New release: Spider-Girl, issue #14

When the master of disguise known as the Chameleon was judged to be the greatest threat to her double identity, Spider-Girl enlisted the Fantastic Four to banish him to another dimension. Now, having discovered the Chameleon is still causing havoc, Spider-Girl has crossed dimensions to track him down…

Issue #14: Gotham Nights

Download from Maskingwriter (Yahoo! Group)

At last… Crossover begins! Spider-Girl has arrived in Gotham City, and she doesn’t exactly get a warm welcome from the natives… but there are crimefighters in this world, too.

As always, if you have enjoyed this or any other issue of Spider-Girl, please click on an ad in the right-hand column for me. You’ll feel better, and I guarantee you’ll go to masking heaven.

I know it’s been a real long while between issues but please, do tell me what you think. I was considerably creaky starting this one, so don’t expect my best work, but I do like the way it turned out. Anyway; comments are always welcome, especially speculation and your ideas for how the story might go in future!

Self-indulgent nostalgic rambling

Can you remember the earliest times you felt – ahem – stirred by the prospect of masks or disguises?

I’m sure we all have a story (unless you just wandered onto this page by accident, in which case, seeya later), and for a lot of us it might involve Mission: Impossible or similar. That’s a common touchstone, but I bet all of us have our own unique memories. If you’re anything like me, those memories haven’t faded too badly over the years, even though your original source may have long disappeared.

One of my earliest ones was of course the primary inspiration behind the Spider-Girl series – a single panel, really, of Betty Brant pulling on her mask. Don’t know why, but that sure as hell got me. I also carried with me, for years, another turn-on from about the same time. I could see the image as clearly as anything in my mind’s eye, and I knew the story it came from. That’d be this image here:

That there is a corner of a front cover to Eagle comic, dated 22nd January 1983. I know this because I have a copy sitting next to me, lent to me by a friend (who, of course, has no idea that I asked to borrow his entire collection of vintage Eagle comics, in part, just so I could find this particular issue). Given that issue’s cover date, I would have been 10 years old when that issue hit the stands.

Well, now I know about when adolescent hormones started for Young GW.

That image drove me crazy, particularly when I read the story inside. Invisible Boy was a series where the kid in question (‘Tim’, who looked quite a bit like how 10-year old Ghostly Writer saw himself) could, erm, turn invisible. So far so dull. But of course while the comic story dealt with ‘interesting’ situations like Tim helping out refugees and stopping crimes, in reality what hormone-plagued boys like me wanted to see was Invisible Boy doing what any normal kid would do… sneak around and see girls naked.

Any normal kid. I wasn’t normal, as we all know by now.

What Young GW wanted to see was girls in disguises. I’d already developed strange feelings after watching Mission: Impossible’s Lynda Day George… and we all know how that Betty Brant crush manifested itself (admittedly, about 17 years later). So when my eyes clapped on that image on the front of that issue, you’d better believe I flipped straight to the Invisible Boy story.

It’s not like it’s Shakespeare, and no, I won’t send you scouring the Internet to find some obscure ‘torrent file so we can all read it. (Although if I had a scanner and not a crappy iSight camera, I’d share.) Basically Tim’s single scientist of a father gets a new housekeeper… and of course as we all know from that spoiler of an image, said housekeeper is actually a gorgeous blonde in disguise. Or as Tim puts it:

“She’s like some Hollywood film star!”

Yeah, emphasis on the word ‘like‘ there, Tim. Still, she was blonde and kinda cute – but more importantly, she had just pulled off a wig and glasses! For Young GW, this meant she was a mistress of disguise, and hence a sex goddess. I would not be argued with, even if we all went back in time and tried.

Over the next three weeks my little adolescent heart went pitter-patter as I picked up each issue, hoping to see ‘Miss Martin’ transform herself for some obscure reason. I didn’t get my wish, although I did get these two panels:

“Tim could imagine it so clearly…”

… and fairly obviously, so could little ol’ me. So much so in fact, that the image above of ‘Miss Martin’ pulling off her wig stuck in my brain for 24 years… and in case you were wondering, here’s where all this becomes relevant to our supposed topic…

… that image has inspired the plot of a potential story called, right now, The Babysitter. I think you can imagine where it might go.

And that, my friends, is what you call a tease.

Finished an ish. Maybe.

Might have just finished Spider-Girl 14. Not sure. Gonna sleep on it. Unsure whether the scene break I just came to is a good issue break, or whether I should go on a little further… but then, it’s over 10,000 words (just) and I’m thinking the next natural break is several thousand words away.

Hence: may have just finished the issue.

Had a lovely “Oh, wait, wait WAIT – this would be SO MUCH BETTER if I did it this way” moment earlier, right in the middle of a scene which I already had completed in my head. The change was so blindingly obvious, but at the same time led so naturally to some other stuff that I want to do, that I just had to make it. It’s funny (Well, to me) but I was so excited I wrote the ‘revelation’ down underneath the text as I typed, as if I was going to forget it. Not likely. Still, three words can change a lot of stuff, especially when those words are ‘[CENSORED] AS [CENSORED]!!’

(You didn’t think I was going to spoil it, did you? Especially when the payoff isn’t going to happen until issue 15… at least. I’m not that cruel.)

I have to say, these are the bits you live for as a writer – or at least I do. Not the moments when the characters ‘talk to you’ (because I don’t feel they do; wanky as it sounds, I feel like they just talk, I listen and transcribe) but when the character’s actions suddenly skew the plot in a new and altogether better direction than the way you were already travelling. That’s when you give thanks to The Muse.

Well, I am knackered, as we say in England; I think I’ve written over 7,000 words of this issue in the last couple of days. Don’t get too excited yet but I think the groove may be back. Shhhh! I said don’t get excited….

PS I am writing, honest

Yeah, been working on Spider-Girl issue 14 today.

It’s going kind of slow – the plot’s mutating, so I am re-plotting it on the fly, but it’s mutated in good ways, I hope. Need to get back into the brain-space I was in when I was writing it steadily.

But it is going.

Tale of a torrent

I love the internet.

Since I last posted, the very helpful (and obviously, smarter than I am because he thought of this, and I didn’t) Zam Wessel 69 posted to several Yahoo! Groups that would probably be ‘in simpatico‘ with my desire to see the unexpurgated version of The Black Widow. He basically said the same thing as me – man your ‘torrent clients.

While it’d be nice to say that overnight that resulted in the 1.69Gb of data I need whisking down my ‘pipes’, what it has done is set up a small group – an elite ‘cadre’ if you like – of peers, all of whom are patiently waiting to get that damn file. And as we all know, the more we share, the more we get.

Unfortunately as none of us has a complete copy of the file, for quite a while we all just sat there with 0% to show for our trouble. Then, randomly, someone somewhere starts seeding, and there’s a flurry of downloads as we all share the new pieces. Then it stops. Then it’ll start again.

Since this morning, when I started at 0% downloaded, we’ve moved up to… wait for it… 1.41%! Or 24.3Mb. About, ooh, 15% of one episode of this 13-chapter serial. So, we’ve got a way to go.

What I’ve found weirdly heartening though, is to look at my peers list and think “Hey, all the people I can see here want the same thing I do. I bet they’re all masking fans.” I bet you are, too, because yesterday before I posted it was just me and one other guy (apparently) in the world after the same file. Now there’s 19 of us, on average.

So I say to you: hang in there, people. It’ll be worth it. (I hope.) And it’s lovely to be downloading beside you.

Oh, and considering when I searched for ‘”the black widow” republic serial torrent’ on Google yesterday my posting came up on page 1, if you came here looking for the torrent, it’s over here – and please, if you’ve got the file, seed.

Altogether now… torrent!

Hey guys and maybe even gals… remember these?

Those there are the only clips I’ve ever seen of The Black Widow, a very hard to find 1947 Republic serial which, in case you haven’t bothered to watch the clips above, features quite a bit of female masking.

I’ve been jones-ing to write a ’serial style story’ for quite a while now, with these clips inspiring me to do so. I’ve even gotten to the point of starting to plot it (harder than it looks, those cliffhangers every episode).

Anyway, all this time I’ve really, really wanted to see the original serial so I could get some more inspiration, and hopefully see a few more disguise or impersonation sequences! Unfortunately the serial wasn’t exactly a landmark, so it’s only been available on VHS and hasn’t had a DVD release…

… but that doesn’t stop the Internet. Some wonderful kind person, understanding my bizarre need to watch old serials that cater to my ’special’ fetish, has encoded all 13 chapters of The Black Widow and made a ‘torrent for them. You can grab it right here.

(Before I go any further, if you don’t know what a ‘torrent’ is, or what BitTorrent is, go find out. Then come back.)

So why do I tell you all this? Well apart from the fact that you too could now see this serial, the simple fact is… if you download the ‘torrent too, then we all get the serial faster. That’s how it works. (Sort of.)

So help my inspiration! Download that torrent and let’s seed this sucker!

Looking for: Grey Orchid

This’ll be short and sweet. I’m trying to track down the Grey Orchid, a writer who’s done some excellent mask-related fiction in the past.

I had some excellent conversations with him via email in 2007, but despite several ‘Where are you?’ emails I’ve not heard from him since last May.

If anyone knows where he is – or better, if he’s reading – get in touch. Ghostly Writer at G mail dot com is the email, except written… you know… like an email address.

Happy New Year’s Resolutions

For those of you following the Western calendar, anyway. First day of 2008. We’re living in the future, I tell you. Flying cars just around the corner.

So I’ve been gone for a while again, but rest assured I’ve been thinking of you (and replying to the odd comment, and email). It’s funny, I realised yesterday that while I scour YouTube and Yahoo! Groups for the occasional masking-related bit, then get all bitter and upset that no-one’s doing anything, at the same time… I’m not doing much of anything myself. Which seems a bit two-faced, if you’ll excuse the pun.

New Year’s Day is a very good time to look at that sort of thing and wonder if you can’t make a change. So here I am, looking at it.

In the past couple of days I’ve dug through Google Docs, and a few other spots on my hard drive, checking out unfinished work. I have a lot of it. (Not all of it has seen the light of day, either.) I’m sure a lot of writers have similar issues, and many more ‘wannabe’ writers (which I still classify myself as, really) but I doubt many of them have the same issue… which is that often these stories are left unfinished by me because they served their purpose. In other words, they got me excited, and that was that.

Bugs me, though.

Sure, there are some stories that haven’t been finished because I can’t figure out how to finish them, or more likely, I don’t have an ending that I’m happy with. (Father Knows Best is a large, irksome example of this. Part 4 has an ending. I’m just not sure it’s the one I want.) There are others which I abandoned because I just decided the idea wasn’t worth spit anyway, or that basically I didn’t want to write that any more.

Truth is though, if I get right down and look at it, many if not most of these things I could finish… I just choose not to. I was looking at a couple of particular things in the last couple of days thinking “Might be fun to finish that”. So that’s why my New Year’s Resolution – as regards ‘this field’, anyway – is…

… finish more stuff.

Oh, and I think I might ask for your help in that. So stay tuned.

Soooo…

… he said, looking around a little furtively. What’s going on with me?

Well, the mask fiction – indeed, the prose fiction – is a little light, right now. As I said in the previous post, I’ve been concentrating on ‘other’ writing recently. I’ve finished another play recently (Yaaayyyy!!) which is going to require a lot of polish to get to a performance level. At the same time, in conjunction with the actors I worked with for the reading of the first play, we’ve decided to stage it next year at a fringe festival here – so that is now taking up a certain amount of time too, with new drafts and revisions and discussions about all sorts of stuff.

The interesting – well, to me – side effect of all this is that the moment this stuff takes off, my urge to write mask fiction diminishes. No prizes for guessing the two are sort of interconnected. The better I feel about me, as a person and as a writer, the less I feel the need to write fiction that frankly, doesn’t do much for making me feel recognised and validated. (Perhaps now you can see why I value your comments so much.)

So, that’s why the fiction you’re used to seeing here has pretty much dried up. I don’t have enough time to sustain two writing ‘careers’. However… before you write me off, here’s the good news. I’m smart enough to know this doesn’t mean I’m quitting. Hell, I drafted this post once before, and something about writing it made me go scribble down 1,600 words of Spider-Girl issue 14, so I still like doing it. I’ll just be doing it a lot slower. Make sense?

Anyway, my sustained mask fiction burst at the beginning of this year had a lot to do with getting my other writing going, so much as you might hate it, dear reader, you had something to do with this situation. Which I won’t forget… and I thank you for.

Okay, back to writing… of all kinds.

Wherethehellyoubeen

So… where have I been? Easy… not here. Been writing. But not here.

And that’s in a dual sense; I haven’t been writing mask fiction, I’ve been writing other stuff. I’ve been working on a couple of different things this year – both plays – and one of them is shaping up quite nicely. I have actors interested, we’ve done a read-through of it, and it’s looking good. So that’s taken a lot of time, and other stuff has slipped.

Doesn’t mean I’m going away for good, just means my energies aren’t as focused as they have been at other times this year on this stuff.

When I do switch back into mask fiction mode, Project T is what’s been worked on, and that still progresses in fits and starts. I hope to have it done pre-Christmas, which (I think) is a sort of realistic timescale.

That’s it! Just wanted to say ‘hi’. Feel free to drop me a line – my name at gmail dot com.