Oh, yes, the fade to white worked effectively. I didn't read most the UK Transformers comics (I did borrow a collected volume of early issues from a friend once, and I did appreciate how Simon Furman took the assignment seriously). The UK comic was far more complex, mature, and better written than the US comics and G1 TV series.
I DID encounter a comic book fade-to-white in DC's "Zero Hour," where one issue ends with a fade to white at the destruction of the multiverse, and the following issue began all-white at the creation of a new universe. At the time I joked it had to be the artists' favorite sequence - full pay for the issue, a couple of easy pages to render.
The UK comic was very influential on me as a young storyteller. Along with the Transformers movie, it was the first time I encountered real consequences in a war-type scenario. Which, really, is far more responsible than the usual kids cartoon thing of everyone being fine at the end of the episode/issue - which inevitably sets up a highly unrealistic understanding of violence and consequence.
In Furman's TF comics, characters died and did so in horrible ways. It was brutal, without being gratuitous, and raised all sorts of interesting questions about time, fate, honour, heroism and so on.
I recently discovered that Furman and Andy Wildman are doing a podcast together called 'The Rest is Giant Robots', looking back on their experiences in the 80s and 90s.
That idea of artists having an easy time reminds me of Jerry Doyle loving the episodes where he got to lie on a gurney with full pay. :)
Did you read JMS' Rising Stars? That did a really interesting thing with page formatting to show a character's point of view who could see the dead. On one side of a page it was him just sat in a chair by himself, and then on the flipside of the same page it was pure white, but with the ghost characters positioned relative to the 'real world' on the other side. If you held the page up to the light, it shone through and combined the two images. Really clever and effective - though, presumably, wouldn't work in a digital format.
"That idea of artists having an easy time reminds me of Jerry Doyle loving the episodes where he got to lie on a gurney with full pay. :)"
Then you got the reference :)
The 1986 Transformers movie transcends its cynical origin of "kill off the discontinued toys and introduce the new merch," to be a genuinely solid action movie. Close to the 140 named characters are killed and/or shown dead on screen, giving it one of the biggest body counts of 80's cinema.
It's biggest problem is not giving Rodimus Prime enough screen time. Instead of opening the Matrix, having Unicron go into overload, and having Rodimus meet up with the Autobots to jump out of Unicron the film needed another few minutes to have Rodimus meet up with the Autobots, fight to Unicron's cental core and unleash the Matrix directly into Unicron's brain. Then we'd actually have seen Rodimus be an effective leader... Since the film needed to be cut down into three episodes to syndicate something else would have to come out. Fine, shorten up Junkworld and the Quintesson trial sequences a bit.
I bet a Furman/Wildman podcast is an interesting listen.
"Robotech" was my action cartoon for consequences of war, of course. We've talked about that before.
"Rising Stars" is quite good. Have you read his "Midnight Nation?" That one would resonate for you.
aen'fa creation myth was NOT on my Triverse Bingo Card.
Yeah, I said "myth." Just because your Gods happen to be real doesn't mean they didn't brag themselves up a bit - or a lot. It was either Douglas Adams, or Terry Pratchett who once wrote (paraphrased) "The Gods came into existence in the first millisecond after the creation of the Universe, and not, as they usually claimed, the week before."
Now - before you cut to the scene with Lola, Daryla, and Slava, I really sat up when the narrative dropped a "we" into, what beforehand, had seemed third-party narration. As a Bonus Chapter, I thought you had decided to really break your own format and do an entire chapter in first-person, and had quite cleverly eased into that*.
As it is...um... Well, damn, learning the aen'fa have resentment of humans baked into their religion is a pretty significant cultural detail. It recontextualizes prior storylines. How GALLING it must have been for aen'fa refugees to flee the oppressors who leached away their power to a universe where these same human dominate - without magic! How desperate they really must have been to move to this new world. How humiliating it had to be to, yet again, be treated as second-class. You just set up the "War of the aen'fa" you're never going to write. Nice work!
*At least the switch back to third person was apparent. Last week I read a Jack McDevitt novella where a third party narrative suddenly dropped a "we" in the the middle of a description, making the entire thing first-person. Except the narrator never got a name, a line, a character referring to them, a scene where the narrator performed an action, had a life or seemed to actually exist, and I spent the rest of the story wondering who the narrator was until I finally came to the conclusion the "we" had to be an error that slipped past proofreading. Point being, it was DISTRACTING.
Your "we" was INTRIGUING, and, of course, resolved as the voice of the author of the book Lola was reading.
As you say, this definitely shows the plight of the aen'fa in a different light. That resentment will play into the rebellion storyline, of which we've glimpsed pieces.
And yeah, religious texts are difficult enough to trace through history as it is in our world, what with translations and rewrites by humans. Imagine a scenario in which the gods in question can offer editorial feedback and demand copy changes. I can imagine Glaicius having a PR department.
The best example I've read of an unexpected narrative shift is in Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Galileo's Dream'. Amazing book, told in third person, right up until the moment you realise it's actually first person. Very clever.
I imagine being a God's PR would either go very well, or poorly with little middle ground. Depending on the God I imagine either being granted long life, powers, and/or position as high priest to continue affecting the faithful, or being quickly killed off/cursed/turned into an animals or plant so no one can find out about the work.
Oh, yes, the fade to white worked effectively. I didn't read most the UK Transformers comics (I did borrow a collected volume of early issues from a friend once, and I did appreciate how Simon Furman took the assignment seriously). The UK comic was far more complex, mature, and better written than the US comics and G1 TV series.
I DID encounter a comic book fade-to-white in DC's "Zero Hour," where one issue ends with a fade to white at the destruction of the multiverse, and the following issue began all-white at the creation of a new universe. At the time I joked it had to be the artists' favorite sequence - full pay for the issue, a couple of easy pages to render.
The UK comic was very influential on me as a young storyteller. Along with the Transformers movie, it was the first time I encountered real consequences in a war-type scenario. Which, really, is far more responsible than the usual kids cartoon thing of everyone being fine at the end of the episode/issue - which inevitably sets up a highly unrealistic understanding of violence and consequence.
In Furman's TF comics, characters died and did so in horrible ways. It was brutal, without being gratuitous, and raised all sorts of interesting questions about time, fate, honour, heroism and so on.
I recently discovered that Furman and Andy Wildman are doing a podcast together called 'The Rest is Giant Robots', looking back on their experiences in the 80s and 90s.
That idea of artists having an easy time reminds me of Jerry Doyle loving the episodes where he got to lie on a gurney with full pay. :)
Did you read JMS' Rising Stars? That did a really interesting thing with page formatting to show a character's point of view who could see the dead. On one side of a page it was him just sat in a chair by himself, and then on the flipside of the same page it was pure white, but with the ghost characters positioned relative to the 'real world' on the other side. If you held the page up to the light, it shone through and combined the two images. Really clever and effective - though, presumably, wouldn't work in a digital format.
"That idea of artists having an easy time reminds me of Jerry Doyle loving the episodes where he got to lie on a gurney with full pay. :)"
Then you got the reference :)
The 1986 Transformers movie transcends its cynical origin of "kill off the discontinued toys and introduce the new merch," to be a genuinely solid action movie. Close to the 140 named characters are killed and/or shown dead on screen, giving it one of the biggest body counts of 80's cinema.
It's biggest problem is not giving Rodimus Prime enough screen time. Instead of opening the Matrix, having Unicron go into overload, and having Rodimus meet up with the Autobots to jump out of Unicron the film needed another few minutes to have Rodimus meet up with the Autobots, fight to Unicron's cental core and unleash the Matrix directly into Unicron's brain. Then we'd actually have seen Rodimus be an effective leader... Since the film needed to be cut down into three episodes to syndicate something else would have to come out. Fine, shorten up Junkworld and the Quintesson trial sequences a bit.
I bet a Furman/Wildman podcast is an interesting listen.
"Robotech" was my action cartoon for consequences of war, of course. We've talked about that before.
"Rising Stars" is quite good. Have you read his "Midnight Nation?" That one would resonate for you.
aen'fa creation myth was NOT on my Triverse Bingo Card.
Yeah, I said "myth." Just because your Gods happen to be real doesn't mean they didn't brag themselves up a bit - or a lot. It was either Douglas Adams, or Terry Pratchett who once wrote (paraphrased) "The Gods came into existence in the first millisecond after the creation of the Universe, and not, as they usually claimed, the week before."
Now - before you cut to the scene with Lola, Daryla, and Slava, I really sat up when the narrative dropped a "we" into, what beforehand, had seemed third-party narration. As a Bonus Chapter, I thought you had decided to really break your own format and do an entire chapter in first-person, and had quite cleverly eased into that*.
As it is...um... Well, damn, learning the aen'fa have resentment of humans baked into their religion is a pretty significant cultural detail. It recontextualizes prior storylines. How GALLING it must have been for aen'fa refugees to flee the oppressors who leached away their power to a universe where these same human dominate - without magic! How desperate they really must have been to move to this new world. How humiliating it had to be to, yet again, be treated as second-class. You just set up the "War of the aen'fa" you're never going to write. Nice work!
*At least the switch back to third person was apparent. Last week I read a Jack McDevitt novella where a third party narrative suddenly dropped a "we" in the the middle of a description, making the entire thing first-person. Except the narrator never got a name, a line, a character referring to them, a scene where the narrator performed an action, had a life or seemed to actually exist, and I spent the rest of the story wondering who the narrator was until I finally came to the conclusion the "we" had to be an error that slipped past proofreading. Point being, it was DISTRACTING.
Your "we" was INTRIGUING, and, of course, resolved as the voice of the author of the book Lola was reading.
As you say, this definitely shows the plight of the aen'fa in a different light. That resentment will play into the rebellion storyline, of which we've glimpsed pieces.
And yeah, religious texts are difficult enough to trace through history as it is in our world, what with translations and rewrites by humans. Imagine a scenario in which the gods in question can offer editorial feedback and demand copy changes. I can imagine Glaicius having a PR department.
The best example I've read of an unexpected narrative shift is in Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Galileo's Dream'. Amazing book, told in third person, right up until the moment you realise it's actually first person. Very clever.
Not one of Robinson's I've read.
I imagine being a God's PR would either go very well, or poorly with little middle ground. Depending on the God I imagine either being granted long life, powers, and/or position as high priest to continue affecting the faithful, or being quickly killed off/cursed/turned into an animals or plant so no one can find out about the work.