Author: admin

 

The following events took place on Thursday, July 20 between 11:OO AM and 7:00 PM. 

Discussing fellow columnist Fred Hembeck some months back, Quick Stop editor Ken Plume asked me, “What would it take to get him to go to San Diego?” Well, perhaps if I dazzle Fred sufficiently with my account of the wonders to be found at the San Diego Con, I can persuade him to undertake the pilgrimage that seems mandatory for all American comics enthusiasts.

Another reason that Fred should go is the opportunity to do something neither he nor I have ever done: meet Ken Plume face to face. As far as we know, he is merely a disembodied voice on the telephone. Last year Ken and I managed to miss each other, but surely at this year’s con we could not fail to meet. (Could we?)

THURSDAY 11:00 AM
When I left off my account of this year’s Comic-Con last week, I was attending the U. S. Postal Service’s First Day Issue ceremony for the new set of DC Comics superheroes stamps. I made an early exit in order to take in a panel that was running simultaneously: the opening session of the Comic Arts Conference (CAC), the academic conference on comics that is held every year at the San Diego Con, and, as it did last year, set up residence in Room 7B.

The Conference showcases serious scholarly explorations of the comics artform. But this first panel was only serious inasmuch as the speakers maintained straight faces while keeping their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

This panel was “Myths for the Modern Age,” featuring contributing writers to a recent anthology of essays, Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, published by Monkeybrain Press.

Farmer, a renowned science fiction novelist, wrote two purported biographies, Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, which alleged that these characters are real people, whose lives and exploits were fictionalized by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester Dent, and other writers. (Thus, for example, Farmer claimed that pulp novel hero Doc Savage, one of the forebears of the superhero genre, was actually a man named Dr. James Clarke Wildman, Jr.) Moreover, Farmer contended that long ago radioactive meteorites landed at a spot in Britain called Wold Newton, and that various pregnant women passing nearby were exposed to this radiation. As a result, the children of these women and their descendants possessed heightened physical and intellectual abilities. Tarzan and Doc Savage are members of the “Wold Newton” family, as are Sherlock Holmes and numerous other characters from classic adventure fiction of the 19th and 20th centuries.

I recall reading at least part of Tarzan Alive decades ago, but never encountered anyone else who mentioned it. So I was surprised some years ago to discover that, once again, something that I considered a private pleasure in growing up is shared today by many others. The writers of Myths for the Modern Age are carrying on and elaborating upon Farmer’s Wold Newton mythos, and this CAC panel dealt with its applications to comics characters. Hence, one paper presented at the panel hypothesized that Modesty Blaise was Tarzan’s daughter; another argued that Vampirella was the same character as Lady Rawhide from recent Zorro comics.

When I arrived at the panel, writer Win Eckert was presenting his paper, which attempted to reconcile the seemingly contradictory accounts of Doc Savage’s later career from Farmer’s book (in which Savage retired in 1950 and had a daughter) and from DC Comics’ Doc Savage comics of the late 1980s (in which Savage instead married a Mayan princess and fathered a son, though Farmer denied that either event took place).

Eckert alleged that earlier in 2006 an anonymous party had sent him news reports by one Adelaide Johnston Lupin, who is the daughter of the gentleman thief Arsene Lupin and the aunt of anime adventurer Lupin III. Based on this purported evidence, Eckert concocted an incredible theory that he nonetheless contended was the only way to reconcile these two contradictory histories. According to Eckert, at one point Doc Savage had traveled back in time. Therefore, for forty years Doc Savage (who ages at a different rate than normal humans) was leading two parallel but different lives on Earth, and thus both Farmer and DC were right.

Now, obviously, Farmer and DC were each devising a different version of Doc Savage’s career following the classic pulp novels of the 1930s and 1940s. The reader should regard each version as an alternate possibility. If the reader insists that one version should be canonical, than he should judge each on its literary merits and on its fidelity to the work of Doc Savage’s creator Lester Dent. It is easy to regard Eckert’s convoluted effort to reconcile such disparate accounts of a fictional character’s life as merely silly.

But I nonetheless sympathize with what Eckert was doing, even if he took it to an extreme. The Wold Newtonian scholars know full well that Doc Savage and the rest are fictional characters, but they are engaging in an entertaining intellectual exercise. They pretend that the characters are real, and try to demonstrate that, beneath a fictionalized facade, the stories about them are true. Thus it becomes an intellectual challenge to reconcile seeming contradictions, and even to find links among various celebrated fictional characters created by different authors.

The impulse behind the Wold Newton scholars seems much like that behind Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman: to chronicle an alternative history in which all these classic characters of popular literature co-exist and interrelate (see “Comics in Context” #22-23).

Eckert was followed at the podium by Peter Coogan, one of CAC’s chairmen, who dropped the pose of utter seriousness in presenting “Principles of Wold Newtonry,” an explication of Wold Newtonian methodology. Coogan pointed out that Wold Newtonry is based on what Sherlock Holmes aficionados call “the Game”: their pretense that Holmes was a real person and their efforts to explain away contradictions within Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about him,

Among the guiding principles of Wold Newtonry that Coogan identified was the Principle of Physical Resemblance, which underlay a previous speaker’s theory that Modesty Blaise was Tarzan’s daughter. Another was the Principle of Unverifiable Evidence, as exemplified by Ms. Lupin’s newspaper stories. Eckert claims to have clippings of these stories, but, as Coogan observed, “you can’t find them.”

My affinity for Wold Newtonry should not surprise anyone since I was engaged in a similar endeavor. In working on the original versions of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe in the 1980s, its creator and editor, Mark Gruenwald and I operated from a similar assumption: writing as if the Marvel Universe were real. We too found ourselves resolving apparent contradictions in Marvel stories and filling gaps in past Marvel history. And much of the appeal of the Marvel Universe lies in the concept of an entire alternate cosmos in which so many favorite characters coexist and interact.

THURSDAY 11:30 AM
Once Wold Newtonry was out of the way, the Comic Arts Conference moved on to more serious matters with Session #2: “The Great Leap: Adapting Comics into Film.” I stayed to hear the initial two presentations.

The first was by Kate McClancy of Duke University, who this year joined Peter Coogan and Randy Duncan in co-chairing CAC. As I did in my lengthy review of the comics and film versions of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta earlier this year (see “Comics in Context” #126-131), McClancy disputed the conventional critical opinion that the movie is a faithful adaptation of the comics. In her presentation, “Should Governments Be Afraid of Their People?: Fascism in V for Vendetta,” she argued that whereas in the comics, Moore contended that each of us must make his or her own decisions, “the film tells us we must rely on a superhero to save us.” Hence, McClancy asserted, the film “actually enforces fascist implications” in the story. That explains the radical change that the Wachowskis made in the film’s ending, wherein the people of London all don “V” masks and costumes: they are idealizing a strong, iconic leader figure, as fascists do, rather than “take responsibility themselves.”

Agreeing with Moore’s contention that the film reflects an “American liberal fantasy,” McClancy pointed out that Moore’s V not only destroys the entire fascist government, but goes after the church and the media as well, whereas the movie V is content merely to bring about “peaceful regime change.”

McClancy also criticized the movie for overly humanizing V, through such means including displaying his burn scars and having him fall in love with Evey, whereas Moore’s V claims to be “an idea,” rather than “a man of flesh and blood,” and his emotional calm reinforces that impression.

(McClancy also asserted that there is no proof of the original V’s gender, and noted that it has been speculated that V is actually Valerie, the woman he claims inspired “him.” Well, the Larkhill sequences certainly indicate that V is male, but then again, can we be certain that the male escapee was V? Hmm.)

McClancy was followed by Richard A. Becker of CSU Northridge, who contended that the makers of movie and television adaptations of superhero series suffer from “a lack of conviction” in the genre. Hence, for example, there were never any supervillains in the live action Hulk TV show, and the X-Men movies refuse to put the characters into colorful costumes. Becker asserted that film makers were afraid that audiences would not suspend their disbelief enough to accept the many fantasy elements of the superhero genre, and yet he pointed out that audiences are willing to accept “Oz, Middle-Earth, and the Star Wars universe.” Becker summed up his presentation by stating that “all fiction” involves a “threshold of disbelief,” but that what is most important is that the audience “must accept” a story “on an emotional level, in their gut.” In comparison to this emotional reality, he said, “it doesn’t matter how many rivets are on Iron Man’s armor.”

THURSDAY 12:00 PM
Once again I left a panel early, this time to get some lunch, or, more precisely brunch, at one of the Convention Center’s fast food counters (not as bad or as overpriced as some claim) and to do some exploring of the main floor of the convention before I appeared on the DK panel at 2 PM.

The convention already appeared crowded, yet it was only Thursday, a day when most adults could not attend unless they took a day off from work. (Do I need to explain that the vast majority of Comic Con attendees are adults, and not school-age kids?) Comic-Con sage Mark Evanier, who has attended each San Diego Con from its very beginnings in 1970 (presumably when the nearby Gaslamp Quarter really was lit by gaslamps), observed on his blog (www.newsfromme.com) that “Thursday afternoon could have passed for Friday.” If Thursday at Comic-Con is the new Friday, and Friday is the new Saturday, then could anyone imagine the horrors of congestion that awaited us on the real Saturday?

I managed to covere a great deal of the convention main floor on Thursday, and explored much of the rest (with difficulty) on Sunday. The immense DC Comics booth area and the somewhat smaller Dark Horse section were easy to locate. As for the question that those of you who have read my past Comic-Con reports are about to ask, yes, I was informed that there was a Marvel booth at the Con, or, rather, a Marvel/Activision booth, but I never found it, and I was searching for it!

One Comic-Con landmark that was hard to miss was the unearthly, unspeakable menace of H. P. Lovecraft’s elder god Cthulhu, which hovered above the heads of unsuspecting convention attendees, and was once again disguised as a giant version of Pikachu from Pokemon. Don’t these fans realize that the reason that Cthulhu/Pikachu wears that blissed-out smile is that he is just about to suck out their brains? Can anyone stop his march to world domination?

Consider Pikachu’s latest triumph. Perusing the current schedule for Boomerang, Cartoon Network’s sister cable network, to which it has banished 20th century animation, I cannot find classic Looney Tunes except for most episodes of the revived anthology series Toon Heads. But Boomerang is now doing hour-long blocks of Pokemon. Could any of us have imagined a day would come when there was no Bugs Bunny show on daily television? Does it even make sense that Warners would drop such a valuable property from its TV networks, especially from a channel that doesn’t have commercials and hence presumably need not cater to current fads? Grateful as I am for the 1990s Batman episodes on Boomerang, will the network eventually become so crammed with retired series from Kids WB and Cartoon Network that Warner/Turner will have to found yet another new network for classic theatrical cartoons? Or should TCM just expand its Cartoon Alley schedule? Or is Warners’ current attitude, “Let “˜em eat DVDs”? (And will a new generation buy Looney Tunes DVDs if they haven’t seen samples of the cartoons on television?)

Damn! If only Pikachu/Cthulhu could meet the fate he so richly deserves! Little did I know on Thursday that before Comic-Con ended, I would see justice served.

By sheer chance I encountered my longtime friend (and former comics pro) Meloney Crawford Chadwick as I made my way through the crowded aisles. We talked animatedly, and discussed getting together on Sunday afternoon, as we had the last two times I attended Comic-Con. We didn’t set a specific time or place to meet ln Sunday, but she told me how to get in touch with her.

And this was a mistake that I make every year at Comic-Con since the new century began. It was merely by luck that I met Meloney on Thursday, and it would be a matter of luck if I saw her again at this Con. Always set a specific time and place to meet. I again quite the wisdom of Mark Evanier, who rhetorically asked on his blog, “Why is it I couldn’t locate the ten or twelve people with whom I had to talk business but I couldn’t take twelve steps without running into Len Wein?” In my case, it was Danny Fingeroth.

I also found the DK booth, where I had the pleasure of meeting two people from DK Publishing’s London office, who would be sharing the panel with me: senior designer Robert Perry and DK Licensing publisher Alex Allan, who, despite the misleading name (or, rather, I was just too unimaginative to recognize an alternate possibility), proved to be a blonde woman.

THURSDAY 2:00 PM
It was also a pleasure to see former Marvel editor in chief Tom De Falco again. We are two of the many writers of DK’s forthcoming Marvel Encyclopedia, which goes on sale in October. I don’t think either of us had any idea what we would say on the DK panel in Room 1B, but thanks to our improvisatory skills it went quite well. We even discovered that we had different stories about the origin of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: I think it came from former editor on chief Jim Shooter’s notion of doing a book of “specifications” of Marvel superheroes’ powers, and Tom thinks it came from Shooter’s suggestion that Mark Gruenwald turn his style guide sheets on Marvel characters into a book. But as I pointed out, both stories could be true. Alex Allan said that the Handbook was indeed a partial inspiration for the DK Marvel Encyclopedia, so I’m still working on the Gruenwald legacy. During the panel I also surprised Alex by praising DK’s art and travel books, which I had been buying long before I did any work for them.

The panel had a good audience, some of whom came up to speak to me afterwards. This was how I got to meet Stuart Vandal, one of the writers of Marvel’s current Handbooks, who had journeyed to Comic-Con all the way from the United Kingdom (thereby putting the reclusive Mr. Hembeck to shame!). As we left, Tom and I got to talk to an old friend, comics writer Marv Wolfman, who was arriving to sit on the next panel. And once I was outside the panel room, I encountered Ben Jackendorf, the cameraman for Constantine Valhouli’s Sex, Lies and Superheroes, the documentary I worked on several years ago, who had since moved to Los Angeles. There may have been over a hundred thousand people at this convention, but sometimes the gods of Comic-Con arrange welcome surprises.

THURSDAY 3:30 PM
Gina Misiroglu, the co-editor of The Supervillain Book, and I had set a time and place to meet (in front of Pro Registration) before we left for Comic-Con, so we had no trouble finding each other. Since we a relatively quiet spot to talk, I escorted her to a quiet restaurant with a picturesque view that Meloney has shown me which is only a short walk from the Convention Center, and yet it appears to remain a secret to over ninety-nine percent of Con attendees. (No, I’m not going to tell you where it is.) There we discussed Gina’s idea for her next book, which I would help write if we find a publisher for it. (No, I’m not going to tell you what it is.) And I finally told Gina my idea for yet another book that she and I could co-edit and co-write, which she loved. (And I’m certainly not going to tell you what this is!) (Gina was also excited about my airborne encounter with Annette: “Did you ask her out?”)

This meeting with Gina worked out fine, but I missed the big Publishers Weekly meeting that was also held that afternoon. I knew there was going to be one, but as of the time I left my apartment on Wednesday I still hadn’t been e-mailed the time or place; the e-mail wasn’t sent out until Thursday, when it was too late for me to see it. The meeting was at 5 PM, which, according to the Beat’s e-mail, was “after the Grant Morrison/[Deepak] Chopra thing that everyone seems to be going to.” (Well, not “everyone”: I am not a particular fan of Morrison’s work or New Age blather.)

Too bad, since the e-mail continued, “We’ll be going over assignments, party invites, and other stuff.” Hey, you mean PW could have gotten me into some of these exclusive parties? Not only that, but I could have gotten my press badge, which PW editor Calvin Reid had picked up. (Couldn’t he have left it at Registration for me?) But Calvin and Heidi had already been swallowed up by the Comic-Con crowd, and I would not see either of them for quite some time to come. Sometimes the gods of Comic-Con are determined to keep people apart.

THURSDAY 5:30 PM
For me Comic-Con would not be complete without dropping in, at least once, on the con-within-a-con hosted by Mark Evanier, who moderates panels, primarily about animation and the Golden and Silver Ages of Comics, throughout the convention. For any comics fan with a sense of history (say, like Fred Hembeck), simply following Mark from panel to panel –twelve in four days this year–and staying clear of the crushing masses on the main convention floor, would make for a perfectly satisfying Comic-Con experience.

If you follow Mark’s blog, you know that he recently underwent surgery for weight reduction, which has had astonishing results. On July 30 he posted on his blog, “I’ve lost 65 pounds in 65 days. I used to eat steaks that weighed that much.” At this rate, I expect that at next year’s Comic-Con we will see the Incredible Shrinking Mark wielding a sharp needle to fend off a predatory housecat. If DC’s new Atom series doesn’t work out, I know where they can find a new contender for the role.

The next panel in EvanierFest was “Spotlight on Jerry Robinson,” the Golden Age Batman artist, editorial cartoonist, and comics historian, held in Room 8.

Before it began, I asked Mark if he had seen our mutual friend Ken Plume. Mark looked at me somewhat severely and said no, but advised me to seek out Ken’s friend, voice actor Billy West. I would not realize the full import of this counsel until later, as you shall see in ensuing installments.

Because I was on the DK Publishing panel, I wasn’t able to attend the Evanier panel that was held simultaneously, “Batman: The Golden/Silver Age,” on which Robinson had appeared. Perhaps that is one reason why Evanier did not ask Robinson much about Batman on his “Spotlight” panel. Another, even better reason, is that there has been considerably more to Robinson’s lengthy career.

Evanier began by observing to Robinson that Batman comprised perhaps “five percent of your career” but that’s “probably what you’re asked most about at cons.” Robinson agreed, “That’s true,” but he added that “It doesn’t bother me.” He added that “I wish maybe they asked more about” his career as an editorial cartoonist, which lasted for thirty-two years. But, Robinson said, reminiscing about Batman “lets me relive my youth.”

Evanier said that “I didn’t realize for a long time that the Jerry Robinson of Batman is the same [person] as Jerry Robinson the editorial cartoonist” because their “styles are so different.” To illustrate Robinson’s versatility, Evanier projected a retrospective of selections of Robinson’s work on a screen: I know that the presentation was done via computer, but the end result was effectively a slide show.

Early on were some classic Batman covers from the 1940s, including one from Detective Comics #70, showing Batman underwater, attempting to rescue Robin, who was trapped inside a bathysphere and, from his expression, clearly running out of air. Robinson explained that this “never happened in a story,” but that he “liked the shape” of the bathysphere. He came up with the visual idea, and “just did it” and showed it to DC editor/art director Whitney Ellsworth, who bought it.

Later there was Flubs and Fluffs, a Sunday comic strip that Robinson did for “seventeen, eighteen years,” in which he drew cartoons based on funny things that children had actually said in classrooms, such as “An autobiography is the life of an automobile.” We were shown a cartoon illustrating the line “In the Civil War, the Southern States receded from the Union”: Robinson’s illustration showed Confederate soldiers at sea, with one dryly observing, “I think we receded too far.”

Robinson said that Flubs and Fluffs received “up to 1500 letters per week,” and he was “told it got more mail than the President of the United States.”

Robinson also said that some lines were submitted to the strip that were too “off color” for them to use, giving as an example, “Magellan circumcised the world three times.”

Beginning in 1961 Robinson did a daily series of editorial cartoons called Still Life, in which inanimate objects commented on current events. In one that we were shown, the Presidential seal states that “The President [Richard Nixon] is in conference with his most trusted advisor. He’s alone.” Still Life was succeeded by a more conventional editorial cartoon series, Life with Robinson, in which people appeared.

Robinson told the audience that as a result of his cartoons he was invited by President Lyndon Johnson down to his ranch, and to the White house by Presidents Johnson and Carter. Robinson said that Richard Nixon “once asked for an original,” but this was “early on,” before Robinson “started criticizing him heavily.”

Since these editorial cartoons were syndicated to numerous papers, Robinson said this gave him “freedom.” He said he “was as harsh as I needed to be” in his commentary. “At times” he “lost papers” due to what he said in the cartoons, but thanks to syndication he could “lose a paper” but “not lose your job.”

How cutting were his cartoons? Here’s an exchange from a Still Life, presumably from the Vietnam era, that we were shown that seems relevant today: a cannon asks, “What’s a limited war?” and is told, “That’s one where the casualties don’t exceed the birth rate.”

Robinson also spent years doing “Theatre Life with Robinson” for Playbill, the program given out at Broadway shows. As something of a counterpart to the late Al Hirschfeld, Robinson would draw illustrations of performers on Broadway shows. (Evanier mentioned that he had once sat for Hirschfeld, and was surprised that he “drew me without looking at the page” once!) Robinson would sit in the audience during a show to do sketches, but he would also go backstage. Evanier showed various examples of “Theatre Life,” such as a striking portrait of Duke Ellington amidst a montage of performers from the Ellington revue Sophisticated Ladies and the original cast of the musical Nine. Commenting on portraits of MGM musical stars Ann Miller and Mickey Rooney from their Broadway show Sugar Babies, Robinson had interesting insights into performers’ public and private selves.

Miller, Robinson said, “posed for me in her dressing room,” which was full of “big stuffed lions.” This affectation, it turned out, was not a reference to the MGM lion; Miller was a believer in reincarnation, and claimed she lived in Egypt circa 300 B. C.. She “told me about some of her funnier lives” in what he termed “a high. sweet voice” until she was interrupted by a phone call to her agent, whereupon Robinson imitated Miller shifting into a loud, angry voice. Then, when the call was over, he told us, Miller shifted “back to the sweet voice” as if nothing had happened.

Rooney, he said, was “frenetic, couldn’t sit still” until Robinson offered him the Napoleon-style hat he wears in the picture. He “held [his] grin for almost a minute once he put the hat on,” Robinson said, long enough for him to make the sketch.

And there were many more examples from Robinson’s wide ranging career in cartooning, which makes most contemporary comics artists’ careers look rather narrow. From a book about the Civil War (America’s, not Marvel’s), there was Robinson’s fine portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which he said he “tried to do in the engraved style of the 1860s.” There was art from children’s books, and a cover that Robinson did for a book called Moon Trip. (Here Evanier interjected that he once asked Jack Kirby about the moon landing, and Kirby told him, “I’ve been there already.”) There were pages from comic book stories he had drawn in the Western and crime genres. There were sketches he had done on his travels to such places as Florence and Prague. We were shown pictures of a caricatured eagle and bear, representing the United States and the Soviet Union, that Robinson had done as co-art director for an animated film called Stereotypes. We were also shown the cover for Robinson’s early 1970s book, Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art, which Dark Horse will be republishing, probably next year.

The subject of the recent protests against the cartoons of Mohammed drawn by Danish artists came up. Robinson said that the Cartoonists and Artists Syndicate, which he had founded to represent foreign cartoonists in the United States, represented two of those Danish cartoonists.

This led to Robinson’s recounting of how in the 1970s Jules Feiffer called him to tell him about “a cartoonist imprisoned and tortured in Uruguay,” which then had “one of the worst fascist regimes.” Robinson said this cartoonist was a “prisoner of conscience” who “only opposed the government in his art.” Robinson set about publicizing this man’s case. “It took three years,” Robinson told us, but finally, through the help of Senator Paul Tsongas and other U. S. senators, the cartoonist “was released six months before his term was up.”

“Most such prisoners,” Robinson continued, have “no one outside to help, so they lose hope” and “commit suicide” or die by other means. Robinson stated that this cartoonist’s wife told him that “Knowing that American artists were working to get him out kept him alive.”

Perhaps inevitably, the panel ultimately returned to Robinson’s reminiscences about his early days in comic books. Mark Evanier asked Robinson to retell the celebrated story of how he, the late George Roussos, and several other artists turned out a whole sixty-four page comic book over a long weekend, starting on a Thursday night in 1941. If they didn’t have the comic done by Monday morning, publisher Charles Biro would have lost the allotment of paper he needed to print it. The artists rented a vacant apartment to work in, but on that Saturday night the city was hit by “one of the biggest blizzards in New York history.” Robinson told us they “had to dig our way out of the doorway.” One of the artists, Bernie Klein, “went out to forage for food,” and returned with a dozen eggs and a can of beans. But they had “no way to cook them,” Robinson recalled, until they started to “break off tiles out of the bathroom” to construct an improvised hot plate.

The artists all created new characters for this book, and Robinson’s contribution was a superhero named London, It was “just before we got into the war,” Robinson told us, the city of London was being “bombed by the Nazis” and “the fate of Western civilization” was at stake. Robinson’s new superhero embodied the British resistance to tyranny. A caption in Robinson’s London story read, “As he is London, the living, breathing reality to prove London can take it!”

Also perhaps inevitably, a questioner from the audience asked Robinson how he came up with his most famous creation, the Joker. Robinson was a student at Columbia University (like myself!) when he was first working on Batman. “I was studying literature,” he told us, and “I knew every great hero has an antagonist,” like “David and Goliath” or “Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.” Hence, Robinson said, he wanted to come up with a villain “with some dimension.”

Robinson was specifically influenced by the fact that, he said, his brother and mother “were champion bridge players. I played too, but not as well.” So he “searched a deck of cards” and found the “classic image” of the Joker.

Robinson pointed out that in the first Joker stories they “didn’t explain his white face.” (Or, for that matter, the Joker’s green hair and blood-red lips.) He “felt it was more intriguing not to explain it.” Robinson is aware that later it was established that the Joker’s hair and skin were permanently dyed by chemical wastes, but he contends that “once you know he fell in a vat, it’s not bizarre.” In a period when comics fans demand explanations for everything, Jerry Robinson thus advocates the appealing intrigue of unsolved mysteries.

A dweller of the Northeast like Mr. Hembeck or myself can see Jerry Robinson speak at New York City conventions, but it took a trip to California to hear him drawn out on these many other interesting facets of his career.

Is this enough to persuade Fred to go to San Diego? Or does he need more? If you and he come back next week, you’ll learn still more about Comic-Con ’06.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF
I’ve written yet another review column for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week, and you can find the article here.

Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson

 

 

 

 

Comic-Con International, more familiarly known as the San Diego Comic Con, is the Mecca of American comics aficionados. Every North American comics enthusiast should make the pilgrimage at least once. The 2006 Comic-Con International is the seventeenth San Diego Con that I’ve attended in the last twenty-five years; the Con marked its thirty-seventh anniversary this year.

But then there are some people who resist the San Diego Con’s siren call, such as my fellow Quick Stop columnist Fred Hembeck, who has never been there once. How can this be? Have you ever had the feeling, when you finally visit a distant place that you’ve long read about, or seen on television or in the movies, say, like Paris or the Grand Canyon, that by gosh, this place really does exist. Perhaps, deep down inside, Fred doesn’t quite believe that something as reputedly fantastic as the San Diego Con (or, I suppose, southern California) actually could be real.

For the benefit of Mr. Hembeck, and of all of you who couldn’t get there this year, for this and the next several weeks I will be reporting in detail on my experiences at the San Diego Con, as I did last year and in 2003.

At any given point while the Con is open, there are so many panels or other events taking place, that no two attendees, unless they travel together in lockstep, could possibly have the same experience there. I attended several high profile panels and events, some of which had an audience comprising thousands of people, as well as panels which attracted only several dozen attendees.

Last year Mr. Hembeck’s endurance seemed somewhat strained when my Con reports ran into their fifth and sixth week. I doubt that this year my reports will take up quite so many pages, inasmuch as I’ve never worked at a San Diego Con as much as I did at this one. All of my journeys to the San Diego Con have been business trips, but I spent most of my time attending panels, and, in the early years, company and convention parties. In 2003 my reason for going to San Diego was the showing of Constantine Valhouli’s documentary Sex, Lies and Superheroes, which I co-wrote and executive produced, at the San Diego Con’s Film Festival. Last year I appeared on a panel at the Comic Arts Conference, an academic conference held during the Con, to promote The Supervillain Book, which I and others had been writing. My expenses were picked up by the Big Apple Conventions, which sent me to scout for possible guests. This year half my expenses, including my hotel accommodations and plane flight, were being picked up by DK Publishing, for whom I wrote The Ultimate Guide to the X-Men, now in its third, expanded edition, and collaborated on the forthcoming Marvel Encyclopedia, which comes out in October. I was scheduled to appear on DK’s panel and to do two signings at their booth. I also appeared on another Comic Arts Conference panel on behalf of The Supervillain Book and ended up doing a signing for it. The book officially comes out this fall, but we had advance copies to sell at the Con. I was also scheduled for a business meeting with The Supervillain Book‘s editor, Gina Misiroglu, to discuss ideas for possible follow-up books. Moreover, while I was planning to write up the panels I attended for this column, which I do for free, I was hoping to do some reporting for Publishers Weekly, for which I would get paid.

Perhaps one of the factors that discourages Fred from going to the Con is the sheer difficulty involved. It has become a very expensive proposition in recent years, with hotels charging hundreds of dollars per night. And that’s if you can find a hotel room. Last year 100,000 people attended Comic-Con; according to early estimates, there were 125,000 people there this year. Rooms at the principal hotels get snapped up months in advance, and plane seats vanish quickly too. Much as I always enjoy the Con, I’ve decided that nowadays I should only go if I have a specific project to promote (as with Constantine’s movie) and if someone will pick up a major part of my expenses, as DK did this year.

But, inevitably, with so much going on at the Con, when I’m doing a signing or appearing on a panel myself, I can’t attend another panel that’s going on simultaneously that I would dearly love to see. So my coverage of the Con this year shouldn’t be as long as it has been in the past, simply because I wasn’t able to attend as many panels.

I hope that my detailed coverage of what I did see at the Con will convey to those of you who didn’t attend some sense of what it was like to be there, and perhaps even excite some of you into making the pilgrimage yourselves.

Concerned as I am about testing Mr. Hembeck’s patience with my long reports, this year I am borrowing a device from one of our favorite television series to enliven my coverage: the digital clock from 24. I will keep you informed as to exactly when these events started and stopped, and whenever you see the time listed, you and Fred can chant along with 24‘s ominous clock music: KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK!

Fred may have further good reason to shy away from trips to San Diego. Based on past experiences, I have formulated a rule that no major trip can take place without something going wrong. For example, years ago when I took a trip to Rome, despite the fact that I was on a nonstop flight from New York City to Rome, the airline still succeeded in losing my luggage. I told the tour guide what happened, and she breezily informed me that I’d never see it again. The next day, on returning from sightseeing, my bag was waiting for me in my room. So a seeming miracle occurred, befitting the vacation in which I visited the Vatican, as well as confirmation of my rule about travel.

Last year, as regular readers of this column may recall, on my trip out to San Diego I had to change planes in Dallas, but the first plane (of course) arrived late, and I was stuck in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport for five hours, reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe while awaiting the next plane, and thereby missing all the Thursday panels I wanted to see. But far more annoying were my dealings with Kinko’s in trying to get the business cards my redoubtable editor Ken Plume had advised me I should have.

For this year’s San Diego trip my rule went into overdrive. Fred, prepare to have all your fears about long-distance travel confirmed.

And Kinko’s was only a minor factor this time around. My old business cards, you see, listed this column’s old web address, over at IGN. But now I’ve moved to Quick Stop, rendering the old cards obsolete. Determined to avoid Kinko’s, I made the long walk to the neighborhood Staples, where an attractive young woman at the printing counter, who told me that it would take seven to fourteen days to print the cards. (Considering that she seemed to have nothing to do, why couldn’t she print them now?) The trip was less than a week away, so I was forced to try Kinko’s again. This time on their first version of my new cards, Kinko’s managed to spell my name “Petre.” (I take it from what I heard other people in line say, that I am far from the only person who has problems with Kinko’s.)

I know better than to trust Kinko’s, but it is really disturbing when you think you can count on a trusted friend on a major matter, only to have the rug pulled out from under you. In June I made contact with a good friend with whom I’d lost contact the previous fall. But it was if no time had passed as we animatedly talked on the telephone. Since she had done a great job in making my travel arrangements for last year’s Comic-Con, I asked her if she’d do it again this year, and I would send her a check. She agreed, and on our second phone conversation, a week later, she was busily reading to me a list of inexpensive plane fares and assuring me that she could find something even cheaper. I asked her to call me back in a few days when she completed her search.

Then she stopped answering her phone and e-mails. For weeks. In imitation of my hero, Stephen Colbert, I have put her on my “On Notice” list.

By now it was early July, and, well aware of the difficulties in booking planes and rooms for the San Diego Con, I was getting worried, and starting sending out e-mail calls for assistance. And miracles occurred again. Only moments after I mentioned my dilemma in an e-mail to her, the Beat, that living nexus of all comic industry realities, phoned me to offer a solution. She put me in touch with her friend Frank, who was in contact with a young nanny named Daniela, who was trying to sell two U. S. Airways/American West vouchers she had gotten after being bumped from a flight. Frank was also heading to the San Diego Con. But U. S. Airways informed Daniela that in order to transfer her vouchers to us, all of us would have to come down to the airport. Since I’m a freelancer, my schedule is malleable, but Frank’s and Daniela’s were not, so all of us headed down to Kennedy Airport (a thirty dollar cab ride for me) one evening. I arrived first, shortly after 8 PM, and discovered something that Dani the Nanny had not been told: the U. S. Airways ticket counter was already closed for the night! So we all had to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to head down to Kennedy Airport yet again so Frank could get into Manhattan by 9 AM. Thus time everything went smoothly: I would fly out on Wednesday, the day before the Con’s official start, arriving around 10:30 PM, and would fly back the following Monday night. Since I finds it difficult to sleep on planes, I’m not fond of redeye flights, but this would give me a day in San Diego after the Con. It seems pointless to me to fly all the way out to San Diego, with its brilliant sunshine, gorgeous sights, and nearly perfect weather, and then spend the whole time inside the Convention Center. I feel my San Diego trips are not complete until I spend at least an afternoon out of doors.

More miracles followed. Bess Braswell of DK e-mailed me that they had already booked a room for me at the Doubletree Club (without telling me). Peter Coogan, one of the chairmen of the Comic Arts Conference, alerted me that another CAC attendee, Patrick Jagoda, was looking for a fourth person with whom to split a room (that cost over $300 a night total!), at the Coronado Island Marriott Resort. So now I had a choice of places to stay, and spent days mulling over which offer to accept. There was a water taxi that crossed the bay between the Coronado Island Marriott and the San Diego Marriott, which stands directly beside the San Diego Convention Center. I liked the idea of starting each day by riding a ferry across the bay, but the water taxi didn’t run at night, so I’d have to take a more expensive cab (a land taxi?) back each night. According to its website, the Doubletree Club was only “minutes” from a trolley that ran directly to the Convention Center. I was leaning towards the Doubletree, until I phoned the hotel, and discovered that the trolley was a five minute DRIVE from the hotel, across a highway! And even with DK picking up half the tab, the Doubletree would still cost me about twice as much as the Coronado Island Marriott. So I accepted Patrick’s offer. (Of course anyplace within easy walking distance of the Convention Center would have been booked solid months ago.)

And there were other problems. Publishers Weekly wanted me to bring a laptop computer to the Con so I could write articles out there and e-mail them to my editors Sunday night, in time for the Tuesday edition of their online newsletter Comics Week. But I discovered that the decade-old laptop was incompatible with recent versions of AOL. I figured out that I could still transfer the articles to the Beat’s laptop via Zip drives; Peter Coogan even offered to give me one, and the Beat approved of the solution. It meant lugging another shoulder bag, with the laptop, on the trip, but, hey, it’d be worth it if I get paid for the PW reports.

Then on the day before the trip, my watch stopped. I had the foresight to have a backup. At this point Fred Hembeck is reading this and vowing he will never venture any further from home than Disney World. And I haven’t even mentioned airport security yet. Without waiting to be asked, I put my bags, the laptop, jacket and shoes through the X-ray machine, though I thought the security people were a wee impatient in expecting people to redress hurriedly. (I understand that this summer security is particularly concerned about the possible danger of serpents on an aircraft.)

What else could go wrong? Actually, not much on the trip out. First I took a flight from New York City to Philadelphia (only thirty minutes; hardly seems worth going by plane!), and then boarded the America West flight for San Diego itself.

I spent part of the journey reading the new novel from Tor, Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch, by Lara Parker, who played Angelique on the original Dark Shadows television series. The book is quite good, and I will be discussing it in a future “Comics in Context.”

What made the flight even more enjoyable was the other passenger in my row. Years ago I found myself seated next to graphic novelist Kyle Baker on a flight (to Chicago for its con, I think), and he observed to me, “Did you ever notice that you never get seated next to an attractive woman on a flight?” (Certainly not that one, since I was sitting next to Kyle.) This year’s flight to San Diego proved the Baker Hypothesis to be wrong. Separated from me by a single empty seat was an attractive young German woman named Annette, who had flown all the way from Munich, changing planes in Philadelphia on her long trek to visit friends in San Diego. Between one or two hours into the flight, she did something I don’t expect from fellow airline passengers: she smiled and started a conversation with me, and apart from an understandable break she took to take a nap, we talked animatedly for the rest of the flight. I even sought to reassure her when she was frightened by some particularly nasty turbulence that shook the plane for five to ten minutes. She was intelligent, vivacious, nearly perfect in speaking English, and quite pretty. This was her first trip to California, and I advised her on various sights she should see not only in San Diego, but in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She mentioned that her friends would have to work during the week, so I offered to show her around San Diego on Monday before my return flight. She seemed open to the offer. Did she turn up on Monday? That’s right: this year’s San Diego report will have an element of suspense. (Fred is already on the edge of his seat!)

So, my many thanks to Heidi, Frank, Dani, Peter, Patrick, Bess, Rachel, Greg, and Zon for their part in making my expedition to this year’s Comic-Con possible. And to Annette for making the flight out so pleasant.

Thanks to various delays on the flights, I arrived in San Diego not around 10:30 PM but closer to midnight; in fact, the airport was about to shut down for the night. Which means it was now–
COMIC-CON DAY ONE

The following events take place Thursday between 12:00 AM and 11:30 AM. (KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK!)

As I explained to Annette, landing in San Diego after dark is always disappointing: you can’t see the palm trees, or the skyline, or the brilliant blue sky. Airports all look alike, and outside is darkness. I found a shuttle, which is less expensive than a taxi, and rode across a bridge over the bay to Coronado Island, and the Coronado Island Marriott Resort. Luckily, my three new roommates, Patrick, Greg, and Zon, young academics, were all still up. Patrick and Greg had claimed the two real beds, and I got a rollaway bed, which proved comfortable enough. (Zon got the floor. Being the eldest of the group, I decided not to feel guilty about getting a bed. Seniority can be a good thing.)

Through e-mail Patrick and I had agreed that I would pay him in cash for my share of the room, and then he would pay the hotel. So now I offered to give him the money, but he’d changed his mind. He arranged it so that there were four separate accounts, and each of us would pay the hotel directly for his share. This made sense at the time. But we had overthought the situation, and had laid the seeds of trouble to come. (Still more suspense.)

DAY ONE 8:00 AM
I may have been the oldest of the four CAC roommates, but I was consistently the first one to wake up, managing to perform my morning ablutions before the others could compete for bathroom time.

9:30 AM
As I had hoped, the morning ferry voyages justified my choice of the Coronado Island Marriott. My friend Meloney Crawford Chadwick had advised me that Hotel Circle, the location of the Doubletree Club, was the middle of nowhere. But here, we emerged into the hazy sunlight, crossed the swimming pool area (which seemed surprisingly bare and unmemorable in daylight), and strode out onto a pier extending into the bay. There you could look back at the island, or across the sparkling waters to the San Diego coastline, with the long bridge to Coronado Island to the right. Directly across from us was the San Diego Convention Center, with its sail-like structure, as if the building were a larger version of the many boats docked at the marina outside the Center. To its left were the two curved towers of the San Diego Marriott, and far to the Center’s right were enormous battleships at San Diego’s famed naval base.

The ferry is tiny; twenty passengers would be a crowd, and the open window areas make one feel even closer to the surrounding waters. The trip between the two Marriotts lasts no more than ten minutes, and this morning the waters were soothingly calm. It is a marvelous way to begin the morning.

9:45 AM
Contrary to earlier rumors, the line at Professional Registration was short and moved quickly. Once I got to one of the booths, my wait slowed down considerably. DK, CAC and PW had each registered me for 2006, and I know from 2003 that thanks to my many visits to the Con, my name is in their computers. But the two guys on duty at this booth were unable to find my name in their system. This, one of them decided, was my fault. The older-looking, bearded one began lecturing me that I should never let anyone register for me, and that I should always do it myself. Then a young woman came by, pressed a key on the younger guy’s computer, thereby immediately bringing up my name, smiled, and walked off.

9:50 AM
With only ten muinutes to go to the official start of the Con, I saw numerous people entering the doors to the main floor. Wearing my professional’s badge, I tried to go in, too, but was shooed away by one of the red-shirted minions of the unfortunately named “Elite” security force that patrolled the Con. He smugly told me to wait with everyone else. Puzzled that pro badges seemed effectively meaningless, I made my way upstairs, to the Sails Pavilion, where I saw hordes of fans lined up in zig-zag formation, waiting to be allowed onto the main convention floor. Unwilling to be regimented, I milled about and finally make my way into Room 5AB, where a surprisingly large crowd, leaving few empty seats, and an astonishing number of video cameramen (including the ubiquitous Mike Catron, king of comics convention video), were awaiting the first panel of the Convention.

10:30 AM-11:30 AM
This event was billed as “DC Comics Legacy: U. S. Postal Service First Day Stamp Issue.” As it would be explained to us, the U. S. Postal Service holds a ceremony marking the issuing of each new set of commemorative stamps. Today the Postal Service was officially releasing its new set of twenty stamps featuring ten DC Comics super heroes, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Supergirl, Green Arrow, Aquaman, and Plastic Man. (How come Plastic Man, who originated at Quality Comics, not DC, made it and the more famous Captain Marvel, who originated at Fawcett, didn’t? If not for the references to him in HBO’s Entourage, would Aquaman have made this list? Didn’t Entourage pick him as a joke because he is such a minor character?) Even better, each image is taken from classic comic book artwork. Each character is represented by a stamp bearing a close-up of his likeness, and by a vintage cover. For example, a Green Lantern stamp bears an image of Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, from a cover by Neal Adams. The stamps would only be available that day in San Diego: in fact, the Postal Service had set up a special outlet right at the Convention Center. The stamps went on sale the next day around the country, and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) hosted another ceremony for the stamps the following week in New York City.

The first speaker was Dave Failor, the Executive Director of Stamp Services for the U. S. Postal Service. He told us that he ordinarily “works inside the Beltway” but that “my job today is to come to Comic-Con.”

Failor said that there had been a “wonderful debate in the office” over how popular the stamps would be. He said they knew the stamps would be popular with comics collectors, and then asked how many people in the audience were comics collectors. Well, duh, this is the San Diego Comic Con: virtually everyone raised his hand. But then he asked how many in the audience were stamp collectors, and I was surprised at the large number of raised hands.

Explaining First Day Issue ceremonies to those of us who were attending one for the first time (like me), Failor said that the Postal Service “always selects one city” where the stamps would be exclusively available to be postmarked that first day of release. He said San Diego was “one of my favorite cities” and “a great fun city to come to,” a sentiment with which I certainly agree.

Then he introduced Jerry Sanders, the Mayor of San Diego. I never expected the city’s mayor to show up. Years ago, my friend Meloney went to one of Europe’s largest comics conventions, the Angouleme Festival in France, where she attended a dinner where the Mayor of Angouleme was present. When she told me about this years ago, I took it as a sign of how much more respect that comics receive as an artform in Europe.

And now, in 2006, the Mayor of San Diego appeared at the opening event of the San Diego Comic Con. This probably has much more to do with the economic impact on the city’s restaurants, hotels, and more from over a hundred thousand people attending the Con than with official recognition of the artistic merit of comics. Still, the Mayor’s appearance was an impressive gesture.

The Mayor began by saying that he “grew up on DC and Marvel comics.” (I suppose once upon a time that if a politician said that, he would be seen as having been a particularly dumb child.) He told us that he gave “a suitcase full of comics” to his nephew three years ago, whereupon the audience collectively went “awwww.” (They sounded sad, as if the mayor had enacted that archetypal moment in the lives of older fans, in which someone, usually a parent, gives away old comics, oblivious to their worth.) The Mayor called San Diego “America’s finest city,” as you would expect him to say, but went on to declare that “We are really happy to have Comic-Con here.” He also stated that “I can’t think of a more fitting subject for a postage stamp series” than super heroes. (Um, how about American Presidents?)

The Mayor observed that Paul Levitz, DC’s president and publisher, who was seated onstage, started his comics career thirty-three years ago. The Mayor said that he himself had started out in the police thirty-three years ago, and “we just went in different directions,” causing Levitz to break into a big grin.

“Please enjoy our city,” the Mayor concluded. “We welcome you with open arms.”

Next up was David Glanzer, the Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Comic-Con International, who said that the U. S. Postal Service and DC Comics had chosen Comic-Con as the site of this event. Glanzer said this “proves comic art has reached a new era of appreciation.”

Then Paul Levitz and many people connected with the U. S. Postal Service who were present were introduced from the stage.

The next major speaker was the U. S. Postal Service’s Judicial Officer William Campbell. We were informed in his introduction that “Bill was a comic collector as a child,” and his speech made it clear that yes, indeed, he is One of Us. Campbell began by welcoming the “comic collectors” in the audience and urging us to “give yourself a big hand.”

Commendably, Campbell then said that at this event “first we celebrate. . . fantastic artists” and “creative storytellers” who brought about a “new kind of heroes” in “the greatest comics industry in the world.”

Next, Campbell said, we “celebrate the heroes themselves,” whom he described as “great characters and role models,” who also “had weaknesses and doubts.” (I suppose that actually applies more to Marvel’s classic heroes than DC’s, but DC has given its flagship heroes more complex personalities since Marvel’s Silver Age revolution.)

Finally, Campbell perceptively stated that today “we celebrate a moment of time most of us shared. . .when characters in comic books were our friends,” when “their battles were our battles,” and “their values” shaped “our ideas of right and wrong.”

Campbell pointed out that these were the “first stamps ever to commemorate superheroes.” Then a curtain at the back of the stage was dropped, revealing large reproductions of the entire set of DC superhero stamps. Paul Levitz, the mayor, and various Postal Service bigwigs posed with the giant stamps for the photographers.

Then it came time for Paul Levitz to make his speech. (Earlier Campbell had referred to him as “President Levitz”: I’d never heard him called that before, but it fits.) Whereas the Mayor and the Postal Service officials wore suits, Levitz was more casually dressed, with neither jacket nor tie. This initially struck me as unusual, but I would learn the wisdom of Mr. Levitz’s fashion choice later in the week, as you shall see.

Levitz began by saying that “The first day of the San Diego Comic Con is generally the best day in the comics business” because “we” get “to see our fans, “to touch them,” and to get “recharged.”

Levitz also said this was a “terrific day to honor” both the “characters” and their “creators,” whereupon he proceeded to introduce, in alphabetical order, a number of the people whose creations and artwork were represented on the stamps, and who were seated in the audience. The roll call included Neal Adams, who stood, turned, and beamed at the enthusiastically applauding audience; Silver Age inker Joe Giella; Flash and Batman artist Carmine Infantino; the blonde Elizabeth Kane, representing her late husband, Batman co-creator Bob Kane; the dark-haired Lisa Kirby, daughter of Jack; comics artist Adam Kubert, representing his father, Silver Age Hawkman artist Joe Kubert; latter-day Batman and Superman artist Jim Lee; Edgar May, a lawyer representing the family of Wonder Woman co-creator William Moulton Marston; Golden and Silver Age Batman artist Sheldon Moldoff; George Perez, looking very happy; Jack Kirby’s frequent inker Mike Royer, who wore a big Western hat which he tipped to the crowd; and frequent Jim Lee inker Scott Williams. Though he was not mentioned from the stage, I also noticed the Golden Age Batman artist Jerry Robinson in attendance. (But not till I started writing this week’s column did I realize that no one from the family of Jerry Siegel, Superman’s co-creator, seemed to be there.)

Levitz pointed out that today was “an important moment” for the early comics “artists who couldn’t sign their work” and who “received no recognition” at the time. He stated that many early comics artists were the children of “immigrants who made their art speak for their [new] country.”

Levitz also spoke of spending “hours of discussdion” to select the “right set of stamps and images,” and joked that “It beats the hell out of real work!”

The First Issue Day ceremony was still not finished, but I left early so as to catch the last part of the first Comic Arts conference panel of the Con. It was a little after 11 AM, but to find out what I saw next, you’ll have to wait for next week’s installment.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

I’m scheduled to do one lecture per month in my series “1986: The Year That Changed Comics,” at New York City’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA). But as it turns out, there is only a week between my last lecture, on July 31 about Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra: Assassin, and the next one, on Monday, August 7.

This will indeed be a special event. I will be giving a talk about the 1986 Squadron Supreme limited series, written by the late Mark Gruenwald. But this is only part of an evening designed as a tribute to Mark, who passed away ten years ago this month. Mark’s widow Catherine will be there, bringing with her something she only recently discovered: a eulogy that Mark had written for himself! Mark’s daughter Sara will also attend, as well as various colleagues of Mark’s from the world of comics, and a number of the current writers for Mark’s creation, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. It starts at 6:30 PM and it’s free! I’m hoping to write about it in a future column, but if you’re in the New York area, please come experience the event yourself.

-Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson

 

 

I really wanted to like Bryan Singer’s new film Superman Returns much more than I did. Yet I was bothered by the very first publicity photo I saw from the film, which turned out to be a sign of the movie’s overall tone. Why was Superman’s cape brown? The traditional reds on Superman’s costume have turned much darker and browner in the new movie. Superman is meant to wear bright colors, matching the spirit of hope he embodies; it’s character like Batman who wear dark colors. Brown is drab and dreary. And Superman Returns is darker and drearier than it should be.

That’s a surprise, since Singer so admires Richard Donner’s original Superman movie from 1978. Now here’s a case of art finally receiving its proper recognition in the course of time. Donner was fired from Superman II (1981), much of which was reshot by director Richard Lester, who did not share Donner’s mythic vision of the character. This led to Lester’s Superman III (1983), an unfunny comedy built around Richard Pryor, and the utterly disastrous Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). But as the years passed, the reputation of Donner’s Superman grew, and fans even managed to piece together an unofficial cut of Superman II, which reincorporated much of Donner’s footage (see “Comics in Context” #90). And now, over a quarter of a century later, Bryan Singer has not only designed Superman Returns as a homage to Donner’s film, but made clear that it is a sequel to Superman II, thereby deleting Superman III and IV from continuity, This does not stop Warners from selling DVDs of III and IV, but Warners is also issuing an official DVD of the Donner cut of Superman II. It seems that sometimes the good guys do indeed win. at least in the world of film history.

Singer follows the letter of Donner’s Superman in terms of continuity, but what I wonder is, does he truly capture the celebratory spirit of that epic adventure film?

Superman Returns’ opening premise is that Superman has been gone from Earth for five years: after Earth scientists determined the location of Krypton, Superman went there via spaceship to see for himself. Of course, he found out what we all know: it had been blown to bits.

I see why Singer and his writers came up with this five year gap. For one thing, metaphorically it stands for the far longer gap in time between Superman II and the new movie. Time in the Superman movies seems not much different than time in the comics. Thanks to recasting, the characters look no older, but now they’re in a world with cell phones, personal computers, and flat screen TVs. (I am now sounding a spoiler alert.)

The five year gap also makes possible the existence of the four-year-old son of Superman and Lois, conceived during their tryst in Superman II. When I first read that Lois would have a young son–born out of wedlock–and a boyfriend in the new Superman movie, I was amazed. Just how much influence over the movies does DC have? Didn’t DC protest? For that matter, wasn’t there any Warners executive who said, maybe a movie aimed at family audiences shouldn’t condone illegitimate births? Or have social mores really changed that much? Somehow, on seeing the movie and realizing that the kid is Superman’s child, it bothers me less. Perhaps it’s that the situation is handled so matter-of-factly.

But the Superman that we know from the comics and even from the Donner movie would never have left Earth for five years. Isn’t one of the points of the Donner movie that Superman made a mistake in giving up his super-powers in order to have a relationship (okay–to be blunt, to have sex) with Lois? Once Superman gives up his powers, the three Phantom Zone villains wreak havoc and nearly take over the world. In Superman II‘s closing moments Superman promises he will never abandon his role as Earth’s guardian again. And yet, according to Superman Returns, that’s just what he did.

Moreover, we are to believe that people started forgetting about superman during his long absence. All right then, what’s happened on Earth in the last five years? Among other things, there have been the 9/11 attacks, the tsunami disaster, and Hurricane Katrina. When such catastrophes struck, wouldn’t people wish that Superman were around to help? Would Superman, after being absent from Earth for five years, ever forgive himself for not being here to cope with these catastrophes? As a wise man has said, with great power must come great responsibility.

While paying homage to Donner’s film in so many ways, Singer’s Superman actually veers very far away from it. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. I was recently interviewed by Newsweek’s radio show about Superman Returns, and I was asked how it resembled Singer’s X-Men movies. My answer was that Singer’s Superman, like the X-Men, is an outsider, whose origin and powers separate him from the “normal” human race. Why would Superman spend five years looking for Krypton if he thought of Earth as his home? Singer’s Superman recalls his father Jor-El (in quotes from Marlon Brando in Donner’s movie) instructing him that he can never truly be one of them–the people of Earth. Singer’s movie seems to argue that Superman can never have a relationship with Lois, even though she is the mother of his son. She has moved on, and has a new, human boyfriend. (The boyfriend is played by James Marsden, who was Scott Summers, alias Cyclops, in the X-Men movies. In those movies the romance between Scott and Jean Grey falls flat dramatically, but Marsden’s appealing, sensitive performance in Superman Returns suggests that he and Singer could have treated the Scott-Jean relationship much differently.) Like dateless Clark Kent, Superman must remain alone.

Really? It’s true that Superman II, in both the Donner and Lester versions, contends that Superman cannot have both his superhero career and a life with Lois. It’s like those old pre-feminist movies in which women could not have both a career and marriage, like The Red Shoes (1948). (So this is The Red Boots?)

Yet in the comics Clark and Lois have been married for years now. Singer’s Superman reminded me of how much John Byrne turned the traditional idea of Superman upside down in The Man of Steel (1986). Byrne’s contention was that Clark is more “real” than Superman, that Superman, having been raised on Earth since infancy, considers himself an Earthman. If Superman is an immigrant, then he is thoroughly assimilated. In the comics, Clark’s marriage to Lois is a sign that Superman considers himself part of normal human society. Note too that Smallville takes Man of Steel even further: not only does Smallville’s Clark consider himself first and foremost a member of human society, but he is suspicious and resentful of Jor-El and other Kryptonians.

(By the way, notice that on his return to Earth in Singer’s film, Superman’s first major feat is to rescue a plane that is not only carrying Lois but also a space shuttle. Could this be a homage to the “space plane” rescue in Byrne’s Man of Steel #1. That would be appropriate since Man of Steel and Superman Returns are both “relaunches” of Superman. Similarly, I suspect that Superman’s near-demise in Superman Returns may be inspired by the famous “Death of Superman” storyline in the 1990s comics.)

Donner’s Superman movies now strike me as dated in its contention that Superman and Lois must remain apart. Other Superman stories have now demonstrated that their romance is far from “impossible.”

In fact, I even wonder if Donner’s movies really support the notion of Superman as alienated outsider. There’s the emphasis on Clark’s childhood and adolescence: it was Donner’s Superman that first established that Smallville was in Kansas, and that Clark is a product of the American midwest and traditional heartland values. (By casting Eva Marie Saint as Ma Kent and recycling some of Marlon Brando’s dialogue as Jor-El, Singer has not only reunited the leads of On the Waterfront in a new movie, but made them the hero’s father and mother figure.) There is nothing alien or alienated about Christopher Reeve’s sunny portrayal of Superman as all-American idealist. Reeve’s Superman even memorably carries a flag in one of the final scenes of Superman II. He’s not only one of us, he’s specifically an American. And isn’t the point of the ending of Donner’s first Superman that Superman rejects Jor-El’s thesis of not “interfering” in the lives of Earth people? By extension, doesn’t that mean that Superman no longer regards himself as separate from them, as Jor-El claimed he was?

The triangle in Superman Returns is like that of a screwball comedy, like His Girl Friday (1940), which., appropriately enough, has a reporter as female lead. There’s the hero, the Cary Grant part; there’s the Rosalind Russell part of the woman who used to be involved with the hero, and would be a perfect match for him, but instead has gotten romantically involved with someone else; and then there is the somebody else, who is nice but bland, the Ralph Bellamy part, as here played by James Marsden. And the rules of drama decree that Cary ends up with Roz. But Superman Returns ends with the triangle unchanged: Lois is still with the Marsden character, and Superman will merely watch over his son from afar. No wonder this denouement feels unsatisfactory.

Then again, I found it hard to care much for Brandon Routh’s Superman or Kate Bosworth’s Lois. They’re okay, and Routh is good at recapturing some of Christopher Reeve’s characterization of Clark. But Routh and Bosworth aren’t memorable, and that’s a big problem when audiences can see Tom Welling and Erica Durante give more vivid portrayals of Clark and Lois every week on Smallville, or hear Tim Daly and Dana Delany act the same roles to perfection every night on Boomerang’s animated Superman. Others have commented on how little dialogue Singer’s film gives Superman/Clark and Lois; Kevin Spacey’s Luthor, in contrast, gets plenty. Is it that Routh and Bosworth weren’t good enough to do more dialogue, or did the movie simply deny them the opportunity?

It’s fun to see Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olsen on the 1950s Superman TV show, as a bartender, complete with Jimmy’s bow tie, in the new movie. That show’s Lois, Noel Neill, is 85 in real life (though to judge from a photo in The New York Times, looks amazingly good), but it’s disturbing that the film casts her in a deathbed scene.

What I liked the best about Superman Returns was the thing I liked least about Donner’s original Superman: the way Lex Luthor is portrayed. My editor Ken Plume and I disagree about Gene Hackman’s Luthor in the first movie. Ken makes the point that this half-comedic version of Luthor represents a necessary transition from the camp super-villainy of the 1960s Batman TV show to super-villainy treated more seriously. I will agree with Ken that beneath the bad wigs and execrable fashion sense (bad even for the 1970s), Hackman does have moments when he conveys a palpable sense of evil and menace. And yes, his aides Miss Teschmacher and, especially, Otis are considerably goofier than he is, although being the straight man to their buffoonery doesn’t make him look more sinister.

But Superman was released in 1978, the year after the original Star Wars, which demonstrated the dramatic impact of a villain who is played entirely seriously, as Darth Vader was. Vader became an icon of evil in popular culture. Significantly, nobody copied the Superman movies’ comedy version of Luthor: not the comics, not Lois and Clark, not the 1990s animated series, and not Smallville. Everyone working on Superman seemed to realize that the movies had gotten Luthor wrong. The somber, imperious menace conveyed by the Luthor of the 1990s animated series, as voiced by Clancy Brown, gets Superman’s greatest nemesis right.

This brings me to the subject of the new animated TV movie, Superman: Brainiac Attacks, which recently premiered on Cartoon Network before being released on DVD. I had been looking forward to this, too: it had been announced that Tim Daly and Dana Delany were returning to voice Superman and Lois, and the promotional art featured the familiar Bruce Timm designs from the 1990s series. So imagine my shock when I watched the movie and discovered this was a case of a wolf in Timm’s clothing, or, rather, designs.
It turned out that people from The Batman, the drastically inferior successor to the 1990s Batman animated series, were behind this TV-movie.
The writer has said in an interview that Superman: Brainiac Attacks was not meant to be in continuity with the 1990s Superman animated show. But if it’s in the same visual style, with the same two lead voice actors, shouldn’t we expect it to be in continuity? But no, though in Justice League Unlimited, which followed the continuity of the other 1990s DC animated show, Luthor had lost control of Lexcorp and had vanished from Earth, here he is back in his office, without explanation. And whereas in the previous animated series it was Luthor who made contact with Brainiac on the latter’s first visit to Earth, and Luthor had been attempting to resurrect Brainiac, according to the TV movie, they’d never met before. It would not have been hard to make the Luthor/Brainiac continuity of the TV movie conform to the previous series.

Even worse, Clancy Brown and Corey Burton were not brought back as the voices of Luthor and Brainiac. Luthor is instead portrayed as a goofball far worse than the Luthor of the Donner movies. I suspect the heavy hand of a Warners corporate decree at work, declaring that from now on Luthor must be a jerk. As for Brainiac, the sinister computer intelligence, he has developed an uncharacteristic tendency to chuckle. In contrast to the imaginative, well-crafted, character-driven storylines of the 1990s Superman series, Brainiac Attacks just turns Brainiac, the ultimate cerebral menace, into a gigantic robot monster, who lumbers about wreaking destruction, and then lumbers some more.

And then there’s Brainiac Attacks’ version of the Phantom Zone, which Superman can fly into and out of at will. But isn’t that ignoring the whole point of the Phantom Zone, which is that it is virtually inescapable (as Clark found out in the last season finale of Smallville)?

Enough about this disaster. Before I embarked on this tangent, I was about to say that I very much liked Kevin Spacey’s depiction of Luthor in Superman Returns. Spacey’s made a specialty of portraying villains that are larger than life yet credibly dangerous, from the first role that won him fame, on the TV series Wiseguy, through Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995). It has been reported that Spacey himself insisted on toning down the sillier side of the movies’ Luthor. Certainly it helps that this Luthor displays his trademark baldness (we see the bad wigs, but Spacey’s Luthor almost never wears them), and that he dresses in a far more imposing manner. One might think that a genius like Luthor would prefer a girlfriend with brains, but, no, Donner tradition decrees that he be given a new beautiful bubblehead in the person of Kitty Kowalski, who lacks Miss Teschmacher’s partly redeeming vivacity. Thankfully, Spacey’s Luthor’s henchmen aren’t buffoons like Otis.

But what’s most important is Spacey’s manner as Luthor. He still makes jokes and phrases things humorously. But whereas Hackman’s Luthor
came off as a vulgar clown, a used car salesman wielding nuclear missiles, Spacey’s Luthor is much more persuasively a criminal mastermind, whose surface repartee masks sinister depths. When Spacey’s Luthor cracks a joke, it comes off as a sardonic witticism. And when Spacey’s Luthor confronts Superman, he is pure menace.

From one perspective, Luthor’s schemes in the Singer and Donner films, which amount to killing millions of people in the service of a far-fetched real estate deal, are ludicrous. But I now realize that Donner’s movie contained the seeds of the Luthor of Man of Steel, the 1990s animated series, and Smallville: the businessman who is insensitive to the welfare of the public.

The third act, with Superman’s struggles over Luthor’s new continent, and his subsequent near death, move at a leaden pace. This sequence also makes no sense.

Earlier, Luthor returned to the Fortress of Solitude, where the crystal-computerized (?) version of Jor-El told him all about the attributes of Kryptonian crystals, First, why did Superman leave the Fortress unprotected, when Luthor knows about it? (In Donner’s cut of Superman II, Superman destroys the Fortress, probably for that reason.) Wouldn’t Jor-El have designed the Fortress so that intruding Earthmen couldn’t activate it?
And why doesn’t the movie do something with the fact that the crystal-Jor-El mistakenly addresses Luthor as “my son,” thereby setting up Luthor metaphorically as Superman’s evil brother, even as an Anti-Christ, if you accept the idea of Superman as Christ figure?

So, Luthor tells us that he got the crystals to duplicate the properties of Kryptonite, and then he uses them to create an entire greenish continent. So shouldn’t Superman grow weak and fall down dead as soon as he flies over the Kryptonite continent? But instead he flies down, though he loses enough of his powers so that Luthor can deck him. Luthor impales him with a dagger-like Kryptonite crystal. Lois later removes most of the Kryptonite crystal, but a small chunk remains in Superman’s body. Superman is nevertheless able to lift the entire continent–which, remember, duplicates the properties of Kryptonite–into outer space. Yes, he collapses and nearly dies afterwards, but that feat should have been utterly impossible! And why didn’t the movie do more with the symbolism of Luthor raising a continent that is a negative version of Kryptonian geography?

In contrast, Superman’s encounter with Kryptonite in the first movie is relatively brief. But Superman Returns draws out his agonies. And when Superman recovers, the celebration is muted. We see Martha Kent, his foster mother, in the crowd waiting outside the hospital for news. Where is the joyous reunion scene between mother and foster son?

Remember the traditional finale of the previous Superman movies, with Christopher Reeve flying high above the Earth in space, then breaking the fourth wall by catching sight of us and giving us a big, winning grin, as he soars off? (It’s a more spectacular version of the memorable end of some of the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, in which Clark winks at the audience.) Singer attempts to duplicate this shot at the end of Superman Returns, but Brandon Routh’s Man of Steel merely looks impassionately forward rather than giving us the smile we expect. It’s a dreary ending to a drab and dark movie. As John Williams’ Superman march sounded during the closing credits, reminding me of all the energy and joyousness in the Richard Donner for which he wrote it, I realized just how much Singer had missed the target.

SUPERMAN RETURNS TO 1960

After years of wondering whether I could fit various examples of DC’s fifty dollar Archives reprint volumes into my budget, and usually deciding no, I was pleased when DC finally started its inexpensively priced Showcase series instead, each offering five hundred pages of reprints in trade paperback form.

In time for the release of Superman Returns, DC has issues Showcase Presents Superman, Volume 2, collecting Silver Age tales from Action Comics and Superman from 1959 through 1961. This was a period of explosive creativity in the seven Superman-related titles edited by the late Mort Weisinger. In many aspects these stories fall far short of the standards of sophistication that readers expect from superhero comics today. But forty-five years ago the audience for comic books was primarily small children, and Weisinger was successfully targeting that market. Editor Julius Schwartz seemed to be aiming at intelligent teenagers as well, and in 1961 Stan Lee would start the revolution in superhero comics that would retain many of his readers into adulthood. But Schwartz and Lee were unusual in pushing the envelope in the early Silver Age.

I first encountered many of the stories in this Showcase volume as reprints in annuals when I was a boy, when my tastes were not yet developed enough to be bothered by the awkwardness in the dialogue or the logical holes in the plots. But i was dazzled by the imagination in these comics, and enthralled by the surprising emotional resonance in the best of Weisinger’s stories. Rereading old favorites in this collection, I still find much to admire amidst the dated dross.

The thing I like best about this Showcase volume is the credits. Although Lee and to a lesser degree Schwartz informed readers who write and drew the stories, again this was unusual at the time. Now, finally, I know who it was who wrote these tales which proved so memorable to me in my childhood, demonstrating to me some of the potential of the superhero genre.

Here in this volume, for example, is “The Old Man of Metropolis” from Action Comics #270 (November 1960), a story I described in one of the earliest installments of this column (see “Comics in Context” #4). The great Curt Swan drew it, bringing out its psychological drama with sensitivity and quiet, but subtly devastating emotional power, and now I know that it was written by the prolific Otto Binder.

Reading it now, it is all too clear that when Clark Kent settles down for a nap, what happens over the main body of the story is a dream, or rather, a nightmare. Clark/Superman finds himself transported into the future, where he has become an elderly man, who has lost all his super-powers. Binder thus masterfully uses the iconic image of Superman, the ultimate icon of strength, power and virility, to dramatize the physical deterioration of old age. Superman spends most of the story in costume, serving to continually remind us of his youth, yet now his hair is turning white, his face is wrinkled, his build is good for an old man but hardly what it was, and he is even forced to wear glasses not as a disguise but in order to see.

What I didn’t notice as a boy is the motivation for Superman’s nightmare about old age: he reads an essay that Supergirl, who hasn’t yet begun her public career, has written envisioning her own heroic career as Superwoman “when my cousin Superman reaches old [age].” The teenage Supergirl looks forward to this time, but the dream shows that Superman himself has subconscious fears that he will physically decline with age as an ordinary mortal does. Moreover, Binder is suggesting that though Superman acts like a father towards his young cousin, protecting and teaching her, he subconsciously fears that she will supplant him when she grows up, as indeed she does in the dream.

One may not expect to find subtlety in a Weisinger-era Superman story, yet here it is. Rereading the story in Showcase for the first time in decades, I was particularly impressed by the scenes between Superwoman and the aged Superman. She never acts with blatant cruelty towards her elder cousin. But, through Binder’s understated dialogue, and Swan’s superb command of facial expressions and body language, Superwoman’s essential insensitivity towards her cousin becomes clear. She folds her arms in impatience towards him, as if controlling her anger towards a misbehaving child. They have reversed their former surrogate parent-child relationship. Later, it turns out that she has even supplanted Clark as a reporter at The Daily Planet. In this guise, she gives him a beaming smile, like a mother trying to make up to her son for being angry. But there’s a certain condescension to her attempts at kindness. She tells him she will restore his fame by writing articles about him, but as she photographs the sad old man changing from Clark into Superman, readers should suspect that she is also exploiting him for her journalistic career. And look at the uncaring expression Swan put on her face as the elderly Superman makes his exit: she has now lost interest in her surrogate father figure.

It’s now part of comics legend that Weisinger used to ask the kids at the barber shop what they wanted to see in the comics. Why would children want to see a story about Superman in old age? I suspect that from time to time writers like Binder used the opportunities they had as comics writers to smuggle thorough themes that concerned them personally. Binder and Swan did such an amazing job with “The Old Man of Metropolis” that even as a boy, when old age and death seemed so far off in the future I need not think about them, it made a lasting impression on me. Perhaps even children have subconscious fears of mortality that this story played upon.

This Showcase volume’s great revelation for me is how often the name of Jerry Siegel, Superman’s co-creator, turns up credited as writer of the stories. So much of what has been written about the work Jerry Siegel and Superman’s other creator, artist Joe Shuster, confines itself to the stories they did in the late 1930s and early 1940s. But here is Siegel, two decades or more after Superman first appeared in comics, still exploring the possibilities of his great creation and further extending the character’s mythos.

When I first saw Siegel’s and Swan’s “The Two Faces of Superman,” from Superman #137 (May 1960), it was reprinted in a Superman Annual and labeled “an imaginary story,” the designation that Weisinger gave to stories that diverged from official continuity, exploring other directions that the characters’ lives could have taken. They were the predecessors of Marvel’s later What If and DC’s Elseworlds. I see from the reprint in Showcase, however, that “Two Faces” was originally called merely an “untold” story. As unusual as the events it recounts may be, they were still meant to be part of canonical continuity.

As its title suggests, Siegel’s “The Two Faces of Superman” is a variation on that perennial theme of superhero comics: the evil twin. Duality itself is a major theme of the genre, as in Siegel’s hero’s dual roles of Superman and Clark Kent, of Kryptonian alien and American citizen. In DC’s new coffee table book Superman Cover to Cover, Alvin Schwartz, the writer who conceived of Bizarro, reveals that he consciously intended Bizarro to represent Superman’s Jungian shadow, his dark side. But Bizarro has been presented as childlike or (dare I say it?) mentally retarded, prone to uncontrolled tantrums but somehow still innocent, much like the traditional 1960s version of the Hulk. He represents the immature child within the adult’s subconscious.

Super-Menace, the villainous version of Superman in Siegel’s “Two Faces,” is more definitely the evil side of Superman’s personality given physical form as a separate entity. The premise of Siegel’s story is that during its journey from Krypton to Earth, the rocket carrying the infant Superman struck an alien space ship. (Considering the inconceivable vastness of outer space, how likely is such a collision? And if the infant Superman’s rocket was slightly deflected by the alien vessel, wouldn’t that have knocked it off course? So does that mean that Jor-El did not intend the rocket to land in Smallville? These are questions we might ask about this story nowadays, but they are irrelevant to the purpose of Siegel’s dark fairy tale.) The collision activates a device that creates a duplicate of the Kryptonian rocket and the baby inside. Both rockets land on Earth, where the duplicate Superbaby is found and raised by gangster “˜Wolf” Derek and his wife Bonnie.

As a boy it never registered on me that the characters in Superboy stories were wearing old-fashioned clothing. Rereading “Two Faces” now I was startled to realize that Swan puts Bonnie the moll in a 1920s flapper outfit. Even though this story was published at the start of the 1960s, since Superman had debuted in 1938, he was still being portrayed as having been a toddler in the early 1920s. (Actually, by this logic, I suppose that baby Kal-El really should have landed on Earth in the late 1910s!) I recall that when Weisinger retired at the end of the 1960s, DC announced in its comics that the time period of Superboy’s adventures was now going to be considerably updated.

The opening caption of the story announces it as a “three-part novel.” Actually, it took up the entire issue, and that is as long as comic book stories got back then. This was a special event, and Siegel’s story has an epic feel, not only spanning settings ranging from Krypton to deep space to Earth, but spanning time, covering the entire length of Superman’s life, from Superbaby to Superboy to adult. From the standpoint of 2006, isn’t it interesting to see Weisinger use of the word “novel” to describe a self-contained comics story of unusual length? In “Two Faces” and other “novel”-length Weisinger stories, we see forebears of today’s graphic novel concept.

Throughout this story Siegel follows the parallels between the life of Superman, from infancy into adulthood, and the life of his literal evil twin over the same period.

There’s a great deal that just doesn’t work by today’s standards. It’s hard enough to believe that Ma and Pa Kent could control a super-powered baby; that’s why, starting with John Byrne’s The Man of Steel, recent versions of the Superman legend have him develop his super-powers after infancy, slowly from childhood through adolescence. How could this gangster and his wife control their super-powerful baby, especially when they actively encourage him to be destructive? Jonathan and Martha Kent did such a good job raising young Clark that he became an obedient, well-behaved Superboy. Wouldn’t his teenage evil counterpart have gone through a period of rebelling against his parents? Maybe we can accept the name of “Super-Menace” for Superman’s evil counterpart as an adult, but “Super-Brat” and “Super-Bully” just sound kitschy as names paralleling “Superbaby” and “Superboy.” And since Superboy was operating publicly in costume in his teens, in the Weisinger-era continuity, why did “Wolf” and Bonnie keep their own super-powered kid under wraps until well until adulthood? In the final chapter, there’s the silver-haired Wolf and Bonnie, who could have had their “Super-Bully” even take over the world for them years before.

These questions didn’t bother me when I first read the story as a boy. As i said, this is a dark fairy tale, and follows a fairy tale’s logic. The mythic power of this story lies in Siegel’s paralleling the life of Superman and the life of his evil counterpart through the decades, through three phases of their lives. Though Weisinger and Siegel surely didn’t think in these terms, one could read “Two Faces” as a metaphor for how the dark side of Superman–his own Dark Phoenix–grew from infancy hidden within the hero’s subconscious, gathering strength to finally emerge in adulthood. In the final chapter Superman’s shadow self finally bursts forth, to challenge Superman’s conscious personality–his Jungian ego–for supremacy. Significantly, even as a teenager, “Super-Bully” tried to frame Superboy for wrongdoing, as if the unconscious shadow self was attempting to corrupt the conscious personality.

There’s also some nice intentional comedy in the story, as with Wolf and Bonnie’s pride in watching their adopted son’s first crimes. “His first safe!” marvels Wolf. “Gosh, it almost makes me feel sentimental!”

Remaining in concealment (and metaphorically, in the subconscious), Super-Bully/Super-Menace grows envious of Superboy/Superman’s life, and wants to take his place. In the final chapter Super-Menace, using his superhuman hearing, discovered that Wolf and Bonnie only pretended to show him parental love; they actually regarded him as a “freak” whom they were out to exploit. “I hate Superman for having had loving foster parents! I’ll kill him!”

When Super-Menace and Superman finally meet, Superman shows him that he isn’t even “real”: Super-Menace is merely “an unearthly force manifested in human form.” You could read this as meaning that Super-Menace doesn’t represent Superman’s true personality, but is merely a formerly buried aspect of his subconscious.

Or, again, though Weisinger and Siegel probably did not consciously think this through, it is noteworthy that Super-Menace has no secret identity, no human identity like Clark Kent that has become a part of society. What they clearly did realize is that Super-Menace has no emotional foundation in parental love. The “love” that Wolf and Bonnie showed him was no more real than his physical body. Hence Super-Menace has no real core to his being: he is a hollow version of Superman. He has also never truly become an adult; he is still effectively an orphaned, unloved baby. Sobbing like a child, the enraged Super-Menace defies Superman: “I hate your human body! I hate all the things that you are that I can never be! I’ve got to destroy you!”

On the point of murdering Superman (his good self), Super-Menace (the shadow self) realizes that his rage is misdirected, and that his entire life was a waste. In realizing this, he has finally achieved a sort of psychological maturity. He confronts Wolf and Bonnie, and accuses them, “My life could have been a blessing, but you, with your rotten cunning, twisted it into . . .something terrible.” Super-Menace then commits suicide, destroying his evil foster parents in the process.

It may be unrealistic to have Super-Menace completely reverse the direction of his life upon learning his parents hated him. But, remember, this is a story that follows the logic of a child’s fable. Consider how much importance the memory of his parents–both his Kryptonian ones and the Kents–have had on Superman, molding this man who could have become humanity’s greatest enemy into its greatest hero, the champion of life. Wolf and Bonnie warped Super-Menace’s mind just as Jonathan and Martha Kent guided the formation of Superman’s personality. Super-Menace’s sense of self is as strongly tied to his foster parents as Superman’s is to the Kents. So there is a poetic justice and logic that learning the harsh truth about his foster parents would lead to Super-Menace’s self-destruction. What would happen to Batman and Spider-Man were they to discover that Thomas Wayne and Uncle Ben had really been criminals?

You surely know about Krypto the Super-Dog and perhaps about the other Super-Pets from Silver Age Superman comics, but have you ever heard of the nasty Kryptonian super-animal? It’s the “Flame Dragon from Krypton” introduced in the story of the same name by Jerry Siegel and artist Wayne Boring, first published in Superman #142 (January 1961), and reprinted in this Showcase. I first saw this story as a reprint in the very first superhero comic I ever read: World’s Finest #142 (by coincidence, the same number), whose cover story was the eerie, even tragic saga of the nobody who briefly became the all-powerful villain, the Composite Superman. I’ve always liked the Flame Dragon, and now I realize one of the reasons why. Perhaps Weisinger and Siegel merely intended to appeal to kids’ fascination with movie monsters. After all, this was the same time that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave us their own dragon, Fin Fang Foom, as well as other monsters in the years just before Fantastic Four #1. Hence, the Flame Dragon was the counterpart to Godzilla, just as the better known Titano was Superman’s version of King Kong, complete with the giant ape’s fondness for a beautiful human woman. But pitting Superman against the Flame Dragon also makes him a modern version of the monster slayers, and especially the dragon slayers of mythology, like St. George and Siegfried.

What seems odd about this story is that its finale is not the defeat of the Flame Dragon, which takes place two pages before the end, but yet another of Superman’s schemes to deceive Lois into thinking he is not really Clark Kent. This time Superman puts on a show for Lois with the aid of Batman and Supergirl, who masquerade as a doctor and nurse. So is it that Clark Kent is afraid Lois will prove he is Superman? Or is the unspoken subtext that Superman fears that Lois will find out that he is really the much more mundane Clark Kent in his everyday life?

The Flame Dragon is another example of Weisinger and Siegel’s efforts to depict Krypton as a world of marvels. It turns out that Siegel is credited as writer for the map of Krypton at the end of this Showcase volume, which features such natural wonders as the Fire Falls, the Jewel Mountain, the Scarlet Jungle, the Rainbow Canyon, and the Gold Volcano. Looking at this map is like looking at a map of Oz, with all of its fictional wonders.

As portrayed in the Superman movies and in Byrne’s Man of Steel, Krypton is a forbidding place. Smallville and recent comics depict the Kryptonians as an imperialistic people, bent on conquest. But for Weisinger and Siegel, Krypton was a lost paradise.

This theme is the basis of the best known tale in this Showcase collection, “Superman’s Return to Krypton” written by Siegel and drawn by Boring, and originally published in Superman #141 (November 1960). By accident, Superman finds himself cast back in time and marooned on Krypton shortly before the marriage of his parents, Jor-El and Lara. Calling himself by his Kryptonian name of Kal-El, Superman becomes Jor-El’s friend and assistant, without revealing their true relationship, and helps Jor-El in his efforts to save the Kryptonian people from the catastrophe he foresees. Superman also falls in love with the beautiful Kryptonian actress Lyla Lerrol. (According to Weisinger’s tradition, each of the women Superman loves has two “L’s” in her name. Weisinger did not explain why Lex Luthor also has a double “L.”)

Siegel tries, but he just cannot make the romance between Superman and Lyla touching. And what about Lois? Well, Superman doesn’t think he will ever see her again, but Siegel also suggests that Lois may be somewhat superficial. Superman thinks, “Lois loved me because i was Superman, but Lyla loves me for. . . myself! I’m just an ordinary mortal!”

Certainly this story is founded on the fantasy that one could be reunited with his deceased parents, as Superman is here. But i think that this tale works best as an expression of longing for the past, for a lost paradise that one can never truly regain.

Weisinger insisted in his stories that though Superman could travel through time, it was impossible for him to alter the past. There is one memorable tale in which Superboy goes back in time and attempts to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, only to be paralyzed by Red Kryptonite wielded by a time-traveling Luthor, who is unaware that this is the night of Lincoln’s murder. In “Superman’s Return to Krypton,” Superman hopes that he can prevent Krypton’s destruction, yet step by step he watches history take its inevitable course. He gives himself over to hs romance with Lyla, knowing that they are both doomed. As it turns out, another accident (and one which isn’t at all credible) spares Superman’s life, but, like Ishmael at the end of Moby Dick, he is the sole survivor who must watch as everyone else perishes. Weisinger’s and Siegel’s vision of the inevitability of time is a tragic one, and hence it is surprising to find it in a children’s story.

Much has been made of Siegel’s and Shuster’s Jewish-American background, as the children of immigrants. The fact that Kryptonian names like “Kal-El” seem to have Hebrew roots suggests that Weisinger and Siegel may have been conscious of Jewish themes in the Superman legend. Thus in “Superman’s Return to Krypton,” Krypton may be a metaphor for the Old Country, the home of Siegel’s ancestors: Europe before the World Wars and the Holocaust, another lost paradise, at least in the memories of those who left, that was doomed to destruction.

It’s too bad that Richard Donner’s Superman movie made Krypton look like such an austere, barren place, instead of the paradise of Siegel’s imagination. Otherwise, wouldn’t “Superman’s Return to Krypton” make the basis of a potentially great movie?

Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson