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Back in February at the New York Comic Con, during the panel about the forthcoming movie Will Eisner’s The Spirit, executive producer Michael Uslan recommended that we all go see the exhibit “Reflecting Culture: The Evolution of American Comic Book Superheroes,” that was opening at the Montclair Art Museum this summer (see “Comics in Context” #170). it turned out that Uslan lent a good number of comics and original comics artwork from his own extensive collection to the show. At the convention Uslan assured us that the museum, in Montclair, New Jersey, was merely “a half hour train ride” from Manhattan. Regular readers may recall that, as a result of my expedition to the Newark Museum to see the first section of “Masters of American Comics,” I was suspicious even then of Mr. Uslan’s assurance.

And I was justified. I decided to head out to the Montclair Art Museum on the show’s bright, sunny and delightful opening day, Saturday, July 14, and discovered from website research that on weekends there is apparently no direct route via public transportation from Manhattan to the museum. Moreover, I ended up not arranging to stay overnight with a friend who lived in a nearby New Jersey town, so my journey to Montclair was going to be a day trip. Getting out to Newark, New Jersey by train was simple enough. Waiting a long time in a grungy area of Newark as the summer sun beat down for the bus heading to Montclair was less appealing. But I was pleased to discover that Montclair itself is a rather pretty, upscale town, and that the bus stopped directly across from the museum. I disembarked, notebook in hand, ready to gather information for my column.

An introductory wall text, on “Definitions and Origins,” began promisingly by quoting a definition of the term “superhero” from Dr. Peter Coogan’s remarkable book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre (see “Comics in Context” #162). The wall text goes on to state one of the themes of the exhibition: that superheroes are modern successors of the title hero of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, of the heroes of ancient Greek mythology, and of legendary figures like Robin Hood. Moreover, “comic book superheroes became manifestations of American history, culture, and folklore.” And so, the exhibition shows visitors, during World War II superheroes battled the Axis powers. Wonder Woman became a feminist icon. In the 1960s Stan Lee and his collaborators created superheroes with more complex personalities, who felt alienated from the rest of society. In the 1970s superhero comics tackled social issues like drug addiction. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of non-Caucasian superheroes like the Black Panther and the John Stewart version of Green Lantern. The “deconstruction” of superheroes got under way in the 1980s, and numerous superhero comics stories were done about the 9/11 attacks. And I suspect that most of my readers are surprised by none of this.

Unfortunately, the Montclair show doesn’t move much beyond what one might term Superhero Comics 101, the most basic kind of course in the genre. Certainly there must be many visitors to the show who know little about the history of the superhero genre, to whom much of this information will be new. But walking around the exhibition, I was reminded of mainstream media articles about superhero comics circa 1970, marveling that they were dealing with social and political issues: comic books had suddenly become “relevant.” Over thirty-five years have passed, but the Montclair show delves little more deeply into the genre. “Masters of American Comics” raised the bar for museum shows about comics considerably. In co-curating a show dealing with Stan Lee’s superhero comics for MoCCA, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (www.moccany.org), I was careful in writing the wall texts both to provide the basic information for people who knew little about the Marvel series of the 1960s, but also to provide insights that I hoped that even longtime Marvel aficionados would find illuminating and different.

What was most rewarding about “Reflecting Culture” was looking at the original artwork and vintage comic books on display. I continue to be amazed that actual comic books that I bought as far back as the 1960s–and even some comics from the early 21st century–are now displayed as museum pieces. But I was pleased with the selection of vintage comic books on display here, ranging as far back as the Golden Age of the 1940s, and, unlike in Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (see “Comics in Context” #176), the accompanying texts provided satisfying explanations of each book’s significance. There was original comics artwork on display by Neal Adams (from a Batman story and Green Lantern), Dave Cockrum (from Uncanny X-Men), Gene Colan, Amanda Conner, Steve Ditko (from The Amazing Spider-Man), Will Eisner (from The Spirit), Carmine Infantino (from The Flash), Gil Kane, Jack Kirby (from Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles), Joe Kubert, Frank Miller (from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), Jim Lee, H. G. Peter (an unpublished Wonder Woman splash page), and John Romita Sr. (from The Amazing Spider-Man). Certainly there were many major superhero artists whose work was not represented, but the examples of art by the artists I’ve just named was all worthy of close inspection. There was even Superman co-creator Joe Shuster’s own 1971 recreation of the cover of Action Comics #1, Superman’s first appearance.

I was particularly delighted with Joe Kubert’s cover art for Batman #310 (1979), showing Batman battling the Gentleman Ghost atop a runaway horse-drawn carriage. Daringly, Kubert put the hero and villain in the background, while the horses powerfully hurtle into the foreground, as if to burst from the printed cover and trample the reader. The dynamic power of the galloping horses reinforces the sense of action conveyed by Batman’s fight with the Ghost. The accompanying label commends Kubert’s “powerful, naturalistic style” and “his masterful eye for realistic detail.” But the secret of Kubert’s artwork in “Reflecting Culture” is his ability to make his heroic figures, whether it is Batman, Hawkman, or Sgt. Rock, appear larger-than-life and iconic and simultaneously seem realistic and credible. In his own way, Alex Ross also achieves this same amazing alchemy. (During the run of “Reflecting Culture,” the Montclair Art Museum is also featuring a commendable exhibit, “Comic Book Legends: Joe, Adam, and Andy Kubert,” honoring these three New Jersey residents, just off the entrance lobby.)

Another of my favorites was the original artwork for Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson’s cover for Green Lantern #26 (1964), in which Star Sapphire, shooting an energy beam into Green Lantern’s power battery, triggers another beam which unmasks the superhero as Hal Jordan. (It is reproduced on the cover of the recent Showcase Presents Green Lantern Vol. 2 paperback. It was a pleasure to be able to study Kane’s elegant linework, as inked by Anderson, up close. This also gave me the opportunity to consider the composition of the cover drawing. Star Sapphire’s downward descent, at a slight angle, is roughly echoed by her power beam. Green Lantern’s stance exactly parallels the other power beam which snatches off his mask. While Star Sapphire’s figure is nearly vertical and exudes confidence, Green Lantern/Hal stands at a decided slant, as if he is literally taken aback by his sudden unmasking. She is triumphant; unmasked, he is vulnerable and seems defeated. The two figures form a classical triangular composition, mirrored by their respective power beams.

The argument has been made that hanging pages of original comic book art on the wall of a museum distorts the experience of reading comics because each individual page is only a segment of a longer work. The “Masters of American Comics” exhibition displayed some entire Spirit stories by Will Eisner and an entire EC war story by Harvey Kurtzman, but only excerpts of one or a few pages from Marvel and DC stories drawn by Jack Kirby.

On the other hand, by displaying a single page, or a two-page sequence, a museum focuses the viewer’s attention on that specific segment of the overall story. Whereas in reading the comics story, the reader will probably get caught up in the narrative, if he sees one or two individual pages on a museum wall, he may notice details and nuances that might otherwise have slipped his conscious notice.

The pages in Montclair that most impressed me were pages 15 and 16 from issue 12 of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ masterpiece Watchmen. In the Watchmen trade paperback, page 16 is the reverse side of page 15. Arguably, these two pages work better as a unit within the issue when they are seen side by side. This is how the Montclair Art Museum presents the original art for these pages.

These two pages make up a short scene within a larger story sequence in the twelfth issue. Since Alan Moore notoriously writes extraordinarily lengthy and detailed scene descriptions in his plots, I do not know which visual aspects of this scene should be attributed to writer Moore and which to artist Gibbons. Together, however, they created a two-page sequence that is a masterpiece of comics storytelling, and which whets my interest in someday embarking on a panel-by-panel analysis of the entire Watchmen series.

(And if you have not read Watchmen, I am about to give away one of the secrets of its plot, so you may wish to skip ahead twenty-seven paragraphs.)

In the first panel Adrian Veidt, alias Ozymandias, stands inside his Antarctic headquarters, gazing into a doorway. Veidt has modeled himself after Alexander the Great, his costume evokes the garb of classical civilization, and he looks rather like an ancient Greek statue as he stands in profile. He wears a placid expression, looking perhaps as if he is lost in thought. If you have the book, then you know the context: he is looking into his “intrinsic field subtractor” chamber, which he just employed to (apparently) disintegrate the godlike Doctor Manhattan, and in the last panel on the previous page he was mulling over the scientific aspects of destroying the Doctor, apparently oblivious to the moral cost of murder.

In the background of this first panel the alert reader will see the silhouetted figures of the superheroes Nite Owl and Rorschach, as if they embody Nemesis, out to avenge the murder of their colleague. They stand in another doorway, and perhaps are merely watching at this point, and not coming forward,

But revenge will come sooner than they could reach him. A balloon, containing the word “Veidt,” hovers to the right of his head, its tail leading offpanel, towards the second panel in the page’s top tier.

This second panel shows another of Watchmen‘s superheroes, Laurie, the Silk Spectre, who was once Doctor Manhattan’s lover, who has surely just witnessed Veidt’s seemingly successful attempt to murder him, and who knows (as do Nite Owl and Rorschach) that Veidt is the mastermind behind the massacre of half the population of New York City. (As I have pointed out in my “1986: The Year That Changed Comics” lectures at MoCCA, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, issue 12 of Watchmen takes on new resonance.) Whereas Veidt was shown turned in profile, Laurie faces the reader, angrily aiming a gun and telling Veidt, “You’re an asshole” (a line which should confirm to the museumgoer who hasn’t read Watchmen that this isn’t a book for small children).

Circular lines curve around Laurie: these are the walls of a circular tunnel (as shown two pages earlier), leading in from the Antarctic snows (accounting for the puddles marking Laurie’s footsteps). The circular lines also serve to emphasize Laurie visually, perhaps harkening back to the occasional circular panels used in comics of the 1930s and 1940s. (Look at an early Batman story, for example.) If Laurie is enacting the role of avenging angel here, the circular lines might even suggest a halo.

Laurie is aiming her gun right at the reader. What this actually signifies is that in this one panel the reader has been given Veidt’s point of view as he, off-panel, turns his head and sees Laurie pointing the gun at him. Moore and Gibbons hardly encourage the reader to identify with Veidt in Watchmen, but by giving the reader Veidt’s literal viewpoint for this one panel, they encourage the reader to consider what it would feel like to see someone about to kill him or her.

Subtly the top tier heightens the intensity of the drama by bringing the reader closer to these two characters, panel by panel. The initial panel on the top tier shows Veidt from his head down to his knees. The second panel gives a closer view of Laurie, from her head to the top of her thighs. The third panel brings us even closer to Veidt, starting from the middle of his forehead, as he raises his left leg, as if that is the only way it could be seen in this close-up.

With the third panel the point of view shifts to Laurie’s. (The first panel was from an “objective” point of view, not that of any of the characters.) Veidt is in the process of turning from his profile position in the first panel to a position facing her. What is most notable about this panel, though, are the multiple images of his hand, held as if to administer a karate chop, and of his left leg, moving up as he is about to launch himself into the air. In contrast with the characters’ static poses in the first two panels, the third panel suggests that Veidt is moving to the attack so quickly that it his movement cannot be “caught” by the artist: it is the equivalent of a blurred movement in a photograph. It’s the kind of multiple image effect one might expect to see in The Flash, and presumably Moore and Gibbons are suggesting that Veidt, though he lacks super-powers, is somehow moving almost too quickly for the human eye to register fully. Even the transcription of Veidt’s battle cry (“Hhhhiiiiiii. . . .”) suggests movement.

The second tier consists of a single, long panel. It unites all four characters in the same visual space and serves as an establishing shot, marking the location of each within this chamber. The characters are divided into groups of two. In the background Nite Owl and Rorschach have moved forward, enough so that Nite Owl’s figure is now partly in the light, whereas Rorschach remains mostly in silhouette. The positions of their legs shows that they are now walking. In the foreground Veidt and Laurie are united by the bright blast of her gun, which not only connects the two figures visually but illuminates them both amid the shadows that have swallowed up much of the chamber (as well as Nite Owl and Rorschach).

The figures of Veidt and Laurie are sharply contrasted, and not simply because they are of different sexes. (This panel provides a clear view of Laurie’s microminiskirted legs, for example. Laurie becomes an archetypal female resisting Veidt’s personification of male aggression.) Veidt has no leapt into the air towards Laurie to attack her, thrusting forward his left leg (which he was raising in the previous panel), which looks as if it would have hit her in the lower abdomen (raising some nasty sexual implications). Veidt’s cape flows outward behind him. Hence Veidt is a basically horizontal figure here, whereas Laurie, firing her horizontal gunshot, stands vertically, in opposition to him.

Yet though Veidt and Laurie are in opposition to each other, their figures also echo each other. Veidt continues to utter his battle cry from panel three as Laurie fires her shot, whereupon it continues in the second tier as a cry of pain (“Yaaa. . .”). Whereas in panel three Veidt was extending his left arm to deliver a karate-style blow, in the second tier he holds his arms closer to his body, bringing his hands together, seemingly to clasp them over a gunshot wound. This pose echoes Laurie’s as she holds her arms together, as her hands hold her gun. As Veidt’s left leg extends forward in attack position, his right leg bends, perhaps in reaction to the pain he feels. Laurie extends her right leg forward, anchoring herself to the floor as she fires the shot, but her left leg bends back, perhaps in response to the recoil effect of the gunshot.

Moreover, whereas in the top tier Laurie and Veidt both wore facial expressions of anger, now their reactions are quite different. Veidt looks somber, as if reacting to the pain, while Laurie looks somewhat anguished, perhaps feeling some fear as she saw Veidt hurtling towards her, or perhaps distressed by the act of shooting at him, however much he deserves it.

The bottom tier continues the visual opposition of Laurie (vertical) and Veidt (horizontal): Veidt lies on the floor, seemingly dead, with his left hand over his heart, with blood staining his costume over his heart, and with his right hand, partly clenched, resting in a small puddle of blood on the floor. Laurie stands upright, although not entirely confidently: her head looks down towards Veidt’s body, and her left knee is bent. The bright light from the gun has been supplanted by smoke which curls eerily upward from the barrel.

In the background, Nite Owl and Rorschach continue their advance forward, both now mostly in the light. Shadow covers Nite Owl’s face, though, masking his reaction to what he’s seen; Rorschach, of course, wears a mask which conceals his facial expressions.

The first panel of the bottom tier hides the facial expressions of Veidt and Laurie as well. The seemingly dead Veidt’s face is turned away from us. Laurie has moved, standing beside Veidt’s head, with her back to the reader. We cannot see her face, but her body language–her stance, the position of her head–suggests her uncertainty as she carefully studies the seeming corpse.

Again, the “camera” is being moved subtly closer to the figures. Whereas the middle tier gave us a full figure shot of Laurie, in the third tier’s first panel we see her from the lower third of her head to just above her ankles. We still see the full length of Veidt’s body. In the second panel of the bottom tier, we draw still closer, seeing both Veidt and Laurie from the waist up. Now we can see Veidt’s face, which is once again in profile, but still not Laurie’s. This has the effect of focusing our attention more on Veidt. From the position of her head, Laurie is clearly looking at Veidt’s bloodied clenched hand, and we are being directed to do the same. The starlike points of the puddle of blood further emphasize Veidt’s hand, and oddly contrast with the rounder contours of the puddle of water marking Laurie’s path.

In the Watchmen paperback, one must turn the page to see what comes next, creating more of a feeling of suspense. But in the museum, pages 15 and 16 hang side by side, so the movement of the “camera,” coming increasingly closer to Veidt’s hand, is unbroken (save for having to shift one’s eyes to the top of page 16).

This pattern of slowly zooming in on something, or slowly pulling the “camera” back from it, is a characteristic Watchmen technique. Issue one begins, on the cover, with an extreme close-up of the Comedian’s trademark happy face button, with blood on it, as if from a head wound, and surrounded by a rivulet of blood, from the Comedian’s body. In each succeeding panel on page one the “camera” pulls further up and back, until it reaches the level of the window from which the Comedian fell to his death. Similarly, issue one closes with the “camera” pulling up and back from Laurie and Dan (Nite Owl) standing on a balcony.

The sequence with Veidt’s hand here in issue 12 creates a reverse effect from the opening page of issue 1. In the first issue the “camera” pulled up and back from a small object, amid blood, that was the symbol of the killing of one superhero (the Comedian) by another (Ozymandias). In issue 12, the “camera” step by step moves closer to Veidt’s clenched hand, lying amid blood, giving us a close-up of the hand in the first panel of the top tier of page 16. In the next panel the “camera” moves in still further, as Veidt opens his hand and reveals the bullet, covered with blood, that Laurie shot at him. Earlier, on page 9, Veidt had implied in conversation with a disbelieving Nite Owl that he was capable of catching a bullet that had been fired at him; now we see the proof. The blood-covered bullet becomes not the symbol of death but the symbol of one superhero’s (Veidt’s) ability to survive a murder attempt by another superhero (Laurie).

The third panel cuts to a closeup of Laurie, aghast at realizing what Veidt has done. Then the rhythm of three panels per tier is abruptly interrupted by the second tier, which consists of a single long panel, in which Veidt just as suddenly comes fully to life, raising himself on one hand and kicking Laurie in the abdomen with his left leg. Notice that this parallels the structure of the previous page, in which the top tier of three panels was followed by a second tier consisting of one panel, in which the figures of Veidt and Laurie were joined by the gunshot with which she attacked him. In the second tier of page 16 the figures of Laurie and Veidt are again joined, this time by Veidt’s leg connecting with her stomach. Thus Veidt succeeds in the kicking attack that Laurie thwarted on the previous page. Veidt still occupies a horizontal position and Laurie is in a vertical one, but Veidt is in the process of raising himself to a standing (vertical) position, and Laurie is toppling to a horizontal position, lying on the floor.

Thus Veidt and Laurie exchange positions, both literally and figuratively: he stands up, triumphant, while she lies down, in pain and defeat. This sequence is also a sinister variation on the archetypal pattern of symbolic death and resurrection, as Veidt, who sees himself as a hero but actually fills the role of Watchmen‘s primary villain, rises from apparent death.

In this second tier we see Veidt and Laurie from the same direction as Nite Owl and Rorschach do. This subliminally prepares us for the third tier of panels, in which Nite Owl confronts Veidt. With the violent assault over, the third tier returns to the steady three panel per tier pacing thatWatchmen usually employs.

Veidt’s first line in this tier is “There. Something else I wasn’t sure would work,” presumably about his success in catching the bullet, and echoing his comment about his seeming murder of Doctor Manhattan on page 14. This suggests that Veidt cares as little about Laurie’s pain as he did about the moral horror of murdering his former teammate Doctor Manhattan. Veidt’s figure is cropped in this panel so that we do not see his head, but we can imagine his indifferent expression from his dialogue. Instead the “camera” turns our attention to Laurie’s facial expression, reflecting her intense pain, as she lies on the floor, her arms positioned so that her unseen hands clasp her abdomen, just as Veidt’s seemed to cover his seeming wound on the previous page.

On rereading Watchmen the reader may observe that, despite Veidt’s confidence, he is as wrong in believing that he succeeded in killing Doctor Manhattan as Laurie was wrong in thinking she had shot Veidt.

Nite Owl and Rorschach have come much further into the chamber, while the “camera” looked elsewhere in the previous five panels, and they now stand fully in the light. As Laurie did in the first panel of the previous page, Nite Owl demands Ozymandias’s attention by calling his name: “Veidt!” But Veidt will defeat Nite Owl’s attempt at confronting him much more easily than he survived Laurie’s.

In the final tier’s second panel the “camera” radically changes position, so that we now seem to be standing behind Nite Owl and directly behind and to the immediate right of Rorschach. Whereas the previous page showed Nite Owl and Rorschach slowly advancing from the background, now we see Ozymandias advancing towards the foreground. This time the figure in the far background is Laurie, who begins to rise to her feet.

Nite Owl insults Veidt (“Veidt, you bastard. . . .”) and begins to threaten him, but his insult and threat seem standard melodramatic clichés, and his voice trails off (“I’ll. . .”). As if wearily scolding a child, Veidt calls him by his first name over and over (“Oh, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. . . .”), thereby failing to acknowledge his costumed persona. Then, in the page’s final panel, Veidt walks right past Nite Owl and Rorschach and out of the panel: the panel crops most of Veidt’s figure, as if he has already mostly passed out of the scene. “Do grow up. . . .” Veidt tells Nite Owl, who turns, looking bewildered at him. Not only has Nite Owl utterly failed to stop him, but Ozymandias has verbally reduced his would-be opponent to the level of a small child. Rorschach’s cropped figure has slightly turned to watch Ozymandias as he passes, showing us part of his mask: Rorschach’s thoughts on the scene he has witnessed these last two pages remain characteristically enigmatic. In the background Laurie stands upright, but her head is bowed, presumably in pain and defeat.

Nearby hung the original art for a page from another classic Alan Moore story, Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), illustrated by Brian Bolland. This page was from the sequence in which the Joker recounts his (possible) origin, based on the 1951 story “The Mystery of the Red Hood” from Detective Comics #168. In Moore’s version an unnamed comedian is forced by criminals to pose as their supposed masked leader, the Red Hood, but while they are robbing a chemical plant, they are confronted by the Batman. This page has numerous superb visual effects. In one panel we see double images of the Batman in the Red Hood’s goggles, magnifying the threat perceived by the frightened comedian. Bolland takes a surprising but effective minimal approach to the key moment when the Red Hood, desperate to escape Batman, falls into a vat of chemical wastes: the artist represents the two antagonists by only a glove and part of a cape. Best of all is the large panel in which the Red Hood, still masked, climbs out of the chemical wastes outside the factory. Bolland depicts the barbed wire and vegetation in highly detailed, naturalistic fashion, but what is most impressive are the concentric circles in the tainted water, marking when raindrops fall: the patterns are at once beautiful and eerie, thus setting the stage for what will happen on the next page, when the Red Hood unmasks to discover the wastes have given him the garishly colored hair and face of the Joker.

My final favorite artwork in the show was Alex Ross’s gorgeous painted cover for a reprint edition of The History of the DC Universe. Strangely, the accompanying label at the museum claimed that the painting exemplified the influence of Surrealism on Ross’s work, offering Salvador Dali’s work as an example. No, no, no, Ross does not deal in distortions of reality but in endowing the fantastic figures and places of comic book universes with a persuasive semblance of reality. His History of the DC Universe cover really demonstrates the influence on Ross of both the great artists of the Golden Age of Illustration, such as his hero Norman Rockwell, and of cinematic montage.

There is so much in this painting to admire. My favorite section shows the head of the Batman; as usual, Ross makes him look like a real man, wearing a mask made of real fabric, his eyes visible through slits, and simultaneously like a formidable, iconic figure who is larger than life, rather than, say, a guy going to a costume party. Ross makes the bat “ears” on Batman’s cowl so long that they conjure the image of devil’s horns, for the Batman is a man who takes on the image of a fearsome bat–or a devil–to defend us from truly devilish menaces. Look how the tall, thin “horns” of Batman’s cowl are echoed by the tall, thin spires of Gotham City’s skyscrapers to the left of his head. Bats, his symbol, fly amid the skyscrapers, and simultaneously over a scene of the boy Bruce Wayne sitting in darkness behind the slain bodies of his parents. The bats hover over the scene, like omens of the boy’s eventual transformation into Batman. Ross’s positioning of this scene near the head of Batman may suggest that this is something that the adult Batman is constantly thinking about: it is his motivation for his endless war on crime. I am also struck by the pose of the kneeling young Bruce. His body language doesn’t suggest the initial shock and horror of witnessing the murders of his parents. Rather, this scene seems to be set moments later, when that initial shock has passed, and young Bruce has relaxed into a state of quiet mourning, and perhaps contemplation, which will eventually lead to the decision that will shape the rest of his life. The blue colors of the Batman section of the painting suggest both night, which is Batman’s realm, and the “blues”–his endless sorrow.

Ross places Wonder Woman’s head against a background of classical architecture, suggesting both her home among the Amazons on Paradise Island and her series’ background in Greek and Roman mythology. Ross pursues the mythological theme with the section of the painting devoted to Captain Marvel. I like his depiction of the Captain shouting as lightning dances over his body. It is as if moments before, young Billy Batson shouted the magic word “Shazam,” and the enchanted lightning transformed him into his superhuman counterpart. Even better is the background: pyramids amidst the desert, reminding us that the Captain derives his powers from the wizard Shazam, who came from ancient Egypt. The orange palette of this area of the painting suggests the desert sands.

For the section of the painting devoted to DC’s World War Ii heroes, including Sgt. Rock, the Haunted Tank (complete with the specter of the Civil War’s General Jeb Stuart), and the Blackhawks in their planes, Ross chooses the color red, perhaps as a reminder that war involved death and blood

I love the visual parallels and echoes in this painting, such as the way that the large foreheads of the Guardians of the Universe, who protect the cosmos from injustice and danger, parallel the enormous brow of Darkseid, the DC’s Universe’s foremost embodiment of all that the Guardians oppose.

I also greatly admire the way that Ross unifies the entire composition with circles: the twin planets New Genesis and Apokolips from Jack Kirby’s The New Gods, the time bubble holding three members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, the encircled swastika representing the foes of the World War II heroes, the circular body of the Guardians’ giant power battery, reflecting the images of their Green Lantern Corps. The right of the painting, which would have appeared on the front of this wraparound cover, is dominated by the face of Superman against what is really an exploding circle: the destruction of the planet Krypton. But shooting above the cataclysm is a small, nearly circular object: the tiny spacecraft bringing the future Superman to Earth.

There was more than just comics art to see at the Montclair Art Museum, and I also explored its galleries of 19th and 20th century American art, its gallery devoted to the Hudson River School painter George Inness, and its collection of Native American artwork. Pleased with my visit, I exited the museum, had only a short wait at the bus stop just outside, and embarked on my expedition back home.

But I got off the bus only about five minutes after I got on. Where was my notebook? It was not in my pockets or my bag or on the floor in front of me. I asked to get off the bus and trudged uphill back to the Museum (How did that bus cover so much ground in such a short time?). The notebook wasn’t at the bus stop, or along the path to the Museum, and although the Museum staff was very helpful, we couldn’t find it anywhere on the floors of the Museum either. So I ended up going back through the exhibit, reconstructing my notes on the pages of a magazine I’d brought. I left my phone number at the Museum, in case the notebook turned up, and checked with New Jersey Transit the next day, but the notebook had seemingly dematerialized.

Could it be that some museumgoer spotted it and gratuitously decided to steal it? But why? One of the guards suggested, “Maybe you take good notes.” Hmm.

To cheer myself up upon returning to Manhattan from Montclair, I went to see the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In it Luna Lovegood tells Harry about nargles, creatures that she claims have stolen many of her belongings. Harry doesn’t believe in them, but he may be mistaken.

I say that Montclair suffers from an infestation of nargles, who are even now attempting to use my notes to become celebrated Internet columnists on comics! Readers, feel free to visit “Reflecting Culture,” which remains at the Montclair Art Museum through January 13, 2008 but beware: the nargles of Montclair may exact a heavy price.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Here’s yet another marker of how much popular culture is changing. Sir Ian McKellen has a large repertory of roles that ranges from Richard III and King Lear to Gandalf and, of all people, Magneto in the X-Men movies. And now, as the narrator of the film adaptation of the fantasy novel Stardust, he has taken on the part of the voice of Neil Gaiman. Or, rather, the authorial voice that Gaiman adopted as the narrator of Stardust the novel.

This week I am continuing my comparison between Stardust the novel and Stardust the motion picture, which I began in last week’s column. As usual, I alert those who have not experienced them to go no further if they don’t want to encounter spoilers.

Before seeing the movie, I was wary about the reports at the 2006 San Diego Comic Con (see “Comics in Context” #144) and in the press about changes to the novel, notably the conversion of Gaiman’s Captain Alberic, a minor character who hunts and captures lightning from his flying ship, into Captain Shakespeare, a pirate captain with a fondness for dressing in drag. Upon seeing the movie, I rather enjoyed Robert DeNiro’s performance as the captain, with the comedic contrast between his threatening macho swagger when he is commanding his crew to his gentler, courteous manner talking with hero Tristan (Tristran in the book) and heroine Yvaine when they are alone in his cabin. In an August 5, 2007 article in The New York Times, Stardust director Matthew Vaughn compares the film to DeNiro’s 1988 comedy adventure film Midnight Run, so no wonder he cast DeNiro as the Captain.

I found Captain Shakespeare amusing, but only mildly so. For me his entertainment value is outweighed by the problems his presence creates for the movie. Stardust presents a world in which supernatural elements like magic and witches and a fallen star in human form (Yvaine) exist, but the book aims at giving the characters psychological credibility. To my mind, Captain Shakespeare just doesn’t fit.

If Captain Shakespeare is so thoroughly in the closet, why does he make Tristan and Yvaine his confidantes? I suppose that anyone who has kept a big secret for so long feels an urge to confess it to somebody. Moreover, the Captain just saved Tristan and Yvaine’s lives, so they owe him the obligation to keep his secret. But still, how can the Captain be sure that he can trust these two individuals whom he just met?

The Captain Shakespeare storyline strikes me as an example of anachronistically projecting contemporary attitudes into the past. Stardust is set in Victorian times, a period not generally associated with tolerance towards homosexuality. Moreover, Tristan is a youth from a small town, not from London, so his openmindedness on the subject seems more surprising. As for Yvaine, she presumably would not share any cultural prejudices towards sexual orientation. Here I again recall Cloud, the nebula who took the form of a teenage girl in Marvel’s Defenders series, who later shifted into male form, to her teammates’ surprise.

Later in the film Captain Shakespeare dances about in his cabin, wearing a tutu, while playing a recording of Jacques Offenbach’s music. I found myself wondering, if he’s trying to keep his sexual orientation secret from his macho pirate crew, why is he playing this music–the 19th century counterpart to Broadway show tunes–so loudly that the crew cannot help hearing it? Then I began wondering, if the Captain is unable to fulfill his wish of crossing over into the “real” world and visiting England, how did he get hold of a recording of French music? And why does the recording sound so good? Have you ever heard, say, the tinny sound of one of Enrico Caruso’s early recordings? Why does the Captain’s Offenbach recording sound as perfect as a 21st century CD? If this scene were actually as funny as it was surely intended to be, I wouldn’t be speculating about such matters while I was watching it.

Soon afterwards, when the Captain’s crew of macho pirates finally find the Captain wearing a tutu, it turns out to be no big deal. One of them tells the Captain that they always knew he was a “whoopsie.” Here I recalled the outing of the gay mobster Vito Spatafore in the first half of the final season of The Sopranos. Although Tony Soprano considers taking a tolerant attitude, since Vito is his best “earner,” the other mobsters’ reactions range from disgust to intense hatred, Tony gives in, and Vito is ultimately brutally beaten to death by other gangsters. So is it credible that a crew of pirates, who were perfectly willing to make Tristan and Yvaine walk the plank, would accept a “whoopsie” as their leader?

Besides, what is so funny in 2007 about a pirate captain in drag? For one thing, by the time the Stardust movie came out, there had already been three Pirates of the Caribbean movies centered on Johnny Depp’s sexually ambiguous pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. (In these films, furthermore, the suggestions of Jack’s bisexuality are less important than his ironic, antiheroic attitude towards the genre in which he finds himself.) Moreover, the basic joke of a figure of macho power and masculine authority turning out to be gay goes back at least thirty-eight years to the debut of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Pythons were continually revealing characters who were judges, policemen, or who held similar traditionally “masculine” roles as gay. Back in the 1970s, when Python arrived on American television, this sort of gag was groundbreaking in American popular culture. Now the joke seems predictable and tired. Instead of being subversive, Stardust‘s Captain Shakespeare seems all too conventional a comedic figure. In 2007 the idea of a gay pirate even seems rather old-fashioned as a comic conceit.

Then there’s a character who was invented for the movie, Ferdy the Fence, who is played by Ricky Gervais, co-creator of the original BBC version of The Office and of the BBC series Extras, which is seen in the United States on HBO. I’m always glad to see–or hear–Gervais doing comedy; his vocal performance was what I liked best about the animated film Valiant (see “Comics in Context” #144). In Stardust Gervais performs a variation of his familiar comic persona, attempting to hold his own (in negotiations with Captain Shakespeare) but unable to conceal that he is in way over his head. This is entertaining.

But I wish that the filmmakers had realized that just casting Gervais and having him play this sort of role already served as an allusion to The Office and Extras. Instead, they gild the lily by showing us a sign reading “Ferdy’s Office” (get it?), and having Gervais utter a variation on his “Are you having a laugh?” catchphrase from Extras. This blatant sort of winking to the audience seems to me to be inappropriate to Stardust. According to the August 8, 2007 article in The New York Times, the novel “Stardust is also written in a consciously old-fashioned manner. [Gaiman’s] aim was to evoke the manner of early-20th-century writers like Lord Dunsany and Hope Mirrlees, who wrote fantasy stories of a sort that was sometimes called “˜faerie’. Hence, Stardust the novel should convey the impression to the reader that it could have been written in the 19th century, and ideally the movie would seem to be adapted from a Victorian work. Explicit references to 21st century pop culture break the illusion.

Ferdy eventually gets killed onscreen when the evil Prince Septimus thrusts his sword into his gut. This sequence was shown during the Stardust preview panel at the 2006 Comic-Con in San Diego (also in “Comics in Context” #144), and I still do not understand why. Why would seeing a popular comedy actor, playing a variation on his usual comedy persona, getting brutally slaughtered onscreen want to make us go see the movie? This scene was a downer when I saw it in San Diego, and it was a downer when I saw it in the complete movie. It’s a miscalculation on the filmmakers’ part.

To digress for a moment, this reminds me of the promo on Warner Home Video’s great new Popeye DVD set for its forthcoming direct-to-video animated film Superman: Doomsday, based on the 1990s “Death of Superman” storyline in the comics. The promo tells us that in the story Superman will be beaten to death onscreen. Now, I expect that this is partly intended as a warning to parents that this film is not intended for small children. On the other hand, it also seems intended as a come-on: watch Superman get beaten to death! (And in animation, which will make it seem more real than it did in static panels on the comics page. The promo makes no mention of any triumphant resurrection for Superman; perhaps that is not considered a selling point.) So I ask myself, why would I want to see this? Why should I find the film’s logo–a Superman emblem dripping blood–appealing? I suppose I’m just not sadistic enough to be part of contemporary superhero comics’ intended demographic.

What I find intriguing about Stardust the book is Neil Gaiman’s unusual approaches to familiar elements of fairy tales and fantasy stories. What bothers me about Stardust the movie is that although it is admirably faithful to the novel in many respects, it makes changes that make the story feel much more conventional and ordinary. Even such seemingly eccentric personalities as Captain Shakespeare and Ferdy the Fence really embody conventional comedy ideas–the macho figure in drag and the TV character doing a walk-on–that one might expect to see in any standard issue comedy movie nowadays.

I can see why the fates of Stardust‘s two major villains, Septimus and the ancient witch, known as Lamia in the film, get changed in the movie. In the book Septimus sets fire to the witch’s hut and plans to beat her to death with a club; instead a small venomous snake bites Septimus’s heel, causing him to die in terrible pain. Since Septimus had posed such a formidable threat through the narrative, it is ironic that he should prove to have a proverbial Achilles’ heel and be brought down not by the sort of brute force he wields but by such a tiny foe.

As for the witch, she was rejuvenated by magic, but every expenditure of magic by her ages her until by the book’s end she has become more ancient than she was at the start. Having cast Michelle Pfeiffer as Lamia, the filmmakers are understandably averse to having her spend most of the movie in old age makeup. At one point she creates an entire inn and transforms a goat into a human being, with seemingly little or no physical effect on herself.

The witch is determined to find the star and cut out her heart in order to rejuvenate herself and her sisters. Towards the end of the book, the witch, having “shrunk by age and time to little bigger than a child” (p. 239), confronts Yvaine, who “realized that she felt nothing but pity for the creature who had wanted her dead” (p. 240). Yvaine explains to the witch that she cannot steal her heart because “I have given my heart to another” (p. 240), namely Tristran.

This is solving a problem through the manipulation of language. The witch intended literally to take Yvaine’s heart, by killing her and physically carving it out of her corpse. Yvaine is pointing out that she has figuratively given her heart to the young man she loves. Metaphor is treated as reality: the witch reluctantly accepts the defeat of her scheme.

I suppose there is a psychological subtext here. The witch may represent a Bad Mother figure, both for Yvaine and for Tristran. Recall that in Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the Wicked Queen (who also ages into an ancient crone) initially not only orders the death of the younger Snow White but demands that her heart be removed from her body as proof that she has been slain. Stardust‘s old witch, as Bad Mother, proves unable to deprive Yvaine of her heart and thereby figuratively prevent Yvaine and Tristran from maturing and falling in love with each other.

The ending of Stardust the novel uses the manipulation of language to bring about other resolutions. Victoria had promised Tristran that if he brought back the fallen star she would give him “whatever I [Tristran] desire.” For most of the book, Tristran interpreted this as meaning Victoria’s hand in marriage. But upon realizing that Victoria loves someone else, Robert Monday, Tristran chooses to interpret the phrase differently: “Then I desire that you should marry Mister Monday” (Harper Perennial edition p. 226). It’s as if Tristran was a lawyer (or a critic), who carefully examines statements for alternate interpretations, as if looking for loopholes.

Similarly, Princess Una of Stormhold, Tristran’s mother, is bound to serve the old woman Madame Semele “until the day that the moon lost her daughter, if it occurred in a week when two Mondays came together” (p. 229). Yvaine is the lost daughter, and when Robert Monday marries Victoria, “there will be two Mondays together!” (p. 231). This is a typical fairy tale trope: the prophecy of a seemingly impossible event which nonetheless comes true. The key is to find the proper interpretation of the impossible-sounding prophecy. This is a lesson that Macbeth learns too late about the three witches’ prophecies about the seeming impossibility of his own downfall.

These examples of manipulating language to resolve plotlines reminds me of the denouements of various Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. At the end of The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko concocts a justification for claiming he had executed the young hero Nanki-Poo when he hadn’t: “It’s like this: when your Majesty says, “˜Let a thing be done,’ it’s as good as done–practically, it is done–because your Majesty’s will is law. Your Majesty says, “˜Kill a gentleman,’ and a gentleman is told off to be killed. Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead–practically, he is dead–and if he is dead, why not say so?”. Once sentenced, Nanki-Poo is figuratively dead, and Ko-Ko argues that for legal purposes, that’s the same as being literally dead. This logic doesn’t seem that much different from claiming that a witch can’t physically steal Yvaine’s heart because she has figuratively given it to someone else.

Moreover, Stardust the novel ends with a sense of forgiveness, even towards its principal villainess. The novel seems to argue that being reduced to a decrepit state of extreme old age is sufficient punishment for the old witch. It demonstrates how far Yvaine has evolved as a character that, although she was so consumed by ire against the comparatively inoffensive Tristran for much of the story, by the book’s end she feels only “pity” for the woman who sought to kill her, and even kisses her goodbye.

This fits with the way that Tristran saves the unicorn from the lion earlier in the book not through intervening with physical force but by simply offering the lion the crown for which the two beasts were fighting. Stardust the book seems to advocate nonviolent means of coping with potential danger.

This is an unusually merciful ending for the villain’s storyline in a fairy tale, and I don’t think it works. It’s a sweet idea that Yvaine has “given her heart” to Tristan, but I don’t find it psychologically credible that the witch would give up her quest so easily, when she was willing to murder to achieve her goal. I can certainly see how the witch’s simply abandoning her quest would seem anticlimactic in a dramatic medium like film.

Moreover, in both the book and the film Tristran/Tristan spends the last portion of his journey back to the town of Wall in an unusually passive state for a hero of a tale of adventure: Madame Semele transforms him into a dormouse. (This is yet another example of the manipulation of language: Tristran did not realize that his agreement with Madame Semele to guarantee his safety left a large loophole enabling her to turn him into an animal, as long as she turned him back at the end of their trip.) This provides Yvaine with further opportunity to show her growing affection for Tristran, since she watches over him in his dormouse form.

So it is no surprise that the filmmakers radically revised the ending of Stardust. In the movie Lamia captures Yvaine, a sword-wielding Tristan joins forces with Septimus to invade the witches’ lair, and there is a climactic battle in which Lamia hurls bolts of magical energy, Septimus and the other witches are killed, and Lamia even resurrects Septimus as a kind of zombie to do battle with Tristan the newly trained swordsman. Ultimately Yvaine defeats Lamia by embracing Tristan and glowing with bright starlight, which destroys the witch.

Well, light is certainly a familiar ploy to use against evil: sunlight disintegrates vampires, bright light would defeat the DC Silver Age villain Eclipso, Doctor Strange uses the light of his Eye of Agamotto to overcome his enemy Nightmare, and then there’s the effect that dawn has on the gargantuan devil Chernobog in the “Night of Bald Mountain” sequence in Fantasia (1940). But it seems rather unfair to use light to destroy Lamia when it hadn’t been established as her vulnerability earlier in the movie. I preferred it when Tristan hurled lightning at Lamia during the battle. Captain Alberic/Shakespeare used his skyship to capture lightning (presumably by magic), so it was reasonable to have Tristan carrying lightning that he had acquired on the ship, and anyone, witch or not, would be vulnerable to a ball of lightning; that was playing fair with the audience.

But Yvaine’s luminescence in the battle scene isn’t merely starlight: it is explicitly shown to be the expression of her love for Tristan. So it’s the power of love that destroys Lamia. But that strikes me as a sentimental notion, and the movie doesn’t come up with a sufficiently clever way of making it work for me. (Note that in the Harry Potter mythos, Harry’s mother’s love provides him with a measure of protection from Voldemort, but J. K. Rowling never contends that the power of love could utterly obliterate Voldemort or evil.)

But my biggest problem with this climactic action scene is that it seems–again–so conventional. Here’s Tristan, finally wielding a sword, just like so many other fantasy heroes, and there’s the witch, shooting her FX bolts of magic, and look, it’s a walking corpse, as if we’ve never seen that in a movie before. The only moment in this scene that surprised me was when Lamia abruptly claimed that the battle wasn’t worth it and called it off. I momentarily found myself astonished, wondering if the movie was going to echo the novel in letting the witch go free, and whether that would work dramatically. And then Lamia said, in effect, she was just playing a mind game with her opponents, and enthusiastically reentered the fray. The key to making these obligatory climactic battle scenes work is to find ways of making the audience forget that they’ve seen variations on this scene in every other action-adventure movie. Stardust the book simply omits the climactic battle in order to focus instead on the way that various leading characters–Tristran, Yvaine, and even the witch and Victoria–have changed over the course of the story. Stardust the movie only finds that one moment in the final combat when I didn’t think: been there, done that.

In the movie, before he embarks on his quest, Tristan knows that he has a rival for the affections of Victoria, the young woman he idolizes: a standard issue bully with a superior attitude. As soon as I saw this man appear onscreen, I sensed the presence of the all too familiar. So Tristan pledges to find the fallen star for Victoria in order to compete with this other man. In the novel Tristran is more naive and innocent, and makes grandiose offers to Victoria to perform extraordinary feats to win her love, out of an excess of romantic sensibility (which would fit the period in which the book is set, as well as the adolescent mindset). It comes as a surprise to both Tristran and the reader when towards the end of the book Victoria informs him that she had already fallen in love with his employer, Mr. Monday, when he offered to fetch her the fallen star. (Since Mr. Monday is a man in his forties, as well as an authority figure, I wonder if there is an Oedipal subtext here: Tristran could never marry Victoria because she is bonded to a father figure.) Is it possible that Tristran, had he been more emotionally and psychologically mature, might have figured this out before embarking on his romantic quest?

Stardust is about a quest that takes its protagonist from one place to another geographically, but it is also about a quest of the spirit, whereby Tristran matures from callow youth to responsible adult. Part of that quest entails learning how to see other people (figuratively speaking) clearly, and Yvaine and Victoria make this quest as well.

One aspect of the book that the movie entirely omits is the evolution of Victoria’s personality. During the months of Tristran’s absence, Victoria is tormented by guilt over “my foolishness, my idiocy, that sent you off on your journeyings,” in which she feared that he might lose his life (p. 223). Having developed a sense of obligation, Victoria pledges to keep her word and marry Tristran. This parallels Yvaine’s own sense of obligation to Tristran. After he saved her life, she is willing to journey with him out of Faerie into the normal world, even though she knows she will transform into an unliving meteorite in this world without magic. Although the film retains Yvaine’s decision to give up her life thus (though in neither book nor film does she have to go through with it), the movie never moves Victoria beyond her initial shallowness.

Just as Tristran is initially blind to Victoria’s true feelings towards him, he is at first blind to Yvaine’s worth as an individual person. Having realized that she is the fallen star in human form, Tristran makes her his prisoner, against her will, and intends to present her to Victoria as a gift. In effect, in the book Tristran makes Yvaine his slave, treating her as property.

In reading the book, I found it hard to sympathize with Tristran on this point. How could he treat someone who (apart from glowing) looked, talked and behaved like a human being like himself as if she were his pet or possession? I can understand why the filmmakers tweaked this plot point: in the movie Tristan tells Yvaine that he will use a magic candle to transport her back to the heavens once he has shown her to Victoria. (This doesn’t seem like a bad deal, making Yvaine’s initial resentment towards Tristan in the movie more difficult to understand.)

But Tristran’s enslavement of Yvaine in the book is probably necessary to making the story work. It’s a metaphor for Tristran’s immature attitude towards women. He idealizes and virtually worships Victoria, blind to the evidence that we readers see, that she is merely toying with his emotions. Obsessed with Victoria, Tristran ignores the good qualities of other women, and, through a kind of metaphorical hyperbole, even ignores the personhood of Yvaine. (As noted last time, Tristran is not cruel, and begins to develop a growing sympathy for Yvaine soon after making her his captive.) Tristran regards Victoria as if she were a goddess, whereas Yvaine, as a living star, is a true “goddess” whom he initially treats as if she were merely his prize.

In Stardust, Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys (see “Comics in Context” #105, 106, 107 and 108) and his television series Neverwhere (see “Comics in Context” #18), the male protagonist starts out on the wrong part in life, having become involved with the wrong woman. A number of Gaiman’s protagonists find themselves confronting the choice of changing their life’s path or suffering death (like Morpheus in Sandman) or a kind of psychological stasis. Look at the contrast in Gaiman’s 1602 between Captain America, who remains set in his ways, and Nick Fury, who undergoes change and thus brings about redemption (see “Comics in Context” #35 and 36).

Stardust the novel isn’t about Tristran becoming a warrior (although he does so in its Epilogue). It is about Tristran becoming more mature emotionally and psychologically, outgrowing naive romantic fantasies and developing empathy for others. Before visiting Victoria on his return, Tristran realizes that “he could no longer reconcile his old idea of giving the star to Victoria Forester with his current notion that the star was not a thing to be passed from hand to hand, but a true person in all respects and no kind of a thing at all. And yet, Victoria Forester was the woman he loved” (p. 208). Tristan does not prove his heroism through physical combat but through his generous, mature response when Victoria confesses her love for Mr. Monday but nonetheless offers Tristran her hand in marriage. Rising above what was once his ruling obsession, Tristran releases her from her obligation to him and gives his “blessing” to her marriage to Mr. Monday (thereby, without realizing it, bringing about his mother’s release from her own enslavement).
Shortly thereafter, Tristran confesses to Yvaine that “Everything I ever thought about myself–who I was, what I am–was a lie, Or sort of. You have no idea how astonishingly liberating that feels” (p. 234).

I find it appealing that the realization that he is in love with Yvaine seems to take Tristan by surprise once he has been disillusioned about Victoria’s true feelings towards him. Similarly, Yvaine’s growing love for Tristran seems to sneak up on her: she once again calls him “a ninny, a lackwit, and a. . .a clodpoll” (p. 233) just before they agree that they will not part again and walk “hand in hand.” Again, the movie takes a more conventional approach, and Tristran and Yvaine seem well aware of their love for each other before the climactic battle. The movie shows Tristran fall in love with Yvaine, but does not communicate the sense that he undergoes a complete change of perspective about “everything I ever thought about myself.”

I also like that the book indicates that this is only the first major step in Tristran’s psychological development. The movie shows Tristan and Yvonne, crowned as rulers, before a vast audience that includes townspeople of Wall such as Victoria as well as Captain Shakespeare and his pirates. (So now it’s no big deal to cross the barrier separating Wall from the realm of Faerie? What happened?) Weren’t they acting like self-centered adolescents only a week earlier? But in the book’s Epilogue, Tristran postpones assuming the throne, and instead leaves his mother, Una, as ruler. He tells Yvaine, “there are still so many places we have not seen. So many people still to meet. Not to mention all the wrongs to right, villains to vanquish, sights to see, all that. You know” (p. 245). Not until five years later do Tristran and Yvaine ascend the thrones, whereupon he rules with wisdom and finally becomes more like the warrior hero of fantasy adventure, leading his people to victory over the Northern Goblins. The implication is that Tristran and Yvaine learned more about the world, and perhaps themselves, during those five years of travels, finally becoming worthy of ruling their land of Stormhold.

Numerous critics and director Matthew Vaughn himself, in the Times article, have compared Stardust the movie to The Princess Bride, the novel and film written by William Goldman. Perhaps this accounts for some of the blatant comedy elements in the film, like Captain Shakespeare and the treatment of the ghosts of the sons of the Lord of Stormhold, who are a more somber presence in the Stardust book. The novel Stardust can be witty but it isn’t a comedy, except in the sense that it has a happy (though ultimately bittersweet) ending. Gaiman said in a July 26, 2007 article in Time magazine that “It’s not like a comedy like Shrek that’s making fun of the thing,” meaning the fantasy and fairy tale genres. “It’s the thing itself.” This is my main problem with the film’s comedy elements, even the more diva-ish moments in Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance: they come too close for my taste to subverting “the thing itself.”

But that wouldn’t bother me if what should be the heart of the film–the character arcs and love story of Tristan and Yvaine–came across more powerfully in dramatic terms. The key to The Princess Bride lies in the movie’s metafictional framing sequence: the old man telling the storybook tale t his cynical young grandson, who stands in for all the adults in the audience who consider themselves too mature and sophisticated for such stuff. Goldman uses his postmodern satire of fairy tale tropes to disarm the contemporary viewer, and make it look as if he is mocking the genre. But beneath all these seemingly subversive trappings, the supposedly old-fashioned story of true love and true heroism comes through with palpable dramatic power, surprising and winning over the young boy just as it does the movie’s adult audience.

I didn’t find the love story in Stardust the movie personally moving, and it should be. Whether because of the acting or writing or direction, It seemed to me too predictable, too conventional, too superficial to be truly affecting. And the theme of Tristan’s and Yvaine’s awakening to their true selves never truly registered. The love story doesn’t come across in the book as powerfully as I might like, either, but it is there, and I can imagine passages in the book, such as those I have quoted, being staged much more dramatically than in the current movie. Maybe one day Stardust will be dramatized again, on stage, or radio, or television, or movies, and more of its potential will be successfully tapped.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson