People will occasionally ask me how I get ideas for when I write. It is a complex answer to provide I suppose, but one of the methods which I use is what I call the George Lucas method. Generally speaking when I say that people have some snarky response to this as a method, but it is actually already meant as a slight on Lucas. The method essentially involves ripping off another person's idea if an original one of your own is not forthcoming. In the past I have used a wide range of subject material to steal from including Call of the Wild and somewhat random paintings. I am presently working on a new work of fiction and at one key point I had to come up with an idea and I use the Lucas method to rip off something which Mr. Terrific did once in comics.

Thinking back though, I still had a grievance for all this time about a claim which someone made about him once in some forgotten comic - that he does Sudoku puzzles and fills them out in pen because he is sure of the answers. This does sound like a challenge and I am not making the case that this is an easy thing to do without having to scrap a lot of puzzles with an error. On the scale of what he is capable of, this is almost a non-feat. The guy can decipher alien languages with universal translators and can travel between dimensions, all things that he has designed with his own significant mental prowess, so is his ability really that worthy? Is it not the equivalent of saying that Superman can lift an entire mountain but can also lift that box in your basement that is pretty heavy? Well I think it is actually a little like this. While I think that it is a mostly useless claim, it can be hard sometimes to put mental abilities in proper context and with the case of the puzzles, it at least gives us as the casual reader something to relate to. When things become so far outside the scope of what is relatable to us as non superpowered humans, then it does help to have some small comparisons, even if they are mostly meaningless in a practical sense in the fictional realm.