It’s time for more outtakes; more from the Volume I stories that you know and love. We’re in a new year and it’s crazy how fast time flies. January went by in a flash and my son celebrated his tenth birthday (he’ll be a grown man before I know it). Also, Roy will be back the second week of February to start the re-run of the PDF Volume I issues. He has another surprise in store for February that you should definitely be excited for. We’re planning Volume II for June, so look out for more outtakes before then.
Today:
We present outtakes from PRL Cosmos’ Made in America and PRL Mysteries’ Old Man Young.
In Volume I, Wes’s One-Shots from Made in America appeared in a majority of the issues and though they don’t work as a straightforward narrative if you read them in succession, there was definitely a lot of set up for the Volume II debut. He focused a lot on character development in Volume I and we really got to know Eakran before his PRL Heroes debut, as well as the beautiful Maria. Wes promises some Vol. I One-Shots tweaks, so be sure to follow the Vol. I PDF re-run next month. He explains that there are a few details that he wants to smooth out, but there won’t be any major changes to the world that was already established. His outtake today takes us back to the two-part Wendy, the IBF Receptionist One-Shot from Issues 4 and 5, and we get to know more about the origins of Wendy. From what Wes has told me, Wendy was originally meant to be a very minor character that would show up when the action took place at the Institute for Brain Function (IBF) location, but since her debut, he has expanded her role in Volume II. Today we get to know a little more about Wendy’s past and what brought her to the IBF.
I have to say that writing Old Man Young has been kind of challenge, but it’s an enjoyable challenge. We live in a strange time in US history when it seems that there is a contingent of people fighting very hard to re-establish a status quo that was hard fought to overcome. It’s most noticeable in women’s rights issues (with the challenges to abortion and contraception coverage in health insurance) and race relations (with the supreme court’s failure to uphold the majority of the voting rights act, and the incidences of police killing unarmed black men). It seems that the fear of the black man is as alive as ever and I keep hearing a strange argument from people who want the Black Lives Matter protests to go away: Where is the outrage from the black community when black people are killed by other black people? I’ll tell you exactly where it is, it’s in the homes of those people who have lost loved ones to black-on-black violence. I’m loathe to blame the media, but of course no news crews are in inner cities across America talking to the families of the victims of black-on-black crime. Its not the same issue to the media, its not even the same issue to black people. The push back against black-on-black crime is a community issue that involves gangs and the proliferation of guns within those communities. The incidences of black men killed by police is evidence that the lives of black men are worthless to the police force that fears them; the police officers who have killed unarmed black men place so little value on the lives of their victims that they did not consider any alternative to ending their lives when faced with what they perceived to be life-threatening danger. The police consists of a group of men and women who have accepted the duty of protecting and serving their communities; when they kill unarmed black men it should cause an outrage because men of a lighter complexion will not be killed so flippantly, almost instinctively, for the committing the same offenses because apparently black men are the only people who can be scary enough to warrant being shot even without a weapon on their person. We can’t solve black-on-black crime the same way we have to address the issues of police over-reaction to blackness. The marches and protests are necessary to keep those incidences in check because they can be avoided with systematic changes to the organization that is funded by the people of the community. Black-on-black crime is similar to the mass shooting violence that plagues white communities; it boils down to a discussion of gun control and whether Americans have a constitutional right to own and possess every gun that has ever been manufactured. When people use the black-on-black crime argument, I hate to say, its an indication of that person’s prejudices and its shows how little they value a black life; they’d rather not consider that a person could be killed just because they look intimidating and they’d rather scapegoat the issue than really grapple with the implications. Admittedly, they are very difficult implications, but hopefully the discussions people are having around the country won’t just die away without any lasting effects.
This discussion is relevant to Old Man Young because Young is a detective who encounters black criminals and his first real talk with Sandra in It Exists (Issue 6) reveals the complexities of the job. It shows how difficult it is for Young to truly understand the lives of the criminals that he encounters, though he is definitely not a racist man and he has many close relationships with black people. The continuation of Old Man Young in Volume II will be Young’s opportunity to face his own prejudices and I can say that he will definitely become a better man, and a better detective for it. This outtake is Issue 4 of Old Man Young and gives a little more of Young’s backstory.
Sorry to get carried away with the intro, but I hope you enjoy the outtakes. I will be back sometime in February to present outtakes from the Volume I run of It Exists, and Roy will be wrest back control of the blog on February 9, 2015 to kick off the Volume I re-run.
PRL Serials 