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?
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
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...)
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...)
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