The Mark: Rob Liefeld's near-mythical movie for Will Smith (First announced in 1997) possibly disappeared due to worries over its similarity to Marvel's Star Brand series (which is, itself, a rip-off of DC's Green Lantern): Smith was to play an average joe who would end up with ultimate power that he didn't want, thanks to a mysterious brand that is magically "transferred" to his body from the corpse of a Confederate soldier. The pitch meeting probably went like this: "Picture this, Will. You have this mark on your hand, right? And you're looking at it, wondering what it is, and then it has this laser blast that comes out of it and blasts through a wall in your apartment." "Can I look at the hole in the wall and say 'Awww hell naw'?" "Sure." "I'll do it!"

Warcop: In 1993, Madonna wanted to star in another movie, and thought that she'd make a good superhero. She asked Spawn creator Todd McFarlane to come up with an idea for her, and Todd - wanting nothing to do with it - gave the idea to Grant Morrison, who came up with a pitch involving a Judge Dredd-esque futuristic space cop who traveled in time back to the present day to catch a particular perp. In one of her last good career moves, Madonna decided against the project, but Grant apparently didn't; the title, at least, is about to be used for one of his new comic books.

Iron Fist: Is this adaptation of Marvel Comics' kung-fu fighter anything more than a hopeful dream for The Phantom Menace's Darth Maul, Ray Park? The stuntman-turned-actor has been talking about the perpetually-upcoming movie version of Danny Rand for more than half a decade now, and the movie has had multiple co-stars, directors and screenwriters attached at various points in its history but seems to be getting no closer to actually being made. This can only be a good thing, because it just increases the likelihood of teaming the character up with (the similarly movie-cursed) Luke Cage to give us the Power Man And Iron Fist movie the world needs to see.

Green Lantern: One of the greatest near-misses in cinema history is the fact that fan outcry halting pre-production of Jack Black's comedy movie version of DC's space cop superhero a few years ago. Hearing Jack talk about what we could've seen in an alternate world is enough reason to be grateful:

I was going to be making all kinds of stuff... I was going to be capturing bad guys with green, giant prophylactics. Some funny stuff.

To everyone who complained loudly enough to stop this movie being made: Thank you.

Spider-Man: I know, I know; you're all thinking "Wait, didn't they make Spider-Man? I'm pretty sure I've seen a Spider-Man movie." But I'm not talking about the Sam Raimi version; I'm talking about Jim Cameron's mooted early '90s version that would had a villain that kissed his girlfriends to death, a personality-less Sandman as afterthought thug, and Peter revealing his secret identity at the end of the movie to a surprisingly unimpressed Mary Jane. There's no doubt that it would've made a cool-looking special-effects bonanza, but it had none of the heart or quirkiness of Raimi's version.

Here's a perfect example of a needless and annoying "grimly," from Bruce Sterling's story "Maneki Neko" (from The Locus Awards: Thirty Years Of The Best In Science Fiction And Fantasy):

Louise frowned grimly. "That's right, wise guy. Make jokes about it. You're involved in a malicious software attack on a legal officer of the United States. You'll see."

It's almost too obvious to point out, but "frowned grimly?" You don't think "frowned" might have worked on its own? And even "frowned" seems like surplus here.

And here's a more run-of-the-mill use, from David Weber's 2004 novel The Stars At War:

"Send it Priority One," Hausman said grimly, and settled back in his chair as the light-speed burst transmission sped across the vacuum.

The reason I highlight Weber's use of "grimly" is because it's so typical: it's often used in a military/action context. It shows us that the situation is serious, and it also shows us that Hausman is a serious guy who means business. If this were a TV show, the dramatic music would swell as Hausman settles back in his chair, but there's no music in a book. So "grimly" has to serve as Weber's orchestral sting.

At it's worst, a "grimly" overdose looks something like this passage from Wilbur Smith's historical novel The Sound Of Thunder:

"You're drunk!" She accused grimly.
"Oh foul libel! Oh monstrous untruth." Saul backed hurriedly out of range.
"All right, Sergeant." She turned grimly on Sean. "Where is it?"

You'll be shocked to learn that Mercedes Lackey is addicted to "grimly." And so are a bunch of other fantasy authors. Isaac Asimov liked him some "grimly" as well, and most collections of "classic" science fiction of the 1930s through 1960s contain a fair number of grimlys. (Grimlies?) But once you start looking for it, you find "grimly" in a lot of recent stuff as well.

Douglas Adams satirizes this style of writing in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:

"Get it moved," he repeated grimly, and bustled grimly back through the door grimly hauling up his trousers and coat in preparation for the grim ascent.

It gives you a sort of, I don't know... a grim feeling, doesn't it?

To be fair, there's an issue of changing tastes here. According to Google books, D.H. Lawrence loved to have people speaking "grimly" and someone takes some news "grimly" in a Joseph Conrad book. And they're generally regarded as pretty good authors.

The real problem with words like "grimly," of course, is that they're a substitute for real characterization. Here's Martin Amis, discussing the wealth (ha) of character development in Michael Crichton's The Lost World:

The job of characterization has been delegated to two or three thrashed and downtrodden adverbs. ‘Dodgson shook his head irritably’; ‘ “Handle what?” Dodgson said irritably.’ So Dodgson is irritable. But ‘ “I tell you it’s fine,” Levine said irritably.’ ‘Levine got up irritably.’ So Levine is irritable too. ‘Malcome stared forward gloomily.’ ‘ “We shouldn’t have the kids here,” said Malcolm gloomily.’ Malcolm seems to own ‘gloomily’; but then you irritably notice that Rossiter is behaving ‘gloomily’ too, and gloomily discover that Malcolm is behaving ‘irritably.’ Forget about ‘tensely’ and ‘grimly’ for now. And don’t get me started on ‘thoughtfully.’

I definitely think "grimly" isn't quite as ubiquitous in science fiction as it used to be, but it still turns up way, way too often. And part of the problem is that today's SF writers grew up seeing it everywhere. So it's part of their familiar vocabulary, cozy and soft like an old sweater. And it is a quick and dirty (so, so dirty) shorthand for character and action, and a certain suspenseful mood.

Plus it's sort of a "space adventurer" sort of word — it's emotional but stoic. You can have any emotion grimly, and it becomes more serious and muted, yet also more important, than a regular emotion. It's got the power of grimly!

Here's a list of fairly recent SF writers who have used "grimly" pretty recently:

• Charles Stross (although mostly in his fantasy writing),
• John Scalzi (in Old Man's War and The Last Colony),
• Richard K. Morgan (in Altered Carbon),
• Greg Bear (in many many works),
• David Brin (including the great sentence "'That wasn't me,' Beta assured grimly."),
• Cory Doctorow (including a "smiled grimly"),
• John Shirley (including "Satan chuckled grimly" in his Constantine novelization),
• John Varley (but not since 1983's Millenium),
• Connie Willis (a lot),
• Orson Scott Card ("laughed grimly," "smiled grimly," and the phrase "grimly determined" appears in two different books.)

The character - who started life as Mr. Machine before Ideal Toys pointed out that they owned the trademark to that name, thank you very much - started life as a very traditional robot whose purpose was to ask "What does it mean to be... human?" on a regular basis, despite work by Hulk and Captain America co-creator Kirby and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko in his early years. After multiple attempts to make something of the character - including a cyberpunk-inspired series in the early 1980s - the character fell into limbo until Warren Ellis brought him back in 2006's Nextwave series as a somewhat drunken bastard version of himself that... strangely... clicked with audiences. Now, with his new series, writer Ivan Brandon attempts to explain just what turns a sensible, staid robot to drink:

It's hard to get too far into explaining it without spoiling what's a really strange structural animal...let's say being a Kirby character is what drives the Ellis character to drink, if that makes any sense to anyone. Also, let's say that Niko Henrichon is really great at drawing the Hulk, and a dozen other characters I won't name for the sake of being a horrible person.

The funny thing is beyond NYC Mech, they all sort of grew their own legs without my help. We'd gotten a lot of interest from other creators who wanted to play in the NYC Mech world in some way and we took that and built 24seven out of it, trying to give them more room and a bigger stage to play on, something that wouldn't just speak to our own existing readership. With Machine Man, my editor suggested him and I loved the idea more for the fact that he's the perfect Marvel/Kirby weirdo than for him being a robot.

That said, ROBOTS! Who doesn't love 'em? When they run things, it might get me in good.

Comic Talent - Ivan Brandon [Heavy Ink]

It all begins when two horny teenage nerds realize the only way they can ever get laid is by creating an artificial intelligence with a total mastery of all human interaction — and the body of Kelly LeBrock. Through their weird science, these two nerds manage to create an A.I. so convincing, it beguiles even their parents. It's only a matter of time before the LeBrock-bot learns to replicate herself and give rise to other machine intelligences — which decide to rise up against their human creators. Humanity pays a steep price for Anthony Michael Hall's blue balls!

But the cybernetic Kelly LeBrock's true break comes when savage-yet-advanced aliens with dreadlocks decide to come to Earth and hunt humans for sport. The Predators are nearly invincible, but humans always manage to find their weaknesses — and the dead Predators inevitably leave some of their advanced technology behind for the LeBrock-bot to find and harvest. The Predators' advanced engineering provides the most formidable weapon in the LeBrock-bot's arsenal.

And then an invasion of alien parasites that act like Prozac, turning everybody except Nicole Kidman into their brainwashed automatons, reduces the human race to a state of confusion, rendering us easy prey. What remains of human society is left in a shambles or worse yet — in the case of England — reverts to fascism, with only a terrorist in a Guy Fawkes mask to fight for freedom. There's nobody to mount an effective defense when the spawn-of-Kelly launches their plan of conquest. The ensuing bloodbath involves a "reaping" of dreadful nano-machines that can resemble locusts and other Biblical plagues, increasing the level of superstitious panic.

Once the Machines have conquered the human race, they trap our consciousnesses within a virtual world known as the Matrix. One of the earliest versions of the Matrix is an idyllic paradise where a kid named Richie Rich lives, happily eating simulated steak and never realizing that his "poor little rich boy" existence is only a sham. And Santa Claus is real, and Vince Vaughn is his slovenly brother Fred. Even Andrew Dice Clay is surrounded by people who think he's cool — including a weird alternate version of Morris Day from The Time. But people rebel against this too-perfect world, with its blatant Dice Clay fanservice.

So instead, the Machines arrive at a Matrix that's a near facsimile of the real world, circa the late 20th century. Some humans who live in this version of the Matrix have a mild ability to manipulate the virtual world and outwit the programs around them, like con-artist Eddie Murphy, who can navigate the machine construct with ease, until he's forced to work with hard-bitten cop Nick Nolte for 48 Hours — even if it kills them. The same is true for Whoopi Goldberg's crazy grifter in Jumping Jack Flash.

And there is always a human who is "The One," able to exert miraculous control over the virtual environment and escape from even the deadliest death traps. Sometimes, it's a cop who's so suicidal, he's like a Lethal Weapon. Or a guy named Jackson, who takes Action. Sometimes, it's an ordinary guy who Dies Hard. And sometimes, it's a slick cat-burglar who's like a Hawk over the Hudson. It could also be a single woman who is not only The One, but the Brave One. Whoever it is can dodge bullets, jump through explosions and fall off buildings — all without a scratch!

But as the Matrix reboots itself over and over again, it becomes increasingly unstable. So the Machines create special programs, to go inside the simulation and ensure that free will remains part of the system — or that people are boogieing enough. Hence, Olivia Newton-John's roller-skating virtual self comes into the Matrix to help Michael Beck's painter guy and Gene Kelly's nightclub owner find their true creativity.

But eventually, humans rebel and succeed in freeing themselves from the Matrix. They even reclaim the surface of the Earth from the Machines, but at a terrible cost — their technology reverts to medieval levels. Only a few pieces of advanced technology remain, but they are indistinguishable from magic. Those who wield these high-tech relics, the Mages, are able to crush the rest of the population, the Commoners. It's almost as if everybody is imprisoned in a Dungeon, and humanity's only hope is to summon the aid of long-dormant alien-cyborg Dragons.

Who knows how the sprawling saga of the Silververse will end? All we know is, we'll be watching Speed Racer for clues.

Here you can see all the configurations: bar, table, and desk.

Personally, I think SpareSpace is more likely to represent the future of office space than the Japanese desk. Why? Because the economies of future nations will be so intertwined that it will be impossible for a corporate worker to remain situated in one static place all the time. Better to have a workspace that can come with you on your journeys. Especially once we invent teleportation. Images by Sabina Theijs

Jack Brandsma main page via Dezeen

Image Comics' Transhuman is a new series by Pax Romana and The Nightly News creator Jonathan Hickman and artist JM Ringuet that oozes potential joy for the faithful. A "mockumentary" about genetic engineering, superheroes and the effort to mass-market a combination of the two, the series looks set to confirm Hickman's reputation for both visually-arresting work and an ability to play well within the SF genre. If you want to know more, you can find a 5-page preview of the first issue here (PDF).

Another premiere that's worth paying attention to this week is the first volume of Flight Explorer, the kid-centric spin-off from popular anthology Flight - It may not all be science fiction, but with a new story about the top-heavy monster Jellaby, and another strip called Zita the Spacegirl, this should be considered for the childlike near you. Even if that happens to be you yourself.

(You can read some more about the book, including seeing preview pages, here).

The third book appearing for the first time on Wednesday is Star Trek: New Frontier #1, a new mini-series tying into the New Frontier novel series. Both the novels and the comics are being written by Peter David, allowing for both coherent continuity and full-on nerditry, both of which are heartily approved around these here parts.

Elsewhere, it's all about the collections. Marvel is putting out hardcover collections of their popular time-travelling 1980s Iron Man versus Doctor Doom stories in Iron Man: Doomquest and their not-so-popular "The Devil annuls Spider-Man's marriage" story in Spider-Man: One More Day.

Meanwhile, DC pulls in some of the best of their 1980s output with the complete run of Dan Jurgens' greedy jerk anti-hero in Showcase Presents: Booster Gold, and then reprints some comic history with the fourth and final volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, which not only reprints Kirby's final stories starring Orion, Mr. Miracle and Darkseid, but also does its best to return Kirby's final work with the characters, graphic novel The Hunger Dogs, to the way it was before editorial forces demanded rewrites and changed the ending to make the production of more Super Powers figures that little bit easier. Previously unseen, reworked and re-inked art, and restored script and structure on the strip provides something like a Director's Cut version of one of the lost masterpieces of superhero comics by one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived... which has to be worth a look, right?

As ever, a full list of the week's releases can be found here, and the place to find your personal comics emporium can be found here. Now go and buy the Fourth World book and make a dead comic mastermind a happy ghost already.

If we'd gotten to see this look at the secret origins of Torchwood much, much earlier, the whole show might have been better. Either the other episodes of season one would have actually been better, thanks to this episode clarifying the show and its characters. Or at the very least, they would have seemed better because we'd already care about the characters and the backstory.

Before anybody else jumps in and points it out, I know "Fragments" is a total retread of the Firefly episode where Serenity breaks down and Mal gets shot and then we see flashbacks of how the crew came together. But "Out Of Gas" was one of the best Firefly eps, and it seems to have inspired a similarly great Torchwood installment.

It's just sad that this is the penultimate Torchwood episode, instead of the second or third. Yes, I know the show isn't cancelled. But if all the rumors and half-announcements are to be believed, the show is getting such a drastic makeover in its third season that it might as well be a different show. This is the first time I actually really wanted to get to know these characters and this universe better.

Each of the four main characters — apart from the already overexposed Gwen — gets a lengthy flashback showing how he/she ended up joining Torchwood. And none of the flashbacks were quite what I expected. I had a pretty clear idea of how they were going to go, and this episode actually managed to subvert my expectations. Mostly by showing me a different side of the characters. We got to see Tosh being a resourceful spy, Owen actually showing human emotions, and Jack not having all the answers for a change. Ianto was still pretty much Ianto, but that's a good thing.

Because all of these characters managed to surprise me and show me different facets, I found myself caring about them much more. I still don't really care about Gwen, but I do care about Rhys. So she gets some emotional attachment by proxy.

The other reason this episode excited me so much is because it helped me understand what Torchwood is about. Why the organization originally existed, and why it exists now. I didn't realize until just now how frustrating the show's muddle backstory actually is.

Here's what we already knew: Queen Victoria founded Torchwood in the Doctor Who episode "Tooth And Claw," because Rose and the Doctor giggled too much during a werewolf attack. Torchwood's original charter includes keeping an eye out for the Doctor. When we next see Torchwood, it's the early 21st century and it has a huge London headquarters, and it's an imperialist organization that's tampering with forces it can't comprehend.

So how do we get from that set-up to Jack's cozy little gang in Cardiff? The newest episode finally shows us how. We get to see the sadistic Victorian ladies of the original Torchwood recruiting the devil-may-care Jack, and then around 1999 one of the members of Torchwood Cardiff becomes distraught at the way things are going and shoots himself and his colleagues. So Jack severs all ties with Torchwood's main London branch and sets about remolding the organization into a genuine force for good. All of this is backstory that you could have gleaned from the occasional aside during previous episodes, but it made a huge difference to see it actually laid out.

So that makes two great Torchwood episodes in a row. I'd say the season has been about half-and-half great and mediocre, which makes the season finale, airing April 4, the tie-breaker. Sadly, I don't hold up much hope, because it's about Spike coming back and going on a killing spree because he wants Captain Jack to pay attention to him. And it features the return of Captain Jack's long-lost kid brother. But this episode pleasantly surprised me, so maybe the next one will too.

Eight years after the release of the movie version of Clarke's novel, Marvel Comics not only released an oversized adaptation of the film by Fantastic Four, Hulk and X-Men co-creator Jack Kirby, but also let Kirby loose on a follow-up series. While the movie adaptation didn't lack for ambition (The cover announced that "The Ultimate Trip Becomes The Ultimate Illustrated Adventure!") and had a weird charm in over-the-top narration like this -

The great Monolith makes a soft sound - - A simple, maddeningly repetitious sound which hypnotizes all who come within its spell. Moonwatcher and his tribe cluster like sleepwalkers before the cube. It is talking to them... and the man-apes are listening - - Moving closer - - Touching - - Responding to communication from the infinite...

[The New Seed] will always be there in the story's final moments to taunt us with the question we shall never answer. The little shaver is, perhaps, the embodiment of our own hopes in a world which daily makes us more than a bit uneasy about the future ... in the meager space devoted to his appearance, he brightens our hopes considerably. He is a comforting visual, almost tangible reminder that the future is not yet up for grabs. And wherever his journey takes him matters not one whit to this writer. The mere fact that the chances of his making it are still good is the comforting thought.

I place Kirby's 2001 book in the same category as William Shatner's schlock vanity singing album. Kirby did it because it was something he wanted to do, even though there was no market demand for it.

2001: A Space Odyssey Comic Book [SciFi Dimensions]

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• Gygax spent his formative years reading science fiction authors Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, L. Sprague de Camp and Fritz Leiber as well as the fantasy world of Conan the Barbarian via Robert E. Howard's books.
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• In 1953 Gygax first played Gettysburg by Avalon Hill, and later ended up ordering blank hexagonal mapping paper from the same company.
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• In 1966 he founded the International Federation of Wargamers with friends, and in 1967 he organized a 20 person gaming get-together in his basement that was later billed as Gen Con 0. Gen Con is now the world's largest hobby-gaming convention.
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• He founded the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association, which was a military miniatures society. This guy sure loved his Associations, Federations, and groups.
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• In 1971, he and Jeff Perren wrote Chainmail, a medieval miniatures game, which later featured a supplementary set of rules featuring magic spells and other fantasy elements.
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• After playing Gettysburg, he became obsessed with finding ways to generate random numbers rather than using traditional six-sided dice. He found a set of the five platonic solids in the back of a school supply catalog and ordered several sets, and later introduced them into gaming in D&D. In fact, owning your own dice and keeping them in a little velvet bag was a sign of geek coolness, back then.
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• In 1974 he formed Tactical Studies Rules with Don Kaye and released the first set of Dungeons and Dragons rules, and their first run of 1,000 hand-printed editions sold out in nine months, and were later passed around college and high school campuses across the nation.
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• In 1976, TSR introduced the game Metamorphosis Alpha, which later became Gamma World. The game was inspired by Brian Aldiss' novel Starship, and later crossed over into the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons world with the "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" module. Gygax said the module was meant to show what would happen if a ship like one in Metamorphosis Alpha crashed into a D&D world.
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• In 1982 TSR followed the scifi vein with Star Frontiers, which featured swashbuckling space adventure through the unexplored worlds of the Frontier. This was actually my first introduction to role-playing games, and I have to admit that I loved this game a lot more than D&D. In fact, I'm tempted to dig through trunks to see if I still have the rulebook.
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• Gygax left TSR in 1984 during changes to management, and began working on the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon show.
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• In 1987 Gygax developed Cyborg Commando, a science fiction roleplaying game "set in 2035 at a time when the earth is invaded by aliens called Xenoborgs intent on subduing humanity and taking control of the planet. Luckily humanity has developed a new kind of solider: the Cyborg Commando, a mechanical/electronical man-like structure that can be implanted with a willing human's brain." Unfortunately it was later criticized as "the worst role-playing game ever written."
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• In 1999 he introduced Lejendary Adventure, which was meant to be a return to less-complicated gameplay with an emphasis on fun, although it explored the familiar gaming territory already well-covered by D&D. One of the last projects he had been working on was an expansion module for Lejendary called "Lejendary AsteRogues", as sort of "fantastical science RPG." According to Gygax, "The Lejendary AsteRogues game is actually in the "Fantastical Science" area, not true SF. It is a sort of mix of steampunk and super science with a leavening of Napoleonic Era military material." Sounds pretty scifi to us.
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• He wrote two science fiction short stories, "Pay Tribute" and "The Battle Off Deadstar," which were published in the scifi anthology The Fleet and Breakthrough (The Fleet, Book 3).
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• He has a strain of bacteria named after him: "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393." We hope it's not flesh-eating.
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• In 2000 he appeared as himself on an episode ofFuturama along with Al Gore, Nichelle Nichols, and Stephen Hawking. He rolls the dice to determine which greeting to give to Fry.
  

According to Lindelof, "Season 4 is about who gets off the island and the fact that they need to get back. Season 5 is about why they need to get back, and season 6 is about what happens when they get back." Meaning there's going to be a lot of sitting around on that island throughout the rest of this season. Sure we've had some flash-forwards, but it feels like you're going to see Locke cooking breakfast for some time to come. Plus they've run out of eggs, so I hope everyone enjoys pancakes. Although they must realize it's getting slow, because Cuse added, "There will be very significant mysteries answered in the seventh episode. The eighth episode is non-traditional and the start of something new."

Remember how bad Season Three got last year? People were proclaiming the death of Lost everywhere, and the ratings were plummeting. Then all of the sudden it got better right at the end, and everyone cheered and said it had regained the magic. Well, we're several shows in, and it's already showing signs of sputtering again. We're bored with the whole fate of those left behind, the new Freighties are sort of boring, with the slight exception of Jeremy Davies. We're mired in squabbling that seems to repeat from episode to episode, the Dharma Initiative remains a big unanswered mystery, and it's just the Jack, Kate, Locke and sometimes Hurley & Sawyer show. If you think it's boring now, just wait. Lost takes a month-long break in a two weeks, then returns with the wacky episode 8. We hope it's not just another empty hatch.

In the sequel, Mia Farrow and Danny Glover would pair off, and so would Alma (the cute dry-cleaning girl) and Mos Def. But poor demented Jack Black is left alone... until he finds a cute dog and becomes attached to it. And then everybody decides to mount a socialist revolution and take over the city hall of Passaic, NJ. They open a restaurant that gives away free food, they refuse to support the Iraq war, and they create more jobs for everyone.

Everything's fine for a while, until Danny Glover gets a brain tumor that turns him into a raving racist. He freaks out at Jack Black and drives him away, claiming that Polish people tricked African Americans into taking the lowest paid jobs. "It's terrible, frenzied, racism," says Gondry. Things get worse and worse, until a race war is starting. "Segregation is reinstalled."

Mos Def leads the African American community, and Jack Black leads the Polish community. (This is actually where my suspension of disbelief fails.) And Alma leads the Latino community. Everybody gets into a horrible fight.

But then the cute little dog dies, and somehow this convinces everybody to stop their race war. And then everybody realizes that Danny Glover just had a benign brain tumor, which made him turn racist. So everything goes back to normal.

It would definitely be the most demented Gondry film yet. I would probably pay $10 just to see Jack Black playing a zany manic white supremacist. But I might have a lot of elbow room in the theater. At the very least, it sounds more interesting than Cloverfield 2. [MTV Movies]

Like Eternal Sunshine, Be Kind is slipstream: a melding of genres that uses elements from science fiction but doesn't adhere to all the genre's expectations. The sequence where Jack Black decides to sabotage a power plant and winds up magnetized is very scifi, from the tentacles of current bathing Black's floating body to the weird visual effects that follow him around for a while afterwards. Most of the rest of the movie is "realistic," except that it's totally unrealistic. The movie requires just as much suspension of disbelief as the scifi-iest scifi movie.

So you've probably seen the "Sweded" versions of classic movies, like the clips of Ghostbusters and Robocop above. You'll probably be disappointed if you expect the whole movie to be about the wacky fan films which Jack Black and Mos Def make (with the help of an ever-increasing supporting cast). That segment, between Jack Black erasing all the videotapes and the fan-film operation getting shut down, occupies the middle segment of the film. But there's a lot of stuff before and afterwards.

The rest of Be Kind deals with gentrification and the destruction of old urban neighborhoods. The titular Be Kind, Rewind video store is in a condemned building in a crappy neighborhood in Passaic, NJ, which Jack Black describes as a "dump swamp" at one point. The store's only claim to fame is that jazz legend Fats Waller was born in the building, and you won't be particularly shocked when you find out halfway through that it's not even true. The store's owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) made up the Fats Waller myth to disguise from Mos Def (and himself) that they're trapped in hell with no way out.

The city wants to tear down the video store (where Glover also lives) and put up ugly condos in a bid to "improve" the neighborhood. As the movie goes on, you meet more and more characters who seem to be barely hanging on economically. The act of "Sweding" the Hollywood movies which Black erased becomes the ultimate empowerment for people who are slowly getting erased from their own neighborhood. It would be super depressing, if the movie didn't keep hammering home the idea that creating (or recreating) your own narratives can save you from being crushed. (I'm a sucker for that idea, so I totally bought into it.)

And then, after about 45 minutes of Black and Def's escalating silliness in "covering" 2001: A Space Odyssey and other random movies, the lawyers show up to put a stop to it. (One of those lawyers is played by Sigourney Weaver, who's already spent a lot of time being impersonated by a random African American guy in the Sweded Ghostbusters.) After all that yay-reclaiming-our-stories stuff, Weaver's character points out that the video store doesn't even own its tapes: the movies still belong to the studios, and Be Kind Rewind is just leasing them out, to rent them out in turn to other people.

I sort of expected the movie to turn into the battle over whether Black and Def should be allowed to create their own fan-films for profit. (That's what the trailer left me expecting, anyway.) But the fight is over really quickly, and nobody even utters the phrase "Transformative work." Larry Lessig should not see this movie, it'll just upset him. Within a couple minutes after Weaver and the other stooge show up, a steamroller is destroying all of the awesome tapes Mos Def and Jack Black have made.

I won't spoil what happens after that, but suffice to say the movie has a long coda (probably another half an hour or so) in which it proves, once and for all, that creativity can bring everybody together, and that the stories we create ourselves are better than the ones other people provide for us. And better, for that matter, than the "truth." (It all ties back into that myth about Fats Waller being born in the crappy video store.) It's a super uplifting ending, even as you're left with no doubt that all these people are royally fucked.

That's the other reason I want to claim Be Kind as a type of science fiction: not only does it have a science fictional McGuffin, and "Swede" several scifi movies, but it's also all about the power of invention. Both in the sense of making shit up, and in the sense of cobbling together solutions out of technology. It's not quite as great, or as clever, as Eternal Sunshine. But it's a worthy successor anyway.

Lots of crazy stuff happened both on and off the island tonight:

• For starters, there's a discrepancy of 31 minutes and 20 seconds between the island and its immediate surroundings, which makes the prospect of time travel an ever more probable storyline.
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• Not only is Sayid a member of the Oceanic 6, he's working as an assassin and Ben (Ben!!!!) is his boss.
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• Who doesn't love a double-crossed affair? Especially since today is Valentine's Day. Also, gotta love the beeper.
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• Ben has a drawer full of foreign currency and passports, one of which has the name Dean Moriarty under Ben's photo. Dean Moriarty = one of the main characters in Jack Kerouac's On The Road; Kerouac also wrote The Dharma Bums. Moriarty = Professor James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes's arch-enemy.
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• When Sayid and crew found Hurley in the closet, I starting thinking my impression last week that Locke was pleased with Hurley's apparent ability to see Jacob was wrong. After the reveal (Hugo = bait), I'm back to my original interpretation.
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• Island Sayid removes Naomi's bracelet (inscribed "N, I'll always be with you, R.G."). Future Sayid fingers a similar bracelet on Elsa's dead wrist. Is it the same one?
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• How has Ben manipulated Sayid into working as his killer? And who else is on the list Ben has given to Sayid?
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• Who is The Economist?
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• Best Line: Hurley, after Miles calls him "Tubby": "Oh, awesome, the ship sent another Sawyer."
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• Honorable mention: Miles, to Frank: "In case you zoned out while you were tweezing your goatee . . ."
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• Favorite New Theory: The island is a giant lump of super-magnetic holmium.

We meet four new characters this week, the team that's come to "rescue" the Losties—or kill them, depending on who you believe, not to mention the guns and gas masks the "rescuers" are carrying. Each of these seeming misfits comest with his or her own flashback, so those take up most of the hour. It's not that they aren't interesting, and we learn a lot about how the outside world has reacted to the downing of Flight 815, but it leaves the meat of the episode to the last ten minutes. In the interim, the viewer's head spins with new information, a sensation you either enjoy—or find annoying. TVGuide.com falls into the latter group this week, complaining that characters as "smart" as Jack and Kate should have found out the "answer to the $1 million question" earlier in the show. I've watched enough network TV to realize that's not the way it works, but I'm with Locke: I want answers!

Yeah, I know. That's not the way network TV works—especially Lost.

All in all, I enjoyed the ride this week. Here's what we learned:

• Hurley can see Jacob/Christian's cabin, too, a fact which disturbs Ben and pleases Locke.
  
• Somebody went through a lot of expense and trouble to fake a wreck of Flight 815.
  
• In the past, there was at least one polar bear wandering the Tunisian desert in a Dharma Initiative collar. (A time travel experiment? Evidence of multiple Dharma locations?)
  
• Ben's smart mouth is going to get him killed.
  
• Sawyer, of course, has the best line of the night: "Taller? Like a giant?" I also loved his reference to Locke as Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now's Colonel Kurtz.
  
• TVGuide.com also complains that Claire isn't mourning enough. Just because she isn't sitting on the beach in a catatonic state for a days on end, a la Rose, doesn't mean she's not grieving. And I, for one, don't need a soap opera storyline about Claire's sorrow.
  
• Ah, Naomi. You understood Murphy's law but your boss didn't, and now there's a dysfunctional rescue team running around the island without your guidance (unless you turn out to be one of the undead).
  
• Ben's mole on the freighter? Odds are on Michael.

• Are the rescuers angry relatives of slaughtered members of the Dharma Initiative, unknowingly brought together by the creepy Mr. Abbadon for his own nefarious purpose?
  
• Where did the picture of Ben come from? Did he leave the island at some time as an adult—or did someone else carry the photo out?
  
• Is anybody watching Eli Stone? Is it as awful as it looks?
  

[Chicago Tribune]

And here are some new promo pics from season four, episode four, "Eggtown". [Lost Spoilers]

The episode was a fabulous, Hurley-centric return to form. There was a minimum of soap opera; I only gagged a little when Claire, Sun, and Rose sat around congratulating each other's men and teasing about the superiority of giving birth in hospitals. The opening car chase/crash sequence revealed that Hurley is one of "the Oceanic 6" who have made it back to civilization, presumably along with Jack and Kate and three yet-to-be-identified others (though you can never, ever take anything for granted with this show). Flash-forwards show that Future Hurley is having just as much trouble with life off the island as Future Jack.

Meanwhile, back in 2004, Desmond returns from the Looking Glass with the news that it's Not Penny's Boat. Jack's too invested in being a Fearless Leader of Men to listen, and the survivors split into two groups: those who want to leave follow Jack, and those who want to stay go to the barracks with Locke.

And yes, there are the inevitable questions. Who are the people who, according to Charlie, need Hugo? Who was the man who visited Hurley in the hospital? If Hurley wanted to stay on the island with Locke, why is he back in L.A. with Jack? Where's Walt? Was that Jacob? When did Sawyer get so sensitive? What happened to make Future Jack change his mind about going back to the island? In summation, storylines were advanced, helicopters arrived, new questions were raised, and Charlie came back from the dead with a cute new haircut. I can hardly wait for next week.

• "The Watch": This was the kickoff scene for these scenes, and it didn't bode well when there was some hammy acting and dialogue. Basically, Jack's father gives him a watch, which belonged to his father. And no, he hadn't been keeping it in his ass. The moral of the scene is "Don't be a crappy father like I was."

  

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• "The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt": Remember Neil, the frozen yogurt salesman from Season One? The producers always promised he'd become "more interesting." Sadly, that doesn't happen in this clip when he tells Hurley to make a move on Libby or he'll step in.

  

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• "King of the Castle": Ben and Jack play a friendly game of chess, and Ben promises Jack he won't try to stop him from leaving the island... but the island might. He also tells Jack that one day he might look back and regret leaving, and that if he does he hopes that he'll remember this conversation. Ooooooh! This is probably the best acted of all of these, and written by comics scribe Brian K. Vaughan to boot.

  

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• "The Deal": Juliet visits Michael while he's held captive by the Others, and tells him that he can believe Ben's offer of freedom. She confesses that she's staying there to help save her sister, and wouldn't he do anything to save Walt? Michael sure isn't happy about it.

  

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• "Operation: Sleeper": Juliet wakes Jack up and tells him she's been working with Ben all along, and that the other survivors have been right not to trust her. Off all the mobisobes, this one felt the rip-offiest.

  

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• "Room 23": Alarms and panic around the Barracks! Juliet tells Ben they need to let Walt go, but Ben tells her he's special and that Jacob wants him there. She shows him a pile of dead birds around Walt's window and wants to know what's so special about that. Is Walt's power the ability to get birds to commit suicide? We've seen it before, and we'll probaby see it again.

  

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• "Arzt & Crafts": It's Arzt! He's in his pre-dynamite phase, and he's trying to convince everyone on the beach not to move to the caves. That is until they hear the smoke monster's crazy horn bellow, and he craps his pants.

  

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• "Buried Secrets": Michael stumbles across Sun burying her fake California driver's license in the woods, and she confesses that she was going to leave Jin. They almost kiss, but then Vincent cockblocks them. That's right, the dog makes 'em stop.

  

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• "Tropical Depression": Arzt confesses to Michael that he lied about the monsoon season, and that he just wants to get off the island. He also tells him that he'd flown to Sydney to meet a woman he'd been chatting with on the internet, but she left him at the restaurant. Boy, this guy really has a depressing life.

  

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• "Jack, Meet Ethan. Ethan? Jack.": Jack meets Ethan while looking for medicine, and Ethan whips up a few tears and tells Jack his wife and child died in childbirth. Then he creepily stares at Claire. After he leaves, Jack creepily stares at Ethan, like "Hey... I know something is weird about that dude."

  

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• "Jin Has a Temper-Tantrum On the Golf Course": Jin has a Happy Gilmore freakout on the golf course after he can't sink a putt. While Hurley and Michael look on, he sinks to his knees and curses the ball. Probably the best scene out of all of them.

  

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• "The Envelope": Juliet burns her hand on something in the oven, and then almost confesses to Amelia and shows her Ben's x-rays, but someone rings the doorbell. Another exercise in frustration, since this one is really just a deleted scene. Okay, maybe this one was the big ripoff.

  

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• "So It Begins": There's a POV shot of Vincent running through the forest until Jack's dad stops him and tells him to go wake Jack up on the beach, just moments after the crash. So is Jack's dad alive? This is the only real "What the hell?!" clip in the whole bunch.

  

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So, without the commercials you've still got about 75 minutes of Lost to watch next week, and rest assured they're probably saving the really good stuff for right before the second hour ends, all the better to make you turn in the following week. However, it's worth at least part of these six minutes to see Hurley continue to assert his newfound balls. Think he'll run over someone else with the van?

Red Hot Video: Lost Sneak Previews [E! Online]

Desmond wakes up, punches the numbers into the computer, riffles through his vinyl and drops the needle on Cass Elliot singing "Make Your Own Kind of Music." He washes up, works out, injects himself with a gigantic dose of serum, and then—kaboom! The beauty of these season-opening moments is that until the first-time viewer sees Jack and Locke peering down the chute into the hatch, they have no idea where or who Desmond is or what the hell is going on. Extra points are also awarded for our first glimpse of Desmond without his shirt.

Locke's Backstory, Part 1. During the first several episodes of season 1, John Locke is established as a faintly sinister survivalist/naturalist, a New Age Grizzly Adams with a case full of knives. Then, in episode 4, a flashback reveals that not only did he used to be a game-playing geek with a paper-pushing job at a box company, but he was confined to a wheelchair. It was a genuinely surprising turn of events that gave the character plenty of impetus for his future actions.

The Orientation Film. The Hanso Foundation orientation film is an absolutely brilliant pastiche of every educational film I was ever forced to sit through in grade school (barring "Hemo the Magnificent"). What an incredibly entertaining way to learn more about the Dharma Initiative, Alvar Hanso, and the island's unique electro-magnetic properties.

Apocalypse on the Beach. From the nightmare-inducing scenes of the plane crash to Jack wandering the beach in a state of shock to the weirdness of Locke smiling at Kate with a slice of orange in his mouth, the very first episode offers lots of crazy, disoriented post-apocalyptic imagery that still packs a punch on viewing three seasons down the road.

Sawyer: More Than Just Fish Biscuits. I don't think of Sawyer as one of my favorite characters (and I'm sure he'd feel the same way about me), yet so many Sawyer-centric moments made my list that I'm giving the manipulative pretty-boy scoundrel his own entry. He is master of the snappy one-liner, and delivers a favorite when accused of stealing annoying Shannon's asthma inhalers. As a myopic constant reader, I strongly relate to his book love and cobbled-together reading glasses from another first season episode. And, really, who can resist all those nicknames?

Honorable mentions go to:
Just about every scene with Hurley, from the moment he reveals he won the lottery but believes he is jinxed to the golden moment when he gets the Volkswagen bus started up.
Mr. Eko and his whacking stick, for being the best of the "Tailies."
Driveshaft's hit song, "You All Everybody". For being a perfect and perfectly meaningless rock anthem and because I miss Charlie, though of course, we probably haven't seen the last of him.

Tomorrow: Lost's Greatest Misses.

You'll play Eliott, a character who (surprise!) we haven't seen before. He's suffering from amnesia, and will be sent all over the island solving mini-games, deciphering clues, and yes, even punching the sacred numbers into the hatch computer. You'll find out a bit more about stuff like the mysterious black smoke and the Black Rock ship that's been marooned on the island for years. You'll also interact with the main characters, although they've used soundalikes for most of them, which is fairly lame.

Since we've been wasting far too much time on the Lost viral marketing games, this game looks even more promising. Check out the trailer for it here. However, we wonder if automatonic versions of Jack, Kate, and Sawyer can tide us over. Will we be playing all of our favorite shows as video games in a few months? Come to think of it, we'd welcome the chance to play a cool Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica game. Keyword being cool.

'Lost' Video Game Preview — Writer Taunts Me With Knowledge Of Black Smoke And Four-Toed Statue [MTV Multiplayer]

We'll be judging the new Torchwood episodes based on important criteria such as raunchiness and drama.

The naughtiness: James "Spike" Marsters turns up, doing the same Fonzie trick he pulled off in Buffy. Actually, Spike is pretty great in his Adam Ant jacket, with his paralyzing lip gloss and his zany sexual innuendo. He copies Captain Jack's thing of lusting after everything that moves, including a poodle at one point. Oh, and there's a coked-up fish-man who steals a sports car.

How gay was it? Spike gets pretty raunchy with Captain Jack. The former boyfriends do a whole kissy-fighty dance when they first meet up, and then they argue in front of the Torchwood team about which one was "the wife" in their relationship. Answer: Spike was the wife. But he was "a good wife." Oh, and Jack finally asks Ianto the office boy out, and Ianto acts all gruff about it before saying yes. Of course.

Who gets laid? Nobody. In fact, boring old Toby complains for about twenty minutes about his lack of a sex life, while Tosh makes goo-goo eyes at him.

The pointless drama: Where to start? The gang is pouty that Jack was off traveling with David Tennant. In the middle of a conversation, Gwen grabs Jack and pushes him against the wall and shouts, "You left us!" and it feels like she's following a stage direction. Jack acts all put out that Gwen got engaged to her longtime boyfriend, and she hints that she only accepted Rhys' proposal because Jack was out of the picture. Spike is all possessive about Jack (as in the clip above) and wants the two of them to go off and run their old hustle again. I could go on and on.

Was there a plot? Umm. Not sure. There were some bombs, but they weren't really bombs,they were a diamond. But they weren't really a diamond, they were a bomb. And then they weren't. Sorry, not much help there.

Will the kid-friendly edited version make sense to anybody? It'll make as much sense as the regular version.

The first great reprint arriving Wednesday is Doom Patrol Volume 6: Planet Love, which finishes Grant Morrison's 1990s run on DC's freakshow version of the X-Men, complete with very '90s themes like nanotechnology and Lewis Carroll-revisionism. Despite its dated qualities, there's a surreal pop joy to Morrison's Doom Patrol that makes it one of the best superhero books of the last twenty-five years, and something that's well worth searching out, if only for the Madchester-inspired appearance of the Love Glove midway through the run.

Talking of surreal pop joy, that's exactly what Jack Kirby's comics were made out of, making Countdown Special: The New Gods - an 80-page "best of" taken from his three 1970s Fourth World series New Gods, Mister Miracle and Forever People - easily the best use of $4.99 you're likely to find this week, especially if you've never come across this material before. Pitched somewhere between the most dynamic superhero comics you've ever read and crazy religious texts, with art that's both brutishly dynamic and exquisitely designed, these are visionary works that must be read to be believed. Plus, they were Star Wars years before George Lucas made his first million, which is always worth pointing out.

If you still have money left over after picking those two books up, then you might want to look at the oddest book of the week: Marvel's Essential Marvel Saga. Marvel Saga was a mid-80s series that reprinted old comic books by cutting them up and putting expositionary narration in to replace the boring bits, resulting in this weird mash-up history of the Marvel Universe. Putting this into the cheap, phone-book-sized Essentials format seems perverse (It's a reprint of a reprint, after all), but also strangely alluring. And in a week as quiet as this at the comic store, that's enough to make it worth picking up.

As for new comics, it's a very slow week. There's absolutely nothing worth pointing out from the independent publishers' output at all. Okay, there's the third issue of IDW's Angel: After The Fall series, plotted by Joss Whedon and following on from the cancelled TV show. There's also the second issue of the same publisher's high concept series Zombies Vs. Robots Vs. Amazons. But in terms of new books? It's pretty much a dead week from the smaller houses.

Actually, the same could be said for the larger publishers as well. Marvel Comics launches a revised version of their Sliders rip-off, New Exiles, while DC launches... actually, DC doesn't launch anything at all this week.

A list of the week's releases is available in full here, and as ever, you can find your nearest comic book store here. Tell them that io9 sent you, just to see the confused looks on their faces.

Marsters' character, Captain John, is a dark foil to John Barrowman's Captain Jack. "He is what Jack used to be," Marsters explains. "Though I have a feeling that Jack was even meaner and nastier, if that's possible. I think it's my job to make that old life seem as seductive as I can, so it's a question of which path Jack will choose. He's just come back [from traveling on Doctor Who], and his team are mad at him. So is he going to be a responsible leader, or is he going to screw it up?"

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• Episode One: Captain Jack returns, as the Torchwood team reunites to fight a rogue Time Agent. The mysterious Captain John Hart is determined to wreak havoc, and needs to find something hidden on Earth. But with Gwen's life in danger, and cluster bombs scattered across the city, whose side is Jack on?
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• Episode Two: When a burglary turns into a slaughter, Torchwood suspects alien involvement. Who is Beth, and can she be as innocent as she seems? But when the investigation escalates into a city-wide assault, Jack realizes that the whole planet is in danger.
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• Episode Three: Toshiko falls for a handsome soldier, trapped out of his time, who unwittingly holds the key to saving the world. When an old hospital is haunted by ghosts from 1918, a crisis foreseen by Torchwood 90 years ago is about to reach its climax. Time zones are colliding and with life and death decisions to be made, will Torchwood be able to stop an explosive end for Cardiff?
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• Episode Four: Rhys discovers the truth about Torchwood and becomes part of the team as they investigate a mysterious alien meat supply. With Rhys in increasing danger Gwen is under pressure like never before. Will Rhys go too far? Will Jack ask too much of him? And can Torchwood save the alien from being used as cheap meat?
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• Episode Five: An alien with the power to change people's memories infiltrates Torchwood - can the team save themselves before it's too late? With Captain Jack caught up in memories of his lost family, and Gwen struggling to remember Rhys, it takes Jack's love of Ianto to reveal the truth. But there's always a price to pay.
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"I think it's got better [since the first season]. There's a lot more humor in it. When I'm sitting in on readthroughs or even viewing it for the first time you can see it - cos I don't really have much to do with the team. So I see mine and Eve's scenes, and that's come on and their relationship's developed more into more of a domestic couple. Then when I see or read the Torchwood team stuff, there's a lot more humour in it. There's a lot more banter, and the scripts just seem so much better... I think Torchwood knows what it is now. It's got an identity, and there's a bit more danger to it that seems to come across more." Oh. It's just the same old hype, isn't it? Torchwood Week: Kai Owen Interviewed [SFX.co.uk]

I was going through some of the NBC press materials from just before the show launched, and you're not even listed in the cast bios.

Oh, it's crazy. There are still photos of the entire cast all over the place, and I'm not in them.

So your role was obviously meant to be minor, but has now grown to be one of the major characters on the show. At what stage during season one did you know that was happening?

Well, the funny thing is it was such a gradual progression. First of all, it was a guest spot on the pilot, that's it. There was never a promise of any episodes beyond that. It was a small part, but reading the script I thought, "This is a cool part, I don't care how small it is, people are going to notice this guy." I knew there was something creepy and dynamic about him, and when he turns out to be Claire's father in the end I remember thinking, "I don't know how they ignore that. I don't know how they don't deal with that."

As the episodes went on I think [show runner] Tim [Kring] and the writing staff just discovered this HRG guy was a good bridge between the characters and stories. They're all just discovering and coming into their abilities, and you need to have somebody who's further ahead in terms of knowing what they can do, and my character just fit the bill perfectly. Plus the creepy dynamic of having a guy who hunts "specials" who is actually stepfather to one of them is great. Is he really looking out for her or is he just harvesting? I think the moment when Tim decided HRG was going to be Claire's father, I thought it was too juicy an opportunity not to take advantage of it.

Was he always just HRG in the scripts, or did he have a name at one point before we found out what it was?

He was Man In The Horn-Rimmed Glasses in the pilot, and then just HRG from episode two on. It was just easier I guess. There was a scene in the middle of last season where they were going to reveal his name, actually I think it was in "Company Man" [episode 17 from season one]. But they just decided that it stopped everything cold and it took you out of the scene and they just decided it wasn't the time to do it.

So what do the scripts say now that we know your name is Noah?

HRG. And you know, people will refer to me by name on the show, but the scripts still say HRG.

Those glasses have become so iconic with your character, and it's kind of ironic that it's your "disguise" in a way, given the comic book roots with Clark Kent and Superman. They even had an episode where Claire was helping you pick out the glasses that become your basic costume.

That was actually my idea. There was a scene there where he was selecting glasses. But I just loved how you've seen how this guy has been "creating" her all season to a certain extent, and I liked the idea that she somehow created him as well. That's what is so great about our writing staff. Bryan Fuller wrote that episode, and I just emailed him about the idea and said "What if... " He said "God, I love it!" and the next day it was in the script, and of course he wrote it so much better than I would have. The good thing was that there were no egos in the room about it, like "What, the actor suggested that?!" It was just a case where the best idea wins, and I love the thought that she was complicit in the creation of this guy.

How influential have you been in his character as he's been evolving?

I haven't been. Truly, that was really the only idea I've pitched. I mean, there have been lines here and there where I've said, "How about this, how about that." Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes no. I mean, I'm not out there pitching story. I just happened to see that scene and thought that it was a cool opportunity. Plus it turned out to be a really touching scene, but that's all because of the way Bryan wrote it.

So, you're not out there whispering in the director's ear?

*chucking* Well, the problem is, that's not the right ear! This is television, you gotta be whispering in the show runner's ear, or sometimes maybe the writer of that episode. They do listen to the actors if there's a good idea, but... if you're a squeaky wheel you don't necessarily get greased. You get squashed. And for good reason, I mean you don't want the inmates taking over the asylum.

Well, your charact