Alva's Story

Book 2: The Curated Worlds

by Cameron McVey

Genres: Superheroes; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

A new series from the author of “Hold Still the Sky,” “Monsters of Utopia” and “Nova Sol.”

Alva Albish is an orphan. She is at the center of an epic mystery. She just doesn't know it yet. Continuing on from book one, Zenda's Story, book two of The Curated Worlds expands on the life and confusing times of Alva Albish. She's an adult now. She works at the Museum of Popular Culture. She's so busy working that she has written any fanfic in a long time. Also, even though Southwest Comic Con happens just down the street, she's never gone. “One day,” she tells herself. “One day.” Then one day something strange happens at the museum. Alva sees three ninjas skulking around. She chases after them but they vanish right in front of her. As she investigates this impossible event, her life and her world unravel. She ends up in the desert while missiles fly overhead. That's when worlds collide.

“The Curated Worlds” is my love letter to science fiction, comic con culture and superhero fandom. In its pages I have created my own superhero-science fiction multiverse and told its most important stories. All of them.

Release date: September 17, 2021

Print pages: 151

Sample

IMAGO: ONE

 

Entry the First  

-This is the diary of Alva Albish. 

 

-This is a new diary, a new year and I plan on creating a new life for myself.

 

-I am “Alvie” to my friends but I don’t have many friends so most people call me Alva. 

 

-I have in the past gone by many different versions of my first name. Allie. Alv. Al. Avie. I even threw in a few twists over the years : Val, Valia, Via. 

 

-I never lied when I told people to use these names. I always told them my real name first then told them to call me whatever nickname I preferred at the time. 

 

-I chose a different nickname with each foster house I was shipped to.

 

-Yes, I am an orphan. All my names are made up.

 

-No, I do not know who my parents are or what happened to them.

 

-Some days I pretend they are still alive out there somewhere freshly recovered from amnesia and searching desperately for me. 

 

-Some days I prefer to believe they are dead and gone. Killed in a horrible car accident or by self-inflicted overdose. That’s why they haven’t come for me.

 

-On my more romantic days, I just know that my parents were undercover agents who lost their lives on a top secret mission and the government stashed me away in the orphanage for my own protection.

 

-Before I turned 18, I just knew that a handsome agent man would come to the foster home on my birthday and whisk me away to a life of intrigue, travel, covert ops and lots of hot sex.

 

-When I turned 18 and that didn’t happen, I just knew that the handsome agent would come to me on my 21st birthday.

 

-Then I turned 21 and found myself in a dilapidated apartment on the seedy side of town working at a convenience store during the day and going to college at night. 

 

-The stories we tell ourselves.* [Possible title for my memoir]

 

-First, a few details about my life as it is and, soon to be, as it was.

 

-I am 27 years old. 

 

-I graduated from Southwest State when I was 22 with a major in Museum Studies and a minor in Creative Writing. I know. Not very practical. I suppose that was because my entire childhood had been practical and as a new adult I wanted to experience something different. Shunted from foster home to foster home, I became very good at being practical, organized, self-sufficient. When I went out on my own, I needed to do something OTHER than practical.

 

-I am the Junior Manager of the Docent Program at the Museum of Popular Culture. That’s a fancy way of saying I train the volunteers while my boss secludes himself in his office day trading. I don’t mean to come off bitter. I love my job. Most of the volunteers are wonderful, caring, engaging people. My boss is going through some shit right now so I’m more than happy to pull the extra weight for a while. I tried talking to him, offering him the proverbial shoulder to cry on, but he’s too locked down. He wouldn’t recognize an emotion if it walked up and smacked him in the face. He’s one of those academics who made a life out of books and studying and knowing things other people never cared to know because that allowed him to stay centered in his head and not really deal with his heart. There are times I think I was lucky growing up in foster homes. That upbringing stripped me of all illusions about the nature of life. Life will kick you in the ass for no reason at all. Multiple times. The only smooth sailing you get in life is when you realize that the road will always be bumpy. Ugh! What a horrible sentence that is. Professor Harkin would scold me if he ever came across this entry. Enough about work.

 

-No, I lied. More about work. The museum is an amazing place. The current, main exhibition is a first time gathering and display of movie posters from both the Golden Age of Hollywood and the Modern Age, too. I find it absolutely fascinating. As Hollywood did during the Golden Age, the collection focuses mainly on superhero movies. The really cool twist to the exhibition is that now in the Modern Age (some scholars have quippily refer to it as the Laser Age in reference to the holographic projector technology that took over the industry a decade ago) with the resurgence of the superhero movie genre and subsequent remakes of Golden Age classics there are several pairs of movie posters with each set having the poster from the original movie and the poster from the modern remake.

 

-Okay, I’m going to nerd out for a bit here, so you can skip this if you don’t want a deep dive into popular culture studies. But you really shouldn’t; this stuff is so cool. After closing a few weeks ago when I finished up my rounds to make sure there were no loitering patrons lurking in the nooks and crannies of the museum (you’d be surprised how many patrons don’t know that the lights flashing three times then going off a few minutes later means the museum is closing) I stood in front of what I consider to be the main pairing of posters in the whole of the exhibition.

On my left was the original “United Protectors” poster. In the center it shows Neil Carraway as Hypoid and Lana Lunger as Bellatria. They are reaching towards each other in the beginnings of an embrace that could either be lovers coming together after having not seen each other in a long time or the start of a serious battle between the two. Scattered around the edges are the other members of the United Protectors and, of course, their most famous adversaries, Psycheon, the mind flayer, and Zarkon Quantris, the computer from outer space. Assassinata, played back then by Angela Gardner, was sort of a cross between hero and villain. She was the super spy of the group. That movie was Gardner’s one big role before she was murdered by a crazed stalker. Tragic. 

Gardner’s on-screen lover, Wild Man, was played by Carmicheal Sturgeon. That was the horrible, horrible, horrible screen name made up by Carter Smith’s agent. Smith went on to have a massively successful career starting with the spin-off serials focused on Wild Man. “Wild Man and the Great Hunt,” 1942. “Wild Man and the Secret of the Lost Mine,” 1943. “Wild Man and the Freaks of the Circus,” 1945. That’s my personal favorite. I’ve always been drawn to the grotesque and baroque. And, of course, the last and most popular of the serials, “Wild Man vs. the Aliens,” 1947. 

The latter two serials took longer to produce as Hollywood was just incorporating new special effects technology back then. CGE, computer generated events, really made that type of fantastical story pop off the screen. The effects were so realistic. Of course, “Wild Man vs. the Aliens” was the last of the Wild Man serials only because the character was used in a series of one-shot movies over the next decade, each more successful than the last. The only reason they stopped making them was because Smith stepped away from his career and began a charitable foundation. In fact, full disclosure, I was able to pay for college with a scholarship from Anima Mundi International, the education branch of The Smith World Foundation. To think it all started with the original United Protectors movie. Unbelievable.

Hour Glass, who I always considered the worst-written of all the Protectors, was portrayed by Wallace Enger. Enger disdained movie roles after that (with the lines he was given, who could blame him?) and focused solely on Broadway roles. He won several Tonys over the decades. His most famous role was Starbuck - Rainmaker in “110 in the Shade.” He often joked in interviews that after his poor experience with the Hour Glass role (he particularly hated the character’s modern, techy version of the traditional, Italian harlequin costume) he initially turned down the Rainmaker offer because he thought it was another superhero production. 

Luckily, his agent, Mort Fastbinder, lied to the producers and told them Enger was on board even though he’d turned down the offer. To say Enger was surprised when he read the casting announcement in the trades is an understatement. He stormed over to Fastbinder’s office and ripped into ole Mort. After Enger vented his spleen, Fastbinder tilted back in his chair, lit a cigar, tapped one thick, ink-stained finger on the paper where Enger had thrown it on his desk and smiled as he said, “You’ll be back here a year from now thanking me.” To his credit, Enger is the one who first told this story and, in so doing, thanked his agent time and time again. “Without Morty, no one knows my name.” 

Jonathan Onsteen played Daedalus. He was the oldest of the actors in the movie. His character was more of a walking plot device than anything else. His ridiculous (but cool looking!) omni-staff provided whatever information the heroes needed just when they needed it. He did a few movies over the following decade before retiring. His most beloved but least well-known role came in the cult classic “Flowers for Agrippa” which was an absurd, surreal mashup of the short story “Flowers for Daniel,” which tells the heart-breaking story of a mute mime who is adopted by a wealthy elderly couple and given a life of glorious splendor only to have it yanked away by the evil, biological son when the couple dies in a clearly orchestrated car crash, and the real-life history of the Roman Senator and confidant of Julius Caesar, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, transposed into modern times via the hand-wavery of Agrippa’s soul being reincarnated into that of a young man who lives in Rochester, NY. The young man, whose name we never know, commits suicide in the very first scene of the movie and that is when Agrippa’s soul takes over the man’s body in order to “live through the disasters that I visited upon others back in that ancient age.” 

However, the young man had been such a fan of “Flowers for Daniel” that he had become a mime himself. He painted his face white and refused to talk. He would only act out his thoughts and desires in, well, a mime-like fashion. So, once in this body, the soul of Agrippa had to communicate in this same manner. The movie leaves it up to the viewers to decide whether or not Agrippa’s persecutors (who is just about everyone he encounters in the course of the film - the sole exception being salt of the earth waitress Eugenia) are also reincarnated souls in new bodies or whether they are simply normal people acting in a vicious manner for no reason whatsoever accept that they have the opportunities to do so. If you’ve never seen “Flowers for Agrippa,” do yourself a favor and stream it right now. It’s amazing. And ludicrous. And cheesy. And sublime. And schlocky. It’s all those and more all at the same time. 

Meanwhile, the actor who played Psycheon, the mind flayer, one Chester Rebis, left Hollywood a few years after the movie and was never heard from again. Some say that Rebis felt cursed by the Psycheon role as no producer wanted to link his or her project to such a hated character. Those who defended Rebis’ intense portrayal of the dastardly supervillain point out that it was the actor’s full commitment to the character as it was written that created such a long-lasting impression on popular culture. After all, we owe the phrase “I’m psyching out.” to Rebis’ searing depiction of that conflicted character.

The voice actor who gave life to Zarkon Quantris, Livingston Calderone, made a career out of such behind the scenes roles. He never physically acted on stage or appeared on screen. He was strictly a voice talent. He never even gave interviews in person, only over the phone. His more notable roles include the “Dark Prince”” in Disney’s “Fabula Phantasma” TV series, “Flight of the Bombardier” as the voice of the plane’s computer, “Hell’s Buring Gate” as the titular gate and “Clovis, the First Man,” a three part mini-series in which he never spoke and only provided the grunts for the animatrodic Neanderthal character. The emotional spectrum he displayed with those grunts won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that year.

The Golden Age United Protectors poster is dominated by waves and waves of dark blue and purple watercolor washes layered one over the other with heavy, thick, burnt orange outlines to demark the figures. The combination is reminiscent of billboards for a haunted house theme park. There are highlights of bright gold - a lens flare-esque burst centered between Hypoid and Bellatria, an easy to miss, spidery, lightning-like stroke in the lower right corner emitting from Psycheon’s left hand, twin sparks at the outer corners of Wild Man’s eyes and, morbidly enough, a stand alone, unexplainable, diagonal slash across Assassinata’s torso which, internet sleuths noted decades later, perfectly matches the angle and length of the bloody gash in the crime scene photos of Gardner’s murder.

 

-Now, on my right, is the poster for the Modern Age United Protectors movie: “United Protectors: Resistance Rising.” Crappy name if you ask me. But, then, I’m always going to favor the Golden Age versions over the Modern Age ones. With the one notable exception of “Hour Glass and the Temporal Theater.” Best use of the Hour Glass character in any medium, any era. Prove me wrong. My favorite episodes are the ones in which Hour Glass faces off against his chief nemesis Queen Crystal.

U.P:R.R. was meant to be the first in a trilogy of movies but it didn’t fare so well at the box office. There are many theories for its failure. Here’s mine: the movie poster sucks. I mean, totally. God awful baby blue background that, I guess (maybe put in some wispy clouds to clarify?!?), is supposed to be the open sky and the heroes are hovering in mid-air in a line with their backs turned to the viewer. They are all looking up at something in the distance while below them, just crossing into the bottom of the image, is what could be General Proteus’ iconic helmet. General Proteus is the leader of the Bone Brigade, the death cult nemesis of the United Protectors, for those of you not familiar with this particular stream of popular culture. But the thing poking up into the bottom of the poster could also be a turd. A big, spiky turd which is what the most quoted review of the movie called Resistance Rising.

On its own, the modern poster is bland to the point of boring. But, paired with the poster for the golden age movie, there are small details, really too small to be seen except in an up close examination, that, once noticed, are hard to forget. For example, the gold highlights of the Golden Age poster shunt the viewer’s eyes over to the belt and gloves of Hypoid in the modern poster. In the old movie, Hypoid doesn’t wear a belt or gloves. The modern, more excessively accessorized version of the character does. The golden age version was a strongman who stumbled across a set of magic barbells that when used in a very specific manner turned him into a superhero. Wish Fulfillment: 101. The modern version is a down on his luck lifeguard on Miami Beach who is kidnapped into a secret, government, genetic manipulation program. When he tries to escape from the isolated facility, Hypoid’s hands are burnt by Colonel Lazarus, who, yes, you guessed it, would go on to become General Proteus of Bone Brigade fame. The constant need to tie together the origin of the hero with the origin of the villain is a modern trend that I hope dies a quick and silent death. Let the protagonists find each other. Let them develop and evolve. Let them grow into being enemies. The dualed fate trope is too heavy handed in the modern takes. But, that’s just my opinion. 

Anywho, back to the belt and gloves. In the modern version the damage to Hypoid’s hands is never shown. Not when it happens, not when he gets his superpowers, not after he dedicates his life to defending the innocent and downtrodden. There are numerous times in the Galanski/Portella run - the best comic version of the character and that’s not just my opinion, that's a known fact - that Hypoid takes his gloves off ‘off screen’ (ha! “off off”) and either he or another character reacts to the horrifying scars. At one point, Bellatria in the much discussed (and by “discussed” I mean shouted about online and debated ad nauseam at comic conventions across the country for the better part of a decade) love scene, a moment built up to over a multi-year storyline, says, “The safety of the world rests in your scarred hands.” 

There was this whole loophole in the story that Bellatria and Hypoid couldn’t be near each other without one of them temporarily losing their superpowers. That is, if Hypoid didn’t have his gloves on. Galanski and Portella went back and forth with neither character willing to give up his or her powers despite their deep mutual love and serious hots for each other. They worked that particular dynamic for more than two years. So, in that moment, when all you see is Hypoid’s gloves draped over the edge of the bed with Bellatria’s speech bubble filling the rest of the panel, you know what is going on. I mean, you know more than if Portella had drawn the image explicitly. It was masterful. Masterful!

So, now that you have that context you understand why fans would pay attention to Hypoid’s hands and gloves on the poster. When you see the posters side by side you note that the modern poster picked up the exact same shade of gold from the old poster and used it for Hypoid’s belt and, of course, his gloves. The belt for the modern costume was explained away as being like the belt of the swim trunks that the lifeguard character wore before becoming Hypoid. But the gloves needed more of an explanation. Lifeguards don’t wear gloves. That’s just stupid. The readers, yup, you guessed, protested online about the gloves when the first images of the redesigned character were leaked. So the original writer on the reboot series, Andres Solanger, crow-barred in the whole ‘his hands got damaged in an escape attempt’ as a reason not only to have the gloves but to show them in every single scene. Hypoid could never take the gloves off back then or his hands would shoot out deadly beams. Because his damaged neurons couldn’t control the super-zarconic energy flowing through his body. I know. Ridiculous. But awesome. While I don’t agree with all of Solanger’s choices there, I do give him props for shutting up the internet rage mob.  

When Solanger suddenly quit the book after several solid if not fantastic years to become his country’s ambassador to Guam (you can’t make this stuff up!), Galanski and Portella took over. They were the only in-house employees who could take on a new book with such short notice. All the other creative teams were working on multiple titles already. Wonder House Publishing wasn’t going to give one of their iconic characters to a freelancer. Galanski and Portella were fresh faces in the industry and, except for a couple of forgettable one-shots done for charity organizations (“Battle Master fights Poverty,” “Big Cat helps the Homeless,” that sort of thing) and their work on the “Attack Squad”  back-up feature “Secret Stories of the Squad,” they had nothing to do but focus on Hypoid. So, focus they did.

Right out of the gate, G. and P. started their run with an issue titled, “The Gloves of Loss.” That issue retconned Solanger’s explanation for the gloves and provided the new one that tied into Bellatria and her powers, too. The new twist set up a slow burn storyline that culminated in the shocking panel that I mentioned above. 

The gloves, you see, allow Hypoid to be on the same super-team as Bellatria without anything bad happening - like one of them losing their superpowers. Without the gloves, Hypoid has to stay five hundred miles away from Bellatria. The exact nature of the interaction between Hypoid’s damaged hands and Bellatria’s always mysterious powers was never detailed. That was Galanski/Portella’s best creative choice. Leave in the mystery. But not too much. Just enough to keep the readers guessing. The retcon of the gloves was portrayed as information from the “Secret Files of the United Protectors,” which only the reader, Hypoid and Bellatria knew the truth of. All the other Protectors were told the original “my hands are damaged and shoot out death rays'' explanation. So, you as the reader knew something Assassinata didn’t know. You knew something Wild Man didn’t know. You knew something even techno-sage Daedalus didn’t know. It was a perfect way to start the new era of Hypoid. 

They did the same thing when they updated Assassinata’s powers. Galanski/Portella made her more than just a highly trained assassin. They gave her some never quite explained yet helpful super-perception powers. She was like a human lie detector. But even more so. She could “sense truth” in some sort of weird and misty way. That helped, of course, when she was sent out on spy missions by Daedalus to find out what their enemies were plotting. Because their enemies were always plotting. It became a running joke in the series for Daedalus to question Assassinata when she returned. He’d say something like, “How did you find that out?” Then she’d say something like, “Oh, I have my ways.” as she all but winked at the reader. Again, you as the reader were in on a secret that some of the main characters didn’t know. It was great, so great.

Hypoid, by the way, in the original comic book run was a name given to the suddenly superpowered strongman by the local paper, the Express Gazette. E.G. were the initials of the then owner of Marlstone Publishing which would a few decades later change its name to Wonder House Publishing. E.G. stood for Earl Goldstein. Yet another golden detail. The character name is believed to have been inspired by an ad campaign for a popular denture adhesive of the times. “Hyperborean Dental Creme - your teeth will be as clean and fresh as the Great White North.” I didn’t believe that connection until I found the advertisements in the archive one day when I was bored at work. Turns out that along with the tagline there was a drawing of a very muscular man smiling broadly to show off his fine teeth while at the same time posing in a very strongman-like manner with balled fists resting on one hip and shoulders flared broadly. 

In the modern run, Solanger just kept the name and didn’t give it any backstory. G. and P. about five issues into their run did give it a backstory. Hypoid is a contraction for ‘Hyper Powered Identity.” Hypoid in his civilian form was literally a different person biologically. Different DNA, different memories, etc. The character had a dual nature with a normal person, unpowered identity and a hyper powered identity. G. And P. played with the “are they the same person or are they actually different people” aspect of that twist rather well. Also, they gave a solid explanation for what we can all agree is an average superhero name at best.  

Back to the posters. All these details flowed through my brain as I stood and stared at them that evening. I noted the gold highlights of the original poster, the indeterminate spiky thing at the bottom of the modern poster then focused on Hypoid’s gloves. The part of the glove that covers Hypoid’s rippling, right forearm contains a light streamer-reflection squiggle that some say (again, the internet fan boards are a wealth of information, cough, conspiracy) spells out a word from a lost ancient language. Right. Either you can’t make this stuff up or someone made that shit up. I’d come across that bit of conspiracy thinking a few years prior and had thought less than nothing of it. But there the poster was right in front of me. Next to the original with all the true stories it linked to - Gardner’s murder, Onsteen’s Agrippa, Rebis’ still unexplained disappearance and all the others - and I began to think that maybe, just maybe there was a word from an unknown language hiding in plain sight on Hypoid’s arm. Maybe that language was ancient Hyperborean. Maybe it was magic. Maybe if I could learn how to properly pronounce this magic, mystery word I could...I could...I could…

 

Prof. Harkin would approve of that last sentence

Entry the Second

-Upon rereading my first entry I realized that I forgot to say why I’m writing this journal. To me the motive is obvious for it is my own. But, I realize after going back through the entry, I was not forthright with my aim at the beginning and so now I shall be. Below, I will lift word for word the entry that ended last year’s journal. That entry and its sentiment guide me this year.

 

Entry the 212th

-Why am I putting so much detail into my diary? Simple. I fully intend to be famous someday and, at the end of an illustrious and ballyhooed career, I will serialize my scratchings in the New World Weekly. People will be agog and aghast at how someone so humble (I, the one and only Alva Albish) rose to such great heights. My story will inspire everyone, especially the orphans. And, just perhaps, someone reading it will tell me who my parents are. 

NOTE the first: I prefer to think of my parents in the present tense.

 

NOTE the second: My memoir’s working title is “Alva Albish: how to triumph over mundane evil and exotic stupidity in order to live a super (heroic) life.” I know. It needs work. Maybe “The Life of Alva Albish: tales of wonder and sorrow.” Or, perhaps, “Alva Albish: there and back again.” No, too derivative. I’ll work on it. “Be Alva Now.” Ugh. Double Ugh. I’ll have to edit that one out before publishing. 

 

Entry the Third

-The poster exhibition is coming to an end in a couple of weeks. As usual, the crowds are getting bigger and the docents are feeling overwhelmed. My research into the magic word and, more importantly, my writing have been put to the side as I’ve been working overtime. 

 

-I hesitate to admit that I’ve been researching that stupid word but I decided that in hindsight, years from now when I publish this diary, I will be able to laugh at my youthful naivete, my heartfelt longing and my hope in the face of all facts and logic. Laugh and, too, cry a little. 

 

-What makes it difficult is not knowing the alphabet the word is formed from. I believe once I nail that down then progress will speed up. But, as noted, I have had to put all that to the side and be present eleventy hours a day at the museum. We are open 10AM to 9PM. Even on the weekend. Very generous hours of operation. I do wish we closed earlier on Friday and Saturday nights as the crowds are noticeably thinner and, yes, drunker or otherwise mentally altered. Before I started this job I never would have guessed that people would go to a museum while drunk. What’s the point? Probably just want some place to walk it off and not have to be outside in the cold. Or...well, who knows? I certainly don’t. And why are you so drunk so early in the evening? Makes no sense. Ahhh, I guess I haven’t completely abandoned my practical side.

 

-The surge in crowds is due partly to the exhibition ending soon and, too, to the upcoming Southwest Comic Con which takes place just down the block and around the corner at the old Armory. Fort Oblivion, the first pioneer outpost in this area of the country, was built on that spot one hundred and sixty three years ago. As often happened, a village then a town then a city grew up around the fort. The safety the regiment provided from both nasty critters and acts of god and nature made this otherwise isolated bosque trapped between the mountains and the desert an oasis for many a fortune hunter on the way to New Portugal, that bordering yet foreign land to the west. Rumors of gold nuggets littering the sand dunes drew the dreamers this way. The stretch of desert which Caledonia City watches over from its slightly elevated foundation proved to be the end of many of those dreams. It was simply too hard to push across that expansive and desolate wasteland once you’d spent more than a day resting in the shadow of the fort and drinking from the crystal clear water of the public wells. 

 

-It is worth noting that Caledonia City is a metroplex built on water. The seemingly bottomless aquifer (they’ve sent probes down; they literally can’t find the bottom.) that runs underneath this part of the world is easily accessible. The fort’s initial site was chosen for just that reason. The regiment under the orders of one Captain Lovelace McCall walled in the small, rocky outcropping which contained the largest of the many naturally occurring springs. The water bubbling up and out of the sandstone pooled in a three-tiered basin. Each basin was progressively larger than the one above it. The first was just bigger than a breadbox. The second was large enough for a big woman or a small man to take a cramped bath in. The third was ample enough for six horses to mingle around while they drank their fill. It’s no wonder that McCall established a fort and, subsequently, a career at Fort Oblivion once he and his men rounded the last spur of the mountain range on their way to setting up a wall along the border of the then United States of Middle America and New Portugal.

 

-Enough local history, more pop. culture history. Or, more accurately, more about this year’s SWCC. I am sad to confess that I’ve never attended the event. I work just across the street and down the block from its many-colored halls yet I’ve never been to it. Budgets is tight when you’re on your own. But I have heard plenty about it. In the museum, I’ve talked to many, many an attendee as they take a break from walking amongst the vendors of t-shirts, comic books, personalized portraits, self-published books, plastic toys of all shapes and sizes (those that fit in the palm of your hand to those that stand ten feet tall), imaginary weapons sellers (offering both magical broadswords and laser blasters at special convention prices) cosplay costumes in whole and in part (for fixing the costumes damaged in transport or too aggressive cos”playing”) and stages for debating the merits of one scifi/fantasy franchise over another (i.e. Star Wars vs. Star Trek, Game of Thrones vs. LotR,  Kong vs. Godzilla, Starfire Hammer vs. Starfire Sword, etc) and, of course, carnival-esque food stands inside and food trucks outside (you can purchase a variety of delectable goodies ranging from Martian BBQ to super sweet giant licorice ropes that come in the oddest of flavors (Krypton Karamel, Mt. Doom Spicy Lava, Adamantium Sour Apple, Doctor Hoo Hazelnut, etc.), from keto-pizza to vegan burgers, from deep fried turkey legs (a personal favorite, it was available outside the con at a food truck and I simply could not resist) to tofu shaped and dyed to look like your favorite superhero. 

 

-The look on the SWCC attendees as they rest their weary feet in front of the latest displays is one of which I am envious. There’s a large, padded, circular settee sort of thing right outside the hall that houses the semi-permanent History Of Wonder House exhibition; the comfy couch draws in tired fans like a spider’s web attracts flies. To a person they are content in a way that can only come when one has experienced a dream come true. Such is the power of fiction and imagination mixed in with a little consumerism and fan service. The attendees are usually in a reflective state of mind when I come upon them. I can’t resist asking them how their con is going. And, each time, they stare up at me from the couch with rested and happy faces as they say, “It’s amazing,” “So much fun,” “I just saw Darth Vader fighting Superman in Hall C,” “The Overlord Max photo op was the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” and the one that makes me the most jealous, “I just came from [insert name of superstar actor/actress/writer /director here] and he/she gave the best talk I’ve ever heard.”

 

-This year the big rumor is that Carmichael Sturgeon (the original Wild Man himself) will be the super-secret, big time guest revealed at the last minute. SWCC has been doing this for a few years now. The organizers are great at generating interest in the con over the months leading up to the event (SWCC is held on the third weekend of Janus every year) with regular updates (“reveals” in con lingo) about that year’s guest line up. Everything from famous authors, actors and actresses (of course) to publishers, wives and other family members of now deceased creators of some of the most beloved franchises (nostalgia is strong at the con, an almost palpable force, it spreads out from the convention center into the rest of Caledonia CIty for the duration of the event putting us all in a wistful state of being for the long weekend), to the writer of that one script for that one episode of that one show that most people forget about (or never heard of) but as soon as they do see the episode they simply have to know everything about the franchise and what that writer had for breakfast the day that he/she started to write that fucking amazing script, etc. etc., etc. 

 

-The first “mystery guest” was Leonard Everstone, the man himself. The creator of the United Protectors comic book. He was over ninety when he spoke. In fact, rumors of his death had circulated off and on every few years for the past decade to such an extent that many people truly believed he was dead and thought the big reveal was both disappointing and in very bad taste. “What are they going to do? Have Dr. Morbius bring him back to life?” was an oft repeated comment online. So, the con social media team had to film and put up a rush video of Everstone himself (yes, in a wheelchair, yes, still smoking those cheap, thin cigarillos he loved so much) saying (and I thought this was brilliant, not sure if Everstone came up with the idea for this line or whether it was someone from the social media team), “The rumors of my death have been super exaggerated.” He emphasized the word ‘super’ to mark the sly change from the classic and probably apocryphal Marcus Twain line. Everstone said the line, gave a single wave at the camera then lit up one of those god awful Swinker Sweets. The crowd, as they say, went wild. It just so happened that the crowd was online, dispersed in homes, offices, and inside various modes of mass transportation (i.e. cars, buses, trans-tubes, unicopters, etc.) across the country. If their individual exclamations of joy and surprise could be gathered into one stadium I’m sure they would have blown the roof off the place. Or, at least, raised it a few inches. 

 

-So, with that as the start to the “mystery guest” tradition, it has been a much anticipated part of SWCC ever since. Each year there are rumors as to who it will be. People look for hints and signs in the order of the announcements of all the other guests. They seek out patterns in which franchises are over-represented or under-represented at that year’s con. Both an abundance and a lack of guests associated with a single franchise are taken as solid proof that it “simply has to be …(the most famous person from that franchise who has yet to appear at the con).” Attendees also scan the current popular culture milieu to see which franchises have releases that year and, conversely, which franchises haven’t had a new addition in several years be it a movie, graphic novel, streaming series or what have you. Again, both the imminent release of a project and the absolute lack of any new material serve as solid, beyond doubt proof that the mystery guest is associated with said franchise. 

 

-However, no one believes that Carmichael Sturgeon (aka Carter Smith) is going to show up. One, he’s old and hasn’t been seen publicly in years, decades even. There have been more rumors regarding his death or cryogenic freezing than just about any other pop. culture figure. He has the wealth, you see, and the organization (his charitable foundation which is clearly just a front for gathering the greatest scientific minds or our time to figure out how to live forever) to pull that scheme off. And, since the disaster that is U.P.: R.R. occurred just over twenty years ago, the United Protectors as a saleable property has been dormant, nay, extinct. It’s become like the dinosaurs themselves: well-loved by children but mostly forgotten about by adults.

 

-On the other hand, everybody wants to believe the Carmichael Sturgeon rumor. I mean, why not? Why not give yourself over to the most unlikely of scenarios if even for only a few days of the year? What harm can come of wishing that to be true? Disappointment? Please. I know disappointment and Sturgeon not showing up would not even scratch the surface. So, again, why not give ourselves over to the potential for the unlikely, the seemingly impossible? Isn’t that willingness the basis for everything on display at the con? Isn’t that how people manage to push ever forward through the crap storms life throws at them?