Convenient Incompetence?

I get on various kicks. These days, I’m really into the Justice League animated series, having seen most of the Justice League animated movies. Though this series is well over ten years old, I’m finally getting around to watching the episodes of season 1 that I missed. Better late than never, I guess.

The Justice League (from left to right) Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Flash, Hawkgirl

Maybe it’s the slo-mo hero walk as the theme music swells that gets to me, but I can’t get enough of the show. Here. Watch the opener for yourself.

Like it? Makes you want to put on a cape, doesn’t it? Or, perhaps it inspires you to find six people and make them walk with you in slow motion. While I love the series, one thing irks me: many times the heroes get a serious beat-down until the last few minutes of the second or third episode. (Episodes have at least two parts in this first season.) I’m not against a hero getting the worst of it in a fight for the sake of building tension. But some aspects are frustrating to me, especially if a character is (allegedly) almost invincible. Take Superman and Wonder Woman.

 

They have super strength and are bullet proof (Wonder Woman through her bullet-proof bracelets), among other skills. But in many episodes, someone who seems to have less power is able to slip in and sock either of them on the jaw, which sends them flying back. Maybe I’m missing something, but if you can’t even use scissors to cut Superman’s hair (since the scissors would break), I ask myself, Does it make sense that someone could punch him on the jaw or in the ribs without breaking several bones in one’s hand? Same with Wonder Woman. I just watched an episode where a woman raised on Themyscira (home of the Amazons) and given super strength via magic, gets the better of Wonder Woman more than once. But shouldn’t a woman who was born an Amazon have a slight advantage over a woman who is merely given super strength? I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m just curious.

And Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’onzz), who supposedly is one of the most powerful creatures around with his super strength, regeneration ability, as well as his ability to shape shift and mind read, regularly gets knocked unconscious.

I know I’m quibbling here. May I remind you that I do love the show. But having watched some of the behind-the-scenes features, I learned that other viewers had issues. Some described Superman as “a wimp” (according to producers Bruce Timm and James Tucker). The producers admitted that they pulled back on Superman’s power to make the threats the Justice League faced have more weight.

Okay, I can understand that. If Superman or Wonder Woman could easily defeat certain villains, the stakes would seem pretty low. And with their abilities, watching them take down a villain practically with one hand tied behind their back would seem boring by the third episode. But that’s the issue with seemingly invincible characters, isn’t it? We don’t feel the tension if we know that they will easily defeat an antagonist. (That’s why I’m a huge Batman fan. He lacks super powers, so the stakes are usually high for him.)

But I still feel frustrated when a character’s “incompetence” seems convenient for the sake of the plot. For example, if a villain is able to slip in and attack a character who supposedly has super hearing or psychic ability.

I know, I know. These characters were developed over many decades. So nitpicking comes easily to someone who does not have to write or produce an animated show every week. That’s why I need to carefully assess my own characters. If they seem too powerful (the Mary Sue effect), the threat is neutralized. But if they have certain abilities (like super strength), there needs to be a good reason why an allegedly physically weaker antagonist can get the better of them. A good example of this is Lex Luthor waving a chunk of kryptonite at Superman, knowing that kryptonite is Superman’s weakness.

That’s why I’m inspired by a Justice League movie—Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths—which seems to hit all the right notes. In that movie, the Justice League are faced with their evil doppelgangers on a parallel earth. I won’t go into the plot. You can find that out here. Suffice it to say that the stakes are high for each character. And that’s what I want to keep in mind—high stakes for hero and antagonist alike.

 

Making sure a character lives up to his or her abilities while keeping the tension high is a tightrope walk. But it’s worth the journey!

Maybe you’re not writing a superhero book. But if you have a hero (male or female) and an antagonist in some capacity, what do you do to keep the stakes high while avoiding making your hero seem conveniently incompetent?

Hello Kitty, after assessing her archnemesis Jordie’s skills, has deemed him incompetent, and therefore worthy to attack.

Justice League image from supermantv.net. Wonder Woman from halloweencostumes.com. Superman from supermanhomepage.com. Martian Manhunter from dcmovies.wikia.com. Justice league: Crisis on Two Earths image from murrue02.tumblr.com. Lex Luthor image from listofcomicbooks.com.

Epic Ending

I’m late to the party on some things. Take Avatar: The Last Airbender, the award-winning animated series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko for Nickelodeon. The last episode aired in 2008. I watched that episode just last week, thanks to a little invention we call the DVD.

I have a confession to make. I also watched the first episode a little over a month ago. Yep. Watched all three seasons in a short amount of time. That’s how gripped I was.

For those of you who don’t know anything about this series, it follows the adventures of Aang, a twelve-year-old kid who can harness the power of the elements (air, water, earth, and fire). In this series, the ability to use the elements is called bending. Aang is the only one who can restore balance to a world where war has raged for 100 years. His task is to fight the main villain of the piece—Fire Lord Ozai. There’s much more to the series than that pithy explanation. I wasn’t sure I would like it, which was why I came late to the party, as I mentioned earlier.

The ending of the series is what inspired me to write this post. I won’t spoil it for anyone who has yet to view it. But I must say it was truly epic and profoundly satisfying. I couldn’t help giving a fist pump as the words The End flashed on my computer monitor. I’ve watched that ending an embarrassing amount of times already. (I will never admit how many times.)

After watching it, I read Avatar—The Last Airbender™: The Art of the Animated Series—a guide about the production of the series (published in 2010 by Dark Horse Books). I was impressed by the fact that the series creators knew the ending of the series before the show was approved for production. They had the arc of the three seasons mapped out. Maybe they didn’t know all of the ends and outs, as they explain in The Art of the Animated Series, but their vision of the series finale is pretty much how the finale turned out in reality.

I’m writing a fantasy duology. I’ve written the first book, but don’t yet have a clear sense of how the second book—the ultimate ending of the story—will conclude. I wish I could be like DiMartino and Konietzko or J. K. Rowling, who also knew early on what would happen at the end of her seventh Harry Potter book. But endings are the bane of my existence. I struggle with them. How do I tie up all of the loose ends and leave the reader satisfied, rather than cursing my name?

In the production guide DiMartino and Konietzko don’t provide step-by-step tips for writing an epic ending. But they talk about the hard work involved in creating a quality series. Their hard work, and that of the other artists involved in the series, is evident in the quality of each episode and the profound sense of closure viewers experience at the end of the series.

Hard work. I quickly learned the necessity of hard work in my grad program (Writing for Children and Young Adults). Whenever I tried to slack off (every month, it seems), my four advisors constantly pushed me to dig deep and stay focused. So I have to do the hard work of ending my duology and not accept the easy or the convenient, but to make it memorable. To make it count.