Pulp Manifesto: Archaeology of the Masked Hero - The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Been doing some research into the early years of pulp heroes lately. And by ‘research’ I mean reading classic adventure stories and watching old movies. Why? Because if you trace back far enough, along the long line of recent superhero movies, past the martial arts stars of the 90s, beyond the gung ho gun-packing 80s action stars, all the way through the silver age of comics, past the early genre films and movie serials, back into the golden age of pulps and right to the early years of the storytelling medium… way back there in the formative years of modern hero storytelling there were older stories influencing what people wrote, why they wrote them and how. I’ve always wondered what lay at the bedrock of contemporary hero storytelling and it was about time I found out. What I found was a bloke called The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I imagine there aren’t too many my age who know much about the Scarlet Pimpernel. I certainly didn’t. I’d heard the name a few times and had an inkling that the character was ‘swashbuckling related’ but beyond that I didn’t know too much. What I did know was that if you went back far enough along the superhero genealogy tree you got to Batman. And Batman was influenced by a series of pulp ‘dark avenger vigilante’ heroes like The Shadow, The Spider, The Green Hornet and, as Batman fans will know, masked vigilantes like the Lone Ranger and Zorro. What I eventually discovered was that you go one step further to reach the hero known as The Scarlet Pimpernel.

This is an actual Scarlet Pimpernel, a common roadside flower.

The Scarlet Pimpernel was written in 1905 by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. It was a tale about a mysterious hero who did his thing all the way back in 1792. This was during the ‘Reign of Terror’ following the French Revolution, a stretch of history where the tables were turned and the arrogant aristocracy suddenly became a hunted species. It is during this Time of Infamy (you have to say that in an old-timey radio serial voice) that, according to the story, the Scarlet Pimpernel became famous for sneaking into France to rescue aristocrats headed for ‘Madame Guillotine’. However, in order to maintain his feats of liberation the Scarlet Pimpernel had to lead a double life, one in which he pretends to be an aristocratic fop by day who is at the centre of London’s elite social life, but so bone lazy and shallow he is the last person anyone would suspect of being an infamous hero. Then, when no one is looking, he sneaks into Paris in disguise and makes fools of authorities by preventing the wholesale slaughter of the upper classes.

Yeah, if you’re looking for the origin of ‘fool by day, hero by night’, the Scarlet Pimpernel is where you stop your search.

The book (which started out as a play) was an immediate success and saw the Baroness churning out dozens of sequels for decades to come. It also inspired many a movie adaptation during the early years of cinema and successfully seeded the idea of the hero with a secret identity, a trope that still dominates a huge swathe of hero writing today. But for some reason the initial popularity of the Pimpernel has been unable to sustain itself up to the present. At least not the way The Three Musketeers or even the Pimpernel’s  initial clones, Zorro and the Lone Ranger, have been able to. For some strange reason you just don’t see that many Scarlet Pimpernel movie remakes these days. (The latest was a British tv series. I’ve seen it. It was okay. But far from awesome)

But, ignoring the untapped remake potential of the story, what can we learn about hero writing from The Scarlet Pimpernel? Especially, what can we learn about secret identity heroes? Just to keep things simple I’ll keep my list of things I’ve learnt to four.( I could talk a lot more about them all but then I’d end up with another 5 article essay ala my James Bond series):

1. Elitist Fantasies.

Some of the most fascinating elements of the story are related to the author herself. Orczy was a Baroness writing at the turn of the 20^th century, a time in which the European aristocracy was perhaps enjoying its last great fling before two World Wars decimated their influence across Europe. This is significant when you consider the subject motivation of the hero – he’s an aristocrat rescuing aristocrats.

I find this fascinating when put in light of some of the criticisms put forward about Batman. People who delve into the politics of Batman often claim that the character is a form of right wing, elitist power fantasy in which a rich American capitalist, sick of the way the legal system is failing to do what he thinks it should be doing, goes out on the town every night to beat on poor(er) people who he blames for everything that is wrong.

I’m not really sold on that particular interpretation. Batman doesn’t exactly have any rich friends that cast ‘his people’ in a good light, and his ‘richness’ only exists as far as it does empowering him to do all his ‘Batman stuff’, not for him to actively participate in ‘his world’ or fight ‘them’ from the poor regions of Gotham. But it is an interesting idea in light of both the source of ‘hidden identity heroes’ – The Scarlet Pimpernel – and the halfway house between them, Zorro. All three characters are wealthy, heavily into the symbolism of heroism, and always end up doing audacious things in order to save the day. None of them decided to join the police force and fight crime the old fashioned way. But how does this ‘hero must be rich in order to be empowered to fight crime’ trope effect how heroes in general are portrayed? Is this a lazy trope, and are there alternatives that haven’t been explored? Was that a significant part of the success of the rise of science fiction based super-heroes, freeing them from the need to have large bank accounts because the power was within their bodies instead of their inheritance?

I think it’s an interesting facet of the billionaire hero trope that becomes clear once you know their heritage. And once you know the rules, you can break them J

2. Ladies kicking it in pulp.

One of the most surprising things for me reading the story for the first time was that the story is actually told from the perspective of the wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Marguerite. This gives the story a strong sense of romance as The Scarlet Pimpernel is an unknown hero she longs for well before she learns that he is in fact her husband, a man she has quite a few problems with. The mystery of the character – and the subsequent romance and rumour projected onto him – are significant parts of both the plot and Marguerite’s motivation. In a funny way it also pre-dates the Superman/Lois Lane relationship, skipping over Batman to inspire the ultimate masked hero dilemma – the two person love triangle.

It makes me wonder why more Superman stories aren’t written from the perspective of Lois Lane. It’s a proven formula. Not only was one of the first pulp hero authors female but she probably cracked the cross-gender hero story well before superhero comics made it such a problem. Learn from your history or you will be doomed to repeat it…

(Note: not that the story is straight up fair on female characters. Some of the writing, read from a contemporary perspective, could at best be considered ‘quaint’. Other times it’s downright ridiculous concerning female gender stereotypes, a fact not helped by the thick layer of swoony romance)

3. A Status Quo of Injustice.

Another thing I noted reading the Scarlet Pimpernel was the interesting way 18^th Century France becomes the perfect setting for vigilante heroism. Mostly this is because it’s so different from your typical urban hero setting where it’s all about taking on crime. In the Scarlet Pimpernel the injustice is of a political nature, existing in another country that the hero has access to. France therefore becomes the ‘generator of injustice’ which in turn provokes so many different stories of vigilante adventure. Batman has Gotham, which is so full of character and meaning in its own right that great Batman stories pretty much write themselves. But other heroes suffer under a weak ‘vigilante concept’ because they don’t have that injustice status quo to draw on. So they all end up in Gotham anyway. Maybe what these characters need is a different form of injustice to fight, another location of injustice with a different form of injustice to differentiate them from their peers. The Scarlet Pimpernel had the French Revolution, Robin Hood had the taxation of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Doctor Syn had the taxation and press gangs of the Dover region, John Carter had the political complications of Barsoom, etc etc. Maybe the problem with some characters is that they need a similarly unique location and status quo of injustice to define them better. Maybe writers need to try harder to create them.

4. No swashbuckling!

The Scarlet Pimpernel has no sword fights! I know, right? Bizarre. Here I am reading one of the original swashbucklers and there’s nary a sword in sight. Plenty of deception and espionage, but no sword fights. Which goes to prove that swashbucklers, contrary to their name, aren’t about sword fighting. A buckler maketh not the genre. Having watched a lot of swashbuckler movies while reading The Scarlet Pimpernel it’s become clear to me that the swashbuckler genre doesn’t actually depend on sword fights to make it what it is, that’s just the inevitable result of the settings in which these stories are usually told. No, the actual foundation of the swashbuckler genre is… audacity.

That’s the common theme amongst swashbucklers films, or to be more precise, swashbuckler protagonists – they’re audacious. Cocky, verbose and daring, the cavaliers at the heart of these movies aren’t just fencing their way to victory but swinging around on ropes, climbing everything in sight (Fairbanks – that man was a climber), racing horses, disguising themselves in order to sneak past their enemies, and generally pulling off outrageous gambles in order to save the day. In the end it’s not so much what they’re doing that makes a swashbuckler movie, but how they do it. They do it with elan, guile and daring. They are audacious. That’s what makes a swashbuckler.

Blokes like this were the inspiration for the genre. But that doesn't mean writers can't go beyond them for more contemporary characters.

 From this I take it that you could readily make a contemporary swashbuckler story without the need to reinvent the sword. You just need an audacious hero who embodies the elan of those earlier heroes such as the Fairbanks, Flynns and Kellys of yesteryear. Give your protagonist a sense of honour to keep their actions ‘pure’, a sense of fun so they get into the spirit of what they’re doing, then unleash them on injustice in a modern setting. Voila! You’re tapping a past genre staple in a way that will probably be fresh and new to most contemporary readers.

Conclusion.

Reading The Scarlet Pimpernel as a research project has been really fascinating. Not only do I have a firmer grasp on the primordial underpinnings of most contemporary heroes but I also have a stack of new character and story ideas I’d like to explore. The story isn’t perfect, and there’s plenty to roll your eyes at sometimes, but seeing the hero genre taking form there on the page has made it easier to grasp what came afterwards. If you’re serious about your swashbucklers then I recommend getting a hold of the story and taking some notes. It’s a classic and free on the internet for anyone who wants it so there’s no excuses. You just need the audacity to try :)

Pulp Manifesto - Crimson Skies and fan fiction gone horribly wrong/right.

Thought I’d talk about one of the major inspirations for Tommy Thunder this week on Pulp Manifesto. For those with a passing knowledge of the source material you’ll have a much better understanding of the sort of world the Aether Age is, while other people might be interested in my sordid tale of fan fiction gone horribly wrong/right.

Our journey starts with a little miniatures table top wargame called… Crimson Skies.

For those not in the know, the Crimson Skies world is a setting developed for a tabletop wargame, but is probably better known as a popular computer game that launched with the first X-Box. The tabletop game revolved around air combat set in an alternate universe 1930s setting where zeppelins dominated the sky and whacky planes with strong Art Deco styling either protected or raided said airships with swashbuckling audacity. The X-Box game followed suit with caper-filled air adventures that took you from Hawaii to New York as you followed the exploits of a daring squadron intent on… doing adventurous things.

In terms of pure Dieselpunk style the game is one of the best examples of a self contained Dieselpunk world. And, while the games are no longer being made, what material was produced still serves as many an innocent’s gateway drug to the world of Dieselpunk. More than a few people who received this dose of distilled Dieslpunky goodness have been left hankering for more.

I was one of these un/fortunates. I can’t remember all the details but at some stage during my sordid wargaming past I stumbled across some images of this crazy new world and its completely different take on fantasy or sci-fi or whatever it was. I didn’t know what genre it was and I never actually got a good look at the game itself (tabletop or X-Box) but I saw two things that immediately had me hooked and fantasising about my own adventures in this crazy new world.

The first thing I saw was the retrotech planes. Have you seen them? Here are some examples:

I LOVED the whackiness of these designs. My first exposure to the world was the miniatures and although I was never able to buy any myself I immediately fell in love with the idea of retroteching past eras. And can you smell the adventure? Nothing says adventurous swashbuckling like a push prop, Art deco-styled, pre-jet fighter plane. Nothing! These things dug deep down into my psyche to where that ‘Indiana Jones’ button was and started banging away saying ‘Here! Here! We’ve found something else that’s exactly like this! But with planes!’

The second thing I found – the thing that had me hooked for life – was this image:

 That there is a beautiful thing. It’s a map. Of a balkanised America. A map that provokes adventure and imagination and possibility. And not a single dwarf or elf to be seen anywhere. The minute I saw that thing my imagination was never able to let go of that obscure little world I had glimpsed but never directly experienced myself.

So I imaginated. A lot. As I am want to do. I daydreamed about a world in which I could suit up my whacky fighter plane, deck out a zeppelin and take to the skies in a deadly dance to the death with other similar fighter pilots. A world full of jazz and that cool 1930s styling (I had no idea what Art Deco was, but I liked it). A world of Indiana Jones style hijinks but with the added awesomeness of planes. A world of distinct characters and groups clashing in a world of fun instead of the usual gritty, serious and repetitive worlds that I kept encountering elsewhere in my wargaming and reading wanderings.

Fast forward several years and my Crimson Skies imaginating had joined the catalogue of other alternate worlds sequestered away in the back of my brain archives – there but lying dormant. Every now and then I would take the world out and play around with it, maybe scratch out some ideas or pipedream about being allowed to write a novel or something set in that world, but that’s all it was – pipedreaming. I even went so far as to start writing a comic. It was more an experiment in how to convey air combat in panels (the bane of all air comics – it’s really hard to do) with a Crimson Skies background but it worked really well, giving me more heartbreaking confirmation that I was on to something, but something that breached someone elses copyright. So  I put it back in the imagination archives and got on with my first novel, a novel set in a fantasy world with no magic (yep, I’m one of those people who can never do things the ‘normal’ way).

Then two things happened. First, I ran into some problems with my novel. I hit a wall and discovered that I’m a super detailed planner when it comes to writing. I couldn’t pants a plot to save myself. And I was pantsing my way to a standstill. My solution was to break the story down into smaller sections, a technique I’d been looking at with my newfound interest in old-school pulp writing and movie serials. But then I realised that, structurally speaking, I would be changing the novel and that if I was going to continue doing so I’d need to get more practise. Probably on other stories that were pulped from the beginning. So I sat down and scribbled out ideas for three different pulpy series that I could experiment with. My Crimson Skies idea was one of these ideas and the pulpiest of the lot.

The second thing I did was have a look around for Crimson Skies stuff now that I had this thing called the internet. It had been so long since I first discovered the idea that I wondered if there had been anything else written or wether a new game was coming out etc etc. What I found was a website where they recorded people playing the game so you could watch how each of the levels played out…

You know that thing where your memories of something are cruelly and brutally shanked when you actually go back and see it again as an adult?

Yeah. That.

The Crimson Skies I imagined wasn’t the Crimson Skies that actually existed out there in the real world. It wasn’t bad (it was still a lot of fun) and, objectively speaking, on the surface it was everything I remembered. But the overall effect I had created in my mind was… completely different.

It turns out the Crimson Skies game doesn’t take itself seriously. In many ways it’s actually a parody of the era. Is that a bad thing? No. The way in which it gently parodies itself is charming in its own way. But how are you supposed to take a story seriously if the characters are just caricatures? More importantly, how are you supposed to get your ‘punk on?

And it turns out that the plane designs weren’t original either. They were all based on real World War 2 X-plane designs, experimental planes that were never put into production because they never made the grade. For some reason seeing real world photographs of these machines hoovered away a lot of the romantic awe I had built up in my mind for the world’s originality. Turns out it wasn’t as original as I thought. Turns out it was based on a whole lot of other stuf that, to be honest, I wasn’t that into.

The Henschel Hs P75.

The Curtis Wright XP-55 Ascender.

The Sacks AS-6.

It also meant that the technology of the game included all sorts of post-World War 2 tech like guided missiles, jet engines on every plane and planes loaded down with an absurd number of machine guns. I knew that this was all for the game and simplifying it for more fun but it made me brutally aware that I wanted to scale the tech backwards, not forwards into the Cold-War era. But that’s exactly where Crimson Skies technology was headed – forwards.

And, weirdest of all, I just couldn’t accept the idea that the zeppelins – the very basis of this alternate world – were able to exist the way they did. Here they were laden down with armour and machine guns and planes, all without nary an explanation as to how they achieved the extra lift required. I was watching a world in which jet-enabled push prop aircraft were launching into battle with wings full of guided rockets but I couldn’t accept the fact that they were launched from a standard sized zeppelin with a Tardis-esque cargo bay full of armoured fighters.

I know I’m weird. But it’s the sort of weird I need to harness in order to write. And my weird was just not gelling with this particular scientific leap.

This then led me on a witch hunt through the alternate history aspects of the Crimson Skies universe at which point I started finding more things I didn’t like. I was now mercilessly tearing holes in the thing that I thought I loved. I was spurned, I was hurt and I was in shock. That thing that I based my fan fiction daydreaming on was not what I thought it was at all. What I was writing was almost in another universe completely…

It was at that time that I started to wonder if I was infringing copyright after all. Maybe I was actually writing my own thing altogether.

Some soul searching and I started going over all the things that I was doing differently to Crimson Skies. I wanted biplanes and trideckers, not guided rockets and jetplanes. That meant a 1920s setting instead of 1930s. I also didn’t know enough about American history to see how that many different groups could spread across the map in a realistic manner and rejected the map as unfeasible. In fact, while I was at it, history would suggest a different fracturing and for completely different reasons. So that was different in my version. And that problem with the zeppelins… that would take a little bit of sci-fi to fix with the addition of another lifting gas, what I would call ‘aether’. And if there was one sci-fi aspect then that would mean I could go super pulpy and start adding  <…spoiler redaction…>!

In the end, while the heritage is clear to those who know where to look, the tone and focus of the Aether Age world has ended up very different to that of Crimson Skies. Most similar is the balkanisation of a post World War 1 America with obvious things like the various power centres of the dissolved United States being similar in their broad sweeps even if they’ve been simplified and changed to some degree (After all, it doesn’t matter what alternate universe you  create, Texas will always be Texas. It’s a rule of the multiverse). But the earlier setting, the presence of aether and other unique sci fi additions, the different alternate history background and the stronger focus on non-aerial material gives The Aether Age a very different destination to all this 1920s American balkanisation.

Thus, thanks to Crimson Skies, Tommy Thunder has been born. And with him a world of aeronautical swashbuckling and pulpy madness, set in a balkanised America where anything pulpy is possible. It started with a Crimson Skies obsession built upon insufficient information. It has become a series of books I hope I can write for many decades to come. And I hope you can all come along for the ride with me.

In the future I’ll reveal some more of the inspirations behind Tommy Thunder and the world of The Aether Age but in the meantime, if you were one of those un/fortunates  to get hooked on Dieselpunk or pulp via Crimson Skies I’d love to hear from you. Don’t be afraid to leave a comment below :)

Happy flying,

Grant.

Pulp Manifesto: A Pulpy (Alternate History) World To Live In.

In honour of the posting of my short story over at the Alternate History Weekly Update blog I thought I’d post a bit about the alternate history aspects of The Aether Age and the world Tommy lives in. Originally I was going to wait a while until getting into the nuts and bolts of my alternate timeline (mostly because I still have plenty of research to do) but I’ll start by giving a vague run down of the key points that make The Aether Age a bit different to The Jazz Age that existed in our own history.

There are only two key differences separating the Aether Age from the Jazz Age but as every student of history knows, everything rides on those key moments. And the key moment for The Aether Age occurs much earlier than the 1920s. It occurs in 1803 with the signing of the Louisiana Purchase, the contract by which the United States of America bought France’s claim to a huge slab of land west of the Mississippi river for the paltry sum of 15 million dollars.

The original Louisiana Purchase superimposed over a modern map.

In the Aether Age timeline the deal went ahead as planned except for one minor detail – a line written into the contract stating that France retained an option to buy back the land at a future date if they so wished, at the going market rate. This small line of legal technicality just sat there, and nothing happened for over a century.

The second difference in the Aether Age timeline was the mysterious discovery of a new element – aether. This gas was first heard of just before the outbreak of the Great War and was quickly exploited in order to make zeppelin technology more efficient. This came both from its incredible lifting power, which far outranks helium, as well as its ability to easily transform from a gas to a liquid which allows for greater buoyancy and ballast control. It also helps that the gas is inert except under extreme conditions.

Yep, that Aether is workin' pretty good.

It better be...

 While the element was only just being utilised at the outbreak of the war its influence was enough to bump flight technology far enough along to drag out some of the worst battles in the conflict and allow journalists greater access to the battlefields of the Western Front via private aircraft. This became a propaganda nightmare for not only the English but their enemies as well. The English press first began releasing unadulterated footage and photographs of the European carnage which flew in the face of previously upbeat military reports, then other European press agencies did likewise. Confronted directly with the horror of the war, the public will for conflict began to wane, the war dragged out, and The Lull of late 1918 ended with the Armistice of late 1919, a ceasefire which resulted in an immediate cessation of hostilities but not much more. By the 1920s large swaths of Europe are still stretches of barbed-wired No Man’s Land and all sides warily eye each other off as they rebuild their war machines.

This never happened in the Aether Age: The 1918 Armistice.

 For the French this meant a ruined nation with the threat of an imminent return to warfare. With there being no end to the confrontation in sight the French government looked to the English strategy of evacuating many of its children to their colony of Canada in the hope of sparing them the incessant zeppelin attacks that plagued the British Isles. In their desperation the French explored all of their own options for a similar strategy. It was then that they were able to find the long lost clause in the Louisiana Purchase contract that would allow them to buy back a large slab of the United States. Were this purchase a success they would be able to provide their most vulnerable citizens with a refuge from the wars of Europe, as well as the economic base from which to continue their Western Front defences.

Needless to say, their initial overtures were met with a somewhat... muted reception. The United States was still divided about being involved with the war in a production capacity, let alone joining, and large rifts were forming between various states over the decision. However, no state advocated the selling of a large portion of the country, even if it was on the say so of a legal document of vague authority. 

But along came some villains...

 But a large cabal of New York industrialists and bankers were interested in the offer. At the going rate for property in the United States the country would make a mint selling off a significant part of its land. And if it was somewhere insignificant like – oh, Louisiana – then wouldn’t that be a price worth paying to receive France’s gold stockpiles and become the bank of the world, no matter what side of the Great War potential customers were fighting on?

What followed was a backroom deal that scandalised the nation. The consortium of industrialists and bankers sold the state of Louisiana to the desperate French, received the French gold, and then were amazed at just how outraged the rest of the country were. Outrage against New York quickly led to threats from other states, the worst being from Chicago which organised its own militia which in turn led to a tense stand off in which the nation braced itself for potential civil war. 

It was only Louisiana. Why are you all so angry?

 New York attempted to compensate by appealing to the citizenry, especially the rural heartlands. However their actions, such as aggressively backing the new and somewhat popular 18^th Amendment instituting Prohibition, backfired, further alienating certain states who went so far as to threaten to secede if New York continued having so much say in political matters. It did not help that New York also began to benefit greatly from its newfound wealth and armed its own militia in case Chicago did attack.

In a turning point for the nation, a headline stealing threat was made by Washington and Oregon senators to secede to Canada if New York did not stop interfering via the Prohibition act. This was then met by disdain and arrogant insult from a young New York industrialist during a newspaper interview. The interview caused another scandal. And Washington and Oregon promptly made good on their threat. 

A Seattle resident from the Age of Aether.

 A call by federal authorities to use military action and bring the states back fell on deaf ears and, while the potential for reconciliation was high, further events soon made it impossible. Seeing the Union crumble under the leadership of New York’s robber barons, other states began to reclaim federal powers for themselves, including the ability to institute standing militias. 

Then, in a move that would irrevocably change the course of the United States of America, Texas held a referendum concerning their participation in the Union. By a slim margin the vote was won for independence and Texas reclaimed its status as a republic, a move that saw California and then the Midwest states quickly follow suit. Soon the powerbrokers of New York and Washington DC were left ruling a ‘United States’ bordered by Canada to the North, the MidWest Commonwealth to the west and the New Confederate Federation to the south, which itself was making gestures of war towards the Nouveau Republique de Mississippi to the south west. The Union was well and truly gone.

Viva Le Lone Star Republic.

 In the power vacuum that has followed the North American continent has been in turmoil. Not only has there been a civil war in Canada (which Churchill, in disgust, christened ‘the most polite civil war to have occurred in this or any other age’) but the abundance of aircraft being manufactured on the continent has prevented law and order forces holding sway on most of the boundary territory far from urban areas. Everything west of the Mississippi and north of Texas is now considered the ‘New West’ with the region falling into economic turmoil thanks to constant skypirate raiding and a mass exodus from urban areas, often west to California which now dubs itself CaliModerna. Both highways and railways were soon torn apart in economic battles between airplane armed groups until zeppelin cargo shipping became the only cost effective method of transporting goods with any certainty that they would reach their destination. And with the rise of criminal empires thanks to the Prohibition act urban politicians cling to in order to appease their rural constituencies, often police and militia forces are not the wielders of law and order they once were.

This happens all over what was once the United States.

Welcome to the Aether Age. Buckle yourself in :)