And good morning… to you.
Today’s myth comes to us from “zeruslord” (who, I am given to understand, is Lord of Zerus, and there is no doubt one does not want to be on the bad side of the Lord of Zerus, so you’ll understand if I answer the request, I trust. Mythologists have to err on the side of caution where Locii are involved). And zeruslord asks:
why do humans have cities and suburbs? I’m mostly talking about the outermost suburbs, like how all of New Jersey is a suburb of New York, and people are commuting from Front Royal into DC, and Los Angeles exists at all. Why are people willing to drive for hours to get to their job? why don’t the jobs move out faster?
It is a good question, really. After all, cities were meant to centralize humanity, giving them greater access to work, goods and services. So, why would men, women and families intentionally go farther afield, sacrificing convenience and adding hours to their workday in the form of “the commute?” Why would they restrict their potential mass transit options to what is in their suburb (or to their car), despite the price of gasoline and maintenance and the environmental impact and all the rest? What, in the end, is the deal?
Well, you probably shouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s all thanks to a jurisdictional dispute. So let’s leap right into it, shall we?
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One of my favorite story drivers, bar none, is The Big Change.
The Big Change is exactly what it sounds like. Something happens to change the world, change society, change the way things have always been done, and then everyone has to deal with it. Theftworld and Trigger Man both deal with the same Big Change despite being set several hundred years apart — stardrive technology, always limited to third stage transitions, could now do fifth which makes new travel routes possible — and there is a third (sadly lost) story that dealt with that change a third time: this time from the point of view of economics.
The Home Front is on one level a homage to the pulp heroes I love. On another, it’s a homage to the golden age of superhero comic books. But on a third it’s a Big Change setting. The common theme is twofold: World War II hits, and actual super powered beings appear in its wake, making the unpowered Mystery Man obsolete. (As, indeed, he was in ‘our’ history too. In fact, the superheroic version of the Mystery Man himself was a bridge between the age of the pulp hero like the Shadow and Superman or the Sub-Mariner. Even the more prominent of the bridge characters like Batman had to embrace the superheroic side of his personality to endure.)
As people have noticed, a lot of Big Change stories are melancholy or even downright depressing. That’s because not everyone makes it through the Big Change equally, and there’s always at least some nostalgia or wistfulness.
This is not a wistful story today. And while it deals with the heart of the Big Change for the Mystery Men — embodied by their withdrawal from their urban battlefields and the reformation into the traveling Liberty Brigade show, drumming up support for war bonds and scrap metal drives — it also deals with the Big Change that America underwent in the war. It’s by far the ugliest of the Home Front stories, and it deals with mature themes.
This one was bought by Greg at Mythic Heroes as well, and was privileged to have been given the magazine’s cover (a dramatic cover piece I dearly wish I had an electronic copy of). Unfortunately, while the issue was solicited through Diamond, it hit the end of the Mythic Heroes ride during the Comics bust, and the issue never saw the comics shops or the newsstands. I actually shopped the story around to the magazines afterward, but mostly got form letters back (and a very nice letter from Gordon Van Gelder, the then new editor at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, that explained that he couldn’t use the piece, but expressing what seemed like sincere regret over the demise of Mythic Heroes.)
I hope you like it. And I promise the last story — scheduled for next Thursday, as it’s a multiple part serial instead of a short story — is nowhere near as depressing.
But then, it hardly could be.
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