Super Sunday IV: Elliot S. Maggin's "Superman: Last Son of Krypton"

Once again, in somewhat of an annual tradition, while the vast majority of the nation focuses its attention on some sort of big sporting event or something like  that, we hear at Gutter Talk HQ turn our attention to telling readers of this blog about a classic tale of the Man of Steel.  This time out, our subject is not one of the character's comic book exploits, but one of his early ventures into the realm of prose novels. 

Regardless of outward appearances, despite the fact that it uses the  film's crystalline Superman logo, notwithstanding the picture of Christopher Reeve in his Superman costume on the cover, and setting aside the sixteen pages of black and white photos from the movie embedded in the center of the book, Elliot S. Maggin's 1978 novel Superman: Last Son of Krypton is not an adaptation of the then newly released Superman: The Movie.  Rather,  it is an original tale set in a rough approximation of DC's Bronze Age Earth-One continuity and reflects pretty accurately Superman as he was appearing in the comics of the day, many of them, not coincidentally, also written by Maggin.  As had been the case for several years in his comics titles, Superman, in his secret identity of Clark Kent, works not as a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper but as anchor for the WGBS six o'clock news and fairly recent additions to the supporting cast Steve Lombard and Morgan Edge figure prominently in the story alongside old standbys Lois Lane, Perry White and Jimmy Olson.

It has been said that the advantage that comics had over film, especially in the pre-CGI days when this novel was published, is that they could portray things that were beyond the scope of special effects technology.  Comics, especially in the Bronze Age, had their own limitations, however.  One was space.  A typical single issue of the day contained a mere seventeen pages of story, and, at least at DC, single issue stories, or at least stories no more than two or three issues in length, were still the norm.  Words and pictures, of course, take more room to tell the same events than words alone, thus far more story could be conveyed in a 238 page novel, allowing Maggin to tell an epic, cosmic science fiction adventure story on a scale previously unattempted in any Superman comic.

Maggin peppers the novel with many of his signature themes and tropes.  The author's admiration of Albert Einstein is well known among comics fans and the renowned physicist, though never actually identified, is a major character in the novel as well as a main motivating factor in the plot.  The Guardians of the Galaxy, from Green Lantern, make an appearance, and in a nod to the classic Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams "Hard Traveling Heroes" era of the book, the exiled Guardian known as the "Old Timer" shows up.  Part of his purpose in the story is to give voice to another of Maggin's favorite themes as he, in  disguise as a human sociologist being  interviewed by Lois Lane for a TV talk show, warns of the possible negative effects of Superman's presence on Earth on human evolution, echoing Maggin's earlier short comics story "Must There Be A Superman?"

The novel begins begins with a retelling of Superman's origin, but with a new spin.  Prior to baby Kal-El's arrival on Earth, a probe carrying a message from Jor-El visits Einstein, who, as "the most highly developed intellect" on Earth, is entreated by the Kryptonian to take in and raise his son.  Instead, the aged scientist travels to Smallville, Kansas, near where Kal-El's rocket is to land, and chooses a local couple, Jonathan and Martha Kent, whom he deems suitable to give the Kryptonian child a good upbringing.  Through the ruse of selling the Kents a new tractor, he maneuvers the couple into position to discover the child from the stars upon his arrival. 

The novel then moves to the present day, as Superman's arch-enemy Lex Luthor makes plans to steal a document left behind by the now late Professor Einstein and sealed in a vault for the last quarter century.  Einstein, it turns out, is a personal hero of the criminal scientist, and it is speculated that the document may contain one last scientific breakthrough.  

Lex makes off with the document, but it is, in turn, stolen from him by an alien named Towbee on behalf of the Master, not the Doctor Who villain but the ruler of the planet Oric in the Vega system.  After meeting with the Old Timer, Superman recruits Luthor to journey with him to Oric and aid him in retrieving the Einstein papers.  Once on Oric, the unlikely allies discover a plan by the Master to make himself ruler of his section of the galaxy, after he has, by manipulating black holes, physically separated that arm of the galaxy from the rest of the rest of the Milky Way, thus putting him out of the Guardians' jurisdiction and beyond the reach of the Green Lantern Corps.

One of the best things about the book is Maggin's exploration of the character of Lex Luthor, who emerges as much more than simply a two dimensional mad scientist.  Throughout the early chapters of the novel, Maggin introduces flashbacks to Clark Kent and Lex Luthor's childhood days in Smallville.  He expands the story of how Luthor came to hate Superboy, giving the future villain a more emotionally resonant and realistic reason for his emnity toward the hero than simple vanity over the loss of his hair.  Superboy, in his attempt to save Luthor's life, in Maggin's account not only causes the permanent loss of Luthor's hair, but destroys his greatest experiment as well. 

I've wondered recently how come someone supposedly as smart as Luthor never figured out that Clark Kent and Superman were the same person, especially since he knew both of them back in Smallville.  After all, both Clark and Superman are about the same age, each left Smallvile at the same time, and then showed up in Metropolis at pretty much exactly the same time.  It really doesn't take a scientific genius, as Luthor purports to be, to put two and two together and come up with something other than mere coincidence. 

Okay, digression over, let's wrap up this post.

While Superman: Last Son of Krypton is dressed up as a novelization of the first Superman movie, it is, in my opinion at least, something even better; the ultimate Superman epic from one of the character's premier writers. 

Here are some links to sites where you can get other opinions and perspectives on today's topic (and maybe even buy a copy):

The Bronze Age of Blogs

Too Busy Thinking About My Comics

Adherents.com

Superman Homepage

PGP

Goodreads

Amazon.com

Grant Morrison's "Supergods" Reviewed

Ok, let's start right off with the one major problem with Grant Morrison's Supergods: Our World In The Age Of The Superhero. (At least, that's the subtitle on my copy of the book, which is apparently the British edition.  It's amazing what you can come across at Half-Price Books, ain't it?  [My copy of Scott McCloud's Making Comics carries the warning "Uncorrected Proof: Not for Sale" on the back cover.]The American edition carried the tag "What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human."  The AV Club called that "ponderous."  I kind of agree, but as the entire book tends to be a little ponderous, perhaps its totally appropriate.  Still, I prefer the British version of the title.)  There are, as you might have inferred from my parenthetical asside just now, some other smaller problems with the book, but only one that really bothers me.  Its a problem I've noticed, but chose to overlook in most cases, in other histories of the comics, but find a little more egregious in this case.

I don't think that I've ever read a history of comics that didn't include at least a couple of factual errors.  I am usually forgiving of  these because most of those books are written by "outsiders" with a particular thesis to prove or agenda to advance, little things like research or accuracy be damned.   Morrison, however, is an industry insider and a self-professed life long fan, so such errors are somewhat harder to overlook, especially when they concern properties on which the author built his considerable reputation in the business. 

Now that I've got the nit-picky stuff out of the way, let me say that I quite enjoyed this book, actually.

Morrison does have his special thesis to advance in this book, which is equal parts history of comics and autobiography of Morrison himself.  That only makes sense, as for the past twenty-five years or so the two have been intimately intertwined.  

Morrison's thesis is that we all have the potential to become superheroes, and, with the aid of 21st century technology, in fact already are, and that tales of fictional superheroes have been there for us over the decades to show us the way.  To be honest, there's really nothing startlingly original in Morrison's theorem.  It's really just another variation on the old "superheroes as modern mythology" trope that's been with us for ages.  Morrison, however, does manage to bring to the table an understanding of psychology, alchemy, and magic as well as a knowledge of world mythologies that goes beyond the Greek/Roman pantheons that are the traditional basis for the metaphor.

The main appeal of Supergods, especially for Morrison's fans, is Grant's breathless, hyperbolic prose, most on display during the comics history parts of  the narrative.  He details the real life history of superheroes in the same mythopoeic terms that he applies to  their fictional adventures. Here's a sample from the very first page of the first chapter:

"From the beginning, the ur-god and this dark twin presented the world with a frame through which our own best and worst impulses could be personified in an epic struggle across a larger-than-life, two-dimensional canvas upon which our outer and inner worlds, our present and future, could be laid out and explored.  They came to save us from the existential abyss, but first they had to find a way into our collective imagination."

"Ur-god and his dark twin...?"  Couldn't just say Superman and Batman, could you, Grant?  That passage, besides setting the tone for most of what's to come, also serves as a fairly succinct synopsis of Morrison's central theme.

When he turns this same technique to his own life story, its just as fun to read, for the most part, though it at times comes off as immodest self-aggrandizement.  Of course, we long time fans expect that. Though I suspect it might put off mainstream readers, who are at least part of the target audience for this book. 

As I said above, the narrative can get somewhat ponderous, as when Morrison discusses his infamous "alien abduction" in Kathmandu, during which he was supposedly shown the true nature of reality by a bunch of fifth dimensional silver blobs.  This was actually part of the book I was looking forward most to reading.  However, before it was done I was waiting for Grant to get back to talking about writing Flex Mentallo, which, unfortunately, he never did.

Despite its over 420 page length, I burned through Supergods in under two days, and it would have been less if I hadn't taken time out to go to my job and sleep.  That is due, I suppose, not only to my intense interest in both of the books main topics, Grant Morrison and superheroes, but to the frenetic pace with which Morrison leads us through our journey of seven decades.  Though, as I said, the book gets bogged down when it should have been its most compelling, for the most part its an exciting and involving read. 

If you're a fan of Morrison, I recommend this tome in no uncertain terms.  If you're not quite the Grant-o-phile that I am, its still worth reading.  If you're someone who doesn't read comics, but might be curious about them (or if you know such a person), I could think of worse places to start your journey into their 2D universe.

Reading Harry Potter

Recently, after having heard for years from people whose opinions I respect that they are actually pretty good and definitely worth reading, I have finally embarked upon a reading of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels.  Though I've only read Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone so far, I'm looking forward to the continuing adventures of the young wizard.

I want to give credit to Rowling, in her first novel, for pulling off something that more experienced writers have botched badly.  The "everything you know is wrong" ending is a tricky thing to do right, and very often it ends up not making sense in the light of the events leading up to it.  A prime example is Brad Meltzer's The Millionaires, in which a character the reader has been led to believe was killed early in the novel is revealed at the end not only to have been alive the whole time but also to be the criminal mastermind behind the whole organization that the book's protagonists have spent the entire story running from.  However, this shocking revelation also renders most of the events of the book meaningless and nonsensical.  The book has numerous other flaws, of course, but the badly executed twist ending is the worst.

Rowling, on the other hand, does it right and makes it look effortless.  She spends the entirety of Sorcerer's Stone leading us to believe that one character is the story's main villain, then in the final chapter reveals the villain to have been someone we thought was merely an innocent dupe.  Yet everything that's gone before still makes sense in light of the last minute reveal and the reader doesn't have to rack his brain trying to figure out for himself how to reconcile the new status quo with what has gone before.

You know, its kind of strange reading Sorcerer's Stone now, after the series became such a wildly popular phenomenon.   For the past decade and a half, you could not escape hearing about Harry Potter nearly everywhere even if you tried.  Therefore, even though I'm reading the book for the first time and have never seen any of the movies, there's a sort of sense of deja vu, since I couldn't help but absorb certain details of the characters and plot just through the zeitgeist.  Still, it wasn't enough to spoil my enjoyment of the book.  

I just picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and I'll be starting in on that one soon.

Book Review: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken

In his introduction to the unofficial fan-published novelization of the Doctor Who serial "Revelation of the Daleks", author Jon Preddle states, "There are only two ways to write a Doctor Who novelisation - the proper way and the Terrance Dicks way."   I really don't know what he means by that.  After reading Dicks' official adaptation of the Fourth Doctor adventure "The Keeper of Traken," I can't tell you what exactly Preddle sees as wrong about Dicks' approach.
The story begins as the Doctor and his young companion Adric are returning to "N-Space"; the "N", I shall assume, standing for "normal"; from a parallel dimension called "E-Space"; with no indication given here just what the "E" is for; where one of the Doctor's companion's, Romana, along with the robotic dog K-9, had chosen to remain.  Immediately upon their return, the pair are diverted from their planned journey to the Doctor's homeworld of Gallifrey to the Union of Traken, a planet with a reputation as one of the most peaceful and serene in the universe, by the Keeper, the centuries old ruler of Traken. He warns the Doctor that a great evil has come to Traken in the form of an alien presence the Trakens have named the Melkur, but which is in reality an old enemy of the Doctor's, who seeks to influence the passage of power as the  ancient Keeper prepares to step down and pass on the mantle of Keeper to one of the members of the planet's ruling council.  This old enemy, who is near death, seeks to use the power of the "Source", which is, as the name implies, the source of the Keeper's power and longevity, to renew, or (big SPOILER), "regenerate", himself.
"The Keeper of Traken" was the penultimate serial in Tom Baker's seven year tenure as the Fourth Doctor.  From a continuity standpoint, it is important for the introduction of Nyssa, the daughter of one of the Traken council members, who would begin traversing time and space alongside the Doctor and Adric in the very next story,  and Tom Baker's last, "Logopolis", thus being, I suppose, more associated with the Fifth Doctor, as well re-introducing the aforementioned old foe (OK--I'll just come out and say it, spoilers be damned.  It's the Master), who would figure prominently in the next couple of story arcs.
At 124 pages; and I've read that the publisher of the Doctor Who novelizations was at the time imposing a limit of 128 pages on the length of the books; Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken appears, although I admit that I've never seen the original serial, to be a straightforward, no-frills accounting of the events of the TV episodes.  Little time is spent introducing the reader to the main characters, although with this being, as the title page tells us, the 37th in a series of novelizations of a TV show that had by time of the book's publication in 1982 been running for nearly two decades, it can reasonably be assumed that the target audience for the novel was no doubt quite intimately familiar with the Doctor and needed no such exposition.
Keeper of Traken is a quick--you could probably devour it in a single afternoon if you weren't distracted---yet entertaining read.  I still don't know what Mr. Preddle, as quoted above, sees as deficient about Terrance Dicks style or approach. In fact, I wouldn't mind reading more Doctor Who novelizations by him--and he did write quite a few I understand.

The Fundamental Things Apply

We are not here today to debate the wisdom of DC Comics attempting to produce prequels to the most revered graphic novel of all time.  That debate continues on a host of other sites all throughout cyber-land.  No, I wish to dispel, instead, the notion that the mere existence of  "Before Watchmen," no matter its quality, will somehow diminish Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' original.   The truth, most likely, is that in a year's time, Watchmen will continue to be a bestseller and "Before Watchmen" will be all but forgotten.  

After all, who remembers As Time Goes By?

See.  I didn't think so.

I loved Casablanca the very first time I saw it on television.  Of course, I was high at the time, so I didn't quite trust my judgment.  Therefore, I went out and  rented it on VHS a few days later and found myself loving it even more.  I've enjoyed it just as much each of the countless subsequent times I've seen it.  The most recent was just a couple of weeks ago, when Casablanca kicked off this year's CAPA Summer Movie Series at the Ohio Theater in downtown Columbus, Ohio. 

Anyway, back in the 1990's, there was a minor trend of producing novels that were sequels to classic motion pictures.  This was around the time that Scarlett, the follow up to Gone With The Wind, showed up in bookstores.  As Time Goes By by Michael Walsh serves as both prequel and sequel to Casablanca.  It seeks to answer all the questions that fans of the film were supposedly dying to have answered.  The novel begins by detailing the exact events that made it impossible for Rick Blaine to return to America, then picks up after the movie, reuniting Rick and Louis Renault with Ilsa Lund and Victor Lazlo.

The problem with the book is not that its bad, because it really isn't.  It's just completely unnecessary.  Like Watchmen, Casablanca is a whole unto itself.  While there may be some questions raised as to Rick's past, the film leaves the answers up to the viewer's imagination, rather than  spelling everything out in dreary detail.

Another problem is that the book's revelations are so painfully obvious. 

In spinning his tale of Rick's past, Walsh draws inspiration from the moment in the film where Renault ventures to guess the circumstances that brought Rick to Casablanca.  Louis wonders, "Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me."  Rick replies that it was a combination of all three.  Well, Walsh strained his somewhat limited imagination to come up with a scenario that truly is a combination of all those elements.  

Of course, its really no spoiler for me to reveal that this festival of fan wish fulfillment culminates with Rick and Ilsa ending up together, and Lazlo dead for good measure. 

For me, As Time Goes By adds absolutely nothing to my appreciation of Casablanca.  More importantly, and more to the point of this post, it takes nothing away from it, either.

The same is true of "Before Watchmen."  I broke down and bought a copy of the first issue of  Minutemen last week.  I'll have a full review of it coming up. However, whether I liked it or not, just the fact that DC published it in no way affects how I will view Watchmen in the future.

The Influencing Machine

My  two main sources of news and entertainment these days are comic books and National Public Radio, and one of my favorite NPR programs, due both to the subject matter it covers and to the way said subject matter is presented by hosts Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, is On The Media.  (Though, due to the fact that my local NPR station no longer carries OTM, I have to keep up with it by subscribing to the podcast.) Combine all of that and you get a book that I just knew from the moment that I learned of its existence that I absolutely had to read: The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld.  A couple of weeks ago, I finally aquired a copy and have read it through from cover to cover twice now, partly to prepare to write this review, but mostly because it is a fun, engaging, and informative book that I absolutely love, as I knew I would.

In the world of graphic nonfiction, dominated mostly by self-indulgent autobiographical comics, the only thing comparable to The Influencing Machine is Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which also seeks to translate complex ideas and theories into sequential art form.  However, while, in retrospect at least, the idea of doing a book on comics theory in comics form seems something of a no-brainer, The Influencing Machine, which distills Gladstone's quarter century of writing about media into an examination of the media's past, present and future and our relationship to it then and now, seems a slightly riskier proposition to attempt as a comic. It is, however, a gamble that pays off. 

In interviews at the time of the book's release a few months ago, Gladstone stated that she chose to present what she calls her "media manifesto" in comics form in order to foster the same kind of intimate relationship with readers that she feels she attains with her radio audience.  In this regard she succeeds even more fully than she might have hoped, due to the nature of comics, which is what Marshall McLuhan termed a "cool" medium, which more fully engages the reader's mind than the "hot" medium of radio and and creates an even more intimate connection between author and audience. 

This is my first time seeing Josh Neufeld's art, but whoever brought him and Gladstone together should get a bonus as he seems the perfect choice to convey Gladstone's message and create that intimate connection with the reader which she sought.

It goes without saying by this point that I highly and heartily recommend this book to one and all.  To whet your appetite, here is an animated version of the book's intro from YouTube:

Ray Bradbury 1920-2012

After I posted my previous entry here this evening, I was taking a look at the blogroll over in the sidebar and noticed that two separate blogs had recent posts entitled "Ray Bradbury."  I clicked on one of the links, fervently hoping that this didn't mean the only thing that it possibly could mean.  Reading the post, however, confirmed my fears.

Ray Bradbury died last night.  He was 91 years old.

Bradbury was, as I'm sure you know, the author of, according to the obit in the Los Angeles Times, 27 novels and over 600 short stories, among them Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man,  and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and many others.  The short story "A Sound of Thunder" is a personal favorite and, in my opinion, the best time travel story ever written.  Many of his most famous works, including all of the ones I listed above, have been adapted for television, movies and comic books.

To say that Bradbury was a great writer of science fiction is to do a grevious disservice to the man and his legacy.  Consider the opening paragraph of Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see them blackened and changed.  With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to the bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.  With his symbolic helmut numbered 451 on the his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.  He strode in a swarm of fireflies.  He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.  While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

That, my friends is simply great writing period.  Its that kind of literary prowess that makes me wonder when I read it why I even try to write when never in a million years will I ever produce anything that painfully good.
I met Bradbury once, extremely briefly, back in 1993 or '94, I'm really not sure which, at Marcon, the science fiction convention held each spring here in Columbus, Ohio.  I make no claim to have actually gotten to know the man or anything.  In fact, I can't remember whether there was any conversation at all between the two of us.  I simply watched as he scrawled his name on a piece of paper I had given him then handed it back to me.  Then I quickly moved out of the way to allow my fellow autograph seekers their turn.  I'm sure that I at least thanked him.  Still, I will always consider it an honor just to have been in his presence.
It goes without saying that Ray Bradbury will be greatly missed.  Yet, as long as the grim future he envisioned in Fahrenheit 451 remains but a distant nightmare, as long as books continued to be printed, sold and read, he and his work will always be with us.

"Mars Needs Moms": Does Earth Need This Movie?

You are probably never going to find a bigger fan of cartoonist and author Berkely Breathed than the author of this very blog.  About six feet behind me as I sit at my computer desk typing this, the top shelf of my book case sags under the weight of every Bloom County/Outland/Opus book, from Loose Tails to the latest volume of the Bloom County Library, including the three children's picture books-- A Wish For Wings That Work, Goodnight, Opus, and The Last Basselope--that Breathed wrote featuring Mr. P. Opus. Next to all of these sits a copy of his non-Opus children's book Mars Needs Moms.  So, when I first heard about the forthcoming movie based on the latter, I was looking forward to seeing it.  Then I started to read more about it, and watched the trailer, and now I'm not all that excited about it all of a sudden.

If the filmmakers had done what they really should have, which is simply bring to life the wonderful paintings with which Breathed illustrated his book, they might have at least produced a good looking film.  Instead, we are treated to another disturbing journey into the uncanny valley courtesy of the same folks who creeped out little kids with The Polar Express a couple of years back. 

Storywise, it appears that the film suffers from a common problem that comes from attempting to turn a fifty page picture book into a two hour feature film. That is, it appears overly padded and weighed down with a lot of unneccessary business simply to fill out the running time.

Of course, these are just my first impressions based on the trailer and they may change after I see the film.  Yes, I do still plan on seeing it, but it's definitely a wait-'til-it-hits-the-dollar-theater kind of deal.

Where's Johnny? (Dredging Up The Past Part X)

(This is probably going to be the last of my re-posting of old pieces from my past blogs.  This one is from The Word From On High and is presented here for no other reason that it happens to be one of my favorite posts from that blog.  Note that I was writing for a more general audience on that blog, not just comics fans, who are the target audience for this effort.  Thus the parenthetical phrase defining my terms.)

The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, written and designed by Arlen Schumer, is a beautiful over-sized coffee table book featuring heavily illustrated profiles of eight prominent comics artists of the 1960's, the era known to comics fans and historians as the Silver Age. (The Golden Age, by the way, was the era that began with the publication of Action Comics #1, featuring the debut of Superman, in 1939 and lasted until approximately the end of the Second World War. The Silver Age begins in 1956 with the first appearance of Julius Schwarz's updating of DC's Golden Age Flash character in Showcase #4 and most historians have it ending somewhere around 1970--which seems to be the cut-off date that Schumer uses in this volume.) The artists include are: Carmine Infantino, Steve Ditko, jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Gene Colan, Jim Steranko, and Neal Adams. All had distinctive styles that made them fan favorites. Ditko, Kirby, Steranko and Adams were also groundbreaking visionaries whose innovations changed the ways that comic books told stories. All eight are worthy of inclusion in a book that purports to present an overview of one of the comic book industry's most creative periods.
Now, some might make a case that Don Heck should have been included. I have never been a fan of Heck's work, but he was perhaps the 2nd hardest working artist of the early Marvel Age, surpassed only by the "King" himself, Jack Kirby. Heck followed Kirby on such features as The Avengers, Giant-Man, and The X-Men,and was the first artist on Iron Man--though the character was designed by Kirby. 
A more significant omission, in my opinion (nothin' humble about it, baby!), is "Jazzy" John Romita. Romita began at Marvel on Daredevil, and soon took over as artist on The Amazing Spider-Man with #39 (thus paving the way, by the way, for Gene Colan's lengthy run drawing Daredevil) when Ditko left the "House of Ideas"for reasons that have never been fully explained but that most assume to be "creative differences" with Stan "The Man" Lee. Romita came to the world of super-heroes from a background in romance comics and the style he developed working in that genre perfectly suited the slick, sub-plot intensive "soap-opera" style of stories that Lee was turning out. Romita's depictions of Peter Parker and his friends and enemies would define the look of the feature well into the 1980's.
A man who contributed so much to the success of Marvel Comics is certainly worthy of recognition as one of the greats of the Silver Age.

The Ten-Cent Plague (Dredging Up The Past Part VI)

(The latest in my series of retreads of old posts from past blogs comes not from The Word from on High, but from the group blog of Columbus, Ohio cartoonists group Sunday Comix. I'd originally written it for a proposed magazine about comics that the group was going to put out, but which never materialized.  I posted it on the group blog because I thought the piece deserved to be read, and I re-present it now because I think the readers of Gutter Talk might like a chance to read it as well.)

The heart of David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America is the story of Janice Valleau Winkleman. We first meet her, in the book’s prologue, living with her husband Ed in a Florida retirement village. But this retiree harbors a secret past that not even her children were aware of: She once made her living drawing comic books. Hers is one of over 800 names listed in the book’s appendix of people who were driven from the medium forever by the backlash against comic books that culminated in the 1954 Senate subcommittee hearings on Juvenile Delinquency and the subsequent adoption by the industry of the draconian Comics Code,the most restrictive set of content restrictions ever enforced on any medium, which drove many publishers, most notably EC Comics, to abandon the field. Throughout the narrative, Hajdu returns to Winkleman’s story, tracing her career from her first job at MLJ Comics (known as Archie Comics these days), obtained at age 19 through connections at the art school she attended, to her final, reluctant, decision more than a decade later to walk away from the industry for good. Though she eventually took up painting as a hobby, Winkleman would never again attempt to make a living as an artist, in comics or anywhere else. When asked why, she responds, “I was scared to death. Don’t you know what they did to us?” Hajdu does indeed know, and in the remainder of this unforgettable book, he lets us know as well.

To be honest, and this isn’t a criticism but merely a caveat, the book doesn’t really live up to its subtitle. This isn’t really a story of how the backlash against comic books changed America, but of how that backlash was an extreme and tragic example of the changes that swept all aspects of American culture and society at the midpoint of the 20th century. The book’s greatest strength is Hajdu’s ability to convey his sweeping social history in starkly human terms. His focus is squarely on the people, from industry giants such as Spirit creator Will Eisner and William Gaines, publisher of EC Comics and a central figure in the controversy, to those like Winkleman, who toiled in relative or even complete obscurity, not even allowed, in most cases, to sign their name to their work, whose lifes were forever altered by the events he details. He also provides insight into the characters and motivations of those who fueled the backlash against comics. These instigators include the infamous Dr. Frederick Wertham, whose sensationalistic book of spurious pseudo-pyschology, Seduction Of The Innocent, provided much of the grist for the anti-comics mill of the Senate subcommitte and other comics detractors, and the ambitious Senator Estes Kefauver, who hoped to use the publicity generated by these hearings to jumpstart his bid for the White House. Aiding them at the grassroots level were the mostly well intentioned, if ultimately misguided, community and religious leaders who took their protests to the extreme of organizing mass burnings of comic books in mostly small towns across the nation, and the children, members of what at the time was the intended audience for comic books, who aided them, sometimes reluctantly and with regret but surprisingly often willingly and with relish, in their crusade by gathering up comic books to fuel the funeral pyres and applying pressure on local merchants, often in the form of a threatened boycott, to stop selling them.

Through striving, and succeeding, to put a human face on this tragic yet, outside of the community of comics professionals and dedicated fans, nearly forgotten episode from our recent history, Hajdu has produced not only one of the most important books of comics and social history yet published, but he has crafted a page turner of a story as involving and compellingly readable as Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel covering the same historical period, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, to which I would heartily recommend The Ten Cent Plague as a companion volume.

Lose Ends Part I: The Matter of the Quote

On Saturday, I shared with you my wholly unexpected discovery that one of my old blog posts had been quoted in a book on the history of comic books.  I wondered just why the author, Shirrel Rhoades, had chosen to cite my writing and said that I'd have to find his contact info and ask him.

Shirrel Rhoades

 

Well, finding a way to get in touch with Mr. Rhoades was not hard at all, as we live in a time when even minor supporting characters in bad comic strips have their own Facebook pages. (One of my Facebook friends is Mary Worth's neighbor Wilbur Weston.)  Thus, on Sunday, I put my questions to the author.  

Obviously a man of profound good taste and erudition, Mr. Rhoades replied that "I liked your blogs and thought you succinctly offered an observation about Stan that even he'd admit to in his less bombastic moments." He goes on to say that he "wanted to pepper the textbook with quotes from a wide variety of sources rather than just my opinions or those of a small insider clique."   

Now that I am recognized as an expert in my field, I will be available for lectures, cable talk shows and birthday parties.  Though I will not do balloon animals.  Even if I could, I wouldn't.  A man's got to draw the line somewhere.

Faced with black and white evidence that people actually read and pay attention to what I put out on the cyberwaves in these blogs, will I now more carefully consider my often inane, sometimes insane, and usually ill informed opinions before I hit the "Publish" button?

Most likely not.

Happy Birthday, Stan Lee (Dredging Up The Past Part IV--or--The Quotable Ray Tomczak)

I realize that Stan Lee's birthday isn't until December 28, so you're probably asking yourself why I'm re-presenting this "classic" post from The Word From On High in the middle of October.  I hadn't planned on re-posting it at all, though now that I've reread it I can see that its actually one of the better pieces of writing from the old blog and on that basis alone deserves a second look, but the real reason I've dug it up is that I just discovered that this post is quoted in a book.
Yep, a real book. With words and sentences and a table of contents and an index--in which my name appears--and everything.
Cool, huh?
Earlier today, I was Googling myself, which, unfortunately, is nowhere near as dirty as it sounds, and buried near the bottom of the fourth page of results, I found a link to a Google Books preview of the the book A Complete History of American Comic Books written by Shirrel Rhoades and published in 2008 (and yet I'm just now finding out about it).   On page 86, in the chapter on the Silver Age, Rhoades closes a section on Stan Lee with: As blogger Ray  "!!" Tomczak puts it, "Stan Lee's real gift was for self-promotion and his greatest creation was Stan Lee himself.
While I am surprised, happy and proud to be quoted in such a context, I kind of wish it had been a more original thought.  As I acknowledge in the post, I'm certainly not the first to make this observation.  In fact that is pretty much the central premise of the book Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, as I note in the remainder of the quoted sentence.   I guess Rhoades just happened to like the way I phrased it. Who knows?  Maybe I should try to find his contact info and ask him.  
Yeah, I'll do that later.  For now, I re-present my December 28, 2006 posting "Happy Birthday, Stan Lee" 

***

As we near the end of 2006, I was thinking back on the more than three hundred posts I've uploaded since February 6, among them quite a few tributes to deceased celebrities, from Don Knotts to Jerry Ford, and I was thinking that I might like to write something nice about someone who's still breathing.

Born Stanley Martin Lieber, Stan Lee entered the comics industry in the early 1940's, working for cousin-in-law Martin Goodman's Timely Comics, which you might know better as Marvel. He stayed at Timely through thick and thin for two decades, until, as he tells it, he was fed up and ready to quit in order to pursue his dream of becoming a novelist. Thus, when tasked by Goodman to create a new super-hero team to compete with DC's Justice League, he, with encouragement from his wife, decided to create the kind of comic he'd always wanted to write. After all, he reasoned, he was going to quit anyway. The comic he wrote was Fantastic Four and from there, he, along with artists Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others, went on to create what we now call the Marvel Universe.

At least, that's Stan's version. It has been quite rightly noted that, whatever his talents as a comics writer, Stan Lee's real gift was for self-promotion and his greatest creation was Stan Lee himself, and it has been shown by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon in their book Stan Lee and The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book that quite a few of the stories he tells of his early years are merely part of the myth that he has built up around himself.

That is part of the reason I so admire Stan. It is his gift for self promotion and hype and for creating, both on the comics page and in his own life, larger than life mythologies that makes him a quintessential expression of the American character and one of the most significant Pop Culture figures of the Twentieth Century.

Very much alive and kicking, Stan Lee today celebrates his 84th birthday.

***

This, by the way, is not the first time my bloggish blatherings have attracted the scrutiny of the literati.  Earlier in December of 2006, after reading  The Man Time Forgot, Isaiah Wilner's book on Time magazine co-founder Briton Hadden and Stealing Time, an account of the AOL/Time Warner merger, I noticed certain parallel between the story of Hadden and that of the man who started the company that would become AOL and I wrote a post about it on The Word From On High.   This piece somehow came to Wilner's attention and he linked to it on his blog. (I was going to link to Wilner's post, but apparently that post is no longer up.) I'm even prouder of this citation, since it  seems that I'd made an observation that hadn't occurred to the author previously.

Gotham City 14 Miles: Taking "Camp" Seriously

Elsewhere on the Wild, Wild Web, over at Comic Book Resources, Tim Callahan devotes the latest installment of his weekly column "When Worlds Collide" to a preview of the upcoming book Gotham City 14 Miles.  Edited by Jim Beard, the book is a collection of essays on the 1960's Adam West/Burt Ward Batman TV series.  The title comes from the sign just outside the mouth of the Batcave seen in nearly every episode of the series.  Callahan himself is one of the contributors to the book.  He's turned in an essay that analyses the series by way of Susan Sontag's famous 1964 essay "Notes On Camp".  Other contributors include Robert Greenberger, Chuck Dixon, Peter Sanderson, Paul Kupperberg, Will Murray, Michael D. Hamersky, Beard and many others.  

This looks like it could turn out to be a really fun, not to mention slightly informative, book and I'm looking forward to reading it.