Category: Comics in Context

From time to time in this column I’ve written about a new school of writing superhero comics that sets itself in opposition to the preponderance of “grim and gritty,” dank and depressing work that seems to dominate the Big Two comics companies nowadays. This new movement is really attempting to revive the positive heroic spirit of the genre from the Silver Age of the late 1950s and 1960s in terms appropriate to the arguably more sophisticated standards of comics of the early 21st century. One of the members of this school, Kurt Busiek, refers to it as the “reconstructionist” movement, as opposed to the “deconstructionist” superhero comics that arose in the 1980s. I’ve called it the “neo-Silver” movement, since it seems to take its inspiration from the classic comics of the Silver Age.

One of the flagships of the “Neo-Silver” movement is writer/artist Darwyn Cooke’s DC Comics miniseries, DC: The New Frontier, which takes the birth of the Silver Age as its subject. At the end of February Warner Brothers Home Video released Justice League: The New Frontier, a direct-to-video animated film adaptation of Cooke’s book.

On one of the DVD’s commentary tracks, Cooke seems understandably ecstatic to witness his creation so faithfully and handsomely translated to the cinematic medium. I’m pleased that so much of the miniseries is now up on screen, but I found myself nonetheless disappointed with this new video version.

As Cooke explains on the commentary track, the requirement of compressing his series into a seventy-minute film meant jettisoning many scenes and characters from the New Frontier comics. As a consultant on the film, Cooke apparently battled to retain certain elements of his original story: for example, if not for his efforts, it seems, Lois Lane wouldn’t have turned up in the film. Still, I think that some of the cuts struck at the heart of what The New Frontier is really all about.

It seems to me that, whether in comics or in animated form, The New Frontier works best for an audience that already has a basic knowledge of the sweep of superhero comics history. People with little knowledge of superhero comics can still follow and appreciate either version, but they won’t fully grasp the underlying backstory. For those who don’t know, let me tell you about it.

In brief, The New Frontier is about the fall and rise of the superhero genre between the late 1940s and the start of the 1960s. In the real world, the superhero genre began with the debut of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman in Action Comics #1 in 1938, as the Great Depression lingered and Europe was about to plunge into World War II. The Man of Steel was an immediate and extraordinary success, and the new genre grew with explosive speed. In 1939 came Batman, at the company now known as DC Comics, the original Captain Marvel at Fawcett, and the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch in Marvel Comics #1 at the company then known as Timely. Scores of other new superheroes followed in the early 1940s. At DC Comics there was Wonder Woman, the original versions of the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom, as well as Doctor Fate, the Spectre, Wildcat, Hourman, and many more. DC teamed its leading superheroes up as the Justice Society of America in its aptly titled All Star Comics.

The comics industry boomed: in those dark times, the country needed new heroes, in fiction as well as real life, and superhero comics were read not only by the little kids they were presumably aimed at, but also by the young soldiers going off to war. Superman leapt with a mighty bound from the comic books to the comic strips, radio, animated cartoons and live action movie serials. The 1940s was indeed the “Golden Age” of superhero comics, when they achieved a mass popularity that has never been matched since.

But after the war ended, the superheroes’ popularity began to fade quickly. Comics publishers turned to other genres, and one by one the newly created superheroes vanished from print. The Justice Society’s adventures came to an end in 1951, as All Star Comics metamorphosed into All Star Western. The only superheroes at any comics company who survived as the stars of their own comic books throughout the 1950s were DC’s Big Three: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, having defeated the Axis powers in World War II, America now faced a new threat from its wartime ally, Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union, newly armed with atomic weapons. After spending years fighting enemies abroad, it was as if the United States couldn’t stop itself from looking for yet still more enemies. So in the late 1940s people in government began hunting for subversives and Communists who, they feared, were in league with the Soviets to topple or destroy American democracy. Thus began the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, his and other Congressional “witch hunts” of Americans who might be secret Soviet sympathizers.

While much of 1950s America was in this inquisitorial frame of mind, Dr. Fredric Wertham wrote his notorious book Seduction of the Innocent, blaming comic books for inspiring juvenile delinquency and even questioning the sexuality of Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman. There were Congressional hearings into the charges against comic books, with the result that most of EC’s line, the most innovative and artistically advanced comic books of the early 1950s, went under, and the comics industry submitted to its own form of self-censorship, the Comics Code, to prevent the government from imposing its own restrictions.

It was Paul Levitz, who is now DC’s president and publisher, who did the first comics story that linked the real life Congressional investigations of the late 1940s and 1950s to the near-extinction of the superhero genre during that same period. In “The Defeat of the Justice Society,” a story Levitz wrote in Adventure Comics #466 (April 1979), the superheroes of the Justice Society appeared before a Congressional committee which demanded that they unmask and reveal their true identities to prove to the American public that they were not subversives. Rather than comply, the members of the Justice Society retired from their superheroic careers. So there was the explanation, in comics continuity, as to why most of DC’s Golden Age superheroes had vanished by the end of 1951.

It might have seemed back then that superheroes were merely a passing fad. But DC editor Julius Schwartz successfully launched a new version of the Flash in Showcase #4 (1956), thereby initiating the great superhero revival of the late 1950s and 1960s, which comics aficionados know as the Silver Age.

Arguably, however, the first Silver Age superhero was really J’onn J’onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, who debuted the year before in a backup story in Detective Comics #225 (November 1955). But J’onn was not originally portrayed as a superhero. Inadvertently transported to Earth by the experimental ray of Dr. Erdel, J’onn (who was not the “little green man” of UFO legend, but a big green humanoid) utilized his shapeshifting abilities to masquerade as an Earthman, John Jones. In his human guise, Jones worked as a detective, turning invisible in order to use his Martian super-powers covertly. Hence, the Manhunter from Mars series was originally a combination of science fiction and the mystery genre. Since the superhero genre, apart from the Big Three, was dead, it seems unlikely that J’onn was originally intended to be a superhero. Only in 1959, after Schwartz had successfully relaunched the superhero genre, did J’onn begin publicly operating as a superhero (see J’onn’s history here).

I’m going to make yet another reference to Danny Fingeroth’s book Disguised as Clark Kent here. Danny shows how the superhero’s secret identity served as a metaphor for Jewish-American comic creators’ efforts to assimilate into American society. So Clark Kent (an alien like J’onn) conceals his Kryptonian ethnicity by posing as an ordinary American-born “mild-mannered reporter.” J’onn went much further literally altering his outward appearance in order to “pass” as a normal Earth human. While Superman would publicly display his Kryptonian powers in his costumed identity, J’onn would initially only employ his Martian powers when he turned invisible, literally out of sight of the majority, who would fear a “Martian invader” in their midst. In New Frontier Cooke showed his recognition of how J’onn J’onzz, hiding his true self so completely from the rest of society, fit into the paranoid, repressed, conformist atmosphere if the 1950s.

In Showcase #4 police scientist Barry Allen was depicted as a fan of the 1940s Flash comics; upon gaining the power of super-speed, he named himself the new Flash after his fictional hero. Years later, Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox had the new Flash travel to a parallel world, “Earth-2,” where the original Flash, Jay Garrick, was a real person. In time they established that the superheroes of the Golden Age lived on Earth-2, while the Silver Age heroes lived on Earth-1. The new versions of the Flash, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman joined the Justice League, Earth-1’s counterpart of the Justice Society; Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were among the founding members of the JLA.

In 1986 DC revised its continuity through the series Crisis on Infinite Earths, which did away with the concept of multiple Earths and established that the Golden Age heroes lived on the same Earth as DC’s modern heroes.

Something else to consider is that, traditionally, comics characters age very slowly or not at all. Superman was introduced in 1938, and yet he remains a young man in the comics today. The Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, first appeared in Showcase #22, cover-dated October 1959, and yet he is not depicted in today’s comics as as the senior citizen he would be had he aged in real time. To make Jordan’s youth more credible, no one in contemporary comics stories makes reference to the fact that his origin as a superhero took place during the Eisenhower Administration. Similarly, in a early 1960s story Superman met President John F. Kennedy, but in current continuity, Superman would not even arrive on Earth as a baby until decades later.

In the real world Superman first appeared in comics in 1938, Batman in 1939, and Wonder Woman in 1941, and all three were members of the Justice Society. In current DC continuity, though, they did not begin their superhero careers until roughly a half century later.

This may all have begun to make your heads hurt, but there is still one more step to consider. In New Frontier Darywn Cooke devised his own alternate version of DC Comics continuity. In this version, DC’s Golden and Silver Age heroes all exist on the same Earth. But, with only one exception I can think of offhand, each superhero debuted in the New Frontier timeline at the same time that he or she did in the comics in the real world. Hence, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman did start their superhero careers in 1938, 1939, and 1941, respectively, in the word of The New Frontier. Arguably, Superman and Wonder Woman’s super-powers keep them from aging normally. But when the story of The New Frontier concludes in 1961, Batman and Lois Lane must be in their forties (though they certainly still look youthful). That one exception, by the way, is Robin, who does not appear in The New Frontier comics or DVD until sometime in the 1950s. If he had debuted in the New Frontier timeline in 1940, as he did in the comics, he would be an adult by the 1950s, and Cooke obviously wanted to use the traditional image of Robin as a “boy wonder” instead.

But the focus of The New Frontier is not on the Big Three, but on the new superheroes who arose during the Silver Age. (Indeed, Cooke’s commentary track on the DVD points out that Superman is kayoed early in the climactic battle at the film’s end so that the Silver Age heroes can take center stage.)

Cooke’s greatest conceptual innovation in The New Frontier is explicitly to turn the Silver Age into a period piece. Instead of presenting the Silver Age heroes as existing in a permanent present day, as comics traditionally have, he instead explicitly sets them in the time period in which their stories first appeared: the 1950s. Cooke presents the Silver Age characters as products of their time. With the perspective that comes with looking back a half century in history, Cooke is able to see how these characters reflect the times of their creation more clearly than, perhaps, their own creators could at the time.

For example, the creators of the Martian Manhunter may not have consciously been aware of how the character–a green-skinned alien disguised as a human in order to live on Earth–was a response to the racism and paranoia of 1950s American society, but Cooke sees it and consciously works with the theme.

So the premise of The New Frontier is fairly complicated for a casual reader of comics, or a viewer of the video whose knowledge of DC superheroes may be restricted to the movie versions, to understand.

Let’s turn now to the video. Watching the opening, I was immediately delighted by the use of a familiar old device–an animated artist’s brush, seemingly wielded by an offscreen artist, which creates the pictures onscreen. One sees something similar at the start of Max and Dave Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell cartoons, but New Frontier‘s animated brush specifically evokes the artist’s brush that appears onscreen in various classic Disney animated films. (I describe one example, All the Cats Join In, in “Comics in Context” #136: “Before There Were Cars“). It’s a lovely homage to a grand tradition.

In the context of The New Frontier DVD, though, the animated brush doesn’t belong to the artists creating the film, but to an offscreen character in the story, a children’s illustrator who has undergone mental possession by the film’s principal menace, a primeval intelligence called the Center (or The Centre, since the film also employs the British spelling). The offscreen illustrator sets down a warning about the Center in his book, and then, still off camera, shoots himself. This is presumably meant to be a shock effect, but I was only a wee bit startled. Not having gotten to know or even see the illustrator within these first few moments of the film, it was hard to feel anything for him.

As for the Center, I’m afraid he leaves a gaping hole where the story’s ultimate villain should be. In the opening of the film we hear the Center’s voice drone on ominously about how he has existed for millions upon millions of years and is determined to eliminate these human newcomers to the planet. But we’ve seen this sort of thing before: for example, H. P. Lovecraft’s elder gods. There’s nothing distinctive about the Center, whether in his motivation, his powers, his personality–or, rather, lack of same–or even his visual representation. when the center finally appears towards the end of the film, he looks like a gigantic and rather drab floating rock with giant pterodactyls, of all things, roosting on top.

In The New Frontier, it is in order to combat the Center that the new Silver Age heroes team up with the Big Three to become the Justice League. Subsequently, the film shows us a shot of the JLA battling Starro the Conqueror, which aficionados will recognize as based on the cover of the comic with the Justice League’s first published adventure, The Brave and the Bold #28 in 1960. You may think of Starro as silly: after all, he looks like a gigantic alien starfish. But that cover shot of the JLA struggling against the monstrous Starro is both memorable and iconic. (And it suddenly strikes me that the cover for Fantastic Four #1, with its heroes struggling against another huge monster, which appeared the following year, is very much like it! Why not, since the FF were allegedly created as Marvel’s response to the Justice League?) In the Silver Age Julie Schwartz and his artists had a knack for concocting just such amazing visual imagery. The Center just isn’t in the same league. The Center does not hold.

During the opening credits for the New Frontier video, we see a newspaper headline announcing the retirement of the Golden Age superheroes and see an image of them trudging away in defeat. We then see a shot of the police pursuing Hourman. Readers of the original comics version will recall that superheroes became outlaws unless they revealed their true identities to the government and took loyalty oaths. Hourman refused either to comply or to retire, and this police chase ended in his untimely death. (This is sharply different from the canonical DC continuity, in which the original Hourman also retired at the end of the Golden Age and resumed his superhero career when the Justice Society reemerged during the Silver Age. But do people who watch the DVD without having read the comics recognize Hourman or understand that he was killed before Superman says so later in the film? )

All of this is treated at greater length in the comics version, primarily through text pieces, like newspaper coverage of the events. Darwyn Cooke explains on the DVD that due to time limitations the filmmakers covered these events through these images in the credit sequence and through a subsequent scene which Cooke wrote in which Superman and Lois Lane discuss the Justice Society’s enforced retirement. But these brief images and references to the end of the Golden Age heroes are not the same as dramatizing it onscreen.

The New Frontier comics series begins at the end of World War II, with DC’s team of military heroes, the Losers, on “Dinosaur Island,” the setting of one of DC’s wackiest war series, The War That Time Forgot. There is a reference to Dinosaur Island in the video, and I suppose that’s where the pterodactyls at the end came from, but I don’t mind that this opening sequence from the comics is missing from the film.

But I think that the film needed a sequence, however brief, to establish that there had been a Golden Age of superheroes. Those who are unacquainted with comics history needed to know a little more about it, and, indeed, need to know that that’s when Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman debuted. (If you don’t know superhero comics history, you might think from the film that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman first appeared in the 1950s, just as the Barry Allen Flash did.) Moreover, in dramatic terms, if the story begins with the fall of the superheroes and the end of the Golden Age, then we should see a glimpse of that Golden Age and its glories onscreen, in order to feel the sense of loss when it comes to an end. Perhaps the precredit sequence would have better been devoted to showing the Justice Society in action.

Perhaps because the graphic novel devotes more space to the fall of the Golden Age, it takes on resonances that are absent from the DVD. Today, a situation in which superheroes are outlaws unless they reveal their true identities to the government not only harkens back to the McCarthy era but becomes an echo of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark series Watchmen. Superman, who is allowed to continue to operate because he submitted to the government’s demands, is in the position of Moore and Gibbons’ Dr. Manhattan, while Batman, who daringly defies the law by acting as a vigilante, mirrors Watchmen‘s Rorschach. In The New Frontier DVD it’s not clear that Batman is operating outside the law; indeed, he shows up at the end to aid the government and no one even mentions he’s a lawbreaker.

Furthermore, in reading the New Frontier comics’ account of what Batman and Superman did when the government lowered the boom on superheroes, I was inevitably reminded of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, another tale in which superheroes have been banned. In The New Frontier DVD Superman mentions that he had to take a “loyalty oath” to continue his superheroic career in America. The DVD does not examine or even seem to notice the moral ambiguity of Superman’s decision. Readers of The Dark Knight Returns know that Batman–and Miller-regard Superman as a sellout for working with a federal government that had driven the other superheroes into enforced retirement. In The New Frontier DVD there is only an oblique reference to the fact that Batman and Superman are on opposite sides of this issue, when Batman ominously notes that he keeps kryptonite on hand in case he needs to use it against the Kryptonian.

Watching the DVD, I realized that The New Frontier is the direct opposite of Marvel’s Civil War. New Frontier clearly indicates that the government is wrong to attempt to control or outlaw the superheroes, who become representatives of individual freedom. The suppression of the superheroes becomes a metaphor for the blacklisting of the McCarthy era. Superman is one of the few “scabs.” In Civil War half of America’s superheroes are not only scabs, siding with the government in its insistence on officially registering superheroes and learning their true identities; they are also strikebreakers, battling their former comrades. Captain America leads the other superheroes in opposing the government’s demands. But in the concluding issue we are led to believe that the public sides with the government; majority rule overrides individual freedom, and Cap and his faction surrender, effectively acquiescing in the idea that they were wrong. (And then Cap gets shot.) With the triumphal emergence of a new generation of superheroes. At the end of the story, The New Frontier extols the superhero as symbol of individual liberty. In contrast, Civil War has an ending that would make McCarthy and the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee happy.

Perhaps in the DVD when Superman is encouraged to take a leadership role, it is intended as a subtle reproach to his acquiescence to the government, and he indeed rises to the occasion later in the film. As for the rest of the Big Three, I concur with Cooke in his praise (on the commentary track) of the animation of a sequence in which a particularly spooky Batman singlehandedly and believably overcomes a gang of sinister Center cultists, one by one.

The big scene with Superman encountering Wonder Woman in 1950s Indochina, adapted from the graphic novel, is another matter. Wonder Woman has encouraged a group of oppressed Indochinese women to kill their tormentors, celebrates with them afterwards, and defiantly defends her actions to the disapproving Superman. This reminds me of the man-hating Wonder Woman of Frank Miller’s All Star Batman and Wonder Woman recently killing the traitorous Maxwell Lord in canonical continuity. These stories’ writers are presumably drawing on the fact that Wonder Woman is a member of an ancient warrior culture of Amazons. But traditionally Wonder Woman has always been an advocate of peace, even if she has to use force to stop wrongdoers. How can she object to the violence and brutality of “man’s world” when she applauds women who resort to blood vengeance? Wonder Woman is not Xena or Red Sonja. I recognize Superman and Batman in New Frontier, but not Cooke’s version of Wonder Woman.

And I just do not comprehend why Cooke put the Flash’s longtime foe, Captain Cold, in such an uninspired costume, which makes him look like a medieval monk wearing 3-D glasses. You can’t beat Carmine Infantino’s classic costume design for Captain Cold. If Cooke has the Flash wear his sleek and stylish Infantino-designed costume, why couldn’t he let the Captain wear his? Ah well, at least the Captain got to wear his proper costume when he turned up in the Justice League unlimited animated series. And despite the fashion victimization, Cooke’s battle between the Flash and Captain Cold in Las Vegas is even better in the animated film. Iris, well, quite a rush to see the Flash moving at super-speed directly at the Captain, only to be halted at the last second when the Captain shouts “Stop!” in warning. It’s lucky for the members of Flash’s Rogues Gallery that in comics the writers and artists can manipulate time: otherwise they would be hard pressed to pull the trigger before the onrushing Flash got to them.

As in the graphic novel, the DVD’s initial sequence with Hal Jordan, who is to become the Silver Age Green Lantern, is set on the final day of the Korean War. Though the war is over, Jordan finds himself forced to kill an attacking Korean soldier in order to save his own life. The purpose of the scene is much clearly and much more strongly conveyed in the comics, however. In Cooke’s graphic novel Jordan is adamantly opposed to killing for any reason. I find it hard to believe that a man with such an attitude would be assigned to fly a combat plane. Shouldn’t Jordan have been a conscientious objector and been assigned some duty in which he was not expected to kill the enemy? In the comics presumably Jordan’s killing of the North Korean in self-defense is to show him learning that violence can be necessary. However, in the film Jordan is not clearly established as a pacifist, so the point of the sequence is blunted. I’m still puzzled as to why Cooke wanted to make Jordan a pacifist and why he felt the need to put this future hero through such a brutal killing, as if it were an initiation into the use of violence. Other heroes in the series, like the Flash, don’t go through this sort of bloody initiation into violence.

Another thing I like about The New Frontier comics is that Cooke presents Hal Jordan as a representative of the daring, pioneering test pilots and astronauts that Tom Wolfe wrote about in his book The Right Stuff. Again, presumably because of the necessity of condensing Cooke’s books, this comes across more explicitly in the comics. In the DVD Jordan seems to be more of a lone star, not a member of a generation of heroic pioneers in air and space.

But it is just wonderful for a Silver Age fan like myself to see the iconic origin of Green Lantern, as the dying alien Abin Sur passes his power ring on to the man he has singled out to be his successor, Hal Jordan, animated on screen: a classic scene from the comics that retains its power today.

The characters who make the biggest impression in The New Frontier DVD are Jordan and the Martian Manhunter. I like nearly everything that Cooke and the animation team do with J’onn J’onnz in the book and the film, portraying him as a humane alien forced to hide his true identity from a hostile world. In both versions there is an entertaining scene in which J’onn watches television to learn about his new world, shapeshifting into doubles of the personalities he sees on the tube, including Bugs Bunny and Groucho Marx, as if trying out identities. Eventually he settles on becoming a detective like those he sees on TV. It’s a perceptive acknowledgment that in the comics of the 1950s J’onn J’onzz was not so much acting as a real detective as adopting the media image of a detective from TV and the movies. Thus we can now see that the early Manhunter from Mars stories of the 1950s reflected the genre now known as film noir, which expressed the anxieties and fears of that decade. The literal darkness of the scenes involving the Martian Manhunter in both versions of New Frontier thus likewise reflects the noir visual style.

The plight of the green-skinned Martian Manhunter is a metaphor for racism in 1950s American society. In the comics Cooke devised a subplot to reinforce that theme, depicting an African-American superhero named John Henry (after the hero of folklore) who is eventually murdered by bigots. On the DVD John Henry’s saga is briefly recapped in a television news report. It’s good that the filmmakers included this, but once again, I wish there had been the time and budget to dramatize it. This is yet another reason why anyone who sees and enjoys the New Frontier DVD should make a point of reading the original comics to find out the whole story.

Cooke titled his series The New Frontier after the celebrated line in John F. Kennedy’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for President in 1960. The first member of his new generation who would become President, Kennedy declared that “We stand at the edge of a New Frontier – the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. It will deal with unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.” “The New Frontier” was the name given to the programs that Kennedy proposed to deal with these problems, just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt had put forth “the New Deal” to combat the effects of the Great Depression.

In his original comics series, Cooke ran Kennedy’s “New Frontier” speech alongside images of the newly formed Justice League and the myriad new superheroes who arose to populate DC’s Silver Age in the late 1950s and 1960s. It is a triumphant, inspirational coda to Cooke’s epic tale, and the film heightens its impact by putting Kennedy himself (or someone doing a masterful impression of him) delivering his “New Frontier” speech on the soundtrack while the montage of Silver Age superheroes fills the screen. Thus Cooke makes the key point of his series: that the rebirth of the superhero genre in the Silver Age reflects, and acts as a metaphor for the birth of a new idealistic, activist spirit in American politics and culture in the 1960s.

At one point in his DVD commentary track, Cooke remarks that the events depicted in the film (obviously aside from the presence of superheroes) resemble those if the present day. I wish that he had gone into detail about this. It has been said that any movie that is set in a period of the past is really also about the period in which it was made. (Hence, Gone with the Wind, though set during the Civil War and Reconstruction, also reflects the racial and sexual attitudes of 1939.) Cooke is acknowledging that this is true about The New Frontier.

The Golden Age of Comics was born during the Great Depression, with the world on the brink of World War II. These first superheroes seem to embody the positive, can-do American spirit that lay behind FDR’s New Deal, that enabled the nation to rise out of economic misery, to defeat the Axis threat abroad, and to become, yes, one of the world’s postwar “superpowers.”

As Cooke shows, the New Frontier and the Silver Age also emerged from a dark, troubled time in American politics and society, involving a war (in Korea) and restrictions on civil liberties, and embodied the will and desire to bring about change.

It was during these two periods–the late 1930s and 1940s, and the late 1950s and 1960s–that the superhero genre experienced its most explosive growth, giving rise to pantheons of characters who have now achieved classic status. In the forty years since we have not witnessed any comparable burst of creativity. For example, it has been said that the last truly iconic superhero created at Marvel was Wolverine, back in 1974! There was a great period for the genre in the mid-1980s, but in the “deconstructionist” mode of Watchmen and Dark Knight.

Now, America is again in a dark period, mired in an endless war, plunging into recession, headed by an administration that employs torture and violates civil liberties. Yet in 2008 Presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, have been promising “change,” a passion to reform what has gone wrong in our society. At this point the two remaining Democratic contenders each represent an element of society–women and African-Americans–who were previously barred by prejudice from holding positions as powerful as the Presidency. And one if them, Barack Obama, has taken as his theme “the audacity of hope,” representing a new spirit of optimism and liberal activism.

Is this another time, like the 1940s and 1960s, that could revitalize the superhero genre? Indeed, has this rebirth already happened in the movies, with the ceaseless wave of superhero movies during this first decade of a new century? But what path will the superhero genre take in the comics? Will it remained stuck in the grim and gritty, the dismal and despairing, with series like Identity Crisis and Civil War, undercutting the heroic spirit, siding with oppression, unable to advance into a new, brighter day? Or will comics creators follow Darwyn Cooke on the path he sets out in The New Frontier: into a newer frontier for the 21st century?

LINKS IN THE GREAT CYBERCHAIN OF BEING

If Darwyn Cooke is a practitioner of the Neo-Silver Age school of comics, then Dave Stevens created a Neo-Golden Age masterpiece in The Rocketeer, his gorgeously illustrated adventure series set in the late 1930s. Stevens passed away this week, and you should read the tribute to him by his friend Mark Evanier.

There have also been remarkable tributes online to the late Steve Gerber, and I encourage you to read those by his former Marvel colleagues and friends Peter Gillis and Steven Grant and Heidi MacDonald’s reminiscences about the man and his work.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

Months before comics writer Steve Gerber passed away, I had already been planning to write about him in “Comics in Context” this year. My subject was going to be the original Omega the Unknown comic book series, which Gerber and his collaborator Mary Skrenes jointly conceived and wrote for Marvel over three decades ago.

I first read Omega when it was originally published in 1976, but I didn’t particularly like or understand what Gerber and Skrenes were getting at. Still, I was a devoted follower of Gerber’s work and kept reading the series till its abrupt end with only its tenth issue. A few years later in 1979, after Gerber had left Marvel, writer Steven Grant devised an ending for Omega in the pages of The Defenders, whereupon the character sank into nearly total obscurity, remembered only in an entry in the 1980s version of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe‘s “Book of the Dead.” (Rereading that entry, I realized that I probably wrote it: the style seems like my own.)

Probably Omega would have remained forgotten had it not been for the highly acclaimed mainstream novelist Jonathan Lethem, whose past work, including a 2003 book titled The Fortress of Solitude, after Superman’s arctic headquarters, demonstrates his knowledge and love of superhero comics. Fortress also mentions Omega, whose series Lethem read as a boy, and when Marvel invited Lethem to write for the company, he chose to revive Omega. The project was announced in 2005, although the new series did not appear until late 2007. Marvel’s editor in chief explained that “winning the MacArthur Grant”–known as the “genius” grant–“put additional and unexpected demands on [Lethem’s] time”. Here’s yet another way the world of comics has changed in the 21st century: how often has winning a “genius” grant served as an excuse for a writer delaying a comics project?

But the fact that Lethem would be doing a high profile revival of the character provided sufficient impetus for Marvel to reprint the entire original series, and even the Defenders wrap-up and my Handbook entry, in a full color trade paperback titled Omega the Unknown Classic in 2005. Had it not been for Lethem’s interest, Marvel would not have awarded “Classic” status to Gerber and Skrenes’ original Omega stories. They would surely have remained neglected rarities in back issue bins, just as I expect that Marvel finally got around to reprinting Jack Kirby’s Eternals after three decades because Neil Gaiman was going to revive them.

Moreover, I notice that Gerber and Skrenes’ names don’t appear on the front cover or spine of the paperback. I presume Marvel’s rationale is that if it listed Gerber and Skrenes and Mooney, they’d have to list Scott Edelman and Roger Stern, who each wrote a fill-in issue, and Grant for the Defenders issues, and every artist who worked on any of these stories. I see the point, but Gerber, Skrenes and Mooney created the series and did the majority of work on the stories in this book. When Marvel has been trumpeting its association with mainstream novelists like Lethem and Stephen King, it seems unfortunate to me that the “Classic” Omega paperback’s front cover and spine treat the series creators as if they were anonymous.

I had decided to wait until Lethem’s ten-issue series ended later this year, and then write a “Comics in Context” installment comparing and contrasting Lethem’s series with Gerber and Skrenes’. But since Gerber died a few weeks ago, it makes more sense for me to write about the original Omega now, thereby concluding my trilogy about his groundbreaking comics work in the 1970s.

Rereading the original Omega after so many years was eye-opening: I had grossly underrated the series, and I can understand why Lethem found it so intriguing.

Perhaps what made Omega most challenging to the comics audience of the mid-1970s was that it depended upon mysteries that Gerber and Skrenes were in no hurry to resolve, and that, indeed, were left unsolved when the series met its untimely end.

The central enigma was the nature of the connection between Omega‘s two protagonists: the mysterious title character, an alien humanoid who rarely spoke and became a superhero on Earth, and a strange, precocious yet emotionally distant 12-year-old American boy, James-Michael Starling (named after comics writer/artist Jim Starlin). Gerber and Skrenes continually offered tantalizing hints and suggestions in their scripts but never an explanation.

Perhaps Gerber and Skrenes were attempting to draw their readers more fully into the stories and the characters through Omega‘s riddles, inducing the members of the audience to devise their own, personal readings of Omega‘s mysteries and metaphors. For years comics readers and even many comics pros have insisted on exposing secrets, even when the mystery is far more dramatically resonant than the rather prosaic eventual solution (as in Wolverine: Origin). Perhaps television series such as Twin Peaks, The X-Files and Lost have now made the popular culture more appreciative of works that draw dramatic and thematic power from their ongoing conceptual puzzles. This is one of the ways in which Gerber and Skrenes were ahead of their time in Omega. (On the other hand, Omega followed the television series The Prisoner, whose meaning continues to be debated four decades later.)

For the sake of argument, I’m going to ignore the Defenders‘ explanation of the Omega mysteries, which Gerber and Lethem both reportedly disliked. I prefer to speculate about other, more rewarding possible solutions, for which Gerber and Skrenes laid the groundwork.

The opening pages of the first issue (March 1976) show the costumed figure of Omega, on a clearly alien world, running towards the unseen source of destructive ray blasts. On the next page we will discover that Omega’s assailants are robots. Captions have fallen out of favor in today’s comics industry, but in Omega Gerber and Skrenes demonstrate one of the ways they can be used effectively. Omega‘s omniscient narrator provides a running commentary offering an interpretation of the characters and events we witness, thereby provoking us to raise further questions about them. The first caption tells us, “Some unforeseen factor interrupts the orderly flow of events, and without warning, a finely-tuned organism erupts in discord, violence.” In other words, Omega existed in a state of peace and order, which was suddenly disrupted by something–the robots’ attack–beyond his control. Not only do his enemies indulge in violence, but Omega must also turn violent in order to stop them. Although violence is a familiar, perhaps essential element of the superhero genre, Gerber and Skrenes nonetheless continually question the use of violence in their Omega series. In this opening scene, Omega may need to employ violence to defend himself, but the “finely tuned” is nonetheless thrown into “discord” by using it.

But why refer to Omega as an “organism,” rather than as a person? Gerber and Skrenes are distancing their narrator–and us–from both Omega and the action, encouraging us to adopt an analytic perspective–not unlike that of Omega and James-Michael, as we shall soon see.

Atop page two, as Omega hurtles at the robots, as the caption tells us, “The mind searches furiously for a key to it all: what is it? What went wrong? Why? How?” As noted, Gerber and Skrenes deny the readers such keys to the series, forcing them to hypothesize their own.

The narrator continues, “The body, meanwhile, does what it must, to survive!” as we see Omega smashing some of the robots with his superhuman strength. Notice that the narrator describes Omega’s body as if it operates independently of his mind.

That mind is portrayed as questioning and analyzing, while the body is driven by the primal need to survive, which animals share. That is an emotion, and, as we shall see, both Omega and James-Michael have analytical minds that usually seem disconnected from their capacities for emotion. One of Gerber’s recurring themes is that of the human being who distances himself or herself from certain emotions. Remember that in Gerber’s Man-Thing classic “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man” (see “Comics in Context” #214: “The Essential Steve Gerber”), protagonist Brian Lazarus, despite the terrors that overwhelmed him, believed that he was becoming like a “computer,” unable to connect emotionally with others. The story’s female lead, Sybil Mills, made a habit of suppressing her own capacity for empathy and love. Are the attacking robots, with their inhumanly analytical, emotionless minds meant as metaphorical mirror images of Omega?

Next the narrator describes this black-haired, super-strong costumed alien as “this last of his superior breed.” Did Gerber intend Omega to be a variation on Superman, just as his earlier character Wundarr, from Adventure into Fear #17 (October 1973), more explicitly had been? Omega too will escape to Earth in a spacecraft, although as an adult, and live on his adopted planet as the sole survivor of his race.

Puzzlingly, the narrator then informs us that the “chaos” surrounding Omega is the result of “the pain and the passion and the fire“ (all terms indicating emotions) “to which he alone remains heir.” Do Gerber and Skrenes mean that Omega somehow induced the robots to attempt to destroy him? Or did they intend the robots to be externalized representations of the capacity for violence within Omega himself?

As Omega shoots energy blasts from his hands, the narrator continues, “The energy–the creative force–could be disciplined only so strictly, held seething in check only so long, before it burst forth–ravaging, mindless, uncontrollable.” Gerber and Skrenes seem to be saying that Omega only has a limited ability to discipline and even suppress his capacity for violence, which will inevitably “burst forth,” overwhelming his rational control.

What do Gerber and Skrenes mean by referring to Omega’s energy as “the creative force”? I confess I feel perplexed by this. Does Omega somehow represent the creative artist, whose abilities can either be used constructively or twisted to negative ends?

Omega realizes that there is a solution. He falls to his knees, rendering himself vulnerable to attack, as the omniscient narrator, apparently describing Omega’s thoughts, informs us that “An organism ceases to live when it ceases to grow.” In the next panel a robot blasts Omega with its ray gun. The narrator, unperturbed, goes on: “The element of change, which loomed so terrifying”–like a robot assassin, or death itself?–“was in fact the only hope of salvation.” So as the robot launches a attack on the hero, the narrator invokes a term that could refer to Omega’s fate in the hereafter. “To resist, to dam the flow, to go rigid“–as in repressing emotion?–“was to abandon all hope,” a phrase associated with Dante’s gateway to hell. This sequence closes with a close-up of Omega screaming in pain, as the narrator tells us that Omega must “wait for the ordeal to be over.”

What sort of “growth” and “change” is it that entails an “ordeal” that seems to entail submitting to possible death? Of course, the Joseph Campbell “hero’s journey” involves symbolic–or even real–deaths and resurrections. In submitting to the robot’s attack, Omega may be crossing a Campbellian threshold from his old life through actual or metaphorical death into a new sort of existence.

This sequence also reminds me of the climax of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a decade and a half later (and if you haven’t read it, skip the rest of this paragraph). Responsible for the death of his son, and incapable of change (in conventional terms, anyway), Morpheus allows himself to be slain in punishment. A new embodiment of Dream, a young boy, takes his place. Gaiman depicts the new Dream ambiguously: the new Dream is simultaneously Daniel, a human boy who has been elevated to this supernatural status, and is the old Dream reborn under what is termed another “aspect.” What coincidental relevance might this have to Omega?

Gerber, Skrenes and Mooney segue from the close-up of Omega screaming to the panel that introduces James-Michael Starling, in the exact same pose, wearing the exact same facial expression, “shouting,” as the narrator tells us that “the agony,” meaning Omega’s, “may span a universe.” James-Michael awakes, but cannot remember his dream apart from the “feeling” of “cold and “desolation.” But the implication is that through that dream James-Michael saw and perhaps somehow experienced what just happened to Omega. The series will explicitly confirm that James-Michael sees Omega in his dreams. So, at the very least, there is a psychic bond linking them.

But is there more than that? If James-Michael sees Omega in his dreams, is it possible that James-Michael somehow “dreamed” Omega into existence? Were Gerber and Skrenes commenting on the way that young boys imagine themselves to be the superheroes they read about in comics? Is Omega a projection of James-Michael’s fantasies of the ideal hero?

Certainly there are similarities between Omega and James-Michael. Omega is the last of his kind, and therefore has presumably been leading a solitary existence. James-Michael has been living in a home in the mountains with his parents, who have home schooled him. He says he has met other children, but they “bored” him. Hence, apart from his parents, James-Michael has likewise led a solitary life.

But now James-Michael’s parents are leaving the mountains and moving to New York, and they insist that he attend school there. His father tells him, “You must begin to interact with other children. . .meet other kinds of people. . . .” (With his black hair and glasses, James-Michael’s father looks something like Omega disguised as Clark Kent.) Later his mother asks him, “But the prospect of facing the unknown–learning, growing–don’t you find that exciting?” There’s that notion of growing, again. Omega and James-Michael each resists the idea of changing until outside factors abruptly alter his peaceful status quo.

James-Michael is precociously intelligent, and speaks in a formal, adult manner. As we shall see, like Omega he has an analytical intellect that is divorced from his capacity for emotion. In nearly her last words, James-Michael’s mother tells him, “The intellectual needn’t exist in scholarly isolation.” James-Michael may be only a boy, but Gerber and Skrenes seem to be signaling that he also represents the cerebral adult who cuts himself off from social interaction or experiences beyond his own, safe ivory tower. Remember that Brian Lazarus was a writer who lived alone.

James-Michael’s mother advises him, “Open up, James Michael. Your life is just beginning.” Gerber and Skrenes put that entire last sentence in bold lettering. I wonder if they might have intended it to be not just figuratively but literally true. There is no proof in the comics that James-Michael existed before that moment he woke up screaming like Omega. James-Michael may recall leading his life before that, but how can we be certain that those memories are real?

The narrator told us that the serene state in which Omega lived changed abruptly due to “some unforeseen factor.” You could describe what next happens to James-Michael the same way. A truck collides with the Starling family’s car. James-Michael revives to see the severed head of his mother, who turns out to be a robot. She warns him not to listen to “the voices,” and then her head melts into metal sludge before his eyes. The deaths of parental figures play a role in many superhero origin stories, but this is one of the weirdest and most horrifying.

Presumably James-Michael’s “father” was also a robot who met a similar fate, though, perhaps significantly, Gerber and Skrenes never show us the father’s remains. Is it possible that he was not a robot and survived? Is it possible that the mother who was in the car was human and survived, and left a robot duplicate of her head with her unconscious son. But why would they abandon James-Michael like this? And if James-Michael’s “parents” really were both robots, who were his real parents? Or didn’t he have any parents?

The newly orphaned James-Michael is understandably unable to cope mentally with the horror, and hs “body succumbs to its state of shock“; again, Gerber points to a disconnect between a character’s mind/logic and his body/emotions. “One reality recedes, another takes its place, equally grim, equally horrifying,” the narrator states, as the scene shifts from James-Michael to Omega. Is the narration implying that James-Michael and Omega share the same consciousness, which has just shifted from James-Michael’s world to Omega’s? (Think of Desmond in the February 28, 2008 episode of Lost, “The Constant,” in which his consciousness shifts between two different locations in time and space.)

James-Michael saw flames rise from the scene of his automobile accident. On Omega’s world “Here, too, columns of flame shoot skyward.” Throughout the original series, Omega and James-Michael’s lives repeatedly parallel each other in various ways. Forced to leave his homeworld, Omega has figuratively become an orphan like James-Michael. Both have unwillingly embarked on journeys to a strange new place, which, in both cases, turns out to be New York City.

The story again segues from a close-up of Omega to a close-up of James-Michael, as he awakens in he Barrow Clinic in New York City. Here he is attended by a nurse, Ruth Hart, whom attentive Marvel readers of the 1970s would recognize as the girlfriend of Gerber’s fictional surrogate, Richard Rory from Man-Thing. Although James-Michael was “thrashing” in his sleep, once he wakes up he is abnormally “calm” and “analytical.” Moreover, whereas a normal boy would be anguished over losing his parents, James-Michael seems to be almost indifferent to their deaths. He is capable of feeling emotion, as his dreams demonstrate, but in his waking life he seems cut off from his own feelings.

The solitary James-Michael also refuses to talk to Ruth, who confesses to clinic head Dr. Barrow that she has difficulty “relating” to people. Nonetheless, since Dr. Barrow is unable to keep James-Michael in the clinic as a charity case, Ruth agrees to let him live at the apartment she shares with her roommate Amber Grant.

Amber is a wonderful character: feisty, funny, liberated and sexy, she immediately hits it off with James-Michael and becomes his mentor in the ways of the world. (Is it a coincidence that Amber is originally depicted with the same color hair as James-Michael’s mother?) She’s such a good character that it’s surprising that, as far as I know, Marvel has not used her since the original Omega storyline, even though her job as a freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle could easily lead to appearances in Spider-Man and other series. In these dark and dismal times for the superhero genre, though, it may be a blessing in disguise for a character to remain safely in obscurity, lest one of today’s writers subject her to fates like rape, mutilation, madness, and murder.

When Amber first meets James-Michael, he is playing chess with himself. “I can’t play chess alone anymore,” Amber tells him. “I keep anticipating the other me’s next move before I turn the board around.”

James-Michael responds, “It’s easier. . .when you feel like two people all the time, anyway.” Aha. The divided self is one of the great themes of the superhero genre, with such famous examples as Clark Kent and Superman or Bruce Banner and the Hulk. You don’t have to have a literal secret identity to relate to the idea that there are different sides to your personality, as Amber indicates.

When James-Michael talks about feeling “like two people,” Amber replies, “Yeah, I can dig that. The voices get pretty loud sometimes, don’t they?” James-Michael becomes excited that she too hears the “voices.” James-Michael may indeed be “hearing” voices in his mind, as the story has previously indicated, whereas Amber is speaking figuratively. Presumably she is referring to the subconscious mind. Again Gerber and Skrenes are pointing out that the fact that certain characters in the superhuman genre literally have multiple selves is a metaphor for the multiple aspects of any person’s psyche.

So James-Michael and Amber have something in common, and they quickly bond. Not only that, but meeting Amber has aroused another sensation in the 12-year old James-Michael, on the verge of puberty: “Who is she?. . .Why does he feel. . .ever so slightly. . .aglow?”

His reverie is interrupted when one of the robots from his dreams invades his bedroom. In the manner of comic book robots, it talks aloud to itself: “Unmistakably the correct target. Yet it has altered its proportions. Smaller. . .more compact. . . .”

This is close as Gerber and Skrenes come in the series to explicitly defining the connection between Omega and James-Michael. The robots’ target, obviously, has been Omega. This robot identifies James-Michael as Omega, albeit in “smaller” form. In other words, James-Michael is Omega in a different form.

Yet the adult Omega immediately arrives and battles the robot, who notes, “Re-evaluation is called for.” The adult Omega and the child James-Michael exist simultaneously.

Yet they still seem to be, somehow, the same person in separate forms. There is another key passage in the next issue, in which Amber and James-Michael walk by Omega, who is wearing ordinary Earth clothing (and is unrecognized by the boy). “Grow up to look like that,” Amber tells James-Michael, “and I’ll forget my position on monogamy and marry you!” James-Michael is bewildered, asking, “Merely because I would resemble that man?” There we have it: Omega looks like an adult version of James-Michael.

Maybe the resemblance could be explained if James-Michael were Omega’s son, somehow displaced through time and space. But Gerber and Skrenes seem to be pointing in a different direction.

I wonder if Omega is Gerber and Skrenes’ variation on the original Captain Marvel. The child Billy Batson can magically transform into the super-powered adult hero Captain Marvel, who presumably looks like Billy all grown up. (In the original stories he cannot simultaneously exist in his Billy and Captain Marvel forms, although in Jeff Smith’s recent Shazam series, they can in certain circumstances.)

Gerber and Skrenes may supply another hint in issue 3 when they introduce Freddie, a crippled boy who heroically hits the supervillain Electro in the shin with his crutch, giving Omega the opportunity to defeat him. One of the original Captain Marvel’s allies is the crippled boy Freddy Freeman, who can magically transform into the superhero Captain Marvel Jr.

Let’s return to the final pages of issue 1. As Omega battles the robot, James-Michael, watching, “feels” a “cold, calculated loathing“ “as though it were his own“: “And yet, it is not his own. . .and yet, it is. . . .” James-Michael must be sharing Omega’s “loathing” of the robot, just as he feels the same pain that the robot inflicts on the costumed adult. (It’s like the title characters of Alexandre Dumas’ 1845 novella The Corsican Brothers, who share an empathic bond. Remember, too, how the Man-Thing’s empathic power enables him to feel the emotions of others.) James-Michael’s analytical mind is bewildered by this unexpected emotion. Finally, James-Michael unleashes energy blasts from his hands, just as Omega can, destroying the robot, and leaving burn marks on his hands resembling the Greek letter omega! If Omega and James-Michael are somehow the same person, these connections make more sense.

In the opening pages of issue 4 the narration makes clear that Omega does not know why he feels compelled to remain on Earth when he could leave in his spaceship at any time. (Indeed, of all the planets in the cosmos, why did Omega come to Earth if not for James-Michael’s presence there?) But the series repeatedly shows that Omega feels a responsibility to protect James-Michael. Why? Does Omega subconsciously sense a fatherly obligation to shield his younger counterpart from harm?

In the opening pages of issue 1, the narrator told us that “An organism ceases to live when it ceases to grow,” and that “the element of change” was “the only hope of salvation.” Had the adult Omega “ceased to grow” so he somehow triggered the creation of a new, younger self–James-Michael? It’s as if, instead of sending his son to Earth, Superman’s father Jor-El was himself reincarnated as a child on Earth. Was that the “change” that Omega found necessary?

In issue 2 James-Michael and Omega each finds a place to live in the dangerously downscale Manhattan neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen. (This was years before Frank Miller turned Hell’s Kitchen into the main locale for Daredevil or its subsequent gentrification.) In general, in each story what happens to Omega somehow parallels what happens to James-Michael.

This hall of mirrors effect extends to other characters, as well. In the second issue James-Michael encounters Bruce Banner, who transforms into the Hulk and battles Omega. Banner/Hulk, of course, is a prime case of duality in the superhero genre, having two physical forms, one an emotionally repressed intellectual and the other embodying uncontrollable power. So it is very appropriate that the Hulk is the first guest star in the Omega series.

The original Omega series abruptly ended in issue 10 with a shocking cliffhanger (spoiler alert through the end of this paragraph), as Omega was gunned down by police. Steven Grant’s wrap-up of the Omega saga in Defenders cleverly connected the dots to solve the mysteries in a way that was true to the letter of the series but not its spirit. For example. he established that Omega and James-Michael were separate beings, artificially created by those alien robots. Omega really was dead (although he had easily survived a bullet to the head in issue 6!). James-Michael, unable to contain the “uncontrollable” Omega energies, went into an insane rage but finally incinerated himself rather than harm his friend Dian. (It’s rather like the later “Dark Phoenix Saga” ending, isn’t it?) For readers who cared about Gerber and Skrenes’ two protagonists, this was surely unsatisfactory and depressing.

In 2005, after Marvel announced that Lethem would be writing the new Omega series, Gerber wrote in his blog that “Omega was one of only two series from my early days at Marvel that I really did care about in a personal way. The other, of course, was Howard the Duck.” He explained that “Much of Omega‘s content was derived from personal experience, both mine and Mary’s. We drew heavily on our own childhoods for aspects of James-Michael’s story and on observation of our neighborhood – Hell’s Kitchen in New York, circa 1975 – for the setting of the book.”

Gerber was infuriated that Marvel planned to have someone other than himself and Skrenes revive Omega. His anger at Lethem subsided after he and Skrenes were put in contact with him. Gerber stated that “As best I can tell, Jonathan is a very nice guy who was acting with the best of intentions.” and that Lethem “claims he was unaware of my history with Marvel, including the lawsuit over Howard the Duck, until the present incident arose; I choose to believe him.”

But I find this disturbing. In the world of corporate comics, it seems that often it does not even occur to editors or writers that maybe the original writer of a property should get first crack at working on a revival. Or that it would be unwise for the company to alienate important creators from its past. Yet I know of case after case in which comics writers are slighted in this fashion. Didn’t Lethem ever wonder what Gerber and Skrenes would think of his writing the series they originated?

Despite making peace with Lethem, Gerber still contended “that writers and artists who claim to respect the work of creators past should demonstrate that respect by leaving the work alone — particularly if the original creator is still alive, still active in the industry, and, as is typically the case in comics, excluded from any financial participation in the use of the work.”

How workable would such a policy be? Should every Batman story have to receive the approval of Bob Kane’s widow? On the other hand, DC Comics doesn’t allow anyone to do new stories with Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus or commission sequels to Watchmen or V for Vendetta, even though Alan Moore is unlikely to work for DC ever again. (Sometimes, though, I wonder if some future DC administration will decide to do a Watchmen sequel or new Sandman series about Morpheus without the original creators. And I would bet that there would be writers lining up to work on them, while professing admiration for Gaiman and Moore.)

Gerber publicly proposed that Lethem “simply retitle the story and rename the characters”: “Make the book your own, and I’ll have nothing to complain about”. Lethem’s series is still titled Omega the Unknown, but whether because of Gerber’s request or not, he has renamed other characters: for example, the boy protagonist is called Alex, and his nurse is Edie. I would be unhappy if Lethem’s Omega is meant to supplant Gerber and Skrenes’ version in Marvel’s official continuity. But perhaps the use of different names means that Lethem intends these to be different characters than the original cast, and that history is now mysteriously repeating itself with variations.

I’ve only read the first four issues of the Lethem Omega so far, so it’s still too early to judge what he intends to do with the concept. So far, however, I am disappointed. The new version lacks the original’s rich subtext of metaphors, its psychological complexity, and its vivid characterizations and dialogue.

But I am grateful that Lethem’s revival of Omega redirected my attention to Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes’ original version, which impresses me far more today than it did when I read it over thirty years ago. As Lethem described it at the 2007 New Yorker Festival, the original Omega does indeed seem like a potentially great work, left in a fragmented state. And “the Omega flap,” as Gerber called it, reminds me that Steve Gerber’s legacy to American comic books is not simply his collection of memorable characters and stories, but also his pioneering work throughout his career fighting for comics creators’ rights.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

Inevitably when I write about the late Steve Gerber’s most celebrated comics series, I feel I have to make the following statement. Yes, most people only know Howard the Duck from the dreadful 1986 movie adaptation, which is one of the most notorious disasters in Hollywood history. Yet Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck comics series was one of the most brilliant achievements in the medium of its time.

Introduced by writer Gerber and artist Val Mayerik in the Man-Thing story in Adventure into Fear #19 (December 1973), Howard immediately captured the imaginations of Marvel readers, and of Gerber, as well. The duck won his own backup series in Giant-Size Man-Thing, and soon graduated to his own comic book, which was a tremendous, if short-lived, hit.

Though he was a bad-tempered talking duck, like Donald and Daffy, Howard was also a cleverly conceived variation on the type of Marvel hero pioneered by Stan Lee. If Spider-Man felt alienated from society, Howard’s situation was even worse. Displaced from his otherdimensional world of talking waterfowl, Howard was marooned on the world of humans, or “˜hairless apes,” as he called them. According to his series’ catchphrase, Howard was “trapped in a world he never made.”

In his book Disguised as Clark Kent, Danny Fingeroth explores how Jewish-American comics writers’ sense of being outsiders informed the superhero series they wrote (see “Comics in Context” #200, 201, 202, 203, 204). Gerber shared this background and Howard is the ultimate outsider. Wherever he went, Howard encountered startled humans who disbelievingly exclaimed, “You–you’re a duck!” as if Howard was not already well aware of the fact. In other words, everyone he encounters reminds Howard that he is not like them. The principal exception is his companion Beverly Switzler, who accepts and loves Howard, despite the difference in their species.

Moreover, Howard is a talking duck, like those we see in animated cartoons and comics in our childhood, who has been transplanted into a world of adult humans. I suspect that Howard represents our inner child, thrust into the world of adulthood. As such, he had special relevance for Baby Boomers who continued reading comics as they grew into adults, shifting away from the innocence of children’s comics into material for more mature audiences.

Whereas so many humor comics produced by the mainstream comics companies for this maturing audience were second or third-rate imitations of Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD, Gerber’s Howard the Duck was a superb ongoing satire on various comics genres, American culture, politics, and even the human condition. Confronted by nonsense all about him, Howard vented his feelings through his favorite expletive, a quacking sound transcribed as “Wauugh!” which could express exasperation, dismay, anger, fury, and even despair. That last emotion might be surprising in a “funny animal” comic, but Howard was a funny animal comic aimed at discerning adults, and through comedy it dealt with many if the same themes that Gerber explored in his genre melodramas like Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown.

One test of great satire is its longevity. Will a satire on topical events and issues still be relevant, meaningful and funny years later to a new generation of readers? I decided to see for myself. In Howard’s most celebrated storyline, he ran for president in 1976 against real life candidates, incumbent president Gerald Ford and the eventual winner, Jimmy Carter. Marvel’s Essential Howard the Duck Vol. 1 paperback enables new audiences to read Gerber’s entire original run on the series, including the presidential campaign. Will the storyline hold up, over thirty years later?

The election story arc begins in Howard the Duck #7, cover-dated December 1976, although the issue came out months before the November election). But Gerber had to spend the first part of the issue wrapping up the story he began in the previous issue. So let’s start with the beginning of that storyline in Howard the Duck #6 (November 1976, the first monthly issue), “The Secret House of Forbidden Cookies!”

Part of Gerber’s modus operandi on Howard was to parody other genres in comics and popular fiction: hence, Howard the Duck #1 burlesqued sword and sorcery. This time the target is the Gothic romance, and so, of course, it begins in a dark and stormy night. Following the Joseph Campbell monomyth pattern, the story starts out with our protagonist, Howard, and his companion Beverly at a low point. Having embarked on that particularly American form of quest, the road trip, Howard and Beverly have been reduced to hitchhiking in a torrential rainstorm. The lone passing motorist on the road at that time of night might have given Beverly a ride, but he panicked upon seeing her companion, reacting as if he’d seen a monster out of, yes, a Gothic horror novel: “It–it’s hideous–inhuman–not a man at all.” In other words, it’s a duck. The driver would have killed Howard and Beverly had they not leapt inside–into the mud. Beverly, usually the more optimistic of the two, postulates that the driver “lost control” of the car. Howard, more cynical about human attitudes towards him, is sure that the driver intended to kill them. And this is far from the last attempt on his life in the course of these four issues.

But then Beverly understandably turns distraught, and she and Howard reverse roles. Now he is the optimist, assuring her that “somebody is bound to come along.” But right now their situation resembles a wetter version of Waiting for Godot. Furious at Howard for getting them into their plight (and giving him a good kick), Beverly turns to hyperbole (“Nobody’ll ever use this road again!”) and evokes a fate worse than death. “We’ll have to eat each other to survive!” she asserts, not explaining just how they could manage to simultaneously devour one another. “That’d be understandable in the Andes,” Beverly says, grappling with the ironically humdrum nature of their predicament, “but not in the Poconos!”

Their plight is ridiculous, yet suddenly Gerber and Colan succeed in making it affectingly real. Fed up with the turmoil of her life since she met Howard, Beverly leaves him. Her parting words are “I can’t tolerate your stubbornness or petty fits of rage anymore!” That could be a line from an entirely serious story about lovers breaking up. Howard’s reaction is both credible and nuanced. At first, emotionally devastated, he seeks to placate her by hesitatingly agreeing with her decision (“if that’s what ya really want“) and admitting his faults (“I can’t deny I’m hell to live with”), perhaps in the hope that his concessions will change her mind. But Howard is too brokenhearted to adhere to his strategy, and suddenly calls out after her. She answers, but this time her anger triggers Howard’s temper, and he literally turns his back on her.

Frank Brunner drew Howard’s initial solo stories, but to my mind Gene Colan is Howard’s foremost artist. From the first time I saw his work, I’ve admired Gene Colan’s handsomely realistic style, which surely owes a debt to the great American illustrators. Yet he also draws Howard with the proper cartooniness. What amazes me about his work on Howard the Duck is that he somehow seamlessly blends the cartooniness of the duck and the naturalism of the people and backgrounds into a credible whole, so that you can believe that Howard and Beverly exist in the same world.

Beyond that, Gerber’s Howard the Duck provided opportunities for Colan to demonstrate his ability to make the characters he drew “act.” In the aforementioned breakup sequence, Colan captures the shifts in Howard’s emotions from sympathy over Beverly’s despair to irritation to being stunned when she says she’s leaving him to a look of vulnerability with a hint of desperation, to his final angry resignation, captured in both the look in his eyes and his body language.

Wandering through the rain, Beverly eventually reaches the archetypal Gothic mansion in the middle of nowhere, where she is mistaken for the new governess, a role played by Gothic heroines from Jane Eyre to Dark Shadows‘ Victoria Winters. Having, in effect, walked into a Gothic novel, the exhausted Beverly accepts the role that is assigned to her (“Oh, heck–why not? Anything that’ll get me in the door!”).

The next morning Howard awakens to the latest variation on Gerber’s “You’re a duck!” trope. This time he is found by Reverend Joon Moon Yuc and his young followers, the “Yucchies,” who regard Howard as a “devil-duck,” a creature of Satan, and a sign that “the last days” are upon them. Reverend Yuc and his followers are parodies of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who moved to the United States in 1971, and the members of his Unification Church, called the “Moonies.” Reverend Moon is no longer as prominent in the news as he was in the 1970s, but Reverend Yuc and the Yucchies still work as parodies of religious cultists and fanatics.

Professing to be “a servant of the Lord,” Reverend Yuc abandons his feigned humility a few panels later, asserting that he knows the will of God. “My word is as the Lord’s,” he declares, and he begins to lead his acolytes in praying to God “to strike this creature dead with a bolt from heaven!” Howard gulps nervously, doubtless fearing what will happen if lightning does not strike and the Reverend decides to take divine vengeance into his own hands.

Who would be the contemporary counterpart of Reverend Yuc? I am reminded of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s infamous agreement that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were God’s punishment on America for harboring feminists, gays, and pro-abortion activists.

In bringing Reverend Yuc onstage, Gerber has not diverged from this issue’s overall satiric theme. Reverend Yuc fills the role of the fanatical clergyman who leads the witch hunt (like the Reverend Trask in Dark Shadows), and the Yucchies are his congregation.

Luckily, the Yucchies are diverted from attempting to destroy Howard by the arrival of a bearded horseman in period dress, Heathcliff Rochester (whose names reference the brooding leading men of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre), who turns out to be a representative of the Seven Gables real estate company (in a shout out to Nathaniel Hawthorne). Having apparently been misinformed as to the name of his prospective client, Rochester addresses Howard as “Reverend Duck.” Like Beverly, Howard accepts the proffered role, which at least enables him to escape Reverend Yuc’s clutches.

Meanwhile, Beverly and her new pupil. Patsy, are having breakfast at opposite ends of the typical long table in the mansion’s typically immense dining room, forcing them to shout in order to hear each other. Patsy’s mad mother (another allusion to Jane Eyre, and other Gothic and romantic works) alerts her that the local villagers are charging up the hill to destroy her. (Rochester later explains that they regard Patsy as “some sort of witch.”) Beverly comments that it reminds her of Frankenstein “with a few contemporary touches”: the leader wears a hard hat, and they’ve brought a crane with a wrecking ball to demolish the mansion. To protect the house, Rochester unleashes the hounds, who proceed to trample Howard in pursuing the villagers.

Watching this, Beverly initially reacts with concern for Howard and rushes out to him, before remembering they had split up and striking an appropriately defiant pose. Mirroring her anger, Howard launches into an inner monologue in thought balloons: “Why should I care if I never see her again? What possible mutual attraction could rationally exist between a duck and–that? It defies every law of nature!” Howard continually faces bigotry from the humans he encounters; now he is giving in to anti-human prejudice against Beverly.

But then Beverly provides him with an opening (“I’m not inflexible. I might be persuaded. . .or charmed. . .”), and Howard immediately seizes it (“On the other hand, I’ve never felt constrained to follow convention”) and rushes into the equally overjoyed Beverly’s arms. Howard’s anger and even anti-human bigotry towards Beverly were merely defense mechanisms for coping with the pain of her rejection. As they hug, Howard thinks, “How could this be wrong–or insane–when it feels so good?” Absurd as the relationship between a woman and a talking duck may be on the surface, this scene is surprisingly moving. Through it Gerber has mounted a touching defense of any unconventional form of love. Readers may choose to interpret the bond between Howard and Beverly as a metaphor for whatever kind of relationship they like. As both Beverly and Howard weep with joy, he tells her, “I know how it goes. Love is strange, an’ all that!”

Howard and Beverly return to the mansion, where Reverend Yuc and his witch-hunting cultists soon arrive to “exorcise” the mansion. Patsy leads everyone to (where else?) the mansion’s tower room, which contains equipment out of a Frankenstein movie and an ominous, enormous figure concealed beneath a sheet. Patsy contends that she is “just baking cookies” and “this whole set-up is nothing more than a glorified Suzy Homemaker oven!” Gerber has hit upon a sharp satiric idea here, comparing the archetypal mad scientist creating his monster to a child baking cookies or playing with dolls. A little girl will pretend that her Barbie doll is real, and Dr. Frankenstein brings his own “plaything” to life. And so this issue concludes with Patsy, defying the “ignorant, unscientific rabble” in the best mad scientist tradition, pulling the archetypal lever, and bringing to life–her gigantic Gingerbread Man! (This, by the way, is eight years before the 1984 movie Ghostbusters and its colossal Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.)

Gerber quickly winds up this storyline within the first five pages of the following issue. Howard has a knack for pursuing different strategies than you might expect from the conventional genre hero. Faced with the enormous walking Gingerbread Man, Howard reasons that “It can’t eat us—if we eat it first!” and begins “ruthlessly chomping” through the creature’s leg. Soon thereafter the Gothic mansion, like Rebecca‘s Manderlay and Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, has gone up in smoke, and Howard and Beverly resume their road trip to the Big Apple.

They get a ride from country western singer Dreyfuss Gultch, a country singer who has been invited to sing the National Anthem at the convention for a third political party, called (get this) the All-Night Party. Gerber had obviously noticed how presidential campaigns enlist popular singers to perform at rallies and conventions, using country singers to appeal to the South.

Beverly asks Gultch if he can get them jobs at the convention, and he complies, although not from a sense of charity: Gerber and Colan visually make it plain that when he offers to do a favor for “such an exceptional pair as you,” he’s not thinking of Howard and Beverly, but of Beverly’s decolletage.

Beyond Gultch’s leering, Gerber continues to make a point of the sexism underlying the male-dominated world of politics. He gets Beverly a job as “Bev, your hospitality girl,” complete with miniskirted costume. “How’s that sound?” she asks Howard, “Like a come-on,” he replied, and indeed, by evening she’s been pinched so much she can’t sit down. Gultch gets Howard a job as a security guard, but when he reports for duty, his superior has a female employee on his lap.

So here are Howard and Beverly in newly assigned roles once again, and Howard’s might seem an unlikely fit. “You know I’m uncomfortable as an authority figure,” he tells Beverly, who knows better: “That’s what they all say–till they put on the uniform! You revel in that sense of power–and you know it.” Howard mulls this over, reflecting, “Sure, even on my world folks costumed themselves to achieve or reinforce a sought-after self-image. . . !” That’s interesting phrasing Gerber used, describing a guard’s uniform as if it were a superhero costume. But that’s something that is important to understand about costumes in the superhero genre: they are like uniforms that people wear in real life to convey an impression of authority. You could say that policemen put on costumes in order to fight crime. Moreover, in general people create a “self-image” through the clothes they choose to wear.

Dismissing the idea that clothes make the duck, Howard tells himself, “ya don’t immediately internalize–“ presumably meaning the image projected by a uniform. Waterfowl, know thyself! Garbed as an authority figure, Howard starts acting the part, imposing common sense solutions on the quarreling politicians he encounters. He has “internalized” his new role, after all.

First Howard wanders into a committee meeting, where a conservative is insisting that “This is the real world–where the Russkies will kill their own people in the name of national security! Our intelligence agencies must have the same freedom to operate. . . .” What, to kill our own people in the name of national security, that all-purpose rationale? A liberal rebuts him, declaring that “our men in mufti deserve our support” (as if anticipating the standard early 21st century rhetorical boilerplate about “supporting the troops”) but contending that “we cannot stoop to condone assassination. . . .” That’s a strong stand that the liberal immediately undercuts by adding, “except in self-defense!”, another all-purpose excuse. Gerber was writing this scene in 1976 about the Cold War, but with just a few alterations it could be a 2008 debate about terrorism between a hard-line right-winger favoring torture “in the name of national security” and a liberal who blusters about human rights but still lets the administration violate them at will.

Exasperated, Howard asks the committee members, “Any of you turkeys know anything about intelligence?” “Not firsthand,” one admits, as if he were in 2008 talking about alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Later, Howard breaks up an actual physical fight between delegates for presidential candidate Wauldrap (with two “a’s”) and delegates for the rival candidate Wauldrop (with one “a” and an “o”) over who will vote for whom on the third ballot. Gerber was writing about when ballots taken at the Democratic and Republican conventions determined who their presidential candidate would be. After the 1970s one candidate from each of the two parties had accumulated enough delegates in the primaries that his nomination was a foregone conclusion going into the convention. But Gerber’s sequence turns out not to be dated. after all, inasmuch as political commentators have lately been predicting that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton will have enough delegates before the convention to win on the first ballot. So the political horse-trading that Gerber mocks here will play a role in the 2008 Democratic convention. And, of course, there are few policy differences between Clinton and Obama: in that sense they are the Wauldrap and Wauldrop of the 21st century.

Despite his characteristic desire not to get involved, Howard heroically saves Wauldrop (the one with the “o”) from being killed by a bomb planted on the convention floor (“I can’t knowingly let even a politician die!”). Gerber was doubtlessly thinking of the political assassinations of the 1960s, but now this sequence will make readers think of the current threat of terrorist attacks. Wauldrop understandably resigns as the All-Night Party’s presidential candidate, and Gultch nominates their new hero Howard to take his place. And if some individuial singlehandedy thwarted a terrorist attack at a national poliical convention in real life, wouldn’t there be a move afoot to promote him for political office?

It’s interesting that, as much as Howard agonizes over making decisions, and as much as he wants to avoid getting involved in other people’s trouble, when someone presents him with a new role to fill in life, whether it’s a reverend or a guard or President of the United States–he passively, unenthusiastically goes along with it. It’s as if he’s drifting through life, taking whatever opportunities present themselves. “I guess I got nothin’ planned between now and November,” Howard says, “but–“ No buts. Howard didn’t say no, and he is nominated by acclamation. Thus a political legend is born.

Recall that in Gerber’s story about the life of Darrel Daniel in Man-Thing #5 and 6 (1974), Darrel reacted to the assassination of Robert Kennedy during the 1968 presidential campaign by deciding to become a clown, to try to make people laugh again. The assassinations of the 1960s must have haunted Gerber, as well, but in Howard the Duck #8 (January 1977) he blows the threat up to absurd propottions. Rival assassins kill one another for the chance to assassinate the duck, and a street in Greenwich Village turns into a sort of shooting gallery as Howard and Bev make their escape in Gultch’s bulletproof limousine.

Mind you, according to Howard’s campaign manager, G. Q. Studley (whose name denotes a preoccupation with fashionable images), the fact that “Howard’s assassination quotient” is higher than the Democratic and Republican candidates for president is a plus: “it means that people care!” There’s nothing dated about Gerber’s satire on professional political consultants like Studley, who insists that candidates recite “nice, safe, pre-tested bromidic bombasts,” which were “compiled by out expert equivocators.” Howard contemptuously bites Studley on the nose and walks out to conduct his campaign his own way.

Gerber and Colan segue to a newscast by a familiar-looking anchorman called “Walter Klondike,” who reports on the astonishing success of Howard’s presidential campaign. “According to Klondike, “his relentless candor set him apart at once. In the words of one astonished listener: “˜My God, he’s telling the truth! He’ll be dead in a week!’”

Howard has become a new incarnation of that archetypal American figure, the political outsider who hasn’t been corrupted by the system and who speaks the plain truth. This is a figure of such appeal to Americans that politicians from Eugene McCarthy to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to John McCain to Barack Obama have all presented themselves as this sort of candidate at some point during their careers. Howard is like a Frank Capra hero, only with feathers and without the naivete. And in bad times the American public fervently responds to a candidate who convincingly stands for change from a rotten status quo; Klondike reports that Howard has won “millions” of supporters.

Howard also proves to be a political performance artist who anticipates Michael Moore. (Gerber even has President Ford comment about Howard’s “theatrics.”) For example, to make his point against pollution, Howard “collected a steam-shovelful of non-returnable containers” and dumped them on their manufacturer’s property.

Klondike presents (fictional) comments on the HTD candidacy from the real life 1976 candidates: Jimmy Carter, depicted as a Democrat uncomfortably straddling both sides of the issue, and Gerard Ford, who seems a clueless Republican president. The names may have changed by 2008, but the character types that Gerber pinpoints here are still with us.

What makes Howard decidedly different from other candidates, apart from his species, is that he really isn’t motivated by the lust for power that drives other politicians. Again mixing his media, Gerber inserts a prose transcript of one of Howard’s press conferences, in which he explains that “I didn’t particularly wanna be president of this coast-to-coast funny farm you hairless apes have set up. When they asked me to run, I’d just been hit on the head an’ didn’t really understand what I was agreein’ to.” But as he tells a fat cat lobbyist, “Well, s’pose I toldja I don’t care if I’m elected? That I’d rather lose than sell out to you oily guys with steel brains and exhaust pipe mouths?” Free from personal ambition, Howard’s candidacy has a purity that other politicians don’t match.

In Howard’s press conference, Gerber continues to rework themes that we examined last week in his Man-Thing stories, but from a comedic perspective. Darrel the clown and Brian Lazarus both rejected the rat race of the business world and its goals of material success. Lazarus feared he had lost his capacity for emotion. Darrel found his true vocation in making people laugh in an unhappy world. Howard tells his audience, “you’ve fashioned an emotionally and intellectually sterile culture. . . .If an individual is unwilling to spend his life in the plodding pursuit of possessions, there’s nothing for “˜im to do! The United States is one big dateless Saturday night! If I’m elected, I’m gonna inject a little life back into you anesthetized Americans! For four years this country’s gonna get down an’ boogie, see?” Indeed, the campaign slogan on the real Howard the Duck campaign buttons that Gerber sold in 1976 was “Get down, America!” which also was a sly reference to the candidate’s downy feathers.

In the concluding pages of issue 8, Howard and Beverly run a “gauntlet” of assassination attempts by “special interest” groups. Whether Gerber thought that special interests would really resort to murdering a candidate they opposed, I do not know. I prefer to think of this sequence as employing hyperbole to satirize the lengths to which political “attack machines” will go to figuratively destroy a candidate.

What finally does in Howard’s candidacy is, beneath its comedic aspect, believable indeed, as politicians such as Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and now maybe John McCain could attest: a sex scandal. The media publishes a (faked) photograph of Howard and Beverly taking a bath together.

Exactly why this is so scandalous is left up to the readers. Is it because Howard and Bev aren’t married? Here Gerber is puncturing the hypocrisy of the political world, since he took pains to depict the convention as a hotbed of covert sex. Or is Gerber suggesting that the general public is less open-minded than Howard and Beverly about the unconventional relationship between a human and a waterfowl?

Beneath the bathtub photo, Gerber ran a caption promoting the title of the next issue’s story: “The Bite of the Beaver! (Chomp!)” I confess that in 1976 this reference to vagina dentata went right over my head–and obviously, over the heads of Marvel editorial and the Comics Code as well!

In the next issue, Howard the Duck #9 (Feb. 1977), it turns out that the photo was faked by a hotel bellboy, a fanatical youth who is in the employ of Pierre Dentifris, an even more fanatical foreign mastermind from, of all places, Canada. So Howard and Beverly head up north, where they meet a square-jawed Mountie named Sergeant Preston Dudley, whose name alludes both to Jay Ward’s Dudley Do-Right and to the now nearly forgotten radio and television series, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon (which was–what a small world!–originally produced by George W. Trendle, who also presided over the creation of The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet).

When Howard and company finally encounter Pierre Dentifris, “Canada’s only super-patriot,” he turns out to be a bearded recluse who rants against America and the “way you barbarians invaded and polluted us with your industry, your so-called culture–!” Surely Gerber was satirizing rabidly anti-American foreign critics. But in 2008, I think that Dentifris has a new relevance that Gerber could not have anticipated. Now to me Dentifris looks like a satiric foreshadowing of Osama bin Laden, raving from his isolated hideaway against American culture and employing fanatical youths to carry out his plots against the United States. Dentifris is conducting his own sort of secular jihad against America. Coincidentally, he even takes control of an airplane as part of his scheme; Sgt. Dudley comments that this is “his modus operandi. . .Pierre always uses bellboys and robot planes.”

Ultimately Dentifris, costumed as “Le Beaver,” has a showdown with Howard on a rope suspended over Niagara Falls. And yes, Gerber even makes an allusion (“Slowly he turns. . . .”) to the classic vaudeville routine about Niagara Falls, probably best known to Baby Boomers from the 1944 Three Stooges short Gents without Cents. Once again choosing a rational but unexpected alternative to standard heroic behavior, Howard decides that the fight is stupid and waddles off the rope back to safety, while Le Beaver falls to his apparent demise. (But considering that the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the American one, I’d say that Le Beaver has finally gotten his revenge.)

Howard’s harrowing experiences leave him on the brink of a nervous breakdown, and Howard the Duck #10 (March 1976) consists of an issue-long surrealistic dream sequence which Gerber titled “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Duck,” kidding his own Man-Thing classic. I could easily keep on going analyzing this brilliant series, but this week’s column is long enough, and this is a good place to stop.

So, yes, Gerber’s Howard the Duck not only stands the test of time, but its satire even proves unexpectedly relevant to current events.

In the 1950s and 1960s Walt Kelly’s Pogo ran for President every four years, and over the decades I hoped that Howard would likewise run–or waddle– again for the Presidency, but he never did, Mind you, this would only have worked if Steve Gerber had written the stories. Others have tried, but Howard is so personal a creation that no one but Gerber ever truly captured the character or the feel of his series. Some years back, Gerber wrote a new Howard the Duck miniseries for Marvel’s MAX line, and I worried that, after so many years, he would be unable to recapture the magic of the original. But he did, and the MAX series matched the standards Gerber set in his 1970s Howard stories. One of my only regrets was that Gene Colan didn’t draw the mini-series.

My other regret was that Gerber never did a follow-up Howard series, for reasons I do not know. And now it’s too late.

Its like the new Batman mini-series that Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers were working on when Rogers passed away, and that now will never come to be. It’s disconcerting to think of the stories that could have been done by comics creators who died too early, if only they had been asked when they were still here.

Imagine if Steve Gerber had written about a new Howard presidential run during the Reagan years, or the Clinton administration, or during the regime of George W. Bush? But the point is that we can’t. No one else as yet has fully recreated Gerber’s unique satiric vision.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

Long, long ago, I attempted to persuade my high school English teacher that comics could be a means of serious artistic expression, just like prose fiction or film. She looked at me with disbelief, for this was the 1970s, and in those pre-Internet days, I knew no one who thought that comics could be serious literature. But I was certain that they could, and I brought evidence to my high school teacher to prove my case. Exhibit One was a Man-Thing story written by Steve Gerber, who passed away last week after a lengthy illness.

According to one school of thought, the 1970s was a dreadful decade for Marvel. It is true that in the 1970s most of Marvel’s top tier titles, such as Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man, ran well-intentioned but second or third-rate imitations of Stan Lee’s superhero sagas of the 1960s. But if you knew where to look, the 1970s was an extraordinary innovative period in Marvel history. Away from the flagship titles, a new wave of young writers, their imaginations fired by the great comics of the Silver Age, were taking Marvel and the comic book medium in new directions, putting the stamp of their own creative personalities on genres from superheroes to sword and sorcery to horror and more. There were Roy Thomas’s Conan the Barbarian, Steve Englehart’s Avengers, Captain America and Doctor Strange, Doug Moench’s Master Of Kung Fu, Jim Starlin’s Captain Marvel and Warlock, Don McGregor’s Black Panther and Killraven, Marv Wolfman’s Tomb of Dracula, and the resurrected series that would transform the industry: Len Wein, Dave Cockrum, Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s “new” X-Men.

Of all of the 1970s new wave writers, perhaps Steve Gerber had the most distinctly individual voice. Gerber continued working in comics on and off over the decades, and was writing a new series about DC’s Doctor Fate at the time of his death. But his groundbreaking, most influential work was in the 1970s, when he wrote an eclectic assortment of series for Marvel, including Defenders, Guardians of the Galaxy, Tales of the Zombie, and his co-creation, Omega the Unknown.

Gerber did not create Marvel’s swamp monster, the Man-Thing, but it was he who made the series memorable. Anyone who has subsequently worked on the character has labored in Gerber’s shadow. It was a horror series, but the nature of its title character, a creature lacking human intelligence, gave Gerber the opportunity to shift its focus to the human characters who wandered into the Man-Thing. More than any other mainstream comics series of its day, Gerber’s Man-Thing focused on psychological drama, and not just on individual character studies but on portraits of American society in the 1970s. Other Marvel “new wave” writers gave personal touches and viewpoints to genre stories, but Gerber’s best work of the period was so personal as to verge on the autobiographical, however fictionalized.

Marvel has collected Gerber’s early Man-Thing work in Essential Man-Thing Vol. 1. Looking through this thick paperback, you will see Gerber’s rapid development as a comics writer. By the time the Man-Thing series spun out of Adventure into Fear into a comic book of its own, Gerber had become a master of comics storytelling. This week I am examining two of these tales, which I believe to be enduring classics.

Let’s begin with the two-parter, “Night of the Laughing Dead” and “And When I Died!” from Man-Thing Vol. 1 #5 (May 1974) and 6 (June 1974), drawn by the foremost Man-Thing artist, Mike Ploog, and inked by Frank Chiaramonte.

In the opening pages Man-Thing rises from the waters of the swamp, as if from the subconscious mind, and trudges forward. Gerber’s narration recounts that this monster was once a human scientist, Ted Sallis, whose one little experiment went awry.”

Like Bruce Banner, Sallis was working on a military project, heedless of its potentially destructive consequences: in Sallis’s case, he was working on: recreating the “super-soldier” formula, to create a race of superhuman soldiers for the government. (I wonder what Gerber thought of Marvel’s Civil War, which led to the U. S. government coercing superheroes into its service.) Just as Banner’s gamma bomb turned him into the Hulk, a monstrous embodiment of destructive power, Sallis’s experimental formula transformed him into a nearly mindless swamp creature, a distorted caricature of a superhuman.

Through his Faustian bargain, Sallis forfeited his prized intellect. The Man-Thing is a being of physical power but only primitive consciousness. Gerber was particularly interested in this theme of the disconnect between the mind and the body in contemporary humankind.

Further, as Gerber’s narration informs us, “as if to compensate for all it stole from you, the swamp gave you back an ability mankind lost in its infancy. . .that of psychic empathy.” The Man-Thing is a creature governed by emotions: he senses and even shares the feelings of others and responds to them. Reduced to a minimal level of intellect, the Man-Thing ironically has greater comprehension of the emotions of others than normal human beings do, a kind of empathy that the human Ted Sallis sorely lacked. Gerber’s narrator tells the Man-Thing, “You can feel what others feel. . .You can understand those feelings. . .And the mote of humanness left within you can act on that understanding.”

As the narration tells us this, we see instead another figure trudging forward: a circus clown, who looks utterly miserable. Gerber seems to be suggesting that the Man-Thing will be capable of understanding this clown. Moreover, perhaps Gerber meant for us to identify the Man-Thing with the clown, both pitiable figures walking through the swamp, and both, as we shall see, brought to the bottommost point of human existence. This swamp, “the festering marshland,” as Gerber puts it, is a visual metaphor for a world of despair.

Of course, the image of the weeping clown is a familiar archetype from I Pagliacci and so many other works. But Gerber, as we shall seem went beyond cliché in his handling of the archetype. For one thing, he surprises the reader by having the clown, merely a page after his entrance, commit suicide.

His counterpart in misery, the Man-Thing, is the only creature who hears and responds to the gunshot. As the creature stares at the corpse, Gerber’s narration concisely and affectingly contemplates how much killing there is in the world, for a variety of reasons, “even, incredibly, for. . . pleasure.” The Man-Thing becomes the clown’s sole mourner. Dimly recalling the ritual of funeral, the creature lifts up the clown’s corpse, in Ploog’s macabre variation on the Pieta, and seeks a place to bury him.

No longer capable of reading, the Man-Thing is mystified by the clown’s suicide note: “Laughter is dead, futility!” This may seem at first a cliche. But, again, Gerber moves beyond the obvious. Another of his themes is whether art–not just comedy–offers a means of transcending the sorrows of existence.

The scene shifts to Richard Rory, Gerber’s semi-autobiographical character, and his friend Ruth Hart, who are being hassled by a motel clerk. Reading this scene now is a reminder that society did not always accept the idea of unmarried couples rooming together. There’s another reason that the clerk objects to Rory, whom he sneeringly calls “Joe College.” Rory complains, “I hate people who make “˜education’ sound like a dirty word.” Gerber’s comics did not indulge in the anti-intellectualism of American pop culture.

Soon Rory encounters a circus owner named Garvey, who brutally strikes down a high wire performer named Ayla Prentiss when she insists they go looking for their missing clown. Rory goes to her defense, but this is not a superhero story, and his heroic moment is short-lived: another circus performer, a strongman named Tragg, overpowers him. Ayla accompanies Rory and Hart and tries to persuade them to help her find “my clown,” whose name is Darrel Daniel. “I loved Darrel. . but I betrayed him,” she confesses, and as a result “He stopped laughing. . .stopped living. . .just wanted to die. . . .”

Then Darrel’s spirit, still in clown costume and make-up, appears, first to Ayla, Rory and Hart, and then to Garvey and Tragg, causing the latter two to crash their truck as the spectral clown watches “gleefully.” So here are more familiar archetypes: the vengeful ghost and the scary clown, most famously embodied in comics by the Joker, merged into a single figure.

But Gerber develops the figure of Darrel yet further. As part one of this story ends, the clown’s spirit appears before the cast of characters–Rory, Prentiss, Hart, Tragg, the Man-Thing, too, and Garvey, who joins them in the following issue–and proclaims, as if he is now the circus’s ringmaster, that “we’re going to have a little show, my friends! And you–all of you–are going to be the actors! We’re going to play out the story of my life–and death–with the swamp as our stage–and my soul at the mercy of the critics!”

There are so many tales of ghosts who remain on Earth because of traumatic events in their mortal lives, which they reenact over and over as spirits. Here Gerber combined this idea with the Shakespearean concept of the world as a stage and ourselves as players upon it.

But Gerber goes still further, for at this point his story takes on a metafictional dimension. As a clown, Darrel is a kind of artist, and here he becomes a playwright and director as well, staging the story of his life. It is implied that every man is the author of his life, that each of our lives are works in progress, completed with our deaths, when our lives are judged by any higher powers that may exist. Thus through Darrel’s “play,” Gerber presented a variation on the idea of judgment after death.

When a person dies, his or her fellow human beings look back upon the life of the deceased and judge its value; indeed, this is what we are doing right now in reading and contributing to appreciations of Steve Gerber upon his passing. But even during our lives, we are continually being judged by the people around us. What sort of public impression do we make? How truthfully does it reflect our inner selves?

Furthermore, Darrel the clown is like the author of any work of art that contains personal, even autobiographical themes, and thus, certainly like Steve Gerber himself. The artist creates his work of art out of his ideas, emotions, and elements of his or her own life, and then presents them to the public, to the world at large, his audience and the critics.

It’s interesting that Gerber, then a full time comics writer, should put such emphasis in critics in this story, since back in the 1970s mainstream critics did not write reviews of comics; the only comics “critics” were writing for comic book letter columns (like myself) and early fanzines. But of course, in a sense, everyone in the audience is a critic, who decides whether what he or she sees is good or bad. When the artist creates a work with such personal meaning to him and presents it to the audience, he or she is not only offering the work up for judgment, but himself or herself as well.

So the play of Darrel the clown is a powerful dramatic metaphor, indeed. It begins in the following issue, in which Darrel announces that his “set” will be the circus. Life as a mad circus is another familiar trope, and Gerber would use it again in his final storyline for the original run of Howard the Duck, casting Howard as a clown who fights back against his oppressors.

Darrel explicitly casts the Man-Thing as a visual metaphor: “You, Man-Thing, shall portray my inner demon–the force within me that laced my laughter with bitter tears–and drove me to self-destruction.” The narrator observes that though the Man-Thing cannot comprehend language, “the swamp beast seems to nod.” The Man-Thing comprehends emotions, you see, and feels repelled by evil. Therefore, it is significant that he sides with Darrel, signaling that the clown is not the villain he might seem to readers at this point.

Darrel then transforms his other “actors” into figures from his childhood. Ruth explains that they’re not just playing these characters: “we’re actually going to be these people from Darrel’s past!” As I observed earlier, in ghost stories the specters are often obsessed with repeating events from their past. I am reminded of how in Dark Shadows ghosts sought to mesmerize mortals into thinking themselves to be people from the ghosts’ own mortal lives. Gerber just makes the role-playing metaphor explicit.

Darrel casts Rory in the role of the clown’s boyhood self. Since Rory is considered Gerber’s stand-in, this may suggest that Darrel, too, is to some degree an autobiographical figure, emotionally and psychologically.

Through the clown’s casting of other roles, Gerber makes an acute psychological observation: relationships that one has an adult can mirror those he or she had as a child. Hence Darrel casts the brutal Tragg as “the bully who was my bane in youth,” and Garvey, his cruel boss at the circus, as his insensitive father. Perhaps the real point is that Darrel, consciously or not, perceives Garvey, whom he blames for his suicide, as another father figure who failed him.

In “Act I” of the clown’s play, Darrel the child hints that he wants to go to the circus. His father Milo forbids it and insists on forcing Darrel into a way of life that the boy finds anathema: constantly working to become rich. Milo condemns the circus as “dirty,” “foolishness,” and “fit for animals only.” Since we know that Darrel grew up to be a circus performer, Milo is condemning his son’s creative ambitions. Milo is bent in forcing Darrel into an identity, a role in life, that is not true to the boy’s nature. If the father succeeded in imposing his will on Darrel, he would stifle the boy’s spirit. “I’m not allowed to have fun,” Darrel the boy tells his father. Later, afflicted with self-doubt, the boy wonders, “Nobody else is laughin’–why should I be able to?”

One of Gerber’s recurring themes is his rebellion against society’s attempts to compel everyone into a sterile, soul-destroying conformity. Like many who grew up in the 1960s, Gerber opposed the American mindset that prized monetary success as a measure of personal worth. The boy Darrell bitterly tells his father, “All you know how to do is count your money!”

Darrel becomes so estranged from his father that, as a teenager, he laughs at Milo’s funeral. A psychiatrist diagnoses Darrel as “a tortured soul. obviously in turmoil over a multiplicity of moral and emotional crises.” But, the shrink adds, “this is America–1951! That makes you normal!” Darrel’s sense of alienation thus becomes a malaise afflicting postwar conformist American society.

Darrel reached a turning point in his life on “the day after Robert Kennedy was shot–the day I went looking for a circus.” In 1974 Gerber did not have to explain to his readers that this was the third of the political assassinations of the 1960s–the murders of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King–that shocked and disillusioned Americans. At this low point Darrel embraced his vocation: “I had at last decided what I wanted what I thought the world needed most”–to make people laugh again.

In real life, after working unhappily in advertising, Gerber figuratively joined the circus by moving to New York and becoming a comic book writer, back in the days when mainstream American culture accorded no respect to the comic book medium.

Darrel succeeded for a time in his chosen artform. He won an appreciative audience, perhaps symbolized by the love of his fellow performer Ayla. “It made me feel good about myself for the first time,” the clown declares.

But then Darrel learned that his supposed benefactor, Garvey was coldly exploiting him (You can’t buy laughter,” asserts the clown), and worse, came to believe that Ayla merely pretended to love him on Garvey’s orders. You would expect that this would drive Darrel to despair. But look at the specific form that despair takes: it affects his vision of the world, and therefore his art. “I changed my act–made it evil!” recalls Darrel, to such a degree that Ayla says that it was “frightening the customers.”

In the end, Darrel says, “The act was scaring me, too–showing me a part of myself I hated.” Art had been his salvation; now it was destroying him. “The laughter in me was dead,” which is what his father had wanted. Unable to accept life without laughter or love, the clown killed himself.

Darrel’s ghost had already characterized this play of his life as a “tragedy.” But the three mysterious, hooded critics do not agree. They now cast off their robes and stand revealed as representatives of heaven, hell, “and the realm between.” Speaking as if they were drama (or comics?) critics, they “judge your [Darrel’s] drama –your life–a moral and artistic failure,” accusing him of not showing “sufficient motivation” for his suicide. Claiming he is “neither a good man nor bad” they sentence him to “oblivion.” By coincidence or not, this is reminiscent of the Button-Molder’s scene in Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 play Peer Gynt. Since Peer, too, is adjudged to be worthy neither of heaven nor hell, the unearthly Button Molder decrees that his soul will be melted down like other flawed goods. Although Ibsen leaves Peer’s ultimate fate uncertain, what may save him is the redemptive love of a woman named Solveig.

How does one truly judge the success of a dramatic work of art? Though Brecht might disagree, isn’t one measure the degree to which the audience members identify with the lead character and see themselves reflected in his or her personality? And doesn’t an actor attempt to comprehend the psyche of the character he or she plays? Gerber’s surrogate, Richard Rory, not only portrayed Darrel in his play but “became” Darrel. Moreover, Rory was in a sense an audience member as well, watching the play take place around him. Now he protests the “critics’” decision: “I lived his life! I can vouch for him! His soul doesn’t deserve to perish!”

Moreover, Darrel’s play is still going on: the Man-Thing, still playing his part, “still acting as Darrel’s inner demon,” battles the three “critics.” The Man-Thing has an advantage to playing a part: the narrator informs us that his “empathic nature enabled him, for a time, to become [Darrel’s] soul.” Moreover, the Man-Thing has specifically become Darrel’s “inner demon,” his spirit of rebellion against repression, fighting back against this unjust judgment. The Man-Thing is also an audience member for Darrel’s play; the narrator says that Darrel’s soul “touched” the Man-Thing, as if it were a touching performance.

Characteristically, Gerber, in his narration, dismisses the three unearthly “critics” as “bureaucrats,” as if even the management of the hereafter has become yet another system unresponsive to individuals’ needs.

It it would be a shallow superhero comics cliche if it were the Man-Thing’s sheer brute force that saved Darrel. Instead, as in Peer Gynt, possible redemption comes through a woman’s love for the protagonist. But Gerber’s Ayla is not a moral paragon like Ibsen’s Solveig. Ayla confesses not only her love for Darrel but also her guilt for lacking “the courage to defy Garvey” and to admit her love to Darrel. Remember, she remained silent when Garvey claimed she only pretended to love Darrel, not realizing the clown was eavesdropping; had she told Garvey then and there that she did love Darrel, he would not have fallen into his downward spiral. Now Ayla offers to sacrifice her own soul to the “critics” in exchange for Darrel’s. This is enough to placate the critics, and the judge from heaven signals that Darrel has been redeemed. The clown’s autobiographical drama succeeded by touching the heart of the key member of its audience, Ayla. (And this ending, in which a woman’s sacrifice, motivated by love, saves the seemingly damned hero, reminds me of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.)

Gerber’s narration leaves the other witnesses to Darrel’s play–and the readers–with a chilling warning: “to wonder what sort of drama they will be able to stage when each meets his own circle of critics.” Each of us is the playwright/director of his or her own life.

As Ploog shows the Man-Thing submerging back into the waters of the swamp, Ayla delivers the story’s final lines, memorializing Darrel by asserting “That a man who can inspire laughter. . .and joy. . .is the holiest man of all.” That’s rather over the top, but Gerber’s belief in the importance of laughter and joy is surely the motivating force behind his most celebrated comics series, a comedy about a talking waterfowl.

Gerber reworked and reexamined themes from the clown storyline in a later story with a memorable title: “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man,” with art by John Buscema and Klaus Janson, from Man-Thing Vol. 1#12 (December 1974).

Sensing “the dull, muted agony of a mind in torment,” the Man-Thing is drawn to an abandoned insane asylum, where he sees “a lone man, pale and wan,” unshaven, writing by candlelight, “living on beans and canned meat. . .rarely sleeping, rarely leaving this one tiny room.” It is an archetypal image of the lonely life of the writer, although this one is particularly, self-destructively driven by his inner demons.

This man is named Brian Lazarus, whose Biblical last name suggests that this will be a story of spiritual death and resurrection. But at this point in the story, there is no glimmer of hope.

Darrel the clown’s art turned so “evil” that it frightened even himself. Lazarus is struggling to express himself through his writing, but he is unable to achieve control over his art; “It’s no good–its not right,” he soliloquizes. “No matter how I try, the words just won’t say what I want them to. Or maybe they do–and I just can’t tell anymore!” But Lazarus feels he must continue to try, because writing is his means of defense against a growing pain. “The hurt is afraid of truth,” he declares.

There enters a well-dressed man, who might be a servant, since he has come to escort Lazarus to “them,” yet he calls Lazarus “Brian” and exudes a sinister authority. Lazarus resigns himself to meeting with “them,” and his guide significantly says, “you know you can’t escape them. You don’t even want to, deep down–or you’d never have brought them with you.”

Then the Man-Thing sees Lazarus beset by a horde of figures–all everyday people, but with wild expressions on their faces, tearing at Brian’s clothes, as his head tilts back, eyes bulging in terror, mouth agape in a silent scream. Brian’s agony is no longer “dull” or “muted.” And what do these human vultures want? They demand that Lazarus pay his bills, pay the rent, or pay a parking ticket. This is the constant barrage of the everyday demands of living in contemporary American capitalist society, the necessity to earn and pay out money for the necessities of life, and they are driving Brian Lazarus insane, “each demanding a bit of soul or flesh.”

Watching, dimly recalling his former human existence, the empathic Man-Thing recognizes that “he has had the same experience, felt the same way Brian Lazarus feels now.” Seeking to aid Lazarus, the Man-Thing seizes one of Brian’s assailants, only to see the figure literally fade into nothingness.

Brian Lazarus is a creative artist who not only suffers from emotional and psychological turmoil but who has lost control of his art. So his creative imagination instead produces these apparitions that embody the demands of society and torment him. Even his well-dressed guide was a figment of his imagination, which has turned against Brian, the creator himself.

As an empath, the Man-Thing is capable of perceiving Brian’s hallucinations. Indeed, since the Man-Thing recalls somehow once having the same experience and emotions, Gerber is establishing Lazarus as a kind of double or counterpart to the Man-Thing. Perhaps, by extension, Gerber is suggesting that everyone feels some of Lazarus’s anguish and fear of the the burdens of everyday existence in modern times. But most of us don’t react in the extreme way that Brian Lazarus does. We must probe more deeply for the source of his madness, as the story proceeds to do.

The hallucinatory assailants vanish, and, after his initial fright, Lazarus strangely accepts the silent Man-Thing as his confidant (but inasmuch as they are counterparts of one another, this seems right). Lazarus speaks of the work he is writing, his “Song-Cry,” and, again significantly, acknowledges his responsibility for the torments he is suffering. “I had to explain how iI let the hurt get me,” Brian tells the Man-Thing. As an artist, and like Darrel, Lazarus seeks an audience for his art–even if it’s only one person–who will understand what he wants to express: “somebody who’d listen without asking for something. . . if I just got the words down. . . they’d find their way to someone. . . .” (Why, it’s rather like those of us who write blogs and columns on the Internet, hoping that our ideal readers will find them.)

Gerber then segues to the familiar figure of Richard Rory, with his new friend Sybil Mills. This sequence reminds the reader that Rory too is connected with the arts: he is a disc jockey, selecting rock music to play for his own audience of listeners, and he promises to dedicate a song to Sybil. But though he kissed Sybil goodbye, she has no intention of pursuing a relationship with Rory: “I make it a practice not to involve myself too deeply with anyone–ever.” Sybil distances herself from her own emotions.

Thus, when she sees Lazarus staggering along the street in the driving rain, Sybil’s initial reaction is to keep her distance. But when Sybil realizes “he is on the verge of collapse,” her better nature prevails, and she “rushes to his side” and “guides him to her quarters.” So now Brian has a new guide who is neither imaginary nor sinister.

Lazarus the writer has led such an isolated life that all he initially says he wants from Sybil is to hear somebody’s voice.” But it soon becomes clear he needs to talk, and to talk to someone who (unlike Man-Thing) can talk with him.

What Brian begins talking about is his love of art, in this case. music. (Notice that Brian calls the text he us writing his “song-cry.” Remember, too, that Gerber earlier reminded his readers about Rory’s connection with music.) “I used to love music–more than anything else,” Brian tells Sybil. “I used to say that anybody that didn’t like music was dead.”

Although Sybil earlier was unresponsive to Rory’s offer of a song, this time a shared love of music forges a closer connection between Sybil and Brian. “I like music, too. Very much,” Sybil tells Lazarus, adding, “I’m a dancer.” Indeed, she spends the whole story wearing her dancer’s leotard. Dance and music are important parts of Sybil’s identity. Like Brian. she too is a creative artist.

It seems that the first symptom of Brian’s growing psychological anguish was losing his ability to appreciate art. He tells Sybil that one day, significantly, upon coming home from his job, he started playing the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, “and it just sounded like noise to me. Ugly, ugly, ugly noise. That’s when I knew. . .I was dying.” Art–his ability to appreciate it and his ability to create it–is at of the core of Brian’s identity, too. But he is losing his capacity to perceive the beauty, the order, and the literal and figurative harmony in art.

The problem was that his alienation from the rest of life has hampered his artistic capabilities. “My whole life. . .became one gigantic, impenetrable wall of noise.” It’s not just the demands that his boss and others out on him. Lazarus tells Sybil that “the lies were the worst. . .by far.” Before he worked for Marvel. Steve Gerber was an advertising copywriter, and so is Brian Lazarus. Brian took the road that Darrel forsook: the path to riches in the business world. But for Brian that meant lying about the destructive product he was paid to sell, even though an artist’s duty is to tell the truth. “I was on my way to being a very rich liar,” Lazarus confesses, before he “ran out screaming.”

Then comes Brian Lazarus’s manifesto, the “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man” itself, which Gerber presents as a text piece, accompanied by Buscema and Janson’s somewhat surreal illustrations (including one of Brian with an arrow through his skull, crying out in agony, like the later Steve Martin gag, but played for horror). This was not the only time that Gerber experimented with the comic book format like this, introducing text passages in the midst of a sequential art narrative, mixing his media.

The point of the “Song-Cry’ is that the pursuit of money in the rat race in the business world destroys the author’s identity as an artist, turning him into “a living dead man,” a corporate zombie. “Sleep, synapses. The world has no use for you today. Or ever,” Lazarus writes, as if his career of telling “lies” for profit has rendered him as mindless as the Man-Thing. “Kill your mind!” Lazarus exclaims in his “Song-Cry.” He writes that he has become “a crumb in the loaf of industry, makin’ life without identity, on the river island of eternity,” suggesting the insignificance of such a life when weighed on a cosmic scale.

Brian’s “Song-Cry” is like Darrel’s play: a deeply personal work of art through which its creator reaches out, seeking understanding from his audience. “There was no one to tell, no one who wanted to listen. No one who could really understand,” laments Lazarus. He asks Sybil (though he is also looking out towards us, the readers), “What about you? Do you understand?” Sybil admits that she doesn’t, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. . .or listen,” as she takes Brian’s hand. His “Song-Cry” has succeeded in moving Sybil, his audience of one: “You touched something in me. . .that I wasn’t even sure was there. I think. . . care about you.” Brian’s “Song-Cry” has awakened emotions in Sybil that she formerly tried to suppress.

The late Ingmar Bergman made a film, Hour of the Wolf (1968), about an artist who was going mad and who hallucinated seeing various tormentors. By the film’s end, the artist’s wife, because she cares for him so deeply, has begun to see his hallucinations as well. The same thing happens here. On the brink of overcoming his insanity, Lazarus suffers an abrupt relapse, and this time Sybil sees the phantasms as well, and the demonic apparitions attack them both.

Again suffering psychic pain through his empathic power, the Man-Thing returns to combat the apparitions, only to recognize that “the phantasms are not the enemy. His assailant is Brian!” This reminds me of Number Six’s discovery in the surreal last episode of The Prisoner, in which he finally confronts his mysterious nemesis Number One. Of course the apparitions embodying Brian’s fears spring from his own psyche. The fact that he is a writer with a creative imagination presumably enables them to take such vivid form.

But these phantasms and the terrors they represent are not beyond Lazarus’s control: the well-dressed man said that Brian did not want to escape them.

As the Man-Thing battled the phantasms, “thought-bursts” erupted in Lazarus’s mind. One was “To survive among them. . .you must become them. . . .To survive, you must die.” Lazarus considers himself the “living dead man”: he has figuratively “died.” It was really his true identity as artist, as individual, as a person with a capacity for love, who “died.” Another of the “˜thought-bursts” makes another allusion to the Beatles: “You can’t be the Walrus if they want you to be the system. They are I!!” That is the point at which the Man-Thing turned to attack Brian. Lazarus had persuaded himself that he had to become part of the “system” to survive in life, rather than remain true to himself. The phantasms are really Brian punishing himself for his decision.

Brian needs a psychic shock to break free of his inner demons. and he receives it when Sybil risks her life to shield him from the Man-Thing’s wrath. Suddenly Brian is concerned for someone other than himself. Earlier Lazarus wrote that he thought he had become “like a burned-out machine. . .a dead computer.” Thus Gerber returned to his theme of the mind disconnected from emotion. Lazarus certainly feels terror and despair, but not empathy (the Man-Thing’s specialty) or love for others, until Sybil is nearly killed before his eyes.

Lazarus tells Sybil, “You should’ve let him hit me. I’m already dead.” But Sybil tells him he’s wrong: “You feel–you care. Dead men can’t do that!” Sybil is Lazarus’s counterpart: she would not allow herself to empathize or love, either. “I wasn’t sure I could care that much. . .even about you,” she tells Brian, but by risking her life for him, “now I know I can.”

It is the recognition that someone cares deeply about him, and, surely, Brian’s own response towards her, that resurrects Gerber’s Lazarus from his “living dead” state. The narration tells us that “Brian’s attackers vanish, along with the madness that gave them life.” People don’t overcome insanity so quickly in real life, of course, but in the context of this tale, this exorcism of Brian’s inner demons seems right.

It is appropriate that Steve Gerber did comics for DC’s Vertigo line later in his career, because the best Marvel horror series of the 1970s, and Gerber’s Man-Thing most of all, foreshadowed the sophisticated, character-driven approach that Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and other Vertigo series would take to supernatural fantasy in the 1980s and 1990s. (You can see Neil credit Steve’s work as an inspiration here) Even so, there was nothing else in the 1970s like Steve Gerber’s psychologically acute, intimately personal, powerfully emotional work in comics, and there is nothing else quite like it today.

But that’s not what Steve Gerber will be best remembered for. Steve Gerber was also unequaled in modern American mainstream comic books as a master satirist, as we shall see next week when we will turn to his most iconic creation, Howard the Duck.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

In last week’s column I embarked on a mission: to track down animated cartoons that had made an impression on me when I was in grade school, but which I hadn’t seen since, and watch them again through adult eyes. I wanted to see how many of them I could find on the Internet, and what other animated cartoons of note might be there as well.

My quest proved to be more successful than I’d imagined. I found a lot of vintage cartoons that I recalled as mediocre or worse, and which lived down to my memories: King Leonardo and Friends, Linus the Lionhearted, Silly Sidney and Deputy Dawg and more. But there were also plenty that proved to be true classics.

Although I’ve seen many of the 1940s Superman animated cartoons as an adult, somehow I never caught up with the one I found perhaps most memorable from my childhood, in which Superman battles a gigantic tyrannosaur. But now I’ve found it: it’s called The Arctic Giant, produced by the Fleischer Studios, directed by Dave Fleischer, and released by Paramount in 1942.

Like the other Fleischer Superman cartoons, The Arctic Giant is remarkable for its dramatic lighting, “camera” angles and visual compositions and its sheer energy and momentum. The superhero genre was only four years old in 1942, yet the Fleischer studio caught its spirit perfectly. But what I didn’t expect from The Arctic Giant were the little touches that the Fleischer team added to the cartoon.

A prologue sequence recounts how the colossal dinosaur was found frozen in the Arctic and was transported south in a freighter with similarly colossal refrigeration facilities. A new wing is built for the “Museum of Natural Science” in Superman’s home city specifically to exhibit the frozen creature. The cartoon never names this city, but the museum’s main building is clearly the actual American Museum of Natural History in New York City, with its towers that make the 77th St. facade look like a storybook castle. The Fleischer Studios were originally located in New York, so perhaps they thought of Superman as based there, too.

There’s not much dialogue in the Fleischer Superman cartoons, but the few words pay off in this one. Assigned by The Daily Planet editor to cover the dinosaur exhibit, Lois stops by Clark Kent’s desk to kid him that he’s so timid the sight of the monster would make him faint. This may be condescending, but it seems more witty than cruel, and Clark, once Lois has left, seems amused by it. It’s the sort of repartee I’d expect from the Lois of the 1990s Superman animated series; how interesting to see that the Fleischers had already caught the Lois and Clark relationship so well a half century earlier.

Of course, the dinosaur is not dead but in suspended animation, and, of course, he wakes up. Lois interviews a workman at the museum who sets down an oil can, which accidentally topples into machinery, cutting off the refrigeration that keeps the dinosaur comatose. In this high tech present, I’ve had enough experience with equipment that malfunctions because one little thing unexpectedly went wrong, so it seemed just right to me that to little falling oil can would end up releasing the monster.

When I first got to the real American Museum of Natural History, I think I was slightly disappointed with the size of the dinosaur skeletons. Big as a real tyrannosaur is, it still fits within a room on the museum’s fourth floor, whereas in my childhood, pop culture tended to make a dinosaur at least as tall as the entire museum. So the awakened “Arctic Giant” is far bigger than a real tyrannosaur: his foot is so big that he simultaneously steps on and flattens two police cars. Marauding through the city, this tyrannosaur looks like he is the size of Godzilla, and that’s pretty amazing, considering that The Arctic Giant came out twelve years before the first Godzilla movie (1954)!

Watching Arctic Giant, I wondered, if Godzilla wasn’t the Fleischers’ model for their “Arctic Giant,” could it have been King Kong? That makes sense: they are both gigantic monsters that stalk through a major city; like the dinosaur, Kong too was transported to New York by boat; Kong and the “Arctic Giant” both wreck an elevated subway line. And, of course, the dinosaur also menaces a young woman: at one point the tyrannosaur scoops Lois up in his mouth!

Superman goes to the city’s–and Lois’s–rescue, and there is a striking sequence in which Superman leaps to the tops of a succession of skyscrapers. Even though Superman streaks across the sky in the opening credits, this cartoon was definitely made before it was decided that Superman could fly. On the other hand, on the cover of Action Comics #1 Superman raises a car above his head; by Arctic Giant his strength has grown tremendously. The monster demolished the museum wing in escaping, and in order to rescue Lois, Superman lifts enormous chunks of rubble that dwarf him in size. This looks astounding to me in 2008; what must it have looked like to audiences in 1942, long before the recent rise of CGI, back when the superhero genre was still brand new?

Upon rescuing her from the rubble, Superman warns Lois to stay out of danger, but once he’s gone, she says she’s not giving up on this story. She doesn’t seem foolhardy, as she often does in these cartoons, but rather dedicated to her job. She isn’t the least bit shaken after her close encounter with the dinosaur, and that seems appropriate for Superman’s leading lady, and should have strongly impressed audiences in this pre-feminist period: she wasn’t continually screaming like Fay Wray did at Kong.

The Arctic Giant mostly seems to take place in New York City, but the marauding monster soon crashes his way through a dam as big as Hoover Dam, flooding what seems to be a country setting with small houses. Superman topples a mammoth mass of rock to seal the gap in the dam. Then the monster is back in the city, wrecking a bridge that looks very much like one of New York’s (with Superman lifting an entire span, with trucks and cars on top, back into place!) and finally stalking towards what could be Yankee Stadium. This is where the dinosaur scoops Lois up in his mouth, and Superman has to go in after her. It’s not quite the “belly of the beast” in Joseph Campbell’s phrase, but close enough to fit the archetype. Once Superman rescues her (again), Lois again shows nerves of steel, whereas you or I, after spending time in a dinosaur’s maw, might be in the verge of nervous collapse; after Superman again cautions her, she even jokingly addresses him as “milord.” She kids Clark Kent abut fainting, but this Lois seems incapable of doing the same.

I recalled Superman killing the tyrannosaur in Arctic Giant and my disapproving: kids, after all, love dinosaurs. On seeing the cartoon again, I am pleased to say my memory was wrong. Superman topples the dinosaur, and there’s a Daily Planet front page with a photograph that seems at first glance to show the tyrannosaur lying prone, but this time I saw the headlines saying that Superman “subdued” the creature, what is now in the “park zoo” (Central Park? Bronx Park?). So it seems that the Fleischers anticipated Jurassic Park here.

And so the cartoon ends with Lois and Clark at the Planet, with Lois sitting on Clark’s desk, showing off her legs (the Fleischer team clearly regarding her as a sex symbol for the adults in the audience), and Clark doing what was a trademark of these Superman cartoons, breaking the fourth wall by giving a wink to the audience. The Arctic Giant lasts only a little over eight minutes, but it has thrills, spectacle, humor, sex appeal, and a “meta” touch at the end. What more could one want?

More than once, upon hearing volunteers at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art ask visitors to become MoCCA members that they ought to play the musical question from Max and Dave Fleischer’s Bimbo’s Initiation (1931): “Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?”

I don’t recall seeing Bimbo’s Initiation as a child, but it certainly and deservedly turned up in Fleischer retrospectives I saw in the 1980s, and it’s about as different from the Fleischers’ Arctic Giant as can be.

“Bimbo” is certainly an odd name for a male anthropomorphic dog, who is now best known for his supporting roles in Betty Boop cartoons. In this cartoon, however, Bimbo is the lead and Betty the supporting cast member. Not only that, but this is one of her earliest appearances, when she was supposed to be a dog, not a human. She looks like the familiar later version, except for her doglike ears.

Watching Bimbo’s Initiation again on YouTube, I decided to apply the Joseph Campbell approach to this infamous cartoon. Walking along a city street, Bimbo tumbles down a manhole, thus inadvertently crossing a Campbellian threshold and descending into an underworld. This might also be an allusion to Alice falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Bimbo, however, finds himself in a sort of hell.

Bimbo lands in the subterranean headquarters of a strangely garbed secret society, who chant in deep male voices, “Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?” “No!” protests Bimbo. But their invitation is a Campbellian “call to adventure,” and according to Campbell’s monomyth, denying the call always leads to dire consequences. So Bimbo finds himself in a series of seeming death traps, often involving sharp, phallic blades, one of which comes to life and tries to bite him. If the dangers weren’t treated in a somewhat comedic manner, this could easily be a horror story.

As the cartoon’s title indicates, Bimbo is being put through an initiation ritual by this secret society. Presumably these traps are intended as a test of manhood. But whenever the society members return to pose their musical question, “Wanna be a member?” Bimbo persists in refusing to join, and yet more danger ensues.

Midway through the cartoon, the dog-eared Betty Boop appears and beckons to Bimbo. This time Bimbo, sexually aroused, happily accepts the invitation and he follows Betty through a doorway only to lose her and be subjected to yet more traps. Ultimately Bimbo is confronted once more by the leader of the secret society, who poses his question “Wanna be a member?” yet again. Bimbo still refuses, until the leader unmasks, revealing “himself” to be Betty. Now Bimbo definitely wants to be a member, the other secret society members reveal themselves to be Betty lookalikes, and the cartoon ends with Bimbo and Betty dancing hand in hand, while the Boop lookalikes provide a backup chorus line. The subterranean hell has become a romantic heaven.

So, if Bimbo is being initiated into masculinity, he refuses as long as he perceives it as requiring submission to alpha males upon threat of violence. Achieving adult masculinity becomes much more appealing to Bimbo when he comes to see it as the means for making a sexual connection with Betty. (So perhaps the word “member” in this cartoon is also a sexual allusion.) At the cartoon’s end Bimbo has passed the initiation, but instead of participating in power games with other males, he instead wins the hand of the leading lady.

Long before I read my first DC superhero comic, I was a staunch fan of another DC Comics title, The Fox and the Crow, a funny animal series which had an impressively successful run from 1951 to 1968. Although I was pleased to see the Fox and Crow turn up in cameos in the first issue of DC’s new revival of Captain Carrot, DC didn’t own these characters. Not until the 1980s, when I read Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin’s pioneering history of animation during the Hollywood studio system years, did I learn that the Fox and Crow first appeared in Fox and Grapes, a 1941 cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin, who later and briefly made memorable cartoons for Warners. Tashlin would go on to direct live action comedies starring Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis (who, coincidentally, also starred in DC Comics series in the 1950s and 1960s).

Despite all the classic cartoon retrospectives I’ve attended over the decades, Fox and Grapes never turned up and remained a mystery to me. But now YouTube has finally given me the chance to see it, and it is surprising from start to finish.

Surprise #1: The Fox and the Crow are unmistakably voiced by none other than supreme Warners voice artist Mel Blanc!

Surprise #2: Maybe this shouldn’t have been so surprising, since I remembered from the comics that the Crow’s first name was Crawford and the Fox’s first name was, of all things, Fauntleroy, as in Little Lord Fauntleroy. When the Fox makes his entrance in Fox and Grapes, he is skipping along a bridge, virtually dancing, wearing a straw hat and enormous bow tie, whistling or singing “la la la” to the tune of a Strauss waltz, his rear end swinging back and forth. Later, Blanc elaborately rolls his “r’s” when the Fox speaks of grapes. Could it be that Tashlin intended the Fox to be gay? (In that same year, 1941, Disney released The Reluctant Dragon, whose title character also seems to be as stereotypically gay.)

Reportedly, Chuck Jones credited Fox and Grapes as a major inspiration for his Roadrunner series, which began in 1948. I expected to find some vague similarities. But now that I’ve finally seen this cartoon, my Surprise #3 is how astonishingly close Fox and Grapes is to the Roadrunners.

First, there’s the Fox’s obsessiveness, which is arguably greater than Wile E. Coyote’s. The premise of the cartoon is that the Crow is trying to get hold of the Fox’s picnic lunch, and learns from the fable of the fox and the crow in “Eslops Fables” that foxes love grapes. (There’s a “meta” dimension to this cartoon.) So, the Crow hangs a bunch if grapes from a branch high on a tree, and offers to exchange them for the Fox’s picnic food. The Fox refuses to trade and says he will simply jump up and seize the grapes. This leads to a long series of blackout gags in which the Fox tries over and over to reach the grapes and fails every time. Like his fellow canine predator, Wile E. Coyote, the Fox will not give up. But unlike Jones’s Coyote, the Fox already has lots of food right there, and, in fact, had already consumed plenty before he even saw the grapes. The Fox isn’t motivated by hunger; he’s simply after a particular delicacy, and yet despite continual failures, he won’t cut his losses and be satisfied with the food he already has. The Fox and Coyote are both obsessive compulsives, and they both suffer from hubris and overreaching.

Still more surprisingly, many of the gags in Fox and Grapes will be familiar to any Roadrunner aficionados. The Fox repeatedly ends up falling from great heights. At one point the impact literally flattens him, compressing him as if he were an accordion. As with the Coyote, most of the Fox’s failures come from overlooking the one little thing that could go wrong with his plans. At another point, the Fox stands on one end of a kind of teeter-totter, strains to lift an enormous rock, and then, with great effort, hurls it into the air. His intention is that the rock will hit the other end of the seesaw, catapulting him upward towards the grapes. Instead, of course, the rock falls directly back down, crushing the Fox beneath. How often have we seen variations in that gag in Roadrunner cartoons?

Fox and Grapes isn’t just an inspiration for the Roadrunner series; it’s virtually a blueprint! But Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese elaborated on this basic structure in numerous ways, turning the Roadrunner series into something conceptually superior to the Tashlin cartoon, and even more profound, as I will explain in some future column.

Who was the first superhero I ever saw on television? I can’t be sure. Was it Superman in the Fleischer cartoons, or Mighty Mouse? Or was it Tom Terrific? He was the title character of a Terrytoons series created by Gene Deitch that ran for years on CBS’s Captain Kangaroo show, back when CBS programmed for children on weekday mornings rather than try to compete with the Today show (here and here).

Tom arguably qualifies as a superhero by the standards established by Peter Coogan in his book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre (See “Comics in Context” #162). First of all, he has super-powers: he wears a “thinking cap” that not only augments his intellect but also enables him to transform into anything. Distinctively shaped like a funnel, the thinking cap also acts as a symbol of his superheroic identity, as much as the chevron or insignia on the typical superhero’s costume. Of course, he also has a mission, to do good.

On the Internet I found a complete five-episode Tom Terrific serial. Alas, it does not feature Tom’s archnemesis, Crabby Appleton, whom I haven’t seen in decades, but instead substitutes a worthy opponent who seems newly relevant in the wake of the popularity of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies: the piratical Captain Kidney Bean.

The Tom Terrific cartoons turned their miniscule budget to heir stylistic advantage. The characters an backgrounds are simple line drawings, devoid of color: in fact, you can even see the background lines through the characters. But I suspect that graphic simplicity was appealing to very small children, as was Tom’s strikingly visual shapeshifting power.

Like so many superheroes, Tom has a sidekick: his case, his talking pet, whom he calls “Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog,” Tom insists that Manfred is as heroic as himself, but as surely even the youngest viewers could tell, Manfred is actually sleepy, stupid and virtually immobile. This may be a clever satire on the way that many pet owners project personality traits onto their pets that the animals don’t actually have.

Seeing Tom Terrific now, I wondered, is it possible that Deitch and his colleagues named “Mighty Manfred” after the title character of Lord Byron’s 1816-1817 romantic poem Manfred? If so, Deitch and his writers were amusing themselves in this instance, knowing that the full irony of Mighty Manfred’s name would never be grasped by their target audience.

Though little kids would understand that Tom is mistaken about his dog’s heroic qualities, perhaps they would not realize that the cartoons also poke understated fun at their boy hero’s innocence about the world in general. The “Captain Kidney Bean” serial makes it clear that its pirate villain is considerably nastier than its naive hero realizes. In this regard Tom Terrific reminds me of the Batman TV show later in the 1960s. In both cases this is a joke that grows old quickly. Tom Terrific was aimed at very young children, and has little to sustain adult interest.

But I am impressed on the cartoons’ emphasis on Tom using his “thinking cap” to think his way out of dilemmas rather than resorting to violence. How often do kids’ cartoons make being smart seem cool?

The vintage cartoons that proved to be better than I had remembered were from Bob Clampett’s legendary Beany and Cecil series. I expect that one reason is that, like Jay Ward’s The Bullwinkle Show, made during the same period of late 1950s and early 1960s, Beany and Cecil worked on two levels: these series had colorful characters and plenty of slapstick action that would appeal to the target audience of little children, but also simultaneously aimed verbal humor and satire at an older audience. Significantly, both Beany and Cecil and Bullwinkle ran on prime time television before settling into Saturday morning berths. The smarter children would pick up enough of that upper level of humor to recognize that Beany and Cecil and Bullwinkle didn’t condescend to them, but instead respected their intelligence and even initiated them into appreciating more sophisticated kinds of wit.

Beany and Cecil are, respectively, a young boy who wears a beany cap, which, in the cartoons, enables him to fly, and his best friend, a “seasick sea serpent.” (That new movie, The Water Horse, has hit upon a similar pairing.) They travel the world with Beany’s “Uncle Captain,” Horatio Huffenpuff, an amusingly ineffectual and cowardly father figure, in his ship, the Leakin’ Lena, and frequently run afoul of perennial nemesis Dishonest John.

The animated Beany and Cecil was a follow-up to Clampett’s more child-oriented Time for Beany, a puppet show on local television in Los Angeles. There are examples of this show on the Web, too, such as Episode 241 from 1951, which I found disappointing. lacking the energy and sharp verbal wit of the later cartoon series. Even so, this installment finds the regular cast of characters in Hollywood, where the villainous Dishonest John persuades Cecil to get himself some publicity by jumping of the roof of a building–and Cecil does! It’s a kids’ puppet show, so Cecil survives, but nonetheless gets badly banged up. The publicity stunt works, and a producer hires Cecil to be in a movie–and wants him to jump off another building. Thus a startling dose of adult cynicism about show business turns up in what is supposedly just an innocuous show for children.

Maybe the sign that Clampett ultimately wasn’t interested in doing a show just for small children is his treatment of Beany. Tom Terrific is also a young boy, but he’s the dominant character in his cartoons. In contrast, Beany is a blank, registering little personality beyond his characteristic smile, which sometimes seems as if it is as permanently affixed as Jack Nicholson’s Joker’s. It’s as if Clampett decided that since the audience is primarily made up of kids, there has to be a kid on the show for them to identify with. But really, was wearing a beany cap EVER cool?

One of the main reasons that Boomers loved this show was Beany’s unlikely costar, Cecil, the Seasick Sea Serpent. Think about it: Cecil is actually a gigantic snake! It seems to me that Clampett and the other writers set themselves a formidable task in having to do cartoon scripts about a major character who could only pick things up with his mouth!

But rather than being creepy, Cecil is wholly lovable. Watching these cartoons online, I realized that Cecil had much the same appeal as Ben Grimm, the Thing in Fantastic Four. Both of them, when in combat, are superhumanly powerful, courageous, and nearly unstoppable. (The Thing shouts, “It’s clobberin’ time,” while Cecil’s battle cry is “I’m comin’, Beany boy!”) But both of them also work superbly as comedy characters. They have similar personalities: hot-tempered but loyally devoted to their friends, prone to insecurity and embarrassment, with a ready sense of humor. (Ben mutters, “What a revoltin’ development this is,” while Cecil, faced with a similar situation, simply exclaims, “What the heck!”) Cecil’s voice would sound just as appropriate coming from the Thing.

The other true star of these cartoons is Dishonest John, familiarly known as D. J.. Dressed all in black, with a mustache long enough that he could twirl it, were he so inclined, Dishonest John looks like an updated version of a villain from a silent movie melodrama (and, indeed, an ominously tinkling piano theme accompanies his entrances). Sometimes the cartoons give D. J. a specific motive for his villainy in that particular adventure, like getting filthy rich. But it eventually becomes apparent that his real motivation is his sheer joy in nasty mischief. Although Clampett probably didn’t realize it, D. J. is a descendant of the “vice” figures of medieval drama, who were both evildoers and comedians, who often spoke directly to the audience. So does D. J., who seems well aware that he is in a cartoon. His trademark line (“Nya ha ha”) demonstrates that no one is more amused by his evil antics than he is.

Once I saw which Beany and Cecil cartoons were available on YouTube, I went straight to “Super Cecil,” Clampett’s comedic venture into the superhero genre. Cecil has sent away for a mail order superhero costume, which he dons to become “Super Cecil.” He doesn’t gain any super-powers in the process, but perhaps Clampett was here acknowledging that Cecil often plays a role like a superhero in these cartoons, overpowering the bad guys with his colossal strength.

Determined to outdo Cecil, Dishonest John switches to his own costumed identity, the Bilious Beetle–and his costume enables him to fly! The insect-themed name and the use of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” as the Bilious Beetle’s theme music suggest that Clampett was alluding to the Green Hornet. But it wasn’t until years after “Super Cecil” that the Batman TV show of the mid-1960s firmly impressed the concept of the costumed super-villain on the minds of the general public. I’m impressed that Clampett was thus parodying super-villains years earlier.

The Bilious Beetle tricks Super Cecil into thinking he’s kidnapped Beany, the perennial abductee in these cartoons, but actually D. J. is using a hand puppet in Beany’s image. This is a “meta” joke for anyone who knows that Beany and Cecil originated as a puppet show (as is the fact that the cartoons never show the end of Cecil’s tail, as if he were still a hand puppet). I suspect it may also be Clampett’s comment on how empty Beany was as a character. The cartoon didn’t even need the “real” Beany to lure Cecil into action. D. J.’s Beany puppet is no more than a Hitchcockian MacGuffin, a plot device of no inherent worth!

There are plenty of visual gags as the Bilious Beetle leads Super Cecil on a merry chase, giving the cartoon strong comic momentum. But it struck me that whereas in Clampett’s cartoons for Warner Brothers, the slapstick would have been the main source of laughs, in this cartoon the comedy principally comes from the personalities of D. J. and Cecil. First D. J. is wittily triumphant, while Cecil is repeatedly frustrated, setting up the cartoon’s payoff in which Cecil turns the tables on his adversary, culminating in a great gag in which Cecil unleashes a swarm of actual “bilious beetles” on their costumed namesake, whom they regard in a way I will not disclose here: go see the cartoon yourselves.

The title of “The Phantom of the Horse Opera“ evokes Lon Chaney, but he’s actually a Western outlaw who has the power of invisibility. (Coincidentally, he thus resembles Marvel Comics’ Western version of Ghost Rider, now known as the Phantom Rider.) When the Phantom first appears in this cartoon, he does indeed seem menacing, until Clampett undercuts the ominous tone by having him speak: he sounds like the 1940s comedian Jerry Colonna. Nowadays Colonna’s most enduring work is probably his vocal performance as the March Hare in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951). Watching “Phantom” on YouTube, I wasn’t at first sure whom the Phantom was imitating, (The cartoon’s final gag makes it clear by revealing the Phantom’s face as a Colonna caricature.) Beany and Cecil cartoons continually engage in such references to the pop culture of their day. But I find that this cartoon captures Colonna’s comic persona so well that even if you’ve never heard of Colonna, you should still find the Phantom’s dialogue funny.

Since Cecil is so enormous, how can human-sized adversaries get the better of him? In “Phantom” the answer comes in the cartoon’s high point, a well constructed comedy set piece in which the Phantom, step by step ruins Cecil’s lunch, spraying him with ketchup, smearing his face with mustard, and dousing him with pepper to make him sneeze, bewildering the sea serpent, who can’t see his invisible tormentor.

Inevitably, the Phantom kidnaps Beany, who just as predictably calls, “Help, Cecil, help!”, but even the Phantom seems exasperated with Cecil’s one-dimensional co-star: “Who writes your dialogue, kid?”

The cartoon climaxes when the Phantom’s “invisible paint” turns Cecil invisible, too, and he has a knock-down, drag-out battle with the Phantom that literally shakes the landscape around them. Breaking the fourth wall, Cecil briefly pauses to tell the audience this is “the greatest fight ever filmed” but “it’s too bad you can’t see it.” I wonder if Clampett and company are joking here that their budget wouldn’t allow them to actually show such a fight, or maybe that the television censors wouldn’t let them show anything this violent.

Better still is “The Wildman of Wildsville“, whose title character is a beatnik artist presented as if he were a “wild man” living in the jungle. This is a topical reference to the Beat movement of the 1950s, and yet, again, Clampett and company make the character so vividly funny that the cartoon has not dated.

The cartoon opens with Captain Huffenpuff presenting one of his typically pun-filled maps. He intends to capture the “ferocious wild man” on the “Hungry I-land,” a reference to the “hungry i,” a famous San Francisco night club of the time. Among the locations on the map are “Mort Soil”–an allusion to political satirist Mort Sahl, who performed at the hungry i–and the “Lenny Spruce.” Wait a minute! A cartoon that was shown to children on Saturday mornings in the 1960s actually made a not-so-veiled reference to Lenny Bruce!?! What the heck!! And that’s not all: later on the Wildman refers to Oscar Wilde!

Once the Captain and company arrive on the island, the backgrounds begin evoking the Abstract Expressionist art of the period. To my astonishment, some of these backgrounds even imitated the “drip” paintings of Jackson Pollack! Which children in the 1960s could possibly have recognized that? And yet Clampett and company put it in, laying a surprise for any adult who knew Pollack’s work and saw their cartoon.

The Captain, Beany and Cecil are out to capture the Wildman, as if he were a wild animal. Clampett and his collaborators are thus satirizing the way that mainstream culture regards people on the radical avant-garde as if they were part of an alien culture, potentially dangerous. The mainstream wants to tame these radical innovators. But in Clampett’s cartoon, it’s the Wildman who wins, just as so many once-controversial artistic movements end up being accepted into mainstream culture (like, say, taking the comics medium seriously). Using his paint, he endows Cecil, Beany and the Captain with berets, dark glasses, and goatees. As Cecil wisely observes, “If you can’t beatnik “˜em, join “˜em,” and the cartoon ends with the nouveau-Beat Beany, Cecil and Captain dancing along with the Wildman to a jazz beat. They’ve gone “wild,” too.

In 1988, four years after Bob Clampett’s death, The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil arrived on television, only to vanish after five episodes. It came and went so fast I don’t think I even knew about it at the time. But one of the delights of MoCCA’s 2006 “Saturday Morning” retrospective was a looseleaf notebook of photocopies of Bruce Timm’s storyboards for one of the new cartoons, “The Courtship of Cecilia,” written by Quick Stop contributor Paul Dini! Now I’ve found this cartoon on YouTube as well (in two parts: here and here). In Clampett’s own “Cecil Meets Cecilia,” Dishonest John disguised himself as a “she-serpent” to humiliate Cecil, and the real Cecilia only showed up at the end. The new cartoon builds upon the original’s premise, by having Cecil alternatively interact with the real Cecilia and with D. J. as the phony Cecilia, thoroughly confusing our serpentine hero. The new cartoon also follows Clampett’s lead in concocting awesomely awful puns (D. J. laments, “Cecil’s singing is giving me a haddock. I wish I was hard of herring.”), metafictional gags (D. J. exults, “I love being a cartoon bad guy–nya ha ha!”), and surreal visual metaphors. Describing what it feels like to be in love, Cecil says he feels “burning hot,” whereupon his face melts and feels as if he is “coming apart,” at which point his body shatters into fragments. This is pretty good! It’s too bad the series didn’t last, apparently in large part due to network interference.

Looking over these old cartoons over the last two weeks, it seems to me that many of those I remember most strongly were the ones that didn’t conform to the conventional notion of what Saturday morning animation should be like. They were wilder and subversive in some way. Matt Groening cites Bullwinkle as an influence on The Simpsons (see “Comics in Context” #8: “San Diego 2003: Day Three: Gaiman, Groening and Bradbury”), so perhaps today’s prime time animation is the true heir of the subversive classics of Saturday mornings of the 1960s.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

Recently I attended a performance of Frank Conniff and Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Dump stage show, featuring screenings of atrocious cartoons from 1950s and 1960s television, and then watched more of the same sort on the Worst Cartoons Ever! DVD, which Beck hosts (see “Comics in Context” #209: “Down in the Dump”). That set me wondering how I would react to seeing other cartoons from my childhood. As an adult I’ve watched Warner Brothers and Popeye theatrical cartoons. which are available on DVD, and seen Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons on Boomerang. But what about the more obscure cartoons that don’t get shown on television anymore, that I have not seen since I was in grade school? I decided to start hunting them down on YouTube and other Internet video sites.

One of the first that I located was “Master Cylinder, King of the Moon“ (1959), an episode of producer Joseph Oriolo’s Felix the Cat cartoon series. Herein Felix and his friend Poindexter, the genius nephew of Felix’s archfoe, the Professor, journey into a jungle environment beneath the surface of the moon, where they first encounter the villainous Master Cylinder. I remembered the Master Cylinder as being a sinister alien robot, which proved not quite true. It turns out that he’s a cyborg: indeed, he’s a former student of the Professor, who accidentally destroyed his body in an explosion, and his brain was transplanted into this cylindrical robot form. That’s rather a ghastly concept to inflict upon child viewers, but the cartoon doesn’t play the revelation for horror. Something else I didn’t remember was that the Master Cylinder is also a rather goofy villain. His eyes appear in what is essentially a thin television screen, and he keeps losing the vertical hold. Moreover, despite all of the Master Cylinder’s blustering threats, he is defeated quite easily, when his robot body is simply unplugged from a nearby electrical outlet while he is busily ranting away.

As you can see, this cartoon is an adventure story with some clever comedy elements. In another example, the Professor, piloting a spaceship to the moon to rescue his nephew, sights an alien hitchhiker in space and puts up a sign reading “No Passengers.”

As for Felix, he speaks in a falsetto voice and seems blandly nice; he’s given to laughing and his trademark line is “Righty-O.” In short, he’s boring, and it’s lucky that the presence of characters like the bad-tempered Professor, the cheerfully brilliant Poindexter, and the monomaniacal Master Cylinder compensate for his lack of personality. Watching this cartoon I realized that this version of Felix is really a watered-down Mickey Mouse with pointy ears.

I was in grade school when I saw Oriolo’s color Felix cartoons, but, before that, among the very first cartoons I recall seeing on television were from the original, silent Felix the Cat series of the 1930s, which are credited to their producer Pat Sullivan but were actually the work of the brilliant early animator Otto Messmer (1892-1983). Since they are now in the public domain, you can find plenty of these cartoons on the Net, and their Felix is far more interesting than the talking late 1950s version: he’s got a mean streak.

Take, for example, Felix Revolts (1923). This early animated cartoon demonstrates that its makers thought of it as an outgrowth of newspaper comic strips: dialogue for Felix and other characters appears on-screen in rectangles that are equivalent to word balloons. Felix looks much more like a real cat in this cartoon, and is frequently shown walking on all fours. Nevertheless, even in this early cartoon, Felix also engages in his characteristic walk, pacing back and forth on his hind legs, his front paws clasped behind his back, wearing a grimly thoughtful expression. After Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur, Felix was the first great star of animated cartoons, and like Gertie, he vividly registered personality on-screen.

In this cartoon Felix undergoes a series of humiliations at the hands of humans. First shown foraging for food in a barrel, Felix swipes a fish from a fish market, only to be beaten up by the owner. Later, another man cruelly feeds Felix red hot mustard, causing the cat to spin about like a propeller: he has to drink an entire small pond to relieve the agony. Subsequently, Felix passes by the town hall, where he hears the town officials declare that “Cats are useless” and plan to “starve ” the cats “out of town.” Like later cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, Felix has been pushed to the brink and now unleashes comic vengeance on his oppressors.

Felix summons the town’s other cats, a horde mostly consisting of Felix lookalikes and delivers a rabble-rousing speech. “We’ve had a dirty deal long enough!” Felix declares, “So let’s make life miserable for them!”

That night Felix keeps the whole town awake by leading a chorus of felines in coordinated yowling. Yes, it’s another example of the image of the conductor that I’ve found in so many classic animated cartoons, as well as a forebear of later cartoons about noisy cats “singing” at night, like Friz Freleng’s Back Alley Oproar (1948). Felix’s initial move may have been counterproductive though: the angry townspeople shout things like “Kill those cats!”

But Felix is far from finished. Next he takes personal revenge on the fish market owner by using worms as bait to lure the store’s fish, who come back to life (if indeed they were dead) and dive off a pier. Felix laughs triumphantly, but, unlike the laughing of his late 1950s TV counterpart, this is laughter with an edge of aggressiveness.

Finally, holding a white flag of truce, Felix meets with a bunch of mice–or are they rats? “The town is yours,” he tells them, adding, “We’re all on strike.” Yes, this is a cartoon about the importance of unions. (It’s also an inspired variation on the fable of the Pied Piper.) This is the perfect cartoon for sympathizers with the current Writers Guild of America strike.

According to the cartoon, the “ruthless rats run rampant” through town. We see rats chasing a policeman, a visual symbol of the rule of law disintegrating into chaos. So perhaps Messmer is signaling that the cats’ strike is not wholly a good thing.

The strike ultimately forces the town officials to surrender to the cats’ demands. The mayor presents Felix with a document guaranteeing that cats will be treated with “courtesy” and afforded access to kitchens and garbage cans. Amazingly, Felix Revolts concludes with Felix and his fellow cats victoriously raising clenched fists into the air, a traditional signifier of radical politics and revolution.

A few years later, Felix has evolved into the more familiar, round-headed figure walking on his hind legs in Felix Trifles with Time (1925). This cartoon also opens with Felix scrounging for food, this time in a garbage can. This cartoon likewise emphasizes humans’ cruelty to cats: one man throws him off the roof of a building, resulting in an amazing overhead shot of Felix plunging towards the ground, reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote’s later vertiginous falls. Upon landing, Felix, as a typical silent cartoon character, is unharmed, and even temporarily detaches one of his legs to examine it for injury. But he is angry.

This time, rather than attempting to change the system, Felix escapes from it. Felix encounters the allegorical figure of Father Time, an elderly, bearded man carrying a clock, persuades him to send him back to “a better age” for a day, and thus Felix ends up in prehistoric times. In sending Felix into outer space, the Oriolo series was true to the original silent series, which likewise placed Felix in fantastic settings.

But Felix discovers that prehistoric times are far worse than his own period. Felix discovers a gigantic dinosaur bone, the answer to his hunger, only to be chased away by a doglike dinosaur.

Worse, Felix encounters a Stone Age tailor, who beckons to him. Here Messmer gives us a close-up of Felix looking sadly wary and vulnerable. For a long moment Felix is no longer the combative trickster but the pathetic perennial victim of man’s cruelty: no wonder Felix won audiences’ hearts. Felix’s fears prove justified. The tailor strips him of his fur, and his caveman customer walks out in a new black fur coat. You might expect the typical gag of the hairless animal shown wearing underwear. But no, instead Felix, except for his intact head, has become a living skeleton! This is the sort of grotesque gag you are far less likely to see after the silent era, with its characters whose bodies easily come apart and reassemble. Luckily for Felix, the tailor’s customer soon goes skinny-dipping at a nearby beach, and Felix reclaims his fur.

But Felix is still not out of trouble, as he is next menaced by an elephant as colossal as those in the Lord of the Rings movies. Luckily, it is now that Father Time returns Felix to his own time. The cartoon ends with Felix back in the garbage can from the beginning, happily finding a tiny bone to eat. “No more Stone Age for me,” says Felix in a title card; “Give me the garbage.” If Felix Revolts advocated revolutionary change, Felix Trifles with Time takes the opposite position, preaching satisfaction with what you have, even if it amounts to “garbage.”

At the end of the silent movie era comes a little masterpiece for Felix: Comicalamities (1928), an exercise in animated metafiction. Not only is Felix very much aware in this cartoon that he is a cartoon character, but he even participates in the creation of the cartoon.

Comicalamities opens with a live action artist’s hand (or, rather, an animated photograph of one) drawing Felix, just the way that Koko the Clown first appears in the Out of the Inkwell cartoons. Felix acknowledges the audience by bowing to us, but then characteristically gets angry when he realizes that the artist failed to draw his tail, and shouts at him. in response, the artist draws Felix’s tail; in effect, Felix has started “directing” the cartoon he is in. Felix breaks into a happy smile until he notices that the black areas of his body haven’t been filled in with ink. Again Felix angrily calls to the off-screen artist, but this time receives no response. The cat walks off the blank background of this scene into the next scene, set on a city street, where he employs a “bootblack” to color in his fur, as if he were polishing shoes.

Subsequently, Felix encounters a female cat sitting on a park bench, her hands covering her face as she weeps. When she removes her hands, Felix is visibly revolted on seeing how ugly she is. But then he turns sympathetic again, and beckons to the off-screen artist, who hands Felix an eraser. Felix then uses the (photograph of a) real eraser to obliterate the female cat’s face. The artist next hands Felix a (photograph of a) pen, which Felix uses to redraw the girl cat’s face to look considerably prettier. So now Felix has become a cartoonist himself, altering reality within his cartoon world.

Felix then uses a mirror, the traditional symbol of vanity, to show the female cat what she now looks like: this proves to be a mistake. Earlier in the cartoon Felix turned a small fir tree into an umbrella. This is a standard gag in the series by which one object is used as a similar-looking but different one. Similarly, Felix finds an enormous lily and turns it into a dress for the girl cat.

But now she starts making demands: she wants jewelry. Felix goes to the edge of the sea and beckons to the off-screen artist, who creates a line of ink with his on; Felix then climbs down the line into the sea. There he finds an oyster bed, consisting of oysters in actual beds, a gag that will recur in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951). Tickling the “baby” oysters, Felix finds one whose teeth’ are actually pearls and steaks them. Then we see the oysters’ mother, who has a human body but an enormous oyster shell for a head. The detached head goes after Felix, who encounters other sea monsters as well. Felix gestures upward for help, as if beseeching aid from God; in response, the animator pours ink into the ocean, turning it pitch black, and Felix escapes back to land under cover of darkness.

Felix gives the pearls to the female cat, but now she wants a fur coat. So Felix finds himself in the Arctic, where he sights a rather friendly-looking bear, wrestles with him, but gets overpowered. The screen begins doing an “iris out,” with the aperture closing around Felix, as if his defeat marked the end of the cartoon. But Felix hasn’t given up “directing” his own cartoon, and holds onto the closing iris with both hands (like Daffy Duck in a similar situation in Chuck Jones’s 1951 Duck Amuck), shouting (silently) to the cartoonist. The hand of the cartoonist, as if it were the giant hand of God, picks up the bear, who falls out of his fur (but not, thankfully, in skeletal form), and then presents the fur to Felix, who returns to the female cat.

Wrapped in her new fur coat, the female cat snubs her benefactor Felix. Enraged after all the effort he went to, Felix does something I’ve never seen Koko do. As if everything on screen were a single drawing, Felix tears off the part containing the female cat and rips it into shreds! It’s a startlingly misogynistic ending that one would never see in a contemporary cartoon intended for kids. Moreover, although Comicalamities, like the Inkwell shorts, openly acknowledges it is an animated cartoon, this climactic act by Felix shatters the illusion of the on-screen “reality” more shockingly than any other animated film I know. More than any other silent cartoon I’m aware of, Comicalamities dramatizes the paradox of animated films of that period: they invite the audience to suspend disbelief in the reality of the characters on-screen, while simultaneously flaunting the artificiality and unreality of the animation medium.

You see, I told you back in column 200 that I would eventually get around to the silent Felix the Cat cartoons, and I keep my word to my readership!

What other silent cartoon classics could I find on the Internet? Several examples of the work of animation’s–and comics’–first great master, Winsor McCay, are available on YouTube, including the celebrated Gertie the Dinosaur and the animated documentary The Sinking of the Lusitania. I chose to watch one of McCay’s animated versions of his Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend comic strip, Bug Vaudeville (1921). While a rather torpid man sleeps in a lovely wooden glade, he dreams of himself watching and applauding, with youthful enthusiasm, a circus with giant insects as performers; there are bug acrobats, bugs who engage in a boxing match, and even a butterfly standing atop a giant beetle, like a bareback rider on a circus horse. We see the dreamer in silhouette, sitting in a row of seats in the foreground, as if he were seated in front of us in a vaudeville–or movie–theater. The final act on the “bug vaudeville” bill is an immense spider, who, instead on remaining on-stage, swings out over the seats and attacking the dreamer, who, of course, wakes up.

Have any of you attended a circus or live theater of some sort in which one of the performers comes down into the audience to inveigle someone to become part of the performance. If you don’t want to be picked, this can be scary. Bug Vaudeville builds upon that sort of fear. What if the wonders–and horrors–that we safely watch on the movie screen came down from the screen?

I wrote about a number of early examples of Max and Dave Fleischer’s silent Out of the Inkwell series, starring Koko the Clown, when I reviewed Warner Home Video’s Popeye Vol. 1 DVD set last year (see “Comics in Context” #190: “Pop Eye-Con”). My favorite cartoon in this series, though, is one of the last, Koko’s Earth Control (1928), starring “The Inkwell Imps,” Koko and a dog named Fitz.

According to the usual Inkwell formula, the cartoon begins with Max Fleischer (in live action) drawing Koko, who comes to animated life. Max and Koko interact, with Max acting as a dictatorial father/superego figure and Koko as a rebellious child–or the id incarnate.

Although Koko’s Earth Control begins with a live action artist’s hand (or, rather, an animated photo thereof) drawing Koko and Fitz, Max never appears on-screen. Perhaps that’s because he’s not needed. In this cartoon Fitz becomes the embodiment of id, while Koko attempts, unsuccessfully, to restrain Fitz’s rebellious impulses.

At the start of the cartoon, the animator’s hand draws Koko, in his clown outfit, and Fitz wearily trudging along the rim of a rotating Earth. If Samuel Beckett had done animated cartoons, maybe this is what he’d draw.

But the emptiness of Koko and Fitz’s existence ends when they come across the “Earth Control” building. Koko experiments with levers that control the weather or turn day into night. Meanwhile Fitz discovers a lever with a sign warning forbidding anyone to touch it, since pulling this lever will bring about the end of the world. But Fitz represents the side of ourselves that rebels against authority, that wants to do what we are forbidden to do, exactly because it is forbidden, no matter what the consequences. This lever is like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and Fitz needs no serpent to urge him on. Despite heroic efforts, Koko cannot stop Fitz from pulling the forbidden lever.

As I have written before in this column, there is a large body of works, in comics and other media, that deals with the end of the world. Koko’s Earth Control is one of the relatively few tales of the apocalypse that is a comedy.

First the animated world around Koko and Fitz is thrown into chaos. These are literally unnatural disasters: the cartoon is making the point that the rules of reality have been overturned. Inanimate things come to life: Koko sees an erupting volcano that, before his horrified eyes, transforms into the gigantic face of a man puffing on a cigar.

Whereas in the typical Inkwell cartoon, Koko escapes into the real world to pull pranks, this time the worldwide chaos in the animated world spreads into the real one. In a shot I’ve always found amusing, two men on a sidewalk desperately hold onto each other as the ground beneath them tilts in one direction and then the other. What’s clearly actually happening is that the camera is being tilted, and I wonder if the Fleischers expected the audience to realize that, and thus were giving an ironic wink to their viewers. More startling is a shot in which Koko watches out the window as New York City skyscrapers (or cut-out photos thereof) collapse against each other.

At the end of the short, Koko and Fitz try to keep their balance on a real world table as it rocks back and forth, and finally collapse into immobile pools of ink. It’s as if they had died: ashes to ashes, and ink to ink. Maybe Beckett would have liked this ending, too.

Returning to my search for cartoons that have stick in my head since boyhood, I located Tulips Shall Grow (1942), part of George Pal’s series of Puppetoons, stop-motion animated films that employ wooden puppets. This short is set in Holland, and the lead puppet characters are the cutely named Jan and his girlfriend Janette. They both traditional native Dutch costumes, complete with wooden shoes, and perform a charming clog dance together. To complete the charming stereotypical image, Janette lives in a windmill, and there are tulips everywhere. As a small boy I thought, yes, this must be what life in the Netherlands is like.

But it wasn’t Jan and Janette I remembered from this short; it was the Screwball Army, an implacably advancing legion of literal screwballs–metal balls with screws for heads. They had a threatening, robotic way of marching, and Pal made clear to his 1940s audience what they were doing: he shoes us one of the marching Screwballs and then shows a goose waddling right behind it. Yes, the Screwballs represent a goose-stepping Nazi army, invading the Netherlands, just as the actual Germans did. But as a child I didn’t make the connection, and probably didn’t even know about the Nazis when I first saw Tulips Shall Grow. Instead I regarded the screwballs as if they were the Terminators of their day. Today, watching the short again, the Screwballs seem absurd and ominous in equal measure. When I was a child, they weren’t funny at all, but truly alarming.

I didn’t recall that the Screwballs weren’t alone; there were also enemy planes that resemble birds of prey, which drop bombs, and tanks, one of which smashes through Janette’s windmill. The tulip fields are devastated and, once the windmill is wrecked, Jan searches for Janette in vain. To my astonishment, Pal makes it seem as if she perished in the onslaught.

Next comes an even greater surprise. Pal shows the mournful Jan kneeling in prayer. Then a massive storm erupts overhead. it is as if God Himself is responding to Jan’s prayer and wreaking an Old Testament style of vengeance upon the evildoers. Lightning strikes down the warplanes. Torrential rains cause the mechanical Screwballs to rust, incapacitating them. Then comes an image I still remember after decades: one of the tanks, bearing the Screwball army flag, slowly sinks into the mud–and oblivion.

With the invading forces defeated, sunshine returns, and Jan finds Janette back at the windmill, which miraculously reconstructs itself before their eyes. They reprise their clog dance off towards the horizon, as row upon row of tulips sprouts up behind them. It’s as if the love between the hero and heroine restored fertility to the devastated land of Holland, and as if the rain that brought destruction to the Screwballs brought new life to the countryside. I may no longer find the Screwballs scary, but I appreciate Tulips Shall Grow more now than I did as a boy.

I decided to see just how good a tool the Internet is at locating obscure cartoons from my childhood. There is one that particularly haunted me in my early grade school days. I didn’t know its name, but it was about a mad musician who stole a dinosaur skeleton and kept shouting a rhymed couplet that I still remember in middle age: “The best bones of all/Go to Symphony Hall!” whereupon he launched into long, insane laughter.

One thing that the Internet quickly teaches you is that you are not alone. Googling, i discovered that others vividly recalled that cartoon’s catchphrase, although they, too, did not necessarily know its name. But finally I tracked it down, and its title proved to be as inexplicably absurd as its plot: The Case of the Screaming Bishop, released by Columbia Pictures in 1944.

What the hell could this title mean? My further research suggests that the title The Case of the Screaming Bishop parodies that of one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop, which Warners turned into a movie in 1937. However, there is no bishop, screaming or otherwise, in this cartoon, though everything else but the kitchen sink seems to be.

Watching the cartoon again after so long, I can understand why it seemed so strange to me as a child, not frightening but fascinatingly bizarre and disconcerting. Instead if the bright palette of most animated cartoons of this period, Screaming Bishop is literally dark, taking place almost entirely at night, mostly in nearly deserted streets or in rooms nearly empty of people.

Soon after the start of the cartoon, the villain appears crying “I did it!” and uttering that boast for the first time, “The best bones of all/Go to Symphony Hall” and laughing hysterically. What does he mean? “Bones” certainly sounds macabre. And who is this? His physical appearance, with a mane of hair like Bozo’s and grotesquely comic features, is at once clownlike and sinister. I first saw this cartoon years before I first learned about Batman’s foe, the Joker, but Bishop’s bad guy seems like his distant relative.

Moreover, this cartoon turns out to be a spoof on Sherlock Holmes, whose counterpart in Bishop is named Hairlock Combs. If I heard correctly, the detective’s sidekick, who acts and sounds like Nigel Bruce’s classic portrayal of Dr. Watson, is named Gotsome. (You can see them at here) When I saw this cartoon repeatedly as a child, it was years before I first knew about Holmes. Since I was unaware of the foundation for these caricatures of Holmes and Watson, their behavior must have seemed all the stranger to me.

When Gotsome arrives at Combs’s Baker Street home to tell him about the theft of the dinosaur skeleton, he finds the flat seemingly deserted, and yet he hears Combs’s voice. Finally, Combs’ head emerges from a lamp (presumably parodying Holmes’s mastery of disguise). Combs warns Gotsome that they are being watched, and the “camera” searches Combs’ darkened flat, showing all manner of things with staring eyes: a stuffed bird, a fish mounted on a wall, a Chinese lion statue, a bear rug, a moose head. Finally, there is a portrait of a man from a previous century, and as we watch, the mad villain knocks him out and usurps his place.

Later, Combs answers his front door and the villain is there and hands Combs a telegram reading, of course, “The best bones of all/Go to Symphony Hall.” The villain then literally fades away into nothingness. Combs looks for him and we see a huge target on his back. Arms reach out from behind a wall, holding a bow, and fire an arrow. Gotsome cries out a warning, we see the arrow hit the target, and then see Combs standing to one side, admiring the shot. Now imagine that you are a second grader trying to make sense out of this. One deduction you might reach is that in the world of this cartoon, potential death and madness lurk everywhere.

Disguised as a pantomime horse, Combs and Gotsome visit the scene of the crime, the Museum of Unnatural History. (I’ve been to London’s real Natural History Museum, and the exterior in this cartoon bears no resemblance to the real thing, but the old-fashioned exhibit cases shown within are dead on.) There Combs and Gotsome (removing their disguise) decide to reconstruct the crime by building a imitation dinosaur skeleton, at full scale, out of a pile of scraps of wood. (The real skeleton resembles the Diplodocus skeleton in the entrance hall of London’s real Natural History Museum, but this may be mere coincidence.) Somehow lifting the enormous fake skeleton, they rush with it towards the door, which is way too small, and the skeleton smashes into bits with a sound like that of a bowling ball hitting tenpins. Somehow Combs and Gotsome do not find this discouraging, hurriedly rebuild the fake dinosaur, and try to take it out through a window, which is even smaller. The bowling ball sounds again. Gleeful in his obsessiveness, Combs has them rebuild the fake dinosaur again, and this time proves to be the charm. He still hasn’t figured out how the villain got the real dinosaur skeleton out of the museum. but he has discovered that, when struck, the “bones” of the fake skeleton sound like the keys of a xylophone (which he pronounces “sillyphone”). Eureka!

And so the scene shifts to a concert at London’s “Symphony Hall” (which probably should be the Royal Albert Hall, but never mind) where we find the villain, identified as Professor Streptokowsky (a combination of Leopold Stokowski and a strep throat?) onstage playing “the world’s largest xylophone”–the real dinosaur skeleton. Combs and Gotsome rush in with a bobby, who puts Streptokowsky under arrest.

Back at Baker Street, Gotsome asks Combs how he solved the mystery. “Elementary, my dear Gotsome,” Combs replies, removing his mask to reveal the face of Streptokowsky’s face who reiterates, “The best bones of all/Go to Symphony Hall!” That’s the end, which never failed to leave my grade school self in a state of befuddlement. It’s as if law and logic have been supplanted by absurdity, anarchy, and–since the villain is a musician–art.

This is still the strangest theatrical cartoon from the Hollywood studio era that I’ve ever seen. Even the most surreal Tex Avery and Bob Clampett cartoons follow their own sort of logic. But now, as in my childhood, I admire this cartoon’s sheer imaginativeness and its absolute commitment to the idea that anything goes, as long as it’s funny. It is a monument to utter comedic absurdity.

But, as Daffy Duck asks at the end of Duck Amuck, who is responsible for this? Screaming Bishop was written by John McLeish, who also, it seems, performed the voice of Combs, and was directed by Howard Swift, about whom I knew nothing–until I took my Google search still further.

It turns out that Howard Swift directed another cartoon that I saw over and over again in my early grade school years: Kickapoo Juice (1944), from Columbia’s short-lived attempt to adapt Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip into animation. Abner and his leading lady Daisy Mae only appear briefly in a framing sequence for this cartoon. Its real stars are Abner’s mother, the feisty Mammy Yokum, and two of the strip’s supporting characters: the ironically named Hairless Joe, a shaggy hillbilly, and Lonesome Polecat, a politically incorrect caricature of a Native American, who specialize in brewing their literally explosive “Kickapoo Joy Juice.” Here is further evidence that Hollywood theatrical cartoons were aimed at adults as well as children. Not only is this cartoon center on alcohol, but Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat spend a good part of it sampling their own wares. Believing that they’re setting a bad example to Abner, the apparently super-strong Mammy attempts to steal the colossal vat of Kickapoo Juice. This leads to sequences with either Mammy or HJ and LP running back and forth, carrying the enormous vat. Yep, it’s just like Combs and Gotsome carrying their wooden dinosaur skeleton mock-up. The animation auteurists among us here can find a gag that serves as Swift’s directorial signature.

Kickapoo Juice has the same propulsive energy as Screaming Bishop, but it doesn’t plunge into utter, reality-shattering nonsense the way that Bishop does.

To me the most remarkable thing about Kickapoo Juice is its subject. Most of the audience for its original theatrical run may have been adults. But when Kickapoo Juice was part of a package of Columbia animated shorts sold to television, its new audience was small children like myself. And this is a cartoon that memorably shows two of its lead characters joyously getting drunk! Recently a DVD collection of early Sesame Street episodes was designated for adults only, because some of its humor is no longer considered fit for children: for example, allegedly, the Cookie Monster’s obsession with cookies is now regarded as an inducement to childhood obesity. Is it even imaginable that Nickelodeon or PBS or Cartoon Network (before 11 PM) would run a cartoon about two backwoods brewmasters getting bombed?

And yet I survived seeing Kickapoo Juice over and over in my early grade school years, though, of course, back then I probably had no idea what alcohol was. Next week I’ll look at still more cartoons from my early memories.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

One of the questions on The Beat’s annual survey for her Publishers Weekly blog is to ask what “guilty pleasures” her contributors are anticipating in the new year. Last year I named the forthcoming Disney DVD release of The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, collecting the silent cartoon series that Walt Disney made just before the creation of Mickey Mouse. This DVD set finally came out in December, and I now realize that there’s nothing “guilty” about the pleasures these cartoons provide. I expected they’d be interesting as foreshadowings of Disney’s later work, but not particularly good in and of themselves. But the Oswald cartoons turned out to delightful period pieces from the early history of animation. Watching these, you can see that Disney was already well on his way to the success he would achieve only a year later with Mickey Mouse.

The Disney company hadn’t released the Oswald series on home video earlier because it didn’t own the cartoons or the character until recently. Back in the 1920s Walt Disney made the Oswald series for distribution by Universal. But then, as a featurette on the DVD explains, Universal sprang surprises on the young Disney: not only did they own Oswald, but they had also hired Disney’s animation staff away from him–except for his best animator, Ub Iwerks, who remained loyal–and would produce the Oswald series without him. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, since Disney was now determined to remain independent and own his own intellectual property; soon he and Iwerks jointly created Mickey Mouse, and Disney was on his way to becoming a cultural colossus. Recently, Disney’s new, enlightened management made a deal with NBC Universal in which Disney regained control of Oswald, and this DVD set soon followed.

Not only does the Oswald DVD set contain copies of all the extent Disney Oswald cartoons (which apparently took some hunting), but also some 1920s Disney cartoons that preceded and followed the making of the Oswald shorts.

The three cartoons that preceded Oswald are from Disney’s Alice Comedies series. Whereas in Max and Dave Fleischer’s silent animated series Out of the Inkwell, a cartoon character, Koko the Clown, entered the real (live action) world, in the Alice shorts a live action girl, Alice, appears within a cartoon world populated by anthropomorphic animals. Hence the evocation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in the series’ title is quite appropriate.

In watching the first Alice short included in this set, Alice Gets Stung (1925), I was initially surprised by how little Alice appeared in it, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been, since I presume that it was harder and more expensive to combine live action footage of the girl portraying Alice with the animation than it was to do the animation alone.

Making Alice’s regular costar, Julius, a cat who looks an awful lot like Felix the Cat seems too much like imitating the competition. (It seems that Disney’s distributor insisted on having a cat in the cartoons: see here) But, as noted, even the premise of Alice is simply taking the Fleischers’ idea for Inkwell and reversing it. At this point Disney is still reacting to his competitors’ ideas rather than heading in a brand new direction.

Alice Gets Stung begins with a lengthy sequence with Julius the cat chasing a rabbit (which doesn’t strike me as being a cat’s natural prey) and the rabbit’s efforts at thwarting him. For example, Julius reaches down into one rabbit hole, while the rabbit emerges from another hole behind him. This is a variation on what became a standard gag in Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd encounters. Watching this cartoon, I felt that Disney had stumbled onto the idea of the rabbit as trickster–but perhaps didn’t yet know what he had. Shouldn’t the rabbit be the star animal of this cartoon, not the cat, who, as the predator, seems to be playing the bad guy? Maybe this rabbit points to the creation of Oswald, though it would be Warners that perfected the idea of the animated trickster rabbit with Bugs Bunny.

Even though Daffy Duck can get blasted by Elmer Fudd over and over without suffering greater harm than a temporarily displaced beak, many classic Warners cartoons still depend on the audience’s belief that the hunter or predator could potentially do harm to the animal hero: Wile E. Coyote does indeed want to eat the Roadrunner, and Elmer Fudd does indeed want to kill the wabbit. In the world of Alice Gets Stung, there seems to be no real threat of death or even injury. At one point Julius pulls off the lower half of the rabbit, but the halves soon rejoin, and the rabbit seemingly suffers no pain whatsoever. Later, Julius removes his own eyes and mouth and positions them over one of the rabbit holes; when the rabbit emerges from the other hole, the eyeless cat captures her. This is a rather grotesque extension of the convention of the Felix the Cat silent cartoons, whereby Felix can detach part of his body, like his tail: at another point in this cartoon, the rabbit uses her tail to powder her face. Amusing as this sort of thing can be in silent cartoons, it also makes the characters seem overly unreal, and one can see why later funny animal cartoons mostly disposed of this convention of detachable body parts.

You’ll notice I refer to the rabbit as “she”: this was a surprise, too. Once caught, the rabbit pours out a sob story about her infant children–whom we see in a brief vignette, all in the same cradle and wailing for “Mama”–as two other rabbits play violins, with heart and flowers appearing onscreen as substitutes for music. Moved, Julius lets the rabbit go, whereupon the rabbit laughs at the cat–presumably her story was all a lie–and the chase resumes. This time Julius pursues the rabbit down the rabbit hole where, with no evident cause, the rabbit suddenly grows to giant size and the tables are turned. There is no logical reason why this should happen, but I suppose the rabbit’s increased size might be a metaphor for growing braver and more aggressive, having gaining the advantage once she is on her home ground.

The live action Alice shows up and, in a neat trick, is shown carrying a cartoon fire hydrant. which she and Julius then use literally to flush the rabbit out of her hole. But again this struck me as misjudgment by Disney. Why is our heroine joining the cat in pursuing the rabbit? Shouldn’t we root for the rabbit, as the predator’s potential victim, and admire her cleverness?

The “hearts and flowers” sequence suggests that Disney might already have been longing for the opportunities that sound could provide for his cartoons. So does the next major sequence in Alice Gets Stung, which shows animals playing music as members of a band. This prefigures Disney’s The Band Concert a decade later. Moreover, in Alice Gets Stung animals’ tails get pulled to cause them to emit musical notes, a gag that would be much more famously used in the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to be released, Steamboat Willie. Alice Gets Stung also uses the image of the conductor–in this case, a bear-that would keep recurring in classic Hollywood theatrical cartoons, including The Band Concert.

Alice shoots a gun at one of a pair of dancing bears. This is another misjudgment by Disney; why should the heroine attack an animal that has been entertaining the audience? In the world of the Alice shorts, however, even being shot repeatedly does not harm the bear, who begins dancing in time to the (silent) gunshots. But after bullets sever his head and limbs, once his body parts rejoin, the bear is understandably enraged. Frightened, Alice and Julius shrink in size (reversing the previous bit of the rabbit growing gigantic with courage) and Alice becomes a cartoon character herself. In the end she and the cat are beset by bees, thus finally providing an explanation for the cartoon’s title.

Death seems to be real in the next Alice cartoon included, Alice in the Wooly West (1926), although the rules by which it operates are unclear. This time Julius looks even more like Felix and he is cast as a Western gunfighter. Bandit mice hold up the passengers of a stagecoach, but Julius rides to the rescue and shoots the mice dead. This is even more startling if you consider that with the creation of Mickey Mouse, Disney would soon firmly establish the convention that in funny animal cartoons, mice are the good guys and cats are the bad guys.

The head of the bandits looks like a bear in a top hat, who seems to be, yea, the forebear of the principal villain in the Oswald cartoons, the top-hatted Putrid Pete. The bear kidnaps Alice, and in the ensuing battle, Julius separates the bear’s head from his body with repeated blows. This causes the bear no harm, his head and body rejoin, and the conflict continues.

In a reworking of a gag from the previous cartoon, this time Julius removes not his eyes but his black fur to use as a decoy. Julius not only clobbers the bear from behind but actually buries him on camera, leaving a flower on his grave! It’s as if Bugs Bunny literally killed Yosemite Sam! So here’s another mistake that Disney would avoid in years to come.

But Alice rejoices, although Julius is embarrassed at her seeing him in his underwear. It’s an odd gag if you think about it, since it evokes the human taboo on nudity by using an animal, to which the taboo would not apply. Variations on this gag would get stranger still in the Oswald series.

The third Alice cartoon in the set, Alice’s Balloon Race (1925), foreshadows the airplane race in the Oswald cartoon, and in both the villain is a bear in a top hat whom the Oswald series would call Putrid Pete. (What an unfortunate adjective to apply to someone with such an appealing first name!)

I was particularly impressed by a bit in which Alice’s balloon crashes in the background and she bounces out into the foreground. Running the sequence back on my DVD player, I could see the point at which the tiny cartoon Alice who is bounced out of the balloon turns into the live action Alice who lands in the foreground. But it happens so quickly that the audience surely had the illusion that it was the real Alice all the time.

Bodies are even more malleable and unkillable in this short than in the others. Falling from the sky, Julius smashes into bits upon hitting the ground, and immediately resumes shape and life. Later Julius enacts a typical Felix-style gag, detaching his tail and turning it into an umbrella. But then this cat goes way further into the grotesque: he eats his tail, which then emerges from the back of his head and then slides down his back until it reaches its proper position. Even the animation experts on this cartoon’s commentary track reacted as if they nearly couldn’t believe their eyes.

The first Oswald cartoon in the DVD set, Trolley Troubles (1927) presents its hero as the driver of a means of public transportation, picking up passengers, just as Steamboat Willie does with Mickey. Oswald looks chubbier here than heroes in the other cartoons. He’s also the visual missing link between Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse. All three are short and black, with white “faces,” black noses, and round heads: the major difference is in the shape of the ears. In Trolley Troubles Oswald also proves to have detachable body parts, using his tail as a brush. More disturbingly, he detaches his lucky rabbit’s foot and rubs it on his head for luck.

In these cartoons Oswald displays a range of emotions that foreshadows Mickey and later animated characters. Unlike many later animated stars, with the major exceptions of Donald and Daffy Duck, Felix, Oswald and the early Mickey were easily prone to anger. In Trolley Troubles Oswald literally hits an obese passenger off the vehicle.

In the most striking sequence, Oswald’s trolley plummets through a series of tunnels. Oswald stands in the foreground, his back to the audience, so we are essentially watching the sequence from his point of view, or, to put it differently, it is as if we are riding the trolley along with him, as the cavernous openings to the tunnels engulf the screen. It’s reminiscent of riding a roller coaster; it’s an early version of the sort of effect that today one might expect to find in a video game.

With the next cartoon, Oh Teacher (1927) Oswald embarks upon a theme that was not often to be found in Felix or Inkwell cartoons: love. here Oswald has a girlfriend, a female rabbit; this obviously prefigures the relationship between Mickey and Minnie Mouse, which is so important to the early Mickey cartoons.

When she accidentally tumbles into a lake, the unnamed girlfriend cries “HELP!”; not only do the letters appear onscreen, but Oswald rides them. as if they were a horse, to the lake to try to rescue her. Earlier in the short a question mark, used to denote a character’s puzzlement, was employed as a hook by the cartoon’s villain. These silent cartoons thus emphasize their own artificiality by taking an written word or a punctuation mark and turning it into a physical object. Maybe the detachable body parts in these cartoons serve a similar purpose: reminding the audience that Oswald and company are pen and ink creations, just as when Koko devolves back into ink at the end of his cartoons.

The girlfriend mistakenly thinks that it was the cat who saved her and snubs Oswald. The cat literally knocks Oswald’s head off, and though the head bounces back onto Oswald’s body, this still seems unintentionally disturbing. It is somehow easier to suspend disbelief and accept an anthropomorphic rabbit as real than it is to accept the idea that a living being can survive beheading.

In the standout sequence of Oh Teacher, Oswald angrily waits behind a schoolhouse to clobber the bullying cat with a brick. The cat unexpectedly comes up behind him, and Oswald nervously tries to hide the brick behind his back, switching it from one hand to the other. When the cat spots the brick, Oswald desperately starts lifting the brick with one hand, as if he is using it for weightlifting exercise. All of this happens in pantomime without a single word onscreen. This is real animated acting; the three Alice cartoons did not even attempt anything like this.

The next cartoon, Great Guns! (1927), suggests that even a decade after the devastation of World War I, Americans had a different attitude towards war than they do today. When war is declared in this cartoon, animals immediately enlist in the armed forces en masse, including Oswald.

Oswald is very much in love in this cartoon: in its most astonishing segment, the shot of Oswald kissing his girlfriend goodbye dissolves into a shot of Oswald kissing a photograph of his girlfriend, as he sits in a World War I-style trench, with rain pouring down around him.

There’s a good touch of Fleischer-style risqué visual humor that I hadn’t expected to find in a Disney cartoon: as soon as the enormous war cannons fire, they immediately collapse into a flaccid state.

Most of the cartoon is taken up by an aerial battle between Oswald and an enemy combatant, each piloting a plane; once again, Disney has cast a mouse as the bad guy.

At this cartoon’s end Oswald is reduced to what looks like shrapnel by a cannonball. His girlfriend, serving as a nurse, sweeps up Oswald’s remains, pours them into a giant shaker, as if she were mixing a drink, and pours out a pool of black ink, which (in the manner of Koko in the Inkwell cartoons) takes form as Oswald. Thus Oswald undergoes death and resurrection, and he gets the girl!

Walt Disney and his principal animators came from Kansas City, and the early Mickey cartoons have rural or barnyard settings. So it’s not a surprise that the next Oswald cartoon teams the rabbit with a cow, but the title character of The Mechanical Cow (1927) is, inexplicably, also a robot! Can we see the seeds of Disney’s future interest in audio-animatronics here? The flaccid cannon joke is repeated here, and Oswald again has a rabbit girlfriend, who is abducted by the bad guys.

In this cartoon the bad guys are ultimately devoured by sharks. I suppose that, considering that characters can survive dismemberment and beheading in the silent Disney cartoons, we shouldn’t take deaths in them seriously. Still, the Alice and Oswald cartoons certainly operate on a harsh moral code.

In The Ocean Hop (1927) Oswald competes against Putrid Pete, with top hat and peg leg, and others in an airplane race across the Atlantic. This updates the theme from Alice’s Balloon Race while probably alluding to Charles Lindbergh’s groundbreaking transatlantic flight, which also inspired the later Mickey Mouse cartoon Plane Crazy. Putrid Pete uses chewing gum to glue Oswald’s plane to the runway so it can’t take off. Instead, Oswald and some mice–friendly ones, this time–turn an unusually long dachshund into a substitute plane, utilizing balloons to lift him into the air. In another Felix-style gag, Oswald uses a word balloon containing a question mark as one of the balloons, employing the question mark to hook it onto the dachshund. (This is a more elaborate version of a similar flying dachshund gag from Alice’s Balloon Race.)

In the best moment of this film, a title card announces, “Then Night Falls,” and we see huge black raindrops falling around Oswald’s plane, which then merge into a sort of black sea of night. This has nothing to do with how night falls in the real world, but it makes a lovely alternative.

At the end Oswald falls from the sky to land safely in Paris, where he looks distinctly uncomfortable as Frenchmen congratulate him by kissing him on the cheek. Was Disney hinting at homosexuality here?

In All Wet (1927), set at the beach, Disney tries an interesting experiment with Oswald’s leading lady. Usually Oswald’s girlfriends, who are sometimes rabbits and sometimes, strangely, cats, are flat-chested; lacking breasts, they tend to go topless, like the early Minnie Mouse. What identifies them as female are things like hats with flowers or skirts and even visible panties. But the lady rabbit in All Wet not only wears a dress but is drawn with the suggestion of a bust. Indeed, at one point in the cartoon, she hides from the camera in order to change from her dress into a one-piece swimsuit. She even strikes flirtatious poses. She’s by no means built like a Jessica Rabbit or even Betty Boop, but she’s certainly preferable to the androgynous female leads of so many early cartoons.

Trying to impress her, Oswald bribes (!) the lifeguard into letting him substitute for him; she rows out to sea and feigns distress, but ends up in real danger. In a clever sequence, Oswald and the girl rabbit are continually being separated as waves lift him or her high up out of the other’s reach. But the girl rabbit seems less than real when Oswald, in giving her artificial respiration, rolls up her body and legs, as if she were a rug!

The Rival Romeos (1927) are Oswald and Putrid Pete, this time without a peg leg. Early Fleischer cartoons depict a world in which everything could be alive and mobile. The silent Disney cartoons in this set generally steer away from this approach, but in Rival Romeos Oswald and Putrid Pete drive cars with faces and personalities. Putrid Pete’s car refuses to drive into mud, and Oswald’s car joins Oswald in laughing at Pete.

With the opening of Bright Lights (1928), Disney and his team are obviously setting themselves new visual challenges and meeting them. This short opens with an animated version of an electric sign such as one might have seen in Times Square, with dancing stick figures, advertising “Mlle. Zulu, shimmy queen,” an exotic dancer. Then we go inside the theater to find yet another example of a conductor in classic animation, this time an ape leading an animal orchestra. There’s a chorus line of scantily clad dancing girl cats, followed by Mlle. Zulu herself, who performs her shimmy dance in an impressively animated serpentine manner.

All of this is before Oswald even makes his entrance. When he does, Oswald proceeds to demonstrate his growing range as an animated actor. His heart bulges from his chest as he thinks about the sensuous Mlle. Zulu, and he grows embarrassed when he unconsciously rests his hand on the derriere of a poster image of Mlle. Zulu, which then angrily comes to life.

Though Oswald’s personality grows fuller and more believable, the characters bodies remain unbelievably malleable. A theater guard hits Oswald so hard that he turns into a mass of tiny Oswalds, which merge back into the full size version; this is a recurring gag in the Oswald series. Oswald retaliates by tying the guard’s legs around a lamppost, as if he were made of rubber. I also like the clever bit in which Oswald tries to sneak into the theater by hiding under a patron’s enormous shadow as if it were a carpet.

With Ozzie of the Mounted (1928) Disney shows ambition as a storyteller by moving away from familiar rural and urban settings into the Canadian wilderness, parodying the same tales of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that later served as fodder for Jay Ward’s Dudley Do-Right. In this cartoon the familiar furry villain in the top hat is identified as Putrid Pete alias Kid Pete alias Peg Leg Pete, a name later given to Mickey Mouse’s feline adversary. Oswald’s horse is another robot, although why Disney was so interested in mechanical farm animals remains a mystery.

My favorite of the Oswald cartoons in this set is Oh What a Knight (1928). On the commentary track Leonard Maltin and Mark Kausler suggest that this is a parody of Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood (1923), which makes sense since the early, adventurous Mickey has also been compared to Fairbanks. So Oh What a Knight is a parody of the swashbuckler genre in film, with Oswald as a kind of heroic singing troubadour: we can’t hear him sing, but there are plenty of musical notes drawn on screen, as Oswald makes his entrance, singing, while his donkey dances along. Robert Israel, a veteran composer of scores for silent films on video, created the musical accompaniment for the Oswald cartoons. I’m especially pleased that he sets Oswald’s singing entrance in Oh What a Knight to music from Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, which deals with medieval singers. Later in the cartoon, Israel quotes from Tannhauser, another Wagner opera about a singing knight (and possibly Israel’s nod to Chuck Jones’s What’s Opera, Doc?, which extensively uses music from Tannhauser).

It’s been two decades since I saw Fairbanks’ Robin Hood, but the most astounding segment in Oh What a Knight reminds me of Errol Flynn’s much more familiar The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), co-directed by Michael Curtiz, which was made a full decade after this cartoon. Both the Flynn Robin Hood and Curtiz’s The Sea Hawk (1940) culminate with swordfights in which the combatants cast enormous shadows on the walks behind them. Was this a swashbuckler movie tradition that predated Curtiz’s films? For, lo, in the greatest segment of Oh What a Knight, Oswald and an armored Putrid Pete wage a swordfight complete with ominous shadows behind them. Moreover, at one point Oswald exits the battle to go kiss the leading lady, while his shadow continues the duel with Putrid Pete in his place!

As the cartoon’s commentary track says, Oswald “recharges” his energies during the battle by continually returning to his lady love for a kiss. In this cartoon and some others, Oswald’s leading lady is not a rabbit but a cat. It would seem strange if Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend were not also a mouse, but then again, in more recent times Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy have gotten away with interspecies romance. I like the way that Disney and his animators kept devising new ways in these cartoons to portray Oswald’s sexual arousal. For example, at one point in Knight, his leading lady’s kiss causes Oswald’s feet to rotate in ecstasy.

Like Bright Lights, Sky Scrappers (1928) places Oswald in a then-contemporary urban setting: a skyscraper under construction. Putrid Pete sexually harasses Oswald’s girlfriend, a female cat, leading to an energetically staged battle between Oswald and Pete on a girder suspended high above the ground. Still, the cartoon disappointingly fails to evoke the suspense of the live action “thrill comedies” with similar settings that surely inspired it, like Harold Lloyd’s Never Weaken (1921) and Safety Last (1923) or Laurel and Hardy’s later Liberty (1929). It certainly pales in comparison to the split second timing of Popeye and company sleepwalking on and off girders in A Dream Walking (1934), whose complex visual choreography and split second timing was presumably beyond the capability of animators in the 1920s. The main problem, though, is that there’ not enough sense of potential sense of danger from falling in Sky Scrappers. At one point Oswald, climbing a rope, falls several stories, squashes on impact, but immediately resumes normal form, seemingly feeling no pain. He’s so rubbery that if he fell off the girder, one wouldn’t be surprised if he bounced.

The Fox Chase (1928) is another example of misjudging audience sympathies. Surely the audience would side not with Oswald the fox hunter but with his intended victim, the clever fox who outwits him. This fox is not only a trickster but a shapeshifter, adopting a disguise in the cartoon’s final moments that thwarts his hunters once and for all. In the high point here, Oswald tries to drive the fox out of a log by rolling it up like a rug–or like his leading lady from All Wet.

The last Oswald short, Tall Timber (1928), utilizes another ambitious setting, opening with Oswald rowing a canoe down a river, past a wilderness, down waterfall and, excitingly, through rapids. This time Oswald is a duck hunter, but, once again, I found my sympathies going to the duck. But then the cartoon resumes thrill comedy mode. Oswald finds himself riding a moose and being catapulted towards the screen–and the audience–until his face fills the frame. Then Oswald flees from an onrushing, rolling boulder, which finally, literally flattens him against a tree. The result is that Oswald is literally rail thin, but far taller. Oswald tries to restore his true shape by hitting himself with another heavy rock, but this impact distorts his body to the opposite extreme. An amazingly weird closeup shows Oswald’s head, inflated like a balloon. In long shot Oswald now looks short and obese, and his ears are no longer long but rounded: in fact, he looks like a fat Mickey Mouse! Two bear cubs seize either end of Oswald and pull, finally causing the rubbery rabbit to snap back to normal shape. Nevertheless angry, Oswald pursues the bear cubs to what looks like an immense black rock, but proves to be their huge, ferocious mother. But after an offscreen battle in a cave, the mother bear flees, with a furless body in bra and panties (yet another of the various animal “nudity” gags in the Oswald series that falls flat). Oswald then reenters, wearing a resplendent fur coat; he dons a top hat and lights a cigar in triumph. That seems an appropriate final image for what amounts to his curtain call in this final Oswald cartoon.

On the second disc are three key cartoons, animated by Ub Iwerks, that Walt Disney made independently, after Universal took Oswald away from him. They include the Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy (1928) and Steamboat Willie (1928). The opening credits for each cartoon call it “a Walt Disney comic by Ub Iwerks,” a description that’s interesting for two reasons. First, the phrasing indicates that Walt Disney was in charge, but that Iwerks was the actual hands-on creator of the film. Second, the phrase “Walt Disney comic” suggests that at this point Disney–and perhaps his audience, as well– regarded the animated cartoon as a cinematic kind of comic strip, rather than as a separate artform.

Plane Crazy was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon that Disney made, and it was originally created as a silent cartoon. But it was the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, with its groundbreaking synchronized sound track of music, dialogue and sound effects, that was the first to be released. But watching Plane Crazy, I found myself thinking that even apart from the question of sound, it was a good thing that Mickey actually made his debut in Steamboat Willie instead.

Opening in a barnyard, Plane Crazy presents Mickey as rural rodent who, with hep from other animals, builds his own plane and models himself after Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic. (We even see a surprisingly realistic picture of Lindbergh in the film, which sharply contrasts with the “cartoony” style in which the animal characters are drawn; Mickey even musses his hair in imitation of Lindbergh’s.) Mickey invites Minnie Mouse to join him on his flight. Eventually Mickey starts flirting with her and puts his arm around her; she wags her finger and tells him no. Looking devilish, Mickey speeds up the plane and puts it through aerial maneuvers that frighten Minnie. then he forcibly kisses her, Minnie slaps his face and she jumps out of the plane to escape him, her skirt billowing into a makeshift parachute. In other words, Plane Crazy portrays Mickey Mouse as guilty of sexual harassment, acting no differently than Putrid Pete in Sky Scrappers!

Watching Steamboat Willie after the Oswalds, I realized that much of the first half of the cartoon and its final scenes is conventional for its time, nowhere nearly as inspired as the best of Felix, Inkwell and Oswald. Mickey is the pilot of a steamboat, and his boss is an enormous cat with a high hat, an early version of his archfoe Black Pete (whom we can now see as Putrid Pete’s descendant). The bullying Pete pulls Mickey’s body, as malleable as Oswald’s, out of shape, stretching it till Mickey’s midsection looks like a rubber hose. There’s some vulgar comedy business with Pete spitting. Too late to board the steamboat, Minnie runs alongside it until Mickey uses a winch and hook to lift hold of her panties, a rather demeaning way to treat the leading lady, and deposit her on the boat. At the end of the cartoon Pete forces Mickey to peel potatoes, a parrot laughs mockingly at the mouse, and Mickey gets angry, beans the parrot with at grown potato, and laughs. This material seems all too conventional. sometimes crass and even mean-spirited.

But the opening image of Mickey at the wheel of the steamboat shows why Steamboat Willie fired the public imagination. Mickey is smiling, happy, and whistles a tune we hear on the soundtrack. It’s not just the fact that Steamboat Willie had synchronized sound that made it a breakthrough: it’s the way that Disney adapted his characterizations and stories to the opportunities that music provided. By making music, either by whistling or by playing his improvised instruments later in the cartoon, Mickey becomes a source of pure joy.

The middle of the cartoon has no story: it’s just Mickey playing his instruments, whether they are spoons and pots or various animals. For example, the musical sequence begins when a goat eats the sheet music for “Turkey in the Straw”; Mickey discovers that by turning the goat’s tail like a crank, the goat becomes a living gramophone, with the music coming from his mouth. Steamboat Willie has incurred criticism for Mickey’s supposed sadism, pulling a cat’s tail, or stretching a goose’s neck, or, startlingly, pressing a female pig’s udders in order to produce musical sounds. But in the context of the Oswald cartoons, in which characters’ rubbery bodies rarely sustain any harm, this doesn’t seem so bad to me. Presumably viewers in the 1920s would accept the convention of the period’s cartoons that these animals are not really being hurt. Instead, the audience would be carried along by the music Mickey is playing with these animals, in an effect that is simultaneously comedic and pleasurable simply as music. The cartoon’s ending, with the reversion to expressions of violent anger, is a letdown: it would have been better had Steamboat Willie ended with a musical gag of some sort. It’s Mickey the music maker who first won audience’s hearts.

The final cartoon in this DVD set is The Skeleton Dance (1929), animated by Ub Iwerks, the first of Disney’s Silly Symphonies series. This cartoon is a little masterpiece even though it has no actual story. Whereas the “Turkey in the Straw” segment in Steamboat Willie was an extended interlude between more conventional story sequences, The Skeleton Dance is entirely founded on music. The cartoon begins as a sort of visual tone poem, establishing an eerie mood both through the music and through classic visual elements from horror tales: lightning, the ominous eyes of an owl, a seemingly deserted church and graveyard, a howling dog (who looks like Pluto in silhouette!), and flying bats. Soon the cartoon introduces notes of humor as well, with black cats battling by pulling each other’s noses as if they were rubber bands. This reversion to Oswald-style visual humor is abruptly interrupted when a skeleton looms from behind a tombstone separating the cats and then leaps directly at the “camera,” invading the viewer’s space. Four skeletons then begin their dance, which takes up the rest of the cartoon, sometimes entertainingly silly, sometimes macabre, sometimes both at once.

The success of The Skeleton Dance led to Disney’s long series of Silly Symphonies which were built around music, frequently classical music. I’ve written about a number of Silly Symphonies before after seeing them at Lincoln Center (see “Comics in Context” #136: “Before There Were Cars”). Last December I attended the Museum of the Moving Image’s four-part retrospective of Silly Symphonies, including The Skeleton Dance and demonstrating how Disney further developed his new invention, the musical cartoon, but that is a topic for a future installment.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

Back in 1987 there was a party at a Manhattan nightclub called the Tunnel to publicize the wedding of Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man, to Mary Jane Watson. Actors portraying Spidey (in mask and tuxedo) and MJ (in wedding gown) were present as was Stan Lee, as himself, and I attended as well. This week I informed my companion for that evening that Marvel had just retconned Peter Parker’s life so that he had never been married. So, I told her, I guess we never attended that party either. Too bad, because she was really proud of the dress she wore for the occasion. I then explained to her that Peter Parker had made a deal with the devil to save his aunt’s life, and the price was changing history so his marriage never happened. Not a comics fan, her reaction was, in effect, say what? Exactly.

It was Stan Lee’s idea to have Peter Parker marry Mary Jane Watson. As Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada told Comic Book Resources, “It was a stunt.” Quesada explained to CBR that “Around 1986, circulation on the Spider-Man newspaper strip had begun to drop.” So Stan Lee and an editor from King Features Syndicate came up with the idea of having Peter marry Mary Jane to boost circulation.

Quesada continued, “So, at a certain point, Stan called up Marvel and let the folks there know that he was planning to marry Peter and Mary Jane in the newspaper strip at such-and-such a point. At the time, Mary Jane wasn’t even dating Peter in the series, but [then editor in chief] Jim Shooter, not wanting the comics to get scooped by the newspaper strip or whatever, decided that the publicity surrounding the marriage (there was talk of a faux wedding ceremony taking place at Shea Stadium to commemorate the event) and the fact that this was Stan made it worth doing in the books as well.” (And I wonder if Peter and Mary Jane will remain married in the Spider-Man comic strip, and if not, how Stan will explain it.)

But after Peter and Mary Jane got hitched, Marvel editors and writers regretted the decision. But why? After twenty-plus years of Spider-Man stories, wasn’t it about time for Peter Parker to get married?

When Stan Lee was writing The Amazing Spider-Man comic book in the 1960s, Peter Parker started out as a 15-year-old high school student who eventually graduated and entered college. Later writers had Peter graduate college and enter graduate school where (as I know from firsthand experience) people can remain students for years and years. Spider-Man/Peter Parker was supposed to be a young guy, a student who had not yet begun an adult career. This distinguished him from “adult” superheroes like Daredevil, who in his secret identity was one of Manhattan’s leading lawyers, and certainly from Iron Man, who was really multimillionaire C. E. O. Tony Stark. If Peter Parker was married, the argument ran, that made him seem too old.

That, it was argued, was a problem because Marvel’s target audience was perceived as being high school and college age kids, who, supposedly would be less able to identify with a Spider-Man who was older than they were. (By that logic, I suppose, they couldn’t identify with Daredevil or Iron Man because they weren’t kids. And for a brief, terrible time in the 1990s Iron Man was indeed replaced with a “teen Tony” version.)

But what is the median age of Marvel readers nowadays? Looking around at comics stores and conventions, I see mostly adults. The owner of one Manhattan comics store tells me that he never sees customers who are kids.

Yet I can see the point that readers well into their twenties, thirties, or middle age might prefer that Peter Parker remain fixed in his early twenties, because he reminds them of themselves when they were that age.

Another, probably greater problem with Peter’s marriage is that the essence of Spider-Man is that he is the “hard luck Harry” (to use Stan Lee’s phrase) of the superhero world. Despite his triumphs over his supervillain adversaries, nothing else ever goes right for Spider-Man either in his costumed identity or as Peter Parker. Therefore, it is argued, the marriage is a mistake because being married to a gorgeous supermodel makes Peter Parker just too happy.

I agree that it was a mistake in the immediate aftermath of Peter and MJ’s wedding to portray her as a wealthy, famous and highly successful model and actress. Peter Parker has always suffered from money problems, and this removed them. Later writers and editors recognized this and gave MJ considerable career setbacks; Todd McFarlane drew an amusing symbolic cover of Spider-Man being literally kicked out of an upscale apartment building where the Parkers were living in the lap of luxury (Amazing Spider-Man #314, April 1989).

It’s certainly a naive view of married life to picture it as a constant source of blissfulness. I suspect there may even have been a certain sexism in this attitude towards Peter’s marriage, as if MJ were defined principally by her looks and her presumed prowess in bed. Why couldn’t Peter and Mary Jane be portrayed as partners in the struggles, personal, financial, and so forth, that Peter had formerly faced on his own? This is the direction in which Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies appear to be moving.

But is nostalgia the real reason that these Baby Boomer editors and writers prefer that Peter Parker be single? Peter was single when they were growing up reading Spider-Man, so they feel that he shouldn’t be married now. I confess that I wonder if this sort of nostalgia clouds my judgment in the issue.

After all, Peter and MJ got married in Amazing Spider-Man Annual # 21, published in 1987. In real time they were married for twenty years, nearly half of the Spider-Man series’ nearly forty-six (!) year history. So that means that anyone who started reading Spider-Man comics (apart from reprints) in the last two decades only knows the character as a married man. Yet Spider-Man remained highly popular among comics readers over that period. Isn’t it possible that post-Boomer generations of Spider-Man readers consider Peter’s marriage to MJ one of the sources of the series’ appeal? Since the comic book audience has been much older over the last twenty years than it was back in the 1960s, isn’t it possible that male readers aren’t put off by the marriage? Young kids might think that a married superhero is more like their father than like themselves. (Reed Richards is the father figure of the Fantastic Four, so Stan Lee and Jack Kirby probably had no qualms about alienating FF readers by having him marry Sue; there was still Johnny Storm to serve as an identification figure for the kids.) But wouldn’t many teenage and twentysomething male readers wish they had a girlfriend or wife like Mary Jane themselves? Spider-Man’s marriage might therefore make the character more appealing to them.

Moreover, there has been a visible growth of the numbers of female readers for American comic books in recent years. Last year’s uproar over the allegedly lurid statuette of Mary Jane pointed to how important and iconic the character has become to female fans of Spider-Man comics–and the Spider-Man movies, in which Mary Jane plays such an important role (see Comics in Context” #178: “The Whole World Is Watching”). To what extent is that role responsible for a significant portion of the blockbuster commercial success of those films? Don’t the love story and Kirsten Dunst’s performance as MJ bring in a considerable female audience who might not otherwise be interested in superhero movies?

If so, then is Marvel alienating present and potential women readers by putting an end to Peter and MJ’s marriage, thereby arguably suggesting that the marriage wasn’t a positive development, that MJ was an inessential character, and even that the heroic male is better off alone?

Then again, one could argue that the essence of Spider-Man is that he is loner, and not by choice. As both Spider-Man and Peter Parker, he continually strives to do the right thing, only to be rewarded with mistrust, misunderstanding, lack of appreciation, and even hatred. In the classic Stan Lee Spider-Man stories of the Silver Age, Peter/Spider-Man was operating entirely on his own, unable to confide in anyone else: even Gwen Stacy, his first great love, turned against Spider-Man, mistakenly holding him responsible for her father’s death.

Therefore, it makes sense to me that Spider-Man/Peter Parker should be single, and that the series works best when he must face his troubles on his own. Peter/Spider-Man would meet mistrust and lack of appreciation wherever he turned, whether it was the public at large, or J. Jonah Jameson, or even, at times, from his girlfriends.

One of the traditional themes of the series is that carrying out his responsibility to do good as Spider-Man continually complicates and damages Peter Parker’s personal life, and this would be true of his romantic relationships as well. This point was most powerfully made by the death of Gwen Stacy at the hands of the original Green Goblin.

Well then, if Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane was a mistake, why not just find a reason for them to get divorced? They could still remain friends, and possibly at some point return to being lovers. This was the simplest solution, and yet Marvel editors refused to take it.

Thankfully, Marvel did not go for the other obvious solution, which was to kill off Mary Jane. Perhaps this was a case of Been There, Done That, since Peter’s first true love, Gwen Stacy, had been killed off. Perhaps Marvel editors and writers over the last twenty years recognized that she was too appealing a character to kill off.

If Spider-Man were published by DC Comics, DC would simply have done of its long series of reboots, casting all past continuity into oblivion and starting the series over from scratch. Traditionally, though, Marvel keeps its continuity intact perhaps because it is founded in the classic stories that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and company created in the 1960s, and which no new version is likely to equal or surpass. I agree with this policy. As the late Mark Gruenwald used to say about reboots, Marvel got its characters right the first time.

So, rather than use any simple solutions, Marvel has resorted to complicated and convoluted schemes to undo Peter and MJ’s marriage.

A decade ago there was the now infamous Clone Saga in the Spider-Man books, founded upon a story in Amazing Spider-Man #149 (1975) in which the criminal geneticist, the Jackal, had created a clone of his foe, Spider-Man. By the end of that issue the clone had seemingly been killed. But in the 1990s a Peter Parker lookalike named Ben Reilly surfaced. The readers were made to wonder, was Ben the Spider-Man clone–or was he the original Spider-Man? Could it be that the Peter Parker who had starred in Spider-Man comics from 1975 onward was actually the clone?

As the Clone Saga evolved, the Spider-Man editors and writers saw it as a means of simplifying Spider-Man continuity and eliminating the marriage. They identified the Peter who married MJ as the clone and shipped them off to Portland, Oregon to live happily ever after; MJ even became pregnant. Ben Reilly was identified as the original Spider-Man and reassumed his Spider-Man identity. Hence, the “Spider-Man” who starred in stories from Amazing Spider-Man #150 into the mid-1990s was an unwitting impostor.

And readers rebelled, quite understandably. The Baby Boomer writers and editors of the Spider-Man books might have been happy since the Spider-Man stories from 1962 into 1975, which they had grown up with, were left intact.

But what if you had started reading Spider-Man in 1976 or later, and Marvel had just told you that you had been reading about a phony Spider-Man? Even if you were a Boomer Spider-Man fan you might be outraged. The Clone Saga was effectively discarding twenty years of Spider-Man comics. Unintentionally, Marvel was telling its audience that they had wasted the last two decades reading about the wrong character!

So Marvel hurriedly sought to undo the damage. Peter and MJ rushed back to New York, Ben was proven to be the the clone and was killed off, and Peter returned to his role as Spider-Man. As for MJ’s pregnancy, she gave birth and was told the baby was stillborn, and the baby was abducted by an operative of the original Green Goblin. Was the baby live or dead? There was no answer, and thus the baby became a continuity time bomb, liable to detonate at some point in the future.

The Clone Saga also failed in its objective of providing a Spider-Man who was unmarried. And so Peter and MJ’s marriage survived for another decade, not alienating readers, as far as I know, until editor in chief Joe Quesada and company devised their solution to the alleged problem in the recent “One More Day” story arc which culminated in Amazing Spider-Man #545, whose writing is credited to J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada.

During Civil War, which, as regular readers know, is not my favorite series, Spider-Man publicly revealed his other identity of Peter Parker. He was subsequently reminded of the reason he had a secret identity in the first place, when his Aunt May was shot and fatally wounded. It seemed that there was no way to save he life until the demon Mephisto, Marvel’s counterpart to the Biblical Satan, made Peter and Mary Jane an offer: he would save her life if they agreed to allow him to alter history so that they had never been married. Realizing that May’s life would still be in danger if the world knew that Peter was Spider-Man, Mary Jane insisted that Mephisto make Peter’s dual identity secret once more. Mephisto, Peter and Mary Jane agreed to the terms of this bargain, and history was changed. Peter and Mary Jane no longer remembered being married, and no one knew that Peter was Spider-Man. (It’s now obvious that Marvel only publicly revealed Spider-Man’s double identity in Civil War because they intended to restore it to secrecy again in “One More Day.”)

Oddly, Mephisto threw in some bonuses. He further altered history so that Harry Osborn had never died. Well, since Harry once followed in his father’s footsteps as the second Green Goblin, perhaps Mephisto intends for Harry to cause trouble in the future.

But what motivation did Mephisto have for removing Peter’s new “organic web-shooters” and having him return to his original, mechanical ones? I assume that Marvel gave Spider-Man the power to shoot webbing out of his hands because he can do so in the Raimi movies. Was Marvel’s comics division under pressure from the movie division to make the comics Spider-Man conform to the movie version? (That could well be yet another reason why Marvel put an end to the Peter-MJ marriage, since they’re not married in the movies.) Did the comics division restore the mechanical web-shooters because that pressure was off, or because fans–or even Marvel pros–had protested?

I applaud the fact that Quesada and company did not kill off Mary Jane. Now that the world knows about the character from the movies, if they killed her off there would be outrage in the mainstream media. And besides, she may be in future Spider-Man movies and certainly in licensing and merchandising spinoffs of the movies and comics.

I’m also glad that Quesada and company didn’t do a reboot of Spider-Man. I wish that they’d refrain from reboots altogether. Is J. Michael Straczynski’s Strange miniseries that radically revised the Lee-Ditko Doctor Strange stories (without coming close to matching them) meant to be canonical?

Although I’d prefer not altering past continuity at all, I am relieved that the changes to past Spider-Man stories are less than I’d expected:

COMIC BOOK RESOURCES: So, to get this straight, OMD [One More Day”] doesn’t actually negate the previous 20 years of Spider-Man stories?

QUESADA: Exactly, that’s precisely what we wanted to avoid. What didn’t occur was the marriage. Peter and MJ were together, they loved each other–they just didn’t pull the trigger on the wedding day. All the books count, all the stories count–except in the minds of the people within the Marvel U, Peter and MJ were a couple, not a married couple. To me, that’s a much fairer thing to do to those of us who have been reading Spider-Man for all these years. Like I said, is it perfect? No. As far as we investigated, short of divorcing Peter, nothing really is.”

(http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12681)

Thus Marvel avoided making the Clone Saga’s mistake of telling readers that the previous two decades of Spider-Man stories are now irrelevant.

But if a divorce would be the “perfect” solution, why didn’t Marvel go for it? Quesada claims to be protecting Spider-Man’s younger readers. He told Newsarama last year, “divorcing them to me sends out completely the wrong message. Imagine you’re a mom and you’re buying little Bobby or little Betty Spidey Adventures or maybe Spidey Loves MJ and you’re watching the news one day and the broadcaster looks right at you and says, “˜Spider-Man is getting divorced, more on that after these messages.’ Let’s just say that as a parent, I’d be upset by the sound bite, I could only imagine how the rest of the world would feel”.

Well, yes, I can see that small children might be afraid that their own parents would split up, so the idea of Spider-Man getting divorced might disconcert them. Then again, small children who are Spider-Man fans might be even more upset if they found out that his eye had been brutally gouged out, as it was in 2006 (see “Comics in Context” #118: “O Other, Where Art Thou?”). Okay, that wasn’t widely reported in the mainstream media, and Marvel was lucky that it wasn’t. But what the mainstream media did make a big fuss over was the assassination of Captain America in 2007 (see “Comics in Context” #168: “O Captain! My Captain!”). Gee, if I were a small child who read comics about Captain America, I bet that would upset me. Why, reading about Cap’s death might even be the first time that little Bobby and little Betty grapple with the meaning of death. And Cap’s still dead in the comics.

Here’s something else. Divorce is far more widespread and accepted in this country than it was back when we Boomers were children. I recall when people claimed that Nelson Rockefeller’s campaign to be nominated for President in the 1960s wouldn’t succeed because he’d been divorced, and it didn’t. But two decades later Ronald Reagan was elected president, and no one cared that he had been divorced and remarried.

I expect that little Bobby and little Betty who read Spidey Adventures may well have friends whose parents are divorced. Maybe little Bobby and little Betty have an aunt or uncle who is divorced, or maybe their own parents are divorced. The traditional nuclear family unit is not as common as it used to be. So maybe these children wouldn’t be as upset by the idea of divorce as Joe Quesada thinks they would be.

But you know what? I bet that if little Bobby and little Betty are being brought up to be religious, they might be really upset by Peter Parker making a deal with the devil. Mommy, mommy, is Spider-Man going to hell?

Spider-Man has a tradition of dealing with disturbing subjects. Consider that Spider-Man’s origin not only centers on the death of Uncle Ben, Peter’s father figure, but makes clear that Spider-Man feels responsible for allowing the murder to happen. And yet somehow for over four decades kids have been able to handle the notion that their hero Spider-Man is partly guilty of patricide. Spider-Man likewise feels guilty for the death of Gwen: the Green Goblin pushed her off the bridge, but her neck snapped when Spider-Man caught her.

Besides, have we forgotten how Stan Lee defied the Comics Code to publish his groundbreaking anti-drug storyline in Amazing Spider-Man #96-98 (1971), which showed Peter’s friend Harry deathly ill from drug addiction? What about that 1986 Spider-Man & Power Pack special, aimed at small children, that revealed that as a young boy Peter Parker was a victim of child abuse? Marvel has a tradition of dealing with such hard issues. Is divorce, then, really too much for Spider-Man’s young readers to handle?

In the year 2008 Quesada’s attitude towards divorce seems, at the very least, quaint. He told Comic Book Resources, “Sure, divorce is a reality of life, but Peter Parker and Spider-Man are not the types of characters that would do that. Spider-Man is a worldwide icon and is considered one of the good guys, like Superman”. So the “good guys” don’t get divorced, presumably because divorce is evil. So anyone who gets divorced is a bad guy?

Quesada has also said that he opposed divorcing Peter and Mary Jane because he wanted to present them as a “strong loving couple”. Well, by breaking them up via Mephisto’s magic, Marvel has put an end to that theme, at least for now. Isn’t it possible that Peter and Mary Jane could continue to love each other but still get a divorce because it is simply too dangerous for Spider-Man to be married, as the assault on another of his loved ones, Aunt May, demonstrated?

Isn’t it also possible that Marvel’s writers could have crafted a storyline that maturely and sensitively handed a divorce between Peter and Mary Jane, written in a way that could explain to younger readers that divorce is sad but sometimes necessary? Maybe reading such a storyline could actually help children of divorced parents reconcile themselves to the idea of divorce.

On reading the conclusion of “One More Day” in Amazing Spider-Man #545, I wasn’t as upset about Peter Parker’s deal with Mephisto as I thought I’d be. Spider-Man is the everyman as superhero, and how would you or I react if the only way to save a loved one’s life was to make a bargain with the devil? Could you justify allowing a loved one to die by refusing to make such a deal?

Moreover, I like the grand, operatic romanticism of Mary Jane’s speech to Peter that not even the devil can destroy their love for one another, and that even if he makes them forget what they meant to each other, they will inevitably be reunited. It puts me in mind of the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or stories about reincarnated lovers reunited, from Hawkman to Dark Shadows, which deal with a similar concept.

But still, I remain repulsed by the idea of Spider-Man making a deal with the devil. In his CBR interview Quesada points out that “One More Day” is based on the myth of Faust. Yes, indeed, and the point of Faust and the many variations on it is that making a deal with the devil is always wrong.

Just look at Marvel’s previous leading version of the Faust myth: the origin of Ghost Rider (in Marvel Spotlight #5, 1972). Like Peter Parker, Johnny Blaze was desperate to save the life of the person who had acted as a parent to him: “Crash” Simpson, who was succumbing to cancer. Blaze made a bargain with the devil, who was subsequently identified as Mephisto, and who did indeed prevent Simpson from dying of cancer, only to let him die soon thereafter performing a motorcycle stunt. Then Mephisto transformed Blaze into the human host of the demon Zarathos, turning him into the Ghost Rider. The Ghost Rider’s origin follows the standard pattern of the Faust myth. The moral is that making a deal with the devil leaves you far worse off than you were before, and that you do not even gain the original goal for which you sacrificed your principles and perhaps your soul.

Therefore, the truly heroic choice for Spider-Man to make may have been to resign himself to letting Aunt May die rather than provide Mephisto with the opportunity to wreak even greater harm.

Indeed, as soon as Peter and Mary Jane agree to the bargain, Mephisto shows them a vision of the daughter that he claims they now will not have. This, presumably, is Marvel’s way of disposing of that “time bomb’ baby: if Peter and Mary Jane were never married, they never had that child. In Tom DeFalco’s Spider-Girl series, set in the future, that child grew up to become the teenage title heroine. But “One More Day” suggests that Spider-Girl takes place in the future if an alternate reality, not that of the “mainstream” Spider-Man.

So there is one consequence of Peter and Mary Jane’s satanic bargain that is arguably worse than the death of his elderly aunt: it’s like an abortion via black magic. And just how many lives would Spider-Girl have saved if she existed in the “mainstream” Spider-Man’s reality? You can expect that Spider-Man writers will be tempted to do still more stories about how far Mephisto has sunk his claws into Spider-Man’s life, if not now, then in the future.

How dense do Peter and Mary Jane have to be not to realize any of this? Have they never seen any version of the Faust story–not even something like Damn Yankees or Bedazzled? There are already mainstream media reports about “One More Day.” How can making a deal with the devil possibly be good for the public image of Marvel’s flagship hero?

Furthermore, to my knowledge, Mephisto has never before demonstrated such power to restructure reality and even resurrect the dead (Harry). But there are plenty of Marvel characters who do, who could have been used to retcon the marriage without morally sullying Peter and Mary Jane’s characters. Over at his online forum, John Byrne has explained how he and writer Howard Mackie would have used the alien Shaper of Worlds to undo the marriage. I find myself leaning towards using the Grandmaster, who has been established as having powers to control time, space, life and death.

For twenty years Marvel writers and editors thought that Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage was a mistake and longer to undo it, and finally Marvel did. And you know what? Right now I expect there are people who are professional comics writers and editors, and people who will someday become professional comics writers and editors, who are outraged that Marvel had Spider-Man make a deal with the devil. And these present and future writers and editors will be determined to undo it. We shall see whether it takes twenty years this time, or much less.

Still, despite my qualms about Marvel brought it about, maybe Peter Parker and Spider-Man should be single. But I don’t feel any enthusiasm about this. Over the last twenty years I have grown very, very weary of reboots, resets, and revisionism.

One reads fiction on two levels. The reader knows that it is fiction and can admire and analyze the craft of the author. But the fiction should also persuade the reader simultaneously to suspend his or her disbelief, to pretend that the story and its characters are real, and to become emotionally involved with them.

But why should we invest ourselves emotionally in the Marvel Universe–or the DC Universe, for that matter–any longer?

For twenty years Marvel has sought to make its readers care about the marriage–and about the love–between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Did they succeed with you? Too bad, because they just retconned the characters’ past so that their marriage never happened. So why should you care about any other romance in Marvel stories, since it too could disappear from Marvel history with the snapping of an editor’s fingers?

When Spider-Man revealed his secret identity in Civil War, did you think that this would change his life permanently? Did you wonder if and how Spider-Man could ever find a new secret identity? Well, Mephisto just wiped out everyone’s knowledge of Spider-Man’s dual identity through magic. So why should we ever care about any disastrous situation that befalls a Marvel character in the future? All they have to do is hit the magical reset button.

Did you feel moved by J. M. DeMatteis’s well-crafted story of the death of Harry Osborn in Spectacular Spider-Man #200 (1993)? Surprise! Harry’s death was retconned away! Now that Bucky has turned up alive, it is clear that no death is sacrosanct at Marvel. It’s as if every character had a version of Wolverine’s fast healing power; it just takes some of them longer to recover from the dreaded deading (as The Goon Show used to put it) than others. Death has just turned into a means of demeaning noble characters–like, say, Captain America, symbol of our nation–and exasperating longtime readers we wait, sometimes years, for Marvel to get around to bringing them back.

One of the main points of the Marvel Revolution was that Stan Lee wanted to explore what would happen if a superhero existed in what was basically our world. In the real world death is irreversible, one’s problems cannot be made to disappear by magic, and reality is not malleable, capable of being shaped and reshaped at will.

How can a reader continue to suspend disbelief when the stories make it all too clear that the characters are merely puppets, and we are all too aware of the puppeteers pulling their strings?

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

To my astonishment, Marvel has just released Essential Marvel Saga Vol. 1! This is a paperback collection of a series that I wrote in the 1980s which outlined the history of the Marvel Universe from Fantastic Four #1 through the Galactus trilogy, with appropriate illustrations from the original stories. It was abruptly canceled with issue 25, back when conventional wisdom had begun to decree that no one wanted books like Marvel Saga and The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. i am glad to see that history has proven them wrong.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

One of the pleasures in previewing Mark Evanier’s Kirby: King of Comics over the last two installments of this column was realizing that work in cartoon art that I had first discovered when I was growing up was now considered significant enough to be honored in art books and museums. In the eight hands comics and cartoon art can achieve greatness. I will return to my commentary on the Kirby book when it is published in March. Now, however, I intend to look at the other end of the spectrum: cartoons from my boyhood that demonstrate the depths to which the artform can sink. I’m not talking about the merely mediocre, of which there is plenty all around us, but the truly awful. Last week we ascended to the summit; now prepare to descend into the abyss.

There can be a certain fascination in looking at cartoons that are utter crap: watching them inspires a certain kind of stunned awe that anyone would put anything so atrocious on screen. But it certainly helps if these aesthetic outrages are presented within the proper ironic format, encouraging us to laugh at their sheer awfulness.

And so it was that I attended the New York City premiere of Cartoon Dump, an comedy stage show that showcases the worst that television animation of the 1950s and 1960s had to offer (http://www.cartoondump.com/). Presented every fourth Tuesday at the Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles, Cartoon Dump made its Manhattan debut at the comedy club Comix (353 West 14th St.) on January 8 of this year, and will return to Comix on February 19 and March 11.

Like Krusty the Clown’s show-within-a-show on The Simpsons or Patchy the Pirate’s live action segments on SpongeBob SquarePants specials, Cartoon Dump satirizes a kind of television show that is familiar to Baby Boomers from their childhoods but which no longer seems to exist: the low budget local TV kiddie show in which a costumed host introduces animated cartoons.

Cartoon Dump separates itself from other such parodies through an intriguing twist: its live action cast of characters are themselves fans of these brain-dead cartoons, who love them rather too much. Emotionally damaged in various comical ways, Cartoon Dump‘s main characters have retreated from adult life by attempting to transform themselves into real life cartoon characters. The show’s host, Compost Brite (played by Erica Doering), is perky and cheerful, even over inappropriate topics, like her anorexia: she happily boasts of going for so long without food that she falls into delirium. One of her friends is Moodsy the Clinically Depressed Owl (played by Frank Conniff), whose other problem include alcoholism, auto-erotic asphyxiation, and other vices that can only be hinted at. Another is Buf Badger, the “rageaholic animation historian” (played by Kathleen Roll), unable and unwilling to conceal her furious contempt for anyone who doesn’t share her encyclopedic knowledge of cartoon history. (It strikes me that she’s be the dream date for The Simpsons‘ Comic Book Guy.) The concept appears to be that if these sorts of kiddie shows still existed on TV, these would be the sort of people, who grew up loving bad cartoons, who would get jobs working on them. It makes me wonder about some of the people engaging in “cosplay” that I see wandering around comics conventions. (Like those young women in “Gothic Lolita” outfits at the recent New York Anime Con: what are they thinking?)

Then again, such obsessives don’t necessarily wear costumes. In the New York show there was a character named Cissy Kafka, the alleged winner of a Cartoon Dump essay contest, who outwardly seemed to be a normal, presentable young woman in a business suit, but soon confessed that she had based her life on Cartoon Dump and considered Compost Brite, whom she’d never before met, to be her only friend. The performance at Comix also had as a guest stand-up comedian Mike Dobbins, who likewise wasn’t in costume, but the weirdness of whose act–including an impersonation of the Hamburglar performing pilates–fit the show.

Cartoon Dump is the creation of Frank Conniff, who was formerly one of the writer/performers on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and was interviewed by Quick Stop editor Ken Plume here). MST3K likewise used the format of a low budget kiddie show, in its case, complete with puppets, in order to mock the old live action movies it presented. Cartoon Dump is this another example of the MSTie diaspora, in which the show’s ex-writer/performers devise and appear in new variations on the theme, such as Michael J. Nelson’s RiffTrax (see “Comics in Context” #185; “Get Off of My Cloud” and www.rifftrax.com) and MST3K creator Joel Hodgson’s brand new Cinematic Titanic, in which Conniff is a participant.

Cartoon Dump‘s execrable cartoons are supplied by animation historian Jerry Beck, who introduced the New York performance, supplying background information about the evening’s selections. Beck presents an assortment of such anti-masterpieces on his own at his “Worst Cartoons Ever” show, which he gives every year at the San Diego Comic Con, although I finally saw it last fall at New York University. Beck also hosts the Worst Cartoons Ever! DVD, which is available from Rembrandt Films, although the animated tripe within–including Sir Gee Whiz, which the Dump showed shown at Comix– is about as far from Rembrandt as is imaginable. (Jerry Beck is better known for his expertise on the masterpieces of classic animation, and he played a major role in putting together the recent Popeye and Woody Woodpecker DVD sets which I so highly praised: see “Comics in Context” #189: “Woody’s Woodpeccadillos” and #190: “Pop Eye-Con.”)

You can also see video podcast versions of Cartoon Dump segments, complete with cartoons, at Beck’s Cartoon Brew Films website. Watching the Dump performers on the videos, their comedy comes across as more drily ironic. To get the full impact, you need to see them with an audience, where both they and the cartoons get enthusiastic laughter. The audience at the Comix performance, which included comics and animation professionals, was particularly good, knowledgeable enough to burst into laughter at the sight of particularly terrible animation.

Actually, while I was waiting for the Cartoon Dump show to begin at Comix, I was delighted to listen to the good examples of early television animation. Over the sound system was played a mini-retrospective of Hanna-Barbera theme songs and background music, including, during the time I was there, the theme songs to Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, Wally Gator, Magilla Gorilla and Peter Potamus. These were the work of composer Hoyt Curtin (with a few spoken lines performed by the great voice actor Daws Butler as Yogi Bear and Peter Potamus), and presumably came from the extensive CD collection Hanna-Barbera’s Pic-a-Nic Basket of Cartoon Classics. My Quick Stop colleague Fred Hembeck wold correctly point out that SpongeBob has featured some remarkably good musical numbers. Still, I found myself reflecting that as a boy I took for granted the jaunty, energetic, funny and memorable tunes that Curtin continually turned out for Hanna-Barbera, and how rare that level of excellence is in “children’s” animation today.

Having reminded us of some of the true classics of early TV animation, the Cartoon Dump show proceeded to introduce us to its collection of animated garbage. I must have had a happy childhood, since I can’t remember ever having seen any of these four cartoons when I was a boy. But in adulthood one learns that it’s impossible to escape life’s horrors forever.

The first cartoon was an episode of The Mighty Mr. Titan, a 1965 series of cartoons from Soundac Productions, which, Beck informed us, was inspired by the Kennedy administration’s promotion of physical fitness for children and adults. (Mr. Titan‘s theme song instructs us, “Your country needs an active crew/Of healthy boys and girls like you.”) President Kennedy may have responsibility for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, but I doubt that he would have accepted the blame for The Mighty Mr. Titan.

Beck refers to Mr. Titan as a superhero. Well, the character’s name and his short with the “T” insignia suggest that Mr. Titan’s creators wanted the audience to think of him as one. But Mr. Titan is really like a poorly animated cartoon version of Jack La Lanne, who hosted a TV exercise show in the 1960s and is still active today, except for the fact that La Lanne possesses real charisma whereas behind his unchanging smile, Mr. Titan has no personality whatsoever.

Nearly all that happens in his cartoons is that Mr. Titan demonstrates some simple calisthenics and encourages his audience to exercise along with him. And just why did Mr. Titan’s creators think that kids watch cartoons in the first place? Is it to work themselves into a sweat, or to goof off and have a good time? If kids want to exercise, they’d go outside and play baseball or anything else that is more involving and fun than joining Mr. Titan in his dreary workout routines.

So the Mr. Titan cartoons would be doomed by their premise, even if they didn’t have bargain basement limited animation. In the cartoon at the Dump show, I watched in bewilderment as Mr. Titan repeatedly performed the same exercise while counting, “One, two, three, four!” But the exercise involved only two positions: whenever he called “two” or “four” he did absolutely nothing. At least Mr. Titan’s wooden movements match his personality.

But the Mr. Titan cartoons aren’t totally devoid of interest. Mr. Titan has a sidekick, Tip Top, a stick figure with an expressive, oval face, who moves in a sprightly manner in the few moments he gets on screen; he doesn’t talk, but he has far more personality than his robot-like boss. If only these cartoons had been about Tip Top instead!

Then there was, “King of the Sea,” a cartoon from the 1967-1968 NBC series Super President, whose title character, James Norcross, is indeed the President of the United States who gains superpowers and secretly becomes a superhero.

The creators of this show stumbled over an interesting idea, linking the American pop culture icon of the superhero with America’s status as a world super-power. The late Mark Gruenwald insightfully explored this concept in his 1986 Squadron Supreme series, in which superheroes take control of the United States, and today DC Comics publishes Ex Machina, writer Brian K. Vaughn’s critically acclaimed series about a superhero as mayor of post-9/11 New York City. I wonder if Super President was the inspiration for Robert Smigel’s X-Presidents cartoons that burlesque politics on Saturday Night Live. But, you see, Gruenwald, Vaughn and Smigel all treated the idea with intelligence; Super President‘s creators stumbled over the idea and fell flat on their faces.

People forever ask, how come nobody recognizes Clark Kent as Superman with a pair of glasses on? Ah, but Clark Kent is a master of disguise compared to President Norcross, who may wear a mask but calls himself “Super President.” And yet nobody realizes that they are one and the same! (Marvel fans may find it disturbing that Super-President’s costume looks uncomfortably similar to that of Guardian’s from Alpha Flight, though I would hope this is merely a coincidence.)

And just how old does a kid have to be to realize that the President cannot just disappear for hours at a time to go on secret missions? Not only would the Secret Service notice, but so would the White House staff.

In classic superhero tradition, Super President has a sidekick, but he’s not a kid in costume, but a pudgy, bespectacled adult in a business suit: presidential aide Jerry Sayles. Jerry Beck keeps calling this other Jerry a Karl Rove lookalike, but I think he looks like a young Dick Cheney before he went over to the dark side. (Longtime comics pros might think that Super President‘s Jerry looks a little like the late DC editor E. Nelson Bridwell. Take a look at Jerry’s picture accompanying this satiric Salon piece in which Super President comments about our current less-than-super President)

It would be nice to think that the perpetrators of Super President were consciously making a joke by pairing their superhero with this chubby, mild-mannered bureaucrat. But since the cartoons are devoid of any sense of humor or any sense of minds working at more than half capacity, I’d say no.

All this dumbness might be more forgivable if Super President at least gave its characters memorable, vivid personalities or provided thrilling action sequences, but no. Like all the cartoons in Cartoon Dump, their cardinal sin is dullness. Even considering the limitations on the animation imposed by the low budgets, Fred Flintstone running past the same cave wall over and over is more exciting than any of the action in this Super President cartoon. The villain has the same number of dimensions to his personality as Super President and Jerry, which is to say, negative three.

The only spark of life in this cartoon comes from the fact that Super President’s voice was supplied by the great Paul Frees. It’s a pleasure to hear him, but even Frees could not do much with the character’s bland dialogue and minimal personality.

Super President was produced by the animation company DePatie-Freleng, one of whose heads, as Beck noted, was Friz Freleng, the great director of so many classic Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s. Freleng apparently did not work on Super President himself. Still, it’s a cautionary tale about how corporate demands can seduce even a great creative artist into permitting godawful hack work to go out under his name.

In the 1960s Freleng was still capable of producing good work, like the animated title sequence for The Pink Panther (1964) and the spinoff series of animated cartoon shorts. The third cartoon in the Cartoon Dump, “Lindy’s Dream,” is the result of a downright appalling story of creative decline. This was the pilot for the stillborn series The Adventures of Sir Gee Whiz on the Other Side of the Moon (1960), which is one ludicrous mouthful, and was produced by the team of Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising, who started out working alongside Freleng in the earliest days of Walt Disney’s animation studio, then produced and directed the earliest Looney Tunes for Warner Brothers, and later went to MGM, creating some cartoons, like Peace on Earth (1939) (see “Comics in Context” #66 : “A Christmas Potpourri”) that are now considered classics.

But most of their cartoons that I’ve seen fall far short of enduring greatness, and Harmon and Ising seem to fall into that sad but familiar category of creative artists who are left behind by changing times. Whereas their former colleagues Disney and Freleng went on to create important work in the 1940s and beyond, Harmon and Ising’s heyday ended at the start of the 1940s. Jerry Beck wrote on his blog, “Hugh and Rudy gave it up to support the effort during World War II, creating instructional animated films for the Armed Services. They spent the rest of their careers creating educational, industrial and commercial films, never achieving the public fame they once enjoyed during the 1930s. Not that they didn’t try.” But they were already out of the creative mainstream. Sir Gee Whiz was an attempt to make a comeback, but instead demonstrates just how out of touch they had become. Beck continued, “Limited animation was not something Harman and Ising could grasp easily. This short shows just how badly Hugh and Rudy didn’t get it.”

I interpret that as meaning, in part, that Harmon and Ising didn’t recognize, as Hanna and Barbera and Jay Ward already had by 1960, how clever scripts, good voice acting, and vivid musical scores could compensate for limited movement. Beck has also suggested that the concept behind Sir Gee Whiz was something Harmon and Ising could have used in the 1930s but had grown dated by 1960. Indeed, by then America was in the Space Age, and kids fantasized about going to the moon by rocket and encountering aliens, not floating up there hand in hand with an elderly elf.

The main reason why Sir Gee Whiz seems to be a signature piece for the Dump is the creepiness of its premise. An old bearded gnome, Sir Gee Whiz (And how did he receive a knighthood? Especially since his accent marks him as Irish?), puts an underage girl’s nanny to sleep and then takes the little girl, Lindy, off with him to his home on the other side of the moon. In other words, what if Humbert Humbert had been a lunar leprechaun?

Should we accept this set-up as innocent? In The Wizard of Oz underage Dorothy goes on a road trip to the Emerald City with three adult males and no one thinks there’s anything wrong with this. Then again, the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion don’t invite her back to their lairs to look at their etchings or whatever.

Or is this a case of creators of works intended for children who so lack perspective on their work that they are blind to the highly inappropriate subtext of their stories? No one bought the pilot for Sir Gee Whiz, so perhaps that subtext didn’t escape everyone’s notice at the time.

“Lindy’s Party” ends with a look at characters that Sir Gee Whiz‘s creators intended to use in later episodes. The Dump audience burst into loud, astonished laughter at the sight of one such character, Senor Ropo, who is indeed an enormous (and somewhat phallic) piece of rope, with eyes, a mouth, a mustache, a sombrero, and a stereotypical Mexican accent. Just what could Harmon, Ising and company have possibly been thinking?

The fourth and final cartoon in the Dump performance was “The Black Vapor,” an installment of the 1967 series Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero: the names “cipher” and “zero” are all too appropriate in grading this cartoon.

Beck pointed out that Johnny Cypher was produced by the Oriolo Studio, headed by Joseph Oriolo, who produced the 1960s Felix the Cat cartoons and the animated series The Mighty Hercules. I haven’t seen the 1960s version of Felix–the one in which he had a literal “bag of tricks,” contended against nemeses like the Professor, the thuggish Rock Bottom, and the alien Master Cylinder (a sort of Dalek predecessor), and had an intellectual young friend, Poindexter–in decades, but I recall my fondness for them from my childhood, and for the colorful voice acting, which I now know was performed by Jack Mercer, the classic voice of Popeye.

I liked The Mighty Hercules even more as a boy; in recent years I watched a batch of them for free on one of Time Warner Cable’s “on demand” channels, and they’re not bad at all. Certainly I have more sophisticated tastes by now, but I still appreciate how Hercules transforms the stuff of Greek mythology into what amounts to a superhero series set in ancient times, with Herc as Superman, his girlfriend Helena standing in Lois, the young centaur Newton (whose falsetto voice I now find annoying) as Jimmy Olsen, and a pack of fine supervillain-like menaces like the sorcerer Daedalus. The analogues to the superhero genre are hardly accidental, since the series was written by DC Comics veterans George Kashdan and Jack Miller. Despite the limited animation, the Hercules cartoons still succeed in creating a sense of action and momentum that demonstrate how much could be done even within the low budgets of early “˜60s cartoons. And Hercules had a great, unforgettable theme song! Indeed, Oriolo and company seemed to have consciously designed elements of the series to be iconic: each episode builds to a high point when Hercules dons the magic ring that endows him with superhuman strength, to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning, the equivalent of Popeye downing his spinach while his theme music plays triumphantly. But did I wonder, even as a child, why Herc just didn’t keep the ring on full time?

The difference between Oriolo’s Felix and Hercules on one side and Johnny Cypher on the other is that Felix and Herc are good, and Johnny is very, very bad. Part of the problem, as Beck explained, was that Oriolo farmed the animation of Cypher out to Japan, making this an early example of anime. But, unlike, say, Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, this isn’t some enduring landmark in anime history. Whereas Oriolo’s Hercules propulsively carries its young viewers along for the ride, Cypher leaves them mired as if in a pool of molasses. In “The Black Vapor,” the vapor turns people to stone, thereby, as Beck pointed out, eliminating any need to spend any effort animating them.

But the real reason that “The Black Vapor” was included in the Dump show seems to be its two villains, who, at one point, break into a frenzied dance of joy, which is not only badly animated but comes off as a presumably unintended burst of over-the-top homoerotic ecstasy.

On the Worst Cartoons Ever! DVD (which I may review at length in the future) Jerry Beck starts out by telling us that “no one sets out to make bad cartoons.” This is a kind and generous thing for him to say, but I disagree. Perhaps the makers of the cartoons in Cartoon Dump didn’t consciously think of their work as bad. But I don’t get the impression from these cartoons that they were striving towards goodness, either.

Back in the 1990s, when I was continuity cop at Marvel (before the present tidal wave of lawlessness in that area), I was speaking with a writer, advising him about the continuity-related holes in his storyline. His continual rejoinder was that “the kids” wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t care. What he really meant was that he didn’t care, and this was his rationalization for his own sloppiness in his craft. Of course by the 1990s Marvel’s readership was mostly adults, the series on which this writer worked soon bombed, and, as far as I know, the writer has since vanished from the comics business.

I suspect that the makers of the cartoons in Cartoon Dump or Worst Cartoons Ever! told themselves much the same thing about their audience. Yes, the animators and other artists at Disney studied the works of great illustrators, and the animators at UPA studied modern art and design, and each group in its on way sought to treat animation as art. And I suspect that many of the makers of the Dump‘s cartoons thought that Walt Disney and the UPA guys were nuts. Why put so much time and effort into cartoons? Aren’t cartoons just time-killing junk for small children? Won’t little kids watch anything that we put on their TV screen? Why should anyone take cartoons seriously?

Many other talented people who worked in animation for early television–Hanna and Barbera, Jay Ward, Bob Clampett, the makers of numerous animated commercials-strove against the limitations imposed by the low budgets they had to work with, and even created work that attracted intelligent adult viewers But not the perpetrators of many of the cartoons destined for the Dump.

In the course of the Cartoon Dump stage show, Compost Brite warned us that people who strive for excellence lead “stressed-out” lives, but that plenty of people who deal in “mediocrity” turn out to be successful. Reminding us that “D is a passing grade,” Ms. Brite leads cast members in singing the praises of making only a “minimal effort” in life. The cartoons in the Dump exemplify that very philosophy, except that the actors playing Ms. Brite and company are just kidding, and the cartoons aren’t.

Wondering whether other cartoon series I hadn’t seen since my grade school days would prove to be as awful as those in Cartoon Dump, I tracked down episodes of some of them on YouTube.

The same people who inflicted The Mighty Mr. Titan on innocent children–creator Robert D. Buchanan and Soundac Productions–were also responsible for the earlier 1957 series Colonel Bleep (and http://www.toontracker.com/bleep/bleep.htm). Like Mr. Titan’s sidekick Tip Top, Colonel Bleep is basically a stick figure, only the Colonel has a triangular-shaped head encircled by transparent, round space helmet. This time Buchanan and Soundac had the wisdom to make the stick figure into the star of the show. Since Mr. Titan was basically an exercise instructor, he had to resemble a real human being, but the extremely limited animation turns Mr. Titan’s actions into laughable caricatures of actual human movement. But the limited animation suits the simplified figures of Colonel Bleep and Tip Top, whose movements are comparatively energetic.

Indeed, one of the delights of Colonel Bleep is its emphasis on graphic design. As noted, the Colonel is a semiabstract figure, composed of a triangle, circle and straight lines. His sidekick, Scratch the caveman, has a figure shaped like an oval. (The other sidekick, a puppet resembling a young boy dressed as a cowboy, is named Squeak because he cannot talk but merely squeaks; this just seems weird.)

The characters in Colonel Bleep have no dialogue, but there is a narrator who adopts a tone like that of an adult reading from a storybook to children. But whereas the fantasy of Sir Gee Whiz seems dreadfully dated, Colonel Bleep capitalizes on the growing interest kids in the late 1950s had in science fiction and the emerging Space Age. Colonel Bleep, then, is an early example of what must have been a new phenomenon: science fiction aimed at small children.

The opening episode, “Colonel Bleep Arrives on Earth“ establishes that the Colonel is an extraterrestrial from the planet Futura, and that the Futurans see themselves as responsible for maintaining order and justice in the universe. It rather reminds me of DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps, and perhaps reflects the United States’ emerging sense that as a world superpower it had the duty to police the world. The first episode further explains that the Futurans decided to send Colonel Bleep to Earth when they detected the first atomic explosion on Earth in 1945 and then observed how Earth had begun firing rockets into space; this suggested to them that Earth posed a potential threat to the rest of the universe.

I hadn’t expected to find concerns about nuclear war crop up in a children’s cartoon from the late 1950s. But this is a key to understanding why the Colonel Bleep cartoons have more life and imagination than many other animated series of early television. The writers on Bleep were working themes with relevance to their adult lives into the backstory. Similarly, in designing the characters, the artists were creating forms that would be appealing to kids, easy to animate, but also aesthetically satisfying to themselves.

I also located an episode of Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse (and http://www.toontracker.com/courcat/courcat.htm), an animated series whose creation is credited to Batman creator Bob Kane. My regular readers know that Kane may have come up with the idea of a superhero costumed as a bat, but that writer Bill Finger cane up with most of the other basic elements of the early Batman mythos. I wonder how much imaginative effort was necessary to devise the concept for Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, who are basically Batman and Robin as a talking cat and mouse. It’s as if Kane crossed Batman with Tom and Jerry. I wouldn’t be surprised if Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw! had Courageous Cat partly in mind when they created their funny animal superhero team, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, which DC Comics has recently revived.

One of the best things about Courageous Cat is the theme music, which conjures the feel of an urban crime thriller of the period, seeming to promise a much more adult sensibility than these kiddie cartoons actually possess.

In the episode I found on YouTube, “The Case of the Big Movie Star” (1960), the series’ premier villain, the Frog, intends to abduct Marilyn Mouse, a movie actress whom he compels to star in the movie he is making. Our heroes, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, have virtually blank personalities. Minute, however, speaks in a falsetto voice, suggesting he is meant to be a prepubescent child. So it’s a little weird and creepy when Minute becomes dazzled by the charms of Marilyn Mouse.

The cartoon becomes way kinkier when Courageous Cat disguises himself as Marilyn Mouse, leading to a sequence in which the Frog attempts to seduce her. Yes, there are plenty of instances of Bugs Bunny in drag, but his disguises are always transparent to anyone with a higher I. Q. than Elmer Fudd’s. Courageous Cat turns himself into an exact lookalike of Marilyn Mouse, which somehow seems weirder. Dr. Fredric Wertham thought Batman was kinky; what would he have thought of this?

But I was amused by the fact that Marilyn Mouse spoke in a breathy voice, reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe’s. And what I remembered most fondly about Courageous Cat cartoons proved to be as good as ever: the Frog himself, whose voice is a superb imitation of that of Edward G. Robinson, the actor best known for his iconic gangster roles in the 1930s and 1940s. When I first saw Courageous Cat I probably did not know anything about Robinson, but that voice gives the Frog a vivid, memorable personality: he’s like Robinson crossed with Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows. It’s too bad no one thought to cast such distinctive voices for Courageous and Minute.

Watching this Courageous Cat cartoon, I got the feeling that some people connected with it–the writers and the voice actors–were having fun, even if the rest of the cartoon was uninspired hackwork.

And that’s the sort of thing that makes the difference. Those writers and artists and actors who smuggled sparks of imagination into their cartoons turned out work that still shows some virtues today. Cartoons that just seem to have been ground out as mindless time wasters for kids end up only as specimens of creative bankruptcy, interred in the Cartoon Dump.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

One of the major events in the world of comics in 2008 is certain to be Harry N. Abrams’ publication of Mark Evanier’s Kirby: King of Comics, a combination of a biography of the late Jack Kirby and a coffee table art book devoted to his work.

In the last installment of this column, just before Christmas, I began my advance review of this book, covering the section about Kirby’s early life and career, just before he entered the comic book industry, then itself young. In this section Evanier includes “Street Code,” a late work by Kirby about life in New York during his boyhood in the Great Depression. Comics writer Peter B. Gillis recently told me that he considered Kirby’s extraordinary double-page panorama of a Lower East Side Street in “Street Code” to be as good as the work of George Bellows or any other member of the “Ashcan School,” the group of New York City realist painters of the early 20th century. He may well be right.

This week I pick up Kirby’s story in the year 1938, when he entered the comic book business by going to work for the studio jointly run by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger. As Evanier explains, earlier in the 1930s comic books had consisted of reprints of newspaper comic strips. “No one had yet really thought how to design a comic book page in any way other than to replicate the reconfigured newspaper reprints,” comments Evanier. “But then, Jack Kirby hadn’t started drawing comic books yet” (Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics, p. 40). Almost immediately, Evanier adds that Eisner, who would soon go on to create The Spirit, would “be the other great innovator of the form–the guy besides Kirby leading the way, making comic books different from strips” (Evanier, p. 40). I’d put more emphasis on Eisner, who achieved greatness as a comics artist and innovative graphic storyteller in The Spirit years before Kirby reached his own peak. But notice that here Evanier, in an understated way, is asserting that it was Eisner and Kirby who effectively invented the modern comic book medium, in that it was they who discovered the means of differentiating comic books from comic strips. (I added the word “modern” since there were early forebears of graphic novels, notably Rodophe Topffer’s, that preceded the rise if the American newspaper strip.) I’m reminded of how Picasso and Braque simultaneously devised cubism. Kirby isn’t just one of the great masters of the comic book art; he and Eisner were the foremost creators of the graphic language of the comic book medium.

Eisner and Kirby got along well, but Evanier doesn’t explain why Kirby left what seems to have been a good job with the Eisner-Iger studio only to end up working for the dreaded Victor Fox, whom Evanier already introduced to the readers in the book’s preface. (How would comics history have been different had Kirby done a backup feature for Eisner’s Spirit sections in Sunday newspapers?)

But at Fox Kirby met its editor in chief, Joe Simon, and they soon formed a creative partnership that lasted sixteen years. They soon left Fox and went to work for Martin Goodman, publisher of Timely Comics, the company that evolved into today’s Marvel.

Again in understated fashion, Evanier nonetheless devastatingly critiques Goodman in introducing him. He quotes another comics veteran, Don Rico, as saying that Goodman “usually arrived on the tail end of a trend. Martin got into pulps just as the pulps started to lose popularity” (Evanier, p. 47). Thus Goodman becomes the representative of the sort of corporate mentality that clings to old ideas and fails to recognize the cultural shifts pointing to the future. This is the sort of businessman who fails to recognize the true value of the artistic visionary, the man who can see and create the future, and Kirby, the visionary, would run up against this kind of blind opposition time and again throughout his career.

Well, at least Goodman knew enough to get into publishing comics as early as 1939, though even he could hardly have missed noticing the immediate, extraordinary popularity of Superman, who had debuted only a year before.

So at the beginning of Chapter Two, Evanier delves into the creation of the Simon-and-Kirby team’s most famous character, Captain America, for Timely.

In another book I recently critiqued at great length, Disguised As Clark Kent, author Danny Fingeroth examines the creation of Captain America as a reflection of Simon and Kirby’s Jewish-American background (see “Comics in Context” #202: “Stung”). In Fingeroth’s view, Simon and Kirby meant Steve Rogers, a. k. a. Captain America, to be “a kind of surrogate Jew” (Fingeroth, p. 58) who battles the anti-Semitic Nazis. It’s interesting, then, that in Evanier’s telling, Simon’s conscious motivations in co-creating Captain America were commercial. “‘Writing super hero comics,’ Simon recalled, “˜we were always looking for that great villain. It was becoming hard to think of a better villain than Adolf Hitler” (Evanier p. 49). Peter Coogan argues in his book, Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre, that Hitler was a real life “super-villain” (see “Comics in Context” #165: “The Supervillain Defined”); Simon apparently would agree. “Kids on the street, he [Simon] told the publisher [Goodman] were already playing soldiers, firing pretend weapons at a pretend Hitler. Why not put that into a comic book?” (Evanier p. 50). This indicates that Simon was acting–consciously, anyway–not so much as a Jew who was opposed to Hitler even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, when most of America was isolationist, but as a perceptive businessman who recognized growing anti-Nazi sentiment in this country, even among children, and wanted to capitalize on it in the comics.

This may be misleading.  Danny Fingeroth has informed me that Simon has been repeatedly quoted as saying that he and Goodman intended Captain America as a means of propagandizing against the Nazis.

Moreover, Evanier reports that Simon and Kirby received anti-Semitic hate mail and threats over Captain America, but the team bravely continued (Evanier p. 54). Presumably it wasn’t just bigots in 1941 who recognized Simon and Kirby’s Captain  America as the protest of two Jewish-Americans against Nazi tyranny.

And so Evanier and Abrams provide a reproduction of the celebrated cover of Captain America Comics #1 (1941), which deservedly takes up a full page of the book, and in which the iconic figure of Captain America lands a powerful punch on the jaw of Adolf Hitler. Both Simon and Kirby were artists, but Evanier credits the cover to Kirby and inker Syd Shores: in other words, this cover is a pure example of the sheer force of Kirby’s early superhero artwork.

That dynamism, captured on the printed page, is even more palpable in the Kirby-Shores cover to Captain America #9 (1941), which serves as the chapter’s frontispiece: an enraged Captain America hurtles powerfully through a window at the ghastly villain, the Black Talon, who holds Cap’s partner Bucky at bay with an outstretched arm, while an underling recoils from Cap, and a hooded figure fires a bullet at Cap’s shield. The entire cover explodes with energy.

Any biography of Jack Kirby must address certain controversial issues, and the creation of Captain America is the first of these. Evanier writes, “Simon would later claim to have had the initial notion for the star-spangled hero and to have worked out the format and costuming before Kirby was involved. Jack would recall contributing from the outset” (Evanier, p. 50). Typically in this book, Evanier is evenhanded on such matters, giving both sides’ versions of the case.

But who actually did create Captain America? This is the book’s first major example of the Rashomon syndrome, in which each party involved has a different story of what happened, and may actually, honestly, remember the events differently. Moreover, in contrast to the Kurosawa film, there was no objective observer to present the truth. No one in 1941 knew how important the matter of who created Captain America would be over sixty years later, and there is no evidence apart from Simon and Kirby’s differing recollections, which may well have been distorted by the passing years.

On his website, discussing the even more controversial question of who did what in the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby collaborations, Evanier writes that “Messrs. Lee and Kirby both have/had notoriously poor memories. You also have the fact that, when two creative talents get together and come up with an idea, each of them might honestly believe that he suggested at least the core of the concept if not the entire thing. This happens in any collaboration anywhere and, ultimately, you usually have to just say that they both had the idea”.

Recently I saw another new and important biographical celebration of a major comics artist, the BBC’s documentary In Search of Steve Ditko (2006), presented by Jonathan Ross, a leading British television host and personality. (Ross doing a show about Ditko seems to be the British equivalent of Johnny Carson hosting and producing a show about whoever his favorite cartoonist was.) A knowledgeable comics aficionado, Ross infuses the documentary with his passion for Ditko and American Silver Age comics. The show has an amazing roster of interviewees, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, John Romita Sr., Jerry Robinson, and even Silver Age Marvel secretary Flo Steinberg (who has clearly overcome her past aversion to interviews); the reclusive Ditko does not show up on camera, of course. Wittily and intelligently written, without a trace of condescension towards comics, this program is a model of what documentaries about comics should be like. It’s too bad that the program is not commercially available in the United States. It’s also a shame that art from news, BBC America runs mostly commercial comedies, crime dramas, and reality shows. Why can’t BBC America run In Search of Steve Ditko? Doesn’t anyone at the network think that there might be some popular interest in a show about the co-creator of the title character of the biggest grossing movie of 2006, Spider-Man 3?

Before watching the show, I had already read reports that in it Stan Lee laid claim to being sole creator of Spider-Man. How, I wondered, could Lee say such a thing? He scripted the first Spider-Man story, but he didn’t draw it; Ditko did. It was suggested to me that Lee, as a Marvel employee, had to say what he did for legal reasons, and that Marvel did not want to give Ditko, a freelancer, legal grounds for claiming to be Spider-Man’s co-creator. On his blog Evanier has observed that “What it says on the Spider-Man movies is, “˜Based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.’ Unless something has changed – and I don’t think it has – Marvel’s recent position is that Stan Lee created Spider-Man. What they are acknowledging with the credit is that Steve Ditko worked on issues of the comic from which the movie drew material”.

Watching In Search of Steve Ditko, I thought Stan Lee made a more reasonable case for his position than I had expected–even if I still disagree with it. In the documentary Lee states that Ditko contributed a great deal to Spider-Man, readily acknowledges that Ditko contributed to the plots from the beginning, and says that if Ditko wants to be called Spider-Man’s co-creator, that’s fine with him. Lee reveals that he sent Ditko a letter stating that he “considered him to be the co-creator of Spider-Man,” but says that he heard that Ditko was dissatisfied with this. Hearing that, I first thought Ditko was being unreasonable but perhaps he had a point. Ross then presses Lee to say whether he really believes that Ditko is Spider-Man’s co-creator.

JONATHAN ROSS: Do you yourself believe that he co-created it?
STAN LEE: I’m willing to say so.
ROSS: That’s not what I’m asking you, Stan.
LEE: No, and that’s the best answer I can give you.
ROSS: So it’s a “˜no’ then, really?
LEE: Pardon me?
ROSS: It’s really “˜no’?
LEE: I really think the guy who dreams the thing up created it. You dream it up and then you give it to anybody to draw it.

(See transcript of this exchange here)

Through all of this, Stan Lee comes across as open and friendly, apparently saying what he indeed believes about the subject, has only praise for Ditko, and makes clear that he was willing to let Ditko be called Spider-Man’s co-creator out of generosity, “because I could see it meant a lot to him.”

As Evanier’s book shows, there is a question as to whether Stan Lee actually was the first person to propose that Marvel do a spider-themed superhero. But for now I’m going to give Lee the benefit of the doubt. Ditko himself has credited Lee with originating the name “Spider-Man.”

The question of who created Spider-Man therefore depends, as Bill Clinton would say, on the definition of the word “create.” I know that the issue of who created Marvel’s classic characters inflames tempers, but let’s play devil’s advocate (and no, I’m not accusing anyone of being the devil).

Lee’s definition of the creator as the person who conceived of the initial idea is a reasonable one, and possibly most people (outside of comics) would agree with him. By this definition, Ditko, in designing the visual appearance of Spider-Man and, quite possibly contributing to the plot and characterization in the first Spider-Man story, was developing and helping to execute an idea initially conceived by Stan Lee.

This is also relevant to the controversy over who created Batman (see “Comics in Context” #94: “Back to Brigadoon”). It now appears clear that writer Bill Finger came up with most of the core Batman mythos, even making important suggestions about the design and colors of Batman’s costume. But if Bob Kane was the one who had the initial idea of a bat-themed superhero, then by Lee’s definition, he is Batman’s sole creator, and Finger elaborated on Kane’s basic concept.

But as the comics industry evolved, it became generally accepted that the writer and artist of the original story in which the character first appeared were the character’s creators. This makes sense, too. Comics is a medium that combines words and pictures. The visualization of the character that the original artist devises is therefore equally as important as the writer’s concept for the character.

Think of collaborations in other media. No one questions that, say, W. S. Gilbert came up with the ideas for the story and characters in comic operettas like H. M. S. Pinafore and The Mikado, wrote the scripts and lyrics, and then handed the completed libretto over to Arthur Sullivan, who then composed the music. But no one would claim that Gilbert is the sole creator of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. Sullivan’s music is judged to be of equal importance to Gilbert’s scripts.

In fact, in some other collaborative media, it is the writer who often gets insufficient credit. Gilbert gets more attention in the world of opera and musicals than most librettists, since the composers are generally believed to be of more importance. All operagoers know that Puccini write the music for La Boheme, but I suspect the majority of them can’t name the librettist off the top of their heads, and I’ve seen various interviews with lyricist/composer Stephen Sondheim in which he reminds his interviewer that he didn’t write the books of musicals like Company and Follies and gives credit to the men who did.

And then there’s the world of film, in which directors get far more attention, even from movie critics, than the screenwriters who may have conceived of the idea for the film being reviewed.

Perhaps one reason why the mainstream media have repeatedly given Stan Lee more credit than Kirby or Ditko for his collaborations with them is that in other media–books, plays, movies, and even operas and musicals–people are used to thinking of a single author, or auteur, a primary creator, for the work. But in comics the tradition has developed of giving writer and artist equal credit.

It also makes sense to me that in a collaboration between two people, one of the partners will get the initial spark of an idea, but that both partners deserve credit as co-creators for their roles in developing the creative work into the form in which the audience first experiences it.

Earlier in Ross’s interview with Lee, the latter recounts that Ditko thinks along these lines. Lee recalls that Ditko “had complained to me a number of times when there were articles . . . .which called me the creator of Spider-Man. I had always thought I was, because I am the guy who said, “˜I have an idea for a strip called Spider-Man and so forth.’ Steve had said, having an idea is nothing, because until it becomes a physical thing, it’s just an idea. He said it took him to draw the strip and to give it life, so to speak, and to make it actual, something tangible; otherwise all I had was an idea. So I said to him, “˜Well, I think the person with the idea is the person who creates it,’ and he said, “˜No, because I drew it.’”

But Lee also developed the initial idea for Spider-Man. We don’t know how much of the plot of the first Spider-Man story in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) is Lee’s and how much is Ditko’s. But Lee scripted the dialogue and narration, using them to define the personalities of the characters and the themes of the series. Does anyone doubt that Lee composed the line “With great power there must also come–great responsibility”? If the initial concept is not as important as the way in which it is molded and developed, then both Lee and Ditko deserve credit for creating Spider-Man, for making the “idea” into something “actual.”

Ross could have gone still farther in questioning Lee about his definition of creating a character. At another point in In Search of Steve Ditko, Paul Gambaccini, one of the early contributors to comics letters columns, talks about a letter that Lee sent him describing a new story about a magician that Lee, in the letter, states is entirely Ditko’s idea. This turned out to be the first Doctor Strange story, from Strange Tales #110 (1963), and Gambaccini notes that Marvel even printed that letter in its Marvel Visionaries: Steve Ditko collection. (Somehow I doubt that there was any high level discussion at Marvel about the implications of printing that letter in the book, and thereby seemingly officially crediting Steve Ditko as the sole creator of Doctor Strange.) So, shouldn’t Ross have asked Lee if he was the co-creator of Doctor Strange? By Lee’s definition of creating a character, the answer would be no.

But I’d say the answer should be yes, because, even if Ditko entirely plotted that first Doctor Strange story, it was still Lee who created the way in which Doctor Strange speaks, thereby helping to define his personality.

By his own definition of character creation. Stan Lee is the creator of Spider-Man but not a creator or co-creator of Doctor Strange. But I believe that the people who plotted, scripted and drew a character’s original appearance should all be credited as the character’s co-creators. By that definition, Lee and Ditko were the co-creators of both Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. For that matter, Larry Lieber, who scripted the first Thor story in Journey into Mystery #83 (1962), should be listed alongside Lee and Kirby as co-creators of Marvel’s Thor.

On his website Evanier concludes that “the Lee-Kirby creations are Lee-Kirby creations”, refusing to credit either man as sole creator. Similarly, in Kirby: King of Comics, Evanier notes with regard to the Simon-Kirby partnership, “To the eternal question of who did what, Jack had a simple answer: “˜We both did everything’” (Evanier, p. 45).

Therefore, the perspicacious reader of Kirby: King of Comics should conclude that, inasmuch as Simon and Kirby collaborated on the graphic stories that appeared in Captain America Comics#1, they should both be credited as the co-creators of Captain America.

Evanier includes a two-page sequence from Captain America Comics #3 (1941) with art by Simon and Kirby, featuring a confrontation of Captain America and his sidekick Bucky with their perennial Nazi nemesis, the Red Skull (Evanier pgs. 52-53). The figure drawing is crude compared to Kirby’s later standards; later in the book Evanier offers a page from another Captain America-Red Skull battle in Tales of Suspense #80 (1966) that demonstrates how far Kirby had progressed as an artist in a quarter century (Evanier p. 150). But in the 1941 story, Kirby already conveys a sense of movement, energy and power that is still startling in panels in which the Skull swiftly strikes Bucky over the head with a fallen chair, a low shot of the Captain and Bucky racing through a cavern, and a brilliant explosion that hurls the bodies of the two superheroes in opposite directions.

Evanier then runs a quotation from the late Harvey Kurtzman, who explains the revolutionary impact of Kirby’s work: “There was such fury and energy in the work that it couldn’t be contained, Kirby was an absolute force.”

Kurtzman continues, “Before Simon and Kirby, the super hero was, in a sense, realistically oriented. Despite the characters’ superhuman powers, they were not drawn in action in ways that suggested how extraordinary they were. When Simon and Kirby drew Captain America, though, they depicted his super-action through opposing lines that clashed and exploded all over the panels. Alongside of Simon and Kirby’s work, everything else was static, pale, anemic” (Evanier, p. 56).

In other words, Joe Shuster may have drawn the first superhero, Superman, but it was Simon and Kirby, with Kirby as what Kurtzman terms “the critical element,” who invented the way to draw a superhero to look truly superhuman in action.

This is an important quotation that illuminates the importance of Kirby’s work. I wish I knew where Evanier got it from. This book needs footnotes, since it will surely be used as a source for future books and academic papers about Jack Kirby. Evanier has plans to do a far longer, far more detailed biography of Kirby for the hard core Kirbyite. Perhaps in that book he’ll provide a list of sources for all the quotations and other information he has gathered about Kirby’s life and career.

Simon and Kirby came to realize that they were being cheated by Goodman in ways that Evanier aptly compares to “Hollywood accounting”: “”˜Martin was making a fortune and bragging about it,’ Jack recalled. “˜At the same time, he was claiming his best selling book [Captain America Comics] was making only a tiny profit’” (Evanier, p. 58). It also seems apt that Kirby: King of Comics is being printed during the current movie and television writers’ strike. in which Evanier is involved, and which revolves around similar corporate behavior.

So Simon and Kirby ended up at DC Comics, where they proved prolific indeed, revitalizing the Golden Age Sandman, rebooting Manhunter, and creating The Newsboy Legion and the Guardian (obviously drawing on Kirby’s own Lower East Side boyhood as well as the movie exploits of the Dead End Kids) and Boy Commandos. Though one DC editor, Mort Weisinger, resented Simon and Kirby’s status as “outside suppliers” beyond his control, “Jack would later recall the period as one of his happiest: “˜They tried for a while to control us, but we knew how to do comics. Finally, they let us do whatever we wanted. They were thrilled with everything we did, and the readers were thrilled. Weisinger was the only one not thrilled” (Evanier, p. 60).

Simon and Kirby’s four Golden Age DC series may not hold up to today’s more sophisticated standards as Eisner’s Spirit does, but they are nonetheless classics of their period, showing vitality and imagination. My first professional comics gig came when DC hired me to read through their library of back issues in the early 1980s and take notes. So believe me when I tell you that most Golden Age DC stories are dismally mediocre and dated, but the Simon and Kirby series are delightful exceptions to that rule.

For example, take the two page Boy Commandos sequence that Evanier reprints (Evanier, pgs. 64-65), which begins with Simon and Kirby in their studio, working on the next story. Enter three self-important DC executives, who seem to share Weisinger’s attitude towards Simon and Kirby: one of them sneers, “Hymph! Them and their ideas!” The DC execs show Simon and Kirby a newspaper that alleges that the Boy Commandos were killed in action (It’s not true, of course; these are the days before DC and Marvel mowed down characters on a regular basis.), and Kirby breaks down in tears. (And why not? One of the teammates, Brooklyn, “sounded and acted a lot like Kirby,” according to Evanier.) Then the Sandman shows up to help Simon and Kirby out.

This is an amusing and inventive foray into what nowadays academics would call metafiction and postmodernism: a comics story about writing a comics story, with the creators interacting with their characters long before Grant Morrison met Animal Man or She-Hulk harangued John Byrne. You wouldn’t see something like this in any other comic book series of the time, except Eisner’s Spirit sections, of course. Later in the book, Evanier reproduces the original art from a page of Fantastic Four #10 (1963), in which Doctor Doom visits Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at the Marvel office (Evanier, p. 120). I think it’s fair to deduce that since Kirby had already dabbled in metacomics in Boy Commandos, that this FF sequence may have been his idea.

By the way, Mark Evanier has informed me that the splash page from Fantastic Four #51 (“This Man, This Monster”) was not reproduced in Kirby: King of Comics from a stat: he located the original artwork, and Abrams shot from that.

So Kirby regarded this period at DC as “the best time in my life apart from one minor detail,” namely being drafted to serve in World War II (Evanier, p. 62). But what strikes me is how very short this period of creative freedom and fulfillment proved to be. Simon and Kirby started doing work for DC in 1942 and turned out a backlog of material that could be run while they were serving in the military. But when Kirby left the army in 1945, “Things had changed at DC Comics. The Simon-Kirby features were losing steam. . . “ (Evanier, p. 69). Well, then, why couldn’t DC trust Simon and Kirby to come up with new ideas to reenergize their series once they were both back in civilian life, or to devise new series? Hadn’t they proved themselves to be successful and brilliantly inventive comics creators?

But then there’s this: “Worse, there was little enthusiasm [at DC] for letting anyone, even Joe and Jack, be outside suppliers any longer. The editors there now wanted everything to go through them” (Evanier, p. 69).

This reminds me of the “writer-editors” at DC and Marvel in the 1970s and early 1980s: creators who had proven themselves to be commercial successes, including Kirby himself, who were given virtually free rein over the comics they did. Writer-editors were considered to be Good Things until the mid-1980s, when suddenly they became Bad Things, and they were stripped of editorial power, which reverted to the hierarchies at the main offices. This may have been a necessary step as the major comics companies expanded and grew more corporate. But certainly the creative freedom of the 1970s and early produced many classic runs of comics that express more personal visions than the corporate “event” comics of the present decade.

Following World War II not only war comics but also superhero comics started declining in popularity. Perhaps DC pigeonholed Simon and Kirby as capable only of working in those genres; it wouldn’t be the last time that a company was blind to the full range of employees’ talents. So Simon and Kirby went off to work for other, smaller companies, like Harvey and Hillman, and scored another major success by inventing a new comics genre. But I’ll have more to say about that when I continue my commentary on Kirby: King of Comics next week.

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Every January the Beat runs a survey to determine what was the “big story” in comics during the previous year and what will be the “big story” of the new year.

In my opinion the leading story in comics during this current decade is the major paradigm shift in American cultural attitudes towards the medium. As the Beat recently commented on her blog, it’s no longer surprising that Entertainment Weekly, Salon and Time all ran lists of the top ten graphic novels of 2007. Yet ten years ago, or even five, how many of us would have imagined this would happen?

So this year, as my contribution to the Beat’s survey, I’ve identified six number of major comics-related news stories, past and future, many of which deal with the growing mainstream acceptance of comics–including Kirby: King of Comics. And you can find what I wrote about them here. But I’ll have more to say about that when I continue my commentary on Kirby: King of Comics when it comes out in March.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

For this last installment of “Comics in Context” before Christmas, I was considering a good number of possible topics. There is the wonderful new Disney film Enchanted, which combines live action, computer animation, and good old traditional hand-drawn animation. There’s the new DVD set Walt Disney Treasures: The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, collecting the cartoons featuring Disney’s cartoon star before the creation of Mickey Mouse. There’s Fantagraphics’ new second volume of their Popeye reprint series, featuring the debut of my favorite E. C. Segar character, J. Wellington Wimpy, and IDW’s first volume of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. And now that the Broadway stagehands’ strike is over, I could go see the stage version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

I promise you that I will get to all of these subjects early next year. But last week, I unexpectedly received a review copy of a book whose publication will be one of the landmark events of 2008 in the world of comics. This is Mark Evanier’s long-awaited Kirby: King of Comics, a beautifully produced art book devoted to the career of the late Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, and so many more, that also serves as his biography, which Harry N. Abrams, Inc. will publish in February, 2008. For me, Christmas came early this year.

The visual excitement begins even before you get to the book’s title page, with several pages of art showing Kirby’s work at its peak, that serve as the equivalent of an overture to a longer piece of music. The initial page, showing a determined, powerful Captain America, his fist clenched, hurtling towards the reader, from Captain America #112 (April 1969), carries the balloon, “And so, a legend lived again!!”, which is equally applicable to this book about Kirby. Across from the title page is one of Kirby’s astounding collages, this one showing Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four entering the otherdimensional Negative Zone in Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966). (Evanier reveals later in the book that Kirby originally intended to portray Negative Zone sequences entirely through collage, but this proved to be impractical; see Evanier p. 171). Reed marvels that “I’ve done it!! I’m drifting into a world of limitless dimensions!!” and this seems an apt description of the incredible worlds of fantasy that Kirby envisioned and captured in his art. And at the bottom of the title page is a small picture of the Thing, whose personality, as the book later tells is, Kirby based upon his own. The text hasn’t even begun, and yet the reader can already see how much careful thought went into putting together this book.

It was wise for numerous reasons to select Neil Gaiman to write the introduction. As regular readers of this column know, Gaiman wrote the recent revival of Kirby’s Eternals (see “Comics in Context” #194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199), such demonstrated both his admiration and his genuine understanding of Kirby’s work (as opposed to those who claim to be Kirby admirers and then proceed to twist his characters out of shape). Moreover, Gaiman, with his high standing among readers of graphic novels, can attract the attention of those among them who may know little about the superhero genre in which Kirby spent most of his career, or even disdain it, and alert them through this introduction that Kirby deserves their attention.

Gaiman starts his introduction by protesting that “a thousand other people” would be more qualified to write the introduction, since he never met Kirby, and recounts how he once could have spoken to him in a hotel lobby, but had to catch a plane, and never got another chance to meet him (p. 11). Yet this too makes Gaiman a good choice to write the introduction. Evanier knew Kirby better than nearly anyone; Gaiman represents everyone–comics professionals and fans–who only knows Kirby through his work. Since Kirby passed away in 1994, there is already an enormous audience of fans of Kirby’s work who will never have the opportunity to see or meet him at a convention, especially when one considers the higher profile that comics have been receiving in mainstream culture in the early 21st century and the extraordinary commercial success of recent films based on Kirby co-creations, notably the X-Men and Fantastic Four movies. Though Gaiman is a Boomer who grew up reading Kirby’s Silver Age comics, anyone who has discovered and come to admire Kirby’s work over the last dozen years or so can identify with the feelings he expresses in this introduction.

“It was grand and huge and magnificent,” Gaiman enthuses about Kirby’s imagination (p. 12). You can sense the excitement that Kirby’s work inspires in Gaiman from the way that these adjectives burst forth in rapid succession. Gaiman’s comparison of the visceral power of Kirby’s art to rock music is well taken. As a student of Gaiman’s oeuvre, I was pleased by his unexpected revelation that Kirby’s Thor series is “where my own obsession with myth probably began” (p. 11). Gaiman also notes his fondness for the 1974 Joe Simon-Jack Kirby version of DC’s Sandman, and its “influence on the rest of my life” (p. 12). And, yes, the main illustration for Gaiman’s introduction is a handsome 1981 Kirby drawing of the 1940s version of the Sandman. Its not the 1974 Sandman, who was the ruler of a dreamworld and thus had a clearer influence on Gaiman’s own Sandman series: you can find the cover of 1974’s Sandman #1 on page 184. But the “˜40s Simon-Kirby Sandman had a dream motif, as well, so his presence on the page is appropriate.

Within a relatively short piece Gaiman manages to sound themes that will resurface in the rest of the book, such as the lack of appreciation Kirby’s creativity received from some of his publishers. Notably, Gaiman directs the reader’s attention to the “small, human moments” in Kirby’s work, that contrasted with the epic scale of his fantasy, particularly “Moments of people being good to one another, helping or reaching out to others” (p. 13). Now take a moment to try to think of any similar moments in new superhero comics from 2007. I drew a blank, too. Many artists attempt to copy the visual flash of Kirby’s work, but how many contemporary comics pros match the emotional substance?

The best part of Gaiman’s introduction comes in a postscript at the end, in which he wishes there were a museum of Kirby art and that Evanier would be there to give you a guided tour. (There is the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, mentioned in Evanier’s acknowledgments page, but so far it exists only online here). Gaiman notes that a physical Kirby museum does not exist “yet” but that Evanier’s book will serve as a substitute till then (p. 13).

When I interviewed Evanier about Kirby: King of Comics for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week, he also compared the book to a museum exhibition of Kirby’s art. I like to think of Kirby: King of Comics as the coffee table book published to accompany a museum retrospective of Kirby’s work that exists only on the printed page. Every phase of Kirby’s artistic career, starting with childhood sketches, is visually represented. Drawings of his world-famous characters are here, but so are relatively obscure creations like Stuntman and the Western hero Bullseye. Whereas other writers might have given short shrift to the period between the Golden and Silver Ages of superheroes, Evanier demonstrates how creatively productive a period the 1950s was for Kirby. Many of the celebrated iconic images that one would expect are here, like a cover reproduction of the cover of Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) (p. 115) and, amazingly, the original artwork for the monumental splash page to “This Man, This Monster” in Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966) (p. 146), with the quietly distraught Thing, standing with sculptural stillness amidst a driving rain that serves as a metaphor for his inner grief. But so are other familiar pages from comics of the 60s and 70s, reproduced from Kirby’s original penciled artwork, as well as art from every decade of his career that even a longtime aficionado like myself finds new and surprising. Unlike the authors of other Abrams coffee table books on art, Evanier does not delve much into critical analysis. But as the reader moves through Kirby: King of Comics, he can see for himself how Kirby’s art evolved over time from brilliant promise to unquestionable mastery of his artform.

Catalogues for museum retrospectives are also usually written in academic prose, but not this one. A writer for television, film, comics and more, including his popular blog (http://www.newsfromme.com/), Evanier is a well practiced, witty and skillful storyteller, an artist of anecdotes. In Kirby: King of Comics Evanier quickly sets an informal, entertaining tone, establishing a personal bond with the reader. Gaiman is right: reading this book is very much like having Evanier escort you through a Kirby show, spinning the tale of the great cartoonist’s life.

Indeed, Evanier sets the tone as early as his masterful preface, which starts out recounting an anecdote about the days back in 1939 when the twenty-one-year-old Jack Kirby saved away in the comics sweatshop of publisher Victor Fox. Then, suddenly, it’s as if Evanier had caught the reader in a judo hold and flipped him over, because the tale of the tyrannical Mr. Fox unexpectedly transforms into an explanation for the title of Evanier’s book and of why Jack Kirby, however much he deserved it, could never take his nickname as comics’ “King” entirely seriously.

But there’s lot more to this preface. On his blog and elsewhere, Evanier has made clear his disagreements with David Michaelis’s biography of Charles M. Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts (see “Comics in Context” #204: “Was It a Dark and Stormy Life?” and I recommend that you read Schulz’s widow Jeannie’s recent criticism of the book). Nonetheless, in Kirby’s case Evanier seems to agree with one of Michaelis’s basic premises, that the artist’s body of work expresses his personality. At his book’s close, Evanier writes that “The stories of intergalactic visitations–of subterranean civilizations and small g gods striding across terra firma–they were all autobiographical, in emotion if not in deed” (p. 218). In contrast with Michaelis, Evanier does not delve deeply into his subject’s psychology. Yet, far more effectively than Michaelis does with Schulz, Evanier vividly portrays Kirby’s personality on the printed page.

Thus, for example, the preface depicts Kirby as a “truly modest man,” “embarrassed” at first by being hailed as “king of comics” by his admirers. In the description of Kirby’s time working for Fox, Evanier shows how Kirby and his fellow artists would find relief from the pressure their dictatorial boss exerted by doing impressions of him in his absence. I’ve been in a situation like that and known people who reacted similarly. This little story gives us an insight into the kind of guy that the young Jack Kirby was, like someone we might have known in our twenties, someone who would have been fun to be around, and, significantly, someone who had the resilience not only to endure a bad situation, but to rise above it through humor. And yet the immensely talented Kirby didn’t turn his resentment of his oppressors into arrogance, but remained “truly modest.”

The preface even provides sharp cameo appearances by its supporting cast. This is the first time I’ve read something about Bill Everett, who went created the Sub-Mariner that same year of 1939, that allowed me to feel why people liked him. And the preface is Evanier’s first step in his book’s generally sympathetic portrait of Stan Lee as a man who genuinely recognized and valued Kirby’s talents–an attitude that was less common from the 1940s into the 1970s than you might have imagined–and yet repeatedly seemed unable to read Kirby’s feelings, thereby exacerbating the rift that grew between them.

Moreover, in the preface Evanier introduces one of the major themes that runs throughout his book. Having grown up in New York tenements during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Kirby knew what poverty was like, and was determined not to let his wife and children fall into it. “He wants to do great stories and express himself and share his incredible imagination with the world, and all that is fine,” writes Evanier. “But being a good provider is still Job One for him and always will be” (p. 17).

Yet standing in the way of Goal Number One for most of Kirby’s career are the likes of Victor Fox, who, Evanier scathingly writes, felt “that since he’s paying [his artists], he’s going to experience the joy of treating them like dirt every day” (p. 15). Evanier’s book shows that for nearly his entire career in comics, Kirby was continually contending against clueless executives and close-minded editors who failed to show him or his work the respect they deserved. In the 1970s even much of the comics readership seemed to desert him. As the book recounts, for much of his life Kirby was struggling simply to support himself and his family. By the mid-1970s Kirby was no longer able to find work in comics. It’s like reading that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one of his paintings during his lifetime. How could this be? From the vantage point of 2007, when Kirby is widely recognized as one of the foremost artists in the history of American comics, this blindness to his greatness seems astounding. How could so many people not see what was right in front of their eyes?

There was something else that was astounding at the start of the first chapter: as artist and writer, Kirby was wholly self-taught. “As he later explained,” Evanier writes, “The pulps were my writing school. Movies and newspaper strips were my drawing school. I learned from everything’” (p. 19). Over and over I’ve seen the admonition that comic book artists shouldn’t just look at comics in learning how to draw, but I suppose that one difference was the illustrative style of comics like Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon in that time. Certainly it’s significant that Kirby said that he learned to draw from the movies: this certainly helps explain his emphasis on action and movement.

On page 20 are nine sketches of famous people of the 1930s that Kirby drew as a boy, ranging from Stalin to Katharine Hepburn. The sketches vary in quality, some are better likenesses than others, and in some one can see Kirby experimenting with caricature. All. the sketches are striking, but they are juvenilia, nevertheless. But on the opposite page is another boyhood drawing, portraying Andy Clyde, a now forgotten comic actor who adopted the persona of an old man. (I know who Clyde is because I dimly remember seeing his Columbia theatrical shorts on TV in my childhood.) This drawing captures Clyde’s screen likeness (complete with old man makeup) realistically, while creating appealingly semi-abstract patterning in much of the linework, and, best of all, conveying through subtle means the personality of a serious, contemplative man behind the comedic facade. This is really good! Later in the book Evanier shows us sensitive, naturalistic portraits that Kirby did of himself (p. 66) and his wife Roz (p. 67) during his military service in World War II: they show a different stylistic path that Kirby could well have pursued, had he not chosen instead to do comics in which there was less time or room for detailed portraiture.

I never expected Andy Clyde, whom I hadn’t thought about in years, to turn up in a book about Jack Kirby. So, too, it is surprising to discover from Evanier’s book that, from boyhood on, Kirby was friends with Leon Klinghoffer, who was infamously murdered by terrorists in 1985. I already knew of Klinghoffer because of something that Evanier does not mention: he posthumously became the title character of an opera: John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer. How strange that two boyhood friends who worked together on a club newsletter ended up as the famous subjects of very different biographical works.

Next Evanier runs “Street Code,” a brief story that Kirby wrote and drew late in his career, in 1983, for the short-lived revival of the pulp magazine Argosy. The story is placed here since it deals with life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the period of Kirby’s boyhood. In introducing it, Evanier observes that Kirby ordinarily “wrote and drew what others wanted” and had to confine “moments of autobiography” to the subtext” (p. 23). “Street Code” is another marker showing an alternate path that Kirby could have taken, perhaps, had he lived long enough, and not suffered physical problems that handicapped his drawing skills, in order to attempt the kind of autobiographical graphic novels that his former boss, Will Eisner, pioneered in the final decades of the last century. Another benefit of placing “Street Code early in the book is that, amidst the many examples of Kirby’s early, immature work, when he was still developing his craft, “Street Code” allows the reader to see Kirby work at his peak, both as artist and as writer. This is where the crude early work, as Kirby learns in the job, is heading, so the reader should study the early work to find glimpses of the greatness that is to come.

The boy protagonist of “Street Code” is never named, but we first see him, pulling on a sweater, reflected in a mirror: it’s a clever signal to the reader that this story is autobiographical, fictionalized though it may or may not be.

I was likewise impressed with the large panel atop the following page, depicting the boy and his mother in their tenement apartment. Kirby shows us the cramped quarters of this impoverished pair, with food cooking atop the same stove used for heating the room, which also holds not only the dinner table but also a bathtub in which the mother, in the foreground, is washing the laundry. Simultaneously Kirby conveys a sense of confinenent and a paradoxical sense of space, filled with detail: this is the private world of these two characters.

Later in the book Evanier will describe Kirby’s scripting of his series from the 1970s onward as being done “in a florid, theatrical voice that did to linguistics what his art had always done to the rules of anatomy and physics” (p. 165). Actually, Stan Lee continually used heightened, operatic language in his scripts; the difference is that he was far better at it than Kirby was. Even so, as I mentioned in my recent columns about The Eternals, Kirby’s scripting is better than he is given credit for. But, apart from his weird mannerism of unnecessarily putting words into quotation marks, “Street Code” shows Kirby’s writing at its best: simple and emotionally evocative.

The first person narration, presumably delivered by the protagonist as an adult, looking back on his boyhood, describes how his mother’s “odd, lingering glance,” which he can nevertheless feel “warm my back” as he leaves the apartment (p. 25). And Kirby shows that glance on her face, too, understated and perhaps weary, but prompted by his description, one can see it is loving, as well. One is so used to Kirby’s prowess in devising spectacular effects that his skill in subtle facial expressions and body language can come as a surprise. But not, perhaps, to Neil Gaiman: this is an example of one of the “moments of tenderness” he mentioned in his introduction.

At the bottom of the stairs the protagonist encounters two bullies, one of whom calls him a “cockroach” (p. 26). I was reminded of Forager in Kirby’s The New Gods, who belonged to a humanoid race that the gods of New Genesis once disparagingly referred to as “bugs.” Later in “Street Code,” when a “block fight” begins, one of the combatants addresses the other side as “y’lice” (p. 30).

A fight ensues between the protagonist and the bullies, that Kirby resents with the same palpable energy and violence as any of his superhero battles. I suspect that through the many fight scenes he drew in superhero comics, Kirby may well have been drawing upon and channeling the rage he would have felt in situations like this in his actual boyhood, and perhaps his anger at the bullies and oppressors he encountered in his adult career, as well.

Over the following two pages, 28 and 29, is an incredible double-page spread depicting the world just outside the protagonist’s tenement: cars race past a wagon slowly being drawn forward by two trudging horses, kids play catch anid the puddles in the street, while along the sidewalk, packed with pedestrians, customers peruse the goods at fruit stands, and a formidable-looking policeman angrily raises his nightstick, apparently shouting at the unseen malefactor responsible for a hurtling bag from above, its contents about to rain down upon the head of an unsuspecting man, seated on the sidewalk, reading his newspaper, while the tenement buildings loom towards the sky, linked by clotheslines that span the length of the street. This panorama of a Lower East Side street, suffused with activity, has just as much epic quality as any of Kirby’s science fiction vistas.

On the following page the protagonist’s battle against the bullies segues into a “block fight.” “Invasion from the adjoining street!” proclaims the narrator, as if he were describing a war between nations. “The face of the enemy was different! His speech was different! His roots were different! All we shared was American birth and clothes–and a fiery hate imported from the “˜old’ country!” (p. 30). Those lines would not seem out of place in X-Men, the superhero series that Kirby co-created that famously centers on the theme of racism. In his book Disguised as Clark Kent (see “Comics in Context” #200, 201, 202, 203), Danny Fingeroth shows how the immigrant experience and the accompanying sense of being an outsider influenced the work of Kirby and other early superhero comics creators. Here is yet another example.

Then comes time for the protagonist and his alliues to perform their combat ritual of rubbing the “misshapen spine” of a boy naned Georgie for good luck. Georgie does not appear to mind, but the ritual troubles the protagonist for reasons he has difficulty defining: “Something inside me was spilling. . . something the Street Code couldn’t touch. . . something only God and my parents knew about. . . “ (p. 33). Was it that the rubbing hurt Georgie, as it certainly does when the protagonist, overcompensating for his sense of guilt, does it? Does the protagonist realize that he and his allies are treating Georgie as some kind of freak? Or does the protagonist sense that Georgie’s deformity–“the terrible thing that nature had done to Georgie’s back”–was a sign of something immense: the universe’s capacity for cruelty? Georgie is actually far from lucky in life.

“Street Code” concludes with the narrator linking his own participation in gang violence to Georgie’s lot in life, as the narrator’s younger self stares directly out of the panel as if looking straight at the readers, confronting us with his epiphany: “I was hurting,” the narrator tells us, “hurting for Georgie and me–and the lousy things we had to do for the Street Code. . .” (p. 33). (Why, look: another reference to lice.) It is as if he feels that by participating in gang violence, he collaborates in the cruelty in the world that Georgie’s misshapen back symbolizes. Through this reminiscence about life on the Lower East Side nearly a lifetime before, Kirby succeeds in finding cosmic significance.

Next come two bits of information in the book to be filed under the heading, “If Only They Had Known.”

Kirby claimed that he enrolled in the Pratt Institute, a New York art school, but had to quit after only one day; Evanier casts doubt on the story (p. 34). Longtime readers may recall that last year the Pratt Institute held an exhibition of the work of nine contemporary alternative comics artists (see “Comics in Context” #122, which I originally titled “Gallery of Gloom”). I wonder if any comics aficionado at Pratt has any idea that Jack Kirby may have just barely qualified as one of their alumni.

Atop page 35 is a delightful surprise: a drawing of Popeye, that forebear of the superheroes, that Kirby did when he tried out to be an assistant animator at the Max Fleischer Studio. Evanier writes that the first Popeye cartoon on which Kirby worked in that capacity was “A Clean-Shaven Man” (1936) (You can see it here). That’s the cartoon for which Quick Stop contributor Paul Dini did the commentary track in Warner Home Video’s recent Popeye Vol. 1 DVD set (see “Comics in Context” #190: “Pop Eye-Con”). If only Paul had known about Kirby’s involvement, he could have mentioned it!

I also quite like the 1939 editorial cartoon that Kirby did for the Lincoln Features Syndicate, demonstrating his opposition to Hitler years before America entered World War II (something else that Danny Fingeroth will find interesting): it shows British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, now infamous for his policy of appeasement, petting a large serpent with the head of Hitler who has just swallowed the nation of Czechoslovakia whole (p. 37).

It seems that when he was at Lincoln, Kirby believed that if he did right by the syndicate, doing the best work he then could, the syndicate would do right by him. Evanier comments, “It was his spin on the American Dream. You make your boss rich and he’ll take care of you. All Jack’s life he believed in that, no matter how many times the bosses got rich and he didn’t” (p. 37).

I can understand why Kirby thought that. It would seem to be a basic rule of human interaction that if you show loyalty to someone, he or she will show loyalty to you. Treat people fairly and they will treat you fairly. Isn’t that the Golden Rule: do under others as you would have them do unto you?

But Kirby’s idealism continually clashed with the real world of incompetence, insensitivity, and greed. Evanier observes that “Either he’d work for men who didn’t know how to exploit what he gave them”–which seems to have been the case at Lincoln– “or for men who did and wouldn’t share” (p. 38).

Treading his biography of Jack Kirby, I keep thinking if Mark Evanier’s continuing reports at his blog on the Writers Guild of America’s current strike against movie and television studios and producers. The latter side, subscribing to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s maxim that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” has been simultaneously arguing that (A) distributing movies and TV shows over the Internet will be the cash cow of the 21st century, and (B) they can’t pay royalties to the writers of said movies and TV shows because no one will make money distributing them over the Internet. Maybe it depends on which side Two-Face’s coin comes down on.

Well, at least the movie and TV writers have a union that looks out for their interests and can challenge the policies of management. But there was no union for comic book professionals in Jack Kirby’s day, and still isn’t. He was on his own: the man who may be the one true genius in the history of American comic books, continually forced to struggle just to support himself and his family.

Kirby: King of Comics is so full of riches, both in artwork and in biographical information and insights, that it demands more than one week’s installment of this column. So I’m leaving off here, with Kirby in 1939, just about to enter the new comic book industry, and I’ll resume my review at the start of 2008.

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I am also pleased to announce that New York University’s School of Continuing & Professional Studies will be offering my course, “The Graphic Novel as Literature” in the spring 2008 semester, starting in February, and my new course, “The Superhero as American Icon,” in the summer 2008 semester, beginning in May. But if not enough people sign up for them, NYU will cancel the courses. Let’s prove to them that there really is academic interest in the comics medium!

I’m currently collaborating on another book, and I am working on several book proposals in various stages of development. However, books on comics history pay less than you may think, and teaching a course at NYU for semester doesn’t quite cover a month’s rent. My New Year’s resolution for 2008 is that, partly due to new medical expenses in my family, I will renew the search for a steady full-time or part time job. If you know of any opportunities for a comics historian, reviewer and teacher, preferably in New York City, with Boston as my next choice, please let me know here at comicsincontext@aol.com.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Like many of you, I used to visit my local comic book store every week, usually on the day that the new comics went on sale. Nowadays, though, my visits are more likely once a month. Part of the reason is that I work out of home, but even so, if I wanted to, I could make the effort to stop by a comics store on each of my weekend prowls about Manhattan. The real reason I go to comics stores infrequently (by comics culture standards) is that I long ago lost that fannish eagerness to see the latest issue of an ongoing series. Every once in awhile, I check in to a longrunning Marvel or DC series to find out what’s going on, or to judge the work of its current writer for myself. And in almost every instance I find myself disappointed and unmotivated to pick up the following issue.

But last month brought an exception to what has become the rule. On the day that Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier went on sake, I made a special trip into Manhattan, with no other reason than to pick up a copy of the book. I started reading the Dossier on the subway trip home. Once back home I went into lockdown mode, as I hadn’t since the last Harry Potter book (see “Comics in Context #187: “All Hallows Eve”).

I read continuously to about the halfway point, when I abruptly wondered if Jess Nevins had already begun annotating the Black Dossier on his website. An authority on Victorian popular literature, Nevins has written two “unofficial” companion books to the League, published by MonkeyBrain Press: Heroes and Monsters, about the first volume of League (see “Comics in Context” #37: “High Noon for Mutants”), and A Blazing World, about the second volume (see “Comics in Context” #66: “A Christmas Potpourri”), each containing an enormous list of annotations plus essays about the source material for League, and interviews with Moore.

Checking Nevins’ website I discovered that, yes, he had: as it turned out, Nevins had been sent an advance copy of the Dossier. So then I began plowing through Nevins’ astonishingly lengthy list of annotations for the first half of Dossier, before finishing the second half and its annotations on the following day.

Not only that, but I spotted two gaps in the Dossier annotations. League heroine Mina Murray has a music hall poster that gives top billing to the team of Lewis and Clark (not the famous explorers of the same names). I fired off an e-mail to Jess Nevins, explaining that “Lewis and Clark” were the vaudeville team from Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys. For the following two weeks I sent additional annotations to Nevins, most of which he accepted for use on his site. And I was far from alone: there was a veritable League of Extraordinary Annotators who sent in supplementary annotations to Nevins’ list, including artist Kevin O’Neill and even the legendary fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, some of whose own characters are alluded to by Moore in the Dossier. You can see the massive annotations list here, and Nevins will further expand it for his Black Dossier companion book, Impossible Territories, which MonkeyBrain Press will publish in July 2008. And good heavens, I just checked, and Nevins has updated the Dossier annotations yet again (as of December 10)!

Longtime readers of this column already know about my enthusiasm for Moore and O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (see “Comics in Context” #22 : “Major League” and Comics in Context” #23: “An Extraordinary Trio”). For those who came in late, the League postulates an alternate history in which the characters of fiction–from both literary classics and popular culture–exist and interact. Every character with a speaking role in League is either a character from a preexisting work of fiction or a relative of such a character. In the original series, set in the 1890s, Moore and O’Neill introduced a “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” comprised of Mina Murray from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and other works, Captain Nemo of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Mr. Hyde from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the title character of H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, as a team of special operatives for the British government. In the first series the League intervened in a war between the criminal masterminds Professor Moriarty (from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories) and Dr. Fu Manchu (who went unnamed since he is still under copyright); in the second series followed the League’s role in combating the archetypal Martian invasion chronicled in H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

Moore’s original motive in co-creating the League was to explore the roots of the superhero genre. Hence, the 1890s League resembles a superhero team, and even includes a few members with super-powers (Hyde and the Invisible Man); even the series’ title seems to allude to the Justice League and the X-Men with their “extraordinary” abilities.

Moore realized that League provided him with the opportunity to explore the entire history of fiction. In the second League series, by means of a continuing text feature, “The New Traveller’s Almanac,” Moore laid out much of the history of this alternate Earth, incorporating fictional characters from works ranging as far back as ancient classical literature, and other characters from beyond the 1890s, well into the twentieth century.

The principal story in Black Dossier is set in the Britain of 1958. Founding League members Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain, who are lovers, have become eternally young immortals, thanks to their immersion in the Fires of Life from H. Rider Haggard’s “She” novels, as suggested in the Almanac in the second series. (And yes, getting Mina out of her previous Victorian costumes provides O’Neill with numerous occasions to demonstrate his skill at attractively drawing the female form.) Warned by Winston Churchill, Mina and Allan severed their ties with the British government following World War II and left for America. In the postwar years, Britain fell under the totalitarian dictatorship described by George Orwell in hs novel 1984: since 1984 was actually published in 1948, that’s when the events of the novel took place in League‘s world. By 1958 the 1984 regime has fallen, and Mina and Allan return to England to locate and steal British intelligence’s “Black Dossier,” its file of reports on the League’s history.

But British intelligence is now headed by Harry Lime, the amoral mastermind created by writer Graham Greene in the 1949 film The Third Man, and one of his foremost operatives is a ruthless, womanizing assassin who calls himself “Jimmy.” The latter is a thinly veiled version of James Bond, who teams up with a very young female operative who is skilled in martial arts named Emma Night. Dedicated fans of the 1960s television series The Avengers may know that the episode “The House that Jack Built” established that the maiden name of the series foremost heroine, Mrs. Emma Peel, is Knight (see “Comics in Context” #52: “Mod as a Hornet” and #53: “The A-Files”). One couple, “Jimmy” and Miss Knight, is out to stop their counterparts, Allan and Mina.

Though this storyline is the heart of Black Dossier, it also serves as a frame for excerpts from the “Black Dossier” itself. Black Dossier the graphic novel is an postmodern collage of different formats. Moore and O’Neill recount the 1958 exploits of Allan and Mina in familiar comics form, no different from that of League Volumes 1 and 2, save for the final pages..

But various documents from the Black-Dossier-within-the-Black-Dossier take the form of O’Neill’s recreations of earlier styles of comics and cartoon art, from a political cartoon in the style of the 18th century cartoonist James Gillray (see “Comics in Context” #72: “F. O. G.”) to a comics version of a sequence from Orwell’s 1984 presented in the style of a pornographic “Tijuana Bible.” Other visual experiments by Moore and O’Neill range from picture postcards to credits pages in the form of a parody of the London Underground map. The most spectacular visual tour de force in Dossier comes in its final pages, in which Mina and Allan’s visit to the fourth-dimensional “Blazing World” is depicted in a 3-D comics sequence, with 3-D glasses attached to the inside back cover.

Other Dossier documents are text pieces in which Moore utilizes different styles, formats, and narrative voices, presenting, for example, government reports on the League and an excerpt from the memoirs of Campion Bond, James’s grandfather, who was a character in League volumes 1 and 2. More significantly, Moore experiments with recreating the styles of other authors: William Shakespeare in two scenes from a “lost” play Faeries’ Fortunes Founded, part of a sequel to the 18th century erotic novel Fanny Hill, a P. G. Wodehouse pastiche in which Jeeves and Bertie Wooster encounter not only the League but also a supernatural menace out of the H. P. Lovecraft mythos, and The Crazy Wide Forever, an imitation of Jack Kerouac’s Beat novel On the Road, which marks its fiftieth anniversary this year.

Through such “documents” in the dossier-within-the-Dossier, Moore further explores and establishes the history of the League’s world, both before and after the stories of League‘s first two volumes. For example, Prospero, the sorcerer who is the protagonist of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, also appears in Faeries’ Fortunes Founded; in the Almanac Moore had already established that Prospero was the founder of the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the 17th century. The second incarnation of the League, in the 18th century, was headed by Lemuel Gulliver of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and included Fanny Hill, who appears in another of the Dossier‘s pastiches.

Initially I found the pseudo-Kerouac style in which Moore wrote The Crazy Wide Forever nearly impenetrable, although once some of the Extraordinary Annotators supplied keys to its plot, the pastiche finally made sense to me on my third try at reading it.

I’ve never read Kerouac, but the stream of conscuousness style of The Crazy Wide Forever, and its profusion of puns, reminded me of James Joyce. This is no accident, since Kerouac was greatly influenced by Joyce’s work (see the excerpt from Kerouac: The Definitive Biography by Paul Maher). I see that there is even an academic essay, “”˜I Dig Joyce’: Jack Kerouac and Finnegans Wake“ by Michael H. Begnal, from the March 22, 1998 Philological Quarterly.
I wonder if Alan Moore is also consciously following the lead of Joyce in his Black Dossier. In his landmark novel Ulysses Joyce not only employs the stream of consciousness technique, most famously in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in the concluding “Penelope” chapter, but employs a variety of formats and styles in other chapters. For example, the “Ithaca” chapter is modeled on a catechism. with questions and answers. The “Circe” chapter is written as a script for a play, which grows increasingly surreal. The “Cyclops” chapter is primarily narrated in the first person, but includes extended passages in over thirty different narrative styles which Joyce utilizes for satiric purposes.

Moreover, in Ulysses and even more so in Finnegans Wake, Joyce fills his work with allusions and references that academics have been busily tracking down for decades. Similarly, the League books seem like bottomless pits filled with literary and historical references that a good number of us have been striving to decode. Jess Nevins is to Alan Moore on League what Stuart Gilbert was to James Joyce on Ulysses: the first person to publish a key to the mysteries of a book, that was unofficial yet had the author’s approval.

It is evident that Moore is attempting to do Shakespeare pastiches in two sections of the book. Whereas, as far as I’m concerned, Moore does a perfect mimicry of P. G. Wodehouse in Dossier, imitating Shakespeare is a far harder task. To my mind, Moore skillfully copies the form of a Shakespeare play in Faeries’ Fortunes Founded, but it comes off as hollow; he does not, perhaps cannot, come close to matching the poetic heights one expects from actual Shakespeare. But I think Moore is much more successful in the speech he gives Prospero in the concluding pages of Black Dossier, perhaps because it fervently expresses what appear to be Moore’s own ideas on the importance of the imagination. Ironically, Prospero’s last speech in Dossier seems to contradict some of what Prospero says in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Towards the end of the Black Dossier, Mina and Allan journey to “the Blazing World,” which first appeared in a work published in 1666 as an archipelago of islands extending from the North Pole nearly down to the British Isles. Moore presents the Blazing World as a single island that, though accessible from three-dimensional Earth, apparently exists on another plane of reality share time is “a physical dimension, so it’s all happening at once” (Dossier p. 184, panel 1). The Blazing World therefore exists beyond conventional time, in what may be eternity. Within the Blazing World sequence Moore and O’Neill depict Prospero and Fanny Hill, both members of former incarnations of the League, and both alive and well. All sorts of other characters from literature and even comics make cameos in the Dossier‘s Blazing World sequence.

Moore’s version of the Blazing World is therefore like a heaven for the fictional characters of our world, who are real people in the world of League. Apparently they can exist there for eternity. This raises the question as to why Alan and Mina, or anyone else who is allowed entry to the Blazing World, would return to the mortal world, where they might die.

Inhabited by fictional characters, the Blazing World is metaphorically and perhaps literally a realm of the imagination. “I’m sure I used to dream about this place, when I was a little girl,” says Mina. Allan responds, “I think I caught a glimpse of the Blazing World in a vision once, during my opium years.” (Dossier, p. 178, panel 1). As I observe in Nevins’ Black Dossier annotations, O’Neill’s depiction of the Blazing World bears resemblances to the literal dream world of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. You could think of the Blazing World as a more joyous version of the Dreaming in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

The Black Dossier concludes with a speech by Prospero, the founder of the original League, who begins, “For truly is our cavalcade now done. . . “ (Dossier p. 190, panel 1). This evokes the first line of Prospero’s most famous speech in The Tempest, following a play-within-a-play, like the masques of the early Jacobean period, that was enacted by spirits he had conjured up:

“Our revels are now ended. These our actors
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And. like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like the insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.” (Act IV, Scene i, lines 162-172)

Prospero likes to refer to his prowess in magic as his “art.” In this speech Prospero (who admittedly is in a foul mood at this point) dismisses the creation of his “art,” the masque performed by the spirits, as an “insubstantial pageant,” a “vision” with a baseless fabric,” an illusion lacking in reality. Thus, perhaps, Shakespeare, if he is speaking his own mind through Prospero, perceives the creations of art, including his own as playwright, as transitory, perhaps even empty of lasting substance. Moreover, Prospero observes that the real world is not eternal, either, and that not only the “gorgeous “palaces”–man’s architectural works–but even “the great globe itself” will someday come to an end. (The “great globe” may have a double meaning, both to the earth and to the Globe Theatre, where most of Shakespeare’s plays were performed. Thus Shakespeare may be reiterating a belief that art does not last forever.)

Furthermore, Prospero points out that people are mortal, as well. The “sleep” that rounds each person’s “little”–meaning short–life is nonexistence, before his birth and after his death. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of” has multiple meanings. If nonexistence is sleep, then life is like a waking dream, an illusion that lasts but a brief time. The “dreams” that are “made” upon us might be a reference to art, such as The Tempest itself. One might also argue that our lives are “dreams” in the imagination of the ultimate creative artist, God.

The Tempest is the final play that Shakespeare composed without collaborators. Traditionally, it has been interpreted as bidding his farewell to the stage through the character of Prospero, who regards his magic as his “art,” and who acts as a sort of playwright and director in The Tempest, staging situations through which he manipulates the other characters. (It suddenly occurs to me that The Tempest is like a high art version of Survivor.) Just as Shakespeare was heading into retirement, so too Prospero decides to return from exile and give up the practice of his art, magic:

“But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.” (Act V Scene i, lines 54-58)

The book is his book of spells, and his staff is like his magic wand, like Gandalf’s staff in Lord of the Rings.

Christianity doesn’t approve of magic, so presumably Prospero would have to give up sorcery upon returning to society as Duke of Milan. If we interpret Prospero’s “art” as a metaphor for Shakespeare’s own, then Shakespeare appears to regard his art as a burden which he is relieved to surrender upon retirement.

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series concluded with “The Tempest” in issue 75, in which Gaiman and artist Charles Vess not only depicted scenes from the play but told a story of Shakespeare himself meeting once more with Morpheus, the Sandman, who “opened a door” to Shakespeare’s imagination, enabling him to put the “great stories” in the form of enduring plays. Prospero’s speech in Shakespeare’s Tempest may suggest that even art fades away . In Gaiman’s “Tempest,” fellow playwright Ben Jonson predicts that Shakespeare’s plays will not last, but Morpheus truthfully declares that they will, that he endowed Shakespeare with “the power to give men dreams that would live on, after you were gone.”

Despite acknowledging the greatness if Shakespeare’s works, Gaiman’s “Tempest” also depicts art as a burden to its creators, a kind of servitude. Gaiman’s Shakespeare tells Morpheus, “For a goodly part of my life I have been in your service.” Shakespeare must repay Morpheus by writing two plays about dreams, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest), from which Shakespeare, well into middle age, is satisfied to give up. Gaiman has Shakespeare refer to it as the “burden of words.”

Gaiman’s Shakespeare laments that his preoccupation with his art distanced him from normal life: “I’d fall in love, or fall in lust, and at the height of my passion, I would think, “˜So this is how it feels’ and I would tie it up in pretty words, I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else., My son died, and I was hurt, but I watched my hurt. and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss.”

After Morpheus removes Shakespeare’s ability to access his full creative powers, Gaiman shows Shakespeare writing Prospero’s concluding speech in The Tempest, in which he asks the audience, “as you from crimes would pardoned be,” to “set me free” by applauding his efforts. (By comparing himself to an imprisoned criminal, Prospero–and perhaps Shakespeare–shows just how oppressive his service to his art has felt.)

In this issue Shakespeare’s longing for release from servitude to his own creativity parallels Morpheus’s dissatisfaction with his own existence and even his personality. Morpheus explicitly compares himself to a Prospero who was not set free from his island of exile: “Because I will never leave my island. . . I am. . .in my fashion. . .an island. . . .” He tells Shakespeare, “I do not [change]. I may not. I am Prince of Stories, Will, but I have no story of my own. Nor shall I ever.”

But, of course, Gaiman’s Sandman series is indeed Morpheus’s story. Moreover, describing Shakespeare’s Tempest, the Sandman says, “I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a King who drowns his books, and breaks his staff, and leaves his kingdom. About a magician who becomes a man. About a man who turns his back on magic.” This is what Morpheus does: he learns humanity, he allows himself to be killed in expiation for his past, thereby surrendering his kingdom, to the new Dream Morpheus does indeed change, and, arguably, the new Dream can be seen as both a new Sandman and as Morpheus himself reborn.

Perhaps Gaiman himself regarded Sandman as both a work of lasting merit and one that had become a burden, so he brought it to an end. Of course, Gaiman has gone on to write many other things, but perhaps he anticipates that someday he too will tire of serving his muses.

Prospero’s concluding speech in Black Dossier does not just take a more positive attitude towards art than the Shakespeare and Gaiman versions of The Tempest; it is outright celebratory. As Peter Svensson notes in a contribution to Nevins’ annotations, “rather than rejecting his magic to return to a normal life, here Prospero praises the greatest magic of all. The Imagination” (Black Dossier Annotations, p. 192).

Moore’s Prospero calls the Blazing World “this shining soil beyond life’s mummied grip” (Dossier, p. 190, panel 1). Moore may have designed this phrase to echo John of Gaunt’s encomium to England in Shakespeare’s Richard II:

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm,
this England.” (Richard II, Act II, scene ii)

Moore’s Blazing World does seem like a modern Eden and “demi-paradise.” Prospero states that in the Blazing World “Our direst yearnings and our fondest fears [are] at sport, made safe from time’s iniquity” (Dossier, p. 190, panel 1). In other words, here art, and the emotions and aspirations that it expresses, last eternally, free from “time’s iniquity” and “life’s mummied grip.”

Next Prospero tells us, “We are the tales that soothed our infant brow, the roles you wore for childhood’s alley-play,” that supplied a “paper paramour” for “your youth,” and that provide “thy consolation, thy escape” when we are “grown to grey responsibility” (Dossier, p. 190, panel 2). This means that art fulfills our emotional and psychological needs throughout our lives. Here Moore is also echoing the famous “Seven Ages of Man” speech from Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act II scene vii, lines 139-166), which includes the “infant,” the “school-boy,” the “lover,” and four “ages of adulthood, growing increasingly aged.

That speech starts with the lines:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.” (As You Like It, Act II scene vii, lines 139-143)

This metaphor fits the theme of Prospero’s Black Dossier speech, which inextricably links the world of the imagination with “real” life.

As in his concluding speech to the audience in Shakespeare’s play, in Black Dossier Prospero breaks the fourth wall and addresses the readers directly. He makes this clear when he speaks of “the very personality that scrys this epilogue” (Dossier p. 190, panel 3), namely, you the reader.

Prospero points out that in forming our personalities as we grow up, we often model ourselves after inspirational fictional characters. “Did fictional examples not prevail? Holmes’ intellect? The might of Hercules? Our virtues, our intoxicating vice: while fashioning thyself, were these not clay?” (Dossier, p. 190, panel 3).

In Shakespeare’s Tempest Prospero likened people to the spirits in his art, all of whom are destined to “dissolve” into nothingness. In the Dossier Prospero likewise connects us real people to the fictional characters whom we imitate: “If we mere insubstantial fancies be, how more so thee, who from us substance stole?” (Dossier p. 190, panel 3). The phrase “insubstantial fancies” echoes Prospero’s “insubstantial pageant” from The Tempest.

But by stating that we stole “substance” from the characters of fiction, Moore’s Prospero indicates that fiction and its characters are not “insubstantial” at all, but possess a sort of “substance” and reality. Hence, Moore’s Prospero continues, “Your trustiest companions since the cave, we apparitions guided mankind’s tread, our planet, unseen counterpart to thine, as permanent, as ven’rable, as true.” (Dossier p. 191, panel 1). In referring to the characters of fiction as “apparitions,” Moore’s Prospero reminds the reader of the “spirits” of Shakespeare’s Prospero’s masque in The Tempest. Prospero’s statement works as a metaphor: that humanity’s body of stories over the length of human history make up a whole “planet” that is a “counterpart of thine.” Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books present this metaphor as literal, depicting an alternate Earth in which, seemingly, virtually all fictional characters are real. In terms of the continuity of the League series, Moore’s Prospero may be establishing that the world of League is a parallel world to our own. (Perhaps we should call the League’s world “Earth-L.”)

But let’s leave considerations of story continuity aside. Moore, through Prospero, is contending that the world of fiction is “as permanent, as ven’rable, as true” as the real world in which we readers exist. As a metaphor, this means that art–even in the form of enduring popular fiction, such as the books from which he draws most of League’s characters–is not trivial or transitory, but has genuine importance in that it inspires us, molds our personalities, and expresses our ideas and our emotions.

It is even possible that Moore means the statement to be literally true in the following sense. Moore is not saying that, say, Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain actually exist. But he may be stating that the “virtues” and “vices” that we find in fiction, and that inspire us, these ideals, have a kind of reality, comparable to that of the universal ideas in Plato’s philosophy. When Moore’s Prospero says that fictional characters have been “your trustiest companions since the cave,” you may first think of our caveman ancestors. Aren’t the first known works of art the prehistoric paintings on cave walls? In the interview about Black Dossier that he gave to Comic Book Resources, Moore confirms this: “The planet of the imagination is as old as we are. It has been humanity’s constant companion with all of its fictional locations, like Mount Olympus and the gods, and since we first came down from the trees, basically. . .  Fiction is clearly one of the first things that we do when we stand upright as a species–we tell each other stories.”

But possibly Moore is also alluding to Plato’s allegory of the cave (here and here). According to the allegory, we are like prisoners in a cave, who perceive only shadows; similarly, the characters of fiction, which Moore’s Prospero calls “apparitions,” are like shadows representing the ideas they embody.

Moore’s Prospero continues, “On Dream’s foundation matter’s mudyards rest, two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou’ve fashioned fashion thee” (Dossier p. 191 panel 1). Here Prospero and Moore refer to the creative, storytelling imagination as “Dream,” thereby reinforcing the visual allusions to Little Nemo‘s Slumberland; again, Moore’s Blazing World is comparable to Gaiman’s Dreaming.

If “Dream” provides the “foundation” for “matter’s mudyards,” then stories must have a sort of reality, even if metaphorical, in order to support the weight of actual matter. the stuff that composes the real world. Notice the contrast between the ugly, concrete image that the word “mudyards” evokes and the ethereal connotation of the word “Dream.”

“Mudyards” may also suggest a place where material things are constructed from mud. People–artists, scientists, anyone who creates ideas–conceives of something in their imaginations and then attempt to implement those ideas in real life. For example, an architect must imagine a building before it is built.

The idea of creation underlies the following lines: “two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou’ve fashioned fashion thee.” Here Moore’s Prospero comes up with a poetic image to reiterate and elaborate upon an idea that he expressed earlier, that we model ourselves upon ideals that we find in fiction. In the aforementioned interview, Moore told Comic Book Resources, “A lot of the dreams that shape us and, presumably, our world leaders, are fictions. When we’re growing up, we perhaps base ourselves on an ideal, and even if that ideal is a real living person, there is every chance that living person may have based themselves on a fictional ideal.” Just as Moore refers to “us” and “we” in that quotation, his version of Prospero may be speaking of people in general when he says that we create fantasies–stories–which in turn influence what we become.

In this case I wonder of Moore may also be referring to the individual creative artist: that the fiction that a writer creates helps shape the personality of the writer himself. Therefore either to read or to write fiction is to open oneself to its influence.

The image of the two sketching hands drawing each other suggests that what each represents–the real world and the world of fiction–is equally important. Each shapes the other. In the interview Moore states that “This is actually ground that we do cover in the Black Dossier, and in the final soliloquy, which is delivered by Duke Prospero. We’re talking about this very thing: the interdependence between the world of fiction and the world of fact.”

(In the December 10 update of Jess Nevins’ Dossier annotations, Janes Morrison and Jon Balcerak each traces Moore’s image of two hands drawing each other to M. C. Escher’s lithograoh “Drawing Hands.”)

Remember that Moore’s Prospero has broken the fourth wall to address this speech directly to the reader. Therefore, it should not be surprising that he acknowledges himself and the rest of the Dossier cast to be fictional characters. He continues, “Intangible, we are life’s secret soul. its guiding lantern principle, its best, untarnished by all subterfuge or spies, unshackled from mundane authorities” (Dossier, p. 191 panel 2). Since the real world is matter, then the world of imagination, represented by fictional characters, is spirit, “life’s secret soul.”

In Dossier and, indeed, throughout the League series, Moore opposes the world of the imagination, representing freedom, to the world of “mundane authorities,” “subterfuge, and “spies,” representing the suppression of freedom. Hence, the British government, as represented by Campion Bond (James’s grandfather) proved to be untrustworthy and ruthless in the first two volumes of League, and why Allan and Mina increasingly distance themselves from their government superiors, until by Black Dossier they have become outlaws, This explains why the fallen dictatorship of Orwell’s 1984 remains such a presence in the background of Black Dossier, and why Dossier puts Mina and Allan in opposition to the British secret service, as represented by James Bond and Harry Lime. The development of totalitarianism in the twentieth century, as Orwell demonstrated, provides powerful means for crushing both liberty and the imagination. Note that Moore’s Prospero speaks of the imagination being “unshackled” by the authorities, implying that authorities are in the business of shackling it, and perhaps by extension literally imprisoning those who conceive of things beyond the status quo. It was Orwell in 1984 who coined the phrase “thought crimes.” The word “mundane” may allude to Hannah Arendt’s phrase for describing Nazi totalitarianism, “the banality of evil”.

The reference to a “guiding lantern” suggests that the works of the creative imagination can provide us with guidance of various sorts, probably including moral and political, since Moore contrasts the “lantern” with “authorities” who “shackle” the imagination. At the end of Prospero’s speech, Moore uses similar images of objects that cast light: “pyre” and “beacon” and, of course, the metaphorical “blaze” of the “Blazing World” itself.

Moore’s Prospero next tells us that “Life’s certainties erode, yet we endure. Whilst tyrants topple, yet Quixote rides with the companions of thy cradle nights in glorious pasture Coleridge never glimpsed.” (Dossier p. 191, panel 2) Thus Prospero points out that great works of fiction survive through the ages, whereas oppressive governments (which may seek to ban such works) rise and fall. Moore’s reference to “life’s certainties” may be ironic: the political certitudes under a tyrannical regime “erode” when that regime falls. Or perhaps Moore means how the “certainties” of age and death “erode” and destroy mortal beings, yet the classic characters of fiction go on and on.

Why mention Don Quixote, whom Dossier establishes as a member of an earlier incarnation of the League? Perhaps because Quixote’s attempts to be a heroic knight continually proved ineffectual. He literally “tilted at windmills,” believing then to be marauding giants, and his name inspired the English language word “quixotic,” meaning unreasonably, impracticably idealistic. Yet, Moore points out, Quixote ultimately has triumphed, since Cervantes’ book about him is still read centuries after its was written, and the character is still known by millions, while tyrannies have come and gone. Franco’s fascist Spanish government fell, but Don Quixote “lives” on.

By “companions of thy cradle” Moore specifically refers to the fictional characters of children’s bedtime stories, and, perhaps, to all fictional characters by extension, since each adult’s love of fiction began in his childhood. Moore ironically contrasts these “companions of thy cradle” to “tyrants”: the fictional “companions” of childhood outlast the oppressive governments formed by adults, and thus childhood innocence and idealism triumphs over adult evil.

The phrase “in glorious pasture Coleridge never glimpsed” is puzzling. “Coleridge” is surely the 19th century British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Does Moore mean that Coleridge, author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), had too bleak and pessimistic a vision of life to conceive of this metaphorical “glorious pasture”? Or that even the splendors of the “pleasure-dome” of Xanadu in Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan (1816) cannot match the glories of this simple “pasture” in which Quixote and other fictional characters ride?

The word “pasture” turns up in various Coleridge works, but one that may be relevant is The Wanderings of Cain (1834), in which the ghost of Abel accuses his brother, ” I was feeding my flocks in green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou killedst me; and now I am in misery”. These “pastures” have been tainted by murder, unlike Quixote’s “glorious pasture.” Quixote dies in Cervantes’ book, but he rides for eternity in the pasture of Prospero’s speech.

In other words, Quixote’s “pasture” is metaphorically the same as the Blazing World: an eternal paradise inhabited by the enduring characters of fiction.

Moore’s Prospero then launches into a summation of his speech (Dossier p. 191, panel 3), beginning with a single word, an exclamation, “Rejoice!” Rather than “drown his book,” representing his art and imagination, as Shakespeare’s Prospero did in The Tempest, Moore’s Prospero joyfully declares that “Imagination’s quenchless pyre burns on”: no water can “drown” this flame. Continuing the imagery of light from his reference to the “guiding lantern,” Moore’s Prospero thus speaks of a “pyre” that “burns,” “a beacon to eternity,” perhaps meaning both that it will remain a beacon into eternity and that it shows us the way to eternity.
He continues, “its triumphs culture’s proudest pinnacles when great wars are ingloriously forgot”; not only does great art outlasts tyrannies, but art is the “proudest pinnacle” of culture, rather than even a “great” war. (So there, simply put, is the difference between Black Dossier and 300.)

Prospero goes on, in metafictional mode, “Here is our narrative made paradise, brief tales made glorious continuity” (Dossier p. 191, panel 3). This seems to confirms that Moore intends the Blazing World to be a heaven for the characters of fiction. In the League series Moore links fictional works by numerous writers into a single, all-encompassing continuity. But his reference to “continuity” may also be metaphorical. If life is a “brief tale,” then the afterlife is a limitless, “glorious continuity.” Notice, too, how Moore repeats variations on “glorious” (even “inglorious”) in Prospero’s concluding speech, making it the key word in these concluding pages.

Prospero goes on, “Here champions and lovers are made safe from bowdlerizer’s quill, or fad, or fact” (Dossier p. 109, panel 3). Having disapproved of past movie adaptations of his work, Moore has a personal motivation for disapproving of those who tamper with someone else’s artistic creation. Anyone who studies the history of longrunning characters in pop culture, including Marvel and DC comics, will see how a passing “fad” can distort the treatment of characters and series. As for “fact,” perhaps Moore means that works of fiction are not bound by the rules of reality. Obviously, works of fantasy and science fiction depict worlds which differ from our own. But fiction generally depicts a world with a sense of order (since the author has constructed the plot) that the real world lacks. Or perhaps Moore means that in fictional characters are potentially immortal and thus need not succumb to the “facts” of aging and death as real people do.

Moore’s Prospero refers to both “champions and lovers.” This may serve to remind the readers that Allan and Mina are not just important as action-adventure heroes in Dossier, upholding the cause of liberty by contending against authoritarian agents like Moore’s version of James Bond. Allan and Mina are also idealized lovers, whose love may be as immortal as they have become. This is one reason for the emphasis on Allan and Mina’s sexuality, and for that matter, that of League members Fanny Hill and Orlando in Black Dossier. Allan and Mina contrast with the womanizing James Bond and Emma Night, who is oblivious to Bond’s true nature, as the traitorous killer if her father.

Moore’s Prospero ends both his speech and the book with a rhyming couplet, complete with alliteration and further examples of light imagery. It starts, “Here are brave banners of romance unfurled. . .” (p. 191, panel 3). Moore probably intends “romance” both in the sense of love, such as between Allan and Mina, and in the sense of heroic adventure, as in Northrup Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.

And on the Dossier‘s final page, Prospero exultingly concludes the couplet, ” . . .to blaze forever in a Blazing World!” (Dossier p. 192). It is a triumphantly celebratory ending, and you can see that reading and exploring the Black Dossier made me happy indeed to be an independent scholar in the comics medium.

And then this week I received a book which made me even happier, and you will read about that in this column’s next installment.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

One of this column’s frequent subjects, Neil Gaiman, and Roger Avary, best known as the co-writer of the 1994 film Pulp Fiction gave collaborated on the screenplay for the new Beowulf movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis. IDW has been publishing a four-issue comics adaptation of the movie. Zemeckis’s Beowulf is a sort-of-animated movie, employing the “performance-capture” he previously used for his 2004 Christmas-themed film The Polar Express (see “Comics in Context” #66: “A Christmas Potpourri”).

Their Beowulf movie is based on the epic poem of the same name which was written by an unknown author between the seventh and tenth centuries A. D. in Anglo-Saxon, also known as Old English. Hence Beowulf is one of the earliest known works in the history of the English language. The title character is the first great hero of the adventure genre that critic Northrop Frye calls “romance” in the English language. Beowulf therefore is our language’s first great example of the kind of character whom I call a “megahero,” who can justly be regarded as a forebear of the superheroes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Indeed, Beowulf’s ability to hold his own in hand-to-hand combat with Grendel, a monster who is described as larger than human. may even suggest he possesses superhuman strength, as Samson and Hercules did.

Therefore, for many reasons, the Beowulf movie is a proper subject for this column.

Certainly Beowulf is a considerable advance over The Polar Express in utilizing performance capture technology to translate the performances of real actors into the actions and facial expressions of persuasively realistic computer-generated characters onscreen. Whether or not this technology will continue to advance, and Beowulf will one day look comparatively primitive, remains to be seen. Watching the film I was usually impressed by its mimicking of reality, although there were still many times throughout the film when the characters looked to me too much like waxen figures, breaking the illusion.

In retrospect, perhaps the technology’s limitations were most exposed by the notorious depiction of Grendel’s mother as a nude version of Angelina Jolie, the actress on whose performance the character was based. (Hereafter I shall refer to the movie’s Ma Grendel as Grendelina Jolie. Readers with time to spare are encouraged to write her a theme song to the tune of Frank Loesser’s song “Thumbelina” from the 1952 movie musical Hans Christian Andersen.) I didn’t find the sight of Grendelina as erotic as it should have been, and I believe that the difference is that the sight of actual flesh can be considerably more sensual than Zemeckis’s cinematic wax.

Although there are film critics who argue that a movie must diverge from a literary work that it adapts, I suspect that the general public assumes that a
movie adaptation is faithful to the original book. Moreover, a movie adaptation may displace the original work in the public imagination: I expect that more people know MGM’s Wizard of Oz than L. Frank Baum’s book.

Neil Gaiman confronted these problems in discussing an “educational pack” for the Beowulf movie in the Tuesday, November 6, 2007 entry in his blog: “Incidentally, I think the educational pack done for Beowulf is simply wrong. Part of the point of the Beowulf movie that Roger and I wrote is the places it diverges from the story of Beowulf, and the ways it explores the relationship between a person and a story about a person. I don’t think they should be putting the stuff we made up on material intended for schools — it seems like a way of justifiably irritating teachers, who have enough to put up with when they try to teach Beowulf without us making their lives harder. It would have been much more interesting to have put up either the original, or one that talked about the differences — I’d absolutely encourage high schoolers to see our version and talk about what changed and why.”

I didn’t encounter the original Beowulf until I was in college, and it is a subject that has occupied scholars who are long past their student days. One of my regular strategies in writing “Comics in Context” is to compare an adaptation to the original work to discover what has been changed, what hs been gained, and what has been lost. In the case of Beowulf, I turned to poet Seamus Heaney’s recent verse translation of the original Old English poem, which, surprisingly, became a best seller in 2000. I obtained a copy of the 2002 Norton Critical Edition of Heaney’s Beowulf: A Verse Translation, which includes numerous critical and historical essays, including J. R. R. Tolkien’s celebrated “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”

The poem begins by speaking of the Danes, “and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness” (Heaney translation, line 2; Norton edition, p. 3). Among those kings was Shield Sheafson, whom the poet describes thus: That was one good king” (Heaney line 11, p. 3).

Shield had a son, Beow, who was “a comfort sent by God to that nation” (Heaney lines 13-14, p. 3). The poet praises Beow for his “prudent” course of action:
“giving freely while his father lives
so that afterward in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line. Behavior that’s admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.” (Heaney lines 21-25, p. 3)

Thus in the first page of the translation, the Beowulf poet establishes some of the work’s major themes. One of them is to describe and commend the behavior of the “good king,” the good leader of men, and, perhaps, the good man in general. The poet points out that “behavior that’s admired” wins the loyalty of others.

Moreover, whereas the Beowulf legend has its roots in pre-Christian culture, the poem Beowulf, as it has come down to us, was written from a Christian perspective. A benevolent God, “the Lord of life, the glorious Almighty” (Heaney lines 16-17, p. 3), watches over the human race, and sent Beow into the world to be a “leader” to the Danes.

Beow was the grandfather of Hrothgar, the king who commanded the construction of Heorot,
“a great mead-hall
meant to be a wonder of the world forever;
it would be his throne-room and there he would dispense
his God-given goods to young and old–
but not the common land or people’s lives.” (Heaney lines 69-73, pgs. 405)

I assume that in choosing the phrase he did, Heaney sought to link Heorot with the legendary Seven Wonders of the World, of which the Great Pyramid of Giza is the sole survivor. So Heorot is presented as a great monument of civilization. Presumably it is also a triumph of art, as a work of architecture.

Moreover, Heorot is Hrothgar’s “throne-room”; it symbolizes Hrothgar’s government, as, say, the White House does the American presidency. Hrothgar is a good king. Rather than hoarding his wealth (like the dragon later in the epic), Hrothgar would “dispense his God-given goods to young and old.” A Norton edition footnote points out that Hrothgar could not “dispose of land used in common” or “unlawfully kill his subjects” (Norton p. 5): again, Hrothgar is a good king. Moreover, he is a king who follows God’s will: his goods are “God-given,” and in distributing them to his people, he performs the Christian act of charity. Hrothgar is “the wise king” (Heaney, line 1400, p. 38).

Hrothgar intends Heorot to be “a wonder of the world forever” (Heaney line 70. p. 5). But here, at the outset of the work, the Beowulf poet introduces another of his major themes: that no one and nothing lasts forever in this mortal world.

“The hall towered,
its gables wide and high and awaiting
a barbarous burning. That doom abided,
bit in time it would come: the killer instinct
unleashed among in-laws, the blood-lust rampant.” (Heaney lines 81-85, p. 5).

A footnote (Norton p. 5) explains that Heorot is doomed one day to be burned as a result of a feud between the Danes and the Heatho-Bards. Neither man nor his works are immortal in this world. The foretold destruction of Heorot may parallel Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, with the destruction of Valhalla, or the Christian concept of the Apocalypse, the end of the world.

Heorot will eventually meet its end as a result of “barbarous” action, resulting from “the blood-lust rampant.” The nature of the good king and the true hero seems to be important to the Beowulf poet because he is well aware of the evil of which humanity is capable. Through their good and wise reigns as rulers, Hrothgar and later Beowulf triumph over the dark side of humanity. Their reigns represent the victory of civilization–and Christian virtue–over barbarism and “blood-lust.” But that triumph, too, will not last forever. Hence Heorot is also like King Arthur’s Camelot, a mythic high point of Western civilization that was doomed to fall.

That barbarism and blood-lust is incarnated in the monstrous figure of Grendel, “a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark” (Heaney line 86, p. 5). That description links Grendel to both the Jungian shadow and the Christian concept of hell.

In the movie it seems that Grendel has super-sensitive hearing, so that even though he dwells miles away from Heorot, he can hear the noise from the partying in the mead-hall. The sound infuriates Grendel, as if he were the stereotypical cranky old man insisting that the kids next door turn their stereo down.

Perhaps, too, he is like Dr. Seuss’s Grinch, living on his mountaintop, angered by the sound of the Whos down in Whoville celebrating Christmas. (Wait a minute: “Grinch” and “Grendel” start with the same letters. You don’t suppose that Dr. Seuss [aka Theodor Seuss Geisel] was inspired by Beowulf in creating the Grinch? A quick Google search demonstrates that the idea has occurred to other people as well: see Robert L. Schichler, “Understanding the Outsider: Grendel, Geisel, and the Grinch,” Popular Culture Review 11.1 [Feb. 2000], 99-105. and here)

But there’s more to Grendel’s motivation than overly sensitive ears.

“It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of man’s beginnings,
how the Almighty had made the earth
a gleaming plain girdled with waters;
in His splendor He set the sun and the moon
to be earth’s lamplight, lanterns for men. . .
. . .and quickened life
in every other thing that moved.” (Heaney, lines 87-98, p. 5)

The banquet represents civilization and community as well as happiness, all of which the monstrous outsider Grendel opposes. But notice that Grendel also hates the music of the harp and the “song of a skilled poet,” who is not unlike the author of Beowulf itself. In other words, Grendel is opposed to one of civilization’s achievements, the arts. Further, the poet’s song recounts how the benevolent God, who conforms to the Christian image of the deity, created the earth, at least in large part as a home for humankind. Like the devil, Grendel is opposed to God. We can also see that Grendel opposes creation in any form, whether it is the idea of God creating the world, or humanity’s artistic creation. The song is also about how God “quickened life in every other thing that moved.” Ultimately, Grendel is opposed to life other than his own: Grendel is the bringer of death.

Whatever the non-Christian origins of the Beowulf myth, the Beowulf poet certainly roots Grendel firmly in the Christian mythos. Grendel is described as “a fiend out of hell” (Heaney, line 100, p. 5) who once dwelled among “the banished monsters” who are the descendants of Cain, the Biblical first murderer. Thus the poet links Grendel with both Cain and Satan. (Lines 1265-1266, on page 34, clearly establish Grendel as Cain’s descendant.)

Grendel invades Heorot, killing Hrothgar’s people, not just once, but over and over, for a dozen years. The poet depicts Grendel not just as a killer but as a usurper.

“So Grendel ruled in defiance of right
one against all, until the greatest house
in the world stood empty, a deserted wallstead.” (Heaney, lines 144-146, p. 6)

Not only is Grendel the enemy of civilization, but he also represents a nightmarish vision of the bad king or leader. The poet condemns Grendel for his refusal to negotiate with his adversaries or pay reparations to the families of his victims!

“Sad lays were sung about. . .
the vicious raids and ravages of Grendel,
his long and unrelenting feud,
nothing but war; how he would never
parley or make peace with any Dane
nor stop his death-dealing nor pay the death-price,
No counselor could ever expect
fair reparation from those rabid hands.” (Heaney, lines 151-158, p. 7)

Hearing of what Grendel had done, Beowulf, “like the leader he was” (Heaney, line 206, p. 8), gathers together men in his country of Geatland and sets sail to go to Hrothgar’s aid. Beowulf seeks glory, which is a virtue in the world of this poem, but he is also extending help to people in distress, a Christian virtue. As we shall see, Beowulf is the poet’s foremost example of the good man, the good leader, and, eventually, the good king. Upon landing, Beowulf and his men “thanked God for that easy crossing on a calm sea” (Heaney, lines 227-228, pgs. 8-9), demonstrating their allegiance to a deity whom the poet surely intends to be the Christian God, even if the poem is set in a time before Christianity came to Denmark.

Then they are confronted by Hrothgar’s watchman, who “challenged them in formal terms” (Heaney, lines 235-6, p. 9). The formal language of the watchman’s speech and Beowulf’s response demonstrates that they are highly civilized men, more comparable to Arthurian knights than to barbarian warriors. Even before Beowulf speaks, the watchman recognizes that “he is truly noble” (Heaney, line 250, p. 9).

Impressed by Beowulf’s heroism, the watchman escorts him to Heorot, which seems nothing like the gray, dark, depressingly primitive structure in Zemeckis’s movie.

“. . .till the timbered hall
rose before them, radiant with gold.
Nobody on earth knew of another
building like it. Majesty lodged there,
its light shone over many lands.” (Heaney, lines 307-311, p. 10)

Why, it seems like an earthly heaven, even despite Grendel’s assaults. Whereas Grendel embodies darkness, Heorot shines with golden light. Moreover, it seems that the civilization that Heorot represents inspires the people of many lands. Again I am reminded of King Arthur’s Camelot.

Beowulf undergoes another challenge in formal language from another Campbellian threshold guardian, Wulfgar, and responds eloquently. Then Hrothgar welcomes Beowulf, recognizing him as an emissary of God:

“Now Holy God
has, in His goodness, guided him here
to the West-Danes, to defend us from Grendel.” (Heaney, lines 381-383, p. 12)

Beowulf asks Hrothgar for “the privilege of purifying Heorot” (Heaney, line 431, p. 13); the choice of words conveys a religious subtext. Indeed, Beowulf acknowledges his belief in God: “And the Geat placed complete trust in his strength of limb and the Lord’s favor” (Heaney, lines 669-670, p. 19).

By the way, in Heaney’s version, Beowulf removes his armor and says he will not use weapons against Grendel (who turns out to be magically invulnerable to them, anyway), but there is no indication that Beowulf is actually naked during the battle with Grendel, as he is in the movie, wherein Beowulf’s nudity seems, shall we say, ostentatiously odd.

Beowulf wrenches off Grendel’s arm. fatally wounding the monster, who retreats to his lair to die. Soon afterwards, a singing storyteller delivers a recitation about another legendary hero, Sigemond, the slayer of a dragon, to whom Beowulf is compared. (Beowulf will also slay a dragon later in the epic.) The recitation ends with what may seem an inexplicable reference to another monarch: “But evil entered into Heremod” (Heaney, line 914, p. 24).
But since the Beowulf poet is out to describe the “good king” and the great hero, it makes sense that he invokes not only another great hero of the past, Sigemund, who parallels Beowulf, but also Beowulf’s opposite, the evil Heremod, an example of a bad king.

Hrothgar makes it clear that the Christian God worked through Beowulf to rid them of Grendel:

“First and foremost, let the Almighty Father
be thanked for this sight. I suffered a long
harrowing by Grendel. But the Heavenly Shepherd
can work his wonders always and everywhere.” (Heaney, lines 927-930, p. 25)
“But now a man,
with the Lord’s assistance, has accomplished something
none of us could manage before now. . . .(Heaney, lines 938-940, p. 25).

The word “harrowing” reminds me of Christ’s “Harrowing of Hell.” Hrothgar also reminds me of the mythic Fisher-King, the wounded monarch who is figuratively impotent, and whose realm declines into a wasteland. Beowulf is the younger, more virile hero who saves the kingdom. Hrothgar adopts Beowulf as a son, making him heir to the restored kingdom.

Indeed, later, the poet describes how Beowulf behaved as a Christian hero in defeating Grendel:

“The monster wrenched and wrestled with him,
but Beowulf was mindful of his mighty strength,
the wondrous gifts God had showered on him:
he relied for help on the Lord of All.
on His care and favor. So he overcame the foe. . . .” (Heaney, lines 1269-1273, p. 35)

Beowulf is rather like the Biblical Samson, combining his great strength with his faith in God.

In a seeming digression, “the king’s poet”–notice how frequently poets and storytellers turn up in Beowulf–tells the story of “the gallant Finn slain in his home” (Heaney, lines 1147-1148, p. 31). Amidst the celebration of Beowulf’s victory this comes a memento mori, a reminder that even heroes can eventually fall victim to the violence of the world.

And the Beowulf poet considers his title character a true hero. He tells us, simply, “that good man, Beowulf the Geat, sat between the brothers,” Hrothgar’s sons (Heaney, lines 1189-1190, p. 33).

Yet the poet even restates his theme of inevitable mortality by putting it in the mouth of his victorious young hero. Before setting out on the trail of Grendel’s mother, Beowulf observes that “For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death.” (Heaney, lines 1386-1388, p. 37).

According to the poem Ma Grendel may be a “monstrous hell-bride” (Heaney, line 1259, p. 34), but she also “as far as anyone ever can discern looks like a woman” whereas Grendel was “warped in the shape of a man” (Heaney, lines 1350-1352, p. 36), so Zemeckis is justified in making Grendel’s mother look like Angelina Jolie rather than a repellent monster.

Again, in the poem Beowulf fulfills the role of the Christian hero in defeating and beheading Grendel’s mother: “holy God decided the victory” (Heaney, lines 1553-1554, p. 41).

During the celebration of Beowulf’s triumph over Grendel’s mother, Hrothgar returns to the subject of the evil king Heremod, who “killed his own comrades, a pariah king who cut himself off from his own kind” (Heaney, lines 1714-1715, p. 45). Hrothgar argues that a leader who loses sight of his own mortality will be corrupted by power:

“He [God] permits him to lord it in many lands
until the man in his unthinkingness
forgets that it will ever end for him. . . .
The whole world
conforms to his will, he is kept from the world
until an element of overweening
enters him and takes hold. . . .” (Heaney, lines 1732-1734, 1739-1741, p. 45)

Hrothgar them warns Beowulf:

“Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,
eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride.
For a brief while your strength is in bloom
but it fades quickly. . . .
. . . and death will arrive,
dear warrior, to sweep you away.” (Heaney, lines 1759-1762, 1767-1768, p. 46)

The corruption of power and of heroes is a theme of Zemeckis’s Beowulf, but in the poem Beowulf never succumbs to this temptation. Soon after Hrothgar’s speech comes another reference to a bad monarch who did, Queen Modthyth, and who provides yet another contrast with the incorruptible leaders Hrothgar and Beowulf.

Beowulf eventually becomes king of his homeland Geatland (whereas in the movie he becomes king of Denmark): “He was a good king” (Heaney, line 2390, p. 60).

But outside Beowulf’s realm violence and evil still ravage the world: “Pillage and slaughter have emptied the earth of entire peoples” (Heaney, lines 2265-2266, p. 58). Not even Beowulf’s counterpart to Heorot (and Camelot) is permanent. A dragon, another monster that embodies the world’s violence, devastates Geatland, and even incinerates Beowulf’s own home, “the best of buildings” (Heaney, line 2326, p. 59).

Moreover, Beowulf recognizes that even his long, heroic life has come to its end, and that he will not survive his combat with the dragon: “He was sad at heart, unsettled yet ready, sensing his death” (Heaney, lines 2419-2420, p. 61). He cannot escape the inevitability of old age and death.

Indeed, the aged Beowulf, like Hrothgar before him, has, to an extent, become the impotent king: look what happens in the battle with the dragon to that obvious phallic symbol, his sword:

“The glittering sword
infallible before that day,
failed when he unsheathed it, as it never should have,
For the son of Ecgtheow [meaning Beowulf], it was no easy thing
to have to give ground like that and go
unwillingly to inhabit another home
in a place beyond [meaning heaven]; so every man must yield
the leasehold of his days.” (Heaney, lines 2584-2591, p. 65)

As the battle continues, Beowulf’s “ancient iron-gray sword” even “snapped” in two (Heaney, lines 2680-2681, p. 67).

Out of pride, Beowulf insisted on battling the dragon alone. The troops who accompanied him fled the scene of the battle out of cowardice. The sole exception was a young warrior named Wiglaf, who goes to Beowulf’s aid, and who clearly is intended by the poet to be Beowulf’s spiritual heir, a hero of the next generation. Working together as “partners in nobility” (Heaney, line 2707, p. 68), Wiglaf and Beowulf succeed in killing the dragon.

Mortally wounded in his combat with the dragon, the dying Beowulf reflects on his life:

“I took what came,
cared for and stood by things in my keeping,
never fomented quarrels, never
swore to a lie. All this consoles me,
doomed as I am and sickening for death;
because of my right ways, the Ruler of mankind
need never blame me when the breath leaves my body
for murder of kinsmen.” (Heaney, lines 2736-2743, p. 68)

In a mark of honor, Wiglaf and others burn Beowulf’s body on what the poet calls simply “the good man’s pyre” (Heaney, line 3113, p. 77). In Beowulf‘s final lines, the poet sums up,

“They said that of all the kings upon earth
he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,
kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.” (Heaney, lines 3180-3182, p. 78)

So, yes, indeed, the Zemeckis-Avary-Gaiman Beowulf certainly “diverges from the story of Beowulf,” the original poem. (And here I issue a spoiler warning for those who have not yet seen the movie.) Rather than depicting a proto-Christian hero, the movie indicates that the rise of Christianity put an end to the age of heroes. Although the movie’s Beowulf grows older, the film fails to convey the sense that age has weakened him, that his death in combat with the dragon is inevitable, or that his tragedy is that of all humanity: the inevitability of old age and death.

Moreover, the Beowulf poet is clearly intent both on creating images of the ideal hero, leader and ruler and on urging his readers to aspire to the high standards that his ideal leaders set. But the Beowulf movie refuses to believe in the poet’s “good kings,” instead depicting both Hrothgar and Beowulf as deeply, morally flawed men. The Hrothgar of the movie is a drunken boor, who can barely manage to keep his clothing on during the celebration at the film’s start, and whose young wife shrinks from his touch. The Beowulf poet tells us that his title character “never swore to a lie,” yet the triumphs of the Beowulf of the movie in slaying monsters are marred by the fact that he is a liar. The movie’s Beowulf claims to have slain Grendelina, whereas he instead became her lover and let her live, thereby not just compromising with evil but becoming its enabler. He follows a pattern set by Hrothgar, who has likewise concealed his own tryst with Grendelina, which spawned the monstrous Grendel, a living representation of the consequences of his liaison with evil. Similarly, the dragon proves to be the son of Beowulf and Grendelina, representing his own dark side, unleashed to wreak destruction. In the movie Beowulf perishes not so much due to the inevitability of human mortality but because he cannot destroy the evil he has created without destroying himself. And is there any hope for the future? At the film’s end, Wiglaf, who is not depicted as a young man, is left staring at Grendelina, leaving the audience to wonder of he will continue the cycle by becoming her lover and fathering yet another monster.

Neil Gaiman says that the Beowulf movie “explores the relationship between a person and a story about a person.” But why should the movie’s deeply pessimistic and cynical depiction of Beowulf be more credible than the original poet’s portrayal of Beowulf as a truly good and noble man? Over a millennium ago the Beowulf poet could extol the human potential for moral greatness. The Beowulf movie dismisses the possibility. This is not progress.

Besides, the original Beowulf is a fictional character as depicted in the epic poem. It is that poem that defines Beowulf’s character. The Beowulf of the Zemeckis movie may have the same name and perform many of the same actions, but he does not have the same personality, and certainly not the same moral code, as the Beowulf of the poem. To put it another way, the Beowulf of the movie has a different characterization than the Beowulf of the poem. Or to put it bluntly, the movie’s Beowulf is not the same person as the poem’s Beowulf.

You cannot faithfully adapt or interpret a work if you turn the central character into a different person. However interesting the Zemeckis movie may be, it might as well be called something like Fred the Dragon-Slayer; it’s not about the Beowulf readers have known for centuries.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

On the day before Thanksgiving I once again headed to New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, in large part to see the gigantic balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which are inflated on the side streets alongside the museum and lie there all night, awaiting the start of the festivities. I regard the Macy’s parade as, in part, a celebration of cartoon art, since many of the balloons represent iconic figures from comics and animation. In past years for example, there have been balloons of Spider-Man and SpongeBob SquarePants.

The first time I went to see the balloons being inflated, several years ago, was pleasantly enjoyable, perhaps because I did it during the late afternoon. But this year I stayed on the museum, looking at new exhibits, until closing time, when the balloons were fully inflated, night had fallen, and people had gotten home from work following the usual early holiday closing. The sidewalks surrounding the museum were flooded with a sea of people. moving slowly but inexorably along. In other words, it was not unlike trying to move through the main aisles at the San Diego Comic Con. This year there were even crowds on the sidewalks across from the museum! Don’t believe anyone who tells you that all New Yorkers leave the city for Thanksgiving. Afterwards, I marveled at how many people were out on Broadway, several blocks away from the museum.

For much of my time looking at the balloons, I was behind parents who were pushing a baby carriage containing a infant who was obviously too young to appreciate the balloons and was wailing loudly–perhaps frightened by being hemmed in by these strange adults towering over him?

Along 81st Street, near the intersection with Central Park West, lay the new balloon of Shrek, the movie version, of course, who was smiling benevolently at the passersby. I reflected that the misanthropic Shrek of William Steig’s original book would be horrified at being surrounded by so many children (see “Comics in Context” #186: “Le Petit Chef”).

Behind him was great Cthulhu–I mean, Pikachu of Pokemon, at a greater size even than his manifestations at the New York and San Diego Comic Cons, where I suspect he feasts upon the brains of attendees. Luckily for us, this Pikachu/Cthulhu looked sound asleep as he lay on the street, as if Manhattan reminded him of his home town of R’leyh.

Then there was a silvery balloon in the somewhat abstracted form of a rabbit which may have puzzled onlookers that evening, but turned out to have been designed by contemporary artist Jeff Koons, whose work I’ve seen at the Museum of Modern Art. Koons’ “Rabbit“ provides another example of the blurring of the boundaries between high and low at: here is a significant artist in the fine art world working in a supposed children’s medium, that of the giant Macy’s balloon. It’s not unlike what’s been happening in comics and animation.

On the opposite side of the museum, along 77th Street, was another rabbit, the familiar Energizer Bunny, who, unlike his fellow balloon creatures, stood upright. It was an enjoyably amusing sight, despite my qualms that the Energizer Bunny, who appears only in commercials, was too much of a corporate icon to be in the parade.

Heading down 77th Street back towards Central Park West, I passed a brobdingnagian Scooby Doo, whose colossal facial features projected a goofy joyousness rather than his more celebrated look of sheer terror. Beyond him was another dog, whose big smile was quieter, even beatific: Snoopy, wearing his Flying Ace helmet and holding binoculars, as if he would be gazing at the paradegoers even as they looked upward at him.

Snoopy’s presence in the parade testifies to the continued hold that the comic strip Peanuts exerts on the American imagination, seven years after the death of its creator Charles M. Schulz, after which no more new Peanuts strips appeared.

Further evidence is provided by David Michaelis’s new biography, Schulz and Peanuts, and the considerable attention that it has received in the news media. Based upon years of research and over two hundred interviews (listed in the back of the book), Michaelis demonstrates how elements of Schulz’s life–his emotionally reserved father, the early, painful death of his mother from cancer, romantic rejection, lack of appreciation for his artistic talents, his dysfunctional first marriage–are reflected in his work on Peanuts.

I had forgotten that I first wrote about Michaelis three years ago in the course of reviewing the first of Fantagraphics’ series of Peanuts reprint collections, for which Michaelis supplied an introductory essay (see “Comics in Context” #66: “A Christmas Potpourri”). Back then I wrote that “Michaelis contends that the darkness within Peanuts was a projection of “˜the private, quiet, depressed Scandinavian part of Schulz’s character. . . .’ Michaelis asserts that “˜Schulz dared to use his own quirks–a lifelong sense of alienation, insecurity and inferiority–to draw the real feelings of his life and time.’” According to Michaelis’s book, Schulz remained emotionally distant in various respects even from friends and family throughout his life. Michaelis quotes Schulz as saying that “depression” was “the wrong term” for his condition and that “I would say “˜melancholy’ would be a better term for myself. Perhaps “˜fearful.’ Perhaps “˜anxious.’ Although this may make life itself rather uncomfortable, it is certainly a good and maybe even necessary trait for a cartoonist to have” (Michaelis p. 435).

Months ago I interviewed Michaelis for Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week. When I asked him about the Schulz family’s reaction to his portrait of the cartoonist, Michaelis spoke about their generous cooperation with him. When I spoke with him in early September, members of the Schulz family had not yet gone public with their disagreements with the book (as they did in The New York Times, October 8, 2007. Michaelis must have known about their disapproval, but arguably it was justifiable for him not to tell me about it if I didn’t already know. Then again, when I interviewed Mark Evanier about his forthcoming book Kirby: King of Comics, Mark told me about “stormy” periods in his relationship with Kirby without my even asking.

Several of Schulz’s children have explained why they disagree with the book on the animation blog “Cartoon Brew.” Schulz’s son Monte sums it up at one point: “I can tell you absolutely that he was not a depressed, melancholy person, nor was he unaffectionate and absent as a parent”.

Various people have written into Cartoon Brew expressing outrage that Michaelis would have a different perspective on Schulz than his children, as if Michaelis were some sort of monster, willfully distorting the truth. In the October 14, 2007 New York Times, Randy Kennedy observed, perhaps wearily, that “Such arguments are nothing particularly new in the world of biography. Writers and loved ones often end up staring each other down across a big chasm separating substantially different versions of a subject both claim to know intimately.”

Who is more correct–Michaelis or the Schulz children? I never met Schulz, so I can’t testify from personal experience. Some of Michaelis’s critics even claim that they met Schulz once and he was pleasant and witty, so how could he possibly be distant and melancholic? But of course any individual has multiple facets to his personality, and a person’s public persona does not necessarily reflect his private emotions.

Nevertheless, I recommend that readers listen to a podcast interview with Michaelis that was conducted in connection with BookExpo America 2007. Michaelis comes across here as he did in my interview with him: his respect for Schulz and his work, and his earnestness in seeking to understand both, are evident.

I wasn’t shocked by reading Schulz and Peanuts because I had already gone through the disillusionment of discovering that Charles Schulz was different from his public image when I reviewed the aforementioned first volume of Fantagraphics’ Peanuts reprints. As I wrote at the time, “Indeed, Schulz as he himself appears in this book provides evidence for Michaelis’s thesis. Michaelis quotes Schulz as saying, “˜I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim.’ The book includes an interview that comics historian Rick Marschall and Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth conducted with Schulz in 1987, in which Schulz comes off as both artistically ambitious and curmudgeonly. Schulz had a reputation for being staunchly religious: in last year’s Christmas column, I marveled at how explicitly Christian the ending of A Charlie Brown Christmas, in contrast to so many other Christmas TV specials that deal only with the secular side of the holiday (see “Comics in Context” #24). So it’s a surprise that in the interview Schulz admits, “˜I have no idea why we’re here and I have no idea what happens after you die.’” (See “Comics in Context” #66: “A Christmas Potpourri.”) Moreover, though Schulz is said to have been generous towards various younger cartoonists, and befriended some of them, in the Groth-Marschall interview he comes off as downright mean-spirited towards the younger generation of comic strip artists. In the interview Schulz contends that he likes none of the newer comic strips (circa 1987), although when asked specifically about Gary Larson’s The Far Side, he concedes that he likes that one.

Heidi MacDonald, the ubiquitous Beat, has famously met seemingly everyone in comics, including, once, Charles M. Schulz. But her shock of disillusionment seems to have been greater than my own. “I can’t pretend that I knew Charles Schulz at all, but I did interview him once over a decade ago, and the impression I got from a half hour conversation was that the guy never ever let go of anything sad that had happened to him. (The sadness in his voice when he talked about the death of his dog 50 years previously was heartbreaking.) If that was the takeaway from a short talk with a complete stranger, I would suspect that this profound melancholy was a regular part of his character, and it certainly was reflected in his work. I’m sure there were other aspects of his character (his kindness was also well known) but the melancholy was so pronounced that once I got over the shock of actually talking to Charles Schulz, I never forgot it. “ She correctly points out that “This view is not incompatible with the kind, caring father remembered by his kids”¦great artists are complex, and Schulz was both.”

Some people posting on the Net furiously condemn Michaelis and his book without having read it. Before writing this week’s column, I reread much of Schulz and Peanuts and was impressed with how thoroughly Michaelis backs up his depiction of Schulz with footnoted quotations from his numerous sources, including members of the Schulz family. Although Michaelis has been accused of getting various facts wrong, which are of relatively minor importance, no one to my knowledge has accused him of misquoting his interviewees. The glowing reviews that the book has received from the likes of novelist John Updike in The New Yorker, The New York Times‘ lead book critic Michiko Kakutani, and even Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson in The Wall Street Journal testify to how strongly Michaelis makes his case: all of them find his portrait of the man behind Peanuts wholly persuasive.

Moreover, Michaelis does provide occasional glimpses of the side of Schulz that several Schulz children claim that he overlooked. For example, Michaelis reports that Schulz and his first wife Joyce “could still let go and have fun. One never-to-be-forgotten time became known in the family as the Huge Water Fight. It started when [daughter] Meredith, doing the dishes, sprayed her father, and he wrestled the sprayer away and doused Joyce. [Sons] Monte and Craig entered the fray with squirt guns. . .and soon everyone was spraying everybody else, using any receptacle they could find” (Michaelis p. 333).

Later Michaelis states that Schulz “took deep pleasure in his role as family chauffeur,” and that the family station wagon “was the place he felt most intimate with his children. “˜That was the joy of my life,’ he later mused. “˜I discovered that my place was to be with the kids” (Michaelis pgs. 364-365). Soon afterwards Michaelis declares that Schulz was “devoted to the children” (Michaelis p. 366).

Later, Michaelis writes about Schulz, “With his children he had been fun and silly. . .correct and courteous, considerate and kind, amusing and witty. “˜Each one of us will tell you that our dad was wonderful company at every stage of our lives,’ said Monte. “˜He was such a fun dad to have’” (Michaelis, p. 539). Perhaps Michaelis does not devote enough space to Schulz’s love for his children, but he does not utterly ignore it.

People who accuse Michaelis of portraying Schulz as unlikable and unsympathetic are misreading the book. Michaelis makes it plain that Schulz could be quite charming, and that, indeed, when he reached seventy, “Women adored him, found him attractive, loved being with him” (Michaelis p. 536), leading to his various platonic relationships with younger female friends. By illuminating the causes of Schulz’s insecurities and doubts and melancholy in his youth, Michaelis won my sympathy for Schulz. In fact, for me the controversial section about Schulz’s one extramarital affair with a young woman named Tracey, during his dysfunctional marriage with Joyce, to be the highlight of the book. Through Michaelis’s skillful account, the reader can see why Tracey would find Schulz charming and even lovable. After all of his past miseries, I thought that Schulz deserved to find happiness with Tracey, and I found myself rooting for Schulz to stay with her, although that was not to be.

As regular readers know, I’ve been writing about Danny Fingeroth’s book Disguised as Clark Kent this month, and in the course of discussing the secret identity motif, he refers to the autobiography of movie director Samuel Fuller, A Third Face. As Fingeroth states, Fuller “explains the book’s title as referring to the three “˜faces’–identities–an individual exhibits: the one he shows the world, the one he shows his family and friends, and the “˜third face,’ the one that only he himself sees” (Fingeroth, Dressed as Clark Kent, p. 101).

That makes sense, and it’s applicable to Schulz’s case. Isn’t it possible that Schulz generally showed a cheerful, charming “face” to the world but suffered from doubts and inner turmoil that he usually kept hidden? This doesn’t mean that his public persona was a hollow facade; it probably represented a genuine side of his personality, but not the only side.

Further, upon consideration, it does not surprise me that some of his children saw a different side of Schulz than the side upon which Michaelis focuses. I cam see parallels in my own life. My father was in combat during World War II, but apart from acknowledging that fact, he never speaks about it. In the war he obviously underwent emotions and experiences that he does not wish his children to know about. Instead, we know him as a cheerful, caring parent.

Good parents tend to want their children to have better lives than they did. So it’s surely possible that Schulz could have been a caring father in various ways, in reaction against the unhappiness in his own childhood.

I also recall talking with a relative about our relationships with a third member of our family, and discovering that she had a completely different impression of his behavior than I did. Was he showing her a different side of his personality than he showed me? Or do she and I interpret his behavior differently?

That leads to another question: how would any of us and our families look from an outsider’s perspective? Have you ever been in a situation in which you are talking to someone who badmouths a friend of yours? I have, and in some cases I can understand why my friend is being criticized, but in others I am surprised and bewildered: how could this person so dislike a person I care about? Family members or close friends may well tend to excuse or overlook each other’s faults. At his October 18, 2007 appearance at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square, Michaelis told the audience that on many occasions when he was interviewing someone who knew Schulz, the interviewee would mention some incident in which Schulz behaved unpleasantly, but would then immediately add that that wasn’t the way Schulz ordinarily behaved. Michaelis’s point was that those examples of bad behavior did happen from time to time and did reveal an aspect of Schulz’s character.

As a creative artist, Schulz revealed his “third face” in his work. What I find most fascinating about Schulz and Peanuts is that Michaelis finds and reprints specific examples of Peanuts strips that reflect people, events, and emotions in the course of Schulz’s life. One of the governing principles of Michaelis’s book is that Schulz’s Peanuts is to a large degree an autobiographical work. Sometimes Schulz may have been consciously aware of the autobiographical implications of one of his strips; other times he may not have been, but the subtexts were present nonetheless.

There seemed to be a new critical reevaluation of Schulz’s work soon after his death, when he was no longer around to disagree with it. The emphasis was on the angst in Peanuts, especially in its early years, and especially as personified by Charlie Brown. And it’s true, the melancholy and sense of alienation are there in the strips.

But I suspect that underlying this reevaluation may be a critical bias that comics, or perhaps work in any medium, has to be dark in mood in order to be taken seriously as art. I keep seeing Schulz depicted as the forebear of Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes. Certainly, their work is influenced by Schulz’s. sometimes even making rather explicit references to Peanuts. But characteristically the misery and alienation in Ware and Clowes’ work outweighs the humor. But aren’t a wide range of genuinely humorous newspaper strips, spanning the period from Johnny Hart’s B. C. to Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts and beyond just as clearly influenced by Peanuts and Schulz’s style of humor?

Michaelis correctly sees and shows how Schulz’s work in Peanuts reveals the cartoonist’s inner demons. Indeed, the strips demonstrate the truth in Michaelis’s portrait of Schulz.

But the strips also show another side of Schulz’s personality that Michaelis does not sufficiently emphasize. In his book Michaelis acknowledges that Charlie Brown and Snoopy are the Peanuts characters who most represent their creator. Describing a strip in which Schulz’s two characters lie with their heads propped against opposite sides of a tree, Michaelis refers to “Charlie Brown and Snoopy, his own two personae, on either side of the tree of life (Michaelis, p. 473).

(Michaelis also insightfully points out that Schroeder, who conjures classical music from a toy piano, represents Schulz, the cartoonist who created great art through the “children’s” medium of the comic strip. Michaelis also persuasively asserts that Schroeder’s ignoring Lucy’s advances to concentrate on his music demonstrates Schulz’s own priorities when it came to his work and to emotional involvement with others.)

Michaelis also maintains that from 1967 onward Snoopy displaced Charlie Brown as the real lead character in the strip. But he does not sufficiently explore the implications of this shift.

Three years ago this month I wrote the following in my review of Fantagraphics’ first Peanuts reprint volume (see “Comics in Context” #66: “A Christmas Potpourri”): “. . .as the strip evolved, it became clear that it had not one star but two: the other was Snoopy, the dog with a human consciousness, who is yin to Charlie Brown’s yang. Charlie Brown can be morose; Snoopy is often jolly, even exuberantly dancing on his hind legs. Charlie Brown frets about his role in life; Snoopy can, too, but the simple pleasures of being fed at suppertime are enough to make him happy, even ecstatic. Charlie Brown is the Everyman as mediocrity, trapped by his own limitations, doomed to failure. Snoopy is a dog who transcends his own canine nature: he thinks like a human being, he walks upright on his hind legs, he writes novels (bad ones, true, but as Dr. Samuel Johnson would say, the miracle is that he writes at all), and he is even the only good player on Charlie Brown’s infamously incompetent baseball team. Charlie Brown’s wishes almost never come true, and his friend Linus awaits the coming of the Great Pumpkin (Schulz’s counterpart to Beckett’s Godot) in vain. But Snoopy easily adopts other personae (ranging from other animals to Charlie Brown’s opposite number, “Joe Cool”) and can even escape into a fantasy world, famously the one in which he is a heroic World War I pilot battling the Red Baron. (Sometimes when Snoopy fantasizes being in a World War I French tavern, for example, Schulz draws the tavern around him, as if Snoopy somehow actually is there.)”

I summed up, “Snoopy is the spirit of optimism that balances Charlie Brown’s pessimism. They represent the two poles of Peanuts‘ worldview. If Charles Schulz could feel as depressed as his semi-namesake Charlie Brown, then surely he must have also found an emotional outlet in Snoopy’s joie de vivre.”

If Snoopy took over the star role in Peanuts as the decades passed, does that indicate that the optimistic side of Schulz’s personality was becoming dominant? Michaelis observes that Snoopy’s role as scoutmaster to Woodstock and his fellow birds resembles the role of a parent. Might the strips with Snoopy and the birds reflect the side of Schulz’s personality that some of his children insist that Michaelis ignores? In his review of Schulz and Peanuts in The New Yorker (October 22, 2007), John Updike observes that “With the introduction, in 1970, of Snoopy’s friend the tiny yellow bird Woodstock, Schulz gave himself access to a whole fresh realm of tenderness; a sort of parenthood at last crept into the strip, where human parents are invisible.”

Julie Phillips, in her review of Schulz and Peanuts in the Sunday Nov. 11, 2007 Washington Post, writes, “One thing that might be missing from this otherwise fascinating book–and maybe this is what the [Schulz’s] children feel–is an explanation for the joy and pleasure that shine through his work. Where, in his lonely Minnesota upbringing, did Charles Schulz learn to let Snoopy dance?”

Michaelis writes that “Snoopy’s spontaneous, soul-satisfying dances made him a genuine free spirit whose only commitment was to ecstasy itself.” (Michaelis, p. 395) He adds that “Peanuts in the new age of Snoopy was bolder but still quietly dissident, laying claim to joy, pleasure, naturalness and a self-glorifying spontaneity.” Michaelis declares that “Snoopy’s basic desire” is “to transcend his existence as a dog by altering his state of mind,” which Michaelis correctly links to the spirit of the late Sixties (Michaelis, p. 396).

Might it be that Schulz also “altered” his “state of mind” as time passed? Yes, in Peanuts Schulz expressed his sense of isolation and melancholy and failure, most of all through Charlie Brown. But isn’t the larger point that in Peanuts Schulz usually presents his characters’ angst and alienation from a comedic perspective? Doesn’t this demonstrate that Schulz, at least to degree, could, through his creativity, rise above his inner demons and laugh at them, and laugh sympathetically at the side of himself who, like Charlie Brown, suffered from them? (In sharp contrast, Ware and Clowes often seem mired in depression in their work.)

But still, Michaelis presents evidence that Schulz’s inner demons tormented him to the end of his life. Although he had served in Europe during World War II, Schulz was terrified by the prospect of travel. “His fear, as he explained it to [his second wife] Jeannie in 1973, “˜was that he would panic on the plane–that he would lose control, start screaming’” (Michaelis p. 515). His friend, fellow cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, said that “You never felt like anything you said or did would ever make him feel really loved” (Michaelis p. 532).

Michaelis describes an incident when Schulz was in the hospital during the final months of his life.

“”No one loves me,’ he [Schulz] said to Chuck Bartley.

” “˜Sparky [Schulz’s nickname], everyone loves you,’ said Chuck.

“”˜That’s right,’ said Cousin Patty. “˜And you know why?’ she said to Bartley.

“‘Why?”

“”˜Because they don’t know him.” At which Sparky let out a big laugh.” (Michaelis, pages 557-557).

And there is further evidence, though Michaelis does not say so, of Schulz’s characteristic ability to laugh at his personal demons and himself.

Shortly after Schulz and Peanuts was published, PBS’s American Masters series presented the new documentary “Good Ol’ Charles Schulz,” for which Michaelis served as a consultant and appeared on camera. (Could this be the first American Masters dedicated to a comics creator?) But Michaelis wasn’t in charge of the film, which, though it portrayed Schulz as a caring father, nonetheless reached conclusions about his melancholic personality that were similar to Michaelis’s book. The documentary likewise showed Peanuts strips that seemed to relate to events in Schulz’s life, often choosing selections that do not appear in the Michaelis book. Members of the Schulz family are reportedly unhappy about this documentary as well, but it may set you wondering whether the documentary confirms Michaelis’s take on their mutual subject.

Michaelis’s Schulz and Peanuts is surely only the first book to be written about Charles Schulz following the latter’s death. There will be more, and it is likely that some of Schulz’s colleagues in comics and animation will eventually wrote their own memoirs, in which they will give their impressions of Schulz. So in ten or twenty years we should be able to evaluate whether Schulz and Peanuts was on the wrong track or whether it was an important pioneering book in providing a better understanding of Charles Schulz and his body of work. I suspect that Schulz and Peanuts provides an incomplete portrait of its title subjects, but that it will nonetheless prove to be a landmark work in biographical studies of the great figures of the comics medium.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

I recently interviewed Quick Stop contributor Fred Hembeck about his forthcoming massive retrospective collection of his work, The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, for Publishers Weekly‘s weekly online newsletter Comics Week. You can find the interview in the November 20 edition here.

A copy of Jess Nevins’ annotations to Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (including contributions by myself and others) has been posted at the Comic Book Resources website. But there have been several new versions of Nevins’ list since then, as numerous League enthusiasts, including myself, continue to add further annotations. I advise League aficionados that if they’ve already read Nevins’ Black Dossier list, go back to its site and take another look. Each time you go back you’ll find still more (with the more recent annotations in blue type).

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

In his book Disguised as Clark Kent, which I’ve been reviewing over the last several weeks, Danny Fingeroth writes about the effect of Jewish-American culture in originating and developing the superhero genre. But this does not account for every major superhero of the Golden Age (1930s-1940s) and Silver Age (1950s-1960s) of American comic books.

For instance, Fingeroth contends that the closest that the original Captain Marvel, whose creators weren’t Jewish, comes to embodying “a Jewish concept” is the fact that the “S” in his magic word “Shazam” stands for King Solomon, whose wisdom the hero possesses (Fingeroth, Disguised as Clark Kent, p. 64) . The other letters stand for deities and heroes in Greek and Roman mythology. Perhaps Solomon was included because the god of wisdom in the Olympian pantheon is female, Athena, called Minerva by the Romans, so maybe the captain’s creators wanted him to derive all his powers from male mythic figures. Of course, Solomon is part of the Christian Bible as a figure in the Old Testament.

Captain Marvel’s mentor Shazam, with his robes and long white beard, conforms to the archetypal image of an old wizard, such as Merlin. Shazam also looks like the common image of an Old Testament prophet. But the fact that Shazam was eventually identified as a sorcerer from ancient Egypt complicates that interpretation.

Fingeroth states that “In the post-World War II era of Superman stories, the metaphorical relationship between the Holocaust of European Jewry and the destruction of Krypton can more clearly be seen. He continues that “the longing for a lost world that could not be returned to was, of course, part and parcel of the exodus of the Jews from Eastern Europe” (Fingeroth p. 44).

Under the editorship of Mort Weisinger, Krypton was portrayed as a futuristic paradise, combining the benefits of advanced science with natural wonders, such as the Jewel Mountains and the Fire Falls. Fingeroth points out that Weisinger edited “Superman Returns to Krypton” (Superman #61, 1949), in which Superman not only first discovered his alien origin, but also “became an untouchable phantom returning to Krypton for a brief glimpse of his parents’ life in the past” (Fingeroth p. 66). Later, Fingeroth recalls, Weisinger and writer Jerry Siegel, Superman’s co-creator, “elaborated on” the theme in the similarly titled “Superman’s Return to Krypton” in Superman #141 (1960). As Fingeroth recounts that in the latter story Superman falls in love with “a Kryptonian woman”–beautiful actress Lyla Lerrol– whom “he would be unable to save when the doomed planet inevitably exploded” (Fingeroth p. 83).

There’s even more to the story than that. Through a trick of fate, Superman finds himself on the planet Krypton at a point before his own birth. Thus Superman is able to fulfill the fantasy of being reunited with his parents and leading the kind of life he would have had if he had grown up on Krypton: although he does not tell Jor-El and Lara he is their son from the future, he becomes Jor-El’s assistant and thus a member of their household. Superman seems to forget all about Lois Lane when he romances Lyla Lerrol, but then again, at this point Superman thinks he will never see Lois again. Superman thus falls in love instead with a fellow Kryptonian, a member of his own community. Of course, he also resumes his Kryptonian name, Kal-El, giving up both of his Earth identities.

Although Fingeroth points out that Lyla Lerrol is doomed, he overlooks the chilling point that in this story, Superman himself seems doomed to perish in the destruction of Krypton. Back on Krypton, with its red sun. Superman has lost his super-powers and is unable to leave the planet. Hence he is metaphorically like a Jew who has been transported back in time and space to Europe in the 1930s, knowing that the Holocaust is coming and unable to prevent himself from becoming its victim. Only through another improbable twist of fate does Superman escape Krypton before its annihilation.

Later in the book, Fingeroth discusses a Silver Age contribution to the Superman mythos: the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city that had been reduced in size and stolen by the evil Brainiac, and thus survived the destruction of the planet. Superman recovered the miniaturized city and placed it in his Fortress of Solitude (whose name arguably alludes to Superman’s status as an alien on Earth), which Fingeroth correctly describes as “the survivor’s living museum to the memory of Krypton. He was now no longer fully alone and could revisit a piece of the culture and society from which he had been simultaneously saved and exiled” (Fingeroth p. 83).

Two years ago when I was listening to a BBC radio program “Is Superman Jewish?” (see “Comics in Context” #75: “The Rubber Band Theory of Cartoon Art”). I was startled when it made the argument that Kandor represented the nation of Israel: a community of Jews, small compared to the millions who once lived in Europe, that survived after the Holocaust.

Something that Fingeroth does not address is that the Weisinger-era Superman exhibits mixed feelings towards the “Old Country” of Krypton? What, after all, is Superman’s greatest weakness? It’s Kryptonite, which literally consists of chunks of his alien homeland, radically transformed into a substance whose very presence can kill him. Did Weisinger and Siegel subconsciously think of Kryptonite as representing Europe, which once was home but had transformed into the site of the Holocaust, a place of death?

What about the familiar trope in Superman stories in which Clark Kent becomes weakened by the presence of Kryptonite, which thus threatens not only to kill him but to expose his dual identity as Superman? In other words, the Kryptonite would metaphorically destroy the disguise by which Superman had assimilated into American society, revealing Kent’s true racial background as a Kryptonian, and literally bring about his death.

Then there’s the Phantom Zone, which is a science fiction analogue to hell, in which immaterial phantoms of Kryptonian criminals–science fictional versions of damned souls–wait for the opportunity to escape back to the world of the living and wreak havoc on Earth. If Superman mourns the loss of his parents and of the Kryptonian population in general, here are Kryptonians whom he does not want to see return to “life.”

But it was also important in the Weisinger-era stories that Superman could, from time to time, visit the people of his native race in Kandor, and that he
discovered and bonded with a relative who had also miraculously escaped the end of Krypton: his cousin Kara, alias Supergirl.

Yet in the mid-1980s the powers that be at DC Comics decreed that Superman must be the sole survivor of Krypton. Supergirl was brutally killed off in Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), and in the reboot of the Superman mythos, Supergirl was an artificially created being, not a Kryptonian, Kandor was no longer a city of Kryptonians, and when three Kryptonians from the Phantom Zone showed up, they were swiftly executed by Superman himself.

Arguably, making Superman the sole living member of his native race strengthens the theme of holocaust survivor that has such cultural resonance for Jewish-Americans. But perhaps deleting the other Kryptonian survivors from official continuity actually demonstrates how far Superman had moved from its Jewish-American roots by the mid-1980s. The new generation of editors and writers felt no motivation to show Superman longing for his homeworld or bonding with fellow survivors of his race.

Had the Superman creative teams of the 1980s and 1990s missed out on an important element of Superman’s appeal? Isn’t Superman and Supergirl bonding together as family members and fellow immigrants like, say, the X-Men as minority members who band together to form their own community?

According to my “Rubber Band Theory” of comics, if a character or series is stretched too far away from its essential concepts, it will eventually snap back into something resembling its original shape. Thus, DC has reintroduced a Supergirl who is Superman’s Kryptonian cousin into the official continuity, brought back the Phantom Zone criminals, and has even reinstated Superman’s Kryptonian-born Superdog, Krypto, into the current canon.

But I notice that the current versions of the Superman mythos still have not truly returned to the Weisinger-era treatment of the Man of Steel’s Kryptonian heritage. In Mark Waid’s revisionist Superman: Birthright, Krypton had an aggressively militaristic culture, though this is not considered canonical, if it ever truly was. (It is hard to tell what DC currently considers to be canonical regarding Superman’s origin.)

In the television series Smallville the young Clark Kent has recently met two positive Kryptonian figures: his cousin Kara and his mother Lara (or some sort of reasonable facsimile thereof; the show contends that the real Lara is dead, but the Lara who showed up in the November 15, 2007 episode titled “Blue” seems indistinguishable from the real thing). But almost every other Kryptonian who has shown up in Smallville has been a menace, including Kara’s dad Zor-El (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), who in that same episode attempted to carry out the genocide of the human race. Even Clark’s birth father Jor-El (or the you-know-what thereof) seems to be there primarily to make arbitrary demands and impose punishments on Clark. It’s no wonder that Smallville’s Clark feels no loyalty or connection to Krypton.

Fingeroth moves on to the subject of Marvel in the 1960s, which began its Silver Age with the Fantastic Four. He correctly observes that Ben Grimm, the Thing, demonstrates “the classic Jewish use of humor to offset tragedy,” which takes the form of his entrapment within a monstrous body (Fingeroth p. 97).

Doesn’t the Thing’s body, which looks as if it were made of rocks or bricks, also link him with the golem, which is made of clay? Stan Lee and Jack Kirby may not have consciously intended such a connection. But consider the Thing’s savage temper in the early issues of Fantastic Four, and the fact that Lee and Kirby did two long storylines in which the Thing temporarily went bad, turning violently against his teammates (in FF #41-43 and 68-71). Weren’t these reminiscent of the uncontrollable, destructive potential of the golem?

In recent years Marvel has explicitly identified Ben Grimm as Jewish. Fingeroth notes that the “evidence” that Grimm is Jewish was a celebrated drawing that Kirby had done showing the Thing wearing a yarmulke and prayer shawl. Fingeroth persuasively argues that Kirby may have intended the drawing simply as a joke, and observes that he did a similar drawing of the Hulk similarly garbed. Still, Kirby and Lee did establish that the Thing was somehow connected with “Yancy Street,” which was obviously based on Delancey Street, which is in what was a largely Jewish section of Manhattan. John Byrne not only established that Ben was once a member of the Yancy Street Gang (in The Thing #1, July 1983), but also hinted that he was Jewish by giving him an Uncle Jake (short for Jacob), and establishing that Ben’s middle initial, J.,” likewise stood for Jacob.

I was quite surprised when Fingeroth revealed the Jewish themes behind Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four storylines concerning Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner: “He began a quest to find his people [the Atlanteans] in their diaspora and lead them back to some renewed version of their “˜ancient homeland,’ echoing the biblical Jews’ search for their God-promised land, as well as their expulsion from that land and the Zionist quest to re-find it” (Fingeroth p. 97).

Fingeroth also draws the readers’ attention to the romantic triangle in the early Fantastic Four, with Namor and FF leader Reed Richards as rivals for “the blond-haired, blue-eyed Susan Storm” (Fingeroth, p. 97). Let me spell it out further: here was Namor, the racial outsider, competing for the affections of an (apparent) WASP, and being portrayed as a more virile and passionate Alpha Male than the rather introverted (apparent) WASP Reed Richards.

And there’s still more that Fingeroth does not get into here. In Fantastic Four #4, Namor finds what he considers evidence that his Atlantean people were at least partly wiped out by nuclear tests conducted by humans of the surface world. In other words, the Atlanteans may have been the victims of genocide. (Later stories not only established that much of the Atlantean race had survived but that it was a single human supervillain named Destiny who was responsible for the massacre of the Atlanteans, not Americans or the surface world in general.)

And how does Namor react to the evidence of genocide? He launches an attack on New York City, raising a monster from the ocean depths to level buildings in Manhattan. (Nowadays, of course, Namor would be termed a terrorist.) Although Lee and Kirby clearly sympathize with Namor’s anger over the loss of his people, they also are clearly opposed to his assault on New York City.

Consciously or not, Lee and Kirby were dealing with a recurring theme in their early Silver Age Marvel stories: how does one morally combat persecution?
Obviously, Lee and Kirby presented Captain America as heroic in battling the Nazis. But they also indicate that Namor went too far in attacking Manhattan in FF #4, and later in leading an Atlantean invasion of the surface world in Fantastic Four Annual #1.

This issue underlies Fingeroth’s discussion of the Fantastic Four’s archenemy Doctor Doom, whom Lee and Kirby establish in Fantastic Four Annual #2 as having been born a gypsy in the fictional Eastern European country of Latveria. Both of Doom’s parents died as a result of persecution. Fingeroth points out that in real life the gypsies suffered “collective persecution similar to the Jews, including destruction in Nazi death camps”; hence Doom is “a surrogate sufferer on behalf of his American Jewish creators’ European counterparts” (Fingeroth pgs. 97-98).

In response to the persecution of his people, “Doom took on the tactics of his oppressors, deciding that the only way to save the world was to dominate it. This is a fantasy of power–of refusing ever again to be a victim–which, coming from Jewish creators, is tinged with meaning” (Fingeroth p. 98).

In Doom’s origin story, it was a Latverian baron who drove Doom’s father to his death; as an adult Doom makes himself monarch of Latveria. Yet although Doom regards himself as a benevolent ruler of the Latverian people, he is nonetheless a tyrant bent on world conquest. If the Latverian aristocracy regarded gypsies as inferiors, Doctor Doom regards the entire human race as his inferiors, whom he deserves to rule. Believing that he was battling his enemy, Doctor Doom became the enemy of all humanity.

To my mind Doctor Doom represents the dark side of the Old World attempting to conquer the New World as represented by the Fantastic Four. Doom is Europe; the FF are America. Doom represents the old order of absolute monarchy–or absolute dictatorship; the Fantastic Four embody freedom. This explains why Doom, although he is the master of advanced science, nonetheless wears a suit of armor, vaguely medieval robes, and lives in a castle: he embodies the repressive forces of the past, which Europeans fled to America to escape.

Of course, Lee and Kirby made this theme about extremism in response to persecution most explicit through the character of Magneto in X-Men. Fingeroth points to the scene in X-Men #4 (March 1964) in which Magneto rescues his fellow mutants Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch from an angry Eastern European mob. Fingeroth asserts that this “”˜raging villagers” motif. . . would resonate especially with Jews in view of the history of Eastern European anti-Semitism, specifically the mob violence of the pogroms, as well as the Holocaust in general” (Fingeroth p. 117).

But Magneto decides that the only way to assure the freedom of his people, the emerging race of mutants, is to seize control of the planet from the majority population. Like the Nazis, Magneto believes in a “master race”: they believed it was Aryans, Magneto believes it is mutants. Therefore, it should be no surprise that, as Fingeroth points out, Magneto even adopts the trappings of Nazism: in X-Men #4 Magneto has his underling Mastermind create the illusion of “a jackbooted army, garbed in Nazi-like uniforms” to help them conquer a small country (Fingeroth p. 117).

In this same issue Lee and Kirby present their alternative to Magneto’s strategy for overcoming racial persecution: Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, debate their differing approaches. Xavier has what was later called his “dream” of a society in which mutants and non-mutants coexist in harmony. The X-Men famously fight to protect non-mutant humans from “evil mutants” like Magneto who seek to harm or dominate them. Moreover, the 1960s issues of X-Men continually tell the readers that the X-Men risk their lives to protect “normal” humans even though those “normal” humans “fear and distrust” mutants. That reminds me of the Christian maxim to “turn the other cheek”: to return good for evil. Xavier’s optimistic strategy is that by helping the majority of the human race, mutants will finally win their acceptance.

Back on the subject of the Fantastic Four, Fingeroth perceives that in Lee and Kirby’s great “Galactus trilogy” (FF #48-50), Galactus is like “the vengeful deity of the Old Testament, preparing to unleash the flood of the Noah story” (Fingeroth p. 98). I found it interesting that Fingeroth refers to the Watcher in that storyline as a rabbinically wise entity” (Fingeroth p. 98). As regular readers know, I think that in the trilogy the Watcher instead represents an alternative vision of God as a benevolent paternal figure (see “Comics in Context” #184: “Clobbered Again” and #185: “Get Off of My Cloud”).

Fingeroth briefly refers to the “Hebraic-sounding names” like Arishem in Jack Kirby’s The Eternals, a series that was recently one of the subjects of “Comics in Context” #194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199. It’s amusing to learn that Zuras’s name is a blend of Zeus and “the Hebrew/Yiddish tsuris (the ts is pronounced like a z) meaning trouble or woe” (Fingeroth p. 98), though I don’t know if that combination has any special meaning. Perhaps it means that you’d better not get Zuras angry at you. Fingeroth also states that the name of one of the Celestials, Oneg, means “joy or pleasure” in Hebrew. It’s too bad that Kirby never showed us why he gave Oneg that particular name. (Could Oneg be Sersi’s Celestial patron?)

Fingeroth also deals briefly with Kirby’s “Fourth World” books such as The New Gods at DC Comics, pointing out that the character Izaya (better known as Highfather) is named after the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Fingeroth doesn’t mention that Izaya also looks very much the part of an Old Testament prophet, complete with white beard, robes, and staff, and that he communicates with “the Source,” who, at least metaphorically, is God Himself.

Fingeroth also claims that in the “Fourth World” books Darkseid’s planet Apokolips resembles “Nazi-dominated Europe,” and notes Kirby’s name for a place called “Armagetto” (Fingeroth p. 99). The latter combines “Armageddon” and “ghetto” into what Lewis Carroll would call a portmanteau word, and should alert us that Kirby makes use of Christian as well as Jewish cultural references. I believe that Darkseid is an analogue to both Satan and fascist dictators like Hitler, and that Apokolips is both a planetwide forced labor camp and a metaphor for hell. The flames of Apokolips’s fire pits evoke factories, hell, and perhaps even the Nazi death camps.

Here’s something else about the Fourth World books: Kirby created Forager and his people, who were long considered to be an inferior race by the New Gods of New Genesis. Here’s a clear parallel to the experience of being in a minority group. Kirby called Forager’s people the “bugs,” which may renmind you abo ut last week’s column, in which I explained how Jerry Seinfeld uses bees as metaphorical Jews in Bee Movie.

In turning to Spider-Man, Fingeroth initially diappointed me by repeating the contemporary conventional line that Spider-Man’s civilian self, Peter Parker “was a nerd” (Fingeroth p. 99). Back in 1962, when Spider-Man debuted, the words “nerd” and “geek” were not nearly as commonly used as they are now and certainly never turned up in Stan Lee’s Spider-Man scripts in the 1960s. Oh, the introverted, studious Peter Parker could be described back then as a bookworm or a wallflower, but such terms didn’t carry the nasty implications of being somehow subhuman that “nerd” and “geek” do. (And for those of you who think that “nerd” and “geek” are complimentary terms, I have no patience with you.) Years ago John Byrne told me that the early Peter Parker wasn’t depicted as a “nerd” but as the “good son,” who did what he was supposed to at school and at home. Indeed, take a look at the opening page of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s first Spider-Man story in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), and it’s clear that the supposedly cool kids who are mocking Parker are superficial fools.

But then Fingeroth more than redeems himself by going right to the heart of Spider-Man’s appeal: “But what Lee and Ditko understood was that to any outsider–nerd, Jew, teenager–in his own eyes, and in the eyes of those who love him, he is not a freak, but is perfectly normal (as Jack Kerouac put it, the hero of his own movie), with a good reason for every seemingly odd thing that he does. . . . It was an exhortation to not judge anyone until you understand what he has been through. Spider-Man is a call to not give in to prejudice, to literally not “˜pre-judge’ anyone” (Fingeroth pgs. 99-100) This is the best written and most insightful paragraph in the entire book.

Next Fingeroth writes about the similarity between Spider-Man and Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown. Now, this interests me because Fingeroth’s book is about New York Jewish creators of superheroes and Schulz was famously a Midwestern Protestant. Yet Peter Parker and Charlie Brown are very much alike: continually suffering from bad luck and lack of appreciation and angst. Different cultural influences produced similar results.

As David Michaelis’s new biography Schulz and Peanuts reveals, Schulz had his own reasons for feeling himself to be an outsider, who was insufficiently appreciated or loved. Fingeroth states that Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko and his successor John Romita, Sr., “both of whom were significantly involved in plotting the Spider-Man stories they worked on–weren’t Jews, but they were of immigrant descent–Slavic and Italian, respectively”–and hence could comprehend the same feeling of alienation from society, which, after all, “is individually a part of the human condition” to one extent or another for everyone (Fingeroth p. 101).

Perhaps, too, there was something about the zeitgeist of the conformist, consumerist 1950s that led Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Charles Schulz to create such similar protagonists as Peter Parker and Charlie Brown. In a culture that glorified success as the American dream, Charlie Brown and Peter Parker personified the supposed loser as hero, who struggles on despite failure, self-doubt, lack of appreciation, and endless hard luck.

In his book Michaelis shows that Charlie Brown and Snoopy represent the two poles of Charles Schulz’s creative persona, but he does not efficiently emphasize how Snoopy’s joie de vivre and ability to transcend the limitations of his role in life (as a dog) balance out Charlie Brown’s melancholy and continual frustrations.

A former Spider-Man editor and writer, Fingeroth points out a similar balance in Stan Lee’s Silver Age Spider-Man stories, not between two different characters but between the ups and downs of Spider-Man’s existence. “Despite the dramatics, he was having fun. in Spider-Man the balance between angst and action, between introspection and exuberance, was skillfully maintained. It was a balance that succeeding generations of comics creators and filmmakers would struggle to get right” (Fingeroth p. 101). I believe that Sam Raimi gets the balance right in his Spider-Man movies, but the balance has long been lost in this grim and gritty world of 21st century superhero comics.

As for the Hulk, although Fingeroth comments “that the Hulk wanders from place to place, seeking acceptance, like the proverbial Wandering Jew, there seems little else about the character that one can identify as evoking Jewish themes, despite the fact that he is sometimes referred to as “˜the Green Golem’” (Fingeroth p. 102). I haven’t seen that many references to the Hulk as a “golem,” although Roy Thomas should be credited with drawing an explicit parallel between the Hulk and the golem way back in Incredible Hulk #134 (December 1970). Of course, the Hulk has frequently been called the Green Goliath,” and hey, that’s an Old Testament reference! And so is Henry Pym’ former identity as the giant-size Goliath.

Returning to Captain America, Fingeroth explains that Lee and Kirby established that the Captain had been in suspended animation since the last days of World War II in Europe. “The ostensibly WASP superhero had metamorphosed into the most metaphorically Jewish aspect of his existence,” Fingeroth writes: “Captain America was a survivor. The people he had known before the war, especially the comrade he cared so much about, were gone” (Fingeroth p. 104).

That “comrade” is Captain America’s young sidekick Bucky Barnes, who was (as far as Lee and Kirby were concerned) killed before the Captain’s eyes just before he went into suspended animation. Fingeroth could have done more with this. Captain America was like a surrogate father to Bucky. In losing him, Captain America is like any World War II survivor who lost a member of his family in the war or in the Holocaust. And, as Fingeroth remarks, Captain America unmistakably suffers from survivor’s guilt in Lee and Kirby’s stories, mourning the loss of Bucky and blaming himself. (This, by the way, is one reason why it was a mistake to resurrect Bucky: that survivor’s guilt is key to the characterization of Captain America in modern comics.)

Fingeroth explains further that due to spending years in suspended animation, the revived Captain America is “physically in his twenties, but his alienation and psychological trauma make him older” (Fingeroth p. 104). Fingeroth sees the Captain’s condition as a metaphor for the situation that that Lee and Kirby found themselves in in the 1960s, as men who “even if you feel energetic and enthused by life,” have nevertheless become middle-aged and find a new generation arising that questions the value system of their elders (Fingeroth, p. 106).

This, of course, doesn’t specifically reflect Jewish culture, but the universal condition of growing older, something that Danny and I can now better understand than we did when we entered the comics profession. It strikes me, though, that Captain America was revived in the 1960s by two middle-aged men, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, as a child of the Great Depression who came of age in World War II, was thrust by fate into the radically different world of the 1960s, but holds fast to the patriotic vision of his youth. But since then, Captain America has usually been written by young men who haven’t experienced moving into middle age. Can younger writers really understand the personality that Lee and Kirby gave the Captain? I cannot imagine Lee and Kirby writing that infamous recent scene in which a young reporter told the soon-to-be-seemingly-assassinated Captain that he did not understand America because he didn’t frequent YouTube or NASCAR events.

Captain America is like Rip Van Winkle as a superhero: the man who awoke after sleeping for years to find that the world had changed almost unrecognizably. Then again, Hawkeye used to call him “Methuselah,” and hey, there’s another Old Testament reference!

I still have more to say about Danny Fingeroth’s Disguised as Clark Kent (and you can read my interview with him) . But other subjects, like the new Beowulf movie, clamor for my attention, so I shall turn to some of them after Thanksgiving.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

One of the highlights of 2008 in the world of comics art is bound to be the February publication of Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier. You can read my interview with Mark about his book in the November 13, 2007 edition of Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week.

In the near future I will be reviewing Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s new The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier here in “Comics in Context.” For help in understanding Moore’s profusion of cultural and historical references, be sure to consult Jess Nevins’s indispensable list of Black Dossier annotations. (I’ve contributed several annotations to his list myself!) The annotations will become part of Nevins’ forthcoming Impossible Territories: The Unofficial Companion to the Black Dossier, which MonkeyBrain Press will publish in July 2008.

One of my own cultural references is the title of the section of “Comics in Context” about my own current projects, “Advertisements for Myself,” which I named after a 1959 book by Norman Mailer, who passed away on Saturday, November 10 of this year. In my student days I was greatly impressed by Mailer’s ventures into “New Journalism” with his 1968 books The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of Chicago. Thinking about him after his death, I realized that these books, without my consciously realizing it, had influenced my own novelistic approach to writing reports about comics conventions, memorials, and other events in “Comics in Context”–even waiting in line (and in vain) on a frigid day to try to get into a theater to watch a discussion between Joss Whedon and Stephen Sondheim (see “Comics in Context” #77: “Gone with the Steam”).

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Over the last few weeks I have been examining Danny Fingeroth’s new book, Disguised as Clark Kent, which examines how the superhero genre reflects the Jewish-American background of many of the genre’s founders. As a lapsed Catholic, I have no trouble spotting the religious imagery in say, fellow Catholic Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Born Again, but I can use the help of Fingeroth’s book in understanding how Jewish-American culture influenced the work of Stan Lee (who wrote the book’s introduction), for example.

A measure of Fingeroth’s success is that he has opened my eyes to looking for such influences even in works outside the scope of his book, which is devoted to the superhero genre. For example, the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, which was hosting half of the “Masters of American Comics” exhibit last year at this time, is now presenting “From the New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig,” marking the centennial of his birth. One of Fingeroth’s themes is that being Jewish in American society confers an “outsider’s” perspective. It is therefore illuminating to consider Shrek, both in Steig’s book and in the movies, as a representative of the minority group member as outsider. In Steig’s book, Shrek embodies an adamant refusal to conform to mainstream society’s norms: it is a fable that takes a defiantly comedic stand against assimilation (see “Comics in Context” #186: “Le Petit Chef”).

Then there’s the new computer-animated film about anthropomorphic bees, Bee Movie, whose auteur is unmistakably comedian and television icon Jerry Seinfeld. Various reviewers have mentioned the exchange of dialogue that obviously signals that Seinfeld’s bees are, in part, metaphors for Jewish-Americans. On an expedition outside the hive, protagonist Barry B. Benson (voiced by Seinfeld) meets Vanessa Bloome (voiced by Renee Zellweger), a kindly human with a symbolic last name: she is the flower to his pollinating bee. (She even owns a flower shop.) On a literal level, though, they start a platonic romance. (Computer-animated films have had varying levels of success in depicting humans. DreamWorks Animation has succeeded in making Vanessa look appealingly pretty and even sexy.) Back in the hive Barry’s mother asks, “Was she beeish?” and Barry states that his new friend isn’t a “wasp.”

A delightful surprises in Fingeroth’s book is his discovery of parallels to Jewish-American culture in what initially seems a highly unlikely source: Marvel’s Thor, which is about the gods of Norse–and Germanic–culture. Back in the 1960s, series creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby devised a longrunning subplot in which Thor had fallen in love with the mortal woman Jane Foster, despite the opposition of his father Odin, monarch of the gods.

When I interviewed him for Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week, Fingeroth told me, “Immigrant families are often concerned that their children will marry within the group. Jews, with their small numbers, are famous for this concern. So when I reread the Thor stories about Odin forbidding Thor to “˜intermarry’ with mortal Jane Foster, it just seemed plain to me that this was reflective of the conflicts that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. . .had to have experienced in their own lives and families.”

Fingeroth also points out in his book that the initially forbidden romance between Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four and Crystal. who belongs to a different racial community, the Inhumans, similarly reflects this conflict. (Of course, this theme isn’t restricted to Jewish-American creators: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet find themselves in similar situation.)

So, then, Barry’s leaving the hive to explore the outside world is like someone moving beyond his ethnic community to investigate the majority culture. Barry’s platonic romance with Vanessa is a metaphor for a Jewish-American man falling in love with a Gentile woman.

But, although the mainstream reviews I’ve read take no notice, the Jewish-American themes extend much further than this in Bee Movie. Barry discovers that humans are “stealing” honey from the bee population. This is a metaphor for the majority culture’s exploitation of the labor of a minority group. It’s not surprising to find this as a subject of an animated film for families. But, startlingly, Seinfeld and his collaborators go further.

Bee Movie establishes that humans harvest honey from hives in what the dialogue calls “work camps” for bees. Of the mainstream critics whose Bee Movie reviews I read, only Rex Reed in The New York Observer came close to finding the buried subtext, referring to “a honey farm that is like a Nazi work camp staffed by slaves”. The movie shows us that before the humans remove the honey, they gas the bees. We see smoke get released and watch the bees collapse. It’s not lethal, but, considering that the Vanessa subplot has already likened bees to Jews, the metaphorical implications should be obvious.

Horrified by the exploitation of the bees, Barry fights back by initiating a class action suit against the human race. During the trial the racial subtext becomes more explicit. The opposing lawyer is a caricature of the stereotype of the racist Southerner, who openly argues against granting bees “equal rights” and publicly exposes the relationship between Barry and Vanessa to foment bigoted reactions. In the trial sequence Seinfeld and company appear to be likening bees to African-Americans as well, as Barry refers to the bees as the humans’ “slaves.” The climactic point of the trial comes when Barry produces a “bee smoker” in court, which gets triggered: in full view of everyone present, bees in the audience are gassed and collapse. even in the context of a “funny animal” movie, it struck me as startling, even somewhat shocking. For a moment Bee Movie had become Maus.

Do you think I’m reading too much into this? In his review in The Onion (Nov. 8-14, 2007) film critic Nathan Rubin missed the Holocaust imagery but nonetheless observed, “Yet the darkness endemic to Seinfeld [the TV series] manifests in some satisfying, unexpected twists” such as “a loopy dream sequence that ends tragically”. He’s referring to a strange sequence in which Barry dreams of Vanessa attempting to fly, as he does, but in a one-woman aircraft which crashes in flames. Watching this I wondered why this sequence was in the movie, since Vanessa is in no danger in the story. But Rubin may be right that there is a dark undercurrent beneath Bee Movie‘s bright, shiny surface.

Moreover, Seinfeld told PBS’s Charlie Rose (on the latter’s show on November 5, 2007) that he was surprised that children liked Bee Movie so much because he had principally aimed it at adults. He told Roger Ebert, “To be honest. . .I wrote it for adults”. It seems strange that he would think that there was a large enough adult audience for what is basically a funny animal animated film to make Bee Movie a commercial success, but this does indicate that Seinfeld wasn’t averse to dealing with “adult” subjects in the film.

Despite its ambitions, I still found Bee Movie disappointing. Seinfeld and his co-writers labored for over two and a half years on the screenplay, but to my mind the story still seems deeply flawed.

The initial premise is that Barry is a young bee who, having just finished bee college is expected to commit to a job in the hive, which is depicted as a company town run by a corporation called Honex: we are told that once he makes his choice, he will never be able to switch to another job, he will never get a day off, and he will literally work until he drops dead. A Honex orientation guide cheerfully declares, “You’ve worked your whole lives so you can work your whole lives.” Barry rebels at this prospect, as well he should.

Brad Bird’s great animated film Ratatouille starts with a somewhat similar premise: the protagonist, Remy the rat, is pressured to conform to the lifestyle of the rest of his species, which is basically to eat garbage for the rest of their lives. (Again see “Comics in Context” #186: “Le Petit Chef”). But Remy has a driving passion to eat and create fine foods, and he envisions a different, better life for himself, which he successfully achieves.

In contrast, Barry has no ambition or dream he pursues from the start of his movie. Moreover, Bee Movie and Seinfeld himself seem to have contradictory feelings about Barry’s future in the hive. Seinfeld told Entertainment Weekly that “I love utopian societies, which is what they [bees] live in — it seemed like a very ’60s corporate environment to me, where people believed in the company, and government, and society. I love that. To me, utopia is an old Jack Lemmon movie. Growing up, I thought that would be the ultimate life, to have a convertible and work in an office in Manhattan”. Somehow I think that writer/director Billy Wilder would not have considered Jack Lemmon’s character’s corporate life in his film The Apartment (1960) as utopian.

Even though Barry is tempted by the life of a “pollen jock,” one of the macho bees who flies out of the hive to gather honey (a task actually performed by female bees in real life, by the way), he still balks at making any choice that would commit him for the rest of his life.

But this storyline takes a back seat to Barry’s evolving relationship with Vanessa. In speaking to her and thereby initiating the relationship, Barry says he is violating the rules of bee society. Metaphorically, Barry is breaking a taboo about close association with people outside his community. Now you might think that the Barry-Vanessa storyline, with its strong subtext, would become the main plotline of the movie. But no, except for the very brief uproar at the trial over it, and the occasional fits of anger from Vanessa’s human boyfriend, Barry and Vanessa’s relationship doesn’t hold onto center stage. It’s as if Barry had picked up a sidekick to provide him with moral support for the next half of the movie. It’s as if after the balcony scene Romeo and Juliet took off to star in an entirely different play.

So if Bee Movie isn’t really about finding an alternative career or finding love outside your community, maybe it’s about an oppressed people (the bees) revolting against their oppressors (the humans). Here I must issue the requisite spoiler warning: if you don’t want to learn about the last act of the film, skip the next fourteen paragraphs.

Barry triumphs in court, the bees are legally granted possession of all their honey, and this turns out to be disastrous. With all the honey they could want, the bees stop pollinating flowering plants, apparently all over the world. From her apartment overlooking Central Park (And just how can the owner of a one-woman flower shop afford this?), Vanessa shows Barry that all of the plants there are dying. As she explains, this will destroy the entire ecosystem of Earth: if flowering plants die, there’ll be no food, and animals and the human race will perish as well. (Yes, it’s another end of the world movie.) The only flowering plants left alive, she informs him, are the roses that were saved for the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.

All right, let’s stop here. Is the movie suggesting that Barry was wrong to sue the human race, and that humans should have continued to exploit, enslave and gas the bees? (By the way, in real life, “Centuries of selective breeding by humans has created honey bees that produce far more honey than the colony needs.”).

Once Barry won the lawsuit, wouldn’t humans have negotiated with the bees to obtain some of their honey? People don’t just use honey for food; it also has medicinal benefits. Since Seinfeld and company have portrayed a bee society that has its own tiny automobiles and television shows, among other trappings of human-style civilization, surely some sort of trade agreement could have been worked out, wherein the bees would exchange honey with the humans for consumer goods. So why would honey production grind to a halt? Besides, even though honey has a long shelf life, wouldn’t the bees eventually have to replenish their stores?

Wouldn’t lots of human beings–and Seinfeld’s intelligent bees as well–have realized, as early as the trial, that if the bees stopped pollinating plants, ecological catastrophe would strike? Wouldn’t scientists have realized this before it got to the point that all the plants in Central Park were dead? Wouldn’t the human and talking bees have reached some sort of agreement to start pollinating plants again long before this point? And if plants all over the world were dying, why would humanity only save the roses for the Tournament of Roses Parade!?! Isn’t food–like wheat–more important?

Does Seinfeld mean to suggest that the bee community (metaphorically representing a minority group) is so lazy that none of them would want to continue working after they won the lawsuit? Considering that he and his co-writers had established that bee society was perfectly happy never taking any time off in their entire lives, wouldn’t retirement be anathema to most of them?

And just how stupid is Barry, the protagonist, that he didn’t notice the ecological catastrophe until it was nearly too late to reverse it? If this movie was aimed at adults, then it has to deal with the kind of logical questions that adults would ask.

Once Barry sees the light, does he first try to persuade the rest of the bees in his local hive that they have to start pollinating again? No, instead he and Vanessa embark in a scheme to steal a truckload of roses from the Tournament of Roses Parade and fly it to New York City. When the plane is in danger of crashing, the rest of Barry’s hive goes to his rescue, and only then does he fill them in on his master plan.

And so the bees use the pollen from the stolen roses to restore the plant life of Manhattan to health. Meanwhile, I found myself thinking, wouldn’t it have been easier if Barry had organized the bees that live in California to use the pollen from all the roses in Pasadena to pollinate plants out there, first? And since presumably there are talking bees out in California too, wouldn’t they have already figured this out? If Earth’s entire ecosystem is in danger, why is it important to start the repollination process in New York City? Okay, granted, as a New Yorker myself, I can sympathize with Mr. Seinfeld’s Manhattan-centric world view, but in this case it’s still wrong.

So, with Story Arc #4 resolved, Bee Movie moves into its happy ending, in which Barry not only runs a law office in the back of Vanessa’s flower shop, but also has become a member of the “pollen jocks.” This brings the movie full circle back to Story Arc #1, but the movie seems to have lost sight of that storyline’s initial point. What about not wanting to be stuck in the same job for the rest of hs life? What about never getting time off or working toll one drops dead? Barry does have his new legal career, but he doesn’t seem enthused about it, and tell the “pollen jocks” that he couldn’t wait to get out of the office.

I suppose that Bee Movie could be interpreted as a fable about a youth who rebels against the ways of his community, but then learns to value them when the community is endangered (by the humans’ oppression), and ultimately rejoins the community. That interpretation would certainly have resonance for the members of a minority group within a larger society. But to me, Bee Movie ends up seeming like a parable about giving up one’s dreams and settling for the status quo.

In Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman writes, “It’s also a fable for our 24/7 worker-bee age. We’re used to animated films like Ratatouille that salute those who don’t go with the flow, but Bee Movie takes a paradoxically fresher tack. In this movie, the power of the individual turns out to be overrated. It’s the system that’s precious, and if that message sounds a tad…reactionary, Bee Movie finds a touching beauty in it. Who’d have guessed that Jerry Seinfeld, the maestro of nothing, would spearhead a fairy tale about the inspiring glory of punching the clock?”
I’d put it differently. Who’d have guessed that Jerry Seinfeld, who did not pursue a conventional career, like that of a lawyer or doctor, but instead followed his muse into the realm of stand-up comedy, and triumphantly beat the odds, co-creating a masterwork of television comedy and becoming fabulously wealthy as a result, would spearhead a fairy tale about punching the clock? He told Charlie Rose in that November 5 show that he is still motivated by the quest to unearth “nuggets of comedy.” Seinfeld’s life is more like Ratatouille, and yet he told Roger Ebert that “I was myself on the TV show and I am in this too, except if I were born as a bee, this is what I would be like”. Really?

I’ve been following my muse into middle age. I may not be rich, but I’m proud of my growing body of work, and think I would have been bored and felt unfulfilled had I not pursued ny fascination with comics and cartoon art, a subject that mainstream culture is finally beginning to take seriously. At the end of Ratatouille, Remy loses his chance at great commercial success, but he continues to pursue his art, and thus the film comes to its satisfyingly happy conclusion. Given a choice between Bee Movie and Ratatouille as a fable for my life, I unhesitatingly choose the latter.

Oh, yes, and at the end of Bee Movie it trns out that cows talk, too, and one of them complains to lawyer Barry that humans exploit them for their milk. Perhaps this is a can of worms that Seinfeld and the other writers should have left unopened, since humans don’t just milk cattle. So would Barry B. Benson put folks like J. Wellington Wimpy and myself on trial for eating hamburgers?

Let’s return to my chapter by chapter survey of Danny Fingeroth’s Disguised as Clark Kent. Fingeroth is good at evaluating and explaining away mistaken pieces of conventional wisdom on his subject. For example, he notes that the second syllable of the Kryptonian names for Superman–Kal-El–and his father –Jor-El–sound “like one of the Hebrew names for God” (Fingeroth, Disguised as Clark Kent, p. 45). Fingeroth points out that Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel is on record as revealing that “Jor-El” is simply a shortened version of his own full name, Jerome Siegel. But Fingeroth acknowledges that “it’s quite possible” that Siegel and artist Joe Shuster’s “memories of childhood Hebrew school lessons” could have “inspired” these Kryptonian names (Fingeroth p. 45). Here we should remind ourselves of one of Fingeroth’s guiding principles in writing this book: the power of the subconscious on the creative mind. Isn’t it possible that while Siegel consciously believed that he named Jor-El after himself, that the name sounded right to him because it subconsciously reminded him of a Hebrew name for God? We can never know for certain, but we should recognize the possibility.

As I argued last week, examining the work of the original creators of the superhero genre may show us whether and how its contemporary practitioners have strayed from the essential elements of the superhero concept.

For example, at one point Fingeroth speculates about Siegel and Shuster’s intentions in creating Superman: “they would have their creation embody the best of the Good Immigrant qualities. “˜Everyone says all Jews care about is money? Well, look at this: we’ve invented the most powerful man in the history of the world–and he still insists on having a day job at The Daily Planet. He is selfless and, by extension, so are we.’ He’s a tzaddik, literally “˜righteous man’ in Hebrew” (Fingeroth p. 47).

The early Superman treated criminals brutally at times, but the character quickly developed a strict moral code of behavior, truly becoming a “righteous man,” as Fingeroth says. In recent years, however, there was Marvel’s X-Statix team, mutant superheroes who were motivated primarily by seeking fame and fortune. More importantly, the “grim and gritty” trend in superhero comics that began in the 1980s and continues through the present day has brought the superhero who is quite willing to kill. Is such a character truly an archetypal “righteous man,” or is he morally compromised? The “goddamn Batman” of Frank Miller’s current All Star Batman and Robin takes a sadistic pleasure in injuring his criminal opponents (see “Comics in Context” #119; “Bats and Spats” and “Comics in Context” #178: “The Whole World Is Watching”). For the genre to progress creatively, the characterizations of superheroes must be portrayed with more complexity and sophistication. But writers must beware of diluting and subverting the superhero concept and genre in the process.

Speaking of Batman, Fingeroth references Rabbi Simcha Weinstein’s hypothesis that Batman’s origin was inspired by Kristallnacht, the 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany. As Fingeroth puts it, “Like the Jews in Europe, Bruce Wayne and his family thought they had all they needed to be insulated from the vagaries of life. Yet, like the Jews of Europe, it was all taken away from them in an instant” (Fingeroth p. 56). It’s certainly possible that this provided the inspiration for Batman’s origin.

But who created Batman’s origin? Was it Bob Kane, whom DC Comics officially credits as Batman’s creator, or Bill Finger, who, like Kane, was Jewish, and who co-created most of the original Batman mythos, or even Gardner Fox, who wrote some of the earliest Batman stories? My guess is that it was Finger, who generated most of the concepts for the early Batman, right down to the name Bruce Wayne and major elements of Batman’s costume design. Moreover, Finger’s body of comics work has a darker edge than Fox’s. In his great Silver Age work, Fox never approaches the bleak, haunting quality of the origin story in Detective Comics #33.

Then again, as Fingeroth demonstrates, Batman co-creator Bob Kane went to great lengths to conceal his Jewish background; reading this, it seems to me that Kane may even have been in a state of denial. Since, in the early days of Batman, Finger and Fox worked for him, why would Kane approve the origin story if he thought it was a parable about the plight of European Jews?

Fingeroth also wonders if Joe Chill’s shooting of Bruce Wayne’s parents was inspired by the murder of Jerry Siegel’s father. This is possible, too. Then again it appears that Kane lifted the scene of the murder of Thomas Wayne directly from a 1938 “Big Little Book” called Gang Busters in Action, illustrated by Henry Vallely. So maybe Kane wasn’t copying reality, but another artist.

But here I believe that Fingeroth comes close to a simpler answer to the question. Why couldn’t the story of Batman’s origin simply be a response to the widespread urban crime of Depression-era America? It was the lawlessness of that period that similarly inspired Dick Tracy and the classic gangster movies of the 1930s. The simple concept of a mugger appearing, seemingly at random, and gunning down a prosperous couple is a perfect image of the dangers of a lawless urban environment. It could equally well be an iconic image of the big city in the 1970s, which, not coincidentally, is the decade when the Batman returned to his late 1930s roots as a grim, avenging figure in the comics.

Following the lead of comics historian Gerard Jones, Fingeroth argues that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s creation Steve Rogers a. k. a. Captain America was “a kind of surrogate Jew” (Fingeroth, p. 58). “If Steve Rogers was blond, well, there are blond Jews. . . . “˜Rogers’ could have been a fake name, too. So, maybe despite all outward appearances, an argument could be made for Captain America as some sort of Jewish-inflected character, the “˜weary, old-country survivor reborn as the new fighting Jew,’ as interpreted by Gerard Jones” (Fingeroth, p. 60).

I think that Fingeroth may be pushing this point further than is justified. But he’s on target when he writes that “Perhaps the most “˜Jewish’ thing about Captain America’s stories is the concerted attempt by the creative staff to make every story universal” (Fingeroth p. 59). Since Simon and Kirby intended Captain America to be a symbol of America, then it made sense that they would cast him as a member of the largest ethnic group in the country in that time before multiculturalism: in other words, as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

But yes, it’s true that the earliest Captain America stories reflect Simon and Kirby’s Jewish background. On the cover of Captain America Comics #1 the title character punches Adolf Hitler in the jaw. Though Fingeroth doesn’t, it should be noted that the first issue was cover-dated March 1941, nine months before America’s entry into World War II. Back then there was considerable isolationist sentiment against becoming involved in the war, and so Simon and Kirby’s open opposition to Hitler was rather daring.

Fingeroth is also correct to point out that the creator of Captain America’s “super-soldier serum” was “Professor Reinstein,” whom Simon and Kirby obviously based on the Jewish scientific genius Albert Einstein. Hence, the subtext is clear when, in the origin story, a Nazi agent guns down the Jewish Reinstein, and Captain America then avenges Reinstein’s death.

It’s surprising that Fingeroth doesn’t do more with his observation that the “super-soldier serum” transforms Steve Rogers into “a one-of-a-kind, perfect, Aryan-looking specimen of humanity” (Fingeroth p. 58). Ironically, Captain America physically matches the Nazis’ idealized vision of a member of the Aryan “master race.”

Were Simon and Kirby conscious of the irony? Decades later, the late Marvel writer Mark Gruenwald seemed to be, when he transferred the consciousness of Captain America’s Nazi archfoe, the Red Skull, into a cloned copy of the Captain’s own body: thus the Red Skull became Captain America’s literal evil twin.

Whether consciously or not, Simon and Kirby had turned the Nazis’ image of the Aryan superman to their own purposes. Captain America was not fighting for the dominance of a master race, but for the freedom of a democratic society in which immigrants from other ethnic groups could find refuge from fascist tyranny.

Fingeroth perceptively points to Reinstein’s declaration that Captain America will be “one of America’s saviors” and comments that “the metaphor system at work here is as much Christian as Jewish” (Fingeroth p. 58). So Captain America is a Christ figure, but couldn’t he also be viewed as a Messiah? And since Professor Reinstein remodels the once frail Steve Rogers into a physically perfect soldier, to go out and combat tyranny, couldn’t Captain America also be seen as a variation on a golem? I’ll let you ponder all of this until I continue my review of Dressed as Clark Kent next week.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF AND OTHERS

I will be interviewing Tim Sale, the artist who has frequenty collaborated with writer Jeph Loeb (on Batman: The Long Halloween, Daredevil: Yellow and Hulk: Gray, among other projects) and who does artwork for the television series Heroes, on Saturday, November 17 onstage at the Big Apple Con‘s annual “National” convention. The convention runs from Friday afternoon, November 16 through Sunday, November 18 at the Penn Plaza Pavilion at 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.

Writer/artist Richard Howell has moved his Claypool Comics series about vampires, Deadbeats, to the Internet, and recently reintroduced a character named Edwin, who first appeared in Richard’s indie comic Portia Prinz of the Glamazons. Take a look at strips 79, 80, and 81 and see if you can figure out what they have in common with “Comics in Context.” Here’s a hint: in strip 81 Edwin delivers one of the best worded defenses of continuity I’ve ever read.

And I am pleased to welcome Fred Hembeck back to Quick Stop Entertainment, where he has resumed work on “The Fred Hembeck Show” with episode 101.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Last week I began my commentary on Danny Fingeroth’s new book Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero. The book demonstrates that Fingeroth, a former editor and writer at Marvel Comics, has realized two principles that, in my experience, most mainstream superhero comics editors and writers don’t grasp.

One is that the superhero genre works through metaphor. For example, Superman was sent from his home planet of Krypton through outer space to Earth, where he was raised as an American by Jonathan and Martha Kent. This can be read as a metaphor for the immigrant experience; it also parallels the Biblical tale of the infancy of Moses, who was born of Jewish parents, was cast adrift for his own safety, and was found and raised by Egyptians.

The second principle is related to the first. This is that stories may have meanings that their authors did not consciously intend. When I interviewed Fingeroth for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week, I asked him, “Were any of the Jewish comics creators of the Golden and Silver Ages consciously aware of putting themes that specifically reflected their ethnic background in their work?”

Fingeroth, who is himself Jewish, replied, “I don’t think so. I think they were, if anything, trying to divest their work of any such content and make it as “˜all-American’ as possible. But the human mind is a strange and wonderful thing, and years later we can look at the work and tease out all sorts of below the surface meanings that weren’t intended to be there.”

The In his book Fingeroth asserts that “there are and were–for the most part unconscious and subconscious–true Jewish content, meaning, and themes in various seminal superhero works.” (Fingeroth, p. 19). He recognizes that such “content,” reflecting the Jewish-American experience, is present even if the authors deny its presence. “There was nothing overt or conscious about this, of course,” Fingeroth writes about such “Jewish content”: “Even creators who do not share [Will] Eisner’s disavowal of Jewish intent have only come to see it in retrospect” (Fingeroth, p. 18).

Fingeroth declares that “the creation of the superhero seems to have been more than a function of happenstance. The creation of a legion of special beings, self-appointed to protect the weak, innocent, and victimized a a time when fascism was dominating the European continent from which the creators of the heroes hailed, seems like a task that Jews were uniquely positioned to take on” (Fingeroth, p. 17).

Jerry Siegel stated that the Nazi persecution of Jews was one of his motivations for co-creating Superman, although he also points to the economic devastation of the Great Depression, which affected Americans of all ethnic backgrounds: “being unemployed and worried during the depression and knowing hopelessness and fear. Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany. . .I had the great urge to help . . . help the downtrodden masses, somehow. How could I help them when I could barely help myself? Superman was the answer” (Fingeroth p. 41). However, since Siegel wrote that in 1975, perhaps this is a case of a Jewish-American creator coming “to see it in retrospect.”

Another Hewish comics creastor of note, Neil Gaiman, told Fingeroth that “Jews had been culturally and for so long the underdog that dreams of wish-fulfillment and dreams of power crystallized into superheroes. . . .the oppressed have their stories and fantasies. Those in power don’t need fantasies” (Fingeroth pgs. 143-144).

Fingeroth maintains that, whether Jewish or not, “immigrants have an outsider’s view of a society and so understand it, in many ways, more clearly than someone born into that society” (Fingeroth p. 23). In my interview with Fingeroth, he stated “that the Jewish and other immigrants, as outsiders, were able to see what was important to the majority society, then distill those values and ideas and reflect them back through the vehicle of popular culture.”

The problem here, I suggest, is that the founding fathers of the Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics were the children of immigrants, not immigrants themselves. Right now America is going through another great period of immigration, with New York City once again as one of its centers. Looking through my New York City neighborhood, I see Asian and Latino immigrant families all around me. What I notice is that the immigrants’ children, who were born and raised in this country, seem thoroughly Americanized. I assume that the superhero genre’s founders, who grew up within American culture, would not have had the same perspective on it as their immigrant parents would have had.

Nonetheless, second and third generation Jewish-Americans would still have felt themselves to be outsiders to some extent since they did not follow the same religion as the majority of Americans. Moreover, anti-Semitism was more overt and widespread in America in the 1930s than today. In his introduction to Fingeroth’s book, Stan Lee writes that he encountered “very little” bigotry in his life, but states that “I certainly had read, heard and known about the prejudice so many Jewish people faced”; significantly, Lee says, “I was very lucky” to have experienced so little of it (Fingeroth p. 10).

Jules Feiffer grew up reading the superhero comics of the Golden Age of the 1940s and began his own career in comics at the Golden Age’s close as Will Eisner’s assistant on The Spirit. Fingeroth quotes Feiffer’s observation that “Superman was the ultimate assimilationalist fantasy” (Fingeroth p. 24). As noted, Superman was an immigrant from another world who was raised out in the countryside, the traditional cradle of American values, to be an American himself. He even acquired a WASP-sounding name, Clark Kent. Feiffer goes on to say that “The mild manners and glasses that signified a class of nerdy Clark Kents was [sic], in no way, our real truth. Underneath the schmucky facade, there lived Men of Steel!” The “fantasy,” then, is that Superman the Kryptonian, who represents Jewish-Americans’ true ethnicity, is not only vital, powerful and downright cool, but that he is also hailed as a hero by the majority culture. (However, as Fingeroth points out later in the book, it was not until 1948 that Superman himself first discovered he was from Krypton. In the 1930s and 1940s the general populace in Superman comics had no idea he was an alien!)

I wonder if Clark represents another side of the “ultimate assimilationalist fantasy” for a minority group: being able to blend into mainstream society so perfectly that one’s true background–one’s inner identity–is undetectable. Part of the fantasy is that all you have to do is put on the glasses, adopt the proper set of “mild manners,” wear the same business suit as everyone else, and not draw attention to yourself, and voila! The disguise–and the assimilation– are complete!

As Fingeroth observes, “It’s the traditional immigrant attitude of keeping a low profile, not standing out. To stand out is to be a target, and who needs that?” (Fingeroth, p. 25).

Later, Fingeroth states that “Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, it was the desire to escape from the Jewish past that in many ways led to the creation of the superhero” (Fingeroth p. 34). He points out that “For the Jewish immigrant families like those from which Siegel and [Superman co-creator Joe] Shuster came, the dual identity was more than a convenience. When your history tells you that you can be murdered because of who your parents happened to be, the freedom provided by being able to blend into the mainstream culture is essential to survival” (Fingeroth p. 49).

Last week I showed how John Byrne subtly but sharply revised the treatment of Superman’s dual identity in The Man of Steel (1986). In the traditional view, Clark Kent is the “facade,” as Feiffer puts it, and people cannot see through to his true self, which is Superman. In The Man of Steel Superman is the public persona, and people cannot see through it to his true self, which is Clark Kent.

In justifying Superman’s dual identity in Man of Steel, Byrne appears to be using as his model the celebrity seeking privacy, rather than the immigrant assimilating in order to escape becoming the target of prejudice. But in both the traditional approach to Superman’s dual identity and Byrne’s, there is the sense that the secret identity is protection against a palpable threat. In The Man of Steel Clark Kent adopts his public persona of Superman after he is mobbed by a grateful public after publicly using his powers to save a space plane from crashing. As I noted last week, Clark tells his foster parents that “They were all over me! Like wild animals. Like maggots. Clawing. Pulling. Screaming at me” and confesses to feeling “fear” (Byrne, The Man of Steel #1, p. 28) He describes a physical threat that seems not unlike that posed by a mob of bigots attacking a member of a minority group.

Despite recasting Superman/Clark as a beleaguered celebrity, Byrne still seems to have realized, consciously or not, that the motivating force behind adopting a secret identity is fear of persecution.

Fingeroth recognizes that “To modern sensibilities, that unquestioning need for a disguise flies in the face of, if nothing else, our current ideal of the whole, integrated, non-hypocritical, complete human” (Fingeroth p. 35).

In recent years superhero comics have become more lax in their treatment of the secret identity motif. Think of all the superheroes who have been “outed” or have “outed” themselves lately, including such major figures as Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man and the X-Men. As Fingeroth says, this may reflect a contemporary idealization of the “integrated” human personality. It surely also reflects an American society that has become more tolerant towards racial and ethnic differences than it was in the 1930s and 1940s. Today’s superhero writers grew up in a very different circumstances than the founders of the genre did.

There is also the more recent phenomenon of “identity politics.” The Jewish members of the superhero genre’s founding generation tended to play down their Jewish identities, in many cases even to the extent of adopting new names, in order to fit into a Christian-dominated society. (In his book Fingeroth examines how Batman co-creator Bob Kane continued to conceal his Jewish background as late as 1989 in his autobiography.) As Fingeroth points out in his book’s later chapters, starting with the Baby Boom generation, comics creators such as Howard Chaykin and Peter David are not only open about their Jewish background but even explicitly portray comics characters, like Dominic Fortune and Doc Samson, as Jewish. Fingeroth’s Disguised as Clark Kent and other books on the same subject, including Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, are efforts by Jewish-American writers to openly claim the superhero genre as a product of Jewish-American culture. Indeed, nowadays, at least some immigrant groups seek to retain elements of their native culture while settling into American society.

Marvel’s original version of X-Factor may have marked a turning point. This series’ original premise was that the original members of the X-Men posed as humans who hunted down mutants. In actuality, the original X-Men would then train the mutants they found not only how to manage the use of their powers but also to “pass” as ordinary non-mutant humans. Indeed, the original X-Men had “passed” as humans in their civilian identities from the beginning of the original X-Men comic book. But comics fans objected to this premise, recognizing that “mutants” at Marvel were metaphors for members of minority groups, and contending that it was immoral to insist that they hide their true group identities. X-Factor‘s second writer, Louise Simonson, reached the sane conclusion, created a storyline showing that X-Factor’s public stance that mutants were dangerous played into the hands of bigots, and finally had X-Factor publicly renounce it.

Years later in New X-Men, writer Grant Morrison took the next step by “outing” Professor Charles Xavier as a mutant, and thus exposing his Xavier Institute as a school for mutants (see “Comics in Context” #28: “Adapt and Assimilate”). Morrison portrayed this turn of events as a blessing in disguise, enabling the X-Men to openly campaign on behalf of mutant rights.

Since X-Men is about a team of superheroes who represent a minority group, rather than about an individual superhero, Morrison may have been correct in disposing of secret identities in this case. Having Xavier go public may well have been a necessary move in keeping X-Men relevant to 21st century America’s multicultural society.

But as I wrote last week, contemporary writers in the superhero genre may be making mistakes by downplaying or ignoring elements that were inspired by the Jewish-American culture of many of the genre’s founders.

The secret identity trope did not originate with Superman; the Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro, among others, had used it earlier. But it’s clear that the secret identity motif had particular resonance, even if unconscious, for Jewish-Americans. As Fingeroth indicates, such elements of the superhero genre that reflected Jewish concerns also proved to have great appeal to the wider audience. Feiffer’s quotation goes on to state that “America cloned itself into a country made up of millions of Clark Kents. and day after day, you could hear them muttering to themselves, I’m not really like this. If they only knew my true identity” (Fingeroth p. 24).

Fingeroth concludes, “The concept that in a modern technological society we all had inner Supermen and Superwomen yearning to be revealed was an idea that the world was waiting for even if it didn’t know it” (Fingeroth, p. 42). This society still exists. In a modern nation that encompasses millions of people, in which each of us may seem to be only a cog in the capitalist system’s wheels, in which the power of technology dwarfs that of the individual, the superhero makes sense as a fantasy by which the individual can assert himself and achieve recognition.

Fingeroth argues that “The Siegel-Shuster Superman concept was in its way the diametric opposite of the contemporary [meaning the 1930s and 1940s] fascist and communist solutions to the modern dilemma of finding meaning and identity in mass society. As expressed through Superman, the self was not to be subsumed to the collective” (Fingeroth p. 42). Nietzche didn’t believe that his ubermensch should “be subsumed to the collective,” either, and, of course, the German fascists adapted the ubermensch concept to their ideology. Nonetheless, I think that Fingeroth makes a good point that the American superhero stood for the potential value of the individual in a period when people sought solutions in ideologies that led to totalitarian systems that would crush individual liberty. “The primacy of the individual was what so many immigrants, including Eastern European Jews, came to America to partake of and conribute to” (Fingeroth p. 43).

But I think that the secret identity would have an appeal in a society of any size. You don’t have to be Jewish or a member of a minority group to identify with Clark Kent; all you need is to feel that other people don’t fully understand the real you, and that is probably a universal sentiment. Fingeroth writes of “the fantasy that having a second self touches in all of us. We all want to think there is greatness in ourselves that the world cannot see, or that we cannot allow it to see, that the facades we display in everyday life are just that–masks that society forces us to wear” (Fingeroth, p. 49).

As I have written many times in the past, the duality of human nature, whether it is between one’s “good” and “evil” sides, or between one’s public and private selves, is one of the dominant themes of the superhero genre.

The dual identity also serves as a metaphor for everyman as he is (the “civilian identity,” like Peter Parker) and everyman’s potential to become a success, to achieve his dreams, to become a “hero” (the superhero, like Spider-Man).

Moreover, the dual identity represents the necessary duality in the superhero, who is at once demigod (or demigoddess) and man (or woman). As Dr. Peter Coogan shows in his book Superhero: The Secret Origin of the Genre, the “science-fiction supermen” before Siegel and Shuster’s creation were often threats to society (see “Comics in Context” #165: “The Supervillain Defined”). The concept of Nietzche’s ubermensch, the superman “beyond good and evil,” was easily twisted by the Nazis to their own purposes. Because the American superhero is grounded in humanity through his “civilian” persona, he is our benefactor, rather than a potential tyrant: he is one of us. (Coogan notes that the secret identity is a “customary” element of the superhero genre. See “Comics in Context” #162: “The Superhero Defined.”)

Looking at Silver Age superhero comics, the contemporary reader might be surprised to see how many “normal” people appear in their pages. For example, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby loved to show their thunder god Thor interacting with ordinary folks on the streets of Manhattan. This is in part because Lee and Kirby must have recognized the necessity that their superheroes must be part of the society that they defend. The secret “civilian” identity makes the superhero into a member of that society.

In contrast, nowadays, not only have secret identities fallen out of fashion, but it often seems that virtually everyone in a contemporary superhero comic is a costumed character. This is the situation that Mark Waid and Alex Ross critiqued in Kingdom Come, which depicts a world in which there are too many superheroes, and they fall to fighting among themselves. Back in a 1996 interview for Westfield Comics, Ross said, “I would criticize modern superheroes as being little more than gangs fighting gangs. When they’re removed into their own environments that are all these techno-babble, Kirby-derived playgrounds and you’ve got characters upon characters and not one person looks like they live in the real world, after a while it feels like another planet.” When the Westfield interviewer suggested that “It’s the contrast between real life and the life they lead, in other words, that is the source of what’s interesting about them,” Ross responded, “Yeah, because ultimately, as far as I’m concerned, once you remove them to their own environment, where it’s just a land of superheroes, then it’s literally become as boring as real life [laughter].”

As my regular readers know, I dislike DC’s Identity Crisis and Marvel’s Civil War. But I recognize that each represents a backlash to the fashion of disposing of secret identities and separating superheroes from the rest of society.

In Identity Crisis writer Brad Meltzer directs readers’ attention back to the impetus for adopting dual identities: fear of persecution. He shows that when superheroes publicly reveal their dual identities, they expose their loved ones–“ordinary” people–to attack.

Civil War pulls in different directions at once. By having Spider-Man and Iron Man publicly reveal their secret identities, Civil War actually separates them from the rest of society, since they can no longer lead normal lives within it. (Spider-Man‘s current “One More Day” storyline makes the negative consequences clear.) On the other hand, the climax of Civil War comes when a group of ordinary citizens emerge from seemingly out of nowhere and restrain Captain America from further assaulting Iron Man. These citizens claim that Captain America has lost sight of what the people want, which is greater government supervision of superheroes. I disagree with the idea that Captain America was wrong to fight for individual freedom in Civil War. Yet it is appropriate that the “ordinary” people on the street, who were so visible in Silver Age Marvel Comics, should reemerge to remind the superheroes, who were behaving like what Ross called “gangs fighting gangs,” of their duty towards them.

The psychological appeal of the dual/secret identity should be more evident in this age of the Internet, in which people masquerade behind screen names and adopt alternate personas in virtual worlds like Second Life.

I’m writing this only a few days after Halloween, which is society’s annual celebration of alternate identities. At the annual Halloween parties at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), “ordinary” people dress as costumed superheroes, thus expressing more assertive, liberated sides of their personalities for an evening. This year, at the party and outdoors on Halloween, I saw examples of that contemporary Halloween trend in which adult women dress in a more erotically charged manner than they would ordinarily attempt.

It is wearisome to see newspaper or television reports on San Diego’s Comic Con that give the impression that everyone there is in costume, rather than the one percent or less who actually are. But New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis, who attended this year’s San Diego Comic Con, has the right perspective on Comic-Con cosplay (July 28, 2007). “Every day we wake up to navigate through a faceless, inhuman, Made-in-China existence,” she wrote, with a certain political incorrectness, but “events like Comic-Con. . . give men, women and children of all ages permission to dress up and act out.” Like Halloween, Comic Con suspends the normal rules of society, enabling people to outwardly assume different identities. Dargis described Comic-Con as a place “where people can give physical form to the passions that the rest of the year remain safely hidden from the cruel world.” (So what happens at Comic-Con stays at Comic-Con?)

Yes, this happens at fantasy and science fiction cons, too. But the superhero genre, which originated in comics, is the area of pop culture that is most identified with the concept of alternate identities. Writers and editors of the superhero genre should be wary of departing from one of the major factors in the genre’s psychological appeal.

New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella recently wrote that “Art is personal; it makes people think about their secret lives” (Nov. 5, 2007). Intelligently handled, the superhero genre can deal with exactly that: the “secret lives” of the characters, the writers, and the readers. This, Acocella is saying, lies at the heart of art.

Turning to the creation of the superhero genre, Fingeroth observes that “There are the legends surrounding the golem, and surely these were part of the superhero mix” (Fingeroth p. 33), noting further that Michael Chabon deals extensively with the golem in Kavalier and Clay. In Jewish folklore a golem is a superhuman being created from clay (as in the name of Kavalier’s partner?), soil or mud by a holy man (thereby paralleling God’s creation of Adam) to serve him. Golems are of low intelligence and are potentially dangerous. In the most celebrated golem story, Rabbi Judah Loew creates a golem to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution; the golem eventually begins attacking and killing people, and the rabbi deactivates him. Fingeroth asserts that the golem legend was “riffed on in Frankenstein,” meaning the 1931 movie, though he doesn’t demonstrate a direct connection. I see that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel was first published in 1818, whereas the story of Rabbi Loew’s golem first appeared in print in 1847. In any case, the two tales parallel each other.

I wonder how much the golem legend really is applicable to the superhero genre. Although the “science-fiction supermen” (like Frankenstein’s monster) that preceded Siegel and Shuster’s Superman could be dangerous, like the golem, the American superhero isn’t a threat to the public at large. I suppose that one could say that Siegel and Shuster, in creating Superman, were comparable to the holy men of legend creating a golem to combat evil and protect the innocent, albeit in a fictional world. But within the context of the stories, the superhero is usually neither unintelligent nor a servant of a master who created him. Perhaps one could say that the typical superhero is his own golem, creating a heroic identity for himself in which he goes out to perform good deeds.

In fact, it seems to me that the early superhero who is most like a golem may be Wonder Woman, whose creator, William Moulton Marston, wasn’t Jewish. Wonder Woman originated as the figure of a child, molded from clay by the Amazon queen Hippolyta, and endowed with life by the Olympian gods. But was Marston thinking of the golem, or of the creation of Adam? Considering the role of Greek mythology in the Wonder Woman mythos, Marston may have been thinking of the story that Prometheus created the first human beings out of clay. (It suddenly strikes me that in Jack Kirby’s The Eternals, the Forgotten One, a benefactor of humanity who was punished by Zuras, may in part be based on Prometheus.)

Fingeroth contends that “there’s little evidence of [Carl] Burgos’s Jewish roots” in his stories about his creation, the original Human Torch (Fingeroth p. 65). But the original Torch’s origin (in Marvel Comics #1, 1939) certainly parallels the golem legend: a modern version of the wise man of legend, a scientist named Professor Horton, creates an android with superhuman powers, which breaks free and goes on a rampage before finally settling into his career as a superhero.

In writing about Jerry Siegel, Fingeroth reveals something that had escaped my notice before this: that Siegel’s immigrant father, Mitchell (born Michel) Siegel, died during a robbery of his store, either from being shot or from a heart attack. Fingeroth correctly argues that the loss of his father gave Jerry Siegel strong psychological impetus to create a fictional superhero. Oddly, Fingeroth overlooks the fact that Siegel wrote not one but two deaths of father figures into the pre-Byrne Superman legend: Jor-El dies in saving his son from the destruction of Krypton, and Clark Kent’s foster father makes a deathbed speech instructing Clark to use his powers to benefit humanity.

At the MoCCA Halloween party, I was taken aside and asked my expert opinion: is Superman like Moses or Jesus? I gave the same answer that Fingeroth does in his book: Superman has parallels to both. Fingeroth says that “Moses is viewed by some theological thinkers as a precursor to Jesus, both figures having been sent as babies to save their people and change the world” (Fingeroth p. 44).

Here I can draw upon my background as a Catholic. Not just “some theological thinkers,” but also the whole Catholic Church finds many parallels in the Old Testament to the life of Jesus, and interprets them as precursors to Christ. Hence, for example, Jonah’s stay in the belly of the whale for three days foreshadows Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection on the third day.

What’s really going on is that Biblical figures like Moses and Jonah and even Jesus are following archetypal mythical patterns, and it should be no surprise that Superman, a figure from modern “mythology,” likewise parallels elements of the lives of Moses and Jesus.

Next week I will further explore the ideas in Danny Fingeroth’s Disguised as Clark Kent, which should be a key book for students of the superhero genre.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

Titan Books has just published Steve Saffel’s lavishly illustrated coffee table book Spider-Man: The Icon, which covers the web-slinger’s history in comics, movies, television, records, toys, and every other relevant form of media and merchandising. You can read my interview with him for Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week here.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

How time flies when you’re having fun. I started writing “Comics in Context” back in the summer of 2003, and now I’ve reached this column’s bicentennial. Each installment runs at least 5000 words, so by now I’ve written over a million words for “Comics in Context.”

Originally the column appeared at the IGN website, and, at the point that I’m writing this, you can still find the first 134 installments over there through Googling. When my redoubtable editor, Ken Plume, left IGN for Quick Stop Entertainment, my column and I followed. As I write this, Ken is in the process of posting the entire run of “Comics in Context” on its Quick Stop archive page: he’s already put the first thirty up. All of my Quick Stop columns (135 through the present) are available there, of course. Towards the end of my stay at IGN, it began altering the titles for my column; when Ken posts them here at Quick Stop, the original titles I gave them will be restored.

Reaching a hundredth or two hundredth anniversary of a column is a good point at which to take stock of what I’ve done in the past, and to determine what I should do in the future. As “Comics in Context” neared its hundredth installment, I told Ken that I realized that I hadn’t yet written about the most important figure in cartoon art. “Jack Kirby?” he asked. No, I meant Walt Disney, and with “Comics in Context” #100 I began a good number of installments about Disney and other important figures of the Golden Age of Hollywood animation. But Ken was right that I should have written about Kirby more than I had, and I took the opportunity with my recent columns about the “Galactus trilogy” and The Eternals.

For my readers’ benefit and my own, I have compiled an incomplete index of the many writers and artists about whom I’ve written in “Comics in Context” so far. Each person’s name is followed first, usually by the name of at least one of his or her works that I’ve mentioned, and then by the numbers of the columns in which he or she appears. Longtime readers will not be surprised that Neil Gaiman is far out in front of the competition.

Adams, Neal (Batman): 129
Adams, Scott (Dilbert): 66
Addams, Charles (The New Yorker cartoonist): 72
Arno, Peter (The New Yorker cartoonist): 157
Arriola, Gus (Gordo): 66
Austin, Terry (sketchbook): 90
Avery, Tex (MGM animated cartoons): 100, 101, 173, 188, 189
Bails, Jerry (comics historian): 157
Baker, Kyle (Plastic Man): 27
Barks, Carl (Uncle Scrooge): 24, 114
Baum, L. Frank (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [prose novel]): 25
Bird, Brad (The Incredibles, Ratatouille [animated films]): 62, 186
Blake, William (illustrator): 72
Block, Herbert (“Herblock”) (editorial cartoons): 159
Bolland, Brian (Batman: The Killing Joke): 193
Boreanaz, David (Bones [TV]): 144
Bradbury, Ray (science fiction author): 8, 98
Brinkley, Nell (illustrator): 159
Brunetti, Ivan (“Speak: Nine Cartoonists” exhibit): 122
Burns, Charles (“Speak: Nine Cartoonists” exhibit): 122
Burroughs, Edgar Rice (Tarzan of the Apes [prose novel]): 132
Burton, Tim (Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride [film]): 103
Bushmiller, Ernie (Nancy): 66
Busiek, Kurt (Astro City): 14, 21, 37, 63, 70, 178
Byrne, John (Generations 2): 25, 66, 200
Caniff, Milton (Terry and the Pirates): 66, 71, 154
Capp, Al (Li’l Abner): 66, 71, 177
Chabon, Michael (JSA All-Stars): 21
Cho, Frank (Liberty Meadows): 66
Clampett, Bob (Warners animated cartoons): 101
Claremont, Chris (The Uncanny X-Men): 37, 39, 124, 134, 135, 172
Cleese, John (True Brit): 66
Clowes, Daniel (Eightball): 64, 122
Cockrum, Dave (X-Men): 156, 172
Colan, Gene (Daredevil): 170, 171
Cole, Jack (Plastic Man): 27
Coogan, Peter (Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre [prose book]): 98, 141, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166
Cooke, Darwyn (The New Frontier): 30
Cornwell, Dean (illustrator): 131, 159
Crane, Roy (Wash Tubbs): 71
Cronenberg, David (A History of Violence [film]): 111
Cruikshank, George (Charles Dickens’ illustrator): 159
Crumb, Robert (Mr. Natural): 64, 122, 156
Curtis, Dan (Dark Shadows [TV]): 11, 12
Daumier, Honore (caricaturist): 159
David, Peter (Hulk: The End): 2, 38, 81
Davis, Stuart (painter): 159
DeFalco, Tom (Comic Creators on Spider-Man [book]): 44
Dini, Paul (Zatanna): 24, 27, 29, 180
Dirks, Rudolph (The Katzenjammer Kids): 59, 71
Disney, Walt (animated feature films): 109, 110, 136, 157, 158, 160, 161, 165, 177
Ditko, Steve (The Amazing Spider-Man): 64, 113
Donner, Richard (Superman: The Movie [film]): 90, 143
Doran, Colleen (A Distant Soil): 6, 123
Drake, Stan (The Heart of Juliet Jones): 66
Dr. Seuss (Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas): 24
Dunst, Kirsten (Spider-Man [films]): 45, 46, 181, 182, 183
Dushku, Eliza (Tru Calling [TV]): 10, 120
Eisner, Will (The Spirit): 6, 25, 64, 66, 68, 69, 71, 80, 81, 94, 155, 159, 179, 180
Englehart, Steve (Batman: Dark Detective): 84, 87, 88, 90, 93, 104
Evanier, Mark (San Diego Comic Con panel moderator): 6, 8, 94, 95, 141, 145, 147
Feiffer, Jules (The Great Comic Book Heroes [book]): 26
Feininger, Lyonel (Kin-Der-Kids): 59, 71, 151, 152
Finger, Bill (Batman): 94, 97, 145
Fingeroth, Danny (Superman on the Couch [prose book]): 41, 200
Fisher, Bud (Mutt and Jeff): 71
Flagg, James Montgomery (illustrator): 131, 159
Fleischer, Max and Dave (Betty Boop and Popeye animated cartoons): 116, 117, 118, 152, 157, 177, 190
Foster, Hal (Prince Valiant): 71, 177
Franklin, Benjamin (political cartoon): 159
Freleng, Friz (Warners animated cartoons): 101
Frid, Jonathan (Dark Shadows [TV]): 11, 149
Gaiman, Neil (1602, Anansi Boys, Eternals)–5, 8, 13, 17, 18, 21, 25, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 65, 67, 72, 85, 105, 106, 107, 108, 129, 144, 164, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199
Garis, Howard Roger (“Uncle Wiggily” books): 177
Geppi, Steve (Geppi’s Entertainment Museum): 176, 177
Gerber, Steve (Superman: Last Stand on Krypton): 27
Gibbons, Dave (Watchmen): 65, 193
Gillray, James (caricaturist): 71, 72
Gould, Chester (Dick Tracy): 66, 71, 153
Gray, Harold (Little Orphan Annie): 71, 177
Groening, Matt (The Simpsons [TV and film]): 8, 188
Gruelle, Johnny (Raggedy Ann and Andy [book illustrator]): 159
Gruenwald, Mark (Squadron Supreme): 150
Guisewite, Cathy (Cathy): 66
Guston, Philip (cartoon-like paintings): 20
Hamill, Mark (Comic Book: The Movie [film]): 7
Harris, Thomas (Hannibal [prose novel and film]): 165
Harvey, R. C. (The Art of the Comic Book [prose book]): 69
Hembeck, Fred (“The Fred Hembeck Show” [Quick Stop column]): 76, 79, 113
Henson, Jim (The Muppets): 47, 96, 114, 115
Hernandez, Jaime (Love and Rockets): 122
Herriman, George (Krazy Kat): 59, 71, 152, 177
Hinton, S. E. (Hawkes Harbor [prose novel]): 70
Hogarth, Burne (Tarzan): 66
Hogarth, William (18th century sequential artist): 71, 159
Homer, Winslow (illustrator): 159
Howell, Richard (Soulsearchers and Company): 38
Idle, Eric (Monty Python’s Spamalot [musical]): 82
Irving, John (“An Evening with Harry, Carrie and Garp”): 148
Jackson, Peter (King Kong [film]): 31, 99, 121
Jenkins, Paul (The Sentry): 63
Johnston, Lynn (For Better or for Worse): 66
Jones, Chuck (Warners animated cartoons): 24, 72, 101, 102
Kanigher, Robert (Enemy Ace): 64
Kelly, Walt (Pogo): 24, 66, 76, 177
King, Frank (Gasoline Alley): 122, 153
King, Stephen (The Dark Tower): 26, 148, 169
Kirby, Jack (The Eternals): 6, 59, 64, 95, 155, 184, 185, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199
Kitchen, Denis (Will Eisner’s agent and publisher): 80, 145, 170
Kring, Tim (Heroes [TV]): 163
Kubert, Joe (Enemy Ace): 64, 193
Kuper, Peter (Metamorphoses): 28
Kurtzman, Harvey (MAD): 156
Landau, Juliet (Buffy the Vampire Slayer [TV]): 169
Lantz, Walter (Woody Woodpecker animated cartoons): 189
Lasseter, John (Cars [animated film]): 120, 137, 138
Lee, Ang (Hulk [film]): 2
Lee, Jim (All-Star Batman and Robin): 119, 178
Lee, Stan (Fantastic Four): 6, 15, 16, 59, 64, 71, 113, 142, 168, 170, 171, 184, 185
Leonardo da Vinci (caricatures): 159
Leyendecker, J. C. (illustrator): 131
Lichtenstein, Roy (comics-based paintings): 153
Loeb, Jeph (Hulk: Gray): 16, 27, 49, 75
Lucas, George (Star Wars [films]): 86
MacDonald, Heidi (“The Beat”): 167
Maguire, Tobey (Spider-Man [films]): 45, 46, 181, 182, 183
Mayer, Robert (SuperFolks [prose novel]): 63
McCay, Winsor (Little Nemo in Slumberland): 60, 71, 151, 157, 177
McCloud, Scott (Making Comics): 81, 156
McCracken, Craig (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends [TV]): 55, 103, 115
McDonnell, Patrick (Mutts): 24, 66
McFarlane, Todd (Spider-Man): 124
McKean, Dave (MirrorMask [film]): 10, 85
McManus, George (Bringing Up Father): 60
Meltzer, Brad (Identity Crisis): 57, 58, 63, 67
Mignola, Mike (Hellboy): 40
Miller, Frank (The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Sin City, 300): 30, 31, 34, 65, 78, 79, 83, 92, 119, 125, 146, 175, 178
Miyazaki, Hayao (Howl’s Moving Castle [animated film]): 91
Moore, Alan (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, Watchmen): 22, 23, 32, 65, 66, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 193
Morrison, Grant (New X-Men): 28
Nast, Thomas (editorial cartoons): 24, 159
Nelson, Michael J. (RiffTrax): 185
Nevins, Jess (Heroes and Monsters [prose book]): 37
Nolan, Christopher (Batman Begins [film]): 89, 90
O’Donnell, Peter (Modesty Blaise): 61
Oliphant, Pat (editorial cartoons): 159
O’Neil, Dennis (Batman): 32
Opper, Frederick (Happy Hooligan): 60
Otomo, Katsuhiro (Steamboy [film]): 77
Outcault, Richard (The Yellow Kid): 59, 71
Panter, Gary (Jimbo): 122, 156
Park, Nick (Wallace and Gromit): 47, 112
Parker, Lara (Dark Shadows [TV and prose novels]): 149
Pekar, Harvey (American Splendor): 6, 64, 73, 111
Powell, Michael and Pressburger, Emeric (The Tales of Hoffman [film]): 85
Raimi, Sam (Spider-Man [films]): 45, 46, 181, 182, 183
Raymond, Alex (Flash Gordon): 71
Reeves, George (The Adventures of Superman [TV]): 48
Revere, Paul (political illustration): 159
Rigg, Diana (The Avengers [TV]): 52, 53
Robinson, Jerry (Batman): 94, 97, 141, 145
Rockwell, Norman (illustrator): 131
Rodriguez, Robert (Frank Miller’s Sin City [film]): 78, 79, 83, 92
Rogers, Marshall (Batman: Dark Detective): 84, 87, 88, 90, 93, 104, 171
Romita, John Sr. (The Amazing Spider-Man): 124
Rosa, Don (Uncle Scrooge): 114, 119
Ross, Alex (Justice): 29, 30, 66, 159, 193
Rowling, J. K. (Harry Potter [prose novels]): 148, 187
Sale, Tim (Hulk: Gray): 16, 27, 49
Schaffenberger, Kurt (Hero Gets Girl): 27
Schulz, Charles M. (Peanuts): 24, 66, 120, 154, 157, 177
Schumer, Arlen (The Silver Age of Comic Book Art [history book]): 26
Schwartz, Julius (Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, etc.): 32, 176
Segar, E. C. (Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye): 63, 71, 152, 157, 177
Seth (“Speak: Nine Cartoonists” exhibit): 122
Simon, Joe (Captain America): 125
Singer, Bryan (Superman Returns [film]): 139, 143
Sinnott, Joe (Fantastic Four): 170, 171
Smith, Jeff (Bone): 78, 167
Smith, Kevin (Quick Stop); 146, 147
Snicket, Lemony (Little Lit): 24
Sondheim, Stephen (composer): 77
Spiegelman, Art (Maus): 24, 59, 60, 61, 64, 80, 122
Starr, Leonard (Mary Perkins On Stage): 66
Steig, William (Shrek! [illustrated book]): 186
Steinberg, Flo (Marvel legend): 170, 171
Steinberg, Saul (illustrator): 159
Steranko, Jim (Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD): 64, 124
Stern, Roger (Superman: The Never-Ending Battle [prose novel]): 90
Sterrett, Cliff (Polly and Her Pals): 71
Story, Tim (Fantastic Four movies): 93, 184, 185
Straczynski, J. Michael (The Amazing Spider-Man): 14, 58
Tarantino, Quentin (Kill Bill [film]): 10
Tartakovsky, Genndy (Star Wars: Clone Wars [TV]): 21, 55
Tenniel, Sir John (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland): 159
Thomas, Roy (Alter Ego): 66
Thurber, James (The New Yorker cartoonist): 157
Timm, Bruce (Batman: The Animated Series): 144
Topffer, Rodolphe (19th century sequential artist): 71
Travers, P. L. (Mary Poppins [prose novels]): 158, 160
Trudeau, G. B. (Doonesbury): 66
Uslan, Michael (The Spirit [film]): 80, 169, 170, 193
Vess, Charles (Sandman): 65
Walker, Brian (“Masters of American Comics” exhibit): 66, 71, 145, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156
Ware, Chris (Jimmy Corrigan): 122, 156
Watterson, Bill (Calvin and Hobbes): 66
West, Adam (Batman [TV]): 50
West, Billy (Futurama [TV]): 147
Whedon, Joss (Buffy the Vampire Slayer [TV]): 9, 13, 42, 43, 54, 58, 77, 98, 164
Zemeckis, Robert (The Polar Express [film]): 66, 83

This is an impressive list, even if I do say so myself. Even so, I see gaps. How is it that I haven’t gotten around to writing about Bill Sienkiewicz yet? Or Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat animated cartoons? Someday, here or elsewhere, I intend to write about the work of the two great Silver Age DC writers John Broome and Gardner Fox. There are also major figures who have already made my list, but I feel I haven’t written enough about them yet: expect to see columns about Walt Kelly’s Pogo and Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates in the foreseeable future. My main area of interest will remain American comics and animation, but I should make more forays into foreign language comics and cartoon art. The forthcoming Persepolis movie will afford one opportunity early next year, and since 2007 is the centennial of Herge’s birth, I should stop postponing taking a look at his creation Tintin. And of course there are always new projects on the horizon: Robert Zemeckis, Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary’s Beowulf film looms ahead, which will also give me the excuse to write about the original Beowulf, the earliest great megaheroic work in (archaic) English.

I will also continue exploring new creations by writers, artists, and even film directors whose work has interested me in the past. For example, back in “Comics in Context” #41 I wrote about former Marvel editor Danny Fingeroth’s book Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society. I recently interviewed him about his new book, Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero, which was published this month (October) by Continuum.

Fingeroth’s book is about a subject that has been attracting attention of late: the role that Jewish-Americans had in originating the superhero genre in the 1930s and developing it right through the present day. Among the many important Jewish-American writers and artists whom Fingeroth discusses are Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of the first superhero, Superman; Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson, the creators of the Batman mythos; Joe Simon, co-creator of Captain America; Will Eisner, creator of the Spirit; and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, founding fathers of the Marvel Universe.

Lee, Eisner and Simon also worked as editors, and Fingeroth perceptively likens two other Jewish-Americans, Silver Age DC editors Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz, to auteur filmmakers. “In the same way that a John Ford or Orson Welles movie is always recognizable as such,” Schwartz and Weisinger projected “the personality of the editors” in their comics, as “interpreted through the skills of the writers and artists they employed” (Fingeroth, Disguised as Clark Kent, p. 82).

Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay provided a fictionalized portrayal of Jewish-American comics creators of the 1930s and 1940s. In his excellent book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones revealed the true history of that generation, concentrating on Siegel and Shuster. Using that history as his basis, in Disguised as Clark Kent Fingeroth investigates how Jewish-American culture may be reflected in the thematic content of superhero stories over the decades, for example, through he sense of being an outsider (see Spider-Man) and concerns with coping against racial prejudice (see X-Men).

Fingeroth also looks beyond the superhero genre’s founding generation to Jewish comics creators of later generations. “As the Passover Seder. . . instructs Jews to tell the story of the Exodus as if they themselves were slaves freed from Egypt, then perhaps each generation of Jewish creators must define the superhero metaphor for itself” (Fingeroth p. 121).

But nowadays the population of superhero comics writers, artists and editors is not only far larger but also far more diverse in background than it was when the genre started out in the late 1930s. As Fingeroth told me (in a part that wasn’t included in the published interview), “I find it more interesting how many non-Jewish creators are attracted to superheroes these days. Thanks to the phenomenon of fandom, as well as other social factors, comics have become a business peopled, on the creative end, certainly, by people from all over the world, not just the highly Jewish New York metropolitan area.”

Moreover, it’s now been nearly seventy years since Superman first appeared. The first generation of creators in the superhero genre grew up during the Great Depression, in a world that was on the brink of war; many of them were the children of Eastern European immigrants. Today’s comics writers and artists have necessarily grown up in very different circumstances. How does this affect their approach to the genre and the characters that were created by a previous generation?

Let’s start by examining the familiar concept of Superman’s secret identity of Clark Kent. In his book Fingeroth repeats the familiar argument that the secret identity motif relates to the immigrants’ efforts at assimilation into mainstream American society. By giving him the WASPy name of “Clark,” “the Kents, literally and figuratively anglicized their newfound son,” (Fingeroth p. 46). Similarly, as Fingeroth pointed out earlier, Jacob Kurtzberg took the “Irish-sounding” name “Jack Kirby” (Fingeroth p. 31). Superman was the “real” identity; “Clark Kent” was the identity he and his foster parents invented so that he could blend in with mainstream society.

In “rebooting” Superman in the 1986 mini-series The Man of Steel, John Byrne followed his characteristic policy of going “back to the basics” with a longrunning superhero. But he was also sharply revising certain aspects of the Superman legend. Byrne rejected the tradition whereby “Clark Kent” was Superman’s disguise, in which he pretended to be not just “mild-mannered” but downright timid and clumsy, a “caricature” of humanity, in Jules Feiffer’s description (in his pioneering study, The Great Comic Book Heroes). In issue 1 of The Man of Steel, Clark and his foster parents devise the Superman persona as a means of preventing the general public from recognizing who he truly is: Clark Kent.

Byrne appeared to be thinking not of the immigrant’s problems with assimilation but of the contemporary concern for privacy in a culture that worships celebrity. (I refer you to Time TV critic Jamie Poniewozik’s description of Disney Channel character Hannah Montana as “Superman for tween girls”: a normal girl with a secret identity as a celebrity pop singer.)

Upon first publicly using his super-powers, Clark is mobbed by onlookers. Admitting to his “fear” of the mob, Clark tells his foster parents, “They were all over me! Like wild animals. Like maggots. Clawing. Pulling. Screaming at me” (Byrne, The Man of Steel #1, p. 28). That’s when Pa Kent comes up with the idea of the Superman persona and costume: the public will pay attention to Superman and leave Clark alone. Clark isn’t worried about assimilating into society; he is desperate to find privacy–a “fortress of solitude”–“where no one will ever think to look for me” (Byrne, The Man of Steel #1, p. 30)

The Man of Steel ends with Byrne boldly overturning another element of Weisinger-era tradition. In his book Fingeroth traces how editor Mort Weisinger and his writers (who included Jerry Siegel) portrayed Superman as longing for Krypton, as if it were a lost paradise. Fingeroth persuasively establishes that “survivor’s guilt” is a significant theme in Weisinger’s Superman, as well as in Batman and the Silver Age Captain America. These are concepts that would resonate with Jewish-Americans of Siegel and Weisinger’s generation, who were aware that they had survived, whereas the Jews of Europe perished in the Holocaust.

In the final issue of The Man of Steel, Superman discovers that he is from Krypton when one of his dead father Jor-El’s devices imprints that knowledge on his mind. At first Byrne seems to be evoking the theme of “survivor’s guilt” theme and even explicitly alluding to the Holocaust: Superman exclaims, ” A planet that died! Died in a terrible fiery holocaust that shattered the world. . .and left only one survivor. Me!!” (Byrne, The Man of Steel #6, p. 20).

But then, in an extraordinary speech, Superman denies that his Kryptonian background has anything to do with his sense of self: “I may have been conceived out there in the endless depths of space. . .but I was born when the rocket opened, on Earth, in America. I’ll cherish always the memories Jor-El and Lara gave me. . .but only as curious mementos of a life that might have been. Krypton bred me, but it was Earth that gave me all I am. All that matters. It was Krypton that made me Superman, but it is the Earth that makes me human!!” (Byrne, The Man of Steel p. 22). It’s not a question of assimilation. Byrne’s Superman was born and raised in America, and doesn’t consider himself truly Kryptonian at all.

Perhaps this shift in attitude was to be expected, nearly a half century after Superman’s 1938 debut. By 1986 perhaps the majority of Superman‘s readers were two or more generations removed from their immigrant forebears, and had no emotional connection to their ancestral homelands.

(I am well aware that the status of The Man of Steel in current DC continuity is questionable. My point is that it is an example of how contemporary creators in the superhero genre may view longrunning characters differently than a previous generation of creators did.)

Similarly, in the Smallville television series, Clark is the “real” person who is destined someday to adopt the Superman persona. Smallville‘s Clark clearly prefers to consider himself an Earthman, the show portrays Jor-El ambiguously, and its references to Krypton make it seem vaguely sinister rather than an idyllic lost world. Far from longing for Krypton, Smallville‘s Clark would probably be happier if he had no connection with the place (apart from his newly arrived cousin Kara).

Are these shifts in attitude towards Krypton necessary adaptations to changing times? Or is something important in the Superman concept being lost?

So I wonder what is the fate of the superhero genre seven decades after its start. Will it continue to be successfully reinvented and reenergized with each succeeding generation? Or is the superhero genre doomed inevitably to fade in vitality and purpose the further we get from the time and circumstances in which it originated in Depression-era New York City? I will return to this subject and explore Danny Fingeroth’s Disguised as Clark Kent further next week.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF AND OTHERS

You can read my interview with Danny Fingeroth about his book Disguised as Clark Kent in the October 23, 2007 edition of Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week.

Then go read Ken Plume’s interview with Monty Python’s Terry Jones, concerning topics ranging from Chaucer’s humor to the similarities between 21st century America and the Roman Empire, here at Quick Stop.

Now that I’ve written my two hundredth “Comics in Context,” “The Fred Hembeck Show,” which took a break at number 100, will never catch up with me! But the reason that Fred has taken a leave of absence from his Quick Stop column is that he’s been busy putting together a retrospective of his entire career in comics, The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, which comes out next February. You can find out more by visiting the Omnibus’s official site.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Chapter Six of Neil Gaiman’s Eternals series begins by forging the first known connection between the works of Jack Kirby and the collaborations of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Kirby created the original Eternals series in the 1970s, and Chapter Six’s title, “Modified Rapture,” is a famous line from Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 comic opera The Mikado.

Presumably Gaiman is alluding to the concept of the “rapture,” whereby at some point in the future, Christians will be transported into the sky to join with the returned Christ. The parallel in the Eternals mythos is the Uni-Mind, created when Eternals rise into the sky and merge together into a single being that represents their collective consciousness.

On the first page various people, most of them asleep, speak what appears to be the words of the awakening Dreaming Celestial, with the repeated declaration, “I am” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 1). This alludes to Yahweh or Jehovah, the Hebrew name for God, which is commonly believed to mean “I am.” The Dreaming Celestial is asserting his claim to be God, and through Thena’s son Joey, he even says, “Let there be light” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 4), the words with which the Biblical God began the creation of the universe in the Book of Genesis. Readers should remember that he is only one of an unknown number of Celestials, and that the Dreaming Celestial also seems to be based on Lucifer and Cthulhu. If the Dreaming Celestial is a God with a capital G, he is opposition to the other “space gods,” his fellow Celestials. As his blackened armor signifies, the Dreaming Celestial represents darkness, not light, even though the armor regains its original golden color as dawn approaches.

Note that Thena tells Ikaris that “I couldn’t fly well even when I was at full power” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 5). That seems unlikely, considering that she had thousands of years to practice self-levitation; based on the goddess of wisdom, Thena should be capable of mastering such mental feats, and there’s no indication in past Eternals series that she has trouble flying. But Thena’s statement is a reminder that, not having undergone a death and resurrection, she has not been restored to full Eternal status.

The Deviant Morjak captures and threatens to kill Joey. When Thena shows parental concern, Morjak sneers, “He’s not your son. He’s not even the same species as you. He’s your pet” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 9 panel 3). Well, ordinary humans (Homo sapiens), Deviants and Eternals are probably both separate species within the same genus, Homo: Zuras later refers to the Eternals as Homo immortalis (Gaiman issue 7 p. 9). The Deviants are driven by racial prejudices that, in the Kirby series, even led them to condemn other Deviants whose genetic makeup violated certain unstated standards. It is no surprise, then, that the Deviants have contempt for ordinary humans, and even regard them as potential food (see Gaiman issue 6 p. 9 panel 1).

As the Dreaming Celestial’s armor reverts to its original golden color, “the universe shudders and shifts” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 12). This dramatically indicates just how powerful a Celestial, the Dreaming Celestial in particular, can be. Miniscule as a Celestial’s physical armor may be in comparison to the unimaginable vastness of the universe, Gaiman is indicating that the Dreaming Celestial is enough of a “God” to endanger the entire cosmos. I appreciate the inclusion of cameos by Uatu the Watcher (the only character to appear in both Gaiman’s Eternals and 1602) and Galactus, which further establish the Eternals mythos as part of the Marvel universe, and also may allude to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s monumental “Galactus trilogy” in Fantastic Four #48-50 (March-May, 1966). Uatu and Galactus’s reactions to the awakening of the Dreaming Celestial reinforce the impression of the latter’s universe-threatening might. Possibly Gaiman is also alluding to Walter Simonson’s story about a final clash between Galactus and the Dreaming Celestial in an alternate future in Fantastic Four #339-340 (April-May, 1990). Since he refers to the universe “shuddering” as if it were alive, Gaiman could have even worked in Eternity, the living embodiment of the universe, but perhaps including the occult aspects of the Marvel Universe would not quite fit a science fiction/superhero series like Eternals.

Ikaris asks Thena if she is “ready” to help form a Uni-Mind, but Sersi replies that “I don’t think I want to be part of this. . . .I’m not even sure I like changing things into [other] things,” referring to her Eternal super-power (Gaiman issue 6 p. 17). Later she rejects her Eternal identity, declaring, “I’m nort on of you. Please just leave me alone” (Gaiman issue 6, p. 26).

Back when I began my critique of this series in “Comics in Context” #193, I pointed out that the dilemma of these apparent humans like Mark Curry and Sersi who are awakening to their true, godlike selves, was comparable to that of various other characters in fiction, such as Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ and even the Doctor in the 2007 Doctor Who two-parter “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood,” in which he has been transformed into an ordinary human with no memory of his true identity. A recurring theme in such stories is the protagonist’s need to choose between the potential happiness of an ordinary human life and the lonely, more difficult path of the hero or even of a godlike being. Jesus’s “last temptation” is the fast-forward vision of his future as a happily married man with children, ending in his peaceful demise; significantly, the Doctor has a similar vision in “The Family of Blood.”

The initial issues of Gaiman’s Eternals show that Mark Curry’s life has reached a dead end, so it’s not surprising that in the final issues Mark has no regrets about resuming his Eternal identity as Makkari. Sersi, though, clings to her life as a human even when she learns of her Eternal identity, powers and responsibilities. Perhaps Gaiman believes this is true to Sersi’s personality in the Kirby Eternals. KIrby’s Sersi does seem at first glance to be the ultimate hedonist, who devotes her millennia-long life to continual partying.

But I think that this is an incomplete view of the character. Gaiman portrays Sersi as a much more subdued, quieter character than the one in the Kirby series. Kirby portrayed Sersi as uninhibited and passionate in whatever she did. Sersi makes her entrance in the original series by literally dancing (Kirby Eternals hardcover p. 51). She speaks of “the joy of living” and says that Eternals “love a good laugh” (Kirby p. 97). Certainly she does, and she is willing to party at any opportunity, and she clearly loves using her powers to transform atomic structures: as soon as Ikaris and Thena leave her alone with Dr. Samuel Holden, she transforms Holden’s furniture into what appears to be a BIg Band out of the days of Kirby’s youth. “Shall we dance??” she asks Holden (Kirby p. 133).

What readers may overlook is that Kirby shows that Sersi is equally passionate about waging battle when the need arises. She erupts in fury against those party-pooping Deviants in Kirby’s stories. At the end of Kirby’s Eternals #16, the narrator asserts that “In a battle between males, the deciding factor is always an angry woman. . .Next–Sersi the Terrible” (Kirby p. 323), which is the title of the next issue (Kirby p. 325).

So it seems to me that in Gaiman’s series, as Sersi’s powers reemerge, she should be delighted by them, not frightened, and that she should discover that there is a side of her personality that enjoys combat. In Kirby’s version, Sersi was the Eternal who most enjoyed being an Eternal.

In a trance Joey continues to voice the thoughts of the Dreaming Celestial, who says that he once intended to reward whoever freed him by endowing him with “the power of a Celestial,” but then, as his imprisonment wore on, decided to reward his rescuer instead by sparing him “when I destroyed this part of the universe,” and finally, hundreds of millennia later, vowed that “whoever freed me would perish first, and that would be my only gift” (Gaiman issue 6, pgs. 22-23). Here the Dreaming Celestial seems like a genie, who will grant a reward to the person who frees him; instead of three wishes, there are three different versions of the “reward.” Once again, we are reminded that though the other Celestials’ motives are unknowable, the Dreaming Celestial’s passion for destruction is evident.

Ikaris, Thena, Zuras, Ajak and Druig form a Uni-Mind, and here is the greatest visual disappointment in the entire series. John Romita, Jr. draws the Uni-Mind as a glowing humanoid figure (Gaiman issue 6 p. 28), but this is a visual cliche. Kirby’s Silver Surfer is a superior version of the same image. Kirby visualized the Uni-Mind as a colossal floating brain, complete with brows, as if it had eyes (see Kirby p. 198). It may be grotesque, but it is unforgettable, and powerfully conveys in visual terms that it is the collective consciousness of an entire race. Radically altering a Jack Kirby design is usually a mistake, as it is here.

As the Celestials did to the Uni-Mind in Thor #300 (October 1980), the Dreaming Celestial causes this Uni-Mind to dissolve back into its component beings. So, you see, this “rapture” did not last long: it was only a “modified rapture.”

From there Gaiman and Romita shift into a sequence that takes place within Mark Curry/Makkari’s mind, as the Dreaming Celestial, in the guise of Sersi, converses with him. “Sersi” tells him that “I am a tiny part of the mind (a subroutine/a demon/the smallest circuit) of one of the order of beings you call Celestials” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 32).

In the interview in the back of the hardcover collection of this series, Neil Gaiman says that he was attempting to “remain true to the Kirbyness of it all. And that includes. . .making the Celestials rather more unknowable than they have been.” That’s surely why Gaiman specifies that only “a tiny part of the mind” of the Dreaming Celestial communicates with Makkari and, presumably, communicates through the minds of the various humans who voiced his thoughts earlier in issue six. Neither ordinary humans nor Deviants nor even Eternals can comprehend more than this “tiny” part of a Celestial’s consciousness, by which Gaiman probably means the simplest level of a Celestial’s inconceivably complex mind. I’d speculate that Ajak, whose specialty is communicating with Celestials, likewise only communicates with “tiny” parts of their minds. If God exists, humans like ourselves could not fathom what God’s consciousness, capable of monitoring all of time and space while existing beyond both, is like; presumably when God speaks to people in the Bible, it is only a “tiny” part of God’s mind that communicates with them.

Even so, I feel that it’s wrong to have the Dreaming Celestial speak, even in this allegedly limited fashion. Although Gaiman tells us that we perceive only a miniscule portion of the Celestial’s mind, we are nonetheless reading the Celestial’s thoughts. And one of the most important themes of the Kirby Eternals is the absolute inscrutability of the Celestials’ minds and motivations. Remember, in the Kirby series, we did not even know why the Dreaming Celestial was “destroyed.” (Kirby’s narrator even calls it a “tragedy”; it was later stories that established the Dreaming Celestial as a sinister rebel guilty of a “crime against life.”) In the final dialogue in Kirby’s Eternals, Ikaris declares that “The space gods remain an unconquerable enigma–mysterious and majestic among the creatures of the cosmos!” (Kirby p. 377).

When Kirby depicted rival images of God in the “Galactus trilogy,” both Galactus and the Watcher spoke. But in his Fourth World books for DC, the Source, who represents God, communicates only with Highfather, who resembles an Old Testament prophet, and only through “handwriting on the wall,” in an allusion to an episode from the Bible (see Rembrandt’s depiction here). In his Eternals Kirby went further: only Ajak could communicate with Celestials, but, significantly, Kirby never showed us the thoughts that the Celestials conveyed to Ajak. Nor did Celestials literally speak through Ajak the way that the Dreaming Celestial speaks through various people in Gaiman’s Eternals #6. Thus Kirby kept the thoughts and motives of the Celestials mysterious.

At the outset I linked Kirby to Gilbert and Sullivan in part as a joke. But I am serious now in linking Kirby’s Eternals with the works of the late filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. One of Bergman’s themes was the silence of God, and this is one of the principal themes of Kirby’s Eternals as well. Bergman may not have known if God existed or not; Kirby brings his “space gods” onstage but makes the point that we do not and cannot understand them or what they want. We are at the mercy of the judgment of the space gods–or the real God, if God exists–but do not know what they–or God–want from us.

As far as I’m concerned, it is always a misjudgment to portray Celestials as speaking at all. Marvel writers have made this error in the past, for example, with Ashema, the Celestial who took human form.

It no longer seems right to call the Dreaming Celestial by that name since he has woken up. He can’t be the Black Celestial now that his armor has changed color; maybe now he should be called the Golden Celestial. But I will continue to refer to him as the Dreaming Celestial until such time as Marvel gives him a new official name. (So he’s the Dreaming Celestial–with the initials “D. C.”–who threatens to destroy Marvel-Earth. Nah, that’s just a coincidence.)

The Dreaming Celestial claims to have personally created Makkari. But when? Kirby established that Makkari was a comparatively young Eternal, so he’s not a first generation Eternal like Zuras, who would have been created by the First Host. Gaiman and Romita show Makkari battling Deviants just before the arrival of the Second Host (Gaiman issue 1, p. 29). Then again, that’s part of Ikaris’s faulty memories, and also shows Sersi, who was a child at the time of Gilgamesh (see Captain America Annual #11, 1992), long after the Great Cataclysm that sunk Deviant Lemuria. Certainly the Dreaming Celestial has a reason to lie to Makkari, whom he is attempting to enlist as his willing servant. But perhaps, whenever Makkari was conceived, the Dreaming Celestial somehow manipulated his genetic structure from afar to endow him with super-speed.

The Dreaming Celestial instructs Makkari to bring a “message” from him to the ordinary humans, Eternals and Deviants of Earth. It makes sense that Makkari should be a messenger, since Jack Kirby based him on Mercury, the messenger of the Roman gods. Kirby established Ajak as the Eternal who communicated with the “space gods,” so arguably Neil Gaiman has made Ajak’s principal role redundant. Then again, a future writer could have Ajak conveying messages from the other Celestials while Makkari acts as spokesman for the Dreaming Celestial. In the original series Kirby seemed to be setting up the Forgotten One to serve as an agent of the One Above All, and in Thor #287 (September 1979), Roy Thomas brought the Forgotten One back, conveying a message from the Celestials. Now this may be one messenger too many.

So at the beginning of Gaiman’s Eternals, Ikaris was a Campbellian “herald,” delivering a message, a “call to adventure,” that Mark Curry/Makkari refused to heed. Now, as the series draws to an end, Curry has not only accepted his Eternal identity but has become a messenger himself, a herald for the Dreaming Celestial, who warns him that Makkari’s message will also be met with resistance and disbelief: “it is not a good thing to be a prophet, Makkari” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 33).

And what is the Dreaming Celestial’s message? He directs Makkari to proclaim “that I will (watch/listen} and that once I have seen enough, I shall judge” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 34). Thus Neil Gaiman restores a version of the status quo from Kirby’s Eternals series: once again a Celestial stands upon Earth, eventually to deliver a judgment upon it that could lead to the end of humanity.

I can understand why Gaiman did not bring Kirby’s Arishem the Judge back, as if he had changed his mind about the “thumbs up” he gave Earth back in Thor #300. Yet having the Dreaming Celestial serve as judge still weakens the original Kirby theme. Interestingly, Gaiman has Makkari say that he is not certain just what the Dreaming Celestial is judging: “Maybe judge the people on it, but that didn’t seem to be what it meant.” No, I think that Kirby meant for us to think of Arishem as judging the human race: Kirby was evoking the image of the Last Judgment, and even of a harvest: “They planted intelligent life on this planet–the crop has matured. . .the Celestials will test it and weigh its value” (Kirby p. 37).

Moreover, post-Kirby stories about the Eternals mythos made it clear that the Dreaming Celestial is predisposed towards destruction: the Dreaming Celestial tells Makkari that when he woke, he intended to “terminate this (Earth/Planet/Place) and all that walk upon it” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 33). Now the sentient denizens of Earth have to persuade the Dreaming Celestial not to carry out his original plan to annihilate him. It is like trying to persuade Satan or Cthulhu to mellow out: the odds don’t look good. But what made Arishem’s fifty year judgment a more powerful concept is that Kirby gave us no hint of what Arishem thought or what he wanted. How can you persuade a judge when you don’t know the standards by which he judges you? Arishem was utterly unknowable to human minds, just as God might be. “Inside the impregnable armor,” Kirby wrote about Arishem, “is a mind incomprehensible to man” (Kirby p. 123).

Insisting that Zuras and his fellow Eternals register as superheroes, Iron Man and Yellowjacket miss a rather significant point. Sersi is definitely a New Yorker, but the other Eternals in this series, as far as I know, are not American citizens (not unless Sprite legally established them as such when he gave them human identities). If Zuras were a citizen of any human nation, it would be Greece. But perhaps that doesn’t matter to Iron Man or to others with a post-9/11 you’re-with-us-or-you’re-against-us mindset. “Whose side are you on?” demands Iron Man. Drawn by Romita as if he is staring the Avengers down, Zuras points out that the immortal Eternals don’t take sides, that from their perspective countries are merely “lines in the sand” and empires (like the United States?) are transitory. Zuras seems to agree with Sersi, who indicated earlier that the superhero registration act really amounted to forcing persons to take a loyalty oath (Gaiman issue 5 p. 17). When Yellowjacket persists in telling Zuras to register, Zuras gets tougher and sternly informs the Avengers that to the Eternals humans–including Iron Man and Yellowjacket–are merely “children” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 39).

Earlier on that same page Makkari, smiling, informed Iron Man that the Dreaming Celestial “likes you.” Since the Dreaming Celestial is the Satan or Cthulhu of the Eternals mythos, this is not a compliment. It would be nice if that induced Iron Man to reconsider some of his recent Civil War-related behavior.

At the start of issue 7 Gaiman and Romita show us a caricatured family of tourists staring, unafraid, up at the Dreaming Celestial as it looms, unmoving, above San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Gaiman’s point is that people quickly grow blase even about a “miracle” in their midst (Gaiman issue 7 p. 1). This makes the necessary point that the presence of the Dreaming Celestial (who the public does not know is a menace) does not prevent other Marvel series from continuing as before: life goes on.

But I think that Gaiman is being too cynical here, even considering that extraterrestrials are nothing new in the Marvel Universe. (Gaiman establishes through the tourists that the public does not know that the Dreaming Celestial is alive, but they know that his armor is alien in origin.). Besides, I think that any Marvel story in which, say, a costumed superhero walks into a bar, and nobody pays much attention, is subverting what makes the superhero genre work. Superheroes aren’t just like normal people, and normal people should react–with awe and wonder, or with fear and distrust, but with some strong emotion– when a superhero flies by. In Kirby’s Eternals people were awestruck or frightened by the sight of the Celestials appearing in their midst; SHIELD attempted to take action against them. Kirby was also wise to put Arishem the Judge in a place far from civilization, where his presence could be kept relatively secret. Perhaps the Dreaming Celestial should stand in some similarly remote place. (Will any Marvel story set in San Francisco now have the Dreaming Celestial drawn into the background?)

Zuras and Iron Man resolve their staring contest through compromise. Zuras drops his superior attitude, conceding that “I’m not” a “god.” although Zuras declares that the Eternals “defend humanity,” he makes it clear that the Eternals intend to “return to Olympia” and find the missing members of their race (Gaiman issue 7 p. 10). In other words, Zuras indicates that he has no current plans of intervening in human affairs. Since the Eternals are leaving America for Olympia, Iron Man need not insist on forcing them to register, and he and Zuras shake hands. What might happen if, say, the Eternals wend up battling a menace to Earth on American soil remains to be seen.

So in the final issue Iron Man/Tony Stark ends up being more open-minded and lenient in enforcing the registration law, and more like the character I remember and admire. Although Sersi, as noted, is definitely a Manhattanite, he does not insist that she register, either, at least in part because she has no intention of resuming her superhero career. Sersi still cannot remember her stint as a member of the Avengers. (She’s lucky. Sersi was written so far out of character in those early 1990s Avengers stories about Proctor that I wish I could forget them, too.) Stark’s sympathy for Sersi has grown to such an extent that Gaiman and Romita even subtly hint that he is growing attracted to her, and feels hurt when she goes off on her own (Gaiman issue 7 pages 9-11).

Then comes what I expect is the most controversial segment of the series. Zuras finds Sprite on a bus and kills him by snapping his neck (Gaiman issue 7 pgs. 15-17). Yes, it’s another child star who has come to a bad end. Sprite had a death wish, and you know what they say about being careful what you wish for. Last week I observed that, despite his adolescent ambitions, Sprite was like an adult trapped in a child’s body. Here Zuras tells Sprite, “You haven’t been a kid for a million years.”

But Sprite was a child emotionally, and it is downright creepy (as Gaiman surely intended) to watch Zuras murder him. Was this the only possible solution? If Sprite had indeed turned into a normal human boy, couldn’t Zuras have simply imprisoned him somewhere to live out his life, which is all too brief by Eternal standards? (Of course we can’t be certain that Sprite won’t be resurrected by an Olympian reactivation chamber.)

Despite my qualms about Sprite’s characterization and fate, I’m quite pleased with the Gaiman-Romita Eternals, whose richness becomes more apparent on rereading. I wish that it had gone on longer. Neil Gaiman has said in interviews that he felt he had too large a cast in 1602 and did not want to face the same problem in Eternals. But there are many memorable characters from the Eternals mythos whom Gaiman did not use yet who are well worth reviving in the proper hands.

The Forgotten One: He only appeared in a single issue of the original series, yet Jack Kirby told us just enough about him so that this mysterious Eternal remains intriguing, even tragic, three decades later. He was a hero who overthrew tyrants and battled “beasts,” yet, Sprite tells him, “Zuras banished you for your pride! Your will to meddle in human affairs!” Just what did the Forgotten One do to provoke Zuras’s wrath, and was he right, or was Zuras? Confined to an isolated part of Olympia, the Forgotten One was even stripped of his name. Yet later writers established that he was Gilgamesh, the hero of the ancient Babylonian epic, that he was responsible for some of the feats attributed to Hercules, and that he was mistaken for the Biblical Samson. (Hey, Neil, maybe in the Marvel Universe, the Forgotten One was Beowulf, and Grendel and his mom were Deviants.) No writer after Kirby has treated the Forgotten One satisfactorily, but he remain a character of great, untapped potential.

Kro: Recently I brought up Kirby’s Eternals in conversation with a friend, who asserted that the greatest character in the series was Kro, the Deviant warlord. He may well be right, so it’s surprising that he’s missing from the Gaiman series. Kro can serve as the villain in the Kirby series, in which he even takes delight in masquerading as the devil by sprouting horns on his forehead to terrify superstitious humans. Yet for millennia Kro has been in love with the Eternal Thena, who recognizes he is “noble, wise and brave” (Kirby p. 131), values that seem to separate him from the rest of Deviant society. In the Kirby series Kro invites Thena to accompany him to the Deviants’ undersea city of Lemuria. It is a symbolic descent into the underworld. Thena tells him, “Once before I went beneath the waves with you. Mythology records it as an unhappy story” (Kirby p. 131). I believe she is referring to the myth of Hades and Persephone. Thinking about Kro’s undersea home today, I realized that the relationship of Kro and Thena echoes the sexual attraction between the Sub-Mariner and Susan Storm in the early issues of Fantastic Four. Unable to remain together as lovers, Kro and Thena are also unable to remain eternally apart from one another.

The Reject: His fellow Deviants regard him as physically repulsive because he looks exactly like a “normal” human being, who is so handsome that Thena calls him “sweet prince.” But she’s also being ironic. Kirby introduced the Reject (later dubbed Ransak) as a combatant in the Deviants’ gladiatorial ring, “I am what I am,” the Reject once explained: “A thing taught only to make its kill–and prepare for the next” (Kirby p. 244). Never having known love, having trained only to destroy, the Reject can suddenly become like a savage beast. “At that moment,” Kirby’s narrator states at one point, “the Reject’s eyes glaze and his jaws distend like a carnivore at the kill! A snarl escapes his lips!” (Kirby, p. 156). A little later the narrator tells us, “the killing frenzy is upon Reject! Combat is the only life he knows!” (Kirby p. 157).

Years earlier, Kirby had created Orion of The New Gods, a hero who was capable of savage violence, reflected by his cruel, bestial face. Orion needed his living computer, the “Mother Box,” to hide his true face, transforming his ugly features into handsome ones. Similarly, the Reject’s outer handsomeness conceals the beast within.

With his “animal instincts” (Kirby p. 224) and “killing frenzy,” the Reject reminds me of Wolverine and his berserker rages. The Eternals debuted in 1976, two years after Wolverine made his first appearance. I doubt that Kirby was paying any attention to the “new” X-Men at the time. Rather, I see the similarities between the Reject and Wolverine as further evidence of Kirby’s ability to tap into the zeitgeist. His Eternals may not have been a commercial success, but Kirby was still pioneering new developments in the evolution of the superhero genre.

The Reject’s handsome exterior hid his inner savagery, but Thena seemed to sense that perhaps he really had the potential, buried deep inside him, to be a “sweet prince.” She recognizes that his destructive urges are a form ofd self-destruction: “Poor Reject,” she says, “he has the death-wish!” (Kirby p. 204). So she takes the Reject under her protection, attempting to civilize him and even to teach him the meaning of love (Kirby p. 203). So perhaps Kirby was consciously or unconsciously tapping into another myth: Pygmalion and Galatea, with the sexes reversed?

But again, no one has successfully exploited the potential with which Jack Kirby endowed this character.

Karkas: You could regard this gigantic, grotesque Deviant “mutate” as a variation on the Thing in Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Outwardly Karkas appeared to be a ferocious monster, just as his opponent in the gladiatorial arena, the reject, looked like a handsome storybook prince. Yet it is the Reject who can become a monster of savagery, while, when not engaged in combat, Karkas is actually a sensitive intellectual. “Your intellect far exceeds your talents as a monster,” Thena tells Karkas (Kirby p. 202). Karkas even hopes that “I may yet become a philosopher of note!” (Kirby p. 204). Kirby paired these two paradoxical characters, Karkas and the Reject, as a team, mentored by Thena. But among subsequent Eternals writers, only Peter B. Gillis, a former academic, has demonstrated an understanding of Karkas’s personality.

Dr. Samuel Holden: One reason that Gaiman did not use Dr. Holden may be that he claims that even in “Marvel time” thirty years have elapsed between the events of the Kirby series and those of his own. But as I pointed out in column 194, that just doesn’t work: in “Marvel time” less than a decade would separate the events of the two series.

There’s something appealing, charming and even touching about the romantic relationship between Sam Holden, this rather proper academic, and the beautiful, uninhibited Sersi. Jack Kirby could depict their relationship with surprising subtlety: look at how Sersi places her hand affectionately on Holden’s chest on page 279 of the hardcover collection. Peter B. Gillis further developed the Sam and Sersi relationship in the second Eternals series, but other writers didn’t get it and didn’t follow it up.

Ghaur: This is the potentially great villain of the Eternals mythos, yet he was created not by Jack Kirby, but by Peter Gillis and artist Sal Buscema in the second Eternals series. (Ghaur’s name, by the way, is pronounced as “gore,” and I should point out that it was not intended as a reference to Al, who was much less famous in 1985.) As the Deviant priestlord, Ghaur should be even more relevant today, when the toxic mixture of religious fanaticism, violence, and lust for power poses such dangers around the world.

My favorite scene with Ghaur is his first appearance, which takes place in Eternals Vol. 2 #2 (November 1985). It is a meeting between Lord Ghaur and another Deviant, Ranar. On the surface Ghaur speaks quietly and politely, but everything he says has a sinister subtext, a lethal edge like a dagger’s: Ghaur is cutting Ranar to pieces with words that foreshadow his doom.

Stan Lee had a flair for heightened, melodramatic language: back in the 1960s he could make Doctor Doom’s boasts and threats work brilliantly. But in lesser hands, the standard Marvel style for villains’ dialogue degenerated into empty bombast. Gillis’s Ghaur was a new kind of Marvel villain, who spoke in a more sophisticated manner, and whose cunning seemed credible and real.

Many writers used Ghaur after Gillis, but once again, none of them understood what was revolutionary about the character, and they turned him into yet another Marvel villain given to pompous ranting. But in the 1980s first Alan Moore, and then Neil Gaiman brought a more realistic and sophisticated style to comic book dialogue, and a new generation of writers followed in their path. So perhaps today Ghaur could find writers who would understand and recreate the distinctive voice with which Gillis endowed him.

Here is a major problem with the ongoing continuity of the DC and Marvel Universes. Great writers and artists can create brilliant concepts and characters, which are then misunderstood and mistreated by lesser talents who follow on the same series. It is a cause for celebration when another major talent comes along on the series who not only grasps what its creators intended but builds important new work upon it.

This is the case with the Gaiman-Romita Eternals. It’s not perfect, but Gaiman and Romita “get” most of what Jack Kirby intended, and have created a worthy sequel to this underrated Kirby classic, that successfully revitalizes The Eternals for a new century.

And thus I bring my six-part critique of the new Eternals to a close. Please come back next week for a landmark event: the two hundredth edition of “Comics in Context”!

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

This week I continue my examination of Neil Gaiman’s recent revival of Jack Kirby’s Eternals. But first, I want to mention briefly a subject that turns out to be related: the newly released The Last Fantastic Four Story, written by FF co-creator Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita, Jr., the illustrator of Gaiman’s Eternals. It’s like one of the old Superman “imaginary stories”: what might the FF’s final adventure be like? In this saga, the Adjudicator, a gigantic armored alien being with virtually unlimited godlike powers, descends to Earth to deliver judgment on humanity. Seems familiar, doesn’t it? It would not surprise me if Stan Lee had never read Jack Kirby’s Eternals, or, if he had, had forgotten it over in the ensuing thirty years. But surely someone at Marvel should have pointed out that the Adjudicator is uncomfortably similar to Jack Kirby’s Arishem the Judge.

Reading the Gaiman Eternals is more rewarding. When I left off last week, Ikaris had regained his full Eternal memories and powers by thrusting his hand into a waterfall in the Eternal city of Olympia. Having already experienced resurrection, Ikaris thus underwent another kind of Christian imagery: baptism.

Then Sprite, revealed as the principal villain of Gaiman’s Eternals, conforms to standard supervillain practice by “monologuing”: expounding on his grand scheme and motivations to the helpless Mark Curry, alias the Eternal Makkari.

Though he has lived for “the best part of a million years” (Gaiman Eternals issue 4 p. 15), Sprite, for unknown reasons, has never advanced beyond the physical age of eleven, whereas the other Eternals are all adults. He’s right on the verge of puberty, but, as long as he is an Eternal, would never reach it.

Sprite once appeared to the British playwright James Barrie, who based Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up, on him, “back when the only thing I had left to enjoy was messing with the transients,” by which Sprite means we mere mortals. Although most people today are probably more familiar with the heroic depictions of Peter Pan in the Disney film and the Broadway musical, Barrie’s original Peter Pan is a more ambiguous figure.

Sprite is a trickster, and his creator, Jack Kirby, established in the original Eternals series that William Shakespeare put Sprite in one of his plays (Kirby Eternals hardcover, p. 173). Presumably Kirby meant that Sprite was the inspiration for Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and those who know Gaiman’s Sandman story about that play know that Gaiman regards Puck as not some endearing, fun-loving sprite but as a potentially dangerous creature (see “Comics in Context” #65).

So, like Peter Pan, Sprite is a boy who will not grow up. There is a related figure in popular culture: the adult who refuses to admit to his or her true age, who refuses to move on from a time when he or she was younger. There’s Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, an elderly woman still wearing a young woman’s wedding gown, trying to make time stand still, and Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), fantasizing about playing the teenage Salome. In a more comic mode, there are Jack Benny and Absolutely Fabulous‘s Patsy Stone both insisting with increasing absurdity that they are only thirty-nine: Patsy and her friend Eddie are middle-aged women who behave as if the 1960s and their youth never ended.

A recurring variation on this figure is the adult who seems stuck in childhood. I wonder if this image originated with performers like Mary Pickford, the first great star of American silent film (and said to be a possible influence on Little Orphan Annie), who played prepubescent girls well into her thirties; apparently her public resisted her attempts to play characters her own age. Then there’s “Baby June” (later known as the actress June Havoc) who was forced to play little girls long into her adolescence, as dramatized in the classic musical Gypsy. In the 1960 book and 1962 film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? a fictional former child star by that name irrationally plans to revive her act.

Then there’s another variation that cartoon art makes possible: the adult with the body of a child, like Baby Herman in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), who looks like an infant but off-camera has a gravely adult voice and smokes cigars. Again, Baby Herman is a show business performer. Baby Herman is a comedic figure, but an adult mind in a child’s body represents a violation of the normal natural order that can seem sinister. One of the villains in Batman: The Animated Series is Baby Doll, a former television child star who suffers from a rare disease that forces her to remain a small child physically, even though she is psychologically an adult. Then there’s Family Guy‘s Stewie Griffin, the infant who not only speaks in an adult voice but has ambitions of ruling the world.

There is also the reverse: the child in the body of an adult, or with abilities that he or she lacks sufficient psychological maturity to handle responsibly. There’s the Billy Mumy role as the sinister, all-powerful child in the classic Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life,” based on the Jerome Bixby short story. The traditional portrayal of the Hulk is of a being with a tantrum-prone, childlike mind within a superhumanly strong adult body.

On first viewing, Gaiman’s version of Sprite is the emotionally immature child with vast “adult” powers. Enraged at being treated as a child by the other Eternals for a million years, Sprite misused his super-powers to punish them. Using his powers of illusion, he manipulated his fellow Eternals Zuras and Ajak into joining with him in a “Uni-Mind,” a collective consciousness, that drew power from the Dreaming Celestial. (Earlier in the series Gaiman established that it takes at least four Eternals to form a Uni-Mind, but perhaps only three Eternals are necessary if they are psionically linked with the Dreaming Celestial.) Through this Uni-Mind, Sprite stripped the other Eternals of access to their memories and super-powers, effectively turning them into ordinary human beings, with implanted, false memories of leading ordinary human lives. Sprite also transformed himself into a normal human, minus any Eternal powers, so that he could physically age.

But it seems to me that Sprite is also like the adult in the body of a child. Consider the complexity and execution of Sprite’s master plan. Leaving Sprite’s super-powers aside, could an actual eleven-year-old have conceived, planned, and carried out such a scheme? Although Sprite uses words like “cool” and “dumb” the way a real kid might, most of the dialogue that Gaiman gives him, including his monologuing here, reads like an adult speaking.

Moreover, one of Sprite’s principal motivations seems to be intense sexual frustration. He tells Mark about Sersi, “Of course, by then she’d had sexual relations with all the straight male Eternals, all sixty of them, except me. . .because I was eleven. . . “ (Gaiman issue 4 p. 15). This doesn’t seem like a typical crush an eleven-year-old boy might have on an attractive adult woman. That “sexual relations” phrase suggests to me that Sprite, despite being physically prepubescent, psychologically has a very active postpubescent sex drive.

That Sprite quotation also prompts me to digress for a bit. Out of roughly a hundred Eternals, sixty are straight males. So the other forty Eternals are either females or gay males? Seems a bit odd that the male/female ratio isn’t more even. And Sersi has had “sexual relations” with all the straight male Eternals past puberty? Sersi isn’t a first generation Eternal (in fact, you can see her as a child in ancient Mesopotamia in Captain America Annual #11, 1992), so what about her father (who is named Helios, by the way)? Or father figure Zuras? Well, this is the intensely jealous Sprite saying this, so perhaps he’s exaggerating. One of the points of this page of the fourth issue is that over their incredibly long lives the Eternals have sexually paired up in all possible combinations considering their individual sexual orientations. It is gratifying to know that Sersi never stooped to having sex with children, much as Sprite may regret it.

It seems to me that Sprite’s intellect and even his sexual desires have matured, but not his emotions or his capacity for moral judgment. Why does he want to become an adult? “I wanted to be a film star and a rock star and a TV star. I wanted everyone to love me. I’m going to stay a star until I’m in my twenties, for the girls. And then. . .Well, that depends.” Actually, despite his claim that he wants to be treated as an adult, Sprite really seems to want to be an adolescent. He has no concrete goal for himself once he has passed the physical age of nineteen. His current goals are shallow, self-centered, and deeply immature: he just wants to be famous and to be universally loved, and, I suspect, to get laid a lot by “the girls.”

Sprite claims he wants to get older, but emotionally he represents an extreme case of arrested development, or, more specifically and appropriately, the mindset that pop psychology terms “Peter Pan syndrome,” which entails both irresponsibility and narcissism.

The clearest sign of Sprite’s narcissism is his ambition to be a “star” whom everybody loves. Like so many of the other characters I mentioned earlier who are simultaneously children and adults, Sprite is in show business, a field which encourages aging people to take extreme measures to hold onto their youth, and which bestows fame, celebrity, wealth and power upon people who may be too psychologically immature to cope with it wisely.

In Gaiman’s Eternals, television programs consist of Sprite’s lowest common denominator sitcom for tweens and a superhero reality show that turns the noble calling of the superhero into a quest for fame and fortune. (As the Spider-Man theme song observes, “Action is his reward,” not big bucks.) I wonder if Gaiman means to suggest that there is something emotionally immature and adolescent about, not just the current state of the superhero genre, but about American (or British and American?) popular culture as a whole, or perhaps even the American fascination with celebrity and wealth. No wonder that the immature Sprite prospers in such a culture.

I also recall that in Lev Grossman’s profile of Gaiman in July 26, 2007 issue of Time, Neil said that “Five years ago, I was absolutely as famous as I wanted to be. . . .I’m now more famous than I’m comfortable with,” and Grossman observed that Gaiman is “leery of selling out to the popular crowd.” I wonder if in Eternals Neil is using the platform of a Marvel comic, supposedly aimed at the more “popular crowd” among comics readers, to examine the dark side of fame and its pursuit and the dangers of selling out rather than following one’s true calling.

And this is a variation on a classic Marvel theme. Remember that Spider-Man started out as a boy who, upon acquiring super-powers, initially went into show business, until he had to face the terrible result of his self-centered pursuit of fame and fortune: his failure to prevent his uncle’s death.

“I could have done whatever I wanted to the world,” Sprite says. Remember when the Red Skull or Thanos acquired the Cosmic Cube in past Marvel epics, and how they wanted to use it to alter reality on a grand, visionary albeit evil scale. And then consider what Sprite says: “I could have made the seas run red, or made snow taste like chocolate. I thought about it.” Claiming to want to be merely an adult human, Sprite instead achieved godhood, yet he ends up seriously considering juvenile trivialities. “But in the end I settled for this. Stardom and puberty,” which in this context seem merely a higher order of triviality. “I’m a real boy now,” Sprite declares, as if he were Pinocchio’s evil twin (Gaiman issue 4 p. 20).

Trying to imagine his future beyond turning twenty, Sprite says, “But whatever I do, I do it as a human. I can leave the solar system, which is more than any Eternal can” (Gaiman issue 4, p. 20). Well, first, leaving the solar system is not something that humans ordinarily do. Unless Sprite thinks he can steal the Fantastic Four’s spaceship, just how is he going to do this? Second, back in Avengers #248 (October 1984) most of the Eternals, united into a Uni-Mind, departed Earth for outer space, and I do not think that the Eternals, who seem to be such social beings, would be interested in merely exploring the uninhabited planets in our solar system; I expect they left to visit other, inhabited worlds. This also means that Sprite must have used the power of the Dreaming Celestial to bring all those Eternals back from outer space and give them human identities on Earth. I suppose Sprite would think that was a safer course of action for him rather than worrying that the other Eternals might someday return and disrupt his plans.

Then Sprite tells Mark Curry, “I can even die–do you know how cool that is?” (Gaiman issue 4 p. 20). Yet it is hard to believe that someone who is so infatuated with being famous and universally beloved, goals which require being alive, has any comprehension of what death is. Perhaps here Gaiman is criticizing the shallowness of an adolescent fascination with death. Or perhaps Gaiman is indicating that Sprite, who has disposed of his entire community of Eternals, and who has bonded with the Dreaming Celestial, a potential bringer of death, is ultimately motivated by a death wish.

It seems odd that Sprite wants to be mortal when he shows such contempt for mortal humans, calling them “transients” and “mayflies”: remember, he used to devote himself to playing pranks on mortals. To become mortal himself may subconsciously be to direct that hatred towards himself, as if he were punishing himself–as well as his fellow Eternals–for his long life of continual frustration.

Sprite claims he wants to grow up, and “be a man” (Gaiman issue 4 p. 20), but what he really wants is to indulge all his childish fantasies without there being any adult Eternals to tell him no. He really is Peter Pan gone bad, after all. In drawing upon the power of the Dreaming Celestial, the Satan of the Eternals mythos, Sprite has metaphorically made a deal with the devil to remain eternally young–and dangerously immature–to the end of his life, which would come far more quickly than an Eternal could imagine, even if he lived to be a hundred.

Here’s another digression. Gaiman establishes that the prison of the Dreaming Celestial is beneath San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. This enables Gaiman to tie in the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake to his story, and look, Sprite indicates that Olympia was in Antarctica, not Greece, back then, too (Gaiman issue 4 p. 16). But past stories have placed the Dreaming Celestial’s prison beneath the Diablo Mountains (appropriate name) (see the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry). The northern part of the Diablo range lies near San Francisco, but not within the city limits. Well, I suppose this is close enough. It seems that even imprisoned space gods move in mysterious ways. It does seem rather impractical for the Celestials to have imprisoned the Dreaming Celestial in such a seismically active area, though.

A more important question is whether Neil Gaiman’s treatment of Sprite fits Jack Kirby’s original conception of the character. Kirby seems to allude to Shakespeare’s Puck, but Sprite also fits into the long tradition of boy pranksters in comics and cartoon art that encompasses the Katzenjammer Kids and Bart Simpson. Such characters are troublesome, but certainly not evil, and their rebelliousness against authority is appealing. “Kirby’s Margo Damian observes about Sprite, “He’s only a boy! Even young Eternals love to play pranks!” (Kirby p. 173).

Still, I can see from Sprite’s initial appearances in the Kirby series why Gaiman took the character in the direction that he chose. Sprite’s pranks are rather mean, inconsiderate, and even dangerous (see Kirby pgs. 147-149). When Ikaris punishes Sprite by spanking him, Sprite implies he will take revenge (Kirby pgs. 172-173). One Eternal even says, “That little fool, Sprite, will cause a war someday” (Kirby p. 150). Zuras comments, “the youth ignore all but their youth!!” (Kirby, p. 150), a remark which, in hindsight, takes on ominous implications considering Sprite’s behavior in the Gaiman series. It seems to me that Kirby’s version of sprite even vaguely resembles a boyish Loki.

It’s Sprite’s later appearance in the Kirby series that indicates that there may be more to Sprite than the “brat” Makkari claims he is (Kirby p. 173). While most other Eternals have merged into a Uni-Mind, Sprite learns that the Deviants are about to attack the Celestial mothership. I get the impression that the imminent danger has shaken Sprite out of his usual childish misbehavior and forced him to behave like a mature adult. “Oh, stupid Sprite–! Monarch of muddle-heads! You’ve seen too much! The fate of the Earth has been thrust into your quaking lap! Something must be done!” the frightened Sprite tells himself (Kirby p. 260). Sprite goes to the long-exiled Eternal known as the Forgotten One and asks him for help. One could argue that Sprite is merely trying to save his own skin, since he obviously fears that the Celestials might again devastate the Earth in retaliation for a Deviant attack. But it seems to me that Kirby portrays Sprite as genuinely impressed by the Forgotten One’s heroic qualities: “I call upon you for your strength. . .and one unselfish universal act. . .” (Kirby p. 262). (It seems that the outwardly childlike Sprite always spoke in an “adult” manner.)

The original Eternals series was canceled before Kirby could bring either Sprite or the Forgotten One back, so we will never know what he intended to do next with these characters. My hypothesis is that Kirby thought that Sprite was capable of redemption, and that perhaps he intended Sprite to become the Forgotten One’s sidekick when the latter presumably eventually returned to Earth as an agent of the Celestials. Neil Gaiman has taken Sprite in an intriguing direction, but I suspect that this represents Gaiman’s most significant deviation from what I guess were Kirby’s intentions for his Eternals characters.

In a dream Thena recalls a battle in which she single-handedly defeated a hundred thousand Deviant warriors (Gaiman issue 4 p. 21). The sequence reminds me of how much and how quickly Jack Kirby’s concept of superheroines evolved in a decade and a half. In the early Fantastic Four Susan Storm’s super-powers–invisibility and projecting force fields– seemed designed for hiding and shielding her from danger; her male FF partners took much more active roles in combat. The Wasp fired her sting, and Marvel Girl and the Scarlet Witch stood and gestured to use their powers; none of them grappled hand to hand with their adversaries. Big Barda, who debuted in Kirby’s Mister Miracle in 1971, initially seemed like a caricature of a woman warrior, but soon evolved into a more appealing, three-dimensional personality while remaining a formidable fighter. With Thena and Sersi in Eternals in 1976, Kirby created women warriors who were both fierce and feminine.

Chris Claremont rightly gets credit for reimagining the superheroine as the formidable equal of the male superhero in X-Men and other titles in the latter half of the 1970s, but it’s important to note that Jack Kirby was simultaneously moving in the same direction. Though they were from different generations, both Claremont and Kirby were responding to the emerging feminist zeitgeist.

Here’s another problem posed in attempting to deal with “Marvel time,” which moves more slowly than real time. Thena has a son who seems not much younger than Reed and Susan Richards’ son Franklin. But Franklin was born in 1968 in real time, while Joey was presumably born since Thena appeared in New Eternals: Apocalypse Now in 2000. All right, so maybe Sprite used the Dreaming Celestial’s power to alter reality to speed up Joey’s aging process, or maybe even to create him, and make Thena and her husband think he was born and grew normally. (I’m going to expect a pile of No-Prizes once I’ve finished solving all the continuity conundrums in these Eternals essays.)

Waking from her dream, Thena finds herself in her Eternal costume. She tells the confused Joey that “It’s still Momma,” but the omniscient narrator informs us that “And even as she says it, she knows it isn’t true” (Gaiman issue 4 p. 23). (By the way, it’s commendable that Gaiman employs third person narration in captions, which is a classic Marvel tradition but had fallen from favor in recent years.) Notice how John Romita, Jr. draws Thena holding her son up by the back of his shirt. This is hardly the way that a loving mother would carry her child: “Momma” has indeed changed. I disagree with what Gaiman and Romita are hinting here about the Eternals’ attitudes towards humans, but I will return to this subject later.

At the end of issue 4 Ikaris teams up with Thena to stop the Deviants from awakening the Dreaming Celestial, and at the beginning of issue 5 the Deviants Morjak and Gelt capture Sprite. Obviously in transforming himself into an ordinary human, Sprite badly blundered in not anticipating that he might need his superpowers in a circumstance like this. Another Eternal who was long thought dead, Ajak, acts as Campbellian “herald” to the Eternals” leader Zuras, who has been reduced to a mad derelict. Ajak issues the “call to adventure” to Zuras, who awakens to his true identity.

Ajak says that he sent Morjak and Gelt after Ikaris, thinking Ikaris would be safer in the “regeneration chamber” in Olympia. I don’t understand why Ajak couldn’t have just told Ikaris to lie low, or how much “safer” Ikaris really was considering that Ajak admits that he had those Deviants kill him. Ajak confesses that he made mistakes; yes, I’d agree with that.

Then Ajak tells Zuras, “Ikaris is fully reactivated. The other four”–Makkari, Sersi, Thena and Druig–“will not reactivate completely until they go though a death and rebuild, but they are no longer human” (Gaiman issue 5, p. 6). By the end of Gaiman’s series, Ikaris is the only Eternal who has gone through death and rebuilding. What does this mean about the others? They have their powers back, and Zuras and Ajak seem to have their full memories back. Does this mean that, except for Ikaris, the others can be killed, albeit with great difficulty, and then Olympia’s technology will resurrect them and restore them to full Eternal status?

Ajak warns that if the Dreaming Celestial wakes, then the “Horde” will come and wipe out all life, not just on Earth, but in “this part of the galaxy” (Gaiman issue 5 p. 6). This time the word “Horde” is not mistakenly being used to refer to a Celestial Host, nor is this horde to be confused with the Horde from Marvel’s 1980s cult series Strikeforce: Morituri, which is not set in the Marvel Universe and which was co-created by Peter Gillis, one of the authors of the second Eternals series. The Dreaming Celestial later describes the Horde as “the locusts of the universe” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 33). Kirby indicated that Arishem could use a “formula” imprinted on his hand to destroy the Earth. (This is reminiscent of the “anti-life formula” in Kirby’s Fourth World books.) Is Gaiman implying that the Dreaming Celestial isn’t powerful enough to destroy the Earth by himself, and needs to call in the Horde to do it for him?

Then again, Gaiman’s series never explicitly states that the Dreaming Celestial summoned the Horde. Maybe the Horde is used by the other Celestials as a fail-safe: if the Dreaming Celestial should wake then they will wipe out all life in his subgalactic vicinity, thus making sure that he is destroyed.

In a scene that follows, Druig uses his powers to perpetrate a massacre, which he plans to blame on a minority group as part of his plan to take control of the nation of Vorozheika. One of his captives calls, “Hail Druig!” (Gaiman issue 5 p. 13), which should remind readers of “Heil Hitler!”

Last week I observed that there is a trend in pop culture of supervillains succeeding in taking over countries. Several hours after posting last week’s column, I found myself watching an episode of Warners Animation’s Pinky and the Brain on Toon Disney, in which the Brain, mouse turned megavillain, provides me with further evidence by taking over a South Pacific island and renaming it “Brainania.” (From the vantage point of 2007, it strikes me that this 1990s animated series seems unwittingly to foreshadow the partnership of our current President and Vice President: Bushy and the Chene, if you will.)

Morjak tells his captive, Mark Curry, that the Second Host of the Celestials ate Deviants; that Ajak, who can communicate with the Celestials, told the Deviants this; and that the Dreaming Celestial was imprisoned for protesting the devouring of the Deviants (Gaiman issue 5 p. 16).

Readers should be wary of believing this. For one thing, later on, Mark Curry asks the Dreaming Celestial why the other Celestials put him “to sleep,” and the Dreaming Celestial says that Curry “wouldn’t understand” (Gaiman issue 6 p. 32). If the Dreaming Celestial was punished for trying to prevent the Deviants from being eaten, why wouldn’t Mark understand that? No, Gaiman appears to be signaling that the Dreaming Celestial’s offense was something different, something that humans–and Eternals–cannot comprehend. Besides, Kirby did not show the Second Host eating Deviants; rather, Kirby seemed to indicate that the Second Host remained aboard their mothership and struck down the Deviants from above. Moreover, if the Celestials regarded the Deviants as “delicacies,” why didn’t they take the Deviants into space with them, in case they get the munchies during those long interstellar journeys?

The main reason that I object to the idea that the Celestials eat Deviants is that it diminishes what should be the godlike grandeur of the “space gods.” The key to Kirby’s Celestials is their inscrutability. Their reasoning is beyond mortal comprehension; we do not know what they want or what they think. If they gobble up Deviants, who, remember, are closely related to ordinary humans like us, then the Celestials’ motives are all too clear: they are evil beings who regard their sentient creations as if they were livestock bred for the dinner table. The Eternals would therefore be evil themselves for serving such masters. Besides, it diminishes the Celestials’ godlike status even to suggest that they eat. We should not even be certain that the Celestials have physical forms beneath that armor: Kirby never let us see a Celestial without his helmet.

Notice that Morjak says that the Deviants “were the food of the gods” and that Celestials considered a Deviant soul to be a “delicacy” (Gaiman issue 5., p. 16). Morjak doesn’t seem appalled by this; he appears to be speaking with pride. That’s the key to recognizing that Morjak’s speech to Curry is merely self-aggrandizing fantasy. The Deviants want to believe that the Dreaming Celestial, who, like them, rebelled against the Second Host, is their benefactor. But notice that once the Dreaming Celestial wakes, he shows no interest in the Deviants whatsoever, not even as potential snack food. As for Morjak’s claiming that Ajak told the Deviants about this, well, this is hearsay, which would be inadmissible in court. Maybe Morjak genuinely believes Ajak told a Deviant this, but that could be an unfounded rumor. Or perhaps Morjak is just lying to Mark.

Ikaris and Thena, in Eternal costumes, visit Sersi, who says, “I get it. You’re super heroes. This is like an arrest. I’ll be dragged to a secret government CIA torture camp until I sign your frickin’ loyalty pledge” (Gaiman issue 5 p. 17). How interesting that, thanks to Marvel’s Civil War, Sersi now assumes that superheroes work as enforcers for the United States government. Moreover, isn’t it quite possible that by having Sersi talk about a “loyalty pledge,” Gaiman wants to remind us yet again about Civil War‘s superhero registration act? And hey, in Civil War, superheroes who refused to register did get locked up in a secret prison.

Only a few pages later, Sersi’s friend Abigail is watching the reality TV show America’s Next Super Hero, and hears its host say that “If you’re a super hero, doing the right thing is the important thing to do. The right thing.” Like saving lives? Like fighting thieves and murderers? The host continues, “Like getting registered.” And then he welcomes back Grace Darling, the super-powered contestant who had earlier defied “legal waivers” to help fight the terrorists at the Vorozheikan party. Apparently she has been pressured into knuckling under. “This is such a dumb show,” Abigail significantly comments (Gaiman issue 5 p. 21).

As the fifth issue comes to an end, Morjak and Galt utilize Mark Curry’s Eternal powers to free the Dreaming Celestial from his underground tomb. Then the two Deviants wait for sunrise, when the Dreaming Celestial, like dreamers in general, will awake. And you readers must wait a week for the sixth and, I hope, final installment of my critique of Neil Gaiman’s Eternals.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

In the October 9, 2007 edition of Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week, you can read my report on the New Yorker Festival’s “Superheroes” panel, whose participants included Tim Kring, creator of TV’s Heroes; novelist Jonathan Lethem, writer of Marvel’s revival of Omega the Unknown; Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy; and Grant Morrison, writer for Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flash, JLA, Superman, X-Men and many more superhero comics.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Last Sunday I was watching Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey on Turner Classic Movies, and recalled that Jack Kirby did a comics adaptation of this movie, and an ongoing series based on it, during the same period that he was writing and drawing The Eternals at Marvel. And both 2001 and The Eternals deal with mysterious godlike aliens who intervene in the course of human evolution.

Over the last several weeks I have been undertaking a close analysis of Neil Gaiman’s recent revival of Eternals. I pick up the story at the party that Sersi organized at the Vorozheikan consulate (not embassy), as Thena, in her human identity as Dr. Thena Eliot, arrives with her husband Thomas, who edits “famous authors” (Gaiman Eternals issue 2 p. 13). Since Thena is based on Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, it is appropriate that she should marry someone who works with literature. (This relationship also reminds me of the seemingly unlikely but decidedly charming liaison between Sersi and the academic Dr. Samuel Holden in the first two Eternals series.)

So Thena’s husband is Thomas Eliot, who works in publishing. Would his middle name be Stearns, like that of T. S. Eliot, the great poet who worked at the British publishing firm Faber & Faber?

Just as Sersi characteristically dresses in green in Gaiman’s series, as if remembering her Kirby costume, Thena arrives at the party in a gold-colored gown, evoking the colors of her costume from the original Eternals series.

Druig, the Vorozheikan Deputy Prime Minister, has secretly arranged for terrorists to invade the party and take hostages. The terrorists shoot Thena’s husband dead when he stumbles upon them. Then the terrorists confront the rest of the party guests.

Some of the contestants from the reality show America’s Next Super Hero are present, but one of them, Tantrum, says “we’re not allowed” to intervene: “We signed these legal waivers. If we use our powers without authorization, we’re out of the show” (Gaiman issue 2 p. 18). This may be another of the series’ comments on the current state of the superhero genre. A superhero traditionally follows the dictates of his conscience, and acts as an individual, or as a member of a relatively small team. But for Tantrum and company, their superhero careers are inextricably linked with show business. Tantrum won’t stop the terrorists and potentially save lives because he doesn’t want to be dropped from the TV show. The fact that the contestants are obliged by “legal waivers” not to use their powers “without authorization” (By whom? The government? The TV network?) also suggests the downside of putting superheroes under government control, as happened at the end of Marvel’s Civil War series.

Meanwhile, two Deviants, Morjak and Gelt, who are holding Ikaris naked and captive, in what resembles a crucifixion pose (Gaiman issue 2 p. 19), finally succeed in finding a way to destroy him, through what looks like disintegration.

With Ikaris’s demise this first phase of the series reaches a critical point: Sersi, Mark Curry and Thena are also in danger of being killed. These four Eternals have sunk to a low point, indeed.

It is then that the sheer stress of facing death finally forces the reluctant Mark Curry over the Campbellian threshold, in more ways than one. First, his Eternal telepathic abilities activate, and his eyes go blank, as if they were glowing, as an outward sign (Gaiman issue 2 p. 21, panel 3). Curry hesitatingly takes a major step in his budding relationship with Sersi by telepathically telling her, “I think I–I think I may possibly love you” (Gaiman issue 2, p. 22). Finally, at the point of his coming face to face with death, as the terrorists shoot at Curry and the woman he loves, Makkari’s principal Eternal superpower–super-speed–kicks in. As he reacts at superhuman speed, the bullets appear to slow down and stop.

Once again Gaiman reminds us of one of his characteristic themes by having Mark liken his situation to “some kind of dream” (Gaiman issue 2 p. 22), but the pain he feels when he touches the bullet provides evidence that it is real.

Then he realizes that “I’m not dressed for this” (Gaiman issue 2 p. 23). Perhaps he means that ordinary clothing cannot withstand the stresses of moving at super-speed. (Were this a Silver Age Flash comic, an editor’s note would inform us that the heat of friction at such speed would burn ordinary clothing off.)

Perhaps there is a second meaning to “not” being “dressed for this.” Maybe Curry is coming close to realizing that he should be operating in his Makkari costume and identity. Indeed, as he thinks about the kind of costume he should be wearing, we see it materialize about him. Is he imagining this? Or are his Eternal powers somehow bringing the costume partly into being?

Lately I’ve been wondering about the degree to which Kirby’s Eternals fit Dr. Peter Coogan’s definition of the superhero (see “Comics in Context” #162). Dr. Coogan contended that a superhero typically possesses powers, identity (ordinarily meaning a costumed identity that is separate from his everyday self), and mission (meaning an ongoing mission, usually to fight injustice and protect the innocent, not simply resolving a temporary problem). In the original Kirby series, the Eternals certainly had super-powers, but they did not have dual identities, except for Ikaris’s short-lived guise of “Ike Harris.” Moreover, although they responded when Deviants made trouble, the Eternals otherwise seemed to lack a sense of mission, except for Ajak, though his service to the Celestials doesn’t qualify as combating evil. In the Kirby stories, Sersi’s “mission,” if you could call it that, was having a good time, and she considered fighting Deviants necessary interruptions in her chosen life of hedonism.

The Gaiman series more clearly presents the principal Eternals as superheroes. Gaiman gives them human identities and roles in human society, so that their identities as Eternals more closely resemble the costumed identities of conventional superheroes. “Mark Curry” is a much more fully realized human identity for Makkari than “Ike Harris” was for Ikaris in the Kirby series.

Furthermore, Gaiman later explicitly states that the Eternals have a mission: their leader Zuras says that “We preserve life, We defend humanity. We will protect the Earth, until the Celestials decide that the Earth is done” (Gaiman issue 7 p. 10). Indeed, one of Sprite’s major sins is to forsake this mission for which the Celestials seemingly intended the Eternals.

So Mark Curry briefly perceives his own costumed identity. Initially he resorts to his default setting, the state of denial: “I’m hallucinating.” But he immediately corrects himself and crosses the threshold, accepting the truth about himself: “I’m not hallucinating. It’s happening. I’m moving at hyperspeed. . . ” (Gaiman issue 2, p. 24).

It’s rather surprising that Jack Kirby, creator or co-creator of a number of super-speedsters (including Quicksilver and the New Gods’ Fastbak) was rather uninventive in the uses to which Makkari put his super-speed in the original Eternals series. Kirby obviously wasn’t a reader of Silver Age Flash comics.

So it’s very rewarding to see how thoroughly Neil Gaiman has thought out what it would be like to move at super-speed, as he demonstrates in the opening pages of his third Eternals issue. I can’t recall ever previously reading a superspeedster story that makes use of the “red shift” and “blue shift” in the electromagnetic spectrum to indicate movement (Gaiman issue 3 p. 3, panel 1).

In the course of his super-fast battle with the terrorists, Mark explains that he “must have crashed into the gunmen at the speed of a racing car. . . .It was a miracle that no bones were broken, Mine, I mean. They weren’t so lucky” (Gaiman issue 3 p. 4). This makes me wonder about all those Silver Age tales with a racing Flash socking Captain Cold or the Mirror Master: The Flash would have had to slow down just before hitting them or he would have shattered his hand–and their jaws.

Two of the superhero reality show contestants watch the melee. One of them, Grace, wants to intervene, despite the legal waivers that bind them. Another contestant refuses, making his priority clear: “I’m going to be a star.” (Notice: his choice mirrors that of Sprite.) To her credit, Grace declares, “The show be damned” and goes into action against the terrorists (Gaiman issue 3 p. 4). Readers should recall at this point that Gaiman has established that although Grace is physically only seventeen, she was born in the 1820s (Gaiman issue 2 p. 10). Hence she is not as much a part of 21st century American culture as her fellow contestants are.

Narrating the battle and its aftermath, Mark says that “if I have super-speed, then I have to become a registered super hero, and I don’t really want to be a hero, registered or otherwise” (Gaiman, issue 3, p. 5). So Mark still hasn’t crossed his final threshold: emerging from his rut of an existence to become a superhero. Moreover, he still clearly does not understand or accept that being an Eternal means more than being a conventional superhero.

But notice that he immediately thinks that he has to become a “registered superhero.” Civil War has so redefined the status of superheroes in Marvel’s America that Mark doesn’t think superheroes–who should be symbols of individual liberty and conscience– have any other option than to report to the government.

“So I didn’t know what to say,” Mark continues, “But then there’s an amplified metal voice, and it says. . . .” (Gaiman issue 3 p. 5). Right on cue, it is Iron Man, the foremost advocate of superhero registration in the Civil War series and its tie-ins, and Gaiman seems to be suggesting that if Mark doesn’t know what to “say” about superhero registration, Iron Man will tell him.

When I started reading Iron Man stories back in the Silver Age, Iron Man–as Tony Stark–was the innocent target of government investigations. I recall how in the 1970s, in the wake of the Vietnam War, Stark gave up making munitions, and how during the “Armor Wars” storytline of the 1980s Iron Man even defied the law in order to destroy what one might call battlesuits of mass destruction that had fallen into dangerous hands. So I find it hard to accept the Iron Man/Tony Stark of Civil War, who has become the spokesman for a federal government seeking to maximize its control over the nation’s superheroes.

Significantly, Iron Man smashes in through a window and then, not bothering to go back the way he came, exits by smashing a hole in the ceiling. He is government authority acting like the proverbial bull in the china shop. You may also notice that he doesn’t bother to inquire (unless it was between panels) if anyone is hurt. No, it’s not like the Iron Man who was once my favorite Marvel hero.

It appears that the crisis situation likewise forced Sersi over the threshold: Mark recalls that “I saw a knife turn into a flower” (Gaiman issue 3 p. 5), indicating that Sersi, perhaps unconsciously, used her psionic power to rearrange the atomic structure of matter.

Gaiman then reveals that so far in issue 3, Mark has been narrating his story to Sprite. Since Ikaris had told him that Sprite was also an Eternal, Curry sought him out. Mark tells Sprite that now that the crisis is over, he can no longer move at super-speed. Curry says that when he was at the “embassy” (Consulate!), he felt “as if I became part of some huge greater mind” (Gaiman issue 3 p. 7). This indicates that, in the face of extreme danger, Makkari, Sersi, Thena, and, as we learn later, Druig, had subconsciously linked together telepathically into a mini-version of the Eternals’ collective consciousness, the Uni-Mind. But perhaps another reason that Curry can’t use super-speed is that he still doesn’t want to be a “hero” or Eternal, and has therefore subconsciously blocked his super-powers. He has crossed an early Campbellian threshold by deciding to actively investigate his possible Eternal background, and even traveled to a sort of enchanted realm–California–but metaphorically Curry sttill has a long way to go.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, one of the subjects of Gaiman’s Eternals is religion, at least as a metaphor. In the next scene, in which Morjak and Gelt drop their human disguises and assume their true Deviant forms, Gaiman points to the dark side of religious faith: religious fanaticism, which is all too relevant a theme in the early 21st century. The warping of religion into something destructive was a theme of the Kirby Eternals series, through “Purity Time,” and in Peter B. Gillis’s Eternals Vol. 2, in which the principal villain was the Deviant priestlord Ghaur.

Morjak and Gelt worship the Dreaming Celestial, who has also been called the Black Celestial, the Great Renegade, and Tiamut in past stories.

The Deviants credit the Dreaming Celestial with creating their race. Actually, in What If Vol. 1 #23 (October 1980) a backup story (which was canonical, not a “what if”) established that the Celestial known as Ziran the Tester created Earth’s Deviants. So perhaps the Deviants are wrong. But it makes sense that they–or their ancestors–decided that the Dreaming Celestial created them, because the Deviants look upon themselves as outsiders and rebels, just as the Dreaming Celestial was with regard to the Celestials’ Second Host.

Morjak and Gelt’s error about who created the Deviants should remind us that we should not accept anything that they say about the Dreaming Celestial’s past as absolute truth. What they and the other Deviants say about the Dreaming Celestial is what they want to believe about him. For example, Morjak and Gelt state that the Dreaming Celestial was “the greatest of all the Celestials.” But this seems unlikely: Jack Kirby seems to have intended the “One above All,” who remained in a starship orbiting the Earth, to have been superior to any of the Celestials who descended to the planet. The Celestial known as Exitar the Exterminator, whose size dwarfs Arishem’s, and who was introduced in Thor #387 (January 1988), also appears to be “greater” than the Dreaming Celestial.

Though the Deviants believe that the Second Host punished the Dreaming Celestial for creating their race, this is unlikely. It is standard operating procedure for the Celestials to create Deviant races in their genetic experiments on various planets: for example, the shapeshifting Skrulls are an extraterrestrial race of Deviants (see The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry).

Rereading the Kirby Eternals in its new hardcover collected edition, I was surprised to realize how little he tells us about the Dreaming Celestial in it; Kirby never even calls him the Dreaming Celestial or gives him any other name. In the original Eternals series the Dreaming Celestial only appears on two pages (Kirby Eternals hardcover, pgs. 344-345). We see that the Dreaming Celestial wore golden armor, suggesting that he once shone like Lucifer. Kirby tells the readers that this golden Celestial was a member of the Second Host that visited Earth when he committed some mysterious, unknown act. The rest of the Second Host responded by utilizing a mighty weapon to destroy him. Kirby’s seems to use this outcast Celestial merely as a set-up for his storyline in which Druig attempts to locate this Celestial weapon. As far as the original Eternals series is concerned, the golden Celestial was dead.

It was the second Eternals series, from 1985-1986, and Walter Simonson, who wrote its concluding issues, that revealed that Kirby’s outcast Celestial was still alive, named him the Dreaming Celestial, and established that he was imprisoned, sleeping, beneath a mountain range in California. Should the Dreaming Celestial be awakened, catastrophe would ensue; either the Dreaming Celestial would perpetrate havoc of some kind, or the other Celestials would return to Earth to wage a battle against him that could cause incredible devastation.

In the original series Kirby had the Deviant warlord Kro pose as the devil by using his shapechanging powers to grow horns on his head. But, as reconceived in the second Eternals series, it is the Dreaming Celestial who is the true counterpart to Satan in the Eternals mythos. Like Lucifer, he once shone with light, but he rebelled against the “space gods” and was cast deep underground, the traditional location of hell: his shining golden armor turned black. Sleeping in a deathlike coma beneath the mountains, the Dreaming Celestial is like a combination of Dante’s brobdingnagian Satan, imprisoned, nearly immobile, at the bottom of the pit of hell, and Cthulhu or another of H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional monstrous deities, now imprisoned but awaiting a time when they will break free and reconquer the Earth.

In Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928), a cult chants the line “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” Gaiman’s Morjak and Gelt refer to “our dead lord dreaming” (Gaiman issue 3 p. 10).

Considering Gaiman’s interest in Lovecraft’s work, as demonstrated by short stories in his collections Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things, it should be no surprise that he chose to use the Dreaming Celestial in his Eternals series.

Iron Man remembers Sersi from her stint as a member of the Avengers. Since the Avengers is such a high profile superhero team on Marvel-Earth, one might think that Sersi would have been recognized as a former Avenger by somebody–any member of the general public–long before this. Did Sprite wipe out everybody else’s memory of Sersi’s Avengers membership but somehow overlook Iron Man?

Mind you, it’s also odd that Sersi, who prefers to pursue a life of pleasure, would ever have chosen to become a full-time Avenger in the first place. But if I have to rationalize this, since Eternals lead such long lives, I suppose she might have decided to try being a full-time superhero for a while as a change of pace.

Iron Man is supposedly Sersi’s friend and colleague. In fact, it’s likely that as Tony Stark he would have known Sersi as the reigning hostess of Manhattan parties long before she went public as an Eternal. But rather than express any delight in seeing her again, Iron Man immediately tells her “to get registered” as a superhero or “face any potential consequences,” a not particularly veiled threat (Gaiman issue 3 p. 13). Suffering from Sprite-induced amnesia, Sersi denies having super-powers or ever being in the Avengers. You might think that it would occur to Iron Man that she has lost her memory and to show concern for her, but no, he decides that she’s just putting on an act to avoid registration.

I really liked Iron Man for decades, and as recently as when Kurt Busiek was writing his series. But that was before Civil War.

The formation of the Uni-Mind awakened Druig’s psychic ability to manipulate minds. Mark Curry can no longer access his briefly reawakened super-speed, perhaps because he is not yet willing to accept his super-powers and Eternal identity. In contrast, Druig wants power and embraces it: he retains his reactivated mental powers and uses them to kill his treacherous associate Prykrish. Notice how Druig’s eyes glow when he uses his powers. In the original series Jack Kirby established that the Eternals’ powers manifested themselves through their eyes.

Held captive by the terrorists, anguished over the murder of her husband, and concerned for her missing son, Thena is still undergoing the stress that played a role in activating her fellow Eternals’ powers at the party. Again, Thena was inspired by Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Gaiman here establishes that Thena, as an Eternal, possesses superhuman intelligence as her distinctive super-power. I like the way he does this: as this power reasserts itself, the narrator tells us that Thena “is used to being smart. But her head is changing–strategies and tactics present themselves, are rejected or accepted faster than she can cope with on a conscious level” (Gaiman issue 3, p. 16). Compared with a normal human mind, Thena’s is becoming more like a computer: she has the “computer-like mind” that Legion of Super Heroes stories have long told us was Brainiac 5’s super-power.

Athena was also the Greek goddess of war. So that’s why, as Thena’s Eternal abilities resurface, she discovers that “she is a weapon” (Gaiman issue 3, p. 17). She hurls a plate at one of her captors as if it were a discus, an object that originated in ancient Greece.

Thena calls Iron Man for help, and when he arrives, he says “I don’t know what to say” about the death of his employee’s husband. When Thena asks him if he knows “who’s looking after my son,” Iron Man replies, “I don’t. I should have checked.” This armored Avenger seems to have let his capacity for human empathy grow rusty. Quietly angry, Thena observes that “The rules don’t apply to you,” which is a more ironic comment than perhaps she realizes, since Iron Man has been busily enforcing the superhero registration rule. Iron Man replies, “Thena. . .I said I was sorry” (Gaiman issue 3, p. 21). Actually, he hadn’t, but he’s saying it now, and that’s a good first step.

Then on the final page of the third issue, the scene shifts to Antarctica, where we find Ikaris’s body intact, and a voice, presumably that of a computer, states, “Ikaris complete. Prepare to reactivate” (Gaiman issue 3, p. 22). In the opening pages of the next issue Ikaris is indeed returned to life, and he finds himself in the Eternals’ city of Olympia. Having been “crucified” and killed, Ikaris has now undergone resurrection and finds himself in a science fiction equivalent of heaven, the home of the Eternals.

Jack Kirby set Olympia atop or near Mount Olympus, in Greece, which, according to Greek myths, was the home of the gods. I can see why Gaiman decided to move it: in an age of air travel and spy satellites, it would be impossible to keep a city atop a mountain in Greece secret. I assume that mountain climbers have been scaling Mount Olympus for centuries.

So Gaiman has moved Olympia to Antarctica, where human visitors are far less likely to intrude. Since Gaiman establishes that Olympia is apparently run by a computer system, perhaps this artificial intelligence has the ability to move the entire city from place to place. Or maybe Sprite, using the Dreaming Celestial’s power, moved it there to put the city out of the way. So, if Ikaris and Druig are Polar Eternals, I suppose that the Olympian Eternals are now South Polar Eternals.

Olympia’s new polar location is inevitably reminiscent of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Even Ikaris’s resurrection in an Antarctic chamber reminds me of Superman’s return to life within a “regeneration matrix” in his Fortress in the course of the 1990s “Death of Superman” storyline.

So now we have an all-purpose explanation for the resurrection of Eternals, like Zuras and Ajak, who were believed to be dead. Even if an Eternal dies far away from Antarctica, Eternal technology can retrieve his remains and reconstruct and reanimate them. So presumably the Forgotten One, a. k. a. Gilgamesh, who was supposedly killed in the “Avengers: The Crossing” storyline, is still alive somewhere out there.

A few pages after this Olympia sequence, Druig states that he has “a country to take over” (Gaiman issue 4 p. 5). It used to be that supervillains tried to take over countries, or even the world, and failed. But the supervillain actually controlling a nation is an increasingly common phenomenon. Doctor Doom, as monarch of Latveria, was the pioneer, and has been followed by Magneto with Genosha, Lex Luthor becoming President of the United States, and even the Master being elected Prime Minister of Great Britain in this year’s series of Doctor Who.

On the following page (Gaiman issue 4 p. 5) artist John Romita, Jr. draws Sersi wearing a string bikini. Jack Kirby never did this. This is an unquestionable improvement over the original series.

Sersi, still refusing to believe she has super-powers, playfully tries to turn a cat into a dragon, and to her horror, succeeds. Mind you, in terms of personality, there isn’t that much difference between dragons and many cats that I’ve met.

On a Campbellian hero’s journey, the protagonist often has a mentor or guide. I believe that various stories also feature what we could call the false mentor, who seeks to lead the protagonist astray. Mark Curry has turned to Sprite for guidance in solving the mystery of his true origin. The fact that Sprite, though he has lived for a million years, looks like an eleven-year-old child, rather than like the wise older man who usually fills the role of the hero’s guide, may be a sign that Sprite is a false mentor.

Sprite has always been characterized as a trickster, and tricksters come in many varieties: good (Figaro, Bugs Bunny, Spider-Man), morally ambiguous (like Star Trek‘s Q), and downright evil (like the Joker). Neil Gaiman wrote an entire novel about tricksters, Anansi Boys, which this column has analyzed at great length (starting with “Comics in Context” #105). Anansi Boys‘ protagonist, Charlie, gains the abilities of a trickster deity while becoming genuinely heroic. Sprite proves to be the primary villain of Gaiman’s Eternals.

Acting as false mentor, Sprite tricks Mark Curry into crossing an ominous threshold: Sprite persuades Curry to touch a black rock that provides them entrance to the underground prison of the Dreaming Celestial (whose armor, remember, is black like the rock). Of course, this is a symbolic descent into the underworld, especially considering that the Dreaming Celestial is the Eternals mythos’s counterpart of Satan.

Then Sprite manipulates Curry into trying to cross another threshold, a literal “barrier” (Gaiman issue 4 p. 7) which is likewise black. Curry hurls himself at this threshold but cannot breach it, and instead causes himself to start to “shut down,” as Sprite puts it. Instead of passing through a threshold and entering a world of new life, Curry, by following the false mentor’s guidance, has instead fallen victim to symbolic death.

Sprite explains that “as an Eternal, you’re hardwired not to be able to attack or harm a Celestial. . . You shut down if you try” (Gaiman issue 4 p. 8). Thena confirms this later in the series (Gaiman issue 6, p. 23). But the Eternals attacked Celestials in Thor #300 (October 1980) and in Eternals Vol. 2 #12 (September 1986).

Well, I suppose that in the case of the latter story, the Celestial in question was actually the Deviant Ghaur in Celestial form, so that might have made the difference. In Thor #300 the Uni-Mind’s unsuccessful attack on the Celestials caused the (temporary) death of Zuras, so perhaps Zuras somehow took the entire “shut down” effect upon himself. So here’s another case in which I can figure out how to reconcile revisionism with past continuity, but I wish the revisionism hadn’t occurred in the first place. So why didn’t the Celestials “hardwire” the Deviants not to attack them?

Meanwhile in Olympia, Ikaris symbolically crosses another threshold by thrusting his hand into what seems to be a waterfall. Water symbolically gives life, and Ikaris regains his full memories and thus his true identity (“I am Ikaris of the Eternals”), his full Eternal powers, and even his mission (“I was created to protect the Earth, and everything that moves upon it.”), thereby satisfying Dr. Coogan’s three requirements for being a superhero (Gaiman issue 4, p. 14). Ikaris’s literal resurrection and symbolic rebirth are now complete.

Dr. Coogan would surely be pleased that Sprite now engages in classic supervillain behavior: what The Incredibles termed “monologuing.”

But wait! Since when did Sprite, treated by Kirby and other writers as merely a juvenile prankster, become an archvillain? That is a question I will explore next week.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR OTHER PEOPLE

Last month I reviewed the exhibition “Reflecting Culture: The Evolution of American Comic Book Superheroes” at the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey (see “Comics in Context” #193). On Saturday night, October 13, at 7 PM, comics writers Danny Fingeroth, Tom DeFalco and Denny O’Neil, and Michael Uslan, an executive producer of the Batman live action movies and the forthcoming Spirit film, will be holding a panel discussion at the museum, thereby recreating the panel they did at the Smithsonian Institution last year. I recommend that those of you who live in the vicinity go see the exhibit and hear what these veterans of the superhero genre have to say.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

In the interview in the back of the hardcover collection of Neil Gaiman’s revival of Jack Kirby’s Eternals, Gaiman says, “One of my favorite things about this – which… takes advantage of… the nature of time in the Marvel Universe–is that in my story, the Third Host did indeed arrive; Arishem came down to judge. In 1976.”

First, as those of you who have been reading this column for the last two weeks may recall, Arishem came to judge Earth as a member of the Fourth Host of Celestials. More importantly, Neil Gaiman has a different understanding of “Marvel time” than I do.

Time passes much more slowly for Marvel’s fictional characters than it does in the real world. Otherwise, Peter Parker (alias Spider-Man), who was fifteen in his first appearance, published in 1962, would now be sixty. When I was active at Marvel in the 1980s, the rule was that in Marvel time it had been seven to ten years (depending on who you talked to) since the events of Fantastic Four #1, published in 1961. My impression is that John Byrne, a staunch defender of the “Marvel time” concept, would contend that no matter how much time has now passed since the publication of FF #1, it is still seven-to-ten years in Marvel time since the FF’s origin (see “Comics in Context” #25). I also have the impression that the current editorial team at Marvel, if they think about Marvel time much at all, may have now stretched the seven-to-ten years to as much as fifteen. This is a mistake (Should Spider-Man be thirty?), but that’s a subject for another day.

Had the original Eternals series by Jack Kirby been completely divorced from other known characters in the Marvel Universe, I would have no problem with the idea that it took place thirty-one years ago in Marvel time. But in the Kirby series two kids put together a robot simulacrum of the Hulk, and Sersi temporarily turns a student’s face into a replica of the Thing’s (Kirby Eternals collection p. 106). There is no way that in Marvel time the origins of the Hulk and the Thing occurred thirty-one years ago. Therefore, the Fourth Host had to arrive sometime within the last seven, ten or fifteen years of Marvel time, depending on your interpretation.

Ultimately, though, exactly when the Fourth Host arrived is a minor matter in the story: what is important is that they did, some years before Gaiman’s Eternals storyline begins. In the context of the series, it is Ikaris, who confesses that he has a faulty memory, who says it was “thirty years” since the Fourth Host came, so we can easily interpret this reference as a mistake on Ikaris’s part that nonetheless serves as a winking acknowledgment to the readers that Gaiman’s series marked the thirtieth anniversary of Jack Kirby’s original opus.

As for what happened after the Fourth Host landed, Ikaris admits that “I don’t really remember all of it after that,” but he does recall that the Fourth Host returned to outer space (“I guess you must have been okay,” Ikaris says, and, indeed, Arishem literally gave humanity a thumbs-up in Thor #300 in 1980), and thinks (correctly) that he “succeeded Zuras as the leader of the Eternals” (Gaiman Eternals issue 1 page 33).

Ordinarily I believe in strict adherence to Marvel continuity. But I also believe in not dragging more references to past continuity into a story than are necessary. Actually, Zuras died (or so we readers thought), and he was initially succeeded as the Eternals’ leader by his daughter Thena, before Ikaris succeeded her. But there is no need in the present storyline to go into that much detail, so Gaiman wisely leaves it out. Similarly, for the purposes of the new series, we do not need to know the circumstances under which the Fourth Host departed Earth.

Thus the injured Ikaris, alias “Ike Harris,” finished recounting the backstory of the Eternals to a medical student named Mark Curry, who has lost his memory of his true identity, the Eternal known as Makkari. Curry reacts with utter disbelief, pointing out that if the Fourth Host had landed, then their existence would be public knowledge. Back in the first issue of the second Eternals series, in 1985, writer Peter B. Gillis established that when the Fourth Host left Earth in Thor #300, they wiped out humanity’s memories of the Eternals, Deviants and Celestials, making a few exceptions, such as Sersi’s companion Dr. Samuel Holden. (In fact, Dr. Holden discovered that even when he told his students about the Eternals, Deviants and Celestials, they immediately forgot!) Arguably this violates Jack Kirby’s intentions, since he not only did numerous scenes in which humanity reacted to the colossal Celestials in their midst, but even did an issue in which Dr. Holden publicly revealed the existence of the Eternals and Deviants at New York’s City College (in Eternals Vol. 1 #6, 1976). But I expect that Gillis and Gaiman both believe that, now that Eternals is so explicitly set in the Marvel Universe, whose denizens are already well aware of the existence of superheroes and aliens, that the Eternals and Deviants can retain a certain mystery by operating out of public view.

Curry then demands to know why, if there were millions of Deviants before the coming of the Second Host, why they haven’t rebuilt their numbers to millions again. Gaiman never answers this question in the new series. In Iron Man Annual #6 (1983) the Eternals got rid of many Deviants, including their leader Brother Tode, by rearranging their atomic structures into a gigantic block which they transported into outer space. This was probably an effort by Marvel to reduce sharply the number of Deviants on Earth, but it still doesn’t explain why the Deviant population had not soared into millions.

Kirby provided a possible answer in the original series through the Deviants’ “Purity Time,” described as “an infamous ritual which never ends” (Kirby, p. 137).

Each Deviant is radically different genetically from the others. The Deviants nevertheless believe that this genetic variety must be kept within certain bounds. Through the endless “Purity Time,” any Deviant whose genetic deviations are judged to be too extreme is sentenced to be destroyed. The Deviants’ leader Brother Kro declared, “Killing serves a practical purpose here! It rids us of the unwanted” (Kirby p. 141). It is unclear what the Deviants’ standards for acceptable genetic variety is, but Kirby shows us that one Deviant, whom he called the Reject, was condemned because he looked exactly like a handsome normal human being. Since all other Deviants look grotesque, and look different from one another, then Kirby is showing us that their standards of racial purity make no sense (and by extension, that any standards of racial “purity” are nonsensical). The Deviants in power are simply venting their violent hatred and exercising their will to power by seemingly arbitrarily seeking out and executing scapegoats.

Deviants condemned in “Purity Time” are transported in “death wagons” (Kirby, p. 137). What happens to them? The Deviant warlord Kro points towards a structure emitting flame, like a gigantic oven (Kirby, p. 139). Kirby also makes reference to “Purity Time” as a “solution.” As in “the Final Solution”?

Lately much attention has been given to the role of Jewish-Americans, including Kirby, in creating and developing the superhero genre. (For example, Danny Fingeroth’s new book on the subject, Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero, will soon be available in bookstores.) On rereading the Kirby Eternals series, it’s obvious to me that “Purity Time” was inspired by the Holocaust.

Hence, it was a serious mistake when the second Eternals series purported that “Purity Time” did not execute “unwanted” Deviants after all. Instead, it contended that the Deviant priesthood placed the supposedly condemned into suspended animation, so that they could eventually serve as the priesthood’s private army. The people responsible for this reinterpretation of “Purity Time” didn’t understand Kirby’s Holocaust imagery at all.

So, if we follow Kirby’s original vision of “Purity Time,” arguably the Deviants, through their fanatical obsession with genetic “purity,” have ended up self-destructively restricting the size of their own population.

Later in Gaiman’s series, after Druig takes over the government of a former Soviet republic and causes the brutal murders of numerous people, the narration informs us that “Tomorrow they will announce that atrocities have been committed by. . who? Gypsies, perhaps, or homosexuals or Slavs. And he will have them rounded up. And it will be necessary to bring back the secret police. And without knowing why, he feels like this is a return to the good old days, the very old days” (Gaiman issue 5, p. 13). So perhaps Neil Gaiman did spot the Holocaust imagery in Kirby’s Eternals, and this is his own allusion to it.

Elsewhere in the Kirby series, the Eternals and human guests Margo Damian and Sam Holden form a group “Uni-Mind” by plunging into what appears to be a gigantic flame. Sersi tells Sam, “That flame is life, not death! It is life as you have never known it before!” (Kirby p. 212). This is another variation on the familiar death and rebirth motif, with the Uni-Mind serving as a kind of afterlife, a higher spiritual state beyond mortal existence. But it also strikes me now that the Uni-Mind “flame” is the opposite of the flame that rises from the “Purity Time” oven. As Kirby intended it, the fires of “Purity Time” bring annihilation, but the “flame” of the Uni-Mind brings a higher, transcendent form of life.

Curry asks Ikaris if Eternals could “interbreed with humans,” and Ikaris replies, “I guess so” (Gaiman issue 1 p. 35). At this point Ikaris is unable to recall that long ago he had a human son, also named Ikaris, for whom he built a flying device. After the younger Ikaris fell from the sky to his death, inspiring the myth of Icarus [sic], his father took the name “Ikaris” in his honor. (See Eternals Vol. 2 #5, February 1986, and here.) Curry points out that Ikaris claims that Eternals can also breed among themselves.

So, Curry asks, why are there still only a hundred Eternals? With their genetic immunity to illness and death, why hasn’t the Eternal population risen into the billions? Through interbreeding, Curry points out, “we’d all be Eternals now.”

This is another question that Gaiman raises without answering. In the original series Kirby wrote that “The Eternals bred few in number” (Kirby p. 11). Perhaps this suggests that it is quite rare for a mating between Eternals to produce Eternal offspring. It also appears, from such examples as Ikaris’s son in Eternals Vol. 2 and Thena’s son in the Gaiman series, that when Eternals interbreed with normal humans, their offspring are normal humans. My hypothesis is that this is all a result of the Celestials’ “intelligent design” of the Eternals. The Celestials did not want the Eternals to dominate Earth, and so they genetically designed the Eternals to prevent their numbers from rising significantly.

Curry accepts the fact that Ikaris is a superhuman; he simply does not accept Ikaris’s explanation for his powers: “If Spider-Man told me that he got his spider-powers from reading Chariots of the Gods, I guess I’d figure he was full of it too” (Gaiman issue 1 p. 35). Obviously Mark Curry is unaware of J. Michael Straczynski’s recent stories in Amazing Spider-Man asserting that Spider-Man’s powers are in part mystical in origin, and that he is the “totem” of a spider-like force.

This Curry-Ikaris scene serves as a transition into a section of the first issue in which Gaiman begins exploring what makes the Eternals different from the many superheroes who populate Marvel-Earth. One of the differences appears to be that, despite Straczynski, most superheroes’ powers are rooted in science; therefore Curry, a man of science, can believe in them. But the Eternals origins have religious overtones, since they claim to have been created by “space gods.”

We next see Ikaris in his hospital bed watching another of the seemingly dreadful American TV shows that Gaiman has devised for this series: America’s Next Super Hero (Gaiman issue 1 p. 36). I wonder if Neil Gaiman knew about Stan Lee’s reality TV series Who Wants to Be a Superhero? when he started work on this Eternals series. (Neil’s show has a “super hero house” a la Big Brother, whereas in Stan’s, the hero wannabes room together in their secret “lair.”) I rather like Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, which is not only entertainingly kitschy, but also, surprisingly, enforces moral standards for superhero conduct that contemporary comics often ignore (see “Comics in Context” #142).

Then again, the New Warriors, one of Marvel’s superhero teams, was appearing on a reality TV series at the time of the disaster which led to the events of Marvel’s Civil War series. Before that, Marvel’s new X-Force team, later renamed X-Statix, were primarily out to become rich and famous media celebrities, relegating fighting crime and saving innocents to secondary importance.

There should be an inspirational majesty to the superhero concept: the idea of a human being who achieves godlike status. I wonder if Gaiman is suggesting that the image of conventional superheroes is being overwhelmed by their status as commercial properties. So here are the contestants for America’s Next Super Hero–Tantrum, ZeeBee, Trucker, and others–who aren’t following the traditional origin path of going out of their own to battle evildoers, but are competing against each other on a tacky TV show. Janet Van Dyne, alias the Wasp, flies in to make an appearance. (So Stan presides over Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, and Jan appears on America’s Next Super Hero. Stan and Jan. Hmm.) Then we see Mister Fantastic doing a Public Service Announcement on behalf of reading. lowering himself with a kitschy catchphrase (“It’s fantastic!”). However, the contestants rave with praise not over these classic Marvel superheroes, but over Sprite, who, as far as they know, is only a TV star for “˜tweens. They’d rather be TV celebrities than champions of justice. Trucker says, “I am now officially the coolest kid in my school” because he’s going to meet Sprite. Shouldn’t he be more impressed that he’s working with a co-founder of the Avengers? Mind you, she seems to have sold out by appearing on this show.

(However, I like the fact that Mr. Fantastic is holding up a copy of Gulliver’s Travels, which is arguably a forebear of science fiction novels. According to Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the book’s title character, Lemuel Gulliver, is an early member of the League, making him a forerunner of today’s superheroes.)

In the interview in the back of the hardcover collection of his Eternals, Neil Gaiman says, “You know, you’ve got the sort of “˜Marvel Civil Warry’ stuff going on in the background, in a way that I hope won’t bug anybody who has no idea what this is but will actually be kind of fun for anybody who does.” Well, I know what this “Civil Warry” stuff is, and I’m bugged. I am no fan of Civil War and its repercussions, and I should think that Gaiman’s many readers who are not superhero fans might indeed be puzzled by his references to Civil War in Eternals. Aren’t superheroes traditionally supposed to act on their own or in small teams? So what’s all this about government registration of superheroes?

Indeed, I contend that the superhero is a metaphor for the freedom, power and potential for greatness within the individual. Clark Kent and Peter Parker are nobodies, swallowed up by contemporary urban society, who assert themselves as individuals by shifting into their superheroic identities. By the end of Civil War Marvel’s superheroes are instead forced into the roles of government servants.

I would like to think that decades from now, Neil Gaiman’s Eternals, as well as Sandman and 1602 and his other works in comics, will still be in print, whereas Civil War, like virtually every other Marvel and DC company-wide crossover series event, will have faded into obscurity. Decades hence new readers of the Gaiman Eternals may well need footnotes to explain the Civil War references.

So why did Gaiman put the Civil War references in Eternals? Did Marvel urge him to put them in, just as back in the 1970s Marvel allegedly pushed Kirby into putting Marvel Universe references into his Eternals?

In Gaiman’s case, though, I tend to think that if he worked Civil War connections into Eternals, he did so for thematic purposes.

In the episode of America’s Next Super Hero that is excerpted in this first issue, Jan tells a contestant, “You see, Grace, when you’re a government-registered super hero, you’ll need to record public service announcements, like this one,” whereupon we see Mr. Fantastic in his aforementioned PSA (Gaiman issue 1, pgs. 36-37). Some readers may recall when government registration of mutants was considered a Bad Thing in Marvel stories, a first step towards the dystopian “Days of Future Past.” How interesting that Jan says that once Grace has registered with the government, she will “need” to do public service announcements. One might have thought that recording PSAs was done on a volunteer basis. Just what else does the government require registered superheroes to do? (Hint: consult Avengers: The Initiative.)

Then, with her characteristically cheerful demeanor, Jan tells the contestants they are off to visit the set of It’s Just So Sprite, “where the lucky winner of today’s hero trial is going to record a PSA about getting registered” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 37). Oh, Jan, I always thought of you as an irreverent free spirit, not a smiling propagandist. And that phrase “hero trial” seems disconcertingly ominous.

Soon afterwards we see Sprite himself on television with Orlando, an America’s Next Super Hero contestant. Sprite is secretly an Eternal, so, like other Eternals, he should be a “protector of the Earth.” But, as we shall see, he has devoted his life to becoming a celebrity instead. On television Sprite reels off his show biz credits, and tells us, “I’m not a super hero. If I were, I’d get registered,” just like Orlando here (Gaiman issue 1, p. 38). So Sprite is a willing propagandist for the government as well.

To reinforce the point, Gaiman has Orlando tell us, “It’s just so Sprite. If you’re gonna be a super hero, get registered” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 37). Gaiman thus links the Civil War superhero registration program to Sprite and the mind-numbing mediocrity of his TV show. By linking the registration program to Sprite, Gaiman also links it to Sprite’s sinister agenda, which is later to be revealed.

The TV show excerpt ends with a close-up on Orlando as he concludes about superhero registration, “It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 37), which carries an implicit threat. This is a rather different slogan for a superhero than “With great power must come great responsibility,” isn’t it? And isn’t there something odd about Orlando’s wide-eyed look in that closing panel, a hint of innocent fanaticism, perhaps?

Come to think of it, doesn’t the fact that the government is putting PSAs about superhero registration on television imply that there must be an awful lot of superhumans out there? Is Gaiman suggesting that perhaps the Marvel Universe has too many super-people? Maybe the limited number of Eternals is another factor that sets them apart from other Marvel superheroes.

Ikaris tells Curry, “There are so many mysteries to solve, and I need you by my side” (Gaiman issue 1 p. 39). At this point Ikaris reminded me of Fox Mulder in The X-Files, a man who believes in and investigates the paranormal but is considered by many to be delusional. Maybe that’s one reason why Gaiman put in a reference to Roswell earlier on (Gaiman issue 1 p. 34). And hey, Mulder’s partner was Dana Scully, a medical doctor, and Mark Curry is a medical student.

But Curry instead injects Ikaris with a sedative to put him to sleep; perhaps Curry was also motivated, consciously or unconsciously, to keep him from talking any further. Considering Ikaris’s high level of “durability,” as The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe puts it, I’m surprised that a hypodermic needle could penetrate his thick skin. And wouldn’t it take a dose of sedative that was far higher than normal to knock Ikaris unconscious? (Think of the various past stories in which someone uses knockout gas on the Hulk and says that it’s a dose sufficient to put something like a herd of elephants to sleep.)

Gaiman will establish that Ikaris’s Eternal powers still aren’t back to full working order at this point. Nonetheless, the issue ends with two Deviants, whose names are later established as Morjak and Gelt, returning to capture Ikaris, and in issue two, Ikaris seems pretty damn resistant to the physical tortures they put him through.

Issue two is titled “Identity Crisis,” which is an obvious reference to Mark Curry’s questioning of his own identity, which reaches the crisis point when armed men who invade a party at the Vorozheikan embassy attempt to kill him. I wonder if it may also be an allusion to DC’s Identity Crisis series, which also concerned characters who lost and regained their memories (see “Comics in Context” #57, 58, 63, 67).

By the way, here’s something that I discovered when I was researching my forthcoming book, The Marvel Travel Guide to New York. Countries usually situate their official embassies in the capitals of other nations. Their official outposts in other cities are known as consulates. Hence, what Marvel calls the Latverian, Symkarian and Wakandan embassies in New York City (for the respective nations of Doctor Doom, Silver Sable, and the Black Panther) are really consulates. And the “Vorozheikan embassy” in New York City in Gaiman’s Eternals is probably a consulate, too.

Not responding to the Campbellian “call to adventure” always has bad repercussions. In issue 2 we learn that Mark Curry has not just refused to heed the “call” but has gone so far as to turn the “herald” who issued the “call,” Ikaris alias “Ike Harris,” over to two men who, as Curry’s superior points out, only “claimed to be doctors” (Gaiman issue 2 p. 8). In actuality, they are Deviants who are busily experimenting in efforts to kill their allegedly unkillable captive Ikaris. Curry’s active rejection of the “call” has imperiled Ikaris.

Ikaris desperately sends another “call,” a telepathic call for help, to Curry, calling him “Makkari,” but Curry fails to respond. This time his refusal to heed the call is immediately followed by catastrophe for himself: Curry’s superior tells him he is “suspended from working here,” and that a policeman “wishes to talk to you” about Harris’s disappearance from the hospital. (Gaiman issue 2 p. 8). In plainer words, the police suspect Curry is involved in the illegal abduction of Ike Harris (and, in a sense, they are correct) and intend to interrogate him. Already in a low position at this start of his “hero’s journey,” Curry has descended to an even lower one.

This issue contains many Campbellian “calls.” There is Ikaris’s telepathic call for help. Another “call” comes through his chance encounter with Sersi, another Eternal who is unaware of her Eternal identity. They are immediately attracted to each other, and we shall learn later that, in their Eternal identities, they are former lovers. Perhaps part of their attraction to each other now is that they subconsciously remember each other: “I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Sersi tells him (Gaiman issue 2 p. 5). She also says that she wishes she could invite him to the party she is organizing at the Vorozheikan embassy; not having been suspended yet, Mark responds that the hospital probably wouldn’t give him the night off. So here’s Sersi wanting to “call” Mark to a party–and to romance, and perhaps subconsciously to a connection to a fellow Eternal–and deciding that she can’t, and Mark, who seems a rather passive fellow, not seeming all that disappointed about it.

After Curry is suspended, Gaiman provides us with a major revelation: Mark has been refusing another “herald’s” “call to adventure”: his own. Curry had been dreaming about Ikaris, the Deviants and the Celestials “before I’d ever met him” (Gaiman issue 2, p. 9). Curry is so far into denial that “I wanted to think that I was going crazy” (Gaiman issue 2, p. 9) rather than accept the truth about his origins. Makkari is the counterpart of Mercury, messenger of the gods, and here we see that Makkari’s subconscious self is acting as messenger to “Mark Curry.” Of course it is right that Mark dreams of his higher potential, as do we all. It is also appropriate to find Neil Gaiman, auteur of Sandman, utilizing dreams once again as a motif.

Right after Mark says he would prefer to be “crazy” rather than accept the call of his dreams, Sersi’s friend Abigail tells her she is “crazy not to” invite Mark to the party (or, if you prefer, issue her call to romantic adventure to him) (Gaiman issue 2 p. 10). Abigail argues that this could be Sersi’s “only chance” to “impress” Curry. This reinforces the idea of the importance of accepting the “call” when it occurs. lest the opportunity never again present itself. (Mark/Makkari is fortunate in that he keeps getting “calls” to return to his true identity, rather like those innumerable invitations to attend Hogwarts that owls keep delivering to Harry Potter until the Dursleys finally give in).

Sersi tells Abigail that there will be some superheroes attending her party, namely “the kids from America’s Next Super Hero“; Abigail disapprovingly comments, “That’s kinda C-list. Any word from Julia Roberts?” (Gaiman issue 2 p. 10). Notice that Sersi and Abigail are discussing superheroes as if they were simply celebrities, not heroic champions or godlike figures. Abigail talks as if Captain America and Julia Roberts were interchangeable. It’s as if Spider-Man were no different than Tobey Maguire.

As Sersi and Abigail chat, they ignore another “herald,” an apparently insane homeless man who shouts, “They took it all away!” Longtime Eternals aficionados should realize from the man’s red beard that he is Zuras, monarch of the Eternals and counterpart of Zeus. “They took it all away!” is his mad reference to what happened to the Eternals, and his cry of “All one!” may be a reference to the Eternals’ Uni-Mind. But Sersi, lacking her memories of being an Eternal, cannot understand Zuras’s message.

Reducing a powerful being into a homeless, amnesiac derelict is a familiar trope in Marvel history”: it has happened to the Ancient One, to Odin (I think), and most famously to the Sub-Mariner in Fantastic Four #4 (May, 1962).

Eternals aficionados should be surprised to see Zuras, since he was killed in combat with the Fourth Host in Thor #300 (even though Gaiman’s series contends that the Eternals are mentally programmed not to fight Celestials); Zuras’s spirit departed from his body in Iron Man Annual #6. However, I always thought that killing off Zuras was a mistake, so I am pleased to see him back. (In general, killing off characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, or any combination thereof, is usually a bad idea. Most such characters have too much potential for further stories.)

Usually I expect that when a writer resurrects a supposedly deceased character in the superhero genre, he or she will explain how the character survived. Later in this Eternals series Gaiman does reveal how an Eternal can literally be resurrected, and in issue four Sprite indicates that Zuras, as well as Ajak, who was killed off in The Eternals: The Herod Factor (1991), went through this same “reactivation” process.

Sersi and Mark Curry turn out not to be hopelessly stuck in their respective ruts: she invites him to the Vorozheikan party, and he accepts.

But then Mark receives the most disturbing of his “calls”: a vision of Ikaris tormented by flames, pleading telepathically for his help. Like the Apostle Peter denying Christ, Curry rejects the call yet again. His face set in anger, and even cruelty, Curry demands that Ikaris “Get out of my head!” (Gaiman issue 2, p. 12).

Mark Curry has now gone too far, and soon it is he will be in dire need of help. Rejecting the call will once more be followed by serious consequences, as we shall see next week.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

I haven’t done one of these sections for awhile, but I’ve continued to do writing for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week. You can find my interview with David Michaelis, author of the psychologically penetrating biography Schulz and Peanuts, to be published in October, here, and my review of R. C. Harvey’s Meanwhile. . . , a lengthy and extensively researched biography of Milton Caniff, creator of the classic comic strips Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon, here.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson