Monday, December 28, 2020

Musical Monday: Superman's Best Songs (Part II)...and more on Light City's Brick

There are a lot of Superman songs out there.  Here's another one I like.

I remember first hearing this when it was the "B-side" (both songs were actually on both sides) of the cassette single of the Crash Test Dummies' remarkably popular song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm."

Not my copy, although I guess it'd be kinda cool if I still had it.  Hmm...

Yep.  The cassette single.

I would go on to pick up the entire God Shuffled His Feet album, and I really enjoyed it at the time.  It's also worth noting that I've gone back and listened to it quite a bit over the last year, and I have to say, as a record, it's not only held up, but it's even better now that I'm older and have a little more life experience with which to frame the lyrics.  It touches on existentialism, maybe even Gnosticism...really it's just brilliant stuff that 16-year-old me couldn't comprehend.  Not that I can really comprehend it now...but that's kind of the album's point, I think...

That little aside...aside..."Superman's Song" was actually on their earlier album The Ghosts That Haunt Me, which I'm not sure I've ever heard in its entirety...but based upon my recently renewed love for God Shuffled His Feet, I really need to give it a listen.

Oh yeah!  The song.  It's fantastic...even if it is, as hilariously pointed out by one YouTube commenter, "[t]he most anti-Tarzan song I've ever heard."  Pretty cool video, too.


Now...let's continue talking about Superman, Light City, and The Brick a little bit.  As I've mentioned, I'd like the Brick class for Light City to allow such a character to be shaped into some variant of a Brick-PLUS, with some of the "classic" extra powers added to taste.  Mysterious francophone Light City co-conspirator soner du suggested an "exaltation" at levels 4 and 6, to be chosen from a power menu.  Their suggestions:

"flight, AC bonus, save bonus, damage bonus, bad-ass signature weapon, etc."

This certainly seems like the way to go, with some of the choices (or maybe the "default" option, for which the menu pick substitutes) lending themselves to more "pure" Brick types like the Thing.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the add-ons are going to need to start before level 4.  I had intended the three levels of The Brick in The Assembly to hold up to the class's expansion, but that might not be feasible.

At any rate, I suppose the question right now is:  What are the powers that need to be included such that most reasonable variants of a Brick are covered?  I think soner du touched on the biggest ones.  Flight is a given.  Using a specific weapon is probably important to cover stuff like Thor's hammer.  I'd say some kind of blasting, like Superman's heat vision and Captain Marvel's (er, Shazam's) lightning bolts, should be in there.  Some amount of super speed is probably a must.

Should X-ray vision be on the list?  That's so specific, but it certainly seems important in the Supes equation.  But then what about some kind of super breath?  At what point does the class just become an exercise in listing all of the things Superman has been able to do over the years?

2 comments:

  1. For the bad-ass signature weapon, I was thinking of Charlie-27 from the original Guardians of the Galaxy. He was just a basic Brick at the beginning, but when Jim Valentino started to work on the series, he's equipped him with an extreme BFG-3000. Ach, those 90's !

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    1. That's a great call and a fairly deep cut! I kinda wondered if you had a specific character in mind with that suggestion. I realized that some sort of weapon prowess would become necessary for Thor/Hercules types...I might have been a little shortsighted in that initial Brick writeup...!

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