Stratovania

The idea of giants having lived in the distant past is a common one in mythology. Norse lore had the Jotun, the Bible mentions the Nephilim, Irish legends had giants like Finn Mac Cool, and the Hindus have the Daityas. This particular post, however, focuses on the giants of Greek mythology, usually considered to be the children of the primordial earth and sky deities Gaia and Ouranos. Their enormous offspring included the Gigantes (from which our word "giant" originated), the Cyclopes, and the Hecatonchires. Ouranos was so appalled by these hideous offspring that he shoved them back into Gaia's womb, causing her great pain until Kronos freed them and threw them in Tartarus. Kronos was one of the Titans, the offspring of the earth and sky who WEREN'T automatically deemed repulsive. Popular culture has made the Titans giants as well, hence the names of Saturn's moon, the element titanium, and a certain ill-fated ocean liner. I'm not sure whether the Titans were originally conceived as giants, however, or that was a later way to differentiate them from the Olympians. The Wikipedia entry proposes that later writers might have confused the Titans with their siblings, the Gigantes.


Aside from the Titans, the Cyclopes are probably the best known of Gaia's monstrous offspring. I've seen it speculated that the idea of giants with one eye each was based on elephant skulls, with early discoverers confusing the trunk cavity with an eyehole. While Norse mythology held the dwarves as the makers of the gods' most valuable treasures, this was the role of the Cyclopes in Greek lore. When Zeus freed the one-eyed giants from Tartarus, they provided him with his thunderbolt, and his brothers with their trident and helmet of invisibility. They came to serve Hephaestos as workers in his volcanic forges. Another possible explanation for the single eye (or maybe a complementary explanation) is that blacksmiths of the time often wore eyepatches to protect themselves from flying sparks. Since Greek mythical creatures tend to come in threes, it's not surprising that many references list three Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. The most famous individual Cyclops, however, is not one of these children of earth and sky, but Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Thoosa. It's this Cyclops whom Odysseus blinded, leading the sea god to torment the hero in retaliation. Poseidon is said to have had Cyclops neighbors as well, so Poseidon and Thoosa must have been pretty busy.


The Hecatonchires, or "Hundred-Handed Ones," are known for having...okay, I'm sure you can figure THAT out. Some sources also refer to their having fifty heads. The most famous of these guys is Briareus, but there are two others named Cottus and Gyges. They're apparently strong and nimble with all of their hands, since they're reported as throwing one hundred rocks at a time at the Titans. I wonder if they have dominant hands like humans usually do. It's said that Zeus freed the Hecatonchires so that they could aid the Olympians in battling the Titans, but Dante refers to Briareus as having attacked Zeus and been sent to Hell for it. I've always been a little confused by why Dante put so many opponents of pagan deities in Hell, when he was a Christian who didn't believe that Zeus and his ilk were real gods anyway. Wouldn't Briareus be a hero for attempting to overthrow someone who claimed to be the almighty lord of creation when only God can reasonably claim that position? Then again, Dante wasn't much for nuance, and he apparently thought that anyone who lived before Jesus and wasn't one of the heroes of the Bible ended up in Hell (or at best Limbo; I seem to remember Julius Caesar being there because Dante idolized him for some reason related to Italian nationalism) regardless of how good or bad they were.


Not as much is known about the Gigantes, other than that they were, well, really big. They're also sometimes depicted with snake-like limbs. Legend has it that they were actually born AFTER the Titans, with Gaia conceiving them when fertilized with the blood resulting from Kronos' castrating his father. Kronos imprisoned them in Tartarus as well, and it wasn't until the Olympians had firmly established their rule that Gaia herself encouraged them to rebel against the current order. The war that followed was known as the Gigantomachy, and the Gigantes attempting to reach Olympus by stacking mountains on top of each other. The Olympians were only victorious when Herakles decided to fight on their side.

For all of the Links and Zeldas who have teamed up to fight Ganon and his minions throughout the history of Hyrule (not to mention alternate timelines), it's interesting that I don't think any of them ever got together romantically. There's apparently even been some online speculation that Link might be gay, although I don't know that he's shown interest in any males either. With this in mind, it's interesting that DiC's Zelda cartoon, made when there was only one game out [1], really played up the sexual tension between the hero and the princess. The cartoon was part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, aired on Fridays in lieu of a Mario cartoon. It appears to be a not uncommon opinion on the Internet that the Zelda cartoons were better than the Mario ones, and I will admit that they apparently took slightly more care with the Zelda episodes (although still not THAT much, since it WAS a DiC production, after all). In the show, Link was constantly hitting on Zelda in the most obnoxious ways possible, and there were occasional hints (especially in the episode "The Missing Link") that the princess secretly returned his affections but didn't want him to know. Another recurring character was Spryte, a fairy who had a crush on Link despite being much, much smaller than him. [2] It's Peter Pan and Tinker Bell all over again, I suppose. I guess it's Link's fault for dressing in that green outfit. And, of course, Ganon was there, and he was very hands-on in this take. He was always showing up in person to steal the Triforce of Wisdom, and insisting that nothing could stop him when he had both Triforces together, even though someone always did. I believe most of the monsters from the first game showed up at some point or other, but they were all morons. One odd rule on the show was that the monsters never actually died, but simply regenerated back in Ganon's Evil Jar, a fixture of his underworld throne room where he kept his henchmen when he didn't need them. They always were reluctant to imply actual death in cartoons of the era, so perhaps that was their way of avoiding it, but I suppose that regeneration kind of makes sense for video game characters anyway.


As with most shows, especially ones aimed at kids, there was never any real continuity. There was always some lame excuse for why Link and Zelda didn't just take the Triforce of Power that Ganon left out in the open. And of course the two heroes never got together; I suspect people would have complained of the show jumping the Zora if they had. When they appeared in a few Captain N episodes, however, they no longer bickered all the time, and Zelda did occasionally kiss Link. So their relationship presumably progressed at least slightly, albeit not on screen.

If anyone wants me to review individual episodes of the cartoon, let me know. I also still have the Super Mario World series to get through, if anyone cares. And if you DON'T care, well, EXCUSE me, Princess! [3]


[1] Actually, Zelda II was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1988, while the cartoon aired in 1989. I don't think it makes any references to the second game, however (for instance, there are only two Triforces in the show, while the game brought in a third), so the writers presumably hadn't played it.
[2] Maybe someone should write fanfic in which Spryte hooks up with the Big Goron. Now THERE'S a size difference!
[3] Yeah, I had to work that in somewhere.

I feel the need to make one minor concession to yesterday's sporting spectacle, so I'll begin this Oz post by introducing (or re-introducing, as the case may be) you to a ball-like people from the Ozian island-continent. These are the Roly-Rogues, who originally lived in the staircase-like North Mountains of the Kingdom of Noland. Coincidentally enough, after I'd already decided to write about these people, I came across this, so perhaps I'm not the only one linking the Roly-Rogues with football. In fact, the young King of Noland once refers to them as "footballs." They have round bodies, heads and arms that can be withdrawn into these like turtles, and rubber-like muscles that allow them to bounce around without being injured. After many years of living on a mountaintop, the entire population decided to bounce down to the ground and conquer Nole, the capital city of Noland. They did so fairly easily, and forced the people to wait on them and make soup for them. The royal family of Noland manages to escape the country and seek help from Zixi, the witch-queen of neighboring Ix. Zixi makes a potion that the Lord High General of Noland slips into the soup, putting the Roly-Rogues who eat it to sleep. The people then roll the invaders into a river, and Baum mentions that they were rumored to have taken up residence on a previously uninhabited island, which is shown on James Haff and Dick Martin's map as Roly-Rogues' Island, in the ocean to the north of Noland. In A Viking in Oz, Chris Dulabone picks up with this conclusion, describing how one crafty Roly-Rogue named Lenoil uses an old Viking ship that washed up near the island to trick his fellows into paying him tribute. Eventually, however, they all discover the deception, with the exception of Llewop [1], the friendliest, dumbest, and hungriest of the Roly-Rogues. Llewop goes on to settle in the Emerald City and play a part in The Magic Tapestry of Oz, in which he gets all the best lines, partially due to how his grammar is so terrible as to be amusingly absurd.


The Roly-Rogues are not the only round inhabitants of the Oz universe. In Giant Horse, the protagonists have a brief encounter with the Round-Abouties, people with round bodies and features who live in a roundhouse on Roundabout Way in the northern Munchkin Country. They spend their time revolving in circles, under the orders of a man known as the ring leader. And in Merry Go Round, a city called Roundabout is integral to the plot. When I was an obnoxiously geeky sixteen-year-old fan (as opposed to now, when I'm an obnoxiously geeky thirty-two-year-old fan), I asked Eloise McGraw if she'd known about the Round-Abouties when writing her book, and she said she hadn't read Giant Horse until later. I suppose this would also explain why the Ozites in Merry Go Round think there are no carousels in Oz, despite the fact that the Round-Abouties had one. [2] The McGraws' Roundabout is a much better realized community, despite the circular reasoning and conversation of its rather simple-minded inhabitants. These are the Roundheads, presumably named after the anti-royalists in the English Civil War. The city's economy was based on manufacturing round objects and selling them throughout the country, but since the objects they made never wore out, this model eventually ended up in danger of collapse. Roundelay, the Sphere-Seer, had his own underhanded plot to secure a king to make the city prosperous again, but it was Ozma and her friends who actually solved the difficulty. The solution was for the Roundheads to begin selling Pi, their tasty national dish made of prickly pears. She also gave them Sir Greves, a disgraced knight of Halidom who preferred cooking to jousting, to serve as their king.


Finally, I believe I should also mention the Hoopers from Lost King, who were inspired by the then-popular children's game of hoop-rolling. The Hoopers, who live in a park in the midst of a Gillikin forest, are incredibly tall and thin, and progress by rolling into hoops. Their ruler is known as King Rollo the Worst.


[1] Chris names a lot of his original characters after his fellow Oz authors, usually with their names spelled backwards or otherwise manipulated. I assume Lenoil and Llewop are named after Braided Man author R.K. Lionel and Raggedys/Mister Flint author Ray Powell, respectively.
[2] The Play Fellows from Grampa also have a merry-go-round, but I don't believe there's any indication that it's motorized.

I'm sure you know by now that I have an interest in monsters. It isn't even so much that I like to be scared as that I just like weird-looking creatures. And I know I'm not the only one, due to the fact that the Krampus seems to be gaining popularity in the online world. So what's a Krampus? Most of you probably already know, but he's basically the Anti-Santa. In Alpine lands, when St. Nicholas makes his rounds distributing presents to the good kids, the bad ones are beaten with a switch by this demonic dude. In fact, it's said that he takes REALLY bad ones to Hell in a handbasket, and I mean that literally. Krampusfest is celebrated on the night of 5 December, right before St. Nicholas' Day, and it involves people dressing up like the holiday devil. Images of the Krampus vary, but he pretty much always has horns and what might be considered a typical demonic face.

( Please, Krampus, don't hurt 'em. )

I don't have too much to say about the cartoons tonight. The Simpsons episode was pretty low-key, but it had its moments, and I think it did a decent job of explaining Bart's reasons for wanting a brother. The Cleveland Show and Family Guy had a few funny moments, including the Jeremy Irons and House bits in the latter, but were rather weak overall. I obviously don't expect these shows to be totally realistic, but the way Peter took over the company was pretty unconvincing even for a Family Guy plot. American Dad, on the other hand, was a fantasy episode, but it still worked. I did wonder how they were going to end it, but I think they did a pretty good job with that, without having to resort to it all being Stan's dream. Klaus WILL still be alive in the next episode, though, right?

And then there's this:

After my post on lunar mythology last Saturday, I've been trying to think of other moon-related posts I can make. I went with balloons and rubber for my Oz posts, although maybe they can be tied in through Notta Bit More's song in The Cowardly Lion of Oz about the moon being a balloon held by the Sandman. L. Frank Baum actually used the Man in the Moon in at least two stories. Mother Goose in Prose includes an adaptation of the nursery rhyme about the Man in the Moon visiting Norwich and burning my mouth on cold pease porridge, with Baum offering an amusing explanation as to how such a thing would occur. Queen Zixi of Ix has the fairies of Burzee asking the Man in the Moon to decide on the recipient of their newly-made magic cloak, and if I remember correctly the film version (known as The Magic Cloak of Oz) shows him as simply a face in the moon. John R. Neill also added the Man in the Moon to his drawing of Mr. Tinker visiting the satellite.


Anyway, since Wednesday is often video game day here at Stratovania, I tried to think of video games that utilized the moon, and the one that immediately came to mind was Final Fantasy IV. This game takes place on a world with two moons, one of which was artificially constructed by the inhabitants of a planet between Mars and Jupiter when their old home blew up. (Yes, apparently the Final Fantasy solar system is basically the same as ours.) They became known as Lunarians, and spent their time sleeping inside the Lunar Palace. That is, until a Lunarian named KluYa decided he wanted to visit the Earth, where he introduced several new technologies, and married an Earth woman who bore him two sons. Late in the game, your characters, led by KluYa's son Cecil, find the Lunarian's old spaceship and fly it back to the moon, where the final battles of the game take place. While the main location there is the palace, with the main villain Zemus lurking far underneath it, the natural satellite is also the home of the dragon Bahamut, a mainstay of the series, whom Rydia can summon if the party beats him in battle. A village there is inhabited by the Humingway family, of which the infamous Namingway is a member. He somehow journeyed to Earth to enter the business of changing people's names, and he shows up in pretty much every town. I also feel that I should mention the Pink Puffs, elusive inhabitants of the Lunar Palace basement who will very occasionally give you a pink tail when defeated.

Today, we take a look at the end of the world. More specifically, it's the final war of Norse mythology, Ragnarok. One fascinating thing about the myths of Ragnarok is that the descriptions are so specific, and the gods know all about them, but they're simply resigned to carrying out their roles. No point in messing with fate, I suppose.



According to the myths, the great war will be preceded by three years of harsh winter, during which morality will break down. Then the bonds holding some of the most fearsome monsters will break, and the creatures that have been trying to cause chaos for centuries will finally succeed. The wolves that have been chasing the Sun and Moon will devour them, and the serpent Nidhogg will chew through one of the roots of the World Tree. The monsters will join forces with the frost and fire giants, including Loki, who will escape from his prison. Sources mention two ships, one made of the nails of the dead, that will convey the giants and their allies to the final battleground; as well as the giants invading Asgard by way of the rainbow bridge Bifrost, which would break behind them. The gods will be assisted by the Einherjar, the virtuous dead who had been dwelling at Valhalla. The exact order and location of the events seems to vary from one source to another, but the last battle will be fought on the plain of Vigrid, which is ten thousand square leagues in area, and fills the same basic role that Armageddon does in Christianity. While we know that Armageddon refers to Megiddo in Israel, where many battles have been fought over the centuries, I haven't seen any speculation as to whether Vigrid might be a real place. At some point in the fighting, the wolf Fenrir will kill Odin, who will in turn be avenged by his son Vidar. Thor and the Midgard Serpent Jormungand will take out each other, with the thunder god killing the serpent but falling to the dead snake's venom. Eventually, after many more deaths on both sides, the giant Surtr will end the whole thing by setting all nine worlds on fire with his magic sword.



As is generally the case with mythology, this death of everything is followed by a rebirth. Some of the younger gods will survive the destruction, as will two humans, who will repopulate the world. In the new world, crops will grow by themselves, and peace and happiness will reign. The main dwelling place of the new gods will be Gimli, a hall that shines more brightly than the sun (and the source of the name for the main dwarf in Lord of the Rings). I seem to recall seeing some different takes on the new world from after Christianity started to gain prominence in Scandinavia, in which there's only the one god after the Aesir die. While an interesting way to try to reconcile old and new beliefs, wouldn't that mean Ragnarok would have to have happened already without anyone noticing? ("Hey, did you hear that a giant wolf ate the sun the other day?" "No, I was inside all day.")



The Norse apocalypse has become a popular theme, and the name "Ragnarok" has also been used for things that don't have an immediate connection to the end of the world. Indeed, most of the Google results I found when searching for the term did not refer to the battle, but to the RPG Ragnarok Online. Other references that come to mind are the Esper Ragnarok from Final Fantasy VI, Ragnarok Canyon in Battletoads, and the avian villain Ragna Roc in Piers Anthony's Two to the Fifth.

I'm not really that familiar with the Castlevania series, but I've seen some of the games played, and it's definitely an appropriate subject for Halloween. The first game was released in 1986 (in Japan, anyway; it was the following year before it came out here in North America), and starred Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter armed with a whip for the purpose of taking down Count Dracula. The Count's minions included monsters from classical mythology and folklore, as well as some from twentieth-century horror films, including Frankenstein's monster and Igor.

Dracula himself was modeled on Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the vampire, although he'd take on other forms in later games. The series has developed a rather complicated mythology, taking place over a span of centuries, with Dracula coming back to life approximately once every hundred years. There are several Belmonts who face him, starting with Dracula's former friend Leon in the twelfth century, and continuing with Trevor, Christopher, Simon (whose adventures take place near the end of the seventeenth century), and Richter. Quincey Morris, the Texan who sacrifices himself to defeat Dracula in Bram Stoker's original novel, was worked into the games' ongoing story as a relative of the Belmont clan. Another significant character in the series is Alucard, the son of Dracula and his second wife, who sometimes assists the Belmonts in their ongoing fight against his father.

While I believe Alucard's real name in the games is Adrian, his more famous appellation first appeared in the 1943 film Son of Dracula, and has been used in several other media since then (sometimes as a son or descendant of Dracula, and other times as an alias for the Count himself, presumably the source for the running gag in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series about how vampires all think no one will figure out who they are if they spell their names backwards).

There's been talk of making the series into a movie, which doesn't sound too promising, considering the track record of films based on video games. Perhaps the fact that the game series was inspired by classic horror movies in the first place would make it better than other such game-to-film adaptations, but that also means that it wouldn't really give us anything we haven't seen before in numerous monster movies. I remember seeing a trailer for the Van Helsing movie a few years ago (I never saw the actual movie), and thinking it looked an awful lot like Castlevania. The main character certainly seemed a lot more like an action hero Belmont than the scientist Abraham Van Helsing from Stoker's book. Personally, I think that if the movie does get made, they should be forced to use the vain, arrogant portrayal of Simon from the Captain N series. {g}

The Angry Video Game Nerd has been covering the Castlevania games recently, so you might want to check out what he has up so far. And in case you haven't seen it yet, his first review was of Castlevania 2.

The Oz books and related fantasies include a lot of villains, but even the worst of them tend to have some comical traits, and most of the ones that can't be reasoned with are often easily contained in some way. Even the Wicked Witch of the West was afraid of the dark and terrified of water. I do think an examination of the villains, as well as the way Baum and Thompson tended to treat them (offhand, it seems that Thompson's villains were less likely to commit physical harm, but also much less likely to give up), would be a good subject for a future post or series of posts, but that's not what I'm addressing today. Rather, I'm devoting this post to the truly evil beings, who are typically motivated not so much by self-interest like most villains in Baum's world, but simply by wanting to make others unhappy.

While I am intending this post to tie in with Halloween, the best examples of such creatures in Baum's fantasy work actually appear in a Christmas-themed book, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Here, the main villains are the Awgwas, large creatures that could fly around the world invisibly and influence humans to do nasty things. Their government was sort of a skewed democratic monarchy, in that the Awgwa who thought of the worst deeds was elected king. The Awgwas hated Santa for the joy he spread to children, so they tried to stop him in various ways, but were always thwarted by the jolly man's immortal friends. Finally, they openly declared war against the immortals, and gathered allies from among the nastiest beings in the world. I might as well quote Baum here: "There were three hundred Asiatic Dragons, breathing fire that consumed everything it touched. These hated mankind and all good spirits. And there were the three-eyed Giants of Tatary, a host in themselves, who liked nothing better than to fight. And next came the Black Demons from Patalonia, with great spreading wings like those of a bat, which swept terror and misery through the world as they beat upon the air. And joined to these were the Goozzle-Goblins, with long talons as sharp as swords, with which they clawed the flesh from their foes. Finally, every mountain Awgwa in the world had come to participate in the great battle with the immortals." Despite the impressive appearance of these monsters, however, they were no match for the magical weapons of the good immortals, under the leadership of Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World. Baum uses this as a lesson that good always triumphs over evil, but I think an alternate moral could be, "Don't mess with Ak."

In his crossover story The Raggedys in Oz, Ray Powell uses the idea of this great war of good and evil in the background for his new villain, the Black Magician Cell-U-Loid. He was once the leader of the Philms, nasty creatures who were made of film and had the power to make their enemies (who were just about everybody) disappear. They lived in Philmland, which was located next to Patalonia, and used wild Gadgols (flying creatures mentioned elsewhere in Life and Adventures as predators of trees) as steeds. The Philms missed the war because their leader was assisting the Roly-Rogues of Noland at the time, but when they tried to avenge their former allies, Ak blew all of the Philms except Cell-U-Loid himself to a faraway land where they were destroyed. The Master Woodsman turned the Black Magician into a cactus, and he remained in that form until Percy the Rat foolishly disenchanted both him and Ruggedo. The evil creature conquered Oz and lured Ak into the Nome Kingdom, where his powers were weakened. Fortunately, Raggedy Ann and Andy figured out that he was weak against flint, and his plans were thwarted.

Baum himself had Santa captured by another evil crew in a story appropriately titled "A Kidnapped Santa Claus." This time, the offenders were the five Daemons of the Caves, each of which represents a different personality trait. The Daemons of Selfishness, Envy, Hatred, and Malice all tried to keep the gift-giver as a prisoner; but the Daemon of Repentance let him go again, although unfortunately not until after he missed his Christmas Eve rounds. His helpers managed to fill in for him, however, and it all turned out happily.

There are some thoroughly nasty characters in The Emerald City of Oz as well. When the Nome King plans to invade Oz in order to retrieve his Magic Belt, he sends the newly-appointed General Guph out to gather allies. He first recruits the Whimsies, fierce fighters with tiny heads, who wear giant pasteboard heads in order to hide their lack of intelligence. They cannot be killed, and are described as "evil spirits," although they obviously have bodies. Next come the Growleywogs, skinny but muscular giants with immense strength and sadistic dispositions, who are ruled by a leader known as the Grand Gallipoot. I suppose the Growleywogs aren't quite as strong as the Herkus, but we never see a battle of strength between representatives of the two nations, so we don't know for sure. The name is obviously a play on "golliwog," which was presumably also the source of the recurring exclamation "Great Gollywockers!" in the Thompson Oz books. The last and most dangerous allies recruited by Guph are the Phanfasms, shape-shifting beings of immense power, who join the Nomes simply so they can make happy people unhappy. The Phanfasms dwell in a beautiful city on top of a mountain, but it just looks like a pile of rocks to visitors. On the Scarecrow's advice, Ozma places dust in the Nome King's tunnel, and all of the Nomes' allies drink the Water of Oblivion and forget their goals. I tend to doubt the memory loss lasted too long, however, and the Phanfasms appear in several other Oz stories. Joe Bongiorno presents a possible way to tie all these stories together here. The Phanfasms are also the main villains in the Emerald City Confidential video game, although that portrays them as simply beings with animal heads, rather than shape-shifters.


Jack Snow, who had experience as a horror writer, introduced some of his own evil beings in the Mimics, who are fairly similar to the Phanfasms in that they specialize in shape-changing. Like the Phanfasms, they belong to the race of evil spirits known as Erbs. They also possess a power that the Phanfasms presumably do not, in that they can steal the forms of people, leaving the copied victims frozen in place. When Lurline enchanted Oz, she cast a special spell to prevent the Mimics from harming the Ozites, and left Ozana on Mount Illuso to serve as a guardian. The plot of Magical Mimics involves the Mimic rulers, King Umb and Queen Ra, managing to temporarily break the spell and invade Oz.

One thing we really don't see in Baum's fantasy universe is an ultimate evil along the lines of Sauron or Voldemort. About the closest we get is Zog, and he's killed off in the same book that introduces him. I know some fans have tried writing such a being into Oz, but they've generally reported that it didn't work out. Maybe that's actually a good thing, as the Almighty Lord of Evil is sort of a cliché by this point.

Boss Bass is an enemy who first shows up in Super Mario Bros. 3. He looks like an enormous Cheep-Cheep, but he might well also have some large-mouthed bass blood in him. In fact, his mouth is SO large that he can swallow a hero whole. That, combined with the facts that he chases Mario or Luigi throughout the level and that killing him will only take him out temporarily, makes him a quite dangerous enemy. He shows up in a few of the above-water levels with rising and sinking islands.



The female equivalent of Boss Bass is Big Bertha, apparently named after the giant German howitzer Dicke Bertha. Like its namesake, she fires projectiles, but these are her own babies. Seriously, that's pretty messed up, isn't it? In Japanese, both Boss Bass and Big Bertha are known as "Kyodai Pukupuku," with gender markers to distinguish the two. Unlike Boss Basses, Big Berthas spend their time underwater. In one Nintendo Comics System story, "Love Flounders", Big Bertha falls in love with Mario while he's in a frog suit. That's sort of like how the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon had an episode with a reverse mermaid falling in love with Frog Mario. Did the writers not realize that fish and frogs belong to different classes of vertebrate? Oh, well.

bethje and I watched An American Werewolf in London last night. Neither of us had seen it before, but it was a good movie. It contained a good mix of comedy and horror, and seemed quite fast-paced. John Landis discussed the movie at the last Monster-Mania Convention, and mentioned that there really are no set rules for monster movies. This film mentioned the idea that you need silver bullets to kill a werewolf, but dismissed it. I guess my thought is that you can have a monster or other mythological creature follow any rules you want, as long as you clearly establish them and stick to them. Nods to the better-known rules are nice, though, because they show that the writer knew the mythology behind the idea, but chose to go in a different direction.



Really, the lore that everyone knows about werewolves is pretty recent anyway. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the idea that werewolves are only harmed by silver weapons only dates back to the nineteenth century. Older weaknesses for lycanthropes include rye, mistletoe, mountain ash, and wolfsbane (the latter of which actually was used in the Canadian Ginger Snaps movie series, which I believe also dismissed the silver thing). Also, while modern werewolf stories often focus on people being changed against their will, old European tales tended to be about witches and wizards who voluntarily turned themselves into wolves to carry out the Devil's work. The idea of lycanthropy being contagious also seems to be a more modern development, possibly borrowed from vampire lore.



One classical myth that a few websites mention as a possible source for the werewolf concept is the Greek tale of Lycaon of Arcadia, who presented human flesh to Zeus. Sound familiar? Instead of being tantalized in Tartarus, however, Lycaon was transformed into a wolf. Some versions of the myth say that his children also became wolves, while others simply say that Zeus killed all or most of them with thunderbolts.