A GAME-CHANGING POST

I've decided to change the rules of my ongoing game of "superheroes are damn-near everywhere" by upping the difficulty for me-- which is sort of like trying to defeat yourself at chess, but anyway:

The original idea was just to look at many of the established actors, mostly in English-language cinema and TV, and see how many of them had credits linking them to the superhero idiom. I found some interesting stuff even I didn't remember, but there's not a lot of effort to scan IMDB.

The first game concerned my sussing out if an actor had "primary" credits in the idiom of metaphenomenal combat-characters, or, failing that, a "peripheral" credit in metaphenomenal cinema/TV that could be linked to a co-starring actor who did have primary credits.

Now, instead of laboriously listing all primary credits for a given actor, the game (he said to himself) goes like this:

(1) There are three categories. Peripherals means the same as before. Primary now applies to those credits where an actor was in a combative narrative but was not himself playing a combat-type. Combatives are the starring roles actor play that are fit my conception of the superhero narrative.

So my last entry in the old game was for "Bowery Boy" actor Stanley Clements. He did not play any combatives himself, but he was in three relevant TV shows, LONE RANGER, GET SMART, and GIRL FROM UNCLE.  I the player can select one of the actors that played a combative and link him or her to Clements. At the outset I can make any linkage I want:

SC-- Clayton Moore OR Jay Silverheels OR Don Adams OR Noel Harrison OR Stefanie Powers

As I go along, of course, the game gets harder, because once I've used Clayton Moore for one connection, I can't use him for the role of the Lone Ranger again. I may handle movie-roles differently from those of TV-serials, but at present the idea is, "one citation for each acting role."

Sticking with that example, if I match Moore with Clements, though I can't use Moore's Ranger again in the combative category, I can use that actor's role from GHOST OF ZORRO to form a link with some other actor's role, because the Moore character in GHOST is the star of that narrative. But I can only use Moore's role in PERILS OF NYOKA in the primary category, because that's a supporting-character role.

Also, I've made connections with voice-actors before, so this time my combatives will also include "characters" who may be played by objccts, puppets, computer animation, and so on.

I've isolated the primary combat-types I've used in the earlier game and won't use them again. The next entry picks up from the last name used in the old game, and will perhaps come closer to demonstrating the near-ubiquity of the superhero idiom.