Been many years now since that weird Arkham
/ Gotham merger occurred, and to celebrate it (and the elegant absurdity of
it), here is the Dark Knight’s investigator card for Arkham Horror – next game, trust me, I’m using it!
Arkham is now a district of Gotham City,
nothing more. They kept the Asylum, sure, but not the Miskatonic River nor the
University, nor the Witch House and other cool eerie spots. HPL’s Arkham is
just plain gone, and it makes me very sad.
It’s like saying that the Dragon Isle of Melniboné
and the Isle of Númenor are one and the same – or that Camelot is in Lankhmar –
but wait till it is Public Domain, though! Why do you think there are so many
versions of the same stories in Greek mythology or Arthurian mythos? It’s
because writers constantly rip off previous writers. Vergil cannot leave Homer
alone, so he tells a different story of the same damn Achilles. Malory cannot
leave Chrétien de Troyes alone, so he spins a different tale of the same damn
Lancelot... Five hundred years from now, our own pop culture will also be a huge mess, perhaps even bigger:
Hastur the Unspeakable will be the Joker’s BFF, and together they’ll plot the
destruction of the Klingon High Jedi Council of Minas Tirith...
Who invented Gotham City anyway? Is it Bill
Finger? Is it Herron & Kirby? We know that Lovecraft created Arkham in
1920. Gotham City is first mentioned in a 1940 issue of Batman. So, is Arkham older
than Gotham, then? But wait, Washington Irving made use of the name “Gotham” back
in 1807, didn’t he? Borrowed from someone who borrowed it from someone else who
borrowed it from... where?
Both names are Public Domain – because both Irving
and Lovecraft died such a long time ago. If I decide to write a Cthulhu novella
set in Arkham, with “Gotham City” being the name of the outskirts of Arkham,
north of the Miskatonic, nobody in the world could say anything, right? The
name Gotham doesn’t belong to DC
Comics.
Today’s TV could be called the Public Domain
Media. Elementary, Sherlock, Grimm, Dracula, Once Upon A Time... Who’s falling into Public
Domain next? Orwell? You can bet there are three TV shows already in the works,
then... Big Brother is watching you, Public Domain, and he wants to make money
without paying any money.
I refuse to do any research about Disney. What
I’ve heard is that they now own every Marvel superhero, just like they own
everything Star Wars. Is that so, or
just a truckload of crap? I don’t really give a rat’s ass. So, hypothetically, Disney owns all of Marvel’s
characters, but not Marvel Studios proper? And Marvel Studios now produce Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which is set in
the same “Marvel Universe”, but you never actually see the Hulk, Iron Man, or
Thor – although they are mentioned from time to time... Eighty-seven lawyers
brokered this lucrative deal? It’s almost creepy. Armies of suits square off
against each other in order to get their filthy hands on our geek dollars.
Someone else told me that Spider-Man still belongs to Marvel – as long as
they keep releasing new material every two years or so; if they stop the flow
of new Spidey material, Spidey then becomes Disney’s property. Is that yet
another truckload of bullshit? I don’t know, and I honestly don’t care
researching any of that. It’s too depressing. Even a half-minute Google search
is too big a waste of my time when it comes to Disney. Consider this my #DisneySide.
My nephew is six years old and now totally
loves Star Wars. Six, that’s how old
I was in ’77. Accordingly, the little guy was amazed when he saw that I knew
these characters inside and out. And of course he wanted to show me his toys...
This is when I realized how Star Wars
nowadays is not exactly – not at all – the thing I used to know and love. There
are Jedi Angry Birds and Sith Little Pigs and Star Wars Angry Birds video games, and Star Wars Lego webisodes and
video games, and it’s impossible to keep track of everything in there. Luke
Skywalker in on Naboo. Jar Jar goes to Tatooine. Han Solo meets Boss Nass.
Darth Maul builds the Death Star. It’s an incredible, intractable, invincible
mess.
Disney / Hasbro / Lego / Rovio / Retoy: an
orgy of cash, that’s what it is.
But I did something fantastic, something I’m
very proud of: I never said anything
in front of my nephew. Let him have his Star
Wars trip, right here in 2014, just like I had mine in ’79. Why should I even
bother, since there’s absolutely nothing
I can do about any of this... Angry
Bird General Grievous now helps Lego Lando Calrissian in his fierce battle
against some cheese-like substance...
Why do we write? What’s the goal of it? To
create interesting characters, right? But if you create an interesting enough character,
it turns to crap for sure – sooner or later. So what’s the
answer? What should we do? Never get attached to any character, ever? Not the
ones you create, nor those created by others.
For example, right now, I’m getting attached
to Reese and Finch and Shaw, and I shouldn’t, because they’re bound to be
turned into crap. It’s not a question of if,
it’s just a question of when. It can
take some time indeed. With the Star Wars
characters, it took more than 20 years. For Mulder and Scully, it didn’t happen
yet – but it will, mark my words. Disney or some other shit factory will
acquire the rights to The X-Files,
and that will be it. Goodbye. Sayonara. Ciao.
I call this phenomenon “the great wood
chipper”. We throw everything we have in it, every piece of our culture. Scott
Fitzgerald, Victor Hugo, Alan Moore, Tolkien, Conan Doyle... We even throw our
previous crap in that crap-maker to make it crappier still – Carrie, Total Recall, Robocop...
Making money is the only virtue in our
society; Hollywood and Disney succeed thoroughly. Sometimes, someone tries to
grab the bonus audience of an adjacent fanbase, like DC did when they included
Arkham and its infamous Asylum: they try to lure in the Lovecraft fans.
Or am I insane?