Storytelling from Homer to Spielberg is a career to keep ones name up front and ones work in demand.

Themes - as in what Propp (1928) called the basic story elements? He said there were only seven stories and a few patterns used in storytelling. What we call the rule of three being one of those patterns.

We're inside a culture. We share context and common mythos. We have social norms and transgressions. Storytellers have "worldbuilding" to establish new contexts and (if lucky) introduce new mythos for reference by later storytellers. One such would be the word "robot".

Of late we've expanded our cultural context/mythos to include people who were relegated to background or agency of opposing culture. We've seen similar inclusiveness of methods from impressionist and expressionist art used to convey character perspective. Some explorations remain in "performance art" not yet brought into common culture for storybuilding. Occasional experiments in storytelling and word-craft find popularity and become tropes. The line "The pen is mightier than the sword" came from a play. A reviewer commented that the author had written a line more memorable than the entire work. So it goes.

I have no clue what you are saying. Storytelling has not changed in a long long time. Superhero storytelling has not either. There are only so many human concerns. (This is what makes improv so easy.)

I enjoyed the premiere of Stargirl. I'm looking forward to the other 12 episodes in this season (13 total).

Conversely, I tried to watch Batwoman, and gave up after about the 12th episode of this first season. I think it's the only show in the Arrowverse that I gave up on.

(EDIT - I just realized that I made it sound like Stargirl was part of the Arrowverse. It's actually considered Arrowverse adjacent, I think. From Wikipedia - "Ahead of the series premiere, characters from the series were featured in the Arrowverse crossover 'Crisis on Infinite Earths', establishing Stargirl as existing on a parallel Earth to the Arrowverse series.")

- Donald

For those who may be scientific-minded, or science interested, Orville has presented me with another story to analyze. This comes from 1973 or so, and is the comic book I read in Sumer camp and I credit it with getting me hooked on them.

To keep the plot simple, Batman is seeking a kidnapped girl, and through police procedure, he finds where she is. He goes for the rescue, but the building is booby-trapped, and he takes an electric shock of undisclosed voltage and amperage. The police find him alive but brain dead from the shock. Luckily, Ray Palmer, the College Physics Professor who is secretly The Atom, happens to be in town.

Break from plot --> to those of you that know The Atom from the TV show, DC Legends of Tomorrow, that is not The Atom. He is a weakened version of Ironman. The atom is a high agile and acrobatic man who can shrink from 6 foot down to sub-microscopic size, and change his weight, proportionally or not. That is his only power.

Back to the story --> Ray Shrinks and enters Batman's brain. By stimulating different parts at different times, he animates the brain-dead Batman. Basically he gets Batman to return to the scene of his defeat and uses the animated Bat-automaton to beat up the baddies and rescue the girl. Eventually he is forced to vacate Batman and take out the final baddie as The Atom would.

Orville wants me to comment on the science in this story, and as you know I enjoy doing that.

This is very simple to answer sort of... Yes, it could work, kind of. All of us have seen on TV how brain surgeons use thin electric rods to stimulate the brain. This is done to see what emotion is triggered where. This is real. Scientists do amazing surgery on the brain while having almost no understanding of how it really works. Now the question; can The Atom, physically jumping on specific sections of the brain really bring the stimulation he narrates in the story? Your guess is as good as mine. The brain has no pain receptors, so Atom can't cause physical pain by doing that. will he cause the stimulation he speaks of? Who knows.

The highlight of the story is the Atom's narration. He describes which part of the brain he is stimulating and why. He triggers memories, action, and normal things such as breathing, and most of his science as to what is where is correct. The one big flaw is that no one, and I mean no one, really knows where memories are stored and how. We know the whole thing is run electrochemically, but that is our best info to date.

By the way, the story ends with the brain dead Batman "waking up" none the worse for wear, thanks to all of the Atom's stimulation. I don't think that is possible, but then electric stimulation wakes up a dead heart, so who is to say it wouldn't work on a brain.

If you accept that a man could shrink to subatomic size, perhaps this could work. Anyway, I loved the story when I read it in 1973 and I still love it today.

hear a short piece about the science of Ray Palmer and his ability here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6vIxvaomWw Physics Professor Jim Kakalios of Univesity of San Diego breaks it down, from his book, The Physics of Superheroes."

Class Dismissed.

Glad you clarified about the difference between the TV Atom and the Magazine version, as many viewers know about the TV version only-- mostly because the Atom magazine is no longer being published at all. If you ask me, DC's Atom is much better than the Marvel counterpart of the Ant-Man because the Atom can shrink to microscopic size whereas in comparison I can recall only one instance where the Ant-Man became microscopic, which happened in an early issue of the Fantastic Four.

When you,Cliff, mentioned electrical stimulation of the brain,specifically to arouse emotions, it reminded me of the DC villain the Psycho-Pirate. Although in his case it was not science but instead the use of the occult, specifically Egyptian masks that he acquired from an excavation. Fascinating because each mask had a different facial-expression denoting a different human emotion--envy, greed, fear, pity, etc. Through the use of those masks,he can cause a person to feel a specific emotion.
To steal from a museum for example the Psycho-Pirate used the mask of Greed to provoke a lady into stealing a museum artifact. Then the Psycho-Pirate used the mask of Pity to make the lady feel pity for him and give him the artifact.

But let me point out one instance that I take issue with. When he was at a jewelry shop,he used the mask of Curiosity to create a diversion. By using the mask of Curiosity,he made everybody else in the shop swarm around a newspaper, that is, making all of them curious to read the front page. Distracted as they were, they could not see him stealing the jewelry. What I thought was wrong about it is that Curiosity is not a human emotion. Instead it is purely intellectual. Because a scientist has curiosity but it's not an emotion. For example, Star Trek's Mr. Spock is scientifically curious all the time but his character suppresses emotions. As you know, the whole character of Mr. Spock is built around suppression of emotions.

Good point about curiosity Orville, I never realized that before. But since you brought up Mr. Spock, would someone who did not experience emotion have an interest in learning new things and finding things out.

Perhaps Spock isn't curious at all. He's just doing his scientific job as assigned.

Or perhaps curiosity is not something that actually (or necessarily) involves emotion.

Perhaps curiosity is worthwhile for its survival value, or because knowledge is power — in which case, the pursuit of answers to questions and mysteries is simply the most supremely *logical* response possible.

Yes,agreed,that's another slant to it, that of its survival value. In that case, it would be categorized as instinct instead of emotion.

Or as wisdom. Simply as wise strategy, or prudent practical policy.

Or lost in space.

Not sure if Tommy was referring to the Lost in Space TV series, but I guess it's pertinent because the series featured a robot which brings up the matter of emotions which is of course the current discussion. Actually the robot was a disappointment because there was no effort made to develop its character, instead using it as simply comedy relief.
Somewhat better was the early 1960s series The Living Doll, about a female robot. Played by Julie Newmar, she was an android. Although quite naive about human emotions, the android was highly intelligent because I remember her playing Mozart on the piano. If anybody else remembers the series maybe they can inform as to whether she learned emotions eventually or not.
But to get back on track on comic-books, I remember DC Comics had the comic book Mystery in Space which featured a series Star Hawkins. Hawkins was a Private Eye with a secretary who was a female robot. At times it seemed the robot was more intelligent than the human because she saved him from some tight situations. The She-robot was extremely modest too, as she did not take credit for her accomplishments, instead letting Hawkins take the credit.

I remember Star Hawkins. Not only was the robot smarter than he was, she was also more competant in every way. Made for some fun adventures.

About the same time as the comic book the TV show "Get Smart" had a robot (android?) character. Star Trek episodes explored whether the computers were people or just "not programmed to respond in that area". Thing about robots is "friend/foe" is just a switch or 1/0 to them. Let's reserve comment about what it means to claim an android is female. The robot/android characters did well in place of cute children and ethnic stereotype cast members.

Sorry the Julie Numar show did not work out. Other shows, from "My Mother the Car" to "Mister Ed" did better. We almost got something that years later with 'Little Wonder" or "The Questor Tapes". In the books - Harlan Ellison write "Demon with a Glass Hand" which brings the future of humanity into this lonely robot who has to survive on his own till after the invasion happens.

When Jonathan mentioned the android from the "Get Smart"series, it reminded me of another series "Holmes and Yoyo." I don't know if Jonathan recalls that series but it was about a robot used on a trial basis at teaming up with a police officer. The series was also a comedy as seen in an episode where the duo went to a house that had electronically controlled curtains. When the remote control curtains were made to open--the robot also comically moved with the movement of the drapes as he was evidently on the same circuit as the curtains.

There was another scene where the robot was yelling into a phone. When his human-partner asked him why he's yelling into the phone, the robot answered that he's trying to learn the emotion of anger. Actually the robot was not angry at all but he was trying to learn it. I don't know whether Jonathan or Cliff remember that series or not.
But back to comic books, there was a comic book called Mister Machine. It was a Marvel comic.

Ah Detective Yoyanovich, played by John Shuck, and his partner Alex Holmes (Richard B. Schull) I loved that too short lived show.

My favorite bit was that if Yoyo tapped his nose, he would take a Polaroid photo, which came out of his jacket's breast pocket. Once a bad guy punched him in the nose and a dozen or so Polaroids came cascading out.

And, don't forget where Yoyo supposedly worked before... The Bunco squad.

I must allow that I never read Mister Machine. What era was that?

There was something called Machine Man from about 1978.

Machine man... That I remember.

Actor Chris Evans sends authentic Captain America shield to boy for his real-life heroism:
https://time.com/5867625/chris-evans-sen......-reason/

Johnny Depp for the Joker? Say it ain't so Joe.