I’m at the halfway point for the Phase 3 stories, so I’m taking this time to look back and see how I think I’ve done so far. I’m giving each story (including the prelude/setup stories) a grade on this scale, with the understanding that every story could use revision or improvement:
- A: I think the story did its job and I like what it did with the characters
- B: The story and/or characters are good, but it needs serious revisions or new draft to function
- C: There’s potential but the story needs a rewrite to come at things differently
- D: I dropped the ball, and should either revise my concept or find an entirely new angle here
- F: Story should just not have been written
I’ll include the pitch for each story, the grade, and a brief note on why I graded it that way. I’m skipping 301, as that was actually written by Mike.
302 - New Tomorrow. A series of quick cuts, like television ads, introduce us to the reality of Rex Tyran’s vision for Halcyon City. Grade: A. This was short, but I think it hit the points I wanted to hit. My only regret is that I haven’t played up the peril of the city as much so far, but as the story of the Stellar Six emerges, we’ll see more of that.
303 - SNOWSTORM. John Black is resurrected from the Antarctic and undergoes therapy, while an admirer tries to find a path to his closed-off heart. Grade: B. This is about half an episode of some comedy/drama anime where two young people are trying to figure things out, but it could have fleshed out John and Alex and their individual views on relationships a bit more.
304 - Entanglement and Collapse. Leo and Aria take their first steps together as a married couple of inventors. Grade: C. As written, we’re just laying pipe, not saying anything particularly interesting about the characters or the implication of what’s going on. It skims over a lot that might deserve more attention. I recognized this early and touched on the wedding a bit more later on.
305 - A Hard Look at the Mirror. The Mirror Alycia Chin learns that nobody can be trusted, not even herself. Grade: C. I liked the core elements of the story but I should have done more work to make the reader understand how subjective and terrifying an experience she’s having.
306 - The Dueling Duo. Charlotte meets Vermillion and Bodark, a pair of Russian fugitives with supernatural powers. Grade: A. I feel like I did good introducing the characters and setting up a dynamic. It’s a setup story, so some pipe gets laid and not much else happens, but as a setup story it does the job.
307 - Reinvention. Summer Newman struggles to find a new way to live. Grade: B. As setup this was okay, but honestly I was as much figuring out Phase 3 Summer as she was figuring herself out. “I can’t commit” came later, but I could have planted those seeds better here.
308 - Lying Down With the Lion. Superchica aka Keri goes to space and comes back with a new appreciation of strength and weakness. Grade: A. I’d call this the flagship setup story. It set up the HHL status quo, but it was also a strong glimpse into this character’s troubled inner life.
309 - Burn Notice. Nono Rodriguez comes to grips with the demands of the spy’s life as she spends time with her pyromaniac villain girlfriend. Grade: B. This is a fun little episode that doesn’t do anything amazing except follow two characters around. We saw Tyran’s robot goons in action, but even so we could have done a little more to examine life on the run.
310 - Dark Stars. Maury and Daph research Tyran’s new superteam, the Stellar Six. Grade: C. Another fun romp through backstory where we set up the Stellar Six, also guest starring the Scurrilous Hullabaloo and their Babble Rabble. Unfortunately I give Daph a really neat question to ask, but she won’t be the one to follow up on the answer, and that sabotages anything else that I do with the characters.
401 - Super-pirates on the high seas!. The Newman rescue organization fights Dr. Sidorov and his magnetic millipede robots to save a freighter at sea. Grade: A. A straightforward rescue episode in the style of Thunderbirds, with Summer coming in with a fancy superweapon to save the day. If I was selling toys, I’d just write more stories like this for a season.
402 - Every Start a Battlefield. Adam Amari and friends chase after Somber, an enigmatic alien with designs on Earth’s negative energy reserves. Grade: B. I think it’s a strong start but I could have staged the early fight in more interesting ways.
403 - All Heroes Must Die!. Alycia Chin’s MIA team fights the Grasscutters, a group of super-mercenaries. Grade: C. Too late, I realized as I was writing these stories that mercs are a bad fit for the kind of fiction we’re doing here, and I should have done more to develop the GCs as an enemy.
404 - The Seven Wonders. Harry Gale and friends fight the Seven Wonders, a band of master villains who ruled the roost in the heyday of the HHL. Grade: B. I think our villains got a good introduction and I like them as characters, but as usual with me I need better fight framing. This would be better as a visual story.
405 - Attack On the Multiverse!. Charlotte Palmer meets a team of heroes across the multiverse to fight a mysterious foe: the Eigendrakes. Grade: A. Big stakes, scary mystical combat, parallel versions of familiar heroes, a visit to a hollow ghostly Earth - everything I’d want in a comic book story. The Empire Strikes Back ending is just icing on the cake.
406 - The Beast That Blocks Out the Sun!. The Newman rescue team save people from a kaiju, and learn to work with an alliance of suspicious European superheroes in the process. Grade: A. I feel this is another successful Thunderbirds style rescue story, with some character development along the way.
407 - Frontline With the Blot. The Love Bug and its occupants save space refugees from the alien Blot, leading Adam in a new direction on his quest. Grade: B. I like the story itself, but some of the elements - the ship teasing with Platana, for example - could have been fleshed out more or excised. Aside from that, I know the tone I wanted to convey with the HHL revanchist team, but I’m not sure I succeeded there.
408 - Renegades From the Deep!. The MIA team saves Panama from a terrorist attack. Grade: D. There’s too many problems here for a new draft to really rescue this story. I’d want to come at this fresh, do more research, and have a much stronger focus on the characters.
409 - The Soul of the Hero. Harry’s team defends the HHL remnant from the Grasscutters and the Seven Wonders. Grade: C. This story tried to do too much, and I should have pared it down to the essentials: contrasting the way the heroes & villains I’ve set up do their business.
410 - The Fires of Conflict. The Newman rescue team intervenes in a politically perilous situation. Grade: C. I like what was at stake here - paying a political price for doing the right thing - but could have done it better. This is also where I started doing a weird thing, which is putting all the interesting action stuff up front, and then having the story sort of peter out in a more introspective way. The introspection itself isn’t bad, it’s just bad if my story has an Act One and Two but not a Three - something to do with all that introspection.
411 - Curse of the Draugr. Charlotte and friends investigate a supernatural mystery in Iceland. Grade: A. I’d call this a good Doctor Who mystery, which is how I tend to write Charlotte anyway. I think I struggled maintaining suspense in some places but I can live with that.
412 - Pursuit Through the Pleiades. Pirates, street racing, organized crime, and a visit to an ancient space temple. Grade: A. This is a story where I worked hard to keep half-a-dozen characters relevant, and I think it shows. Adam went solo at the end but I think those moments were rightfully his anyway.
413 - City of Clones. The MIA team investigate the Antibody program in Russia, as all of Alycia’s secrets are exposed. Grade: B. I didn’t do the Antibodies justice the way I should have, and that’s my biggest regret. A scene of them interacting with the robot “dolls” set up for practice would have been fine and could have moved plot forward. Handling the base chase also could have gone better. But aside from those points, I think it was a fun spy story in an interesting setting.
414 - “The Sentence is Death!”. Harry must defend his family from a magical assassin, without the use of his powers. Grade: C. I think I did good on the setup, but I totally messed up the actual confrontation. The battle between the Sentence and the Gales itself needs to be rewritten from scratch. I like how it started and I like how it ended, but I really don’t like everything in between.
415 - Star-Crossed. The Newmen rescue people from an imperiled space station, and Summer questions her commitment to the team’s mission. Grade: C. Once again I do the big action stuff up front and the quiet thoughtful stuff at the end, without it paying off in the present story. It’s good character development, but we also want to see that development in play.
Overall grade: 8x A, 7x B, 8x C, 1x D. This is a GPA of 2.9, which isn’t great - it’s a passing grade, sure, but not where I’d like to be.
