THE HONOR ROLL

     So, I had to wonder, in what order should I recapitulate my old reviews for the greatest possible delectation of readers? I could simply reprint all my favorite essays, but that would neglect all my attempts to wring insights out of even the most unpromising material. I could reprint the essays in their order of blog-publication, or in reverse-order, or in alphabetical order by title. I finally decided on using the alphabet as my guide, but in the context of an “honor roll” for the starring and supporting players of superhero operas.

“Players” are any characters in a superhero opera with whom the audience may identify, whether to cheer for or hiss at. In movies and television, the vast majority of productions are done with the use of living actors, who belong to the subset of players I call “performers.” The other subset of players I call “proxies,” who are, in essence, effects brought to life by people who don’t directly go “on camera.” Performers may be involved in the making of proxies, but the audience does not *directly * identify with that performer, but with the effect he’s enabling. Moviegoers don’t see Haruo Nakajima wearing a lizard suit, they convince themselves that they see Godzilla. They don’t hear Vin Diesel speaking the phrase “I am Groot,” they hear Groot. The honor roll of starring and supporting players, then, includes performers and proxies. The performers are listed by their real names; the proxies, by their character names—and each player only gets one entry on the honor roll, for however long I continue the blog.

The honor roll is at base my way of forming my reprints into a pleasing-to-me order. I make no bones about enjoying the game of “spotting the film stars,” and the more head-scratching pursuit of “Six Degrees of Whoever or Whatever.” So each week, I take a letter—let’s say “T”—and decide if I want to “honor” as my weekly Costumed Crusader “Tom Tyler” for performing The Phantom, or an animated version of “The Thing” for one of the three FANTASTIC FOUR cartoons. (Of course, I haven’t reviewed any FF cartoons yet, so I can’t “honor” The Thing until I do so.) Cartoon characters with both a given and a family name, like Jonny Quest, are alphabetized by the family name, just like Zachary Quinto and Linnea Quigley.

And that leads to my last point in this tortuous (not “torturous,” one hopes) explication. Some letters of the alphabet just don’t get used that much for the names of either performers or proxies. So as I go along, I’ll combine these letters as needed: “I” with “J,” “N” with “O,” “Q” with “R,” “T” with “U” and “V,” and “W” with “X,Y, and Z.”

And—that’s it. “By my songs, shall you know my operas.”