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Post By CrazySugarFreakBoy! Fri Jul 23, 2004 at 07:24:48 pm EDT |
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Why CrazySugarFreakBoy! is a Lair Legionnaire: The Director's Cut Special Edition | |
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What I said then (Saturday, Aug. 14, 1999), in terms of the in-continuity reasons that the character of CrazySugarFreakBoy! is a member of the team:
Sure, we all know that CrazySugarFreakBoy! became a costumed crimefighter out of his enthusiasm for the superhero lifestyle espoused by his favorite comic books.
And yet, the question remains, why would such stories appeal so much to a person that they'd actually go the next step of taking on the massive day-to-day responsibilities of such an unusual calling?
Hopefully, the brief summary of points listed below might explain the most important factors in Dream's decision.
1) In the few years of early childhood that they spent together, Louis Laughing Fox taught his son about the Native American spirit legends, a series of cultural myths much more polytheistic than most modern Western European religions. Therefore, Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove’s mind was already equipped to handle the concept of a Pantheon of Gods who interacted with the human beings of Earth on a semi-regular basis.
2) Although he’s held a succession of jobs in his fifty-odd years of life, most of Louis’ eclectic assortment of occupations can be simplified to two career functions. He’s served as an electronic engineer, as he was in the Air Force and still is now, to a smaller extent, on the Spokane Tribal Police, and as a trained soldier, serving the military in defense of his country, and in the law enforcement of his reservation homelands later on as Sheriff. Thus, the primary ideals that he passed down to his son were those of both an inventor and a warrior; fix what’s broken, and defend what you love.
3) When Louis abruptly left his son as a child, Dream was deprived of a father figure, and resorted to hero worship as a means of filling this sudden absence in his family unit. Also, because the conditions of his childhood were less than ideal, especially after Louis’ departure, Dream was predisposed towards hiding in worlds of fantasy to avoid dealing with any unpleasant parts of reality, such as the fact of his father being gone away now. He discovered the swords and sorcery school of fiction through novels such as The Hobbit around about the time when Louis left, and although he went on to explore other genres of art and writing, his early exposure to these epic stories was enough to convince him that the true purpose of life was to live out those tales of adventure he’d read.
4) Just as he adopted the essential basics of his father’s moral code, his mother taught Dream about the importance and practical application of those beliefs in his everyday existence. It was from watching Meggan Foxxx’s unflinching determination in the face of frightening obstacles, such as the educators who sought to send her son to “special” schools, that Dream got a sense of how to stay brave against far more formidable foes. Granted, Dream’s boyhood memories of caring for his mother after she was beaten and raped were heavily filtered through his comic book-distorted view of events, which explained away her injuries by telling himself that she was a superhero who’d gotten worked over by the bad guys. However, the sight of his protector, whom he’d previously thought of as fearless and invulnerable, in so much pain must have deepened his subconsciously engendered desire to ease the suffering of others and set the world right, to “save the damsel in distress,” so to speak.
As an epilogue to this piece, it's worth noting that, while Dream grew up on a healthy diet of J.R.R. Tolkien, his favorite book of all time is the classic science fiction tome Dune, by Frank Herbert.
I leave it to those of you out there in the audience to discern how many aspects of that story arc have mirrored themselves in the events of Dream's real life.
Orion: Our story is a generational one. Most men eventually become their fathers, or so I'm told.
Superman: I wouldn't know.
– The New God become old, and the Man of Tomorrow whom tomorrow has passed by, sharing a moment of bitter reminiscence in DC's Kingdom Come.
What I’m saying now, in terms of my reasons as a writer for introducing the character of CrazySugarFreakBoy! to the Parodyverse in the first place:
I created Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove when I was 20 years old, and after mapping out his youth in flashback stories from the age of seven forward, he and I both celebrated our 21st birthday on the same day – May 28, 1975 – but after I left college and went into the Navy, and found that I wasn’t able to write stories about Dream as frequently as I would have liked, I kept his birthday of May 28 the same, but I gradually started shifting the year of his birth back, more and more, so that he could always remain 21 years old for just a little while longer, which is a practice that I’ve continued in the Parodyverse, no doubt to the consternation of Scott and the other continuity fiends here, who probably wondered why Dream was still 21 now even though he was already 21 back when Hatman was only 17.
So, in that sense, it can be said both figuratively and literally that Dream is the part of me that never evolved beyond being 21 years old.
Dream’s identity as the superhero known as CrazySugarFreakBoy!, however, came much later, since even though I’d long wanted to give him a costumed crimefighting alter ego, I could never come up with a concept that seemed to work the way I wanted, until the two years when I was stationed in Japan with the Marines, during which time I started posting over at Alvaro’s ComicBoards under the handle of CrazySugarFreakBoy! (an online nickname I’d first adopted over on a long-since defunct web-based chat called The Park, when I was still just a student in the Defense Information School’s military journalist program).
After Lisa’s repeated and rather aggressive invitations to stop by Baron Zemo’s Lair, it took me a while to figure out what was going on, but before I’d had much of a chance to do so, Space Ghost had already taken the liberty of working me into Parodyverse continuity as a character, in one of his many zany tales, so I suddenly found myself needing to come up with a backstory for this brand new character who was named after my posting alias.
I had a character named Dreamcatcher Foxglove who needed a superhero identity, and a character named CrazySugarFreakBoy! who needed a civilian identity, and looking back on it all today, the fact that I arrived at the solution that I did seems practically inevitable.
So, even though Dreamcatcher Foxglove came into being around about 1995 or so, the superhero known as CrazySugarFreakBoy! didn’t come into his own until at least 1998 or thereabouts, and while his origins have time-shifted away from that point as the years have gone by, in my desire to have Dream stay “just over 21,” the year in which CrazySugarFreakBoy! made his debut in the Parodyverse probably informs his character as much as anything else.
Bear in mind, after all, that 1998 was a decidedly kinky year in comic books – Marvel was a whipped dog at that point, and not only was DC blowing them away in terms of the quality of their comic books, but for the first time in a very long time indeed, DC was also leading Marvel in sales as well, which was a feat rather roughly akin to the Republican Party suddenly becoming the political affiliation of choice for a majority of liberals in America.
And yet, oddly enough, even with all of the bad that was befalling my favorite Marvel character at that point, since Spider-Man was being thoroughly hatcheted by John Byrne, Howard Mackie, Ralph Macchio and Bob Harras, there was this weird sense of optimism in the air, because there were still some success stories at Marvel, and what made them so affirming was the fact that they were all complete repudiations of the worst excesses of the Image-inspired grim-and-gritty period of the early ‘90s, with Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s Avengers being perhaps the best example of this trend.
Between the work of folks like Busiek and the revitalization of the Justice League (and, by extension, the rest of the DC Universe) that was being spearheaded by Grant Morrison at that time, it was an intoxicatingly giddy period for readers like myself, who had returned to the fold of comic books maybe half a dozen years before, and very nearly quit the medium all over again because everyone had these huge muscles and tiny heads and big guns and angry frowns and dark costumes, because for the first time since I’d come back to comics, the majority of popular titles on the stands in the late ‘90s were saying that it was okay to be happy and silly and wear bright-and-shiny costumes with colorful motifs, and all of the franchises that had done their best to promote the view of a “bad world,” where everything inevitably ended in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, were dying on their feet in terms of sales and popularity.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! was born of the exuberant jubilance of this brief era, when it seemed as though the scowling steroid-abusers spawned by Rob Liefeld and his ilk stood an excellent chance of finally going extinct altogether ... as Hunter S. Thompson said of the late ‘60s, in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, it was a time when there was a sense of impending victory over the forces of old and evil, not in any sort of mean or military sense, but rather, simply because we thought our energy would overwhelm them and see us through.
Is CrazySugarFreakBoy! a traditionalist, then, or is a progressive?
Both and neither, really, because like Mr. Epitome, CrazySugarFreakBoy! has come to embody his own aspect of the American dream, i.e. that of freedom – more specifically, the freedom to play, have fun, be silly, and ultimately, to live happily ever after.
He never had a secret identity, never even thought about having one, because part of what he was rebelling against was the notion that people should have to live under limits imposed upon them by others, which meant that he saw no need to carry on any of the tropes of old-school comic books that he’d disliked or disagreed with as a kid, the biggest one of those being the idea that the hero couldn’t reveal to the rest of the world who and what he truly was.
Dream doesn’t believe in keeping secrets, either from his loved ones or from anyone else, and he certainly doesn’t buy into the notion that his responsibilities mean he should give up on getting the girl of his dreams, so right there, you’ve got a rather direct rejection of some of the most central and long-standing concepts behind both Superman and Spider-Man.
At the same time, he never liked the Image anti-heroes, because their worldview always seemed to imply to him that big smiles and colorful spandex and improbable powers and absurd origins and goofy enemies were part of what they were seeking to get rid of, and to Dream, that feels like the sort of forced conformity and limiting of choices that a mean-spirited grown-up would foist upon others, so he’s unlikely ever to throw in with their lot, either.
Basically, in the great debate between traditionalists and progressives, CrazySugarFreakBoy! is bound to piss off both sides equally, because he doesn’t fancy the return to tired old standards such as women as trophies and hostages, or minorities as stereotypes and scapegoats, that would almost necessarily come with the traditionalist goal of rolling back the clock, nor could he ever abide by the newer conventions of all characters being dysfunctional misanthropes with feet of clay, or all protagonists being drably-clad anti-heroes who win their battles by being more villainous than the villains they fight, that are part and parcel of far too many self-styled progressive tales, because to CrazySugarFreakBoy!, both sides of the debate have too many rules to tolerate, and if there’s one thing that he’s always been opposed to, perhaps more than anything else, it’s the idea of rules themselves.
So, while I’ve always found it rather easy to write CrazySugarFreakBoy!, since I’ve always pretty much just written him as the more sunny side of me, back when I was still 21, I suppose I can understand why Bill and a few others have had problems getting a handle on him, because like me, he has a very dual nature, being both a defender and a proponent of the world’s best traits, while simultaneously acting in an almost anarchistic fashion to undermine and subvert all the aspects of the adult status quo that he finds to be most objectionable, which I guess makes sense, since by lending Dream my own birthday, I did make him a Gemini.
I guess all of this might help to explain why Dream has gotten more angry over the years, as well, since he came into his own in a time when it seemed as though the bullying anti-heroes whom he hated the most would no longer hold sway over the marketplace, but now, if anything, they’ve made more of a resurgence than ever, and Dream feels the need to fight back with the one weapon that he always had, even back before he had any superpowers, i.e. his mouth.
Perhaps that’s yet another reason why Mr. Epitome irritates him so much, because Dominic does bear more than a passing resemblance to Liefeld’s “Heroes Reborn” version of Captain America (albeit with light years better writing, Mike, so please don’t take that the wrong way) ... mean, scowling, beady-eyed, cynical, manipulative, and created by a sinister shadowy cabal within the American military-industrial complex that does not necessarily have the best interests of the country’s average citizens at heart.
So, Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove, a character who one of my female friends once described as “Peter Pan with a perpetual hard-on,” is now faced with the sobering reality of having to defend his Neverland against pirates who, for the first time ever, he realizes actually do stand a better-than-average chance of beating him and the rest of his Lost Boys, so, yeah, you know what, that is gonna make him at least a little bit mad, because especially according to the playtime rules of both Neverland and all those Bugs Bunny cartoons, the bad guys are never supposed to pose a serious threat, or at least, not in any sort of way that could cause the tricksters to lose their faith and question their purpose.
As far as Dream is concerned, it’s meant to be play, and while folks like Baron Zemo and the Hooded Hood seemed to understand and respect this condition, people like Mr. Epitome want to make it serious, and to his mind, that’s the greatest transgression of all.
Problem is, if Dominic and the rest of his no-fun cronies don’t leave Dream alone and stop “picking on him” by trying to force him to grow up, I can’t foresee anything good coming out of it, because Dream has seen just as many movies as his author has, and especially with the benefit of his role as an official spokesperson for an enormous corporate conglomerate, which allows him access to just about any media in a heartbeat, things could get very ugly very fast if Dream was finally pushed to the point where he decided to pull a Howard Beale from Network, and declare to all the would-be “bullies” of the world that he and his fellow nerds are as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore ...
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