ciaraldi@rochester.UUCP (Mike Ciaraldi) (09/29/83)
From: Mike Ciaraldi <ciaraldi> I just got the first issue of MARS, by Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel (might have the "k" and "c" backward, there!). Published by First, if I remember right. Thoughts on it: 1) Art style unique, takes a little getting-used-to, but it grew on me, and seemed to improve toward the back of the book. 2) Interesting premise--Woman with legs paralyzed in an accident happens to be a scientist who works on robotics/AI/mind transfer. Develops leg stimulators, but has to move to the Moon to walk because of lower gravity. Develops robots that can have a human mind transferred into them temporarily, so is sent on first Mars expedition, which uses robots to terraform Mars. Expedition loses touch with Earth, so decides to go into suspended anmimation. She wakes up 10,000 years in the future, and just manages to survive crashlanding on Martian surface. Where is the rest of the crew? What new life forms have developed on Mars? Is the whole planet out to get her? 3) Writing style good, but with occasional lapses, e.g. future terminology that could be easily explained but isn't. Not a major annoyance, but a good editor should have caught it. Overall--Recommended. The bottom line is that this comic is out-of-the-ordinary,but still well-done and accessible (which distinguishes it from Raw and Thriller, in my opinion). If people can support Cerebus, Elfquest, American Flagg, and Jon Sable, Mars should be able to find its niche. Mike Ciaraldi ciaraldi@rochester
tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney) (10/18/83)
I suppose it was inevitable that First should come out with another bad comic. (Their first was Jon Sable.) I suppose that having two bad comics out of six titles is a respectable ratio for a brand-new comics company which is directly competing with The Big Two in the direct sales market. Still, I am having a hard time getting over my disappointment with MARS. There are three ways in which MARS is bad -- storytelling, art, and its pretense at being "real science fiction". The storytelling is dense and unbelievable, with the characters existing as little more than an excuse for stringing together the "mind-bending" events. They do not live for you at all, despite their (trite) idiosyncracies and their (feigned-seeming) shows of emotion. Perhaps this will change after the first issue, which was obsessed with setting up the situation, but I have little hope. The art is likely to strike you the first time you open the comic. As the editor says, it is not like conventional comic book art. There is nothing wrong with that -- in fact, the medium benefits from every such new style. Unfortunately, MARS's artwork is not just unusual, it is ugly. The lines are not expressive, the colors are jarring, and overall the thing looks as if someone had had his bluff called when he said that he could do better than most modern artists. Mike Gold seems to think that the difference is enough to justify the art. Not so. It must have some merits of its own, and there is no evidence of any such. Finally, and this is what has really spoiled me on the book, Gold makes a big thing out of how "this is an experiment in science fiction, a lot of people think that you can't cope with real science fiction, but we know you can" and so on ad nauseam. If MARS is real science fiction, then so is Tom Swift and His Amazing Electronic Boffing Machine. You have to wonder if the person who called this SF has read anything by Niven, Heinlein, Clement, or any other "real" science fiction writer. There is no understanding of the basic scientific developmen process, and no evidence that any thought at all has gone into the definition of the technology which is critical to the situation. I'm not talking about the pseudo-explanatory nonsense that so often substitutes for thought (for example, the power explanations in the Marvel Universe Handbook), which we are far better off without. I am talking about having a clear idea of what the technology does and what its implications are. Here it is useful to introduce a distinction between science fiction and science fantasy. This is an intuitive distinction, and there are some works (Clarke's "Childhood's End" stands out) which should be considered as being both. Like most intuitive distinctions, this one is best illustrated rather than explained. Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon books are undeniably science fantasy rather than science fiction, while Larry Niven's stories of Beowulf Schaeffer are clearly science fiction. The "Star Wars" movies are science fantasy. The distinction is largely in the attitudes towards the hardware. Contrast Niven's variable sword with Lucas's light saber. The variable sword is an implication of a previously-introduced piece of technology, the time stasis field. It works by running a stasis field down an ultrafine wire, creating an unbreakable and irresistable cutting edge. The light saber is a mysterious relic of an ancient civilization of enlightened men known as Jedi, able to cut through anything and impress the hell out of anyone who sees it. The roots of the light saber are in mysticism, while the variable sword is rooted in science. Fabricated science, to be sure, but science nonetheless, well-defined and comprehensible in its effects. [ Disclaimer -- I LIKE science fantasy an awful lot. What I am taking issue with is Gold's absurd claims that MARS is a great new thing, the first comic book with "real" science fiction. ] Now let's look at MARS. The biggest piece of hardware in terms of its effect on the story is an unnamed technique of mind transferrence into computers. The lack of a name for the technique is Clue One that the writer hasn't really thought this through. The technique is invented, apparently overnight, by a 13-year-old science whiz, who explains to us (there being no one else around when she says these things [another example of the storytelling failures]) that is you just simulate a particular person's mind on a computer, "two identical things must be the same thing" and the consciousness jumps from the person's body to the computer. Fine. I'll buy that. Most science fiction, like the delusional syndromes of psychotics, starts with difficult-to-believe premises and develops logically from there. What I don't buy is the Tom Swift/Reed Richards invention process. That is not science fiction -- it's just silly. Who can believe in an inventor who puts Edison to shame? It is science fantasy in which the amazing wizards of technology fabricate these marvelous devices, not science fiction. There is not even a hint as to how the necessary information about the person is obtained. One would think that this would involve some sort of chemical process on the central nervous system, which would almost certainly be destructive. The issue is not even raised -- she just programs her complete persona into the computer as easy as falling off a log. Right. So anyway, she goes to the Moon so that with her newfound computer link, she can overcome her severed spine and walk. Why couldn't she do this on Earth? Apparently her legs are too weak to walk on Earth even with the computer link. Again, this is bullshit, showing a complete lack of thought. If she can send "walk" signals to her legs, she can damn sure send "exercise" signals. There is no organic damage to her legs. Later on, she goes to Mars, and we find out that the ship's computer is actually her, which she had programmed herself. It doesn't know this, but after she tells it, it is capable of transferring its consciousness into a robot which was designed to receive her consciousness, through the normal telepathic or whatever process (the unnamed one). Whoa there! The way it was explained before, it is impossible for there to be two of the same person, since the consciousness will automatically transfer between them. It is the identity that makes duplication impossible. And yet, here is a direct contradiction of the principle as explained. I'm not picking nits here -- go back and review how the thing is supposed to work. It just doesn't make any sense for there to be "another" of her. Yet another clue that the writer has not thought about what he is talking about. I coud go on for quite a while about the multitudes of nifty devices that are present. For instance, there is a hibernation system that works to keep humans inactive for 10,000 years without harm of any sort. I find it difficult to believe that any system could execute its function that perfectly without ever having been tested over the period of time it is supposed to work on. The system could have been tested for a few decades at most, given the story timeline. Yet no one is at all worried about whether it will work for 10,000 years. And these are scientists! In any case, listing these would be boring for both of us, and the point has been made. MARS is emphatically not anything new, either from a comic book or a science fiction perspective. It shows the same attitudes about science that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby showed with the Fantastic Four, namely that you can just throw out gadgets that do what you want done whenever you want, that these need not behave in any consistent fashion, and that scientific creation is a one-person enterprise. That is not science fiction, and the ridiculous claims of First to the contrary have spoiled whatever enjoyment I might have derived from this title. (Of course, even if it WERE science fiction, it would still be poorly drawn and written.) You probably think that I won't buy MARS any more. Not true. I believe in giving any series at least the consideration of three or four issues before judging finally, unless it as bad as Crystar #1 (which, bad as it is, MARS is not). In addition, I want to see the backup story that starts with the second issue -- the art samples were intriguing, and First has been known to have backup stories better than the lead before (Grim Jack in Starslayer). This is a probationary period for the comic, but in all honesty, the prospects for MARS turning out to be a worthwhile comic seem slim. ________________________________________________ Tim Maroney duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
eric@aplvax.UUCP (10/26/83)
Boy, so much material here to touch on! Since tim mentioned Jon Sable only in a back handed way, I won't go on about that series, although I do enjoy it (particularly the four origin issues). First I want to mention a few things about MARS. In general, I agree that this is a silly series (particularly after reading the second issue). The plot goes whipping by very quickly in the first issue, and then drags - barely able to reach the finish (which it really doesn'e) in the second issue. And much of the "science" is on very weak grounds. But I don't find the art that offensive. In fact, it seems to remind me quite a bit of the style of the Japanese animation shows. Has anyone else noticed this? I read the bios on the artists, but neither seems to have any background in the Japanese shows, and no mention is made of it. Anyway, I'll hang on a little longer to see how it goes. Perhaps more disturbing is the insistance that science fiction has to be prepared to give PhD level explanations of any "new" science to qualify as "science fiction" and not "science fantasy". I simply do not agree. Certainly in the 40's, 50's and early 60's this was the case, and it was the style that first captured me. But the field has grown beyond the stage of writing stories around hardware or theory. There are many good "science fiction" stories that do not bother to explain as they go along, but deal with the characters or ideas. Some examples are the stories of Spider Robinson, Gene Wolfe (maybe, the jury is still out on just what the Torturer series is), and some of Zelazny's short stories and novels (Eye of Cat, Rose for Ecclesiastes, etc). It just isn't necessary anymore to explain how FTL drives, stasis fields, or time travel work to be "science fiction". Roddenberry once pointed out that Matt Dillon never once explained how a Colt 45 worked, and so he felt no need to explain how a phaser worked. The problem with MARS is the so-called "willing suspension of dis-belief" and the sometimes glaring inconsistencies. It looks like I am going off the deep end here, but after trying to catch up on a full weeks worth of news, that sometimes happens. 'Til we meet at Callahan's. -- eric ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric