[Note: Stan Lee preferred the term "comicbooks" to "comic books" because he considered them to be a true literary and artistic format for storytelling.] With numerous variations, comicbooks are an international phenomenon with a long history.
Like scads of "comicbook" & superhero fans, Stan Lee's legacy in that genre has fired my imagination off and on for decades. I have long time aspirations of breaking into the superhero arena. To see a few of my creations in even a "Grade-Zero" movie and/or videogame...
That Would Be Something (-and i don't even play videogames-)
Ok. So, I've already "published" a lot of superhero fiction on Wattpad™️. It comprises a huge part of an entire anthology. That's a start. However, since I've been so influenced by American style "comicbooks," especially stuff that Stan Lee was either directly or indirectly involved in...
How to find my own voice? Plus, how do superhero stories originating in other countries differ from what I'm most familiar with? How do other cultures handle various themes? Science? Patriotism? Theology? What counts a good win or a harsh defeat? What's the balance between individualism and social obligation? And (sometimes) ...
• What's with the spontaneous dance scenes?!
• And (but of course) about the only thing stranger than Japanese TV are Korean romcoms. [Wait! What am I thinking?! NOTHING is weirder than Japanese TV!!]
Never mind.
****
• According to a delusionally fermented rumor (started by moi)...
•• The producers of Japanese gameshows make their contestants take out massive life insurance policies...
••• Naming the producers as the beneficiaries.
You can scream at the little people who live inside of your television, "Don't sign that life insurance policy!" But do they ever listen? I think not. 😛
Ok. Ok. To be fair to the fine inhabitants of the venerable Korean Peninsula, Korean romcoms are simply to die for. No absolute need for dubbing or closed captioning. Why, you ask? The answer is simplicity itself:
• Romantic comedies translate themselves because we humans are insane.
🙄 (-snicker, snicker-)
****
Hmm. Anime and manga are not exclusively Japanese, and both cover an extraordinary range of genres. Both anime and manga are valuable in researching "non-Americanized" approaches to stories about superhuman characters.
What got me rolling towards actually getting superhero stories published online was the Russian superhero movie, "Guardians." A consistent problem for the superhumans in that movie was range. This is quite unlike a lot of comicbook related source material that I was more familiar with. I even considered placing my own super heroic project in that movie's "world," but centering in other countries.
There are 3 primary reasons why I didn't do this.
1) A single movie (no matter how much I examined its nuances) is limited source material.
2) I was unsure if I needed any legal permission "to play in their pond."
But mostly:
3) How important was it to me to be "original?"
Doing anything too derivative of Stan Lee's work, or the company he's most associated with, had hit similar creative obstacles. Therefore, being "original" won out. Since I love sci-fi, I'm designing the pickle juice out of my primary setting. And, yes, I'm even doing a lot of the math, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc., etc.
My original, superhero project has brought out my own "not-so-secret-identity": I'm a real live mad scientist.
Oh. About the picture at the top of this "chapter," I did a text-to-picture AI piece on NightCafe™️ before doing some image processing of my own on it. [This is merely a reference and is in no ways an endorsement, mutual or otherwise.] It's a step in the right direction for conceptualizing 1 of my female characters. Truth be told, that's not what I was thinking that her hair would look like, nor her outfit.
So, why look at AI generated images at all? They're not going to "precisely match" whatever I see in my imagination.
The idea, for now, is simple: I'm not financially set up to pay live artists what they'd deserve to do the visual design work. Moreover, different artists are going to put their own inflections into any illustrations. What AI can do for me, realistically, is to come up with:
A) Better descriptions. Whether the artwork is manually produced, or computer generated, instructions are instructions.
B) Some AI pictures will have areas and details that I like that an artist could use as part of a style guide.
C) There may be details that I don't want for a particular character: as in, "Don't draw it this way." However, some of these details may be more appropriate (or simply inspirational) for another character.
In short, AI generated artwork is a financially affordable tool...
• For the short term.
However, it must be used cautiously. Besides, I don't want to base final character designs entirely on AI generated images. This is one reason why I deliberately photo edited the AI generated image to produce the presented artwork.
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A Bridge Over Troubled Waters
SpiritualDear Reader: You are precious, priceless, and irreplaceable. In the entire history -- of the entire universe: In the history of all Eternity... There has been, and ever will be, only one you. Herein are opinions, observations, and things autobiograp...
