“Yet across the gulf of space…intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

– H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898)

As much as I would love to see a proper, Victorian-era film version of The War of the Worlds, I understand why the story is usually updated to modern times*. End-of-civilization stories are all the more powerful when they’re happening in a familiar world. Besides, Wells wasn’t writing a period piece.

On the other hand, some relatively recent adaptations–notably the late ’80s TV series and the 2005 Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise collaboration–make a second change that I find unnecessary and even self-defeating. In deference to modern knowledge about the Red Planet, they claim that the Martians aren’t from Mars after all.

Mars holds a special fascination for us. It’s red, the color of (human) blood. It’s named for a god of war. And even if you set aside thousands of years of myths, lore, hoaxes and other fictional accounts, the most important thing about Mars is that it’s the next planet over.

So, while I thought the Spielberg film–which retained both the tripod war machines and the first-person narrative of the novel–was pretty terrific, it loses big points by removing Mars from the scenario.

And that brings me to the 1953 version produced by George Pál. He moved the story to then-contemporary California, but at least his Martians remained Martians.

In Wells’ novel, the invaders are large, blobbish things with the requisite number of tentacles, but Pál’s creatures are bipedal whozits with three-fingered hands and three-lobed eyes. (The script plays up the Martians’ predilection for the number three.) Given the release date of the film, I doubt it’s a coincidence that their eyes evoke early color television camera optics.

George Pál‘s early film work involved a lot of stop-motion animation, yet he ultimately chose not to recreate the walking tripods of the novel. Instead, the war machines are striking, copper-colored manta rays topped with cobra-bodied heat ray projectors. Yet, contrary to popular belief, they’re not flying saucers; they’re actually suspended by invisible, force field “legs.” There are a couple of shots where one can see shimmering beams holding them aloft, and the ground beneath them occasionally sparks where the “legs” contact it.

The visual effects are spectacular, but what really sells the ’53 War of the Worlds are the sounds.  The heat rays make an ominous thrum-thrum-THRUM noise until they erupt in a terrifying, electronic shriek. My favorite scene in the film is when the heroine’s uncle, a priest, attempts to confront the aliens with the word of God. As the hovering Martian machine lowers toward him, the sound intensifies: thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum-THRUM SKREEEEE-EEEE-EEEE!

It’s a bad day for the clergy, but God eventually gets his due. Pál adds a religious undertone to the familiar tale, and it’s telling that the Martians finally succumb to Earth’s bacteria just as they are about to demolish the church in which the main characters have chosen to wait out the end of the world.

Me, I’ve long thought that the war in The War of the Worlds isn’t between humans and Martians, or Martians and God, but between the two planets themselves. When humanity proves inadequate to the task, the Earth sends its smallest soldiers to defend itself.

* One of two low-budget War of the Worlds movies released in 2005 to cash-in on the Steven Spielberg epic was unique in that it retained the Victorian setting. However, it was by all accounts terrible.

Dave Sci-Fi George Pal, Martians, my favorite Martians, War of the Worlds

Dave Weird commercials, dogs, poo

Sci-fi fans born in the past 32 years (Great Gazoo, I’m old) have no idea just how massive was the impact of the original Star Wars. There had quite literally been nothing like it before in the history of cinema. It wasn’t just groundbreaking in its technical elements, but in its building of a fictional world. Part of the joy of seeing it again (and again and again) was that there always seemed to be something new lurking in the corner of the screen, some vehicle, droid or alien that you hadn’t previously noticed.

A big part of that was the Cantina sequence. Again, if you’re a youngun’, you just don’t get how much of a showstopper it was in ’77. There’s a good reason that for a time pretty much every space-based TV show/movie had to have a “Star Wars bar scene.”

Prior to Star Wars, the number of big-budget science-fiction films ever produced could be counted without even reaching for your toes. And if a flick had a “real” alien, and not just some dude in a leotard scolding us about our warlike ways, you can bet that they only sprung for one rubber suit.

That’s what made the Cantina such a favorite part of the film: there were dozens of aliens. There were giant preying mantises, humanoid flies and belligerent worms. There were wolf men, lizard men, mouse men and even a few men men for variety’s sake. Some had four eyes, some had only one. And with a couple of exceptions, none of them had names or were important to the plot in any way. Someone had gone to the trouble of designing and building all these things just to provide a backdrop to the main characters.

Without doubt, my favorite one was Hammerhead. Mind you, that was just the nickname that the production team used for him, later adopted by Kenner Toys when they made their action figure.

Hammerhead appears on-screen for all of five seconds, and all he does is sit at a table listening to another patron. But he made quite an impression on me, with his curiously inhuman noggin and his strange vocalizations.

While Kenner released a Cantina playset, they never made the bartender. Wouldn’t want to encourage kiddies to drink, I suppose. And so, in my world, Hammerhead ran the bar. That’s because Hammerhead was the coolest, and besides, who else are you gonna have run the bar? Snaggletooth? I don’t think so. He can’t even see over the counter. Walrus Man? After challenging Ben Kenobi, he’s down to one arm. And Greedo? Shot down in his prime by a mangy nerf herder.

Now, the time came when we could no longer allow all these wonderful creatures to remain anonymous. They had to have fully-fleshed out backstories so that we could use them in role-playing games and write novels about them. Every patron in the Cantina was there for a secret, special mission for either the Rebellion or the Empire. Not a single one could be simply popping down to the pub after work to knock a few down before returning to the hovel with Mrs. Belligerent Worm and the grubs.

And so, Hammerhead is no longer simply Hammerhead. He is Momaw Nadon of the peaceful, agrarian Ithorian race, a priest from the floating city of Tafanda Bay exiled to the desert world Tatooine after revealing his people’s technology to Imperial forces in hopes of saving the Mother Forest. One day, the Imperials demanded his help in locating an astromech droid. Arriving at the cantina…

Oh, fuck that. It’s Hammerhead. That’s all you need to know. And Hammerhead is awesome.

- – -

Bonus content: the 1979 Cantina drunk driving PSA.

Dave Sci-Fi aliens, Hammerhead, my favorite Martians, Star Wars

I know I’m likely to get a “really, Dave?” from certain quarters for admitting this, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Fifth Element. Luc Besson’s 1997 film starring Bruce Willis as a futuristic taxicab driver and Milla Jovovich as the perfect woman is pure comic-book fun. Specifically, it’s the French comics magazine Métal Hurlant (renamed Heavy Metal for U.S. distribution), whose frequent contributor Jean “Moebius” Girard was hired by Besson to help design his future world.

My previous entries in this series have been rather long-winded, so this time I’ll avoid a lengthy recap of the movie and skip right to the scene that inspired today’s post.

Midway through the film, Korben Dallas (Willis) has “won” a cruise to the planet Fhloston, actually a ruse to get him near the Diva Plavalaguna (whose name literally translates to “blue lagoon”). The singer is said to have a set of four stones that serve as the elements of a weapon that can destroy the ancient ball of evil (aka Dick Cheney) headed toward Earth.

In the orbiting cruise ship’s theater (actually London’s Royal Opera House), the curtain parts to reveal a tall, bright blue alien. She shambles slowly forward, trailing a set of long tendrils from her bulbous head. And then she breaks out into an aria from the opera Lucia Di Lammermoor. It’s a strange, serene moment: the weirdly beautiful creature performing in front of a row of enormous windows, through which can be seen the ocean-covered globe of Fhloston Paradise.

Below decks, Korben’s companion Leeloo (Jovovich) is facing down several brutish Mangalore mercenaries. As the fight begins, Plavalaguna launches into a bizarre, rockin’ song and dance. Her cascade of notes punctuates Leeloo’s martial arts moves, and just as Jovovich puts down the last of her attackers, the Diva’s show concludes to thunderous applause.

You can say what you want about the plot of The Fifth Element, but for my money this scene transcends its surroundings and reminds me of what I love about science-fiction: sights and sounds that couldn’t occur anywhere else.

Dave Sci-Fi aliens, Diva Plavalaguna, my favorite Martians, The Fifth Element

The Krell can’t even be bothered to show up for their role in the classic 1956 film Forbidden Planet. However, as they destroyed themselves in a single night of madness more than 200,000 years ago, I suppose they can be excused. Lacking point-and-shoot technology, the Krell left no depictions of themselves, though their general shape is suggested by their characteristic doorways: wide, upside-down diamonds. While the Krell have vanished from the galactic scene, something of them remains…

Forbidden Planet was a remarkable movie for its time. It was a big-budget, “A” picture from MGM during a period when nearly all science-fiction flicks were cheap potboilers. It boasted state-of-the-art special effects and was scored with unique “electronic tonalities” by Louis and Bebe Barron. (In some cases, the score doubled as otherworldly sound effects.) It had a thoughtful script that was allegedly inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, though honestly the resemblence is superficial at best.

And when I was growing up, it was my absolute favorite film, bar none. At least until ’77, when Star Wars changed everything.

In the early 23rd century, the Earth saucer C-57D arrives at planet Altair IV to check on the progress of the colonists who set up shop two decades earlier. All they find is a lone scientist and his beautiful, virginal, miniskirted daughter, who want nothing more from these spacemen than for them to fire retrorockets.

Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon, who’s terrific in this) has himself a sweet set-up. Both his home and his robotic manservant Robby (yes, that Robby) sport technology far in advance of human science. His immediate surroundings are a paradise inhabited by flora and fauna from Earth, brought to Altair IV not by the colonists, but by the original inhabitants. And with the rest of the colonists mysteriously ripped limb from limb by an unseen force, he’s got all the time in the world to continue his language studies.

Commander J.J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen; yes, that Leslie Nielsen) isn’t going anywhere. In part, that’s because he wants to find out what happened to the other settlers, but mostly it’s because he’s fascinated by young Altaira (Anne Francis; boom-chick-a-wa-wa), who has never known a man other than her father–make of that what you will–and, well, did I mention the miniskirts?

Meanwhile, the invisible beast returns to menace the saucer men, leaving clawed footprints unlike any creature known to science.

The reason that a simple professor of languages could build a machine like Robby soon becomes clear. Morbius discovered the last remaining works of the Krell, including a vast, underground complex, 20 miles on each side, still humming away with power after 2,000 centuries. The doctor deciphered their writings and used their lab tech to boost his intelligence to genius levels. But even Morbius doesn’t know what the great machine is for.

Late that evening, the invisible monster strikes again, this time illuminated by the laser fence set up around the C-57D. And soon, the truth about it is revealed.

You see, the Krell had completed their greatest achievement, a machine meant to do away with all other machines. It allowed them to create and manipulate matter in any form, for any purpose. They had, as one might say, Fucked With God’s Domain. And God wasn’t having any of it, no sir. For the Krell had forgotten about their own baser natures, locked deep within their subconscious minds. Once they went to sleep, their Monsters from the Id went on a genocidal rampage.

And now, 200,000 years later, Morbius’ dreams of selfishness and jealousy have activated the alien device and manifested themselves as a giant, angry gumdrop. Desperate to hold onto his daughter–again, you’re not reading too much into that–his unstoppable creation burns its way through several feet of nigh-indestructible Krell metal to kill Commander Adams and Altaira herself.

In the end, Morbius attempts to renounce his murderous monster, but the effort (somehow) kills him. As he heads toward his final peace, he pushes a conveniently-located self-destruct mechanism that will annihilate Altair IV in a matter of hours, giving the saucer crew enough time to clear the blast area.

Leslie Nielsen gets the final word: “Alta, about a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. And your father’s name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy. It’s true, it will remind us that we are, after all, not God.”

Dave Sci-Fi aliens, Forbidden Planet, Krell, meddling in God's domain, my favorite Martians

If there’s one thing that the original Star Trek series teaches us, it’s that aliens are people too. Several notable episodes involve Captain Kirk and his extraterrestrial foes overcoming their natural antagonism and realizing that they don’t have to kill…today.

The 1967 episode “Arena” is credited as an adaptation of Fredric Brown’s short story of the same name, but it’s more likely that the production team recognized the similarity between their script and Brown’s earlier work and chose to cover their asses. All the two have in common is the basic premise: a human and an alien forced by a higher power to settle their interspecies war through one-on-one combat.

The action begins on the planet Cestus III, where the Federation unknowingly has built a fort within territory claimed by another interstellar power. Investigating the destruction of the human colony, Captain Kirk’s landing party is shelled by an unseen foe, while the starship Enterprise is attacked by an unidentified vessel. Returning to his ship, Kirk sets off to destroy the fleeing enemy before it can report back to its home base.

The two craft are abruptly stopped dead in flight by the Metrons, textbook examples of Snotty, Nigh-Omnipotent Beings (or S.N.O.B.s). They resent having their space invaded for the purpose of conflict, so they intend to resolve the dispute through, er, conflict. Specifically, they teleport Kirk and his counterpart to a planetary arena for a fight to the death, with the loser’s starship and crew to be destroyed.

Only then do we get a look at the Gorn. For mid ’60s TV, it’s a pretty spectacular creation: a six-foot lizard man with iridescent eyes, rockin’ a sporty tunic. It’s one of only a handful of full-blown, rubber suit monsters to appear in the original Trek. With a hissing voice, the Gorn promises Kirk a “swift and merciful death” if he will only surrender.

Kirk, being Kirk, ultimately prevails, using naturally-occurring mineral deposits to create gunpowder and wound the creature. But he refuses to land the killing blow, reasoning that the Gorn may simpy have been trying to protect its people when it attacked the fort. The Metrons are impressed by this demonstration of “the advanced trait of mercy,” never mind that they themselves intended to annihilate several hundred bystanders just to make a point about the savagery of less enlightened species. Instead, they allow both combatants to return unharmed to their ships.

It wasn’t the first time that Star Trek would preach understanding of Those Not Like Us, and it wouldn’t be the last. A couple of months later, Kirk would be cozying up to an even more inhuman creature, the Horta: a silicon-based glob that kills miners on Janus VI after they destroy some of its rock-like eggs. The message: if we can make friends with a deep-dish pizza, then perhaps there’s hope for our mutual understanding of other human cultures.

The Gorn themselves wouldn’t make another live-action appearance until 2005, during the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise. Too bad, really, because I’d take a lizard in a tunic over a bumpy-headed, Shakespeare-quoting Klingon any stardate.

Dave Sci-Fi aliens, my favorite Martians, Star Trek, the Gorn

Okay, let’s get it out of the way. The aliens in this series of blog posts will, more often than not, hail from somewhere other than Mars. “My Favorite Aliens” doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

For an indeterminate yet finite number of days to come, I will be profiling the otherworldly denizens of movies and TV that have beamed themselves into my heart. Will you join me on this journey of cultural diversity?

Let’s meet our first interplanetary ambassadors!

The Kilaaks are the bewitching brains behind the events of Toho Studios’ 1968 film Destroy All Monsters (known as Kaijū Sōshingeki in Japan). While they’re not from Mars, they’re not so very far from the Red Planet. The Kilaaks hail from a small planetoid somewhere in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Now, you might think that living on an airless lump of rock so far from the sun would make the Kilaaks resistant to cold, but then you have not walked a mile in their tinfoil pajamas. As it turns out, the Kilaaks thrive in intense temperatures. Anything less causes them to revert to their original form: weird, metallic worms. (What they want with our temperate planet is anyone’s guess.)

Despite that severe disadvantage, the Kilaaks have several things going for them. First, they’re all women. Second, they’re all brilliant scientists. Third, they’ve perfected mind-control devices which allow them to puppet humans and monsters alike.

Issuing forth from a flying saucer hanger hidden amidst the craters of our moon, they invade Ogasawara Island, aka “Monsterland.” You see, in the far-flung future of 1999, all of the world’s giant monsters–including Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra–have been herded onto an island prison. Pretty soon, alien-controlled beasts are rampaging throughout the cities of the world, distracting the human military and allowing the Kilaaks to set up an advance base near Mt. Fuji.

Eventually some heroic astronauts penetrate the Kilaaks’ secret moon crater, exposing the space women to the cold and forcing them back into hibernation. With the mind-controller in human hands, Godzilla and crew are marched toward the Mt. Fuji complex.

And that’s when the Kilaaks play their trump card: the mighty interstellar dragon King Ghidorah.

You see, Ghidorah (first introduced in 1964′s Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster, aka San Daikaijū: Chikyū Saidai no Kessen) is also an alien. Born of a fallen meteorite, King Ghidorah is the bad-ass of the Godzilla franchise. During his early appearances, no single monster was capable of defeating him.

One thing you need to understand about my love for this film is that I grew up during an era without VCRs or DVDs. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to go where it was playing or hope that some TV station would choose to air it. As a young Godzilla fan, I only knew about Destroy All Monsters courtesy some black-and-white photos printed in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.

And so it was that I had to talk my dad into driving me to Greater Chicagoland to catch a kiddie matinee of this, the ultimate Japanese monster flick. We arrived near the end of the first screening, which meant that I walked into the theater just as King Ghidorah squared off against ten (!) of my favorite monsters. (“My Favorite Monsters,” coming soon to a blog near you.) It was geek kid heaven.

Now, Ghidorah might’ve been able to hold his own against Godilla, Mothra and Rodan, but against those three plus Anguirus, Gorosaurus, Kumonga and Minya (the “son of Godzilla”), the poor guy doesn’t have a chance. Killed once and for all for the time being, the path is clear for Godzilla to crush the Kilaaks’ dome.

The Kilaaks may resemble Japanese actresses costumed as baked potatoes, but as a kid I found them way creepy. Effectively immortal–cold only causes them to hibernate–they’re still out there on their unknown asteroid, wriggling their wormy bodies and plotting our destruction.

Dave Sci-Fi aliens, Destroy All Monsters, Kilaaks, King Ghidorah, my favorite Martians

District 9 is an amazing film for several reasons. Its reported $30 million production budget looks like $100 million on the big screen. It seamlessly mixes documentary-style footage with fully-realized digital characters. And it manages to be surprisingly likeable despite being populated almost exclusively by horrible, horrible people.

At first glance, District 9 appears to be an update of Alien Nation, the late ’80s film/TV series about an entire population of displaced extraterrestrials being plopped into the midst of a major metropolis. However, when it came to cultural assimilation, the Tenctonese had it easy compared to the “Prawns” of District 9.

For reasons unexplained, their massive starship parks itself directly above Johannesburg, South Africa. (As V and Independence Day have taught us, nothing gets humans’ attention quite like hovering a mile-wide saucer over a populated area.) Unable to return to space, the insectoid aliens are moved into a shantytown. Tensions flare between the native South Africans and the new arrivals. Fed up after two decades of not-so-peaceful coexistence, the humans decide to forcibly relocate the creatures to a new tent community far from the city.

An office drone named Wikus (played by Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of the move by the head of the Blackwater-like organization for which he works. Wikus seems amiable enough at first, but soon he’s going door to door, forcing aliens to sign eviction notices at gunpoint. The allusion to apartheid is not at all subtle, but so what? It’s still something that needs to be said.

For the initial half hour or so, District 9 plays out in a faux-documentary style, with a mixture of interviews and surveillance camera footage. Once the main plot kicks in, it becomes a more conventional thriller before reverting back to docu-mode for its final minutes.

Wikus has the bad luck to become infected with a mysterious liquid which begins to mutate him into one of the aliens, Brundlefly-style. That makes him a valuable commodity, as the powerful weapons recovered from the spaceship are keyed to alien DNA and therefore useless to humans. Soon, Wikus is the target not only of his superiors–who have been performing some nasty experiments on the unfortunate residents of District 9–but also the Nigerian gangsters who have taken over the slum.

Copley’s performance as the in-over-his-head office worker managed to bring me back to his side, never mind that a half-hour before I’d seen him cheerfully torching a shack full of alien pods, describing the popping sound made as the unborn creatures burst into flame. It didn’t hurt that he allied himself with “Christopher Johnson,” an alien with his own agenda. A digital character speaking entirely in clicks, Christopher somehow winds up a soulful, thoroughly sympathetic character.

District 9 is not for the faint-of-stomach. There are copious amounts of vomit and other fluids on display. And when the alien weaponry comes into play, soldiers explode in sprays of blood.

First-person shooter videogamers will love the insanely lethal devices, from the lightning rifle that instantly blasts its targets to mist, to the gravity gun (straight out of Half-Life 2) that turns found objects into projectiles. At one point, someone is shot with a pig. No, not by a pig. And I haven’t even mentioned the alien power suit that turns Wikus into the deadliest office manager ever.

Like the best pop sci-fi, District 9 uses the future to comment on the present. It shows how even those who were recently forced to live apart are all too willing to visit the same on those who are not like themselves.

Dave Movies aliens, District 9, pig projectile, reviews, vomit

There once was a television series called Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K to its fervant fans). Born on a local Minneapolis TV station, it was the horror movie host concept taken to its logical conclusion. Instead of a would-be comedian in a Dracula cape riffing during commercial breaks, MST3K presented a running commentary throughout the film, with its hosts superimposed as shadows in the lower corner of the screen.

The premise was that a mad scientist (Dr. Clayton Forrester, named for a character in 1953′s The War of the Worlds) stranded a janitor (Joel first, later Mike) aboard an orbiting satellite, forcing him to watch terrible movies as part of an ill-defined experiment in world domination. Accompanied by two wise-cracking robot puppets (Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo), he kept his sanity by making fun of the films.

The show eventually moved to basic cable: The Comedy Channel, Comedy Central and finally the Sci-Fi Channel. During its eleven years it won a Peabody Award and spawned a barely-released feature film.

Several years after the show was cancelled in 1999, something curious happened. The various cast members–perhaps in part because of a relative lack of success in parlaying their work on a puppet show into big, Hollywood careers–resurrected the movie-riffing act. For reasons unclear, the original cast and their later counterparts launched separate, competing projects. And because neither group owned the rights to the MST3K name or characters, they were forced to create their own franchises. The old crew produces an MST3K knock-off called Cinematic Titanic, while the second generation does RiffTrax, a series of comedic commentary audio tracks intended to be played in synch with DVDs of recent blockbusters. From what I can tell, the RiffTrax folks seem to be the more successful, or at least the more prolific.

Tonight they participated in a live performance beamed to theaters nationwide from Nashville. Their target: the plutonium turkey Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Honestly, riffing on Plan 9 is like shooting flying saucers in a barrel. There’s a reason that they never took on Ed Wood’s masterpiece during eleven years of MST3K. Its tale of aliens in pie plate spaceships resurrecting zombies–including the late Bela Lugosi and his stand-in, a chiropractor holding a cape over his face–is funny enough without help.

That said, the result was hilarious. The gang had a great time poking fun at zombie Tor Johnson’s massive frame (“His mother named him Tor because that’s what he did to her when he was born.”), and police detective Duke Moore’s habit of using his gun as a pointer and neck scratcher. As with MST3K, the quips came fast and furious.

The boys also presented a vintage short about stewardesses in training. Great stuff, though again, the short would probably have been pretty amusing on its own. If nothing else, the disconnect between ’50s era air travel (fold-down beds! four-course meals!) and today’s cattle cars in the sky was a hoot.

Filling out the show was a host named Veronica Belmont, who was presented as “the Queen of the Internet.” I have no idea who she is, but Queen of the Internet is clearly an inherited title, as Ms. Belmont had the hosting chops of your average high school thespian. (Lots of hooting from our local audience.) There were a couple of parody commercials produced by “Lowtax” of SomethingAwful, and geek-themed songs by some dude named Jonathan Coulton. (Personal note to the women in the Nashville audience who were mouthing the words to Coulton’s tunes, yes, we saw you, and yes, we were laughing at you.)

A good time was had by all, and the event certainly had me interested in looking into RiffTrax‘s other output. Still, I’d prefer that they settled whatever differences they might have with their Cinematic Titanic counterparts, and that the combined groups would buy out the owner of MST3K. Clearly there’s a desire on the part of both the players and the audience for more Mystery Science Theatre.

Dave Movies MST3K, Plan 9 from Outer Space

After a couple of days of downloading, patching, downloading again, repatching and smacking my head against the tabletop, last night I was able to join the Champions Online open beta. The superhero role-playing game goes officially live next week, but they opened up the beta test for those who pre-ordered.

You may recall that I used to play City of Heroes, a similar MMORPG. Both games were designed by Cryptic Studios, though City was eventually handed off to South Korean company NCsoft. My initial reaction to Champions Online is that it’s more of the same, except better.

One obvious improvement over City is that one has much more control over the look of one’s heroes. There are dozens of slider controls to tweak both facial features and physique. Unlike the older game, it’s actually possible to play a small-breasted (or no-breasted, if you’re into that) female character.

There also appears to be greater variety of character archetypes. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to lock one into a specific role (“scrapper,” “blaster,” “tank”). Instead, beginning character builds are based on their power sets. I noticed that at least some powers can be modified; for example, I was able to make one of my psychic attacks emerge from my head, hand or even chest.

My first character was an attempt to recreate my favorite from City of Heroes, Ms. Mesmer. I really like the spiral effect on her costume. Not so crazy about the hood; it’s big and dorky. But at least she gets a cape from day one. In City, heroes could only don them after reaching Level 20. While I understand that the idea was that it made a cape an obvious status symbol and a reward for long-term play, it was pretty silly that you couldn’t just tie a towel around your neck, same as any five-year-old pretending to be Superman.

I took Mesmer out for a spin through the tutorial levels last night. It took me quite a while to get the controls to my liking, and to stop auto-running into a group of angry alien insects. I’m not familiar enough with the pen-and-paper role-playing game on which the online Champions is based to fully understand the attribute scores that describe my character’s capabilities. (The original RPG was so insanely complex that an advanced degree in mathematics was helpful when trying to get the most of your superhero.)

Gameplay so far seems like a familiar mix of missions: “Go beat up 30 bad guys,” “Go take this piece of paper over there,” etc. Hopefully there will be more to it once the full experience is up and running.

One thing that doesn’t seem to be active I haven’t been able to try yet* is the aspect of Champions Online I find most appealing: the ability to create one’s own archenemy. It came to bug me that in City of Heroes,  everyone was fighting the same set of supervillains. To me, every great hero needs at least one really compelling rival that’s all his/her own. Batman has the Joker, Spider-Man has the Green Goblin, Betty has Veronica. Supposedly, Champions will include in the character creation process the opportunity to design a custom villain who will be computer-controlled, and will dog that hero’s career. I’m looking forward to introducing Ms. Mesmer to the dreaded Mr. Remsem!

And now, here’s a sneak peek at my first new character for Champions Online:

Dinosaur Jones, Prehistoric Adventurer of the Spaceways!

* Apparently, I was wrong about the “archenemy” thing. I’ve read that you don’t get that perk until Level 25. That seems awfully late in one’s superheroic career.

Dave Videogames Champions Online, superheroines