Brave Men Run Podcast - Episode Two Chapts. 5 - 6
Episode Two took a while to get going, but I suspect the overall audio quality is better. Also, I’ve shortened the intro and outro sections.
Reply to this post with your comments — please!
And now… behind the curtain:
Chapter Five:
– “Later, we would learn that everything in and around the Monument, including every object in the kiosk down to the smallest paper clip, turned black as well.”
In an earlier draft, I had all sorts of things — like bathrooms — insideWashington Monument. Except there really isn’t much inside the Monument, apart from stairs. Lots of stairs. Talk about a near miss!
– “Channel four brought in a panel of experts, only there were no experts, not yet, so they found Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Ray Bradbury, and Daniel Schor.”
Four men worthy of admiration. Carl Sagan’s gentle teaching blew my young mind when Cosmos first came out on public television. Richard Feynman was our century’s scientist-rockstar… where’s his movie??? Ray Bradbury… elsewhere, I’ve called him my story-father, and that will do here. Daniel Schor has been reporting and commentating on Washington D.C. long enough to have been on Nixon’s enemy list.
— “Now this guy comes around, tells the world all those old comic books are coming to life…”
This, gentle reader, is your first clue that this is not simply our world (plus metahumans.) There are some fundamental differences of history. More on this later.
– “I took another look at the television. Bill Moyers and some skinny old guy were talking about the comic book ban in the fifties.”
Well, it’s later, sort of! Bill Moyers is talking to Joseph Campbell, the remarkable, wise, and brilliant comparative mythologist. Nate Charter’s adventures in Brave Men Run are a deliberate attempt to write in Campbell’s classic “Hero’s Journey” motif.
There was no comic book ban in the fifties, in our history! What’s going on here??? More later.
– “An old black and white cartoon of a flying man fighting robots flashed by.”
That cartoon would be Max Fleischer’s “Superman - The Mechanical Monsters.” It’s a beautiful piece of animation from 1942… and it’s actually in color!
– “…like in Jason’s Japanese Gekiga books.”
Loosely translated, “gekiga” means “super-team.”
Chapter Six:
– “It was a two hour drive five thousand feet up the mountains to Kirby Lake.”, and very lovingly named after Jack Kirby, the man who created many, many super-heroes that went on to make Marvel and DC comics huge piles of money. Thanks for picking up the pencil, Jack.
– “The “Nuclear War Clock” was moved another minute closer to midnight.”
This is actually called the Doomsday Clock, courtesy of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
