disserzine

The rest of the "Romeo and Juliet" brawl in Lego (see previous day for the start)

2008-12-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

This comic never was completed for a variety of reasons:
- time,
- desire for pieces used for the stage,
- impending move,
- office/Lego space traded so that I no longer had a cat-free environment (and this was a big stage...)
- the play was over,
- I didn't have a copy of "Comic Book Creator."

Now that the final part has been addressed - thanks to a clearance-priced copy in a toystore - I'm now able to publish these. There were three more page of heavy, heavy text, but it's better to end the first issue of a comic with a cliffhanger. I like the "Next Issue" notes I made.

Seriously tempted to start up on a different play, albeit with a different approach to staging...

Five Pages of My "Romeo and Juliet" Lego Comic

2008-12-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

These were some of the first Lego pictures I took - without a macros light tent and with a flash. This facility was crude, but it was adequate to freeze these images for the Bard. (Sorry.)

Idle Convention Musing

2008-09-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

As if there's no one else doing this, but...

At the moment, all I can think is that I really wish I'd caught Obama's speech last week - but, as a Canadian, I'm naturally inclined that way.

It's a bit more fun watching PBS, since they show the protesters a little more - the guy with the "McCain votes against vets" sign, a bit of someone yelling something at McCain - but it's been a long time since I watched any of this political stuff. Probably 1992, in all honesty.

Leaving aside the cringe-worthy hagiography of the lead-in video for McCain, the most fun and the most terror has been found in the knee-jerk chants of "USA! USA!" when McCain tried to talk about the economic troubles of the moment. I realize that this is theatre, but give the actor a chance to work the lines and the message. Shouting down the ideas you dislike... well, it seems goofy when they're said by your candidate.

The cliches have been fast and furious, raining down like cats and dogs, too. It hurts to hear, and it hurts to make the obvious ironic quip, too.

Still, the best has been the blue screen that McCain's in front of for his speech. I realize that the imagery from the audience is very Reaganesque, what with the morning sky and the stalwart flag, but you'd think they may have learned something from Colbert's green screen challenges this year.

Okay, now that we're into the shout-outs to people, real people (whose states inevitably cheer when they realize that these examples are one of their own), I just can't keep up. I need to prep, and need some distance from all of this - especially if my 10s vote for the novels I think they will (To Kill A Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451) and I need to consider just how much politics I should let into play in an English class.

All the Blog Entries..., Part Two: Ironic Subtitle

2008-08-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

There's simply not enough time left for anyone to capitalize on it, but if anyone's in Vancouver between now and 8 September, stop by the Vancouver Art Gallery for the last days of the "Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art" exhibit.

Were this a traditional review, there'd be some sort of ironic title like "Museums Have Grown Up and Accept Comics" or "Otaku Kids: On to the Opera!" or something like that, but this will be mostly anecdotal. If you want lots of details, get hold of the exhibit book. (I'll order it in a day or two when I send off for Anathem.)

Krazy! takes over the first two floors of the Art Gallery. I'd never been there before - so I can't compare to previous installations - but I made a point of getting to this show twice this summer. The general direction for the show seemed to be counterclockwise on the first floor, taking you from comics to graphic novels to manga to anime to cartoons. The second floor, clockwise in orientation (unless you tend to visit the gift shop in the middle of your tour), went from video games to the theatre to pop art to CGI art to conceptual art (to the gift shop).

Each section featured about eight artists, with several pages or images apiece. Presentation was spare and simple - lots of white walls, plain wood, and extra 3D elements added to the mix like maquettes and cardboard models of settings - though some sections had more to offer than others. For example, the comics and graphic novels were entirely English language, while the manga did not feature translations, but anime, thank goodness, had subtitles.

The most disappointing section was probably video games. It's not that the selections were bad - it's hard to argue with most of the selections that had been released - but that some of the choices were odd. Most notable was the choice to include Spore. Part of this may have been that Will Wright, the creator of Spore, The Sims, and most anything else with Sim in the title, was the curator for the video games section - which, admittedly, didn`t keep Seth or Spiegelman from including their own works in the comic and graphic novel sections - but the main source of annoyance is that the game isn`t even out yet and it`s already featured in the show. The other issue with this section was the layout - screenshots and video were shown on televisions set on short stands in the middle of the floor - while the walls had some game boxes, consoles, and a wall of screenshots. When compared to the anime section, which featured angled projections on white walls and LCDs playing key clips from a series of films - a thoroughly effective and hypnotic section - the video games were quite disappointing. (And you couldn't buy them in the gift shop, though you couldn't buy the anime, either.)

There were many notable sections and sequences for the exhibition. I was deeply taken by Kevin Huizenga's "Jeepers Jacobs" in the comics, and Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons was quite impressive, too. I'll need to get hold of several anime films now, such as Paprika, Patlabor 2, and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. (Oh, and Akira again. It always comes back Akira, doesn't it?) I'd like to try some of the manga that was featured, though it's tough to figure what to make of some. Afro Samurai didn't look too bad, but I'm not sure what to make of the super-kawaii (but hyper-sexualized) Pure Trance. And it would be neat to see all of Cosplayers, with its striking mix of supermodern Chinese urbanity and people running around in full fandom costumes.

Two pieces particularly stand out in my memory, though. One was a massive statue by Mr. (seriously, Mr.) called Strawberry Voice. The statue was a cartoon girl's head, roughly 3 to 4 metres tall, with a face of sunny details and vague distance and a cave entered from the nape of the skull filled with decades of girls' toys, shiny objects, and a ceiling of country-style quilting. This sounds much simpler than it is. The effect, I suppose, was akin to seeing the monumental Lawren Harris at the McMichael a few years ago: you encounter something iconic and realize that there's something to the icon, rather than just a shorthand. Strawberry Voice was as similar an experience as monumental theosophist art compared to pop-culture suffused statuary can be. I realize that's an awfully mixed metaphor, but it's art - if I could nail it down and quantify it with joyless, pinpoint precision, I'd likely be shilling for some major brand.

The other - my favourite, for reasons I still can't coalesce - was No Ghost Just a Shell by Angela Bulloch and Imke Wagener. It was a multimedia sort of an art piece, and I'll have to read more on it later. [Having breezed through some of the link above, I'm kinda right and kinda wrong.] Essentially, it is a presentation of a metaphysical, self-aware computer generator character... I think. A small theatre offered a spooling presentation of a four minute clip, possibly from a larger piece, where this figure discussed something either philosophical or pretentious (or both) with an internal monologue conducted at a rapid, hypersaturatedliterate clip. The only sounds "made" by this figure were clicks and gasps which made it seem less and less human, made the viewer face the uncanny valley of computer representation rather than be taken by the figure and accept it as a humane figure. I still can't quite say what it's about. I can't even quite say if it was successful. I can say that it was compelling, though, and that it enthralled me.

I'm sure that this show may have annoyed some - there were far more bad words and bits of nudity than the slightest mention of superheroes, and the detailed examination of Over the Hedge, particularly as the example of the state-of-the-art for cartooning, was odd - but the overall effect was very strong. I wish I could see it again.

All the Blog Entries I Meant to Write, Part One

2008-08-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

I'd intended to end the whole research gig with a trip to the library. Not quite the first library for my postsecondary schooling - that was in Camrose, AB. The old stacks at Augustana were classically college: lots of titles, lots of old titles that hadn't been read to pieces but hadn't been deaccessioned, lots of old carpet with old stains, lots of odd corners, and lots of old wooden tables. It was great fun for the papers I was doing in first year, but I'm sure I'd be harder on myself than my profs were on me. (Well, one was critical of one paper that rested too heavily on one source... that took a bit of adjustment.) Still, it had a pine outside the front windows that caught the snow, and I loved it. When compared to the library at DeVry - which I looked at my postsecondary tour in grade 12, and discounted when I realized that there were probably only 1/20 of the titles that my high school library had featured - Augustana had been heavenly.

And it's not like the library I was going to could even claim to be the site I'd spent the most time in study, since Weldon at UWO easily outstrips the competition for time spent in research and/or study. Granted, I did have a study there, and close to a good friend who was going through the same comps process, and a tonne of books to read... but the sheer volume (noise, not titles) in that library, especially on the first few floors, was simply stupifying. And I simply don't have the funds to make a ritualistic flight to London; at least, not at this juncture.

No, the return - one final return, in all that cliched effect - would be to the Koerner library at UBC. Koerner was one of the first buildings I heard critiqued in a scholarly fashion - something about part Seawall, part False Creek condo, part postmodern cathedral, and only partly complete (which is still the case, if I recall properly) - and I got to spend a lot of time there, though mostly in the basement. It had a lot of great features - a spiral slide for a book return, a big concrete courtyard suitable for APEC protester road hockey games in the fall of 1997 (which I didn't participate in), and nice big carrels where I could immerse myself in periodicals, monographs, readings, or comic books (I distinctly remember reading the end of the "Onslaught" special there). And its elevators still have that oiled machinery odor of high school shop class.

But it's not even true to say that this was the official ending. After all, there was an even more convenient option for book returns - UBC Okanagan's library, just down the valley in Kelowna. And I had gone there to return books... and came back with one. It's hard to go cold turkey, I suppose, and something about Barbara Ehrenreich's Long March, Short Spring called out for further reading. So 27 books were returned in one fell swoop, and one remained. The plan was simple - read that book, and return it to Koerner when I visited Vancouver at the end of the month.

Ah, but then there's distractions from reading the book, other thoughts to work with, other things to read... and so I was scrambling to read it the night before I returned it.

It's not a bad book - not as scholarly as I'd hoped, entirely focused on 1968, but still interesting on the whole. Some of the German and Italian bits were decent, though the real revelation was in the midst of the chapter on Columbia. While describing the occupation of the Dean's office - with the Dean kept as a virtual hostage, if memory serves - Ehrenreich notes that a group of students spent their time playing "Diplomacy" around the clock.

It's one of those startling bits that just leap off the page and insist that you turn to the source material and see who these game-minded activists were. Again, nothing much there other than a note on sources. What really struck me was the range of possibilities for this little fact: for the first time in ages, I thought "This could be an excellent short story... or play!"

So the book didn't get returned. The official research is done and over, regardless, but the possibilities for that historical detail remain... and I'd like to play a little.

End of an Era, Start of an Epic

2008-08-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

So here's a few words on the termination of studies for the PhD -

One, it's tough to find the right word for what this process is. Termination is really harsh. Cessation is much softer - and what was used in my emails to my supervisor and grad chair - but it's still not right. The closest approximation is "I have decided to not continue this course of study." "Quit" and "dropped" aren't even apt, at least in my mind. I remember reading the classic Matt Groening "School is Hell" way back when, and it had a cartoon for the grad school dropout. (If memory serves, they're supposed to be the saddest people on earth. There was also a note with it that said something like, "If it's not making sense, just read another book!") I don't feel that I'm dropping out; I feel that I achieved the metaphorical "ABD" (since there's no program or lambskin for that) and that this was probably what I came for.

"Brand" is another word, one that I used way back when as a Social Science rep for a preliminary session for discussion of either a new Dean for grad studies or a change in the program (I really can't remember which one). Simply put, there've been more and more reports about the dilution of PhD brand as more and more are produced, and that there's less and less positions for us to fill. Yeah, I know that scaremongering is easy, lazy reporting. But I also sat in on a lot of job hire functions (go for the juice and cookies, stay for the insight into the process) and came away with more and more questions. How was it that there were this many applicants for such specialized positions? How is it that we came up with these names out of so many in the stack? How is it that so many... underwhelming applicants (all unhired) made it onto the shortlist? Are the rest of the names in the long list this underwhelming, possessors of C.V. poison, or simply really, really unlucky? I've discussed them with lots of people since, and a lot of those questions remained for me. I can live with questions... but there's other words that influence things here.

"Expectations" is another word, to be perfectly mercenary and perfectly personal. I'm really not interested in trying for the big university life of academe. I like to teach, preferably at a high level. But I'm not interested in living anywhere other than near my family, and they're all in BC. BC does have more universities on the way - in a manner of speaking, depending on how all of them shape up - but it's not sure how the colleges are going to go. And, quite simply, such considerations are quite a few years away, even if I stayed the course. There's several more years of uncertainty to have to endure, and I've been unsettled for a few years. Heck, the trip to grad school was done because of uncertainty. I'd spent four years as a substitute teacher, and governance changes for BC's schools made it pretty unlikely that something would come up soon. Four years of subbing would burn most anyone out, and I was torched. Thankfully, the MA program was an excellent reboot, and the community of grad students that I was in was a fun and welcoming one. So... roll it over and give it a try.

"Try" is another word. The PhD program was, at times, challenging, tiring, exhausting, and reflective. I saw it, in a way, as the first stage in a career (albeit a pretty low-paying stage). Did anyone see Oronte Churm's blog post on archaeology back in July? The first stage (Days 1-2,190) sort of captures the feel. Instead of the whole "week's probation for a dishwashing gig," this was sort of like a decade's probation for an academic's gig. (Really, lecturer/seminar instructor would be the parts I'd be looking to do, but you have to take the whole gig on if you want to get anywhere with it.) And I've seen other people further along this process than I am. Some have done fabulously with it, and some... seem to have not. I suppose that's life, but it seems that there's fewer in the first position. (And to make it in the first position you've got to have a knack for grants, it seems - never one of my strong points.)

"Me," ultimately, is the final word to consider here. I just didn't see me in PhD anymore. (It probably doesn't help that the lyrics to the Beastie Boys' "Dr. Lee, PhD" are pretty garbled. How could you fail me like this now, pop culture?) I simply didn't want to be defined by what I did anymore - or, rather, what I was aspiring to do. I suppose there's many things I'll still be defined by, but that's neither here nor there, and having one less major definer will provide me with a better focus for my life as I live it. And it's fairly unlikely that I'd manage to purge the verbal tendencies that I've acquired over these past few years, so my students will likely continue to have to ask me to re-word questions that are phrased over their heads. (I remain unapologetic about that, except when my phrasing is tortured and incomplete. Except for in this post - some of these issues and words can only be approached poetically, even if it's bad poetry. As long as it's not as purple as the patriotic doggerel that J.V. introduced in seminar...)

So what can readers of this take? Well, take whatever you want. Even though most of the readers will be linked from my Facebook page - a pretty diverse crowd - I'm really only assuming that colleagues will have read this. For my colleagues, I don't think of this decision as the end of our collegiality (though I'd really rather just say that it's friendship). There's no way to excise the history, let alone historiography, from my thought patterns, and it's not as though I'm renouncing anyone here. We'll likely not run into each other at conferences now, though, but you're always welcome to come and visit, just as I hope to still be able to visit people in Ontario. (I'm sure that wine tourists will be the most likely visitors, naturally.) Your friendship, advice, help, and conviviality has been dearly appreciated over the years. I hope that the students I help at the high school level will be better prepared for the university courses in which you'll encounter them, or at least to act like decent, thoughtful citizens who don't take umbrage at the traditional list of "OMG the things these professors study on taxpayer money" titles at Congress time in June.

I nearly wrote earlier today that "It is with regret that I announce" this decision, but I quickly deleted that. I don't regret this decision, but it was not an easy decision to come to. It took a lot of thought and reflection for me to arrive at this point, but here it is. I remember a discussion with a friend in the teacher program at UBC about our future education options, and he argued that the key thing is to aim to be an intellectual rather than an academic if you're going on with further studies. That one always stayed with me. I'd like to think that I've started on that path, but I know that it's a lifetime of study. It might seem odd to some that this self-defined lifetime path is the better one than a five-to-seven year course of study, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Cunning scientists and power-mad military men

2008-02-23T20:34:00.001-08:00

Phew. It's been a busy month. As it turned out, it wasn't just the block apiece of English 11 and English 9 that I took on - it was also a block of English 10 (so three teaching blocks, and three preps) as well as a few weeks of tending to visiting international students from Korea (short-term visits of four to seven weeks). I get my spare back this week, at least.

It has been quite tiring, frustrating, rewarding, and somewhat fun this week.

Texts today: Amazing Spider-Man #2-4, Tales of Suspense # 40-42

Contrary to what was found earlier with Fantastic Four, Spidey hits the ground running with his rogues' gallery. Issue two introduces the Vulture (and the Tinkerer – yes, an extra “-er” on that name), issue three features Doctor Octopus, and issue four has the Sandman. (Recall that at this point the FF had just met the Sub-Mariner – their first really good villain. The Mole Man is bush league.)

There’s not a ton of science to be had in issue two. There are some hijinks in the science lab, as Peter trades barbs with “Moose” and is told off by the teacher for flipping through a magazine instead of minding his experiment. The appeal of the mag is the offer of a substantial payday for pictures of the Vulture, a flight-powered supercriminal clad in shaggy green tights. The first tussle goes badly, but Peter develops an “anti-magnetic inverter” as a countermeasure for the magnetic-powered gear of the Vulture and subdues him. The “B” story opens in the science lab (“A story has to start somewhere, so let’s begin ours in the science lab of Midtown High…”) where Peter is focused on his beakers while the cool kids tease him [ASM #2 - .pdf #11]. Peter’s offered a job helping with weekend research for Professor Cobbwell (“Gosh! A chance to work with the most famous electronics expert in town?”), who apparently doesn’t have grad students or undergrads to help him with his “urgent experiments” [ibid]. Step one is to pick up the professor’s radio from the shop. (An electronics expert’s radio in the shop… sure, why not.) The Tinkerer’s prices are insane – so cheap that even chronically broke Peter Parker is doubtful – and the radio, just like the Tinkerer’s shop, set off the underdeveloped Spider-Sense. If you’ve paid attention to any of the previous issues of other titles, you can already guess that there’s probably invading aliens behind all of this – they’ve been prepping their invasion through the Tinkerer’s low, low repair prices, sneaking spy devices into each radio or TV. After Peter examines the radio and finds odd gadgets in it, he returns to the shop as Spider-Man to take a look-see. Naturally, the “military leader” the aliens are listening in on is about to divulge “our plans for the defense of our eastern seaboard” to his aide just as Spidey is noticed. There’s a fight, Spidey’s zapped by the Tinkerer’s special weapon, Spidey escapes from a deathtrap, the aliens flee the earth (destroying the evidence as they go), and the Tinkerer escapes the patriotic rage of Spider-Man (“They were just doing their duty to whatever planet they were from! But you, you traitor--!”). [ASM #2 - .pdf 16]

Issue three is very nice: a classic villain, no B-story, and lots of sciencey things. Doctor Octopus is probably second in the classic Spidey-villain pantheon to the Green Goblin, and he suits Spidey nicely. The full-on origin story is given as part of the omniscient narrative of this issue, as the reader is segued to the “US Atomic Research Centre” on the edge of town. Doc Ock is introduced as the “most brilliant atomic researcher in our country today” – one who has designed four robotic arms that he can manually control to safely conduct experiments which will allow him to “work safely with volatile chemicals… though others fear radiation, I alone am able to make it my servant!” [ASM #3, .pdf 3] Of course, things go badly (for science and grammar: a worker announces that “There’s gonna be a blow-up!” when his panel goes whacky), and Doc Ock is bathed in radiation. He wakes up paranoid, and takes the hospital hostage. He subdues Spidey and gloats that “mine is the energy of an atom, born of a nuclear accident” rather than that of a mere spider [ASM #3, .pdf 7]. Peter is bummed, and asks for the first time if this is “the end of Spider-Man?” [ibid.] Emboldened and driven from his hospital, Doc Ock next takes over his old workplace and decides to demonstrate his strength by destroying half of the nuclear plant and then rebuilding it to suit himself. (Understandably – have you ever tried to find a nuclear subcontractor to do renos on your nuclear plant?) The “foremost brains of the nation’s armed forces and security agencies confer feverishly,” and one notes that “We’ve never been up against anything like this before! A brilliant scientist, with superhuman powers, on a mad rampage!” [ASM #3, .pdf 9. These guys may be the foremost brains, but they’ve probably not been paying attention to the world around them. Will they be surprised when word gets out about, oh, every other atomic scientist in the vicinity of New York gaining super powers…]

Anyhow, the Human Torch is supposed to beat Doc Ock but he’s got to wait for his fire reserves to build up again. While waiting, he works as an inspirational speaker at Peter’s high school! (No, I’m not kidding.) He tells the students to “stick to your school word and do your best in your studies! Don’t be discouraged if it sometimes seems tough!” [ASM #3, .pdf 9] It’s no speech about a van down by the river, but it works its magic on Peter. (Steve Ditko does really well with pictures of Peter Parker, by the way – the two panel progression from surprise to confidence is pretty fun.) Anyhow, Spidey heads off to battle Doc Ock, takes some time to prepare a chemical compound which will instantly fuse metal (i.e., the arms of Doc Ock), and ultimately fells his antagonist with an “old fashioned punch to the jaw” [ASM #3, .pdf 13]

One letter stands out from the first letters page – a plea for Spider-Man to not deal with invading aliens, written in response to the first issue. I hope, for the sake of the writer of this letter, that he stayed with the book in spite of the previous issue’s aliens…

The fourth issue introduces the Sandman. After – again – Spider-Man loses his first meeting with the villain (due to a mask malfunction which drives him from the fight early), Peter sees the handy backstory exposition news report on the TV while he’s darning his mask. Flint Marko, a hardened and most wanted criminal, had hid out in an atomic testing range and been mistakenly granted the ability to adapt his form to various properties of sand as a result of a test blast. J. Jonah Jameson rants that the advance-seeking Parker is like all other teens – “you think the world owes you a living” – and muses that Spidey and the Sandman may be in cahoots. (Mmmmm…constant red herrings….) Sandman ends up trying to hide out in Peter’s high school, barges in on a class with the principal and a bunch of students, and then demands a diploma (a self-respecting hardened criminal, Sandman never finished his schooling). The principal stands firm on this one, though – “Nothing could make me do that! A diploma must be earned!” – and Spider-Man ultimately lays the vacuum down on the villain [ASM #4, .pdf 9].

Tales of Suspense #40-42 does not feature any members of Iron Man’s stable of villains. Offhand, I’m not sure I can name any other than his Soviet counterparts and the Mandarin. Anyhow, the first villain is a huge Neanderthal called “Gargantus”… which ends up being an android devised by unnamed alien invaders who’d last come by 80,000 years before and figured that this type of masterful, hypnotic figure would be a perfect stalking horse for their invasion. The best part of this issue – actually, of all three of these issues – is the first few pages which present a short bio of Iron Man. Considering that ToS was an anthology series, this cut down the writing load by a page or two each month, but it may have been annoying for some 60s readers. For me, though – well, the idea of transistor-engine-powered roller skates which send US troops down highways at 60 mph is just ludicrous. (And really – unless they were invading Germany or fighting domestically, how much smooth highway does the army expect to encounter?) But it’s all worthwhile for Tony Stark – after all, he does not “neglect America’s Cold War struggle against the communist menace” and he presents himself as “a scientist who realizes that the boundaries of science are infinite…” [ToS #40, .pdf 3] Unfortunately, he has no aesthetic sense. It takes the tears of a small child to convince him of the need to change his look. Alas, it’s just a coat of gold paint, not a new suit. (That comes at the end of 1963.)

[C-story note - #40’s has a time traveler trying to blackmail the United Nations, lest he forewarn nations about their impending doom. And then he finds that the UN functionary he was talking to was… a policeman from his time!]

ToS #41 has a broader tableau of inventions from Stark – it opens with his munitions (“These atomic naval cannons I designed are able to fire a nuclear salvo more than 500 miles, thereby revolutionizing battleship firepower!”), with medicine (“Your flesh-healing serum works perfectly…”), space problems (as he works on shielding to withstand all types of interstellar radiation), and his help for the US defense effort (artillery shells capable of destroying hardened pillboxes and bunkers are miniaturized to the size of .50 cal bullets so that they can be fired upwards of 1000/minute) [ToS #41, .pdf 3]. It also shows us that Iron Man fights both criminals and communist spies (as he throws a set of airline stairs at a taxiing communist charter flight, foiling their getaway). The key villain this time is Dr. Strange – not the Sorcerer Supreme, but a rather disposable villain who arrived a few months earlier than Marvel’s top magician – and he somehow takes control over Iron Man through the power of the mind and some device, forcing the hero to break him out of prison. (He almost reads like an undistinguished early appearance of Doctor Impossible, but without the killer jokes.) Anyhow, this Dr. Strange is doing all of this to patch things up with his daughter, and he assembles a group of accomplices (“the most cunning scientists and power-mad military men on earth!”) who do nothing of note in this issue. (Of note, however, is the glimpses of JFK and Krushchev that are given on the ninth pdf…) Since this was the A-story, it ends very quickly – Iron Man comes in from the sea (“Even a super-genius like Dr. Strange can omit an important detail, like extending his force field underwater!”), knocks out the main power source for the island but is incapacitated by the effort, is gloated over by Dr. Strange, and is renewed by the gift of flashlight batteries by Dr. Strange’s daughter.

[Again, the C-story is kind of worthy of notice – a depressed loner in the year 3000 is tapped to travel faster-than-light to the edge of the universe! Once there, he discovers something that makes him happy – but he can’t say anything other than “I know!” It’s much, much more annoying than the video for Radiohead’s “Just.” Still, at least people still wear fedoras in the year 3000…]

Finally, issue 42 features the spymastering of the Red Barbarian, whose efforts are continually thwarted by Iron Man. After having lost out on a new atom bomb design, the Red Barbarian turns his attention to the disintegration ray that Stark is developing for the military. His only chance is send in “The Actor,” a spy who is a master of disguise; the Actor not only finds the plans, but also uncovers the secret identity of Iron Man. Iron Man sets off to the Red Barbarian’s headquarters by rocket – accurately, in spite of his concerns, and safely, in spite of the optics for an ICBM launched at the USSR from the US – and catches the Actor. Once in control, Iron Man then brazenly walks into the compound, pretends to be the Actor, and then left once he’d set the scene for the Actor’s return. Once the Actor returns without the plans, he is summarily shot before he can spill the beans on the Iron Man/Tony Stark connection. It’s… kind of bloodthirsty for early Iron Man, I’d think.

Employment

2008-01-30T22:29:00.000-08:00

I'll get on the "Scientists in the Classroom" followup in the next couple of days, as it's been busy (sub work as a proctor for exams), annoying (clogged bathtub), crashing (car, not computer - everyone's fine), and gratifying (employment).

I'll start work on Monday in a 50% English teacher position (i.e., two blocks of English in a school on the four blocks per semester system). Tomorrow'll reveal what the blocks are (two of eleven or one of eleven and one of nine), as well as what books are in the bookroom, but for now it's just joy.

It was about eight years ago this week that I started my practicum. Frankly, that's just weird to contemplate.

...there is a limit to the frustrations which any men can endure -- even communists!

2008-01-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

(It was either the title above or "Hey! Nothing I like better than a circus!" but the latter really needed the image of Rick Jones saying that in The Incredible Hulk #3 to make it work...)

Titles today - Fantastic Four #6-10, The Incredible Hulk #3-6, Tales to Astonish #39, Amazing Fantasy #15, and Amazing Spider-Man #1

This assortment doesn't quite get through 1963 - there's several issues of Fantastic Four to go yet, plus the Avengers' introduction - but it is a good start on catching up. Thankfully, this week marks the end of the first term of studies here in BC. This means two things - there's a bit of spare time to permit me some expansive blogging, and that openings for the second term need to be filled. The Globe and Mail online reminded me that prospective employers google candidates, and a quick check of my name yielded up my name at Old is the New New... and reminded me to blog. And so!

Today the selection of heroes increases substantially on this blog. I know that I've already done a fair bit on the X-Men, but I decided last year to go back and try to work through the titles from the sixties more or less as they appeared. Now, I don't have every title out there - I'm not sure where Ant-Man first appeared, and I'll probably be able to get by without Thor - but I'm pretty sure that I've got much of the Marvel that I'll need. But until these issues start to feature monthly checklists, ads for other Marvel titles on newsstands that month, or a full complement of 12 issues in a year on the DVD-ROMS, I'll have to guess for a bit. (Basically, it's all good once we get out of 1963.)

Briefly, Fantastic Four #6-10 feature Dr. Doom and the Sub-Mariner teaming up, Kurrgo (the Master of Planet X) kidnapping the FF to force them to save his planet, the introduction of the Puppet Master, Namor's attempt to lure the FF to their doom... in Hollywood, and Dr. Doom's return (in the offices of Marvel Comics)/identity switch with Mr. Fantastic/reduction to subatomic size.

"Scientifically," though, things are happening in most of these issues. Doom plays on the Sub-Mariner's heartstrings (cliches are contagious, sorry) by reminding Namor that "the glistening towers of your once-great civilization" were destroyed when "the barbarians from the surface [conducted] their underwater H-bomb test in this particular area..."(#6, page 8) Doom then demonstrates his a miniaturized supermagnet "grabber" ("Magnetic force is unlimited! And when it is amplified, it has the strength of giants!"), and Namor agrees to plant it in the Baxter Building. (When he flies free from the ocean, Namor is mistaken for an American Polaris missile test by a passing jet. We'll take up the mistaken military-industrial complex/superheroic later on.) Once the magnet's planted, of course, Doom turns on all of them and tries to hurl the entire skyscraper into the sun. (I'll accept the supposition that this tin-can sized device can effect such force, but it's just odd that it'd seamlessly unfix the building from its foundation.) Anyhow, Namor and the FF team up, Doom's hurled off into space by a speeding meteor, and the Baxter Building returns to earth under the cover of darkness. (Narrator's breathless commentary: "...and the stray individuals who later witness the silent return of the Baxter Building from the skies write it off as a bad dream... an hallucination resulting from the anxieties that plague our nuclear society..." (#6, page 23)

#7 features our only early counterculture dig for today: the Human Torch daydreams about the hash he'd make of a swanky tribute dinner in DC - "That reminds me of a joke I heard about two beatniks... or, ah, er, maybe you've already heard it?" (#7, page 2) Mr. Fantastic's not much happier about going to the dinner, since it means that he has to abandon a rocket fuel experiment that's just about to reach fruition. Anyhow, Planet X is about to be destroyed by a rogue planetoid, and Kurgo, the Master of said planet, sends his robot minion and one of the two starships they have to bring the Fantastic Four back so that they can save Planet X. (I'm hoping that more things take up such naming. I'd love to live in Housing Development X.) An American satellite notices the approaching alien craft, and it's first assumed that it might be "an attack by the Reds" before someone else comments that "no earth nation ever built a ship like that!" (#7, page 5) We'll ignore the hostility ray that turns the world against the Fantastic Four (used to blackmail the team into the plot... and somehow ineffectual on this infighty team...) and move along to the close. With the fate of five billion innocents in the balance, Reed devises a shrinking gas to miniaturize the entire population so that they can all travel to another planet and then use the antidote to restore themselves. Kurrgo, of course, plans to save the antidote for himself but instead is left behind when he is unable to decide between power and safety. (And there was no antidote! Oh, the irony!)

#8 is only really notable for two things - the Puppet Master uses "radioactive clay" to make small sculptures of people which permit him to control their actions, and the 22nd page where he describes his plan to destroy the United Nations and make himself king of the world (complete with a panel that shows Khrushchev, Castro, Mao, and perhaps Franco serving him dinner). The means of control is poorly explained - apparently, he has to manipulate these sculptures like marionettes in scale models - and the origin is left untold. ("But what would she say if she could know that ever since I discovered this quantity of radioactive clay, I have been carving it to gain power for myself!" - #8, page 7) But I suppose that's why there are recurring villains. This issue introduces the blind sculptress Alicia Masters as the Thing's love interest. (She's blind but sees the goodness in him!)

#9 is really quite funny. The FF are broke, and an offer of a movie deal delivers them into the plans of the Sub-Mariner! (He found out about their money woes on his undersea television set - apparently, a standard tube encased in a splatter of green algae-like material.) No science here, but there is the real Cyclops and an African tribe that has a potion which protects them from fire. Yeah, let's move along.

#10 brings back Doctor Doom. He uses Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, who are forced to call in Mr .Fantastic to "work out a plot iwith 'em!" "Strange," Mr. Fantastic muses, "we just finished discussing a new plot yesterday!" (#10, page 6) [Yep, the boldfaced emphasis was put on yesterday.] It turns out that Doom was saved from the vastness of space by the Ovoids, an alien race with "science and culture... a million years ahead of ours!" Able to control events around them by thought and to transfer their consciousness into new bodies when they age, Doom learned their secrets and returned for revenge. Before the rest of the Fantastic Four arrive to rescue Reed, Doom transfers their bodies... and assumes leadership. They imprison Reed (trapped in Doom's body) in a cell that will run out of oxygen (designed by Doom, of course, to be a death trap for Reed) and Doom gloats about the brilliant plan that will destroy the rest of the team.

Pages 15-16 of issue #10 are simply some of the funniest, oddest, and most Calvin and Hobbes of all the FF pages I've read so far. [If the link to www.transmogrifier.org doesn't provide the strip, just search for "F-14" to get the flavor.] Doom's stolen zoo animals and shrunk them, and all the tiny animals escape. But it's not the work of villainy - he's going to increase the FF's powers! See, the dinosaurs prove how this will be done: "...ages ago, the dinosaurs were the lords of Earth! But, unfortunately for them, their bodies grew too large while their brains remained the same -- until they simply grew themselves out of existence! But what if they have [sic] been smaller? If their bodies had been a fraction of their natural size, then their brains would have been much larger by comparison! Today, the dinosaurs might still be the rulers of the earth!" This explanation takes up two panels - the first, your standard image of tyrannosaur and triceratops about to throw down; the second, an image of tyrannosaurs with four-fingered human-like arms in space suits on an alien planet. There's a spaceship in the background and odd celestial bodies in the sky, and the foregrounded tyranno-man has a huge, spacey movie camera on a tripod. (This will lead to accusations that even these hypothetical tyranno-men faked the moon landing, of course.) Anyhow, Doom claims that he'll shrink the FF and then re-enlarge them - and in doing so, they'll retain their powers at a tiny size and then have them increase porportionally when they're enlarged. On page 17, Doom's thought bubble reveals that this little bit of "scientific double-talk can fool almost any other unsuspecting victims" since Reed wasn't there to call B.S. on Doom's patter. (I would like to read a story where Reed has to correct this lesson for Johnny. "Who taught you what about dinosaur brains?") Anyhow, Reed escapes, Doom's focus on the body-switch fades and the two scientists trade back to their own bodies, Doom's shot misses its target and switches on the shrinking ray... which shrinks him to nothingness. It seems that the science of evil beings always turns on its inventors in these tales.

Incredible Hulk #3-6 - issues 3-5 feature two stories per issue, and the 6th was the last issue for the first volume of the comic. (He gets moved over to Tales to Astonish later on, and it changes its name to The Incredible Hulk in 1968.) #3 has General Ross trick Rick Jones into tricking the Hulk on board an experimental rocket because "there isn't a man living who could stand the forse of its G-pull... we want the Hulk to ride that rocket, in the interests of national security!" (#3, page 3) Of course, the rocket's set to send the Hulk off into the depths of space. But once in space, the light of the sun changes the Hulk back into Dr. Bruce Banner... and the unshielded space craft enters a radiation belt "and once again Bruce Banner's body is subjected to thos mysterious, powerful rays about which so little is truly known! Rays of intense radiation, with the power to effect the most fantastic changes upon anything that lives!" But Rick discovers that this was all a plot, sidles up to the control panel and turns the payload back to earth. The signal, though, is affected by the radiation and ends up linking Rick to the Hulk - effectively putting the Hulk under the control of Rick. The rest features Rick and the Hulk dealing with the villanous Ringmaster - he hypnotizes towns so that his circus of crime can ransack a city! (No, I'm not kidding. Yes, Snake said it best in the Monorail episode - during the jam-packed town meeting - when he asked another looting criminal if Springfield could be any stupider.)

#4 has a few nice science-y moments. Page two has Betty Ross mooning over a picture of Bruce Banner and reminiscing. (When introduced to Banner, she unabashedly states, "It's a pleasure to find that America's most famous scientist is also so young -- and handsome!" (#4 page 2) You hear that, kids? You can become a famous young scientist! It helps if you're handsome! Hope you like chaste relationships with general's daughters!) Banner's helping the military-industrial complex along nicely, though, even when he's not there - on pages three and four, Ross is overseeing the testing of the "iceberg rocket" which will capture the Hulk. (They test it on a jet-powered copy of the Hulk, of course. It makes Betty shriek, of course.) Rick is brought in for questioning by the military, is saved by the Hulk (who runs amok a bit, including a brief bit of fun on a movie set), and then uses the gamma ray machine in the hidden lab/Hulk holding pen to turn the Hulk back into Banner. Rick messes up a little - he can't turn off the rays in time - but the weakened Banner tells him that it's not Rick's fault ("You're not a scientist!"). But Banner re-adjusts the machine and produces a Banner-controlled Hulk which is angrier and more impatient. That's fine in the second half, "A Gladiator from Outer Space" - an alien warrior called Mongu lands somewhere in the continental United States and challenges "Earth's mightiest warrior to met me in hand-to-hand combat!" (#4, second story, page three). Naturally, the Hulk and Rick Jones charter a mini-jet and fly to the Grand Canyon to meet his challenge. But it's a trap! Mongu was merely a robotized costume worn by Boris Monguski, and his squad of Soviet soldiers plan to bring the Hulk "back behind the Iron Curtain ... [where] our great scientists will learn the secret of your great strength and build for us a whole army of warriors such as you!" (#4, second story, page six). They brought an "ear-splitting sound-gun" with them which "doesn't affect normal ears... [but] prove torturous to the super-sensitive ears of the Hulk!" (#4, second story, page seven) I can't help but wonder if he has super taste, too.... Anyhow, this challenge is bested, Hulk forces them to surrender (since there is "a limit to the frustrations which any men can endure -- even communists!"), and sends them packing in their helicopter (and if they don't immediately set course "to Vodka-land by the time I hit earth, I'll be back!") (#4, second story, page 9). Newspapers, of course, assume that this was all a hoax perpetrated by the Hulk and he remains a pariah. (SNL circa 1976: "General Francisco Franco is still dead, and the Hulk is still a pariah.")

The first story in #5 can mostly be left aside - an immortal wizard called Tyrranus, imprisioned underground by Merlin, kidnaps Betty Ross and temporarily forces the Hulk to be a gladiator. Instead, we'll take up the next chapter of the Hulk as Red-buster. In "The Hordes of General Fang," the "iceberg rocket" is used upon the Hulk. It successfully finds its target and encases him in ice, but "the one thing "Thunderbolt" Ross did not take into consideration was the intense body heat of the captive Hulk! For, like an atomic pile, when the Hulk expends his almost limitless energy and power, his temperature rises to an unimaginable degree!" (#5, second story, page 2) And so he escapes. An urgent bulletin from the small nation of Llhasa informs us that "the bloodthirsty scourge of Asia, General Fang" is about to invade with his evil plunderers. (#5, second story, page 4. He's also atop a slave- or POW-borne litter. How decadent and evil.) Anyhow, the Hulk and Rick travel to "the Orient" on a jet for no reason other than the fun of watching Hulk rage at a clumsy stewardess spilling coffee on him. They escape over Formosa, though, and move along westward to Red China. (Ah, pre-1973 comics.) Hulk dresses up as the abominable snowman, wreaks havoc on the hordes, is captured, is freed by Rick, captures Fang, and drops him off in Formosa. Fang gets a chance to demonstrate his evil - he orders a soldier's execution for daring to counsel retreat in the face of the yeti - and his tactics - he employs a sophisticated projector which displays a massive lavender dragon (#5, second story, page 9). (The dragon looks kind of like Fin Fang Foom - which I think was a 50s Marvel monster before it was added to the Marvel universe. And Massive Lavender Dragon would be an excellent prog rock band name.)

#6 isn't terribly noteworthy except for three things. One is that the villain, the Metal Master (an alien conqueror) melts Banner's "space probe rocket" with its powers, and the second is that the reader letters in this issue were not impressed with Mongu-the-communist-plot. The third, though, is the most excellent. Hulk, defeated by the Metal Master, is summarily imprisoned by Ross, and blames it on Rick. Rick is "hurt, bewildered" and asks Ross where one would enlist in the army. Rick, only sixteen, is too young. "But I'm tired of bein' just a nothin'! I wanna be where the action is!" Ross knows how Rick feels, but tells Rick that if he "really [wants] to serve your country... the best thing to do is stay in school! America needs trained men, in every field -- even in the army! And then, when you're old enough..." (#6, page 12) Rick's dejected by this. Some unknown person in a brown suit argues that Rick should "just stick to [his] education! That's what the rest of us are doing!", but Rick ruefully thinks, "Sure, it's okay for him to talk! He was never the Hulk's partner! How can I go back to being an ordinary kid after something like that!" (#6, page 13) Rick immediately finds the answer, though. His cool friends show him the ham radio set they're playing with, and Rick sets up the Teen Brigade - a setup of "cats like us, all over the country" working together to "help the army, the police everybody" - and "they can't stop us on account of our age!" (#6, page 13). And, of course, they help the Hulk trick the Metal Master and save the earth - and the Hulk gives them most of the credit for helping to assemble the fake gun that the Metal Master couldn't destroy. (Is there anything that plastics and cardboard can't do?)

So that addresses the issues for the established heroes. Two new ones are introduced around this time.

Tales of Suspense #39 presents the reader with Iron Man's origin story. This'll be all over the media this year, so I may as well do it right by its Cold War origins. (I shudder to think about the likely War on Terror origins for the movie incarnation, but so it goes...) Tony Stark is a wunderkind inventor visiting Vietnam to demonstrate and field-test his industrialized magnets. Naturally, he needs to be guarded - "the commies would give their eyeteeth to know what he's working on now!" - but he's also a millionaire playboy bachelor (#39, pages 2-3). But all is not right in Vietnam - there's an evil warlord whose plundering hordes are marching through the countryside and wreaking havoc. (No, not General Fang, but good guess.) Wong-Chu likes to wrestle, plunder, and... be victorious. And he's mean. (Not much characterization, but I don't think any hero's expected to be set against their nemesis in the first issue. There was a great What If...? issue in the 80s that examined a different story for Iron Man and made Wong-Chu more important, but not necessarily more developed as a character. But, as Nigel Tufnel would remind me, "that's nit-picking, isn't it?")

Anyhow, the general in charge in Vietnam has a staggeringly painful time understanding the nature of guerrilla warfare ("Our heavy artillery could defeat them, but we can't transport such big weapons through the dense jungle!"), but Stark's midget transistors will allow US allies to carry mortars that aren't any heavier or larger than flashlights (#39, page 4). (Er... I thought he was testing magnets, not miniaturized mortars... continuity editor!) Brief skirmish ensues, Stark treads upon a booby trap and injures himself (and apparently kills his guards), and is captured by the red guerrillas. (That's all they're ever called. I wonder if things change later for Marvel.) Anyhow, the shrapnel's near his heart and inoperable (he's only got a week to live), and so Wong-Chu tries to trick him into inventing a superweapon by promising a surgeon for Stark if a new weapon's designed within the week. Stark sees through the lies, but agrees so that his "last act will be to defeat this grinning, smirking, red terrorist!" (#39, page 5) Wong-Chu, naturally, laps up the fact that Stark "would not hesitate to betray [his] country to save [himself]!" (ibid.)

The next day, Stark is given some help - the great scientist, Professor Yinsen, had been forced to work as Wong-Chu's "lowly manservant" but now would assist the inventing process. Stark, of course, read Yinsen's books in college, and thought that Yinsen was the "greatest physicist of all" but everyone thought he'd died. (#39, page 6) Once told of the plans for the Iron Man armor, Tinsen throws himself into the effort. It is full of transistorized, electronic goodness - and it features a device to keep Stark's heart beating. But! Once Stark puts on the armor it needs to be charged - and the guards are coming back early! Yinsen quickly acts to save Stark and the work that they've done, but is killed in the process. Iron Man hides in the rafters, and Wong-Chu decides to go wrestle peasants. (No, I'm not kidding.) Iron Man picks up a handy white smock and blue fedora and heads out to the wrestling ground to challenge Wong-Chu. (What is it with superheroes and wrestling in their origin stories?) As he holds Wong-Chu aloft, Iron Man states, "You are not facing a wounded, dying man now... or an aged, gentle professor! This is Iron Man who opposes you, and all you stand for!" (#39, page 10)

Naturally, Wong-Chu calls in his hordes, and they open fire with small arms and then progress to bazookas and grenades. The bullets "Kapow!" and "Painng!" away, and a reversed charge on a transistorized magnet repels the heavy stuff. Iron Man next hacks the PA loudspeaker to tell the hordes to desert and run away, and he reflects that "In panic, and without leadership, they'll soon be captured by South Vietnam troops!" He chases after Wong-Chu, and, because the latter is about to order the execution of all the prisoners, Iron Man ignites a stream of oil which leads to the ammo dump to end the threat. He liberates the prisoners, sends the reds running, and then puts on the hat and smock and walks away, David Banner-like.

(David Banner, of course, was the name used for the 1970s "The Incredible Hulk" TV show, and he always walked out in the midst of the sad song at the close of the show. This list is not about the close, but rather the ways in which the Hulk got his Hulk on. Again, we're not yet at this stage for the Hulk yet in the comics. Anyhow, if my schoolyard memories are accurate, his TV name was changed to "David" because someone thought "Bruce" wasn't a manly enough name. As I'm pretty sure MAD magazine noted in their parody, it's pretty odd that, in the decade of Bruces Jenner and Springsteen, NBC execs/TV writers/whoever would make such a change.)

Anyhow....

We close with Spider-Man today. I'm sure everyone knows this one by now - either due to Sam Raimi's films or the 1960s cartoon with the awesome theme song - but here goes again. Peter Parker, a nerdy wallflower being raised by his aunt and uncle in NYC, is bit by a radioactive spider and given amazing powers. But! When he fails to halt a thief who soon thereafter kills his beloved Uncle Ben, he learns that with great powers comes great responsibility. (Seriously, I could recite that one in my sleep. I probably have.)

Anyhow, Spidey first appears in the final issue of Amazing Fantasy - which was rebranded as The Amazing Spider-Man at the end of 1963 - as the main story. (Just like in Tales of Suspense, this was an anthology comic. I'll take up a couple of the B stories later.) I could say a lot about the art - Ditko's really astonishing, especially as an artfully gawky yin to Kirby's dynamic yang - but I'll comment on the text instead. Naturally, Peter tries to talk a girl into going to the Science Hall with him (just "Sally" - no MJ or Gwen Stacy yet), but is mocked: "Give our regards to the atomsmashers, Peter!" (#15, page 2) The fateful experiment doesn't make much sense - radiation sent from orb to orb like electricity, I guess - but Peter's post-bite swoon is mocked by the older science types. Nothing worse than lab bullies, really. I really like that one notes that "our experiment unnerved young Parker!" and the other replies "Too bad! He must have a weak stomach!" (#15, page 3) This works in many ways: one, the scientists have an attractive young woman with them, so even these scientists are cooler than Peter. Two, even these men of science who aren't Banner, Richards, or Stark conclude all of their sentences with exclamation marks. Three, and best of all, they seem to be making their science even more elitist and distant. Rather than concern themselves with the lack of stomach for radiation research - and, perhaps by extension, nuclear research in general - that a nerdy youth displays, they chalk it up to some deficiency of Parker's character or ability. It's a fairly effective tactic - Peter's set up as someone who knows science but is an all-around outcast, but he'll mostly stay out of the lab and not scare away the readers. This reminds me of a passage from Scientists in the Classroom... I'll have to look for that tomorrow.

Anyhow, Peter effortlessly designs webcasters (no organics here) and starts on his road to fortune. His just-looking-out-for-himself ethos is only relaxed for his kindly Uncle and Aunt - who get him the microscope he's always wanted on page 8 - and by page 11 he learns the shortcoming of his philosophy. Still, money is needed. In the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man (generally to be abbreviated as ASM), Aunt May's trying to find a way to make ends meet and Peter goes looking for work. Peter offers to drop out, but Aunt May won't hear of it: "Your uncle always dreamed of you being a scientist some day!" (#1, page 3) Peter decides to go back under the spotlights, but finds that he can't cash the check made out to "Spider-Man." By that point, J. Jonah Jameson has started his editorial campaign against Spidey, and there's no chance of further stage work. (JJJ also starts stumping for the heroism of his son John, a test pilot.)

In spite of all this, the story has Spider-Man save John Jameson from a guidance system failure on his test space capsule. Really, this is a ludicrous story - there's no real sense of the orbit that Jameson's in, there's several rescue attempts made which don't make much sense, Spidey convinces a pilot to fly him up to the area with the capsule, and then web-slings his way over to the capsule with a spare guidance system. But! There's no way to get in JJJ's good books, as he chalks up the crisis to Spider-Man's sabotage of the situation so that he could present himself as a hero.

The second story has Spidey try to get a job with the Fantastic Four and defeat the Chameleon. Wanting to make a good impression, Spider-Man goes right to the top of the Baxter Building and ends up fighting the Fantastic Four before Mister Fantastic gets around to asking what Spidey wants. When they state that they're strictly non-profit, with all their after-expenses funds directed into the development of "the most effective super-crime-fighting apparatus we can create!", Spidey goes off in search of other opportunities (#1, second story, page 4). We then run into the Chameleon sneaking into a defense installation to steal plans to sell to "the Iron Curtain countries," he then plots a frame-up for Spider-Man when he goes after the second half of the missile defense plans. (Again with the missile defense schema... I'll have to look into early SDI soon.) By the by, the Chameleon just uses a lot of really good disguises; he's not a shapeshifter or anything.

Anyhow, Chameleon somehow is able to broadcast messages on the same wavelengths that spiders communicate (must have been some angry spiders in NYC that night...) and he draws Spidey out to the scene of his next heist. As the Chameleon escapes by helicopter, Spidey's able to use his Spider-sense to "tune in" the chopper and hone in on it. (Nope, none of those fancy Spider-tracers yet. I wonder if the Chameleon will get the credit for that one later on?) Spider-Man jams the hatch of the Soviet sub shut and he then commandeers the Chameleon's helicopter back to the scene of the crime. But! A smoke pellet provides the Chameleon with time enough to run off and disguise himself as one of New York's finest. Luckily, Spider-Man manages to help nab him, but he still feels abused by the world.

The B-stories for Amazing Fantasy and Tales of Suspense are odd. In TOS #39, there's "the Last Rocket" - with all but two humans fleeing the planet in the face of impending solar collapse. The two that stay dig the earth, love nature, and don't want to leave their homes. The sun nears its end, and then a new star explodes into place - and Adam and Eve talk about how they're going to populate this new earth. (I'll take Larry Niven's "How About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers" instead - which does a nicer job of this, thanks.) And #39 ends with "Gundar!" - where the shipwrecked descendant of a Viking captain who'd cursed his mutinous crew frees them from the curse. (Yep, I've told that one back to front - they reveal his name at the end. I'm sure I've ruined that story for dozens now.)

In Amazing Fantasy #15 there's another religious parable - this time, in "The Bell-ringer!", the old man who stays on a volcano-imperiled island is taken heavenward from the chapel which he'd not deserted. (And yet it takes three pages to tell it!) Two sub-EC "surprise twist" tales round out this issue - in "Man in the Mummy Case!", a thief is offered refuge from the police by a mummy... only the refuge is through time, working as a slave on the work gang for the mummy's pyramid! And in "There are Martians among us!" a UFO crash-lands and the nation is alerted to the likelihood of human-sized martians among them. Weeks pass, and a quiet domestic scene of paranoia is shown - with the husband daring to go out, and the wife told to not admit anyone - but when the wife realizes that there's no coffee for after dinner, she dares to go and buy some... only to be surprised by footsteps and then captured! And when her husband comes home to find her missing and calls for help - if she's gone, then she's been caught and they'll know she's a Martian... and they'll come for him next! And as he says this, one hand is holding the phone to his head... another is mopping his cheek... and two others are held out in either surprise or jazz-hands! Quel surprise!

From these an empire was made?

2007-12-10T09:45:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-07T19:22:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-07-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-07-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-04-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-04-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-05T06:03:00.000-08:00

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.