{"id":1203,"date":"2009-05-04T23:38:35","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T14:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2009-05-04\/1203"},"modified":"2009-05-05T00:15:44","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T15:15:44","slug":"anthonys-adventures-of-craneman-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2009-05-04\/1203","title":{"rendered":"Anthony’s “Adventures of Craneman”, #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n
<\/a>\nThe Adventures of Craneman #1<\/span>\nWritten and Illustrated by Anthony Friedl\n<\/div>\n\n

Anthony spent much of the flights back\nfrom Ishigaki yesterday<\/a> looking through a catalog<\/span> of toys and costumes\nthat Grandma had included in a recent<\/span> package. Anthony loves toy catalogs,\njust to check things out and to practice saying “I want<\/span>\nthis!”.<\/p>\n\n

The particular catalog yesterday had lots of costumes, including about\nevery superhero and villain in western culture, and he was quite interested\nin who among them were good and who was bad. Superman: good. The Joker:\nbad. Some, like Iron Man, I just didn<\/span>'t know because I don't<\/span> know those\nstories.<\/p>\n\n

This morning he was still interested in those stories, so I told<\/span> them\nabout comic books and how someone would make up a story<\/span> and write them,\nusually centering around a good<\/span> superhero, who then faces a variety<\/span> of bad\nvillains.<\/p>\n\n

I told him that he could make up his own stories if he wanted, and gave\na silly<\/span> example that if he wanted to make a story<\/span> about bread that was a\nsuperhero,<\/span> he could call it anpanman<\/i>. Anpanman is just that, a very<\/span>\npopular superhero among Japanese kids, made of bread, who gives of himself\nto help the hungry. (He appeared in my blog just the other\nday<\/a>, and also some time ago here<\/a>.) My\nidea in giving this example was to at first make it sound too silly to be\npossible (“superhero bread”), then reveal that it's something he already\nknows well, thereby showing that the seemingly impossible can be made\npossible if you just do it.<\/p>\n\n

I then made up another example.... about a superhero.<\/span>.. (thinking\nfast.... gotta' think of something silly) crane man<\/b> who uses his\nwinch to help good people and “get” bad people. He liked<\/span> this idea a lot,<\/span>\nimmediately launching into a long<\/span> story about how craneman was born, and\nhow he grew up, etc. He was very<\/span> animated.<\/p>\n\n

He's never seen a western-style comic book, but I described<\/span> one and\nencouraged him to make his own, and this was the result....<\/p>\n\n

Here's his story, in his own words...<\/p>\n\n