So, every so often things don’t work out quite as you expected them to.
That’s not too surprising at this point. When you’re a writer, sometimes the stories take unexpected turns. Which is what happened to me this time. You see, I finished the Prosperina myth, and figured I was going back into normal production. Prosperina was long for a story, so I had a certain amount of ‘flex’ before I had to get into the regular schedule, but I was pretty sure I’d write a Justice Wing story, then write or post something for Storytelling, then do a myth for the following week.
For whatever reason, I didn’t want to do the next part of Vilify 5 next. I wanted to write something self contained. I thought about writing the very old school story of the time Lady Velvet used Paragon as a weapon against Nightstick and Cudgel, but that story wasn’t quite ready.
And then I thought “hey — why don’t I tell an origin story! That’s nicely comic bookish!” And for whatever reason, the Lieutenant was the character that sprung to mind. I even came up with a good framing device for it — a book Barbara Babcock (Lois Lane to Paragon’s Superman) would write about what Champions would call the Dependent Non Player Characters in a superhero’s life.
In other words, a book about Lois, Jimmy Olson, Perry White, Alfred Pennyworth, Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Steve Trevor, and all the rest of the happy people who were turned into monkeys or killed and stuffed into refrigerators. That would do it!
Yeah.
Over twelve thousand words later, here we are. I thought about breaking it up into parts, but I don’t think this story would support it. So here’s a whole chapter of Barbara’s book for you. And this is why I didn’t get anything else done since then.
One thing I like is neither Barbara nor her interviewee sound like Todd Chapman, from “Interviewing Leather.” At least, within the bounds of me actually writing everyone involved.
The picture isn’t fan art, per se. That’s actually mine. Sort of. See, I started with a posted City of Heroes character based on the Lieutenant, and then I did the photoshop shuffle. The result was meant to look like a comic book panel from 1938 or so, and damn if it didn’t come out right (right down to suspect registration errors and slightly heavy blacks on the lines).
I hope you like “Legacies of the Past.”
