From these an empire was made?

Texts for today - Fantastic Four 1-5, Incredible Hulk #1-2

Well, that's not an entirely fair description, since issue 4 of FF features the return of Namor, the Sub-mariner and issue 5 introduces Doctor Doom - but still...

For anyone who doesn't know the origin stories, the Fantastic Four gained their powers during a risky, unauthorized space trip - the shielding of their vessel wasn't up to standards, and they were bathed in cosmic rays. Naturally, these cosmic rays were attuned to ancient elements, as powers related to fire, earth, air, and water are bestowed upon them.

Unfortunately, they aren't granted a complete team mythos. Well, maybe that's unfair, but I expected a fully outfitted team from the get-go, or else a crash-landing that leads to their encounter with the Mole Man. (Yeah, I read the 1990s reboot.) Naturally, it takes them a little time to outfit their operation - but it just flashes into existence between issues 2 and 3. They go from having little more than signal flare guns to possession of the Baxter Building and a passenger ICBM. (So far, not used.)

And it's a little odd that they've not been held by the US government after their space escapades, or at least pursued - after all, they went joyriding in space on the taxpayer's dime!

Anyhow, issue one features nuclear hijinks, as the Mole Man has some subterranean behemoth steal nuclear plants. It's all resolved in a few pages, and little more is useful from that issue. The second issue features the debut of the shape-shifting aliens known as the Skrulls, who impersonate the FF in hopes of discrediting them so that an intergalactic invasion can ensue. (It concludes with the defeated Skrulls changing into cows and being hypnotized so that they forget what they are. I'll have to check wikipedia later to see if anything happened to the children that drank that milk...)

Issue three features the Miracle Man (not the British superhero who has caused such trouble for Todd MacFarlane), but other than the presence of the military during the "rampage" of Miracle Man's "creatures," there's little to discuss from this issue. Well, there's the Invisible Girl's fashion designs for the team, the introduction of the Baxter Building (more on it in a later post once they've used it), and the first use of the Fantasticar (a flying car that splits into four sections).

Namor was a golden age superhero who'd been lost since the end of the war. After the Human Torch and the Thing have a spat in issue three, the Torch leaves and encounters a powerful derelict in a flophouse in the Bowery. (Luckily, the Torch was reading a 1940s comic book while relaxing in the flophouse. Of course, old comics didn't quite have the same collectible value then that they have now, but it seems like a bit of a stretch that a 20-year-old comic would be waiting for him there. Yes, I'm aware that I'm taking issue with the presence of an old comic book in a building that houses a man who can burst into flame and coincidentally runs into a half-man, half-Atlantean amnesiac king of an undersea kingdom. And?)

Anyhow, Namor regains his memory thanks to the Torch, finds that his kingdom's been destroyed by H-bomb testing, and declares war on the surface world. New York is evacuated, a gigantic undersea creature goes on a rampage, and the Thing totes an atomic bomb down the creature's gullet (and escapes in the nick of time). (Is there anything that nuclear weapons can't solve?) Oh, and Namor falls in love with the Invisible Girl.

Doctor Doom - who proves to be the FF's nemesis - first appears in the next issue when he forces the men of the team to go back in time to steal Blackbeard's treasure. (Yep, I laughed, too. It even turns out that the Thing proves to be Blackbeard, since his disguise and his fighting prowess makes him out to be the captain of the captured pirates. He plans to stay behind and live with the pirates who've accepted him as a man, but a storm gets in the way.) Fortunately, Doom's not just about the bling, but interested in the magical properties of some of the jewels which had previously been the property of Merlin. Mr. Fantastic had left the jewels behind, though, and the FF manage to escape from the trap that Doom had prepared for them. (Doom also employs a doppelganger robot, which entirely fools the FF.) Doom, therefore, is set up from the beginning as the natural antithesis of Mr. Fantastic, as Doom's scientific abilities (shown in his origin story, his robot-making, and his powered armor) are matched only by his interest in mystic powers (which are not employed here).

Issue five also features the Human Torch reading issue one of The Incredible Hulk, and quipping that the Hulk looks a lot like the Thing. (Not even close, of course, given the grey skin of the early Hulk and the lumpy, rocky hide of the early Thing... but the Torch is just interested in teasing.) The Hulk is immediately laid out as a nuclear age Jekyll and Hyde, with the mild-mannered but aloof and arrogant Bruce Banner transformed into the angry, powerful Hulk by a mishap during the testing of the "Gamma Bomb." (A rebel-without-a-cause teenager, Rick Jones, drives out onto the testing ground to prove his courage, and Banner shoves Jones down into a protective ditch but is caught in the blast. Banner becomes a part-time superhuman, and Jones is completely safe. Totally safe - and all because he was shoved to cover! I smell sequel to "Duck and Cover..." - so long as they can re-sign the monkey with the firecracker from the instructional film.) Early on, the Hulk only comes into being when it's nighttime, not when he's angry.

Anyhow, the villains of the story are the "Red spy"/scientist Igor - who conveniently forgot to stop the test of the gamma bomb, and tried to steal its plans - and he alerts his superior, the Gargoyle, to what has transpired through the "sub-minature transistor shortwave sending set" on his thumbnail. (The first texter?) The Gargoyle immediately travels by "experimental man-carrying rocket" - launched by a Soviet missile sub - so that he can capture the Hulk and take him back to the USSR. The Gargoyle arrives safely in the passenger capsule, but "America's mighty defense structure unleashes its fantastic arsenal" and the body of the rocket is destroyed by "hunter missiles." (I know this isn't the first example of SDI, since Frances FitzGerald discusses this in Way Out There in the Blue.)

Anyhow, the misshapen Gargoyle's helped by Banner - not to become the Hulk, but to become normal. Banner knows how to use radiation to heal the Gargoyle, even though it'll destroy the Gargoyle's superintelligence. He readily accepts, and once transformed into a normal human he shakes his fist at a portrait of Khrushchev and denounces the work he'd been forced to do on secret bomb tests. But since an American cured him and he is "no longer a Gargoyle, [he] can defy you, and all you stand for like a man!" He promptly aids Banner and Jones, sending them back to the United States in his escape rocket although he does not escape. Instead, he glories in the fact that he is a man and has finished his work by setting off a self-destruct sequence so that he can "die as a man!" As Banner and Jones fly away, Jones notes that Banner not only made him "normal again" but also "turned him against the Reds!" As the destruction of the base sounds, Banner notes that "It's the end of the Gargoyle! And perhaps... the beginning of the end of the Red Tyranny, too!" (Yep, it was one spy named Igor and a mutated superintelligence which made the Soviets such a challenge. Meh, I shouldn't be so hard on the final panel of a comic...)

The less said about the threat of the Toad Men in issue two, the better. (No, I'm serious abou that threat.) Anyhow, Banner is kidnapped by the Toad Men, who've hunted down "the most brilliant scientific mind on Earth." I suppose they value weapons of mass destruction design over experimental spaceflight design (Mr. Fantastic), robotics (Doctor Doom), or miniaturized weaponry (Tony Stark, the Iron Man - who admittedly hadn't been created yet). So Banner is captured, it turns to night, Hulk smash (and muses about the power he has at his fingertips with the magnetic weaponry of the Toad Men - which would allow him to be the hunter instead of the hunted), and the US missile corps shoots down the UFO. (General "Thunderbolt" Ross: "If your radar shows an unidentified flying object above us, shoot it down, man! What do you think we're here for?" The rules of engagement for Ross are such fun.)

The UFO falls to the daylight side of earth, and Banner is arrested as a traitor. With the Hulk out of the way, the Toad Men signal the invasion fleet. (I guess when you've come all that way, a green-skinned behemoth won't faze you. Yeah, he's green now. I don't think he's grey again until the late 80s when he became a Vegas legbreaker. No, I'm not kidding.) Anyway, Hulk escapes while the magnetic technology of the Toad Men plays havoc with tides and they call for surrender. Once he reverts to Banner again, he turns to the gamma ray gun he invented and uses it against the Toad Men. Only thing is, he doesn't know what it'll do: "No one can predict what their effect would be on a field of magnetic energy!" But he goes with it anyway, and somehow it reverses the magnetism and sends the fleet off into space. Banner is cleared, but Ross remains suspicious of a connection between Banner "and that ding-blasted Hulk!" My thoughts exactly.

Bounties of Media, Models of Major-Generals

So, at long, long last, almost all of the DVDs I need have arrived - Invincible Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Mighty Avengers, Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer, and Captain America. Naturally, the last was the first that I examined, particularly since it featured the assassination issue and the whole Winter Soldier storyline.

I've not read a lot of the Civil War, so the particulars of that story arc may have made Steve Roger's death even more poignant, but it was still powerfully affecting. Yeah, it's a comic, and yeah, it's all made up, but... it was still surprising to see something like that done well, let alone done at all. The good news is that I've got 40 years of issues to read now (and I can always start picking up the alternative reboot of Ultimates, too).

Reading the Winter Soldier storyline prior to the assassination issue certainly provided an interesting counterpoint to things. For anyone who didn't hear, Captain America's original sidekick, Bucky Barnes, was brought back from the shadowy depths of presumed death as a former Soviet super-assassin. (Naturally, this demolishes the tryptch of "No one stays dead in comics except for Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Uncle Ben." Only Spidey's uncle remains in the realms of the undead, but I'm hoping that he'll end up as a herald of Galactus before long.) It was a good storyline - compelling reading, emotionally charged, and centred more on the story than on bang-slam action scenes.

As for the last two weeks - my plans for this weekend's library trip were dashed when I was signed up as a substitute Drama teacher at a local school after a family tragedy. It's been a lot of fun working with the students on their performance of "Pirates of Penzance," but it's also been pretty time-consuming. Heck, it's even taking up some evenings and weekend time - such as today. Speaking of which, I'd better get ready - time to get moving and help with some tech before the rehearsal begins this afternoon.

Library trip, though? Well, we'll see when it can be planned. If the library's open after Christmas, I might have to travel down there and spend a few days in the glorious quiet of a university library during the holidays...

[Edit - And now that I've been accepted for the CHA this year, I'll certainly have to be ready and set with whatever I proposed...]

Branching out in the comics reading - oddly

As has probably become clear so far - and as I hope I've admitted - I'm a pretty major Marvel fan. Not to the point of current collecting - I quit a little after I got married, and I couldn't find any copies of the death of Captain America on the shelves, so I took that as a hint - but to the point of expecting that everything should read and look like a Marvel comic.

Oh, sure, I've read other things, but mostly of the canon - Maus, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Bone. Noticeably, the only thing that could claim any possible continuity is Miller's TDKR, but it's mostly mythic and predictive, and it's not like anyone my age doesn't know the basics of Batman. (Vicki Vale's his one true pairing, right?)

But I have been reminded that there was more at work than Marvel at this time, and I've started to work on that. It's not as easy for DC, since their change in creator royalties in the mid-seventies plays havoc on any chance of a DVD compendium like Marvel's getting. (Still, I wouldn't mind if Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Atom, and others like them were only printed up to that point...) I've started some investigations of MAD, and it's been interesting to see how much - and how little - it changed from the late 50s to the issues that I read as a lad in the 80s. (And our elementary school had a subscription! Of course, it's gone now...)

So here are the texts that I picked up this week at the library: Alison Behdel's Fun Home and Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. This is an odd pairing, to say the least, but they're a pretty interesting yin and yang of American comics.

I picked up McDuck mostly because of a note that I read in one of those "Bathroom Reader" books while I was in Vancouver last month. In a hard-hitting, completely bereft of annotation or citations article (shock!) on the realism of science in comic books, it noted that the classic McDuck comics of Carl Barks were pretty good on their science. (Oddly, Superman and the Flash had failing marks.)

Rosa's taken up the copious heritage of Duckburg and crafted a tale of McDuck's rise to the top of a vault of money. (I won't play with the made-up numbers for how much money, though.) So far, it's pretty good - I'm about 1/3 of the way through - and I can see why the Onion AV club put it on their list of good books that should get cinematic adaptations (it's number ten on the list). I'd never been a fan of funny animal books before, but Bone made me reconsider their possibilities. And I've never been a big fan of Disney, but I suppose that I've got to make some allowances from time to time.

What's really interesting about this serial story, though, is the ways in which it presents stock Horatio Alger-style storymaking without annoying me or putting me off of the character. Part of it's the whole way in which McDuck's money tells him how he made it - this dime from a shoeshine, that silver dollar from a riverboat adventure - but part of it's the realization that these comics are huge in Europe. (Bigger than David Hasselhoff, I hear.) I'll have to look up some of the scholarship that's been done on this stuff by readable Marxists - it could be interesting. (At the very least, it'd be interesting to use some pages of this for a high school assignment on ideologies - how would a communist read this page? A Lockean liberal?)

Fun Home, on the other hand, is a critically-lauded graphic novel memoir by a woman who examines her family's history, the circumstances of her sexuality, and literary themes while she tries to understand her parents. It may sound dreadful - depending on your tastes for comics - but coming from someone who didn't absolutely love the graphic novel Ghost World, it's absolutely spellbinding. There's not a lot here for research - other than the few times where she's buying MAD magazine - but there's a lot here for literary fun. In many ways, it reminds me of The Corrections. I wonder if this one'll get on Oprah's list?

This one's for all my comic scientists

Texts in mind: X-Men issues to date (#1-22ish), random Marvel wisdom.

So there's a few things that have percolated over the last few weeks on the subject of scientists in comics.

My Facebook status for the day had me thinking about comic book mad scientists, which quickly drew a reply from a colleague with an interest in such topics. The usual suspects were discussed - Richards, Banner, Doom - but I was mostly thinking about some of the last few scientists to be presented in the pages of X-Men.

The main one I was thinking about - still - isn't really a scientist (regardless of any arguments made about social science), but Bolivar Trask, the anthropologist-turned-Sentinels-inventor, presents a few of these interesting issues most readily.

One is that these science-type guys are just brilliant, in the whole "I just invented a self-perpetuating robot" sort of a way. It doesn't matter what their research is in: once they've got a PhD, they're just a few years away from a technological quantum leap which will not only imperil mankind but also be potentially toyetic. [Note to self: hurry up on this dissertation! And think merchandising, goshdarnit...]

Two, they rarely require any help. Trask doesn't appear to have any assistants or grad students or even a wife to pitch in. (I'm pretty sure he has a son who shows up later, but I can't recall. Still, this doesn't necessarily mean that he had a wife if latter-seasons Simpsons writers were involved in that storyline.) If they need help, they usually invent it.

Three, these robots aren't that bright and they certainly don't have anything like strength of convictions. I'll have to check again, but I'm pretty sure that Professor X uses his telepathic powers to stop the Sentinels a few times. (Something about a highly advanced positronic brain emulating the human brain? We'll have to see how that holds up with re-reading, or if later issues provide a good retcon for that event.)

A side note here about robots and communism: in Savage's Comic Books and America, he discusses the ways in which the communist threats in comic book plots often originated with one key villain who had duped all of the follower-underlings. The heroes then either had to convince the followers of their mistake so that the villain could be defeated or had to defeat the villain to convince the followers of their mistake. To some extent, it may be that there's some sort of corollory present here, except that the robots aren't latent westerners but instead mistaken machinery, programmed to evil yet easily put off task. (And doctrinaire! They just can't adapt to new situations and always require leadership, as was the case when the unexpected X-Men threat led one Sentinel to turn around for reprogramming.)

So if this is the case, then one can usually assume that the technology that modern science creates is not to blame, and that the science itself is not to blame, but that the scientist who creates is. ("Science doesn't kill people - mad scientists kill people.") The good thing about scientists, though, is that they use science, and its rational processes should bring them to the "truth" in the end. And if the scientist in question does not have the adjective "mad" in front, then they may be reasoned with, or may even reason things out for themselves, as was the case with Trask. (If they're not reasonable, then they're mad. Or a brainwashed commie, I suppose, though we've not met him yet here. The Red Ghost, though, provides us with a possible example over in the pages of the Fantastic Four.) Science, then, is on the side of good.

Back to our list, and taking up this previous issue: the fourth item is that scientists can often be trusted to do the right thing. Beyond Trask, another example is found with the Mimic's father in issue 19. Rather than invent a machine which would make his erratic, proto-villain son into a powerful threat, he secretly creates a device which will nullify his son's powers. Alas, the angry mob imperiled this plan and inadvertantly killed him. (Then again, Mimic's also a proto-hero, if I recall correctly - not only in these pages, but also in alternate realities. Or do we call them counterfictionals now?) At the rate by which scientists solve things, I'm really hoping that the "SCIENCE!" guy from that Thomas Dolby song shows up soon with solutions.

Finally, the important thing to keep in mind when evaluating a scientist is whether or not the government approves of him. (I don't think we've seen a female scientist yet.) Professor X occasionally shows up unannounced in the midst of police action or military situations, but once
word comes down from the Pentagon or Washington that he can be trusted, the authorities trust the heck out of him. They may question his long silences/naps - from when he goes astral to examine the situation on a different plane - but they don't turn him away. (And they certainly need the solutions that he divines.) Then again, Professor X has to work in a more circumspect manner than Reed Richards, since the former's got a secret identity to hide. (Not a costume, just a status that he keeps quiet. Oh, the superpowers that dare not speak their name...)

Enter the Story Arc... and the Sentinels

Well, it's surprising to see how long it's been since last I posted. Alas! It's also somewhat odd to see how verbose I've been for just a couple of issues, particularly when I've many more issues to discuss, two Asimov novels, and some random thoughts. But we'll keep things focused with just nine X-issues for today.

X-Men #11-19 take the team through some of a storyline for their mythos and some general filler issues. #11 sees a extraordinarily powerful alien called The Stranger come to Earth and steal away Magneto and the Toad as specimens of mutation. (His people are just nuts about mutations. Go figure.) #12-13 introduce Professor X's super-strong step-brother, The Juggernaut, and provide a sizable amount of backstory for Prof. X. #14-16 make the most important contribution here, as they introduce the Sentinels - mutant-hunting androids - to the Marvel Universe. #17 has a mysterious villain - Magneto - subdue the battle-weary X-Men, and #18 sees Iceman rescue the rest of the team and thwart Magneto's attempts to create an army of mutant androids (more detail to follow). #19 introduces the Mimic - a villain who is able to copy the powers of others.

There's some items of note in these issues. The background tale for Professor X begins with his father's funeral after he dies in an atomic blast ("that fateful holocaust") in Alamagordo, NM. Brian Xavier's colleague, Dr. Kurt Marko, survived the blast and eventually marries Mrs. Xavier. Naturally, L'il Prof. X doesn't trust Marko - who has a black goatee, of course - and once Marko moves in he revels in wealth, prestige, and funding for science-y research. Long story short, Marko's son , Cain, from a former marriage arrives, Mrs. Xavier dies of a broken heart, and eventually an explosion kills Marko. ("Don't touch those test-tubes!! They're unstable -- explosive!") Marko saves Xavier and Cain, admits that he hadn't tried to save Xavier's father from the accident - though it truly was an accident - and then warns Xavier to beware of Cain once he finds out about Xavier's power.

Xavier, of course, first uses his power to steal answers in class and excel at sports, and his success infuriates Cain. They end up serving in Korea together (didn't the Lizard serve in Korea, too? And there's an ad in #13 for the Sgt. Fury Annual - set in Korea!) and when Cain attempts to hide out in a cave he stumbles upon "the sacred, lost temple of Cyttorak" and touches a ruby on a dias. Naturally, it transforms him into a human Juggernaut through "the power of the crimson bands of Cyttorak," but the ceiling collapses and buries him beneath a mountain. It takes until the end of issue #12, but Juggernaut's arrived to fight for his "rightful" inheritance (having bludgeoned his way through the defenses that the X-Men erect around their mansion). Xavier quickly completes a "mento-helmet" to amplify his abilities, the helmet which protects Juggernaut's mind is dislodged, and Prof X's mind is able to defeat the brute force of his stepbrother.

#14 sees the X-Men become a monthly title - just in time for the winter holidays - and ups the ante for anti-mutant hysteria. Other than Magneto's diatribes and the occasional angry pedestrian, there really didn't seem to be much to the notion of fear and hate of homo superior by ordinary homo sapiens. Heck, Spider-Man always seemed to get it worse. But "in another city" Dr. Bolivar Trask, one of America's greatest anthropologists (according to a reporter), holds a well-attended press conference where he warns of the mutant threat: "We've been so busy worrying about cold wars, hot wars, atom bombs, and the like, that we've overlooked the greatest menace of all! Mutants walk among us! Hidden! Unknown! Waiting--! Waiting for their moment to strike! They are mankind's most deadly enemy! For only they have the actual power to conquer the human race!" Now, all of this takes four text balloons and two panels. (And the following panel sees "Mutant Menace!" on the cover of the "Daily Globe" - not sure if this means that that JJ Jameson's got better things to publish, if this is a riff on the "Daily Planet," or if this is supposed to be the paper of record for Boston in the Marvel Universe.) It's a fun passage for me for many reasons - not just the explosive power of the academic voice - but the key's all the notes of fear about America's youth implicit in this passage and the dismissal of the threat of the Cold War. If only mutants have the power to take over the planet, then were does that leave the Soviets? (I can't recall when Soviet mutants were introduced - Colossus may well have been first, for all I know - but we'll see if any show up before then. I think the Voice was from Czechoslovakia and fought Ant-Man, but I can't remember when.)

Clearly, Prof. X reads the Japanese version of the "Daily Globe" - bad art on page six with the newspaper cover on the wrong side - and he takes in the feature article: artwork of vaguely Namor-like mutant overlords forcing mere humans into slavework and gladiatorial sport. Professor X calls up the National Television Network (yawn) and challenges Dr. Trask to a televised public debate. Naturally, NTN lives for this sort of thing: "It will be a privilege to present a scientist of your stature on our network!" (In times like this, there's only the Simpsons: "Hey everyone! An old man is talking!")

And so the debate. Continuity is still tricky for Marvel at this stage - Xavier's introduced as an education authority, not as a geneticist, and as "an articulate spokesman for America's intellectual community." (This is the end of 1965, so Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life would have won its Pulitzer by now.) Xavier counsels consideration and thought, and the audience reacts accordingly ("Wouldn't it be groovy if he's a mutant himself?" "No kid of mine is a mutie!" "I've never even heard of him! I'll bet he's a communist!"). Trask claims that Xavier's blind, and then trumps the debate with his world-premiere of his Sentinels - giant androids. (The television moderator is thoughtful enough to shill - "I hope that all our viewers at home realize they are seeing a sensational television first, thru the courtesy of our sponsor!")

It's got to be said - I've yet to meet an anthropologist's robot. Maybe there's some special school for robot mechanics which grants PhDs in anthropology, but Trask either was trying to impress a girl with his robot hobby or else was able to really branch out once he gained tenure. Anyhow, the Sentinels turn on Trask - because of all their power and ability, it is their destiny to command, not to be commanded - and they take Trask to their base. (Xavier reflects that "Trask was an anthropologist--not a robotic expert! His knowledge of cybernetic brains was inadequate!", which only makes me wonder what school offered degrees in advanced idea mechanics or in evil medicine in the Marvel Universe.) Xavier summons the team - the Beast and Iceman are once again in Greenwich Village, with more hipster humour - and they prepare to fight. Again.

#15 introduces the Master Mold - the android that Trask created to make Sentinels - who mentally probes the Beast's origin story and forces Trask to design new Sentinels ("I do not possess the knowledge to create other Sentinels! You shall do it for me!") During the Beast's story debriefing, he states that the X-Men's mission is to protect mankind, and Trask becomes remorseful about his mistake ("a blind -- dangerous fool!"). The Beast's father was a labourer at an "atomic project" whose radiation likely caused his mutation, and the Beast naturally used his powers for athletic gains at first. The Sentinels prove to be quite unadaptable to invasion, as they frequently leave to gain new instructions when presented with novel events. (They clearly don't have the overriding primary goal of "destroy mutants" hardwired into them yet.) Prof X somehow finds a way to use his abilities to attack the Sentinels - I'll leave the philosophical possibilities for someone else - and the Master Mold grimaces as "a strange force" scans its "thinking apparatus!!"

#16 brings the whole Sentinel saga to a close - Xavier finds a means to disrupt the control signals for the Sentinels and is given full support by Washington, and Trask sacrifices himself to thwart the plan of the Master Mold.

There are three major techs of note for #17-18. The first is the "new laser-induced hypodermic" which the ER doctor creates to help the injured Iceman, but the second is key to Magneto's plot. Somehow - naturally, not well explained - Magneto uses the lab equipment of Professor X to construct a device that will "analyze... and duplicate" the body cells of the Angel's parents. Since their son is a mutant, Magneto will be able to use these cell patterns to create an army of mutant slaves, even control the types of mutations that they receieve. The third tech is the atomic power plants of the museum-quality starships held on the Stranger's planet; Magneto quickly reactivates one and rockets back to Earth (though he abandons the Toad there). Of course, Magneto's plan is thwarted, the mutant androids/slaves/whatever they're called (it's really not too clear what they'll be like - probably something like the Age of Apocalypse's Infinites), and the Stranger chases Magneto away.

#19's Mimic isn't a mutant - or certainly doesn't appear to be given his origin story. Still, it's classic Silver Age stuff. Calvin Rankin's father is "a scientist, working on a strange, dangerous experiment", and the headstrong lad's curiousity leads him to tinker with the beakers and unleash a gas by mistake. After this, he was able to rapidly assume the abilities of those around him, but only temporarily. As the locals became suspicious, his father worked on a machine which would give permanence to the Mimic's powers, but the threat of an angry mob led to an explosives mishap which buried the father and his device. With the powers of the X-Men, Mimic is able to uncover the device which turns out to be a nullifier rather than a stabilizer for his powers.

In other news, I never thought I'd be grateful that Cyclops ended up with the White Queen (a 21st century development, not something here), but the fact that even the Angel notices in #14 that Scott's into Jean just makes this whole slow-motion love story annoying, particularly since Angel's the first attempt at a love triangle here. (For once, Wolverine definitely makes things more interesting.) No wonder the rest of the team had no luck with the ladies - all this attention was showered on these two. Still, it's a little less notable overall here than it was earlier.

Letters of note:

- #11 sees a grad student in Calculus (and member of the Marvel Mathematicians Comic Club) writes in support of the Hulk and Doctor Strange and notes that his educated parents wait for him to send various issues home so they can read them.
-#12 leads off with a letter by a student of evolution who takes umbrage with the technical errors in issue #10's Savage Land. (Letter three makes many of the same points, and the last letter in #14 provides an explanation for all the overlapping prehistoric creatures.)
-#15 featues a discussion of Darwinian and DeVriesian mutation, and how the X-Men do not suit these theories, and #19 sports a rebuttal by another fan. (#19 also has a letter by the boys of Phi Kappa Tau at RPI asking that someone mention "Hey You! Get off of my cloud!" by the Rolling Stones for some reason.)
-#18 has a question about whether or not Angel is a mutant, since his wings didn't develop until he was in his teens, and the editor actually admits that they're not Charles Darwin. (Considering other responses, that's awfully contrite of Stan Lee.)

Next time: Asimov, X-Men, and Alfred E. Neuman.

Motorways and tramlines

Texts considered: The X-Men #9-10 (1965), an ad from the reprint of issue nine in Annual #1 (1970), "Heroes" (2006-2007)

Well, these were a bit of a let down. I know that I've been raised in a very different comic culture, but why didn't Stan and Jack ever consider multi-issue arcs for some of these stories? I really figured that the whole "Lucifer" subplot would take a lot longer to be resolved - maybe even have some drama - but here it is, all complete. For now...

Well, there's the minor beef out of the way. Quite quickly, issue nine sees the X-Men fight the Avengers off so that Professor X can defeat Lucifer (who is not Beelzebub), and issue ten sees the X-Men travel to what will most likely become the Savage Land (a prehistoric oasis in the middle of Antarctica) and meet Ka-zar (a Tarzan knock-off, for those who don't know) and his feline life partner Zabu.

The closest thing to anything military-industrial complex-y here is the "thermal bomb" ("Large enough to blow up a continent!") which has been attuned to Lucifer's heartbeat so that Professor X can't just kill him. (Seriously - how often does Professor X just kill people, even those who crippled him? He even lets Lucifer go at the end. The worst he did to Magneto was shut his brain down after he stole Wolverine's adamantium.) Oddly, the bomb's targeted at Antarctica - which would make the world's oceans into "montrous, deadly, cascading mountains of water, destroying all in their path" - rather than set to home in on Lucifer's last signal so that his killer can also be destroyed, but I suppose everyone has to suffer if a super-villain dies. Besides, he's just off in the Balkans anyhow. Oh, and the explorers that Ka-zar encounters at the start of issue ten are heavily armed, though a quick check of wikipedia tells us that military personnel and equipment can be used in the neutral Antarctic for the purposes of exploration. (Were they armed with tommy guns in case of tapdancing penguins? I sure would be.)

(I do have to wonder at the "artificial dust devil" that Lucifer employs to trap Professor X, though. It just seems odd and unlikely. Yes, I do realize that I'm reading a comic with a winged teen and an ice-man. Anyhow, I know that I've now two entries for an anthology of literary discussions of dust devils.)

In terms of science, the main option is all the archaeological delights in the Savage Land, but not much is made of it. There's sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths and tyrannosaurs and eohippi (or whatever the plural of eohippus is), but that's about it. Hank is impressed, Warren wants to shoot B-movies with no need for an effects budget, and Scott is stoic.

Also, I'll have to check wikipedia later for how long it took Sam and Diane to become a couple. After just ten issues of unrequited whatever between Scott and Jean I'm already laughing at most thought bubbles: "Is that the normal concern of a leader for an ally...or do I detect another note in his voice? ...One that I've been longing to hear?" "When she stands this close to me, I forget everything but my desire to reach out...to embrace her!" "If only I could comfort you with my arms... my lips...but I know I mustn't! As our acting leader, you've no time for thoughts of... romance!" (At least there's not a lot of bold lettering in their thoughts. Poor Professor X, especially considering his feelings back in issue three. No wonder he went nuts. At least the other guys in the team have given up on her.)

Musical ads alert: in issue nine, there's three calls for poems and only two opportunities for musical instruction, and in issue ten, there's just two calls for poems. I suppose my previous speculation about the rise of singer-songwriter comic book readers was deeply unfounded. I wonder how Joe Satriani managed it, then...

(Issue number nine was reprinted as part of the first X-Men annual and it featured a Columbia House ad. Twelve albums for just $3.98! There's a lot less canon there than I'd have hoped.)

Other ads: well, the Merry Marvel Marching Society finally makes an appearance in the pages of a comic. It's just a dollar for various cards, stickers, and a button. Radio-television electronics make an appearance in ads - my fave is a two dollar screen overlay that transforms a black and white television into a color television. Since Time told me yesterday that all the networks went color at this time, this makes a lot of sense. (I'm still waiting for the cardboard submarines that Dave Barry bought as a college student to be advertised.) There's also high school equivalency programs which join the mechanic programs that we've already seen. Oh, and I forgot to mention the various cartooning and drawing schools that have been advertised, too.

There's still ads for rockets. I really should order one of those sometime.

As for the letters, some discouraging words are finally heard. In issue ten, a student of psychology who dabbles in parapsychology (did she sue the Ghostbusters people later?) huffily notes that it's "psychokinesis" or "P.K." rather than "telekinesis" which Marvel Girl employs. (Stan Lee employs something called "sarcasm" for his reply here.) More effectively, someone takes issue with the house bluster of Marvel and the overworked artists who aren't able to produce the art that they're capable of. (Actually, that probably should have been "Art.") Not only that, he also talks about how the art's "now unpleasing to the discerning comic book fan" but closes by saying that he enjoys these books. (Stan calmly declines to argue and says that the letterwriter's entitled to his "own bonehead opinion" and that they never expressly said that they had more talent than other comic book publishers. Maybe they had some pride, but not that much...)

A science fiction fan - of Arthur C. Clark [sic], Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, and Damon Knight - also chimes in this issue. A solemn oath to no longer read comics had been made two years previously, but Fantastic Four had changed everything for him. He also notes that he's entering the University of Vermont as a freshman, "so [he's] not a kid any more. Marvel Comics are great reading material. They are well written, well drawn, and even believable. The X-Men as super mutants are nothing more than a logical deduction on the part of your staff." I suppose this guy went on to get his dissertation in genetics and supervise the work of Mohinder's father in "Heroes."

Oh, and people are still angry about Iceman's lack of boots. Considering that when I was in my undergrad I had to contend with an X-Men whose mutant power was his matter-devouring digestive system which had separated itself from his body into two maggot-shaped symbiotic creatures, I don't have much sympathy. Kids those days...

Given all the letters about freeing Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch from the Evil Mutants, it's not terribly surprising that they'll end up in the Avengers before long. And uniform critiques are rising, too.

***

As for "Heroes," a few weeks' worth of catchup viewing finally got me through the first season. It's kinda odd to consider that this superhero show was one of the few survivors form this season - especially considering that "Studio 60" was so touted and had such a solid pilot - but it was fun to watch. Considering how Marvelesque it all was, it's not surprising that there was a Stan Lee cameo, too - though only one line. No one's running around in tights yet and everything's reasonably acceptable so far. I will be interested in the next season, that's for sure. It's no "Buffy," but it's pretty decent.

The lack of origin stories is a little odd, but I suppose they don't entirely know yet. It seems that most of the powers of the youngest heroes are likely ones that they were born with, but it remains to be seen how their parents received theirs. Very few powers are anything particularly new, or even beyond the realm of the X-Men (flight is still a pretty awesome and lame solitary power, no matter how you slice it - and at least they acknowledge that). But it's probably for the best that they've not yet given us an origin story - a little mystery goes a long way. In a way, that's probably one of the blessings and faults of this research - it's hard to look for anything new or different when you already know the general story arc.

The Beast as a Beat

Texts considered: The X-Men #7-8, Time 26 December 1969.

There's fewer issues considered today for two simple reasons. The first is the undeniable joy of seeing Hank McCoy and Bobby Drake spend 10 panels in a beat bar in Greenwich Village, while the second is the awesome spectacle of Time's final issue of the 1960s (as most people count a decade, anyway. Me and Al Franken will maintain that a year that ends with a 1 must always be the first of a decade... but that's a posting for a different sort of blog).

Anyhow: issues seven and eight aren't particularly notable for canon or plot or, well, much of anything beyond what I'm looking for in these issues. Simply, seven sees the Blob briefly team up with the Evil Mutants (not yet the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and eight sees Hank McCoy briefly leave the team and then return to help them deal with the challenge of Unus, the Untouchable. (Insert jokes about him not being hugged enough here.) The Blob returns to the circus at the end of the former, while Unus is blackmailed into renouncing a life of crime. (Spoiler alert - if such a thing is possible for 40+ year old texts: the Beast creates a device which amplifies Unus's power so that he cannot touch anything, even food. Given the choice between neutrality and starvation, Unus goes sort-of-good.) The setting for neither fight is particularly notable, and there's little science to point to, let alone military-industrial complex fun. (Well, there are torpedoes that Magneto sends chasing after the X-Men, but for all the damage that they do they could just as easily be flying manatees.)

Oh, and issue seven sees Professor X leave the team under the leadership of Cyclops while he goes a-questing. Issue eight indicates that the villain he pursues - deep underneath the Balkans, naturally - is Lucifer. I shudder to think what this villain will be once we find out. Reading various appearances of Diablo in contemporaneous Fantastic Four issues makes me wonder how many more satanic figures there are to come - and makes me hope that most of them, or at least Mephisto, are kept within the pages of Doctor Strange.

So: outside of the Beast as a beat, what else is there of note? Well, when Magneto tries to convince the Blob to join forces with him, he imprisons the bally in an animal cage. Filled with righteous indignation - or simply the spirit of "we've not yet had an action scene in this issue" - the barker solemnly intones "I don't know what your game is, Mac, but if it's a fight you want, you came to the right place!!" and then yells - in red, hand-drawn block letters, no less, so we know it's on now - "HEY, RUBE!" What makes this fantastic is the narrator's text which follows: "Seconds later, in answer to the time-honored carny battle cry, a group of husky roustabouts charge the mighty mutant!" (I now know what my first filk album will be titled, anyway.)

Things move along once the Blob's catapulted backwards and has his memory restored by a jolt to the head. Actually, it's funnier than that - the mental blocks that Professor X put on him have apparently been jarred loose by that collision. (I suppose that the brain is a curious machine which we still don't understand, but that's a ham-fisted metaphor if ever I read one. Oh wait...)

The other oddity is that the Beast, once he departs from the team in the next issue, decides to join professional wrestling and make his fortune. He's only been gone a week, and yet he's already exploded "on the T.V. screens throughout the nation! He soon becomes a top-draw wrestling villain", which leads the Beast to muse - as he's led to the ring in cage accompanied by at least six safari-style characters - that "At the rate I'm going, as a pro wrestler I'll be a millionaire in a year!"

There's a few problems I have with this. First, this is Hank McCoy - there's no way that he would employ both a contraction and an abbreviation in the same sentence. (Yes, space is tight in that word balloon, but still...) Second, what is it with Marvel heroes and professional wrestling? (I'm looking at you, Spidey.) I'm not looking forward to finding some rare issue of Iron Man where he fights Bruno Sammartino or to a very special Avengers where Andre the Giant helps them fight Immortus. (And I'm trying to forget all the ridiculousness of Unlimited Class Wrestling in Captain America in the 80s.) Third, I suppose that I shouldn't question Hank's mathematical abilities - if he only had his allowance the week before and now was making three times as much, then he could well expect that things will increase at that rate - but it seems that wrestling's pretty darned lucrative yet open to any yahoo who happens to stop by.

But the great part of these issues has got to be the slice of bohemian New York that Hank and Bobby experience in issue seven. Naturally, there are a lot of beats with berets, cigarette holders, and turtlenecks to be seen, plus lots of sunglasses worn indoors and drippy, drippy candles. There's a jazz combo - "so far out that they'll be fired if anyone can understand the melody!", Bobby exclaims - which appears to feature a baritone saxophone, an oboe, and a mariachi-sized guitar, and there's also a "zen" poet doing a reading. Informed that it's poetry, Hank quips, "I assumed he was checking a housewife's shopping list aloud!" and is then informed that it is a shopping list - "That what makes him a genius!" (Naturally, someone yells out "Go cat, go!" I would likely have inverted the bold font for that sentence, but what do I know? I just blog about this stuff.)

Bobby's a little distressed that Hank's having such a rough time - "The trouble with you... is that you can't understand anybody who doesn't use ten-syllable words!" - but Hank's just uncomfortable because of the shoes he's wearing. The shoes go - the blonde at his table is pretty sure no one will notice in this place, but such is not to be.

"Say! Dig that crazzzy paperweight!" a turtleneck-clad passerby comments, while a trio at another table enumerates the possibilities for such feet - "They should be immortalized on canvas!" "Wait till Bernard sees them! He'll write a new poem immediately!" "This could start a whole new cult--we'll call ourselves barefoot beats!" Unfortunately, the first option is not seized upon (after all, we've all seen Hank's feet again and again), but at least the beats decide to hail him as their leader - the "king of the barefoot beats!" (But I'm relieved to not encounter the poetry.) Free coffee is offered to everyone as Hank is carried off on their shoulders ("I appreciate the accolades," Hank states plainly, "but I think you're all totally bereft of sanity!"), while Bobby tries to hit on the waitress, Zelda. (Bobby is written to be pretty goofy with the ladies, I suppose: "Y'know, if you twist my arm, I think I could learn to like you!"

Fortunately, the Angel sounds the alert and saves Hank from a fate worse than... well, it's pretty odd, anyhow. Someone's painted red-lined eyes on the soles of Hank's feet (but not a mouth) though very little else has happened so far. Hank makes his verbose pre-exit declaration - "I thought I was inexorably trapped here!" - which befuddles the hipster over his shoulder, and then leaves with an acrobatic multi-bounce departure. "That wasn't too wise," the Angel notes. "Someone might suspect your secret identity after a stunt like that!" "Not in that place," the Beast confidently replies. "Those far-out characters wouldn't be inclined to suspect anything unless it were normal!"

Two things come to mind after this exchange. One, I suppose you don't really need gritty discussions of the perils of drug abuse in this panel for Hank's point that the beats would not be reliable witnesses to be accepted. Two, you really have to wonder why the X-Men didn't all move to Greenwich Village if the hipsters there were so readily willing to accept offbeat characters. (Given Hank's intelligence and affinity for literate people, it's especially odd in light of his decision to become a professional wrestler in the next issue.) Still, the world is probably a happier place for not having issues of Bobby Drake's poetry readings interrupted by rogue caricatures of Jules Pfeiffer rampaging by, let alone having to rescue Hank McCoy or Henry Pym from yet another LSD tycoon who needs a new chemist.

Ad alerts: the most fun is the ad for "yubiwaza" in issue seven. (To see it in all its glory, the blog greeklish has a post which discusses it and includes a scan. Naturally, something this offbeat had to be googled, and it also turned up a bio for a character from the Tick - Paul the Samurai, a third degree fuschia belt yubiwaza warrior.)

Also of note is the shift in classified-style ads which appealed to readers who were poets or aspiring songwriters. Issue seven featured three ads which solicited poem submissions (so that they could be set to music) or song ideas and one ad from Boston's Ace Publishing which promised to teach you how to write and sell songs. There's also a classified ad - much larger - which promised "a new world of adventure - as exciting as the space age" through model rocketry. (The biggest ad was for baseball equipment, though.) Only two ads asked for poem submissions and song ideas in the next issue, though - Ace's ad is joined by "Guitarist Ed Sale's" money-back guaranteed seven-day guitar course. It's certainly not the target of this research - and it's only two issues rather than a meticulously charted trend - but I wouldn't be surprised if there's more emphasis on singer-songwriterly ads instead of calls for song ideas and poems as the issues move along.

Oh, and a letter in the seventh says that people should stop talking about Beatlemania and instead focus on Marvelmania. (The letters are almost relentlessly upbeat, positive, and so thesaurus-belabored as to give you sugar shock. Oddly, a few seem to think that Iceman looks strange without his boots. Really, there's little to report in the letters so far. Alas.)

There's the usual body-building ads, cover splashes for other Marvel titles, and a few education or business opportunity bits. One gets a rather odd sense of 1964 society from the juvenile entrepreneurship jobs - were there lots of door-to-door shoe salesmen to be had? (You did get your free selling outfit when you joined the Mason Shoe Company, but this almost makes pets.com sound stable.) There's also the option to become a Grit salesman. (I wasn't impressed when Richie Rich tried to get me to become a Grit salesman, and I'm not about to listen to some plain-o ad in X-Men.) And there's various ads for becoming an electronics repairman or an auto mechanic - training in your own home! I'm pretty sure that's not the training that Hank used to defeat Unus, but there's still quite a few issues to go. All I know is I want the same program that Doctor Doom used - I put my faith in despotic cartoon experts, after all.

***

The real fun of the last bit has been packing and weeding through boxes. (Moving, moving - now my parents are joining the fun and my old stuff's gotta get packed up.) In a box with my yearbooks and various photo albums, I found a variety of early-70s Time issues - and the 26 December 1969 issue. The cover's missing, but there's a list of major accomplishments of the various departments which the magazine covered then - Film, Music, Theatre, Books, and so on. The popular music list is pretty unsurprising (though it doesn't have Abbey Road) with the Beatles, Coltrane, Davis, Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Aretha Franklin, and Cash all listed. Press notes include mentions of the LA Free Press and the death of the Saturday Evening Post (and that the subscription numbers for Playboy rose from 1 million to 5 million over the course of the decade). Naturally, there's no mention of hockey on the sports list.

But there's plenty of countercultural events memorialized in these lists (and some preparation for a retconned death of counterculture via the first disco in Manhattan in 1961). The "modern living" section notes Timothy Leary, the first hippie "be-in" in San Francisco, and Woodstock, while the environment section mentions Rachel Carson. But most of the key events are on the education page.

The education section's notes open with the "First Negro student sit-in at Greensboro, N.C. lunch counters, 1960", moves through integration and the acceleration of curriculum reform by Educational Services, Inc., and mentions Clark Kerr's "multiversity" and Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (which "certifies an old philosopher for the New Left, 1964"). Notes are made of "mass arrests at Berkeley (1964) [which] prefigure later campus revolts at Columbia and San Francisco State (1968), Harvard and Cornell (1969)" and of the "first teach-ins and draft card burnings [which] dramatize student reaction to Viet Nam War, 1965." (There's also note of Head Start, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and of the Supreme Court's order that southern universities desegregate.) I was nagged by the notion that something important was missing, and then remembered - Kent State was in Spring of 1970. That certainly changes the spin a little. (But I learned about Kent State from an issue of GI Joe that made fun of yuppies so now I don't even know where to stand on this one.)

Other than a shout-out to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - my fave of the plays listed - and to the note which accompanies The Graduate - that it "alerts film makers to the news that more than 60% of their audience is 30 or under" - the major categories of note which remain are in art and in television. Lichtenstein's comic-strip images are named as part of pop-art's arrival in 1962. Actually, that's about it for art -given the parameters I'm running with - though I should note that Buckminster Fuller's Expo '67 edifice is also mentioned.

The last note for television would make an excellent Marvel Team-Up - hero x and hero y have to deal with "Vice President Agnew attacks the networks, 1969"! - but most of the others are still worthwhile or curious.. Yes, there's men on the moon and Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, but there's also instant replay for sports and "A black, Bill Cosby, co-stars in NBC series I Spy." Sure, there's the Kennedy-Nixon debate and Newton Minow's "vast wasteland speech," but there's also "all network shows are now broadcast in color, 1967." (Someone'll inevitably tell me that the switch to HDTV has nothing on the shift to color, I'm sure.) From the distance of 38 years, though, I'm trying to decide which of the last two events wins out - Viet Nam War brought directly into the living room or the announcement of the invention of Electronic Video Recording. (Yes, probably the broadcast of the war, if only for the way that it helped along the culture wars - but given current war rhetoric, I'd imagine that a video iPod would probably be much more impressive to a time-traveling 1960s astronaut than current reports from Iraq.)

Anyhow, that's just a quick flavor of this issue. I suppose I shouldn't be suprised that Marvel Pop-Art productions didn't get posted as either books or art achievements (actually, there were no lists for books of the decade), but it would have been interesting.

Did Jean Grey Have An Extra Power? Seriously?

Texts considered today: The X-Men 1-6 (1963-4)

Before someone clamors forth to declare that the comic in question is The Uncanny X-Men, I'll admit that even I had to pause and check the comics out again to make sure. As I thought I'd remembered, it's not until the series took off in the seventies that the "Uncanny" was added (and then not even to the front page - at least, not as far as a cursory examination of the covers revealed).

Anyhow, with such geekiness aside, it's time to consider what sorts of things are presented to the reader in these comics.

First off, it's painfully obvious that these are very pre-"Women's Lib" stories. Jean Grey/Marvel Girl is given a lot of attention when she first arrives at Westchester - so much so that's it's kind of a relief to know that she'll end up with Scott Summers /Cyclops eventually. Other than the fact that Bobby Drake/Iceman is pretty much the bratty little brother of the team at this point, the reader's presented with a wealthy playboy Warren Worthington III/Angel and a not-so-verbose-and-brilliant Hank McCoy/Beast trying to catch her eye.

There's even the one panel where Charles Xavier/Professor X smolders with an inappropriate lust for his only female student (the last panel on the fourth page of issue #3) - wrong not only because he's in a position of authority but also because it was used to help Rob Liefeld disasterously reboot Captain America. [That's a personal aside, I suppose.] Anyhow, it seems clear that Jean Grey temporarily had some sort of power to make the male characters around her behave most inappropriately. (I'm sure there's a fanfic somewhere where someone comments that "it looks like he was poured into that uniform!" - the opposite of what Iceman exclaims (while Jean Grey thinks that the designer could give Dior a run for his money) - but I'm really not looking for links for that.)

Second, there's a fair bit of military-industrial complex detail added to many of these stories. Magneto, after all, first tries to make his mark in issue #1 by humilating humankind's efforts to launch "the mightiest rocket of all" and forces it to fall into the sea. A red-hatted NASA official notes that "every phase of the launching was A-okay! There can only be one explanation... the bird was tampered with!" (The Daily Globe newspaper on the next page notes that "Sixth Top Secret Lauch Fails At Sea! Phantom Saboteur Strikes Again!", which seems to indicate that the American military also needed to work on its counterintelligence or public relations at this time, not just the issue of rocketry.) In issue #4, Magneto steals an "old ex-convoy freighter with the cannons on the deck" - surprisingly chintzy for a guy who was trashing rockets just a few issues before - but by issue #5, Magneto's already a space power with his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants set up in an asteroid with magnetically powered capsules.

The Vanisher, on the other hand, aspired to the theft and ransom of defense plans from "inside the mighty Pentagon building" in the second issue. (Fun with exposition: "Let's review those continental defense plans again, Hendershoot!" "Yes sir, General! We can't be too careful of our procedures!" I'll admit that this is excellent economy in storytelling, but it still makes me laugh. Hendershoot, on the other hand, is a great name that should be used more often - like Rowsdower.) Luckily, Professor X has a contact in the Department of Special Affairs at the FBI who puts a McDonnell XV-1 Convertiplane at the X-Men's disposal to ferry them down to Washington. They fail at first, and the Vanisher demands ten million dollars, tax-free or else he`ll turn the plans over to the communists (would supervillains behind the Iron Curtain have paid the tax?).

Third, science gets name-dropped whenever necessary (like Galileo dropped the orange). When Mr. and Mrs. Grey visit the Mansion, she mentions that she was "so impressed to learn that some of your courses are classified top secret by the government," and he speculates that "perhaps they're teaching a special secret science course! Oh, well, I suppose we'll find out some day!" [Oh, the foreshadowing! And the use of exclamation points!] It's an easy explanation for these minor characters to use, and certainly as valid a reason as any for the government to be involved in the education of minors. It will be interesting to see how this government-mutant relationship will change in the comics, though there's already some hint of anti-X-Men public feeling in other issues - though only because they initially failed to thwart the Vanisher and hide their identities. Given the fact that only Marvel Girl appears to have a family in these issues it's somewhat odd that they worry about their alter egos, but I suppose that these crazy teenagers wanted to have some privacy.

One has to wonder what sort of sense of time - or the nature of mutation which informed Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's work here - but they do have Professor X note in the first issue that he "was born of parents who had worked on the first A-bomb project! Like yourselves, I am a mutant - possibly the first such mutant!" Now, this is a fine timeline for the current movie incarnation of the X-Men, but this either means that there was a super-secret early atomic bomb project in the 1920s (since Professor X has to have a fair number of years on his charges), that the Professor was changed by the radiation around him during youth and is instead an altered human, or else that he's incredibly young and his feelings for Jean Grey are much less skeezy. (Or that Stan Lee set up a future retcon from the get-go.) Regardless, this gave Professor X a sterling science background and provided Marvel with the key genesis story for the mutants.

As for the other issues - issue #3 introduces the Blob and features his attempted invasion of the school with the rest of the circus. [Seriously.] Issue #6 was the third in a row with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and featured the attempt by both sides to recruit Namor, the Sub-Mariner to their teams. Professor X is scientifically-minded enough to allow that Namor may be the first mutant, but neither side is terribly successful. It's odd to see how the early Magneto is presented, though: I don't think I saw him fly much, his bloodthirstiness seems to be a work in progress, he is somehow able to project his essence in a somewhat telepathic manner, and he actually relies on devices and weapons. The devices make some sense - those that amplify his power, anyhow - but the weapons are just odd. (And he thinks that they'll impress Namor, too, which is just funny.)

Also, letters pages aren't introduced until the fifth issue. So far, there's been little of note in them (a couple asking about origin stories, someone asking that Iceman be renamed Kid Kold, a few who've learned how to write in the lofty prose of Stan Lee) but it will be interesting to see how they evolve - and when critical letters will arrive. (The closest so far is the complaint that the covers are cluttered with "sayings such as, '...a book-length classic of the incredible! ...never have you read a tale like this! ...'" which drew the reply "Never have we read a letter like yours, Kathie! Surprise followed spectacular surprise! Can we help it if we're cornballs?")

So far, there's been a reasonable amount of noteworthy content - albeit not necessarily all intended for final use in the dissertation. I'm intrigued to see where this all ends up, but it's been so long since I last read new comics that I've grown accustomed to the fast-forward rate at which I could re-read the titles of my youth. (And, other than Fantastic Four #21-40, I've never read much of the Stan Lee-penned style of comics. That's part of the legacy of art-heavy comics of the 1990s, I suppose.)

A note on the source: I've been able to find the "40 Years of the X-Men" DVD-ROM by GIT Corp. (The link to the website has been erratic; here's an example of it on ebay.) It's pretty good so far, though it doesn't feature early-'90s edition of X-Men that Jim Lee started.)

Remember, remember, the seventh of the... er... Heinlein?

Just for the record, my lucky number's 13.

Maybe this'll just be a chattier warm-up than intended, but it's quite interesting to see the hoopla around 7/7/7. There's been a few reports over the years about these sorts of triple-threat dates (I think I read that next year's 8/8/8 will be bigger for marriages, but hey) but it seems that it's also a day for centennials. The Globe and Mail reported today that it's Freida Kahlo's, but the one that I had in mind was Robert A. Heinlein's - since he's a major portion of the dissertation as it's been designed.

Oddly, my recon trips to the used bookstores in Vernon have revealed very little of note for used Heinlein. (One book with three novels, but none that really stood out as key Heinlein.) There's been lots of Asimov (not necessarily those which are needed, though I suppose that the first Foundation trilogy's pretty essential in spite of pre-dating 1957) and even a fair amount of Dune and its sequels to be had, but fairly little Heinlein.

As I've been told by some who love the guy - Adam, I'm looking at you - that he's contributed plenty to the development of SF and to thought about what our futures will be. And I've read Larry Niven's take on the importance of Heinlein for the development of the genre (or the lack of development of the American military-industrial complex, take your pick). But I've read precious little of his stuff. I may have inadvertently read one of his short stories without knowing it, but the only title I can recall reading is his Have Spacesuit, Will Travel for English 8. Heck, I haven't even seen Starship Troopers (though I have seen the end of it several times on network television, I suppose).

But any plans to watch that movie or to read something of his have been shelved, since I'd forgotten that today was the day to watch Transformers with my brother. Having been fortified by several somewhat approving reviews - and an ever-fun Anthony Lane review - I'm actually somewhat looking forward to it. Anyone who knows me well knows that's high praise indeed for a Bay film. And considering that I'm investigating the civic impulses of my parents' generation's science fictional pop culture as preparation for an eventual study of the (more?) militaristic impulses of my own childhood, it should be fun to see how mine is repackaged for this next generation. (Now that I write this, I'd really rather see how Transformers would be repackaged for Heinlein's generation - or for my parents' generation - but I shudder to think of the steampunk Transformers that someone's undoubtedly created...)

Postscript: Well, that certainly was a Michael Bay movie.

There were a few times where I couldn't help but think, "That's some pretty good narrative editing right there" - such as when the Air Force was prepping their strike on Scorpinox in the Qatar desert, regardless of how common a filmic trope that sort of sequence may be - and many, many times when I couldn't help but think, "Does the editor know or care what sort of movie is being made here?" As others have noted, the film has a solid hour-long homage to '80s comedies built into it which was either tedious or superfluous.

[Spoiler: also, there's something pretty creepy about having Witwicky and his love interest gettin' it on on the hood of Bumblebee at the end - after they've fought and won and all that. On top of that, you have the rest of the Autobots idling around while Optimus Prime's voiceover intones, "We live among its people now in plain sight, but watching over them in secret, waiting, protecting." Watching over them in secret? So... they're just voyeurs now?]

Still, it was pretty good popcorn fare (even though the popcorn was terrible) and it'll make fantastic MST3K-style fodder soon enough.

Much, much better was "Ratatouille" - the first Pixar movie I've seen in the theatres since "Finding Nemo." Actually, I still haven't watched "The Incredibles" or "Cars," though I'm only interested in the former. Out of all the characters in the two films, the rat protagonist here was easily the most human. That's one which is pretty close to "Monsters, Inc." for me.

Melodrama as Great Responsibility? No, wait...

Texts in mind: "Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium" (Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, eds. - particularly Umberto Eco's "Superman" essay), ""Science Fiction Culture" (Camille Bacon-Smith), "Science Fiction" (Adam Roberts), "Science Fiction: The Academic Awakening" (Willis E. McNelly, ed.), "Science Fiction and the New Dark Age," (Harold L. Berger), "The Creation of Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Magazine Science Fiction" (Paul A. Carter), "Not Just Men in Tights" (Henry Jenkins' blog).

As somebody else said, it's kind of funny that critiques of ethnicity, gender, and class are applied to geeky subcultures that usually drew the teasing and swirlies of the jocks and BMOCs. Similarly, it's kind of fun to consider the literatures of such a crowd - science fiction and comics, of course - in an age before they gained real-world credibility or box office power.

So it's hard today - when moon missions are a historical fact rather than a futuristic goal - to imagine that people might not have understood the vacuum of space (as the NY Times did when they critiqued Goddard's articles on rocketry) or an age when special effects couldn't duplicate the imaginations of comic book artists. (Though I suppose that in this day and age Flash Thompson would still be causing trouble for Peter Parker. Maybe that will become some sort of parable someday - "The geeks and nerds will always be with you...")

Conversely, there's also the purist's approach to these sorts of things - everything after this date is a debased version of the proper essence of this thing I'm enthusiastic about - so I'm less surprised now when compilations of writings on comics halt right around the late 1950s. Still, there's still some things that will surprise. "Arguing Comics" presents the thoughts of several literary luminaries on comics, and little jumped out at me until the end (i.e., last three pages) when Umberto Eco discussed the civic and political consciousness of Superman.

The key phrase that jumped out at me was that Supes is "a perfect example of civic consciousness, completely split from political consciousness." (164) Instead of changing governance (or taking over), Superman opts to be a good citizen of the United States (and doesn't do things like free the Chinese from Mao, Eco notes). Epochal acts would upset the issue-based storylines of the age (Eco writes this in 1962) so instead Superman merely presents small acts of charity - stopping bank robberies, cat burglars, and so on - as the height of civic engagement. In essence, placing supreme powers and alien abilities at the disposal of average human modes and models. Given the post-Wertham perspective on comics at the time (though Superman was probably well suited to the Comics Code Authority worldview), one should be able to assume that this sort of a model for superhero behaviour was the only acceptable one. After all, given the general tenor of Silver Age comics that Jenkins discusses - with the "classical" storytelling and characterization of superheroes fully realized, and prior to the multi-issue story arcs and character development that the 1970s introduced - the paradigm of superheroism that Eco discusses has a particular resonance.

The general discussions of the nature of science fiction, as discussed in several of the books listed above, presents a somewhat different notion of engagement. For some of these authors, the science in these stories alternatively provides threats and promises to humankind, just as authors alternatively defend human civilization and castigate its future debasement. The usual markers of a science fiction tale - a technology overcomes one of our current physical laws, a theoretical law is proven and harnessed, an alien civilization encounters humankind and hijinks follow, rockets fly and things blow up melodramatically - are usually predicated upon an encounter with difference that forces the protagonists and humankind to consider how to adjust.

(The one that doesn't easily fit this model - melodramatic rocketships - has its basis in such space opera stories as Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" stories. These tales, Paul Carter notes, have a frontiersman as their hero, whisked to Mars by means unknown from the Arizona cave where he's hiding.)

Of course, many of these writers on SF point to the late 1960s as one of these points where everything changed. Bacon-Smith, who investigates modern fandom in her book, notes that "the New Wave, feminism, television science fiction, and a real-life moon landing brought whole new audiences to science fiction." (2) The addition of these new fans - who didn't necessarily adhere to the classic, golden age texts or who were only interested in the derivatives of the same - upset the established dynamic. Some welcomed this, others decried it. I had been very interested in the chapter "Youth Culture" in this book until I realized that it was entirely focused upon gothic/cybervampiric collisions with older fans at conventions. (I wonder how readily the irony of this encounter between "scientific" stalwarts and these fantastical creatures was apparent to those involved.) I'd still like to find another book that talks about youth SF culture in the 60s or in the 50s, but I suppose I may just have to write that one instead.

So there's a couple of key ways to consider the citizenship displayed in these texts - great power turned to the service of humankind, and great threats or advances that turn humankind towards a better (or worse) future. One asks you to fit in, and the other asks you to be ready to adjust. We'll have to see how well this duality holds up to the melodramatic angst of the Marvel Age...

A Call (or, terrible/tragic/adorable actions)

Texts in mind: Professional Development seminar with Bill Turkel today on computers and technology for the work of history, everything else I've been reading to date.

I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that everytime someone blogs about blogging (add terrible/tragic/adorable action) occurs... but here it is anyway. One of today's big events was the final professional development seminar for the year. Bill's presentation on the possible uses of computers and technology for historians - both for now, for the future, and even for the past (which I got a kick out of) - provided a healthy serving of food for thought.

Thing is, it's been a day of thought (in between TA duties and getting tapped to show a prospective PhD candidate around today) rather than a day of action, so it' s fairly natural that the thoughts I've had back-and-forth about the citizenship/science debate in my research have latched onto Bill's presentation. And, as a result, I'm blogging on it as part of my personal sense of citizenship. The seminar may not have been a call to arms, but there was a call there nonetheless.

Now, this blog's going to be the major centre for my research thoughts and developments due to the move I'm making after my residency's been fulfilled - and since it's not friends-locked or anything it is just out there. (I'm not expecting that this will lead to fame or fortune, of course - rather, the "famous for fifteen people instead of for fifteen minutes" that's been mentioned as the web paradigm is the most that I'm expecting. And I'll try to do that without relying on my extended family.)

The general discussion of the role that blogs can play for academia certainly made my colleagues and I realize that we've got to be more aware of what's out there. (And hammered home that some of us just don't know what's out there!) Looking at some of the blogs listed at this also helped me to realize that there's a fair number of people doing this sort of thing. Granted, some blogs are very new, some are very stale, and some have very many hobby discussions and not much history... but there's a lot of stuff there to be found nonetheless.

So I'll write about my further thoughts on citizenship and science as touchstones for youth in Cold War America at a later time, but I felt compelled to post on this topic first. It's the tricky fact of practicing what one preaches. If I'm going to talk about citizenship - either as a researcher or as an educator - then I'd better put it into practice. And if a community of historians is to continue to develop online, to be a part of the world, and to be accessible to the world... then I'd better try to be part of that, too.

Witty, Edgy Title

Texts in mind: "The Conquest of Cool," "The Culture of the Cold War," "BoBos in Paradise," "Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 2 (Issues 21-40)," various environmental lifestyle tales of the present day ("100 Mile Diet," "No Impact"), standard 50s culture and business texts, lots and lots of ads, and "No Logo."

So: anti-consumerism is arch-consumerism.

That's probably not the key point of Thomas Frank's "The Conquest of Cool," but that's the one that's staying with me right now. The joy of writing this as a blog rather than an essay is that I can occasionally get my reminiscence on (which I'll generally try to avoid - I'm sure that's ad copy for something) and harken back to "No Logo" and that whole late 90s undergrad feel. Naturally, all that is tatters now, too. I've almost got to wonder if the only option left for non-consumerist mentality (short of swearing off purchases) is to just go blindly into the store and buy the first thing I see.

In brief: Frank argues that the broad counterculture of the 1960s (not the focused one which Roszak discusses) was never that far removed from being co-opted - indeed, may well have been pre-packaged. The desire to get beyond the organization man, grey flannel suit, other-directed ethos of the 1950s was readily present in the business mentality of the day, particularly in the advertising companies which sold things. People wanted to shake things up, wanted to sell in a different manner, wanted to get beyond the pseudo-scientific strictures of the industry at that time - but the advertising establishment was against them. "The Man," if you will.

So: it takes something different and unlikely which achieves extraordinary success to change things, and it's offbeat ads that deconstruct advertising claims and tricks which manage it (to some degree). Volkswagens get beyond their Nazi-mobile heritage by presenting themselves as solidly engineered vehicles unconcerned with style (and therefore never fall out of style). Avis admits that it needs to work harder because it's number two, and even highlights small failures that they needed to fix. And menswear changes rapidly.

All well and good, all apt and appropriate to our modern, can't-fool-us sensibility. The trick is that it's a trick, too, which we may recognize, smile at, and then buy - or merely accept without reflection and buy anyhow. A savvy consumer is an ultra-consumer. "Consumer Reports" may get you a better product, but it also makes you aware of more products. (I'd always believed that "CR" was a 1960s product, but wikipedia tells me that it started publication in 1930.) And the "Whole Earth Catalogue" is still a catalogue.

The rigours of hipness means that you're constantly buying to stay ahead of the curve, too. Eventually, it's not even necessary to get young people to buy your products - you just need to convince elder young-at-hearts that you're selling youthfulness and you're set. The Globe and Mail had a great article on this problem for the Gap over the last decade - as they moved towards marketing themselves to first-wave Gen-Xers and later Boomers, they stopped endorsing the youthful vibe that was de rigeur for everyone in the early oughts. (Even further back, I recall an endorsement of Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood as the locus of youthful vitality. I did a lot of my grocery shopping there and I usually found it filled with people in their middle ages. But if 60 is the old 30, then it's all okay - if kinda odd.)

Anyway, this endorsement of diversity by tastemakers for the broad marketplace (which suggests that the notion of conformity in diversity is not at all recent) is a nice contrast piece with Whitfield's "The Culture of the Cold War." Save for the epilogue of the second edition, most of the book is directed towards a discussion of the postwar era up to the end of the Eisenhower administration. Most of it's a review of almost every lecture or discussion on the 1950s during my undergrad years (the benefit of some good literature courses which looked at American drama in particular and my wife's paper on the controversy around Elia Kazan's lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999), but its presentation of the fear and paranoia that typified so much of the early years of the Cold War is effective. Furthermore, its argument about the demise of its mindset may not be conclusive, but the point made that the assassination of JFK did not lead to reprisals or vigilantism against pinkos and traitors (which it certainly would have 10 years before) certainly indicates that it had dissipated somewhat.

Precious little is made of youth culture at the time, of course, in Whitfield's book. Television and film are given significant mention, but the terror of comic books in the mid-50s is left undisturbed. The contradicitons of the era are neatly encompassed in this panic, of course - capitalism equals profit from competition through the presentation of choices to the consumer and the recognition of underserved markets versus the need to control and limit the choices available to young people (even if it means that they don't get to choose) for their own protection. Whitfield mentions that Edward R. Murrow's program suffered for want of endorsement in the late 1950s, but the troubling comics of the age always offered plenty of ads. (Though once "Mad" became a magazine it stopped offering advertising... but that's for a later discussion on the canon of marginal, underground comics versus the exclusion of the mainstream.)

The lack of advertisements is the most curious adaptation that I had to make while reading the "Fantastic Four" anthology. These black-and-white reproductions offer only the 21 to 22 pages of story from each issue (plus the occasional filler pic and the covers) without any of the features I've expected from comics - ads, a checklist for other titles from the publisher with some in-house gossip, and the letters page. Regardless, there's plenty to be made from these collections. Unsurprisingly, there's plenty of science-y patter and boosterism from Reed Richards, but there's also lots of other details thrown in.

(My favorite was at the end of #21 - after defeating Adolf Hitler, disguised as the Hate-Monger and armed with the H-Ray which drives people into a rage, someone off-panel notes that "The Hate Ray must have been one of the last achievements of his enslaved Nazi scientists!" I couldn't help but think of the poor enslaved scientists - thank goodness most of them have been freed to work for the United States now, except those still enslaved by the Soviets....)

A lot of FF stuff so far hasn't been particularly countercultural - but there's been plenty of military-industrial complex paraphenalia to go around. Really, the only way to fly is with one's own ICBM - once one gets the necessary clearance for launching it in New York, of course.

So: what do these add up to for this week? Well, one is that "the establishment" is always looking for ways to identify markets and to sell to them. (Cross makes the point in one of his studies of children's culture that it's toy makers who are most concerned with the direction of family structures, since these determine what and how they will sell.) Another is that more reading's going to be needed on the direction of "silent majority"-type cultures as the McCarthyite impulse fades and before Nixon endorses it.

And for further reading, I'll have to dig up my old copy of David Brooks' "BoBos in Paradise" later this summer. After reading "The Conquest of Cool," I'll have to see how well it fits in with Brooks' book. I'm not entirely sure if it does. Still, this notion of arch-consumption as part of the 60s and a natural precursor to a Pottery Barn'd life makes a lot of sense. I'd just like to see how Brooks deliniates its development.

Comic Book Citizenship

Texts in mind: "What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy," "Understanding Comics," "Rethinking Comics," "Comic Book Culture," "Kingdom Come," "Marvels," various cover letters and my resume

It's the time of year that high school and college jobs start to open up for the next school year. Oh, there will be more - or less - later on as enrolments are finalized and shortfalls (hopefully) have to be filled in, but right now is when the good postings come online (in high schools) for things like IB History and Senior Social Studies.

This is important because of the need for cover letters and resumes. All these were lost when my wife's old computer died suddenly last year - in the middle of comps - and needed to be recreated over the last few months. The resume/CV part is pretty easy - I've gone to school a lot (4th degree now), I've taught a little (if four years of substitute teaching counts), and I've done a lot of service work over the last three years.

It's odd to reflect on service and trumpet it, but however true it is that they're done in the name of citizenship, it's also true that some of it is done in the name of filling up the CV, too. However, all these citizenship line items are from the last three years as I've been out at grad school - and that's kind of odd when one considers the clear role of citizenship training that Social Studies is supposed to play. (Part of this is due to the labour disputes of the early decade in BC and part of it is due to my moving around, but all that's for a different post.)

All these things came together in a funny way over the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, I noticed Waid and Ross's "Kingdom Come" on the university bookshelf and finally got a chance to read it. Leaving the religious aspects and the countering of 1990s antiheroic comic book protagonists aside for now, I particularly noticed the discussions about citizenship and engagement that the golden age DC heroes bruited about and reflected upon their difference from silver age heroes - my particular field of academic interest.

The other funny way that these things came together was from a happenstance re-read of the intro to Gee's "What Video Games have to teach us..." and his discussion of different readers and readership for particular texts. His focus, of course, is on the texts in his title (also near and dear to my heart) but it made me pause and consider the task of academic exploration of comics and of effective literary engagement with this particular type of text. I remember the old Bangs-ism about how writing about rock and roll is like dancing about architecture (which I think was a working title for "Almost Famous," but that's for another blog) and knew that some consideration would have to be given to the task of creating a vocabulary for this work.

Now, this isn't to say that this act of "creation" would be a solo proposition - there are other books on comics and there are other articles, dissertations, and whatnot that have done this sort of work- but simply that it would be necessary to start to internalize and refine the vocabulary to suit my needs. Hence, the consideration of Scott McCloud's two books, "Understanding Comics" and "Rethinking Comics."

These were read out of sequence (such that I rethought before I understood?) due to the nature of demand in a university library for particular texts at particular times. (They'll likely be recalled within days.) They're books I'll almost certainly buy at some point - some of the discussions of symbolism, presentation, and genre are perfect for teaching, especially in high school - but they've also got some problems for my research.

The big problem, of course, is that I'm dealing with a square text - 1950s and 1960s superhero comics, among other texts, and their relation to American youth during the push for science and technology education after Sputnik. If it was truly a cool topic, I'd be doing head comix and underground 'zinesterism and whatnot. (As my supervisor's noted - noticing the innovation of this far before I could - it's kinda radical to look at the mainstream during the 1960s rather than the canon of marginal comics.)

The problem with this square text is that it's also been the dominant genre in comics since the Comics Code Authority and basically what got comics going in a big way. This is a problem for McCloud because he believes that comics can be much, much more than adolescent power fantasies. (And I should note that I believe he's right, but I won't get into a bibliography of non-superhero comic books to establish my slight bona fides in this department.) McCloud has a reason, of course - he's calling for an expansion of the industry and a realization of its possibilities - but it's something that I have to get beyond for the purposes of research.

McCloud does note that he's read superhero comics, enjoyed superhero comics, and continues to read and enjoy superhero comics (and provides a postscript to his buddy Kurt Busiek's "Marvels" teasing him for taking the critical acclaim and accolades from McCloud as well as the success that Busiek'd always had) - but McCloud also needs to tear them down somewhat to aid his argument. That's well and fine - he's working in the now, and I'm working in the past. (His discussions of "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" and other books about comics art, such as Will Eisner's, reminds me that I am not done this part of the work of collating and creating vocabulary.) He's working to create new meanings and I'm searching for old meanings which were given the widest possible circulation. Lucky for me, the post-Wertham comic books got themselves mixed up with science fiction at a time when science education became part of national defense - and when scientific study became part of one's civic duty. I certainly can't claim that too much of my service record is science-based.

The other thing that I'll need to hunt down are records of the comic book culture at the time. Pustz's book (tidily named "Comic Book Culture") provides a list of some of the early 'zines that started up at the time, while also detailing the path Roy Thomas took from 'zine culture to comic book industry. (I'm so totally Stan Lee'd in my early comics education that it's all I can do to not write "Rascally" before his name.) It's interesting to note that letters pages didn't appear in comics until 1958, and that the letters usually included the addresses so that fans in the area could meet and congregate - in no small part, thanks to the 'zines. These fanzines and the conventions which comic book fans put together allowed new fans to be educated about the history of the genre and the particular characters - in effect, preparing them to be comic book citizens. (Also preparing them for comic book capitalism through the sales of old, collectable issues, but that's for another post.)

So I've gained a few more titles to have to chase down for eventual research, but I've also gained some further problemitization for my dissertation topic. I'm pretty sure it's not that much of a problem - essentially, that science education became a major facet of citizenship for youth at this time - but one still has to wonder if the question is what sorts of citizenship qualities were presented to youth at the time rather than what sorts of science and technology warnings that they received. More on this later.