They Really Didn't Call Her the Cat

It’s the summer of 1966, and in the pages of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane # 66; the woman with stretch marks on her DNA goes through one of her oddest transformations yet in ”They call me the Cat,” a story written by Leo Dorfman, penciled and inked by Kurt Schaffenberger, and edited by Mort Weisinger.

This time Lois’s change is not swift and it’s not something normal like getting older, or fatter or becoming a toddler. No this one takes some time, and is weird the whole trip.

As things start it’s rough for the four people who work at the Daily Planet, the air conditioning is out, and it’s the hottest day of the year, well it’s rough for some of them, Clark is faking it of course.

To ease his employees suffering Perry White has order up a round of iced lemonade, (and I do note the guy with the drinks has 7 cups so perhaps there are a few others workers we never see) that’s when we find there is another, along with Clark, who is not suffering with the heat. It seems that Lois says she is freezing and even with the help of a blanket, the fur coat of Perry White’s wife that is heading for storage, and the heat wave she continues to shiver.

That she is really, really cold is demonstrated when a cup of hot tea she is drinking turns to ice in her hands. This of course calls for Clark to duck out and reenter as Superman so he can fly Lois to the Metropolis version of the Mayo Clinic, where no doubt the Dr. House of Earth I will eat this up with a fork, don’t be silly, this story is set in the Silver-Age.

Superman’s first move is do what he knows will “cure those mysterious chills,” he flies her, fur coat and all, to Death Valley were Lois proclaims herself colder than ever.

Next he takes her to the Fortress of Solitude and puts her in his Venusian hothouse, mean tempter 650 degrees; nope still frosty, colder even says Lois. Really grasping at straws now, and Superman apparently having become a devout Christian Scientists when we weren’t looking, his next move is not a hospital, but to put Lois in an experimental space suit he has been working that will let him take her into the sun, yeah, not near, into the sun.

Just why a man who baths in the sun to get rid of `space germs’ after a long mission in space needs this, he says nothing. However even he admits it is risky. But off into space and the sun they go anyway, but to no effect, on returning to Earth Lois still has the chills.

At this point Superman admits he is at his wits end and takes her somewhere else, Metropolis General? Of course not, Kal-El apparently still has issues with all those doctors who were always trying to give him inoculations when he was Superbaby, and takes her to some scientists he knows at Metro U.
They too are baffled by Lois’s condition, but do note that it seems to be getting worse, so Superman decides to bring in an expert, (about time yah big lug) and fly to Paris to get Dr. Leroux… the world’s leading expert on cryogenics. (What?!?)

However when he returns with Leroux Lois is back to normal with whatever it was leaving no ill effect on her, the “doctor” proclaiming that it “must have been zee virus that gave le chill,” and things return to normal.

Back at the Daily Planet Lois is given her next assignment, and the pathogen takes the next stage in its development, her job, report on the flower show at the Coloseum (sic) Oh Lois! Being sent to cover a flower show? That’s worse than covering a dog show, at least something might happen at a dog show, watch out or Perry will have you writing the obits next!

Something however does take place at the flower show after all, on being shown the grand prize winner (a huge floral display depicting Superman, what else?) and left alone with it Lois starts to eat the flowers and can’t stop herself before the left arm is gone. (Alright! Stop over psychoanalyzing this right now! I can hear you doing it, it’s that loud.)

Later that night when Lois reports for night duty at the Metropolis Hospital where she works as a volunteer nurse (?!!?) things get complicated when a patient awakens to find her eating a big bouquet flowers left for him.

Narking to Superman the doctor tells him about her actions and how “Lois’ strange mania is unknown to medical science,” here we perhaps find why Kal-El stays clear of the doctors in Metropolis, this one not being able to find anything about pica the disorder that makes people eat odd things, usually however things more odd that flowers, nor does he know there are over 40 types of flowers that or are quite safe and edible, if a bit bland, making them at most a little trendy, not a victim of a “mania.”

The doctor then gives it all over to Superman saying he can’t come up with anything, but perhaps his “super brain” can. (Oh… so that’s why Sups stays clear of them. Note: if you ever find yourself sick in the Big Apricot get out of town as fast as you can, even if you have to crawl to the Greyhound station.)

Superman’s brilliant “super brain” solution to this development is to fly Lois to a rainforest in Africa that only he knows about which contains a type of flower unknown to the rest of the world which play a musical tune when wind blows through them. Sups then flies off “to take care of an important chore” leaving Lois to photograph the blooms.

She of course proceeds to devour this rare species whole while Superman watches with his telescopic vision, “my cure was a complete flop,” thinks Superman.

The next day however when as Clark Kent he takes her to lunch all signs of the dread “mania” of vegetarianism are gone and she not only turns down a salad, but the flowers on the table as well and downs a porterhouse.

The next day everything is so back to normal that window washers are once again falling from the fiftieth floors building, only this time (do they even give these guys any training in Metropolis, or just depend on Superman to pluck them out of the sky as they fall?) the Man of Steel it seems does have chores out of range and the washer is left dangly from his belt.

Seeing this from the Daily Planet, which is across the street from the other building, Lois has the sudden urge to leap out of the window and using a covenant wire that for no decidable reason connects the two structures goes to the aid of the window washer, doing this via a pair green furred and clawed legs and feet with four “toes” one of which seems to act like a thumb, that have replaced hers. (Hey! And we have a reason this is here on this site.)

She only notices her change when it is pointed out to her by the Man of Steel arriving tardy. Her response is to trudge dejectedly back to work. Say what you want about her, the woman had a heck of a work ethic.
She even covers a story when, while shooting a scene for a movie the operator of one of the special effects, which consists a 150 foot long mechanical centipede at the time being used to crawl up a building, has a heart attack and can’t be reached.

Lois once again comes to the rescue by walking up the building, then the mech and giving the man medicine to keep him alive (aspirin?)

Sure enough, as soon as this is done her feet revert to normal and she falls, but as usual Superman saves her. Superman warns her to fight her dare-devil urges, the whole thing with the feet not even being brought up.
The next day while on the street Lois helps an exotically dressed and veiled woman recover some pearls that have fallen from a broken necklace of hers, in gratitude the woman, who introduces herself as Princess Zerma of Arctor, takes Lois to lunch. There she shocks Lois by first turning her soup into ice by touching it, then following that up by downing the flowers arranged on the table.

Being the courageous and inquisitive reporter we all know her to be, Lois response to this by getting up and booking it out the back door of the restaurant. This however gives both Lois, and us, the chance to see Zerma racing after her on a pair of big green claws along a spiked fence.
Cornered by the veiled and turbaned “woman” she reveals all, pulling off her veil to reveal a fanged alien face and explaining that she comes from the frozen planet Arctor where everyone lives off “frost flowers” and scoots along on big old furry feet like hers, she then explains herself.
Of course it’s all about Superman, whom the princess has been watching on her space monitor for years, and having decided him to be a marvelous specimen revolves to marry him.

But realizing that he will be repulsed by her alien looks (and yet for some reason she isn’t repulsed by what would be his alien looks to her) she of course takes the only course left, take over Lois Lane’s body.

This is first attempted via a “transmuter dome,” her turban, which fails to do the job and only temporally transfers some of Zerma’s normal traits to Lois.

Realizing that she has to be close to get the job done she travels to Earth, and after getting a free lunch out Lois takes over her body, but not before Lois is able to `babble hysterically,’ only the babble is really Lois setting things up so that on going back in the Venusian hothouse it proves, due to her freezing ability being weakened by the combination with Lois, it’s too much for Princess Zerma, she spites from Lois, and beats a hasty retreat back to Arctor with Superman feeling pretty smug that yet another space princess has the hots for him. Forget that this lead to him taking the chance of killing Lois by dipping her in the sun.

So that once again an alien… well not menace, let’s say stalker, is defeated by people being fooled into thinking Lois and Superman have something even remotely like a normal close relationship.

Oh… and at no point in the story does anyone call her the Cat.

The second story in this issue involves Lois being bitten by a bug and dreaming that she’s a witch doctor, accidently blinding Lana Lane, curing her and then watching her marry Superman.

The Origin of Millie Marie and her Housewives & Others

On the 31th of July Millie Marie closed the shop that bore her name, giving, as was her long tradition, the employs and followers of Millie Marie's Housewives & Others the whole of August off with pay.

Millie herself, making sure no one knew where she was going, headed to the airport for her annual pilgrimage to the Greek Isle of Samos.

It was there in 1890 that Millie Marie, then known as Sir Miles Jove St. Maris, a member of what passed in that time as the profession of archaeologist, but who really just spent his time looting the world of the treasures other people and sending it to a new home in London.

His undoing came when he tried to have a more than three thousand year old shrine stone to Hera dug up to be sent to molder away in the depths of the British Museum of Antiquities. To his surprise Hera herself appeared and turned the stodgy forty six year old Brit into a young Greek woman who, if any of the members of his expedition had bothered to really learn, as they had at University, to not just read ancient Greek but speak it as Sir Miles now did, would not have believed her wild claims anyway.

After a thorough search for the missing Sir Miles proved fruitless eventually his crew left calling it a mystery and leaving the shrine stone and the transformed ex-Englishman behind.

By that time St. Maris had become better acquainted with Hera and was told by Her that she would stay just as she was until she had apologized to the Goddess by obtaining 1,111 new followers for her. To help Sir Maris along she granted her immortality and powers far beyond, and considerably weirder, than those of ordinary mortals.

The problem however was that while Hera had given the new woman an immense task, she had not told her how to complete it, “Sir” Miles was left to figure that out on her own.

Knowing that she had to complete the task set before her in ways that where complimentary to the power base of Hera, that is, the matriarchy, fidelity, marriage and domestic harmony, Miles, who now called herself Mary, spent the next 50 years, after that is once again learning English, as an impossibly competent nanny, nurse maid and housekeeper who, using a command of the wind granted her by Hera, flew via umbrella from household to manor house seeing to it that wifeless widowers and misogynists were soon involved in full tilt domesticity, while successful, this lead to not a single new follower of Hera.

Lashed severely for her failings, as only a Goddess can lash someone, the ex-Sir Maris was “encouraged” to try something new.

Mary came up with a radical idea that she had gotten from a new popular media that she had run into due to some of the children she cared for.

Deciding it couldn't do any worse than what she had been doing and so worth a try, Hera turned Mary back into a man, but no ordinary man.
Known now as John Cole, he became the world's first real-life superhero. A superhero who by shouting the name of Hera would change into an oddly costumed woman known as Housewife Man, the hero with the power of 1,000 housewives! Of course for this change to take place it had to be done, while John Cole, in the view of as many people as possible, Hera not really grasping the idea of the super heroic secret identity.

While his / her exploits got a lot of press, and even a run in one of the early comic books, this, after 13 hard bizarre year’s evil fighting, lead to at best only a dozen new followers. Though Hera did give Housewife Man credit for all the philandering and abusive husbands she pounded, wayward hubbies being a pet peeve of the Goddess.

By 1953, the time the John Cole / Housewife Man persona was dropped, and soon forgotten by the public who regarded he / her / they are just a publicity stunt by those nasty Funny Book people, and probably a commie plot of some kind, Sir Miles Jove St. Maris was starting to have a tenuous at best hold on the British gentleman he had been, but with Queen Victoria dead, the era he was comfortable with quickly fading, and only 34 “wins” being counted by Hera, Sir Miles was becoming sure he would never see his ancestral lands and do so as a proper English gentleman again.

It was that year that Hera proved that she meant business about Miles needing to get about finding her worshipers or there would be consequences changing him from John Cole into an impoverished 88 year old Greek woman known as Minthe Melanthakis of the island of Corfu and staying there to get along as best she could until she had reached her even more rheumatic 100th birthday.

The day after that “birthday” Hera, pleased that Minthe had been able via the “talks with a wise woman” route with a number of young girls and random tourists, been able to add 14 more worshipers, turned Minthe into a young woman again so that she went out with renewed vigor to really see about reviving something like Hera worship in the modern world, because “damn it a promise is a promise, and a man must buckle down and do what he is pledged to do, even if he must do it as a woman!” that and Hera's declaration that if the ex-Englishman didn't get really motivated and start trying harder she would discard Miles, let her experience that rejection as a blind 120 year old. Miles

It was from that day that the former British anthropologist abandoned all thoughts of his old life as Sir Miles Jove St. Maris and started thinking of herself as Millie Marie Minthe, and as Millie Marie went about her job in earnest.

Fortunately for Millie, who after Hera's latest transformation of her, seemed to be in her early 20s, the 60s were just the right time to start such an endeavor, from the Hippy movement, to the later Feminist and then the Neo-Pagans in the 70s, from 1965 to 1988 she was able to add 160 new recruits, three times more than she had been able to add in the 95 years before that.

Pleased with her progress Hera then gave Millie some time off, five years to be exact, to do as she pleased. The problem was that after almost 100 years as a woman, and sometimes man for a while, concerned only with growing worship for Hera, Millie didn't know what to do with herself.

Thinking she would find out what had happened with her old pursuit of archeology she enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania and spent three years as just another college girl, which, as with the adventure amongst the hippies, feminists and Neo-Pagans, lead to more changes than she had yet to experience.

The whole time however Millie knew that her time off was ticking away and Hera would soon be back in her life, and only with only 208 recruits found in 98 years it meant she would likely be back even more impatient than before, then Millie had an idea.

Surprising everyone by dropping out at the end of her junior year, the people who knew the impressively sharp and studious young woman would have been even more surprised if they had found out she had left to go to a beauty school.

And then another and more impressive one after that, and another. So that by the end of the remaining two years Millie knew everything there was to modern styling and beauty techniques, then Hera return and Millie told the Goddess her idea.

And so in 1993, on the first of August, Millie Marie's Housewives & Others was opened, this was the first of only three Augusts that the ultra-modern beauty salon would to stay open for business during that month, following that, after three years of normal beauty treatments, and special treatments that only Millie could provide, she began her tradition of closing down the salon and flying to the still untouched old shrine stone on the Isle of Samos where she told Hera about her progress, and while certainly Hera could have just gotten the information by going to Millie herself, as she had for so long, after the third year of averaging over 200 converts a year Hera decided that something more orthodox was called for, and so Millie went to her and with offerings.

The great success in the creation of Hera approved and worshiping women, even if the women in question came didn't exactly know that's what they were doing, came about when after her first five months in business Millie encountered Joey Van Boer, a pushy alpha male who came into the freshly open establishment demanding a haircut, when told that Millie Marie's was a beauty salon he made a dismissive noise and started “so, hair's hair right? Just clip it short and it's all the same, I like ladies to cut my hair, and there ain't nothing but dude barbers in this town, so I'm going to set down and you'll make with the clip, clip clip, and I'll give you a ten, cause that's all I ever pay, and then everybody will be happy. And if I don't get what I want, and get it from the prettiest girl here, you'll do, I'll report you to the better business bureau or spank you are something.” he had said smirking at the last remark and pointing at Millie Marie to the other beauticians surprise Millie, though they could tell she was angry, agreed and telling the others to get back to work led the man into one of the styling cubicles where she could work without being seen, “alright, you know how things work then,” said Van Boer setting down in the chair, “now I just want a trim nothing fancy or girly smelling or wha...” Joey never finished his sentence because as he was making it Millie had stepped behind him and unleashed the full force of the power that Hera had given her to push women toward her approval by the Goddess.

Only where Millie had been giving women the equivalent of a mystical 8 volt zap, what Millie turned loose on Mr. Van Boer had to have been more like 10,000 units of orphic whim wham. Millie had no idea what this would do. What it did, in a brilliant silver and rose flash, was turn Mrs. Joey Van Boer into a woman, “so that's what it looks like when she does that?” thought Millie looking at her first transformation. And quite an alteration it was too.

Van Boer was not just a female version of himself, she was so, Millie judge, an improbable cross and exaggeration of two women from another era seeming to be both June Cleaver, and Mamie Van Doren fussed into one. Having Van Doren's figure, platinum hair and overdone makeup, her huge breasts reinforced with bullet bras that had not been seen since the 50s, at the same time her stylish powder blue 50s dress, heels and hose ensemble was like the ones worn by the mother of “The Bev” right down to the string of pearls. The body wearing it however had never been seen in the old sit-com. And yet there was still somehow something about the women, who seemed to be asleep, that still looked something like Joey Van Boer.

Then the woman's eyes opened. “Oh my this is just terrible!” said the woman in a voice that sounded like Van Boer's, only now as a melodious woman's contralto “oh great, how am I going to handle this?” thought Millie “I've fallen completely asleep how rude of me!” said the new Van Boer getting out chair and examining herself in the mirror, “you shouldn't have let me waste your time that way, I'm sure you have other costumers you have could have been taking care of.” continued the vastly changed former man patting her hair and looking at it from views offered by the angled mirrors in the cubicle. “just perfect!” said the woman apparently indifferent that she had once been a man, “do you mind if I pay with a check?” asked the woman going for a purse that both had not existed a few moment before, and yet matched her shoes. “sure, that's alright” said Millie wondering if she would now remember that her name was Joey and she had been a rather rude man less than five minutes ago.

Bending over a counter in the cubicle to write the check Millie had a visit from her old base self of Sir Miles as she admired the derriere Joey now possessed, “hmm, impressive child bearing hips too,” thought Millie. “I made it out for fifty dollars,” said the woman “that's the right amount isn't it?” “sure, that sounds good,” said Millie who was busy taking in the check “Josie Van Boerin” it read, apparently having not only transformed the person, but changed his ancestral origins from “farmer” to “farmer's wife.” “well I've got to go!” said the woman, “I just remembered that my apartment is an absolute mess! And I have to get right back and clean it up!” with that the woman effervesced out of the salon, seemingly quite comfortable as her new self and having no trouble navigating on the four inch powder blue heels she now did it on.

Later that week when Millie took the check to the bank it cleared with no problem, showing that it seemed she had not only altered the former Mr. Van Boer's reality, she had altered the rest of the world enough for the new Ms. Van Boerin to fit in it.


After that Millie broadened the scope of recruits admitted by seeing to it that she went out of her way to make MMH&O a place that men would feel comfortable coming in by seeing to it that they could not only get haircuts performed by attractive women, but also offering classes in things of use to bachelors, such as how to cook, clean house and empress the ladies with their domestic skills, and when Millie was finished with them the skills of those ladies were impressive indeed.

She soon had it honed to a skill for attracting a particular type of male, such as a type of unpleasant frat-boys she had had a lot of trouble with while at University.

These she saw to it that only she took care of, and she took care of them by unleashing the power that Hera had given her and changing the men into not just women like her, but extreme, parodies almost, of the idea of the modern housewife. And by modern, to Millie who still had a bit of the Victorian in her, which could be any era from 1890 to 2011, but mainly hovering around 1955.

These new women soon became Millie's most dedicated followers, and then members of her staff, so that within five years a dozen and three new MMH&O's were opened around the world, all with at least one staff members empowered by Hera, from the original in Pennsylvania they grew to include ones in other parts of America, then Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, France, Abu Dhabi, and of course Greece.

These salons were not all about transforming women into followers of Hera, or certain types of men into burlesque housewives, but all of them, via Millie's special converts, did some of that often enough.

And so Millie landed on the Isle of Samos and told Hera how things had gone in the last year.

“1,111 thousand this year,” said Millie touching the statue of Hera that over the years had become “theirs,” invoking the number that Hera had given her to convert 121 years ago to set herself free from the Goddesses command, “and isn't that something?” she continued, “the same number as it took me from 1890 to 1998 to complete, and we did it in a year, perhaps we should pull back a little before people start to get suspicious?”

“Yes, just a little,” said Hera in a voice that only Millie, who on reaching that number in `98 and being offered by the Goddess to be turned back into Miles Jove St. Maris and released from her service had said she wanted to stay Millie and keep the salons going and growing, could hear.

“But don't worry about that, it's amazing how much you humans can ignore something if you don't want to see it, but do be a little more discerning in whom you give the special conversions to. That biker gang that you change in Orange county are not really turning into the most honorable of my new housewives, and that entourage of, well we didn't have people like that in my day, the ones you changed and set in that little town in your adopted country, that American town of Fairview, they are simply desperate, I'd like to see less of both types, from now on let’s say quality not quantity is the motto of the epoch.”

Agreeing Millie poured out her libation of wine, a Barbaresco Gaja 2001 it having been a very good year financially for Millie as well her more esoteric successes, to Hera and then left to spend the rest of her time simply enjoying herself. September would be the start of another busy year for her and Millie Marie's Housewives & Others.

That was no lady, that was Sherlock Holmes!

Along with being the working definition of THE master detective, one of the things you soon learn on reading the original stories about Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes, here after known as “The Canon,” is that he was also a master of disguise. Appearing in disguise in 10 stories in The Canon, unless I miscounted, he is so good at the craft that not even Watson is able to tell who he was when playing at being someone else.

Taking on such diverse characters as a sailor, two different sorts of sea captains, an Italian priest, an elderly seller of books, an opium smoker, a drunken groom, a non-conformist clergyman, a French laborer, an Irish American spy, and, in The Mazarin Stone, an elderly woman.

Based on a play that Doyle had written in 1921 called "The Crown Diamond," I suspect this disguise came about manly because of the British love of men dashing about on stage dressed as women more than anything else, but whatever the case there you have it and so there ends the tale of Sherlock Holmes in a dress.

Not quite, don’t forget the pastiches, more or which have been written about this character than any other fictional character by a factor of at least a big freaking bunch to 1, alright I haven’t done a real calculation, or been able to find one about this, so I don’t have an actual count and mount, but I feel confident I’m correct.

It’s there, in stories by others, good, bad and just horrid, that you find Sherlock Holmes disguising himself as a woman with enough regularity to make Jimmy Olsen jealous (another “master of disguise” they couldn’t keep out of a frock.)

Some I am aware of are:

The Case of Emily V. By Keith Oatley

Written from the point of view of a woman undergoing therapy with Sigmund Freud Holmes once again appears as an old woman.

Draco, Draconis by Brett Spencer & Dorian David, this is based on a script from the Granada Series based often on highly altered stories from The Canon; this one has a brief example of Sherlockian drag.

The Incredible Umbrella by Marvin Kaye. A fantasy in which the hero moves from one fictional world to another, sometimes picking up the aid of famous literary characters along the way, (the Frankenstein Monster, on whom he has bestowed the name the Boris, is his side-kick) at one point he enlists the aid of Sherlock Holmes who at one point disguises himself as a woman in Flatland.

We find Homes impersonating women in two stories, The Adventure of the Left-Behind Wife and The Adventure of the Other Woman by Michael Mallory who has written a number of pleasant, heretofore unknown, adventures about Dr. Watson's second wife Amelia. In one, falling back on what seems to be his favorite such alter ego, Holmes appears as an old woman, while and in another he passes himself off as Mrs. Watson!

Getting out of short stories, Holmes appears as a woman a number of times in novels written by Laurie R. King featuring Sherlock Holmes’ young female apprentice Mary Russell, appearing for instance as a nun in, A monstrous Regiment of Women.

More interesting however is when Mary is taken to one of the many bolt holes that Holmes has hidden around London where he keeps most the items he uses in taking on undercover guises out of the way of his regular digs. While there Mary Russell notices that Holmes has a large collection of frocks and shoes of a size to fit his frame, indicating he may do that sort of thing more often than anyone knows.

In the Singular Habits of Wasps by Geoffrey A. Landis, and The Mycroft Memoranda by Ray Walsh, we find that Holmes has more than just old women in his repertoire when he appears in each at story at one point as a London prostitute!

In the Martin Davies,' Mrs. Hudson and the Spirits' Curse, we find Holmes a crone again; we also discover that he apparently spreads being a detective like a contagion as it mainly features Mrs. Hudson as the sleuth.

Sherlock Holmes can also be found tant que femme in, A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin, W.G. Grace's Last Case by William Rushton, Call Me Wiggins by Norman Schreiber, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer, The Case of the Gustaffson Stone by June Thomson, and in the horror story, The Quality of Mercy by William Meikle.

Are there others? I’m willing to bet almost certainly there are, as I said earlier there are a heck of a lot of Sherlock Holmes pastiches.

I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to one day find out someone who has made a specialty of turning out a whole string of “newly discovered” stories where either during the years before he met Watson, or during The Hiatus, Holmes chased after the game that was afoot, and did it in the latest Victorian women's high-bottom shoes.

As East Meets West.... How Much Blending Will There Be?

Things change as time goes on, the Chinese Goddess or bodhisattva known as Kwan Yin was is said to have started as Avalokitesvara a bodhisattva from India who started as male, over centuries things changed.

As American and China become more entwined in the 21 century, will some of our “gods” and “goddesses” undergo a metamorphose in the  Immateria?*

*Immateria – See comic book series Promethea by Alan Moore

The Crystal of Ool Thul Ha

On finding out about the mystic Crystal of Ool Thul Ha, a magical gem that was capable of reaching into the collective unconscious and dragging things of pure imagination into the real world and making them not just real, but also keeping their fantastic powers and abilities intact, Leo Maxwell Gordon was determined that he would be the one to find it!

Then he discovered that someone else had not only already gotten hold of it, they were using it, turning objects and people into things and characters from myth and fiction, and they were doing it not for power, but money!

“This is even better!” thought Leo, who had wanted to use the Crystal for conquest and intimidation, but mostly just to kick the asses of a long list of people, starting in high school, and continuing after, who had given him hell for not being “one of the crowd,” i.e. a nerd.

“I won't have to make all the personal sacrifices and years of labor the books say you have to preform to activate the Crystal, I'll pay the price the person who did do it is asking, then once they've turned the power of the Crystal on me, I'll use my vast knowledge of anime and manga to become... I don't know... Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, or InuYash, or Vampire Hunter D, or... I know! Goku from Dragon Ball! Then I'll just take the Ool Thul Ha from this fool and nothing in the world will be able to stop me! HA HA HA HA” Laughed Leo actually doing a fairly good super villain laugh, at least until he had to stop and cough for a half minute.

Hunting down the location of the holder of the Crystal via The Eclipse Web, the arcane and esoteric part of the Internet hidden from most people.

Leo was a little disappointed at just how prosaic the whole affair turned out to be. He didn't have to pass any tests, or surmount any challenges, or anything like that, apparently just just having been able to find out that there was a Crystal Of Ool Thul Ha, and who had it, was enough, that and giving this person and the people around her a person wad of cash... “goodby faithful Honda Civic,” said Leo as he sold the last of his possessions of to get the money for the audience with the person who had the Crystal.

The transformation turned out to be an anti-climax, with the mysterious woman who preformed it hardly even paying any attention to Leo, just saying “Okay, think about what you want to become, but don't be too disappointed if you don't get exactly what you want, this mystic crap is wonky on the best of days, but remember this above all NO REFUNDS.”

At least things got a little more interesting when one of her people let him into the “Chamber of Imaginings” which was a large room with the wall painted to look like it was the middle of a forest glen at twilight, scattered around the chamber were seven stone slabs that person leading him in told him were designed to “capture and hold items that you might drag back out of the collective unconscious when you change, you know? Like stuff like Bat-cycles, tricorders, things like that, sometimes they're empty, once a fellow dragged back Silver the Wonder Horse, only living thing that's come over so far, but who know? Anyway, good luck and no talking to the boss lady.

Getting a push from the attendant, who had other clients to deal with Leo found himself in the middle of the softly lit blue and black room, track lighting streaming down on the seven slabs looking at the woman who he had seen earlier and who possessed the Crystal which was held around her next like a pendent, without a word she pointed this at him and Leo was hit with what he though must be a million volts or electricity, combined with a full body Icee-headache, and a desperate need to sneeze.

This to say the least made concentrating about becoming a real life Goku just a bit on the impossible side, Leo however did the best he could.

The sneeze, when it came, took the form of him popped back into reality. Leo knew by the way he felt that the Crystal of Ool Thu Ha had done its work! Whatever that might be.

All Leo knew was that he felt grand, extraordinary, different. “But my mind was all over the place, who have I turned into?” wondered Leo.

Thinking he would ask the woman who had held the gem what had happened to him, he saw that she had left while whatever was happening to him had been happening.

“So who am I, I wonder.” thought Leo, giving himself an exploratory pat-down using, to his surprise, a pair of hands now covered in gloves he had not been wearing before the change.

As Leo patted a sinking sensation came over her. “Oh crap,” said the now living embodiment of Jessie of Team Rocket from Pokémon, the first character from anime to catch Leo's imagination.

“WALREIN!” said the Walrein Pokémon standing behind her which, along with one Lickitung, Jumpluff, Mr. Mime, Bidoof, Magikarp, and Luvdisc were now the first and only living Pokémon, whatever those sorts of things might be, in the world and now they were Leo's or rather Jessie's to figure out what to do with.

“Should have kept the Civic and taken that job as a data entry keyer,” Said Leo / Jessie, the only person on the planet with naturally magenta hair, as she gathered up her various Pokémon into their various Pokéballs. “I wonder if there's any real money in making personal appearances at Sci-Fi conventions?”

There isn't.

Writing good captioned images can be a Tights fit.

Alright, so you’ve decided you want to make some captioned images, tell a little story in less than a thousand words, with the picture or pictures, being worth another couple of thousand words, to help make it better.

And as you are here, let’s assume that you want to make a captioned image that involves someone being transformed in some manner, shape or form.

Let me give you a piece of advice…

DON’T GO NUDE!

Sorry, but 19 times of 20 that just comes across as tawdry, and this site, along with the idea of transformations in books, films, comic books and other media, is also about entertainment and maximum story content in minimum space. I.E. captioned images.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than how a person is dressed in a picture can make it worth at least two or three hundred more.

Take for instance tights, on the surface rather a simple article of clothing, been around for hundreds of years, yet in a room full of beautiful women, I’m willing to bet you would notice the one in a pair of tights first… Okay, you’d notice the nude one first, but she would get arrested and taken away in pretty quick order, and so you would never get to talk to her.

I’m just saying if you want to write a good transformation captioned images, go with well-dressed people!

Oh… and as I bring up Captioned image stories, perhaps I should say that I personally have created thousands of them.

And as almost all of them have involved impossible transformations, I should say more about that subject!

Makes a lot of sense once you say it out loud.

Later

Tribute to a little known bit of American History

From the middle 1800s to the early 1900s in New York Irish women immigrated to America as a rate twice that of Irish men, as such at one time there were 100 Irish women to 80 men from Ireland in New York.

At the same time while men from China were coming to America, few or no women made the voyage. In fact from 1850 to 1860 not a single Chinese woman was recorded in the New York census.
Because of this many Chinese and Irish couples came together then.

Also at the time busybodies did a lot of clucking, complaining and otherwise being unpleasant about. Some people are like that.

This image is in Celebration of this little item of American history.

The words in the air are Ireland in Chinese and China in Gaelic.

Meanwhile 150 years Later

And

Scene from a Modern Chinese / Irish Wedding

You Down With M.O.T.?

If you have fantastic transformations, you need a reason for that transformation to take place.  Which means you need a Transformation Method, or that is, a method of transformation or MOT for short?

“It just happened” just won’t do.

These can go into four broad categories

Disguise or Fake: If it’s all just make-up and padding and rubber, or it was all a dream, here you go. This one is the most believable.

But it can still be abused. An example being all those old episodes of Mission Impossible where the IMF agents would put on a an easy to remove mask and presto they’re someone else, more often than not someone with bone structure that was completely different from the one under the mask. But hey, that’s why it’s called “willing suspension of disbelief” you have to meet them half, or sometimes more than half way.

And if it was just a dream… just keep it to yourself, people act like that’s interesting, but no wants to hear the ones someone else had.

Physical Change through Effort: For example see body builders, clients of plastic surgeons, and any number of training montages from kung fu or Rocky movies, also sad, but still too true, accident victims.

Some remarkable changes possible in real life, to an extent, but not like they show in the movies.

Science: Especially if it’s Weird Science. Now we’re at the place where we can get away with just about anything and have some really wild changes, as long as you can come up with a good enough “scientific” reason” for it to take place.

Nano-Bots, avatar creating bods, being bitten by a gamma ray, being too near a spider bomb going off, loudly humming booths of all sorts, Quantum Sidereal This or That, leaky vats of bright bubbling unobtainium, put in enough mysterious ray machines, and herbs unknown to science and you can get away with a lot. Remember, “Reverse the proton stream” is your friend.  

Magic: Now here’s where things get too darn easy, Yes you can get away with anything at all this this excuse, but you have to be careful and not get lazy. This can be as bad as “if just happened.” I mean look at this movie coming up where two buddies swap bodies, played by the way by two actors that I for one have a hard time telling one from the other in the first place so what’s the point? With the mind swap coming about because they peed in the same “magic” fountain at the same time, seriously? Sure… okay. Whatever.

Put some limits on it and make it have a little texture and be fun to play around with as a reason.

So there at least or my ideas of the 4 reasons for out of the ordinary transformations in stories.

Oh… The reason I put this here is that I will be putting in items from time to time, like the one called “How to Become Filipino” in which I outline some MOTs, which I will tag with both that and transformation method, the reason being that, if I can get this going enough generate at least some interest, I was thinking about having a contest, with real prizes `en everything, and having that tag might prove useful.

But that’s not for some time yet, if at all.

We’ll see.

How to Become Filipino

Such as Ask the Pinoy

Writing stories about people changing race, culture, nationality or gender is all well and good, but how do you get around the “willing suspension of disbelief” of such a thing to make the story, no matter how fantastic, at least seem believable enough in the context of the tale?

There are a lot of ways.

Here is one I created to make the transformation of Westerners into people of the Philippines.

If you want to use it to make a story, be my guest, but if you do, as with all such things, please treat others with respect.

If you have a story where someone is becoming a member of another group of people, learn about that people.

Dr. Valarao's Filipino Spirit-Essence Clinic:

There is an unusual form of alternative healing known as "psychic surgery" the advocates of which claim they can, using only their bare hands, and the help of God, or their psychic abilities, or spirits, or variations and combinations of those three, perform surgery using only their hands opening up bodies and doing such things as pulling out tumors, cleaning internal organs and removing blockages to arteries, and then closing the opening leaving no mark.

The practitioners of this always, at least as far as I know, turn out to be either a con artist, or sincere but deluded

However on a planet of over six billion people the percentage chance of the “impossible” happening with a random roll of the DNA dice becomes more likely.

Paolo Valarao it seems is the one out of 6 billion who has rolled all sevens and is the world’s only genuine, working, “holy mackerel do you see what I see!” for real psychic surgeon, and not just like the fakers, but to the point that he can go as far as reach into bodies and mold bones as if they were clay, give serious tugs to chromosomes so as to erase years of age and restore color to gray hair, or even change it’s to a new one it never had, and do things that no normal surgeon could ever hope to do.

However “Doctor” Valarao, it seems, also has an agenda, born from real irritation, and just barely suppressed rage, about the exploiting that he feels foreigners have been besieging the Philippians with for centuries, as well as the millions who have been found they have to leave the Islands just to make a living, he expresses his feelings though his wild talent.

When a Filipino comes to him for help he performs what healing he can, however when a person from America, Japan, or Europe is able to find him, he heals them as well, while at the same time, in ways no one, not even Dr. Valarao, can explain how it’s done, reshapes their bodies so that anyone seeing them after he is finished recognizes them as a young Filipino person, and if that were not remarkable enough, when he’s in the mood, and the visitor to the islands proves to be a certain type of loud and pushy type of male tourist, he makes them into Filipina women.

Whichever change he performs on the unconscious foreigners, and to a person who can remold every bone in a person’s face to make them seem to be someone new, altering blood pressure to keep them out as long as he needs while doing so is a mere afterthought,  their IDs are  removed, and in the case of his more radical changes, dressed appropriately for their new form,  his followers deposit the visitors miles from his clinic, another island altogether if they have the time, where they are left to make do as best they can as a new citizen of the Islands.

While they are 100% who they were before, with only their bodies altered into seeming to be someone else, those who go to the authorities, or their county of origin embassy are regarded as simple hysterics or outright mad.

After that it's up to them to adjust as best they can to Doc Paolo’s radical form of full emersion cultural assimilation.

Komiks: Some of the Best Comic Book Art EVER!

Super Gender Change!

And speaking of Comic Book and Manga characters that have changed their gender at one time below are just some.

■ Birdy the Mighty - Male and female inhabit one body, shifting from one form to another.
■ Chelsea Nirvana - Turned her body into male when fused with Johnny Redbeard's essence. Her and her father's body were swapped later.
■Cloud – A Marvel character from outer space that started out looking indeed like a cloud changed kept changing back and forth from male to female.
■Courier - Male shape shifter trapped in a female form by Mr. Sinister in one X-Man comic or another
■ Fishnet Angel - Male turned into a super powered woman.
■ Futaba-kun Change – A manga in which a whole family changes their sex from time to time.
■ Guy Gardner (a Green Lantern with an attitude problem) - Turned female for a bit
■ Lady Merlyn - Old mage Merlin's life-force materialized in the form of a small girl.
■ Loki - Reincarnated as a female for a while in Marvel's Thor
■ Mighty Man - Female can turn into super powered man.
■ Ranma – Changes into a red-headed girl every time he is splashed with warm or hot water (changes back to his Japanese male self with cold.)
■ Shocking Suzi - Male turned female by the H-Dial, (don't ask, it's a long and silly story) and was trapped like it forever, because she couldn't find the device anymore to turn it off.
■ Sir Tristan - Male reincarnated as female in a re-telling of the Knights of the Round Table set in the future.
■ Spider-Man / Spider-Woman (Earth-1610) - Male cloned into female.
■ Superboy – Thought he had been turned into girl by a lady from outer space.
■ Tim Hunter – (Who was Harry Potter before there was Harry Potter) uses a glamor stone he takes on the physical attributes of his mother and also takes her name, Mary.
■ X-23 – A Marvel character is a clone of Wolverine  made female.
Also
■ In one issue of Action Comics  Mr. Myxlplyx swapped the genders of everyone on Earth save for Superman, who was away in space at the time, just to mess with his mind when he got back.
And this is just a few.

The Silver-Age of Gender Change Fiction?

Of course it you're talking about fantasy transformations, after people turning into critters, which wins out through the shear number of said happenings found in old myths, and fairy-tales.

The biggest theme of this admittedly small sub-genre, are people changing their sex, not dressing like the other sex, but become such.

There were a few such changes that took place in old myths, and folktales, but it was in the second half of the 20^th century that it really came into its own.

Starting slowly at first with Thorn Smith's novel Turnabout published in 1930 there wasn't much else for 30 or 40 years, other than a bit here, an alien makes Superboy think he's a girl to teach him a lesson, Grandpa and Eddie end up doing some in an episode of the Munsters, a famous cartoon in Mad Magazine by Don Adams, etc.

But slight as it was the theme did grow, so that today I guess we could be said to be in the Silver-Age of the sub-genre, (the Golden-Age being 1995 or so to around 2005 being my guess.)

I mean now Amazon has listings for the subject so you can find novels devoted to it (mind you a lot is straight Kindle items but there is it anyway) and during the time I speculate as being the “Golden-Age” of the genre there was hardly a science fiction or fantasy based television series that didn't use it at least once.

While in comic books there were whole series such as Mantis and Fishnet Angel (yes, that's what I said, Fishnet Angel) with the theme.

And don't get me going about Web Comics with the theme!

Now it seems it's just around, another trope to be used by writers and artist.