OO, THOSE AWFUL ONTOLOGIES

My title references an essay by snob-critic Edmund Wilson, who sneered at THE LORD OF THE RINGS with a snotty essay, "Oo, Those Awful Orcs." I say, if you're going to steal, steal from elitists; that way, you're just stealing from cheats.

My most sustained thoughts on the subject of "ontology" came about from my relatively recent attempts to suss out the works of Alfred North Whitehead. Even before finishing his most famous philosophical book, PROCESS AND REALITY, I wrote this essay to draw comparisons between his system and mine, based on a perceived conflict between his ontology and my epistemology. In response to Whitehead's statement that his philosophy concerned "the process by which subjective data pass into the appearance of an objective world," I wrote: 

It could be interesting to see what criteria Whitehead uses to measure his “objective data,” and what if any impact that would have on, say, Kant’s theory of the sublime—this being the Kantian concept that has most affected my own theory. I will say that within my epistemological schema, I rely on a sort of “objective data” that feeds into narrative constructs, and my own “satisfaction” with an author’s use of such patterns is more “intense” when I am convinced that the patterns used reinforce one another, creating my version of “concrescence.” However, within the sphere of literary narrative, “objective data” can be either things that the audience believes to be objectively unquestionable—say, the fact that the sun always rises in the east—or what I’ve called “relative meta-beliefs,” such as the Annunciation, the Oedipus complex, and the Rise of the Proletariat.

I later referred to all such "data" as half-truths, because that's how "truth" operates in fiction. But in more recent months, I began to consider, in the essay A NOSE FOR GNOSIS, that Whitehead's concept of an "ontology of subjective data" might parallel my concept of an "an ontology of fiction," by which I mean everything that *literally* takes place within a fictional discourse."

...I've been examining the idea that Whitehead's "pre-epistemic prehensions" comprised an ontology, while the epistemologically oriented apprehensions formed an epistemology. Prehensions as I understand them would necessarily flow from "knowledge-by-acquaintance," while apprehensions would line up with "knowledge-by-description."

A new wrinkle I'll now add on top of these previous observations is the following:

Since fictional ontology, whether one defines it as "literal content" or as "pre-epistemic prehensions," is comparable to "knowledge-by-acquaintance" rather than "knowledge-by-description," all judgments based on taste spring from a subject's response to a fictional work's ontology.

In 2012's THE CARE AND ESTEEMING OF LITTLE MYTHS, I defined the function of taste thusly: 

The notion of intersubjectivity explains much of the appeal of fiction.  Elitists like Groth generally insist that the difference between good and bad fiction is a matter of highflown sophistication; that which lacks sophistication is perforce bad.  Yet even elitist critics differ among themselves over what is good or bad in Shakespeare just as much as comics-fans do about the proper depiction of Batman.  The arguments themselves may be more sophisticated, but the response for or against any given work spring from the extent to which the work mirrors the subjectivities of critic, fan, or general audience-member.  But subjectivity doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and so we must speak of intersubjectivity as a way of understanding how persons from all walks of life can see reflections of themselves in the works of strangers, often strangers from other times and cultures. Thus, when we feel affection for the works of Shakespeare or of Bill Finger, what we “love” are shadows of our own tastes and personalities.

I still maintain that taste is not a matter of abstract justifications, though one can amuse oneself by debating the logical propositions that others use to justify the superiority of their tastes. Taste relates to the audience's identification with the travails, deserved or not, of fictional characters, and that means identifying with a work's internal ontology. 

The aforementioned Gary Groth, for instance, has often ridiculed the genre of superheroes with a variety of intellectual justifications. His few comments on his early comics-fandom have painted a picture of his younger self as simply ignorant of literary principles. But there's no reason to take Groth's word for his self-evaluation: that he formerly had the propensity to identify with fictional superheroes but then recognized their absurdity for intellectual reasons. A lot of readers fall out of love with a lot of genres that they may love intensely for a time, only to tire of them and chase after some other passion. Ontological identification arises from the reader's perception that the ontology reflects something he or she would like to see play out, regardless as to whether the fictional scenario reflects something the reader would like to see transpire in reality.

Now, if I am correct that reader-taste stems from identification with a work's ontology, how does that influence the same reader's ability to suss out a work's epistemology? My answer is that the reader's non-intellectual tastes can indeed influence whether or not one appreciates the epistemology that can be used to justify the ontology. Even without reading Edmund Wilson's famous anti-Tolkien essay, the title alone tells one that Wilson cannot countenance the basic appeal of villains who repel the reader on the basis of their ugliness and their violence. I'm sure Wilson had all sorts of intellectual justifications for that position, but I don't think that his judgments of taste, any more than those of Groth, stem from intellect, but from an ability, or lack of ability, to identify with the basic-- one might say "pre-epistemic"-- propositions of an ontological scenario. And if one can't grok the "knowledge by acquaintance," one is unlikely to find any validity in the "knowledge by description" used to justify the abstract principles aligning with the pure events of the story.

NEAR MYTHS: "THIS MORTAL COIL" (ALPHA FLIGHT #50, 1987)

Bill Mantlo's tenure on the original ALPHA FLIGHT series wasn't much more distinguished than that of the feature's creator John Byrne. Yet curiously, one of the few times Mantlo delves into the world of epistemological myth was a story in which he was clearly attempting to jettison a couple of characters he didn't like writing-- that is, Northstar and Aurora, whose history I briefly examined in TWINSANITY.

To the extent "Mortal Coil" is remembered at all, it's as the issue in which writer Mantlo made the big reveal that ambiguously gay superhero Northstar was actually a "fairy"-- but in the literal sense (though this didn't keep some commenters from assuming that this revised origin was meant as gay-bashing). Such invidious remarks didn't take into account (1) that Mantlo was also stating that Aurora, who was not gay/lesbian, shared the same human/fairy heritage, and (2) that Mantlo was a fairly conspicuous Liberal, who was unlikely to have been bashing even an implicit gay character.

Bill Mantlo took over writing the regular ALPHA FLIGHT title after John Byrne departed with issue #28, and he continued on the feature until issue #66. I would judge Byrne's stories to be no more than standard Marvel soap-operatics, in which a team of disparate individuals bounce off one another with lots of emoting and hand-wringing in place of substantial characterization. Mantlo's run was largely more of the same, and it can be argued that he made an honest attempt to follow through on most of the character-arcs Byrne had established. The two authors had roughly opposite strengths and weaknesses. Byrne could not plot an arc to save his life, but he was able to give his characters distinct voices. Mantlo was a better plotter, but all of his characters talk like they just graduated Exposition 101.

I glanced over the Mantlo issues prior to "Coil," and for the most part he keeps the Byrne status quo with respect to the mutant twins. Northstar is jealous of Aurora's dalliance with men in a way that would seem incestuous were he not supposed to be implicitly homosexual. As it is, Brother Northstar just comes off as judgmental for no particular reason. After the death of Aurora's former lover Sasquatch, she begins a love-affair with technician Roger Bochs, a legless paraplegic. Throughout these issues, Aurora's split personality remains unaltered, and her superhero persona is that of a flirt who has only light, insubstantial loves. Mantlo clearly had no interest in improving the fractious characters, and "Coil" is a story in which he sought to get rid of the twins-- and, for that matter, another Byrne original, the dwarf-hero Puck.

Since issue #44, Mantlo introduced the notion that Northstar had a "pre-existing disease" that made him cough in every succeeding issue. Unconfirmed rumors of the period asserted that Mantlo meant to imply that Northstar had contracted AIDS and to have the mutant hero perish of that disease. Allegedly, Marvel Editorial refused to let him make even indirect allusions to homosexuality, so Mantlo revised whatever plans he had to rid himself of the mutant siblings. Thus, Northstar's illness, as well as Aurora's mental instability, become serious enough that the team takes both of them to a potential place of healing, a mystical conduit that links to many of the Marvel magic-worlds.

Despite some nice art by June Brigman, most of the perils the Alphans face are standard and uninvolving. Thus there's some irony to my assertion Mantlo saved his creative energies to craft a new origin for the characters, just so that he could be rid of them. This new origin claims that the twins' mortal father, who died before either sibling could have met him, found his way into the Faerie World, and caught a female elf, Danae, who wanted to be caught by him. However, after the two were married and Danae conceived the twins, an Elf Purity Squad tracked the wayward fairy down. The twins' father expires in an accident and Danae, despite being immortal, perishes for some reason Mantlo does not bother to discuss.

This revelation by Loki, Norse God of Mischief, is taken at face value by both twins as they seek to survive in the darkness of the conduit. This situation engenders the closest thing the two characters have to a "mythic moment." John Byrne, during some of his last issues, had Aurora declare her independence from her snobby brother by altering her genetic makeup so that the two of them lost their powers when they made physical contact. Faced with the prospect of death in an otherworld, Aurora makes a sacrifice, radiating her store of light-energy-- which I guess is now mystical in nature-- into her brother's body. This depletes her so that Aurora is captured by some of the conduit's demonic denizens. 

Northstar locates the rest of Alpha Flight, but because their leader Vindicator is suddenly antsy about letting the demons out of the gate the heroes opened, she then seals it, with both Aurora and Puck inside. With two of the three characters Mantlo didn't want to write out of the way, he then came up with a way to usher Northstar into the Faerie-World of his mother's race-- though it's not clear why the elves suddenly welcomed a half-elf, half-human when twenty-something years ago they wanted to keep their bloodlines pure. 

The book's heroes have to slink away with their tails between their legs, but Mantlo makes certain that the readers don't condemn him for consigning two regular characters to horrible fates. I won't get into Puck's disposition, except to say that he's relieved of an ongoing curse. Loki then tells some irate deities that Aurora, by hurling all of her light-force into her brother, not only cured him but purged her own elf-nature as well. Loki claims he delivered her to some unspecified mortal custodians and that he supposedly cured her of her split personality.

I don't pretend that "Coil" is a good story, and as soon as Mantlo left the feature, the subsequent writer reversed the "half-elf" solution and both Northstar and Aurora came back, though I haven't re-visited at those stories for years. But I will give Mantlo some credit for coming up with a climax for the Northstar-Aurora sibling relationship, in marked contrast to the characters' creators John Byrne, who was content to have them simply snipe at one another endlessly. The idea of Aurora surrendering her essence to cure her ailing brother could even carry a loose clansgressive motif, which plugs in to Northstar's jealousy of his sister's sexual relationships-- though I won't claim that this was intentional on Mantlo's part. The name he gives to the twins' elfin mother also has an inverted connection to the use of "light" to signify "intercourse." In Greek mythology, the mortal maiden Danae begets Perseus after the hero's godly father Zeus appears to Danae as a "golden shower," usually translated as rain, though the shower's color has stronger associations with sunlight. And though I don't have reason to think Mantlo a "mythophile," it's interesting that the name Danae resembles a Celtic name for the faerie-folk: the "Tuatha de Danaan."

TWINSANITY

As preparation for a "'near myth" analysis about a particular ALPHA FLIGHT story, I felt I needed to write an overview of two of the team's characters, Northstar and Aurora, as they were used in the first 28 issues written and drawn by their creator John Byrne.

I had read all the Byrne issues back-to-back a year or two ago. This time I only wanted to scan for scenes involving the mutant siblings, trying to figure out what if anything Byrne meant to do with them once the team graduated from a few random guest-appearances to their own title.

Today Northstar is arguably the better known of the two, as he will forever be referenced as "the first gay superhero." And Byrne has been unequivocal that he meant Northstar to be gay as soon as he began planning the ALPHA FLIGHT feature. But Byrne could only allude indirectly to the Canadian hero's personal sexual proclivities, given that Marvel Editorial wanted to keep gay politics out of their comics. 

An unintended effect of this editorial restraint, however, was that as a character Northstar was something less than compelling, possibly because the author didn't put his best foot forward. I tend to think that, consciously or not, Byrne modeled his speedster-hero on one of the "speed-freaks" whom the artist grew up on: Quicksilver of X-MEN and AVENGERS fame. Northstar, despite not having been pegged as a mutant early in life as was Quicksilver, seemed very similar in his arrogance and waspishness. And as Quicksilver and his sister the Scarlet Witch joined the Avengers to prove themselves to humanity, Northstar also had a sibling-related motive for allying himself to Alpha Flight. Neither Northstar nor Aurora knew one another growing up; they were made aware of one another's existence only as adults. However, Northstar had once been a minor-league anti-government revolutionary, so he was in a sense already an "evil mutant" in being opposed to the status quo. So Byrne apparently decided that such a character's only reason for aligning himself with a government operation was to watch over his newly discovered sister.

The artist-author had much more freedom with Aurora and devoted much attention to her history. Byrne depicted in great detail how during her youth Aurora had been raised in a restrictive, religious orphan's home, which imprinted on her an animus toward her own sexuality. This deviation from a normal upbringing resulted in a split personality: one harsh and anti-sexual, the other an audacious, fun-loving libertine. To Northstar's credit, once he found out about his sister's impairment, he did his level best to help her. However, he never bonded with the other members of Alpha Flight; to Northstar, they were at most a means to an end.

Byrne, being an avid Marvel reader, also would have known the history of the Quicksilver-Scarlet Witch team in the AVENGERS title: that by the early seventies, Quicksilver and his sister had a falling-out due to her dating the android Vision, and that he departed the super-group while she remained a regular member for most of the next fifty-plus years. It's probably no coincidence that when Northstar had a falling-out with Aurora during the Byrne tenure, it was because the brother had some objection to the sister cozying up to a male of which the brother did not approve. But whereas it was clear that Quicksilver didn't think his sister ought to be humping an artificial man, Northstar's objections to Aurora's choice in lovers, that of the hulking Sasquatch, is never very clear.

Byrne did not stay on the title long enough to permanently sever relations between Northstar and the rest of Alpha Flight, but the most prominent Northstar-Aurora arc for those 28 issues was that Aurora began to resent her brother's bossiness and his comments on the sauciness of her libertine persona. The first conflict appears at the end of AF #7, where Northstar makes the rude comment that he thought his sister had vamped a super-villain (and a particularly ugly one) in order to save her life.

The two remain at odds for several more issues, until issue #22. Aurora, going through a psychological breakdown, seeks out her brother, and they reconcile somewhat. However, by coincidence Northstar gets a call from one of his old revolutionary friends, who owns a circus now and is getting trouble from Pink Pearl, a felonious fat lady. But thanks to Aurora overhearing conversation about Northstar's past illegal activities, she cuts him off again, and even informs him that she plans to tell Alpha Flight about his history. 

This was rather out of left field even for Byrne. At this point, though one might think Aurora's conservative persona might be politically conservative, none of the characters had discussed any real-world political concerns, and even Northstar's recollections about his former status are vague at best. A few issues later, one of the Alphans summons Northstar to help them with some great menace. He thinks Aurora called him, and when he makes an egocentric statement about how much she needs him, she slugs him.

That's pretty much the state of affairs between the siblings by the time Byrne wraps up his run. For most issues, Byrne was more concerned with exploring the different aspects of Aurora's personality. One of the last wrinkles was that she wanted to be separated so much from her brother that she had Sasquatch alter her mutant powers so that her powers and those of her sibling were no longer boosted when they touched hands. This seems like a very risky super-science procedure, but that remained the status of the twins as the Byrne tenure came to a conclusion.

    

COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 7

Most support-characters, like most the subordinate villains discussed in Part 5, default to "static alignment" with whoever or whatever is the "Prime" icon of the story. In the vernacular, they continue to dance with whoever brung them. But there are examples of subordinate characters who shift their alignment into a dynamic form.

In contrast to the interlocutor-types discussed in Part 6, here I will discuss the sort of figures usually described as "viewpoint characters." In my essay OUT WITH THE BAD WILL, IN WITH THE GOOD, I distinguished two narrative approaches to viewpoint characters, who usually (though not always) merge with the viewpoints of the readers:

In place of "ego-oriented," I'll speak of the *endothelic,* meaning that the narrative is focused upon the will of the viewpoint character or of someone or something that shares that character's interests.

In place of "object-oriented," I'll speak of the *exothelic,* meaning that the narrative is focused upon the will of "the other," something outside the interests of the viewpoint character, though not necessarily opposed to them.

I'll mostly focus here on exothelic stories, but just for more context, two instructive examples would be Conan Doyle's novel THE LOST WORLD and the 1933 film KING KONG. Both are stories involving intrepid adventurers voyaging to obscure parts of the Earth in order to uncover rare phenomena. But in LOST WORLD, Challenger's merry band of explorers are the focal icons of the story, despite the copious detail author Doyle provides on the phenomena of The Lost World. Therefore, LOST WORLD is endothelic. However, in KING KONG, the phenomenon is Kong, and Kong is the star. The ensemble of explorers-- Carl Denham, Ann Darrow, and Jack Driscoll-- are all vividly sketched, but they're all support-characters in an exothelic film.

Neither Kong, Darrow nor Driscoll made an encore performance in any film from the original KONG production company-- but Carl Denham did, rearing his head for one more official appearance in THE SON OF KONG that same year. While the junior giant ape never assumed the mythic resonance of his theoretical "old man," there's no question that he is the star of this exothelic show. Denham and one or two other crewmembers are the only icons linking the two films, but because they shift their support-duties from one Prime to another, they're my examples of "dynamic alignment" as it relates to support-characters.

A parallel example appeared first in THE MOON POOL, which began in a short story with viewpoint character Walter Godwin, who has a close encounter with an eldritch alien being. Author Abraham Merritt then incorporated this tale into the context of a full novel, in which Godwin and an ensemble of other characters find their way to the hidden city where the bizarre entity, The Shining One, dwells. Despite the heroic activity of some of the explorers-- not including Godwin, who's essentially a "floating eyeball"-- the author emphasizes the exothelic presence of the Shining One. The novel ends much as the short story did, with Godwin excluded from the fantasy-world and consigned to mundane reality.

That, however, doesn't keep Godwin from going on the hunt for more supernormal phenomena, and he comes across a totally different lost world in 1920's THE METAL MONSTER. I frankly don't remember what happens to Godwin at the end of that novel, but MONSTER too is exothelic, focusing upon Norhala, a young human woman who has become the thrall of an inorganic metal-intelligence. So Godwin shifts his alignment from The Shining One to Norhala, who aren't even as interrelated as the two Kongs of Skull Island.

My tentative judgment, then, is that just as I've said that there's a "crossover-vibe" when a villain introduced in one feature makes an appearance in another-- even if that villain's alignment is not static in nature-- there's also a crossover-vibe, albeit minor, in both SON OF KONG and METAL MONSTER,

Wrapping up, I should note that even though THE LOST WORLD is definitely endothelic, I'm not sure all of Doyle's other Professor Challenger stories also qualify, not having read them in some time. It's possible that in some of those, Challenger takes a back seat to whatever phenomenon he's expounding upon. But that's a question for another day.

ADDENDUM: For all Sub characters, they can only generate a crossover vibe once when first "jumping" into another cosmos. Going back to my hoary Cobra-Hyde example, their first encounter with Daredevil, after having been foes of Thor, is a crossover-- but not their second, third, or fourth encounters with Daredevil. The same rule applies to their first appearance in a Captain America feature, and so on. This concept parallels my observation about the transition of subordinate characters into Primes starring in a given feature; only the first appearance counts as a crossover.

COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 6

My formulations on observations re: static and dynamic alignment in Part 5 only discussed villains appearing in serial features in subordinate roles. But the same distinctions apply to all Sub characters, including those that might ordinarily be described as "support-cast" members.

In ASPIRIN FOR ANTHOLOGIES PT. 3, I took pains to establish that the 1981 HEAVY METAL anthology-film was a crossover-movie, but not because some of its stories adapted icons from established features, specifically "Den," "Captain Sternn," and "So Beautiful So Dangerous." If the film had just introduced each story with some non-diegetic interlocutor figure akin to EC Comics' Crypt Keeper, then there would have been no crossover-elements. But the demonic Loc-Nar, a creation of the movie-script, both tells the stories and participates in them as an icon with agency-- though not more agency than any of the characters with which Loc-Nar interferes. It's possible that the deleted "Neverwhere Land" sequence might have shown Loc-Nar with true agency, since it involved him creating an entire civilization, only to destroy it. But in the existing sequences, Loc-Nar usually just sets events in motion. He causes comical consequences in "Dangerous" and "Sternn," heroic ones in "Harry Canyon," "Den," and "Taarna," and tragic ones in "B-17," but in each story the primary agency is not Loc-Nar but those he influences. Even "B-17," in which Loc-Nar wreaks an unalloyed evil by turning a dead airman crew into killer zombies, the primary agency rests with the animated cadavers, who attack the plane's pilots. One pilot escapes the assault and parachutes down to an island-- where, it would appear, Loc-Nar has also animated the corpses of other slain airmen. The agency here is with the living dead men, for though they have no conscious motives, they arouse revulsion in the viewer out of the conviction that if the dead could come to life, they would seek to slay those still living, for spite if nothing else.

In formal anthologies-- that is, collections of completely separate stories that may have a "guest-host" interlocutor-- the agency of the story's Prime icon or icons appear within the story proper, and if the tale-teller could be deemed any sort of status at all, he would be a Sub rather than a Prime. The only way an interlocutor could become a Prime would be to enter the story proper and assume agency through specific actions. "Horror Beneath the Streets," a 1950 tale in HAUNT OF FEAR #17, posits that the two writers of EC Comics, William Gaines and Al Feldstein, begin discussing the idea of publishing magazines devoted to horror stories. They are then duly ambushed by the Old Witch, the Crypt Keeper, and the Vault Keeper, who force the beleaguered authors to give them all contracts to host their own respective titles. Clearly the horror-hosts are the stars of this story, and one could even deem "Streets" a crossover of characters who are usually subordinate icons in other, otherwise-unrelated stories.

However, in another EC story the Old Witch enters a story but just remains another type of Sub. "A Little Stranger," in HAUNT OF FEAR #14, depicts the romance of two Prime characters, vampire Elicia and werewolf Zorgo, whose unholy unison begets the Witch herself, who's only in the story proper for one panel.

Since Part 6 ended up running extra-long with its analyses, I'll save the actual remarks on static and dynamic alignment for Part 7.

CURIOSITIES: WHAT NEAL ADAMS DID WAS CRIMINAL

 

Or rather, KRIMINAL.

That's assuming these KRIMINAL issues came first. If the art-swipe went the other way, just reverse the metaphor.