On the very night that I e-mailed to FilmForce my previous column, about Columbia Pictures’ deal with Major League Baseball to place Spider-Man symbols on the bases, it was announced that the deal was off. And the fun lay in listening to the strange whirring sounds that corporate spokespersons make as they spin. According to the New York Times (May 7, 2004), “Bob DuPuy, baseball’s president and chief operating officer, said, ‘We decided collectively that it wasn’t worth jeopardizing the entire feel-good promotion based on the fact that a few people seemed to object to a small feature of it.” Ah, but if it had only been “a few people,” they wouldn’t have backed off the deal, and certainly not so quickly. Again according to the Times, Columbia Pictures “had monitored polls on ESPN.com and AOL yesterday showing that fans were overwhelmingly against the idea of commercial endorsements on bases during the games. . . .” So let us thank the gods of technology for the Internet, which can puncture corporate self-delusions about what their audience wants.
How ironic that this should happen to Spider-Man, who is traditionally portrayed as the everyman, the underdog, the little guy who goes up against the big guys, the guy who’s continually broke but isn’t interested in making big bucks. For one day he instead became the character through whom corporate executives tried to sully the integrity of everyman’s sport, baseball. (Some articles about this dispute suggested that this was only a brief moment of resistance to the ongoing, inevitable further commercializing of the sport.) Columbia and Major League Baseball managed to turn their critics into real life J. Jonah Jamesons, but this time on the right side. What a tangled web Spidey wove, indeed. (Still, it gave David Letterman an excuse to talk about Spidey on his show; that’s always a pleasure to hear.)
But let us turn from baseball leagues to leagues of a different sort.
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
As testimony to its popularity and impact, there is now a parody of one of this column’s recurring topics, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This is “The Enclave of Incidental Individuals!, or Moore or Less!” in Claypool Comics’ Soulsearchers & Co. #65 (March 2004), co-plotted by Peter David and Richard Howell, scripted by David, edited by Howell, and with art by John Heebink and Al Milgrom.
This issue also features a characteristically, and enchantingly witty cover by Soulsearchers‘ original penciler, the amazing Amanda Conner, and inked by Steve Leialoha.
Were this an example the standard sort of comics parody that originated in Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad and has been imitated ever since in books like Marvel’s Not Brand Ecch and others, the “Enclave” story would merit no more than an appreciative but brief mention here. But, though “Enclave” does feature the expected broad burlesques of Moore’s series, it is also the vehicle for David’s and Howell’s explorations of some serious ideas that connect with certain continuing themes in this column. (As usual, in order to do a thoroughgoing lit crit analysis of a story, I will give away more about what happens than you may wish to know. So you may wish to read the story before reading the closing pages of this critique.)
I’ve discussed the small independent comics company Claypool and Soulsearchers before (see Comics in Context #9). Soulsearchers is that rare but valuable phenomenon in today’s comic book market, a comedy adventure series that is genuinely and consistently witty. The team after whom the series is named is a group who investigate and combat supernatural menaces; some team members have supernatural abilities themselves. (Soulsearchers may have followed Ghostbusters, but it debuted before Buffy‘s “Scooby Gang” or Angel Investigations.)
In this issue the only two team members who appear are newlyweds Bridget and Baraka, the latter being a benevolent demon from a hell out of Arabic mythology. Having encountered Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat in the previous issue, Bridget and Baraka tumble, like Alice, through a portal into another time-space continuum, which turns out to be “the literary dimension,” nicknamed “lit/dim.”
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Though to my surprise she herself does not make this analogy, the Virgil who guides Bridget and Baraka through this literary realm is Portia Prinz of the Glamazons, an early alternative comics character whom Claypopol editor Richard Howell created back in the 1970s. (You may be aware of others who have used the name “Glamazons,” but, as far as I know, Howell was the first.) As the name “Glamazons” might suggest, Portia’s series was in part a variation on Wonder Woman with its Amazons”: both featured a race of immortal women, and, indeed, the Glamazons’ patron goddess, the black Afrodite, also shows up in this issue. (You may have seen the name “Afrodite” elsewhere, too, but, again, as far as I know, Richard was the first.)
But though they are both princesses, the resemblance between Portia and Wonder Woman stops there. Actually, Portia and the Glamazons remind me more of Jack Kirby’s Eternals: a race of immortals, each of whom cultivates a specialized interest and/or an eccentric persona. Hence, two of Portia’s friends, Appaloosa and Joette, are singers and musicians, and another, Sgt. Shrew String, who appears in this issue, might best be described as what Nick Fury might be like after a sex change operation.
Like Wonder Woman, Portia is, to quote her own words in this issue, “fabulously stunning”; in contrast with Wonder Woman, Portia’s specialty is not physical strength but sheer brain power. “I’m an intellectual titan,” Portia tells Bridget and Baraka, “not a magical goddess.” And, as you can see, she is not averse to saying so. In fact, she can exasperate other characters she meets. “Oh-h-h! You are the most aggravating ““ !” grouses Bridget at one point. Portia, with a big, beaming smile, cuts her off: “Thank you. I live for superlatives.”
And this brings me to the subject of the alleged “know-it-all” amid traditionally anti-intellectual American society. It’s a subject that affects comics. It’s been pointed out that Peter Parker, as originally depicted by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, was the Good Son (albeit to his uncle and aunt), studious, devoted to his family: it wasn’t his fault that the popular kids like Flash Thompson and Liz Allan, arrogant, shallow, downright cruel, treated him like dirt. For the last decade and a half, at least, people, including some of Spider-Man’s own writers, dismiss the early Peter Parker as a “geek” and “nerd.” It’s even a subject that reaches into politics: in the last presidential election Al Gore was typed as the nerd/geek/wonk while George W. Bush was the regular guy, not particularly brilliant but fun to be with, with results that I will leave it to readers to discuss among themselves.
Elsewhere in popular culture, I recall an episode of The West Wing in which press secretary C.J. Cregg brings up a topic, and President Bartlet, a former academic, begins reeling off interesting facts about it. C.J., looking weary, tells him no one likes a “know-it-all” In another episode a staffer calls Bartlet a “nerd” to his face. Why can’t they be entertained by these dollops of knowledge? It’s not as if the staffers aren’t brainy themselves. Obviously series creator Aaron Sorkin and/or his writing staff knows this stuff Bartlet says. But it seems that even bright people are embarrassed about looking smart. (To Sorkin’s credit, later episodes questioned why the President should hide his level of intelligence from the American public in his campaign, and decided he shouldn’t.)
A few weeks ago I saw an episode of Disney’s House of Mouse on the Toon Disney channel (and more about this another time), in which Mickey Mouse gets annoyed with Professor Ludwig Von Drake for being a “know-it-all,” and, indeed in this episode Ludwig does seem rather full of himself. So Mickey challenges Professor Von Drake to answer correctly every question put to him in the course of the episode. Ludwig does just that, culminating with a tour de force in which he reels off the names of every classic Disney character in the audience of the show’s night club setting. This is the high point of the episode, and one might well assume delighted the show’s writers, who must be bright Disney aficionados themselves, as well as the viewers. But Ludwig overlooks naming one of them, himself (and I thought that Fred MacMurray was Disney’s Absent-Minded Professor) and Mickey wins the bet. As the episode closes, Minnie comforts Mickey, saying it’s all right not to know things.
Well, perhaps this was sincerely intended to let kids watching the show know that they need not be depressed if they’re not as smart as someone else. On the other hand, the episode seems to be saying that being smart isn’t a good thing.
Though House of Mouse plays Ludwig entirely for laughs, Ludwig was introduced in the debut season of Walt Disney’s NBC series The Wonderful World of Color to serve as a frequent host. Though funny, Ludwig was presented as a genuine authority on a wide variety of subjects, and could talk about serious subjects as well as introducing cartoons about his nephew Donald. In other words, here was an animated character who prized and exemplified knowledge. Hence, despite his comedic eccentricities, as a child I regarded Ludwig Von Drake as a role model. (Here’s another measure of how American pop culture has changed: as the frequent master of ceremonies for a show with a large audience of children, Walt Disney chose a character who was clearly elderly!)
Portia Prinz defies the anti-intellectualism in pop culture.
She takes a matter-of-fact pride in both her looks and her braininess. And, although supporting characters get annoyed by it, Portia’s high self-esteem, along with her ironic awareness of it, comes across as part of her charm. She is indeed smart and gorgeous, and her good-humored pleasure in the fact is infectious. (Howell also takes some of the sting off through Portia’s buddy, who jokes about her friend’s self-regard just as her fellow cigar aficionado, Ben Grimm, humorously undercuts his friend Reed Richards’ high-faluting speeches. Neither Shrew nor Ben show any malice toward the friend in question, but simply an affectionate tolerance.)
It turns out that it was Portia who had the Cheshire Cat bring Bridget and Baraka there. In other words, Joseph Campbell fans, Portia and the Cheshire Cat are heralds bringing the call to adventure, and Portia will also be acting as a mentor to our heroes, befitting her Greek mythological background and her status as a first generation Howell creation guiding his latter-day co-creations.
DILUTION AND DISSOLUTION
With Portia as tour guide, Bridget and Baraka arrive in the “literary dimension,” which David and Howell immediately establish as having a scope like Moore’s, albeit a scrambled geography: Beowulf and the monster Grendel, Mr. Bumble from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (see Comics in Context #25 for another comics version of Bumble), and Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters all co-habit within the same panel.
Bridget asks, “Is it my imagination or does the landscape keeps changing?” and Portia replies, “Yes to both questions.” The “Lit/Dim” is the product of the collective human imagination; this idea is comparable to Moore’s own remarks that the world of imagination has existed as long as the real world of humanity (see Comics in Context #37).
Portia explains further, “the Lit/Dim stems from human longing” and that people “can never decide on what they want. Luckily for all concerned, the more iconic aspects of said longing remain relatively fixed.” This makes me think of the malleability of continuity in mainstream comics nowadays, in which individual stories of the past, however classic, get dumped from the canon, and series may get rebooted in comics or in adaptations into other media over and over. Yet the essence of certain great characters, like Superman, Batman or Spider-Man remains relatively stable amidst this maelstrom of writers changing their minds.
Portia reveals the problem that she has brought Bridget and Baraka in to help solve: major characters (as examples we see portraits of Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan) are disappearing from the literary dimension. She explains that “lack of originality in the real world is causing the strip-mining of the truly great characters The more often such paucity of imagination is displayed, the more it simply eats away at the life force that perpetuates the greats.”
In other words, lesser writers who make use of the great creations of their betters of the past, turning out lesser works, diminish the mythic power of those great characters. As we shall see, the lesser writers may distort those characters as well.
“You might say it dilutes them,” Portia says. “Enough dilution and they lose their effectiveness as great creations. . .and fade away entirely.”
Think of public domain characters, such as the ones that Moore draws upon in League. How many of the more recent books and movies and television series with versions of Dracula or Sherlock Holmes even approach the greatness of the originals? (What might Bram Stoker think of what movie director Stephen Sommers has just done with Dr. Van Helsing?)
Legal theorist Lawrence Lessig and others have been recently argued against the extension of longrunning copyrights; press reports on this movement spotlight the Walt Disney Company’s so far successful efforts to keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. The articles I’ve read tend to take Lessig’s side, as he burbles on about the great array of creations that will arise once anyone can legally use Mickey. I wish that I’d see more articles presenting the other side. There are companies that are founded on specific intellectual properties. Can we really imagine Disney without Mickey, who is not only the symbol of the company, but the leading icon of its canon of animation and its theme parks? Can we imagine Warners Animation without Bugs Bunny, or DC Comics without Superman, or Marvel without Spider-Man? What would these characters be worth if everyone is allowed to do his own versions? I predict dilution aplenty: there’ll be the porn versions of Mickey and more. A recent article in the New York Times (Sunday, April 18, 2004) in which various artists create their own versions of Mickey, inadvertently demonstrates the horrors that await. (This article will be further addressed in a future column.) Maybe there’s a point to having an official custodian of the character.
But that’s not the entire solution, either. Look at how many hundreds of mediocre and downright bad stories have been produced at Marvel and DC about some of their genuinely great characters. With rare exceptions, like Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus, whom only Gaiman has so far been allowed to write, how many leading DC or Marvel characters have not undergone “dilution”?
Bridget comments that such “dilution” “sounds like literary hell,” whereupon Portia remarks that she once visited a number of literary hells, including Dante’s Inferno, that of Milton’s Satan (see Comics in Context #37 for more about him), and even that of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huit Clos (which Portia assumes we will translate as “No Exit”). As footnoted, this was in Portia Prinz Vol. II #1, back in 1986 (I remember reading it), and this serves as further evidence that Moore is far from the first person to mix the worlds of different literary fictions together, even in comics.
LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING
This issue of Soulsearchers strikes me as something of a satiric comics equivalent of a Shavian play of ideas, for now, under Bridget’s prodding, Portia extends her theorizing into a new area. Speaking of the “dilution” of classic characters, Bridget asks, “Is this part of why people have become so cynical?”
“Oh, yes,” agrees Portia, “and why the heroes are nearly indistinguishable from the villains nowadays.. . The absence of true, classic heroes creates a vacuum. ““ and nature abhors a vacuum, which means one is left with ““ ” While some of us admire Portia’s perfect use of grammar, Shrew finishes her sentence with an image out of the Hoover catalog: “Heroes who suck.”
Dilution, it seems, also entails distortion. Through misuse and misinterpretation, the characters are no longer such powerful archetypes of good and evil.
Regular readers of this column can see where I am heading: this Soulsearchers story is yet another manifestation of comics’ Neo-Silver movement, a longing for classic heroes after the grim and grittiness of the last two decades in comics. Certainly Peter David and Richard Howell, Baby Boomers who grew up with the comics of the Silver Age, fit the profile of Neo-Silver creators.
As I have thought about Moore’s League, I have come to realize that it represents another aspect of the movement that takes it beyond comics. Moore is something of a paradox: his series like Watchmen and Miracleman are landmark works in creating a darker, more morally complex vision of the superhero genre. And yet his Superman story, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow,” though incorporating genuinely tragic elements, is the first Neo-Silver tale. His 1963 series and his work on Supreme were variations on Silver Age stories, though what I’ve seen of them was too parodic for my taste.
Moore’s work on his America’s Best Comics line reaches further back than the Silver Age, coming up with contemporary reworkings of archetypal characters from Golden Age comics or even their pulp forebears: hence Doc Savage inspires Moore’s Tom Strong.
Moore has described his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as originating in his effort to trace contemporary superheroes back to their roots in Victorian English science fiction and fantasy. League acknowledges the present by incorporating contemporary concerns and explorations of character, such as Mina’s sexual trauma and Quatermain’s addiction. But in reviving so many great Victorian characters and, despite their flaws, presenting them as genuinely, classically heroic (or villainous) figures, Moore is pursuing the same method as the Neo-Silver writers. Perhaps I need to find a new word to describe this movement, to demonstrate that it involves more than the Silver Age superheroes. Perhaps I should call these writers the Neo-Classicists.
THE MINOR LEAGUERS
Let’s return to the story at hand. With the great heroes having vanished from the literary dimension, we are left with the “heroes who suck”: supporting characters from famous works. This is the Enclave of Incidental Individuals, comprised of Inspector Lestrade from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories; Ezzy, a virtually (and understandably) forgotten stereotypical black maid from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan; H.G. Wells’s Time Traveler from The Time Machine; Jules Verne’s Passepartout, Phileas Fogg’s valet from Around the World in 80 Days; the mad, bug-eating Renfield from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; and a talking Martian from Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
In Wells’s War, as well as Moore’s retelling in League Vol. 2, the Martians were killed off by Earth germs; the Enclave’s Martian survived but seems to have a permanently running nose, if “nose” is actually the proper terminology.
Passepartout explains that he is “not, as many mistakenly believe, remotely Mexican,” an allusion to Cantinflas’ portrayal of him in the famous movie version of Verne’s book. (Neither the Enclave’s Passepartout nor Howell and David betray any awareness that soon many people will assume he is Chinese: Jackie Chan plays him in Disney’s new remake.) Especially on page 9, the Enclave’s Passepartout looks like someone out of Herge’s world-spanning Tintin, appropriately enough.
The Time Traveler shouldn’t be in this group, since he is the star of his book. He claims to have avoided dilution because Wells never gave his real name in The Time Machine. I don’t find that particularly convincing: the Time Traveler has fallen into other authorial hands, too, including Moore’s in the backup story in League Volume 1. Indeed, by intention or coincidence, the Enclave’s Time Traveler bears a slight resemblance to Rod Taylor, who played him in the MGM movie version.
It is pointed out that some of these supporting characters have also turned up in pastiches or adaptations of the original stories in which they appeared. So how did they so far avoid dilution? Lestrade says that “it’s a matter of focus.” He explains that no one has starred him in his own stories. However, I think a better point might be that the writers of new Sherlock Holmes stories (or adapters of the originals) feel less motivated to tinker with a minor character like Lestrade, so he tends to remain recognizably himself. Ezzy points out that she gets entirely left alone by modern-day writers because she is considered too politically incorrect to use. (David and Howell do include some subtle references to Gone with the Wind, through whose continuing popularity stereotypical black characters linger on, and the recent parody/pastiche it inspired, The Wind Done Gone.)
The Enclave receives a ghostly visitation from yet another 19th century character, “the lost Lenore,” the beloved of the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven. Here she speaks a pastiche poem that in a cleverly imitation of The Raven‘s rather rigid rhythms and rhyme scheme, complete with its own jab at “grand theft author crimes forsaken/for their homage projects makin’. . . .”
As the Enclave, Portia and company head off to the mystery villain’s lair via blimp power, the readers may observe that, like League, this story puts jokes and allusions in its backgrounds, too. A signpost bears signs pointing to various locales, some entirely fictional, such as Middle-earth and Lankhmar, while others are real places about which fictions have been written, including Troy and Dublin. The Dublin of James Joyce’s Ulysses is depicted in such elaborate detail that it is a genuine fictional counterpart to the real city. The Troy of Homer’s Iliad is grander than the actual city appears to have been; Time (May 10, 2004) quotes Nigel Phelps, production designer for the new Troy movie as saying that the real “Troy just didn’t have the size or the spectacle the movie demanded. . .most of the buildings were maybe 10-ft. high and made of mud.” One sign points to Verona, where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet. Nearby stands an Italianate building with the requisite balcony, but the wall bears the graffiti “Shark vs. Jets,” a reference to the famed reworking of Shakespeare’s play, West Side Story.
One character comments that it was “lucky” that Lenore turned up to tell them where to go. Lestrade replies that “At Scotland Yard, we prefer the term ‘contrivance.’” This reminds me of Sir Richard Reed’s theory in Neil Gaiman’s 1602 that he lives in a universe governed by “the laws of story.” Lestrade appears to be at least partly aware that the “literary dimension” functions the same way.
When the heroes arrive at the docks, there are background references to not only the Iliad, but the Odyssey, and, leaping ahead several millennia, Moby Dick.
Continuing her own theorizing, Portia observes, “An interesting side note is that these supposedly-dated characters provide an originality and innocence in this post-proto-modernist world of writing.” This is yet another indication of the Neo-Silver sensibility at work in this story. Neo-Silver works are reactions against the grim and grittiness of the last two decades of comics and against ironic subversions of the heroic adventure genre. As Portia suggests, these classic characters from the past, when treated correctly, convey qualities that today once again seem fresh and vital.
DISTORTION AND DISAPPEARANCE
Entering the villain’s lair, Lestrade suspects that Holmes’s archfoe Professor Moriarty is behind this. Shrew responds, “Your instinct is in another series entirely.” This, perhaps, suggests that Shrew is even more aware than Lestrade that they are operating within a fiction. By another series she may be referring to the Sherlock Holmes canon, or possibly even to the fact that Moriarty is the lead villain in League Volume 1.
Now even Enclave members begin to succumb to disappearance through dilution. Passepartout vanishes, allegedly because a Canadian TV company has just concocted a bad television series for him. (Maybe the new Asian version of Passepartout might have served as a better excuse for his disappearance.)
Out rush the Three Musketeers, but as they appeared in the 1993 Disney remake: the likenesses of Kiefer Sutherland and Oliver Platt are actually rather good. The terrible trio shout “Dude!” as their battle cry, and Portia explains that “They were condemned to remain in limbo until an even worse version of the Dumas classic was made ““ if possible.” And yet it did prove possible, as the more recent The Musketeer, which Portia calls “The Male Model Musketeer.”
Here David and Howell are making clear that they are not just talking about bad new stories about classic characters, but bad adaptations of the characters’ original tales. Moreover, David and Howell are targeting distortions of the original characters and their stories. In the case of The Three Musketeers, they are pointing specifically to supposed updatings along the lines of then-current trends that instead undercut the strength of the original material. Aramis refers to his “Aramis cologne,” so perhaps here the authors are also observing how iconic characters get transformed by business into commercial shills.
And again, as with Passepartout, David and Howell are possibly unaware of yet another dilution on the way: Disney is releasing yet another Three Musketeers later this year on video, this one starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy in the title roles. (But this actually might be fun, and you should not be surprised to see it reviewed in this column later this year.)
For that or some other reason, the Disney live action Musketeers disappear. “Characters are vanishing before our eyes!” Portia, again careful about grammar and clarity in writing, asks, “So-o-o-o you’re worried your eyes will vanish next?” Instead it’s Lestrade who disappears. According to the Cheshire Cat, that’s because he was just put in a new, gay-themed series in which “Lestrade’s got a big ol’ yen for Holmes.” Thus David and Howell target yet another way in which contemporary writers can distort literary characters from the past. The Cheshire Cat adds, “You won’t be seeing Alfred the butler around anytime soon.” This is not only an indication that what Howell and David are saying about the “dilution” of classic characters in prose also applies to great comics characters, but is perhaps also an allusion to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s notorious misreading of Batman. Characters can also be “diluted” and distorted through gross misinterpretation.
Now David and Howell demonstrate how their arguments apply to comic characters by subjecting Bridget and Baraka to this kind of distortion. The mystery villain uses gas to put both Soulsearchers to sleep and in his power. Baraka finds himself transformed visually into a big-headed midget holding a pitchfork, such as one might see in an old Harvey comic, prompting his comment, “I know I’m Hot Stuff, but this is way too literal!” (Bridget even affectionately called him “Hot Stuff” earlier in this issue, something I only noticed on my third reading.)
The unseen villain tells him, “We’re just trying to make you more kid-accessible. You know. . .like at Marble [sic] Comics.” Baraka angrily retorts, “I will not be kiddified in order to pander our adventures to your concept of child intelligence!”
Well, Baraka clearly doesn’t meet Portia’s exalted grammatical standards (“pander” is an intransitive verb) but he makes the author’s point. David and Howell are attacking the way that the corporate owners of intellectual property can mandate the distortion of the artistic integrity of characters, and the intentions of their creators. The mystery villain taunts Baraka that “nothing is sacred. Any concept that be twisted to pander to the taste of modern audiences.”
It is intriguing to see that “Marble” is here accused of dumbing its characters down to appeal to a juvenile audience. It seems only a short time ago that Marvel’s Max line was trying to reach an older audience by giving us a Nick Fury who spoke on-panel obscenities, as if that was the definition of mature art. So now Marvel has allegedly reversed course and is chasing an audience of children, as if the market hadn’t irreversibly become dominated by teens and adults decades ago.
Meanwhile Bridget goes “all retro,” abruptly transformed into a modern-day counterpart to Millie the Model. I don’t know if David and Howell have some recent change in comics that they are parodying here. But the brainwashed Bridget’s banter about her “own doll line” that will be “a Diamond exclusive” suggests that they may be aiming at changes in characters driven by merchandising concerns. Reverting to her true personality, Bridget protests, “I don’t want to be arbitrarily changed! If I change. . .it should be organic, a natural progression. . . .”
DIMINUTION AND DENOUEMENT
Having woken from their trances, Bridget and Baraka and their allies find themselves tied to the “Wheel of Mishegoss,” noted as being from a “Just’a League” comic. That’s a reference to Professor Amos Fortune’s Wheel of Misfortune from the cover of an early Justice League of America comic (and I was only recently saying it should have been referenced in the JLA/Avengers limited series!).
Thinking back to the War of the Worlds, the Enclave’s Martian starts quoting Chuck Jones’s Marvin the Martian: “Where was the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!” Moore went to so much trouble in League Volume 2 to meld various fictional versions of Mars together in Vol. 2 but he didn’t get to the Looney Tunes version.
I have decided to be good and not reveal the identity of the mystery villain, though I will say that his motives make no sense to me. If he is upset by lesser writers diluting and draining “creative energies” from classic literary creations including himself, why is he trying to speed up the process? But his wheel drains the remaining Enclave members of those energies and they disappear.
Bridget declares that she won’t be affected by the wheel because “we’re real ““ not. . .not fictional characters!” Portia knowingly replies “You don’t get out much, do you, dear?” More than Lestrade or Shrew had, Portia thus demonstrates clear knowledge that she and her allies are fictional characters. Portia and John Byrne’s similarly aware She-Hulk should compare notes.
I will also allow you readers to discover for yourselves how Bridget, Baraka, Portia and Shrew manage to escape from the wheel.
Once free, to the villain’s and perhaps the reader’s surprise, Portia voices the other side of the argument over “recycled culture.” She tells the villain, “It’s what one does with the source material that matters. As Landor wrote of Shakespeare: ‘He was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life ““ !’” Portia is here referring to the fact that most of Shakespeare’s plays were based on history or were adaptations of previous works, not original plots.
Portia goes on: “Furthermore, Bayles’ ‘Dictionaire historique et Critique’ maintains that there is “not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book than in being the first author of that thought.’” (Mr. Howell has informed me that these two quotations constitute a Bartlett pair.)
The reader may have been wondering as he or she goes through this story whether David and Howell are actually condemning Moore for recycling classic characters in League. But perhaps they are not. After all, they themselves have incorporated characters created by authors of the past into this very issue. Moreover, Peter David is well known and justly celebrated for writing significant work set in fictional universes created by the likes of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Gene Roddenberry. Howell’s Glamazons are inspired by William Moulton Marston’s Amazons, who are in turn inspired by the Amazons of Greek mythology, and Portia herself once went on a League-style journey through other author’s hells, as she mentioned earlier. Much as David and Howell’s story attacks hackwork, their specific parody of Moore’s League seems affectionate.
In the DC and Marvel Universes, the original creators of characters and concepts do not get to control them. As noted, this results in loads of bad and mediocre stories. Then again, the creators of great comics characters are not always the best people to guide their series indefinitely: their creativity may ebb, or they may prove unable to change with the times. Eventually Bob Kane and his ghosts had to depart Batman in order for the series to remain artistically vital and continue to evolve.
Moreover, the fact that new generations of writers, artists and editors get to work on classic characters makes it possible for innovative talents to develop the characters in new, artistically valid ways that reveal new facets of the original creation. For example, the groundbreaking work of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, and Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli on Batman produced not only artistic and literary high points in the character history while remaining faithful to creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s original concept.
Portia can see both sides of the issue, whereas the mystery villain can only see one; she recognizes that truly inspired creators can build on the work of the past, while the villain refuses to acknowledge any distinction between the talented and less talented. He grouses that “it’s just hacks standing on the shoulders of giants,” though he seems oblivious to the way this visual image applies to himself (you’ll have to see it).
At least the villain smashes right through the fourth wall as he makes his exit, complaining that he won’t get “any understanding from independent comics characters. . .who’ve always been written only by their creators ““ !”
So the issue of Soulsearchers leaves us with a creative issue that is too complex to easily be resolved. As the Cheshire Cat (himself a character borrowed from a great author of the past) observes on the last page, “Fictional icon’s’ll always be vulnerable to bad remakes and creative theft. . . .” Afrodite states that such iconic characters possess “purity of concept. . . and immortal value.” So, if one is to create new work based on the iconic characters of the past, his or her duty is to understand and adhere to that conceptual purity as well as possible. That’s why informed critics play an important role in evaluating new work about established characters and series in the context of the great work of the past. And that, after all, is what this column is about. Even a critic is, in effect, creating a work of art inspired by the works of others.
–Copyright 2004 Peter Sanderson
But having Batman call himself a “terrorist” may be misusing the word. As we commonly think of terrorists, they inflict death and injury on noncombatants to achieve their political goals by striking terror into the population at large. Batman isn’t doing that in DK2: he seeks to terrorize Luthor and his allies, but not the public, and he certainly will not harm the general population. The only people this Batman seeks to kill are Luthor and Brainiac.
Alas, I didn’t receive a review copy of Mythology, but I have procured copies of Ross’s two new tabloid-sized books about the Justice League of America that were published in 2003: JLA: Secret Origins and JLA: Liberty and Justice, co-plotted by Alex Ross and Paul Dini, with painted art by Ross and scripting by Dini.
The Superman origin sequence emphasizes the character’s childhood, and despite the destruction of his native world, Ross shows it as idyllic. There is the baby Kal-El smiling up at his adoptive parents; in the next panel, despite the shadows obscuring much of the boy Clark’s face, it is still clear from his body language that he is smiling. This is a happy childhood that produced the most optimistic and altruistic of heroes. Dini’s text emphasizes that Clark/Kal-El is an immigrant who has happily embraced his adoptive world.
No surprise here: the Green Lantern origin is in green. The top panel, the only one showing Hal Jordan in costume, depicts a large number of Green Lanterns in flight together like a flock of birds. In this sequence Dini and Ross are emphasizing not an individual Green Lantern so much as the entire Green Lantern Corps, its origin and history. The concluding color image here is that of the alien Green Lantern Abin Sur passing his ring to his successor Hal Jordan: the focus is on the continuity of the Green Lantern tradition, more than the individual.
This also fits into this sequence’s focus on marital as well as parental love. The shot of Aquaman’s father rescuing his mother is the stuff of romance. Another panel is devoted to the wedding of the adult Aquaman to Mera. (Unlike Superman and Martian Manhunter, Aquaman returns to his native realm.) The final color panel echoes the shot of the infant Aquaman with his parents: now it is Aquaman and Mera holding their child. With the Flash, Ross and Dini celebrated young married love; with Aquaman they celebrate the next phase, parenthood.
The Martian Manhunter’s sequence is the dull reddish color of the Martian landscape. That terrain is the subject of the first panel: desolate, devastated, “as barren as it is lonely.” In both JLA books Dini makes the point that unlike Superman, only an infant when Krypton was destroyed (or, in Byrne’s version, not yet born), J’onn J’onzz remembers the destruction of his civilization; hence, while Superman, who could easily fit into the human population, has a sunny, optimistic disposition, J’onn is lonely and gloomy. Dini here calls J’onn an “immigrant” who “found a way to assimilate,” but the panel shows him, in human guise, as faceless: he has not truly fit in. Ross cleverly depicts J’onn’s emergence on Earth, making it unclear whether his true form is humanoid (as in the original continuity) or inhuman (as in the recent revision). I am very pleased with Ross’s rendition of J’onn’s benefactor Dr. Erdel, making this 1950s cartoony caricature look credibly real. The final image shows the Manhunter soaring into space, alone, apart from Earth.
The Green Arrow sequence is green, too, naturally, and Dini’s text emphasizes that he is a modern “urban Robin Hood.” Green Arrow, like Robin Hood, is a form of the mythic “green man” archetype, the man of nature. But here only the opening image of Oliver Queen as a kind of latter-day Robinson Crusoe, learning to survive on a deserted island, has a mythic feel.
With the Hawkman origin Ross and Dini are very specifically doing the Silver Age version, and not those that preceded or followed. The final shot here makes Hawkman and Hawkgirl look eerily birdlike, thanks in part to the lighting effects. It is significant that Ross and Dini show both the Hawks in this panel: this is another celebration of love, in this case, of a couple who are partners in action as well as in private life.
The gray of the Captain Marvel sequence suggests the archaic ““ the ancient idols of the “Seven Deadly Enemies of Man,” Shazam’s resemblance to an Old Testament prophet, and the bleakness of orphan Billy Batson’s life in Depression-era New York. Here the color image signifies life and vitality appearing amidst age and dreariness. Both Billy and Captain Marvel are in color, putting the focus on the joyous ascension of orphaned child to powerful adult.
The only false step in these origin sequences lies in Plastic Man’s: deleting the monk from the story weakens the theme of Plas’s spiritual rebirth. It’s impressive indeed how Ross can make Plas’s cartoony stretching (especially the shot of him pulling on his face) look so real: as I said in 
There follow portraits of other JLAers from the Silver Age, including one of my favorite shots of Zatanna ever. The “story” ends with a very impressive two page shot of the major League members standing imposingly together. And here one can see another of Ross’s virtues: unlike so many comics artists, he gives his heroes distinctive faces from each other, and even gives them varying heights.
Superman: Last Stand on Krypton has a very good concept at its heart: a clash between the traditional Silver Age depiction of Krypton (a lush paradise and utopian society, whose destruction was tragic) and John Byrne’s radical revision of Krypton in his 1980s Man of Steel mini-series (as a sterile world with an utterly sexually repressed populace, a world, as Wendy Pini once put it, that deserved to die). In Gerber’s story Jor-El and Lara have recreated the idyllic Krypton that Byrne established existed in centuries past, but it takes the form of Krypton as it was depicted in the 1960s, even complete with “thought-beasts”; I’m surprised that Gerber didn’t include the Fire-Falls while he was at it. Jor-El has even cast aside the Byrne “bio-suit” to wear his traditional 1950s-1970s costume. Jor-El’s own father and other Kryptonian elders seek to put a stop to the Silver age Krypton he is recreating.
Sid Caesar, the great comedian of 1950s television, makes a brief appearance in Comic Book: The Movie, and this may not be his only connection to comic books. I came across the Hollywood Reporter‘s Jan. 3, 2004 review of his new book, Caesar’s Hours. The reviewer begins, “Ask a learned comics fan who created Peter Parker and his arachnid alter ego, and the instant reply will be Stan Lee.” (That should be Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, I grumbled learnedly.) But then the reviewer quotes Caesar in his book, “Although I can’t prove it, I suspect Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen may be indirectly responsible for the creation of Spider-Man.” It seems that Gelbart and Allen wrote a sketch in which Caesar was bitten by a termite, causing him to develop termite-like attributes and to devour the furniture.
The title Neverwhere evokes the name of the enchanted realm of another British fantasy writer, Sir James Barrie’s Neverland, and Neverwhere‘s hero, Richard Mayhew, is something of an adult Lost Boy.
Gaiman is also careful to have it pointed out in the “Dream” story that Death of the Endless is not “the goddess of death” or the “incarnation” of Death, but Death itself/herself; similarly, Morpheus, the Sandman, is not “the king of dreams” but is Dream itself. The Endless are the concepts their names signify: what over in the Marvel Universe have been called conceptual beings.
In certain cases Gaiman’s Endless fit one’s expectations: Despair is in despair, Desire does embody amoral desire, and Destiny (the sole member of the Endless he did not create, who was a preexisting DC character) is a variant on the familiar figure of Father Time. In other cases Gaiman seems to intended to turn the readers’ expectations upside down. Thus, Destruction proves to be quite an amiable figure, even before he gave up his post. Gaiman’s Death is far from the hooded, skeletal figure with the scythe, or even the archetypal femme fatale. She is, or can be, friendly, sweet, empathetic, even joyful. She can be the spritely figure portrayed on the cover of Jill Thompson’s recent Death: At Death’s Door for Vertigo.
