You light up my life

[austin_dern]

From the ``things to make you smile'' department, something spotted at CityLink -- a girl, maybe five or six, wearing sandals. The straps of these sandals had blue lights inside, and every time she moved, one or more would light up. She was riding an escalator and jumping around little enough that her mother wasn't bothered, but enough to twinkle along the ride. Boy, I'm glad somebody makes sandals like that for children.

In other luminiferous events, last night after going to bed (later than I should), I saw a quick sudden flash of extremely bright white light, accompanied by the barest start of a thunderclap. This has to be an illusion of some sort; my eyes were closed, there wasn't any thunderstorm nor second flash. It was just a little White Event, like the one that started Marvel's New Universe, a short-lived line of comics that I was one of about four people to collect.

The New Universe premise was a universe with no intricate backstory, no aliens, no alternate universes, no centuries-old secret histories; it was our world exactly until a worldwide flash of light leaves a tiny but growing paranormal population. This premise lasted to the first issues of the comics, introducing one guy who got his superpower from an alien (later retconned to a secret-history superpowered Dutch nobleman, later retconned to ... oh, forget it), one from a parallel universe (later retconned very badly), and one from the little-known Women With Giant Mecha Robots Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (they never suspected the alien spaceship actually at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Still, it brought D.P.7, the first comic I know set in Wisconsin; and before the end it offered the outrageous idea of the United States, victim of a massive, horrifying attack on its homesoil that destroyed Pittsburgh, attacking Libya (remember Libya?) for it, even though Libya had not a single thing to do with the destruction. As I haven't seen any notes of superpowers developing on my Friends list I'll write it off as an odd dream fragment.

Trivia: The first trans-Atlantic telephone calls, in 1926, cost US$75 for three minutes. Source: A Thread Across The Ocean, John Steele Gordon.

Currently Reading: SF: Author's Choice, Edited by Harry Harrison.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I've seen those lightups in snekaers, but not before in sandals. One of the things I'm envious I never had in my childhood.

No superpowers here yet. I'll let you know if they do show up. I rather liked Spitfire and The Troubleshooters, and while the other titles looked interesting I never did pick them up, I think. Maybe one D.P.7 and one Star Brand, but I can't recall exactly.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you; I appreciate the watch.

From the New Universe -- and I'm delighted to know I know anyone who's even heard of Spitfire and the Troubleshooters, or the others -- I think the most interesting was probably Star Brand, even if it was a sort of Green Lantern derivative (and the one with the idiot who manages to blow up Pittsburgh by it). D.P.7 was probably second most, because that was the one that most easily tossed in all the various paranormals they could think of, from the woman with power over friction to the guy whose body changed shape -- entirely, and unpredictably -- every 48 hours (a pace that increased), and after Spitfire's book was cancelled she joined the gang (she lost her mecha suit, but grew a steel skin in its place).

No, I don't know why all this nonsense sticks in my mind.

The highest-concept but ultimately unworkable one was probably Nightwing, about a psychologist who gains the power to enter others' dreams ... the trouble being, there aren't that many different superhero stories you can tell from that start, and it barely took a year to have him go through the loss-of-sanity storyline. Great supporting character, but not a book on its own, really.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Nightmask, that was. Nightwing is Richard Grayson, the first Robin, who took the new name and identity after quarrels with Batman in the 70's.

Star Brand showed up later in the Marvel Universe, actually, in some crossover I can't recall now. Spitfire joined DP7? Huh.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, yeah, that's right. Nightmask. They really need to open up the phase space of superhero names, at that.

Spitfire, well, near as I remember, the Women With Mecha Department at MIT got closed, and they briefly joined the US Military Department of Giant Robots. While exploring the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Pittsburgh, Spitfire herself was infected with something which caused her to grow a metal skin. She was then shuffled off to the Department of Secret Stuff along with some other superpowered women, who lasted about one secret mission in the rainforest before running away. Somehow or other they made their way to Manhattan, the paranormals' ghetto, to which the surviving D.P.7 folks fled after determined stupidity turned the paranormal school into the biggest shoot-out in Wisconsin state history. Somehow or other the player-characters found one another and shared a couple apartments.

I'm not sure precisely what all they did past saving the Rockefeller Christmas Tree from another bunch of paranormal evildoers.