Tonto (Johnny Depp) and The Lone Ranger (Arnie Hammer), from the upcoming film The Lone Ranger. ©2012 Disney Pictures.

I know these are cynical times. These days, heroes are hard to come by. I guess that’s why Hollywood is dredging up old heroes and reinventing them for the masses.

Our heroes are being rewritten in light of 21^st century skepticism, to reveal flaws where there were none. To make them “realistic,” heroes are made brutal, aggressive, and dysfunctional. And it’s all in an effort to make these classic characters more appealing to a new generation of viewers.

That’s why I cringe every time Hollywood remakes a story from my childhood.

Last year it was The Green Hornet. This year, Hollywood is remaking The Amazing Spider-Man. In 2013, Superman will be rebooted (again) in The Man of Steel.

And yet, it’s another hero — one from before my childhood — that concerns me the most. I’m talking about the masked vigilante of the Old West: The Lone Ranger.

Directed by Gore Verbinski (the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films) and co-starring Armie Hammer (as The Lone Ranger) and Johnny Depp (Tonto), this new film is set to reintroduce the classic western hero to a new generation of moviegoers.

Unfortunately, fans are concerned that Verbinski isn’t going to keep it to the spirit of the original.

Now, a recent article on MovieWeb (“The Lone Ranger Is a Badass Says Armie Hammer”) may confirm fans fears. Hammer reportedly told the site that this Lone Ranger is not only more grounded in reality, but more hardcore than the original character.

“It’s a little bit more badass and a little more realistic.”

The problem is, the Lone Ranger was never meant to be a gritty, realistic western. We don’t need the hero deconstructed. I don’t want to see a Lone Ranger who doesn’t live up to the legend.

When I was a kid, The Lone Ranger was still being rerun on television, ensuring my generation was familiar with Clayton Moore’s version of the masked crusader, and his faithful sidekick, Tonto (played by Jay Silverheels). It was meant for kids, and they took that very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that creator Fran Striker created The Lone Ranger Creed.

Now that I’m older, I’m protective of legends like the Lone Ranger. The old heroes from serials, radio, and the Golden Age of television have a special place in my heart. I’m attached to the past by some ephemeral cord.

I respect characters like the Lone Ranger, Zorro, the Shadow, the Green Hornet, the Phantom, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

Maybe their stories weren’t great literature, but they were the heroes of another time, another generation. And I feel they should be remembered that way.

Today, you can check out my response. Read “You wouldn’t know me from my writing,” and be sure to leave me a comment or two. I look forward to seeing you at the Cafe.

The King With Six Friends, by Jay Williams, is a quirky story about the benefits of having friends with magical powers.

This past weekend, I encountered a social media troll who had some unfavorable things to say about childhood. This person referred to the magic of youth as “just the consumption of mass-produced fantasies and a horrifying gullibility.”¹

I do not consider myself a Peter Pan type, who refuses to grow up. I’m a writer, yes, but I also have a career and a family I love very much. I am happy being an adult. Yet, I also have a fondness in my heart for the things of my childhood.

However, I must admit there’s a little truth in his statement. Some of the most magical things I remember from my youth are the “mass-produced fantasies.” Namely, the stories — novels, short stories or films — I encountered while growing up.

Each book, from Where the Wild Things Are to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, infused me with a spirit of adventure and a belief that all things are possible. One of my favorites, The King With Six Friends, was the first fantasy I remember reading, and instilled me with a love for quest stories.

I can’t imagine my childhood without the stories that were a part of it. And I can’t give up those stories just because I’m older. Those stories are still important to me, in part because I still believe them. I still read comics, I still love fantasy and science fiction, and I will keep watching Disney movies until the day I die.

Some people, especially those who don’t appreciate the wonder of childhood, like to quote Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 11:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.²

Out of context, this verse seems to be an admonishment to grow up and stop behaving like a kid. But he’s only using childhood as a metaphor for our imperfect understanding of the divine.

These same people fail to remember that in this chapter Paul was speaking of love, and how useless our gifts are without it. He concludes the chapter with another well-known verse:

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.³

Or, as a magical story from my childhood declares, “All it takes is faith and trust …  and just a little bit of pixie dust.”

Footnotes:

1. For the record, I wanted to argue with this guy. My wife talked me out of it, pointing out that this individual was likely “damaged.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

2. 1 Corinthians 13:11, American King James Version.

3. 1 Corinthians 13:13, New International Version, 1984.

That said, I finally decided to take a bold step for The Creativity Well. We’re going mobile. It’s still a WordPress platform. But with the help of a plug-in called WPTouch, the content is now being adapted for mobile devices. It’s nothing fancy. It just helps organize the posts into a readable format for mobile. If it works, I may upgrade to WPTouch Pro to get more features.

At least, I think it works. My dumb phone is still trying to resolve the full site (and doing a poor job of it).

So, if you have a mobile device, check it out. Let me know how if works by leaving me a comment below. Thanks!

Now, here I am, once again fighting change.

DC Entertainment rocked the comic book world this week by confirming a rumor that had been floating around for more than a year. In summer 2012, DC Comics will publish a series of all-new stories set in the Watchmen universe.

The plan is for DC to create seven interlocking mini-series, each centering on a different main character. The stories will be set at a time before the original Watchmen series. With a different writer/artist team on each, the comics will fall under the banner Before Watchmen.

DC Comics say they want to “keep all of our characters relevant.” What I hear is “We’re changing everything else, let’s muck around with Watchmen, too.”

Controversy has swirled around DC Comics’ plan to capitalize on the Watchmen franchise for years. Writer Alan Moore, who created the original 12-issue series back in 1986, has been vocal in his opposition. In a piece in The New York Times, he decried the move by DC as “completely shameless.” Fans, likewise, have voiced their distaste for what they perceive as tampering with a legend.

The case for Before Watchmen

The argument for adding new stories into the universe the Watchmen inhabit goes something like this:

Comic books are built on the tradition of new writers and artists reinventing characters and stories created by others. Even Alan Moore has worked on comics that he did not create. His Watchmen world and characters, therefore, should be available to other writers and artists to create new stories.

I won’t get into the legal issues, suffice to say that DC Comics owns Watchmen. So, from what I understand, it’s within the publisher’s rights to do this.

The case against Before Watchmen

Meanwhile, Moore and fans of the original series (which is the highest-selling graphic novel of all time) take a point of view that boils down to:

Watchmen is a single story, representing one artist’s work and reflecting a certain period in time. Anything added by others would only derivative of the original story and cheapen the source material.

Moore has gone so far as to compare his seminal work to Moby Dick, pointing out that Melville’s whale of tale didn’t have any prequels or sequels.

A creative analysis

Let’s forget about DC Comics’ “draconian contracts” (as Moore calls them), and leave out the moral argument of who should own the Watchmen characters and series. Copyright law is a messy subject and I’m no expert.

What I want to discuss is whether it is artistically valid to add more stories to the Watchmen universe.

Writers and artists reinterpret classics all the time. They re-imagine Shakespeare, stories from the Bible, and even, yes, Moby Dick. (Check out Star Trek: First Contact. They flat out compare Picard’s struggle with the Borg to Ahab’s obsession with the white whale.) Even Gone With the Wind got a sequel. So it’s not unprecedented.

I’m not sure adding a series of prequel stories to Watchmen is the same thing, however.

Firstly, Watchmen is a product of its time, a story that grew out of Moore’s need to deconstruct the superhero in the 1980s. To revisit that idea now, within that same time period, is to ignore nearly 30 years of comic book history since then. And will today’s readers identify with the post-Vietnam, Nixon’s America it is set in?

Secondly, at this risk of feeding Moore’s ego, Watchmen is a great story already. The characters need no more definition. The world they inhabit needs no more detail. Sure, what writer wouldn’t be interested in tooling around with Rorschach or Ozymandias? But their stories have been told and anything that gets added won’t change the end of the story. So from a perspective of story, prequels don’t matter (*cough* Star Wars *cough*). A good editor should cut them out.

I know DC Comics is a business. And like any business they have to keep an eye on the bottom line. My complaint, however, is the same one that I’ve had with Hollywood for ages. Why rework the stories of the past when there are new stories to tell?

Be brave. Be bold. Create something new. Don’t try to change the past.

Come on over and check out my post, “Listening to the Sound of My Voice.”

And while you’re there, read a few of the posts by other writers and leave some comments.