integrity in a twisted narrative landscape, going so far as to swap hero and villain roles.
But, the ability to pull this off as its own narrative, strong on its own merits, is just tickling the shit out of me.
Theatre tries to do this all of the time, most often with Willy and the Greeks, and it tends to leave me cold. Much as the Ultimate X-Men would leave most full-grown adults cold. When there is an audience as engaged with characters, be they serial or just endlessly examined, why not start reiterating the story? Fucking with the permutations? There is something uplifting, something that smacks of the immutable nature of the soul, in seeing characters maintain essential traits through warping of their narrative contexts.
I’d like to know in what ways artists can make that experience more widely accessible, bring that joy to a broader audience than theatre geeks, comics geeks, or serial scif-fi and fantasy geeks. Which narratives would we warp? And how would we traits would we render essential, unchanged by context?
Speculative re-histories seems the obvious choice, but I’d rather go more meta-pop-culture, like a retelling of the 4077 with Frank as the company clerk and Winchester running the show when a young Lt. Pierce strolls in, or a bar run by an Iowa hayseed, who inherited it from his ex-catcher-coach uncle, where a former pitcher gets drunk and a mailman dispenses sage and measured advice. Or maybe Beetle Bailey as a record store clerk, holding a candle for his cousin Hi.
Fer chrissake, you’d think I could find something better to do with my time.
posted by JJisafool at 12:11 AM
<< Home