GUNN SHOTS

 

"Our plot has nothing to do with All-Star Superman, but some of the aesthetics of what Grant wrote and what Frank drew were incredibly influential," he continues. "They also had that sort of science fiction, and the idea of Lex as a mad science sorcerer, almost. You know, science is his own sort of sorcery. And the giant, you know, the monsters and the threats and all of that the Silver Age look through a green lens. I think a lot of that was taken from All-Star Superman, and that was my biggest one, for sure. Also my favorite."-- Total Film.

This comment, made by James Gunn to various press-reps while publicizing a SUPERMAN LEGACY trailer, seems to be all that he ever said about the influence of the Morrison-Quitely ALL-STAR SUPERMAN on his film. The opening sentence, where he notes that he's not attempting anything like the ALL-STAR plot, didn't stop a lot of fans from speculating that the Morrison work would be a major thematic influence, rather than just influencing some aesthetic aspects of the movie. (I note that the Total Film essay specifies that some members of the cast took inspiration from the GN as well.)

Now that I've both reviewed the film and re-examined ALL-STAR, I don't even think Gunn took much from Morrison/Quitely in terms of aesthetics. Gunn and M/Q are both making use of the garish, larger-than-life imagery of Silver Age comic books. But Gunn takes those images at face value, while M/Q find ways to illuminate the symbolic potential of such images. For instance, Gunn's Fortress of Solitude carries no sense of wonder: it's just a repository of things Gunn needs to make the story work: a solar-ray healing machine for Superman's wounded body, and robots to attend his recovery. Interestingly, David Corenswet is quoted in this IGN piece as to how affected he was by the M/Q depiction of the Fortress, allowing him as a performer to have insight into the "gentle loneliness" of the Superman psyche. I think Corenswet conveyed in his performance the sense that, even with human friends and a few fellow Kryptonians, Superman is still terribly alone. In my ALL-STAR review I considered the possibility that the M/Q "vision of interconnectedness...makes Superman so devoted to helping others, and it may be the only thing about ALL-STAR to influence James Gunn, even though Gunn chose a totally different direction." But now I don't think Gunn, even though he may have comprehended what M/Q meant re: the connectedness of people, took any influence from ALL-STAR there. 

Gunn does want to convey a sense of Superman as being motivated by a deep and soulful caring for all living beings, even the kaiju-creature Luthor sends to tear up Metropolis. But the closest Gunn comes to articulating that motivation comes in the final scene between Superman and Luthor:

I'm as human as anyone. I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human. And that's my greatest strength.

        

Now that's a vision of commonality, but not of interconnectedness. It doesn't really explain the hero's extraordinary reverence for life-- something not shared by his fellow superheroes. Hawkgirl cheerfully executes one of the villains, saying, "I'm not Superman," thus channeling the sentiments of many of the harsher comic-book vigilantes, some of whom Gunn has adapted, such as Peacemaker. This scene suggests that even though Gunn was trying to convince viewers that Superman's great kindness is the new "punk rock," he knew that the audience would want to see at least one villain pay the ultimate penalty, and Luthor was clearly not going to be knocked off. Barring new info from seeing the movie a second time, I think Gunn was just trying to find some way to rationalize Superman's dominant Boy Scout image. He might have built more upon a possible "savior complex" the hero had built up in reaction to his understanding of the "legacy" left him by his Kryptonian parents, but if Gunn meant something along those lines, the concept didn't make it into the finished movie.

More Gunn Shots to come, possibly.

    

MYTHCOMICS: "SUPERMAN IN EXCELSIS" (ALL STAR SUPERMAN #1/ 10-12, 2007-08)

 

Even before I saw and reviewed SUPERMAN LEGACY, I'd heard somewhere that James Gunn might have been influenced by Grant Morrison's 2007-08 limited Superman series, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. I don't intend to research what Gunn might have publicly said about the Morrison work, though I assume he did make some statement or other. My reaction to the assertion was that I thought Gunn might have borrowed this or that storytelling trope, but I highly doubted that he would have any interest in Morrison's predominant themes of archetypal realities and creative evolution. But now that LEGACY is a box-office success, that leads me to examine ALL-STAR through the lens of myth-explication.

Previously I reviewed just one two-part story in ALL-STAR, the Bizarro sequence, without saying anything definitive about all twelve issues. I will now state that even though the ALL-STAR series is almost certainly the best Superman story of the 21st century (and may continue to do so if the comic continues until 2099), its diverse stories don't all sustain my concept of symbolic concrescence. Morrison made a studied effort to bring all his concepts under his chosen theme, the aforementioned ideal of creative evolution, but I don't think he was successful across the board. He formulated a sort of "frame-story" in which the villainous Luthor finally manages to doom Superman, and this frame starts with issue 1, becomes a leitmotif throughout issues 2 through 9, and culminates in issues 10-12. The stories in 2-9 are many times better than what usually passes for a good Superman story in this century, but their purpose is not predominantly to illustrate the main theme. The "in-the-frame" stories are Morrison's attempt to isolate all the quintessential tropes of the Superman series up to that point-- mostly the tropes of the 1955-70 Silver Age-- though he works in references to other eras (Steve Lombard of the 1970s, Doomsday of the 1990s). For me, the frame-story, for which I've used the title Morrison gave to the last installment, is the only segment that thoroughly fulfills the theme of creative evolution.

         

 

"Excelsis" begins with daredevil billionaire Leo Quintero (note the possibly coincidental resemblance of the name to "quintessential"). He and a crew of androids fly a spacecraft to the periphery of the sun, ostensibly to map the solar body, though there's also a reference to taking fire from the sun in some Promethean endeavor, in line with a couple of references to the Ray Bradbury short story "The Golden Apples of the Sun." However, Lex Luthor, who's apparently aware that Superman is watching over this scientific project, smuggles on board an android timed to blow up the ship. Superman bursts in and expels the android, but in so doing, he like Icarus (not a Morrison reference) flies close to the sun. Even though the sun is the source of most or all of Superman's fantastic powers, the hero's not able to simply barrel his way his way through the solar mass here, as he did in so many other comics-tales. The Kryptonian's system is poisoned by too much solar "information," and Quintero informs Superman that he's likely to die soon. As something of a measured boon, Quintero also states that if he can't save Superman with his science, he'll try to create "replacement supermen."

While anticipating his death, Superman seeks to arrange his affairs for that contingency, though he still has to deal with continuous menaces to Metropolis. One of his most vital decisions is to reveal to Lois Lane the truth of his double identity, as well as giving her a guided tour of his Fortress of Solitude. Among the many wonders he shows off is a "baby Sun-Eater," which is Morrison's only reference to the history of Superboy's involvement with the Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes-- though the creature pops up later in a more essential role. Lois doesn't entirely believe the hero, and he isn't truthful about everything. Superman informs Lois that his recent visit to the sun "tripled my curiosity, my imagination, my creativity"-- which seems to be true in a general sense-- but the hero doesn't tell the girl reporter that too much sun has also killed him. (I wonder if there's a parallel to the psychotropic drugs that appear in many Morrison stories, though I don't know how often such substances result in death in his stories.)

   

Superman keeps busy despite the sword hanging over his head. As Clark Kent he interviews Luthor, who's been sentenced to execution, and the hero isn't entirely able to conceal his revulsion at the mad scientist's waste of his talents. He finds a new world for the Kandorians to inhabit. He visits the Kent farm, recollecting the circumstances of Pa Kent's passing, which in Morrison's world involves a meeting with "Supermen of the Future." And, to experiment with seeing how Earth would get along without him, he creates his own pocket-planet, "Earth-Q," which is essentially our own world (complete with an artist, implicitly Joe Shuster, creating the fictional Superman). Morrison presents this Superman as a modest god who constantly seeks the best for mortals, albeit a god with human limitations.   

   

Morrison's intra-frame stories are loosely united by a "twelve tasks of the hero" motif, but the final and most important feat is that Superman, unlike Captain Ahab, succeeds in "striking the sun itself." But this isn't the non-sentient solar orb that accidentally poisoned the hero. Rather, this surrogate sun is Solaris, a solar computer from the future, an entity who wants to usurp the position of the regular sun and become the object of Earth's veneration. Luthor's responsible for Solaris' presence as well, apparently because the villain didn't want Superman to go off and die in private. Instead, Solaris bombards Earth with red sun radiation, so that Luthor will be able to personally torment and execute a powerless Superman.      

However, in a moment of irony, Superman outthinks his enemy-- using "brain over brawn," a line which James Gunn more or less recycled for LEGACY. The hero uses a gravity gun that accelerates Luthor's metabolism, to burn out the super-powers the villain gave himself. And on top of that, Luthor is forced to see the universe through Superman's eyes: "this is how he sees all the time, every day. Like, it's all just us, in here, together. And we're all we've got." This is implicitly the vision of interconnectedness that makes Superman so devoted to helping others, and it may be the only thing about ALL-STAR to influence James Gunn, even though Gunn chose a totally different direction.      

So both Luthor and Solaris are defeated. But because Solaris poisoned the sun, Superman doesn't expire on mundane Earth, but ascends to the Heavens, becoming joined with the body that has slain him. Back on Earth Lois keeps the faith, telling Jimmy that the hero hasn't died, but is only seeking to heal the sun with a new "heart." Morrison suggests but does not affirm that this may be true, but clearly, in this sequence, the writer is using the trope of the hero's death to sum up, not simply his accomplishments, but all the creativity that gave him the status of a modern myth.    

Finally, the Latin phrase "in excelsis" translates to "in the highest," and appeared in a Christian hymn within the phrase "Glory to God in the highest." But within the context of the ALL-STAR stories, "in excelsis" connotes humanity's need to emulate its highest creative potential. This is underscored in issue 10, where Morrison and Quitely give the reader a glance at Earth-Q, where its version of the 15th-century philosopher Pico del Mirandola states the following.

“Let us not yield sovereignty even to them, the highest of the angelic hierarchies! Become instead like them in all their glory and dignity. Imitation is man’s nature, and if he but wills it, so shall he surpass even imagination’s greatest paragons.”

Morrison seems to be alone in drawing a connection between empathy for all beings and "imagination's greatest paragons," and that may be the thing that keeps ALL-STAR on a "higher plane" that most of what passes for "Superman mythology" in this era.       

    

MYTHCOMICS: "THE 1001 DOOMS OF MISTER TWISTER" (THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #54, 1964)

 

Just as I didn't expect to find a mythcomic in one of the late "Spooky Titans" adventures of the TEEN TITANS' first run, as chronicled here, I also wasn't expecting to reread the first TITANS story and find any concrescent myth-tropes in it, not least because I didn't remember it as a strong story. (Part of the problem was the art by Bruno Premaini, who didn't suit this feature all that well.) But on rereading Bob Haney's first story with the nascent team-- which wouldn't get a formal name until B&B #60-- I found that the tropes were there. But just like "Scourge of the Skeletal Riders," it's not the heroes who incarnate the myth-tropes, but the one-shot menace to the protagonists.

Certainly the title-- which connotes nothing in the story but may be hyperbole meant to suggest the 1000 NIGHTS-- and the opening are nothing impressive. Like many of the Silver/Bronze Age TITANS stories, this one begins with the idea that the Titans-to-be are uniquely situated to solve problems between teenagers and adults. The quarrel in "Dooms"-- the teens of Hatton Corners want a clubhouse, and the adults want "more chores less play" from the adolescents-- is jejune in the extreme. Still, the teens are so hungry for mediators that they write separate letters to Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, and all three young heroes show up at the small town.

Contrary to expectations, the heroes see the teen club's old meeting-place wrecked. The local adults think the teens did it themselves and ran away, but after Kid Flash and Aqualad hunt about in all directions on land and in the sea, the Titans conclude that something weird is going on. The instigator of the weirdness quickly shows up, a man in colonial garb riding a tornado and calling himself Mister Twister. The mayor immediately recognized the man as "Brom Stikk" (more on the name later) and he freely admits that he spirited away the teens of Hatton Corners.

    

Even ten-year-olds reading this funnybook in 1964 would have recognized one trope from the folkloric story of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" here. However, Haney adds some interesting new tropes, particularly one that some sites label "The Impossible Task." In colonial times, the land on which Hatton Corners was founded was owned by one Jacob Stikk. But he didn't give the land outright but required that "until the end of time the town will pay me and my descendants one passenger pigeon feather yearly or forfeit ne of your stalwart youths to labor in my service for that year." Jacob's pilgrim contemporaries consider this an elaborate joke, since at the time it's easy to acquire such feathers. So, while the Pied Piper just wants coin of the realm, Jacob sets up a task that's not impossible yet, but which will be in future-- for the implicit purpose of gaining the services of the community's youths. Apparently at some point both Jacob and his immediate descendants vanish, so that the elders of Hatton Corners get used to not paying the rental fee. Then in 1964 Brom Stikk, the alleged descendant of Jacob, shows up clad in a feathered robe and a tricorn hat, and demands all the back rent he's owed. Even though what Brom wants would be valueless even if passenger pigeons weren't extinct, the elders of present-day Hatton Corners laugh Brom out of town, just as the Piper was denied his legitimate fee.

Naturally, the Titans care no more about the justice of Brom's claim than the town-elders do; they care only about rescuing the missing teens. And though most folktales about Impossible Tasks don't involve payments of extinct-animal plumage, the entire "rental fee" comes to resemble a demonic bargain, morphologically closer to Rumpelstilskin more than the Pied Piper. Readers of "Rumpelstilskin" never know why the imp wants the firstborn of the young woman who accepts his bargain, which can only be cancelled by the completion of a seemingly Impossible Task (learning the imp's name). But "Dooms" offers a pretty fair motive: the Titans locate all the captive teens on a nearby island, laboring to construct a pointless monument to Twister's ego. (I note in passing that page 11 of "Dooms" also shows Kid Flash and Aqualad quarreling slightly about whose powers are better, a likely indicator of DC writers embracing more hero-conflict in response to Stan Lee's game-changing of the superhero paradigm.)

Here we see Brom repeating his Impossible Task trope, telling the teens they'll be punished if they don't complete the tower while he Brom is absent. Kid Flash functions as the "helpful animal/god" in similar folktales, completing the task for them, though technically the task isn't necessary, because before Twister gets back, Aqualad summons a whale to break the island from its connection to the ocean-floor and carry it and the captives away. Meanwhile, Robin tails Twister and sees him renew his staff's powers in the cave of an Indian medicine-man. Robin attacks and is defeated, after which Twister drops him off in Hatton Corners, along with a note that he will bring three (not 1001) dooms to the town if he doesn't get his pigeon feathers.

Since we're never in Twister's head for very long, once can't say that he's aware that the elders can't deliver the payment the villain wants. It's more likely that he always intends to destroy the town out of spite, and that's where his "broomstick" name becomes significant: he's a supervillain version of a malefic witch, who wants to wreak evil for evil's sake. The super-powers of Kid Flash and Aqualad are vital in forestalling the three dooms, but it's Robin, whose lack of powers Brom sneers at, who disarms the overconfident evildoer. (I note in passing that the artist shows Brom losing his feathered cape a la Icarus, even though his cape has nothing to do with his ability to fly by conjuring up twisters.)

The adults and teens of Hatton Corners are reconciled while Twister is taken away, never to reappear in his original identity, but only in retconned variants. I conclude that though I don't know how hip Bob Haney was to name-origins, I find it interesting that "Hatton" is often interpreted to mean (roughly) the "settlement of untamed land." In the case of "1001 Dooms," the settlement would seem to imply the banishment of such insidious presences as witches and devils before civilization can take hold-- which suggests that at times Haney allowed his storytelling instincts to roam more freely than he did in other instances.

VARIANT REVISIONS

 In ICONIC PROPOSITIONS PT. 2, I gave two examples of established literary works, ROB ROY and IVANHOE, which respectively represented PURE and IMPURE forms of variant propositions, said purity being based on how much the narrative is based on previously established figures. However, particular icons within variant narratives may be deemed originary.

In the previous essay I analyzed "Requiem for a Titan," a TEEN TITANS story which related the first appearance of the Gargoyle. The character didn't appear very often, but because he did not, he offers a fair illustration of the way an originary icon-- albeit one situated within a variant proposition about a team of sidekicks--gets changed over time, even by the icon's creator.

 Bob Haney returned to the Gargoyle twice, but the first story, "A Titan is Born" (TEEN TITANS #35, 1971), wasn't an auspicious return. In this tale Haney tried to find something interesting to do with non-powered Titan Mal Duncan, a character introduced by Robert Kanigher during the "Relevant Titans" phase. In these seven pages, Mal pulls solitary computer-watching duty at the Titans HQ. A scientist named Heller-- the Gargoyle in disguise-- intrudes on Mal's solitude, claiming to be a colleague of the group's patron. Haney's vague on a vital point-- that somehow the Titans computer, set to perform some unspecified experiment, opened a dimensional doorway, allowing the Gargoyle to return to Earth. By story's end Mal manages to reverse the experiment and send the villain packing. The odd variance in the tale is the Gargoyle's own creator seems to have forgotten his original idea. In "Requiem," there's no indication that the tale Gargoyle told about his being an ex-convict was anything but a dodge to seed doubt into the heroes' minds. Since in "Requiem" Haney gave Gargoyle no real identity, and since in "Titan" he needed a quick-and-dirty motivation for the villain's actions, he faked one. Haney could never have anticipated how many odd turns his minor deviation from his originary story would later generate.               

Haney wrote one last story with Gargoyle, which I reviewed in detail here, and I don't need to say anything more about it except that Haney just treats the villain like a demon escaping its domain. Then in TEEN TITANS #53 (1978), writer Bob Rozakis contributed another link in the confusion. Rozakis imagines a story that supposedly took place between the canonical first and second adventures. Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Speedy and Wonder Girl team up for this "actual second Titans tale." All the sidekicks' mentors-- Batman, Flash, Aquaman, Green Arrow and Wonder Woman-- have suddenly turned into remorseless criminals. The young heroes prove their stuff by capturing the evil-ized good guys, and then, by dumb luck, the Titans stumble across the solution to the mystery by attempting to hold the Justice Leaguers at the JLA headquarters. There, the Titans meet one of the dumbest looking aliens ever conceived in comics (by artists Delbo and Fuller) -- The Antithesis. 

Rozakis gives no reason as to why the Antithesis is hanging out at the JLA HQ, and the heroes don't even smoke him out. The villain pops up to keep the Titans from contacting other Leaguers, but at the same time he shows absolutely no ability to attack anyone. He followed the Leaguers "from a far corner of the galaxy" because he could gain great energy by dominating heroes and making them do bad things. (This story has nothing to do with Haney's Gargoyle, but the Antithesis and Gargoyle are not dissimilar in that raison d'etre.) As the Titans attack Antithesis, he proves immaterial, but that's because they've cut off his supply of corrupted-hero energy. The evil ET seems to be hoping his last pawn will win in the field, though that pawn is defeated and Antithesis vanishes, wailing something about "power generators." From what Rozakis writes, the only "power generators" Antithesis has access to would be his heroic pawns.     

It was left to George Perez, long after he and Marv Wolfman had reworked the TEEN TITANS concept into a sales success, to link Haney's Gargoyle with Rozakis' Antithesis, and with a separate character as well. "Pieces of the Puzzle" (SECRET ORIGINS ANNUAL #3, 1989) is mostly a mashup of selected stories from the Haney, Rozakis and Wolfman-Perez eras, conveyed to the reader by dream-scenes experienced by Nightwing as he's tormented by a cowled enemy. As a story "Puzzle" may be worse than that the Rozakis "Antithesis" tale, though the art is much better. But to make his story work, Perez interpolates an odd new detail; that the Antithesis was hiding in the JLA's own computers. This detail seems to serve no purpose, and I hypothesize that Perez confused the origin of the Antithesis with Haney's "Titan is Born" tale, where Gargoyle gets out of limbo thanks to the Titans HQ computer. Perez recounts the Haney tale at the end of "Puzzle" as he's retconning it into the narrative of Mal Duncan, but that retcon doesn't actually require the revision of the Rozakis story.      

The big Three Reveals, if one can call them such, is that (a) the cowled figure giving Nightwing bad dreams is The Gargoyle, (b) The Gargoyle is really the Titans' first foe Mister Twister (which factoid could be used to justify Haney's erroneous 1971 story), and (c) Gargoyle got all his powers, in both identities, from the Antithesis. Whenever I read this, I remember thinking it was a good idea to combine the best enemy of the original Titans with their first one. But now I recognize that Perez was a little too desperate to shoehorn together unrelated stories for a superficial effect. In fact, there's are so many retcons in "Puzzle" that there was no room for the author to expatiate on the Gargoyle-Antithesis relationship in the story proper, so it all had to be explained in a prose sidebar. 

Of course, heavy-continuity stories can be done well. But since my next essay will discuss the mythic tropes surrounding the Titans' first antagonist, I felt it necessary to explain why I thought all of these variant propositions were badly framed.         

NEAR-MYTHS: "REQUIEM FOR A TITAN" (TEEN TITANS #14, 1968)

 

In this essay I distinguished three general periods in the first run of the TEEN TITANS feature: "Wacky Titans," "Relevant Titans," and "Spooky Titans." But "Requiem for a Titan" was an odd game-changer for long-time DC scripter Bob Haney. "Requiem" didn't mark a sea-change for the feature-- future stories still utilized a lot of wackiness revolving around the alliance of the teen sidekicks-- so it seems like Haney just had a sudden desire to thrust the innocent barely-adults into the chaos of guilt and moral breakdown.     

In a haunting sequence-- or as haunting as a comic with brightly clad superheroes can get-- artist Nick Cardy outdoes himself. Robin the Boy Wonder meets a new fiend, The Gargoyle, in a graveyard that includes prominent markers for Robin and his teammates. At the white-clad villain's command, Robin divests himself of parts of his costume, as if surrendering parts of himself. He balks at removing his mask, but the Gargoyle conjures up giant phantom images of the other Titans, all of whom mock the Boy Wonder. Robin capitulates and removes the mask, upon which action the villain projects a ray from his ring. Robin vanishes as the Gargoyle cackles that "the Teen Titans are embraced by Limbo-- and in Limbo rule I, the Gargoyle."

So what is Limbo, before it was the name of a Trinidadian dance? Early Catholic theology, particularly that of Augustine, posited Limbo as an intermediary realm between Heaven, which was a reward for believers, and Hell, a punishment for unbelievers. Since Bob Haney never defines the nature of the otherworldly dimension he calls Limbo, it's fair to speculate that Haney wants to get across the idea that the place is somehow an exception to the norms of good and evil, even if Limbo's under the control of a demonic-looking master.

A long flashback then transpires, as we are told how the Gargoyle came into the Titans' lives. Though none of them ever saw him before, the costumed figure claims that he went to prison, and that one of the Titans sent him there by falsifying evidence. Though Gargoyle produces zero evidence for his claim, three of the Titans-- Aqualad, Kid Flash and Wonder Girl-- simultaneously place credence in the notion, and all three suspect the detective member of their group of the malfeasance. But nothing about the Gargoyle's story is anything but gaslighting; he fed the heroes his phony story in the hope that all of them would suspect one another. Robin alone did not suspect his teammates, but the doubt nurtured by three of them allows the Gargoyle to consign them to his domain. 

Further, after exposing the doubt-ridden heroes to the influence of Limbo, Gargoyle can bring them back as giant phantom versions of themselves, but with their morals reversed, so that they now hate Robin and everything in the "real world." Gargoyle leaves the noble-minded Boy Wonder to perish in a fire, but he survives, though the world thinks the other Titans dead. Robin then seeks out the security of the Titans secret HQ, only to learn that Gargoyle and his "phantom titans" have taken it over, with the fiend claiming that he and his allies will "wreak crime and evil for the greater glory of the Gargoyle." (Note that nowhere in the story does Gargoyle ever disclose any simple, mundane motive for gain or power.) Robin escapes again, but he refuses to reach out to any other heroes, such as his mentor Batman or the Justice League. Though he's done nothing of which to be ashamed, he's immensely guilt-ridden by his failure to stop Gargoyle-- which is more regret than one sees in the story from the three "faithless" Titans.

After a couple more pages the flashback ends, and we see how Robin, after being hit by the rays from the villain's ring, has entered the free-form world of Limbo, now transformed into another giant phantom. However, the Boy Wonder tricked the villain into merely thinking he Robin had filled his mind with evil thoughts. (Gargoyle's raison d'etre seems to be the opposite of Peter Pan's, where "happy  thoughts" conferred power.)

  After Robin clobbers his ensorcelled teammates, he and Gargoyle have a battle in the bizarre Limbo-realm. Robin cleverly sabotages Gargoyle's ring, which action conveniently strands the villain between dimensions, but delivers all four Titans back on Earth and none the worse for wear. The three "traitors" have forgotten all of their evil deeds, and there's no firm evidence in the story that Robin tells any of them what happened.

Haney, like other DC writers of his generation, must have executed dozens of "scientific-Gothic" story-resolutions, wherein an apparently supernatural phenomenon is neatly explained by some technological gimmick. Not only is Gargoyle's true identity never revealed here, one sees no firm denial that he may indeed be some extra-dimensional being. Now, there are a few concessions to the possibility that he's just some clever Earthman. Nick Cardy's Gargoyle has claws on his hands and toes, but he also seems to have seams separating what might be gloves and boots from the rest of the silvery body. Robin calls the Gargoyle's appearance a "getup," meaning he sees it as a costume. But as I said earlier, Gargoyle certainly acts as if he just worships evil for its own sake, and as if he takes pleasure, like a medieval devil, in corrupting pure hearts. The Limbo-ring may be some form of "magical technology," and since Gargoyle admits he has no "power to remain in Limbo" without the ring, that mitigates against any view that he was actually a native of that dimension. Gargoyle did return for a small handful of stories, but no one, not even his creator, ever again gave him this level of mythic ambivalence.                             

HOSTS, HEAVENLY AND OTHERWISE PT. 3

 

I started thinking once more about the topic of "story-hosts" after re-reading Batman's visit to "The House of Mystery" in BRAVE AND BOLD #93, courtesy of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams. In a previous installment of this essay-series, I had talked about how certain issues of that rotating team-up title, because those stories paired Batman, a superordinate icon, with such subordinate icons as The Joker, the Riddler and Ra's Al Ghul, none of whom have ever progressed beyond the subordinate level (in contrast, say, to a rare character like The Catwoman, who made her superordinate mark in the 1990s and who has kept that stature thereafter). 

But at least all of the villains so featured were actual icons. In the story "Red Water, Crimson Death," the two "headliners" are Batman and Cain from DC's "House of Mystery" title-- but not only do they not interact with one another, the latter character has, as far as this story is concerned, no power to interact with Batman or anyone else. He might best be termed a "null-icon" here, as he is in most if not all of the horror-stories he hosted. Thus, in contrast to what I wrote in COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 6, in all such narratives Cain would be neither Prime nor Sub. I'm aware that he becomes a Sub in the SANDMAN comic, which parallels what I also wrote in the above essay about the EC story "Horror Beneath the Streets." In that tale the three EC horror-hosts come into "reality" to berate the comic-book makers-- but only to make the humans assign the hosts to their already established venues. Technically they are Primes and the comic-book authors are Subs-- though the categorization is made more difficult in that story-hosts are essentially identical with their authors. They serve the same purpose as omniscient narrators, but as "null-icons," they convey a sense of personality absent in such narrators.

So in my book, "Crimson" is essentially a Batman story, concerning his adventure when he tries to take a vacation from being Batman. He meets a young Irish boy, Sean, during an ocean voyage , and though Bruce Wayne has no idea that Sean is involved in a criminal case, he ends up accompanying the boy back to his small fishing-isle, and thus, getting some necessary exposition-- and an introduction to a supernatural manifestation.          

I won't recount the whole story here, but suffice to say that there's a human agency behind the so-called "red tides" and the never-specified deaths of Sean's parents. However, there's also a superhuman agency that manipulates the Gotham Guardian into intervening to capture the criminals and save Sean's life. And yet, though as scripted this is a Batman story, with no crossover elements, O'Neil and Adams structured the tale as the sort of thing that could have run in HOUSE OF MYSTERY. And suppose that it had been reworked to be just such a story, with Batman ejected and replaced by just some basic one-shot viewpoint character? Then the centricity would have shifted from that POV type to either King Hugh, the ghost that renders aid to the boy's protector-- or even to Sean, since O'Neil's backstory slightly suggests that the boy, still grieving for his lost parents, may have subconsciously summoned the spirit of his dead relative to enact vengeance.

NEAR-MYTHS" "THE TRILLION DOLLAR TROPHIES" (SUPERBOY #221, 1976)

 

This story, one of the last Jim Shooter wrote for The Legion before he became an assistant editor at Marvel, is a curious venture into "quasi-adult" subject matter for both Shooter and for a feature associated with the Superman mythos. That, more than the story's formal qualities, are its foremost features, and the tale garnered a degree of negative response for its appatrent employment of B&D elements.

Short version: the Legion-heroes are the "trophies" of the title. Two criminals, Grimbor and Charma, seek to capture the heroes for purposes of reaping a ransom from the group's rich patron. Charma is in some ways the "dominant" member, for she has the power to dominate any male and make him her subservient slave. However, this same talent evokes titanic rage in any female, even though Charma may not be impinging on anyone's particular mate. Charma thus needs a powerful male protector, so she enslaves the reluctant lock-maker, Grimbor the Chainsman. The duo seem like castoffs from a William Moulton Marston story, though I tend to think they represented a "one-off" idea for Shooter, rather than any syndromic obsession.

          First, while Grimbor takes on Colossal Boy, Charma gets beat on by Shadow Lass.

 

Timber Wolf and Light Lass try to separate their enemies, but as Charma takes another beating from the female Legionnaire, her cries cause both Grimbor and the male Legionnaire to come to Charma's aid, so these heroes are also captured.

Later, when Charma is about to kill off some of the captive heroes, Shrinking Violet, one of the weakest Legionnaires, comes to the rescue. Though Violet is governed by the same compulsion to punch out Charma, the heroine does so with an eye to making the captive males so angry they break their chains and accidentally clobber Grimbor. The story closes on the revelation that at some point Grimbor planned to get back in the driver's seat by making special chains to restrict her domination-power.

It's not a very good story, nor a deep story. But one must admit- it's not a dull story.