THE READING RHEUM: TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD (1932)

 

TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD, the sixteenth in a series of twenty-four tales about the ultimate noble savage, was almost certainly the second Tarzan novel I read, following a paperback of TARZAN OF THE APES. Yet I might have formed a lesser impression of the ape man had I read any other books past the halfway mark of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan oeuvre. Not a bad impression, for ERB at his most formulaic was always entertaining. But most ERB books aren't emotionally moving, and GOLD was. I haven't read all the books he authored, but I would not hesitate to consider GOLD ERB's best work after Tarzan's origin tale.

Before this novel, ERB had Tarzan get involved three times in stories where he had to sort out the differences between two warring cities inhabited by White colonists-- sometimes "lost cities" that reproduced some earlier era's culture, sometimes fantasy-domains with no relation to real-world history. GOLD includes two warring cities, but this time the ape-man spends the whole time in Cathne, the City of Gold, and never visits Athne, City of Ivory, aside from learning of the latter from an Athnean denizen, Valthor. After Tarzan rescues Valthor from bandits in the first few chapters, Valthor guides Tarzan to the locale of the two cities, but floodwaters separate the two. Tarzan then spends the rest of the novel interacting with the greatest of Burroughs' pagan queens.

Tarzan gets captured by Cathnean soldiers and hauled before Queen Nemone on suspicion of his being a spy. ERB then has the ape-man compare Nemone to the first pagan queen he ever met: La, Priestess of Opar, who first appeared in the second TARZAN book. This is more than Tarzan's wife Jane gets, as she's not even vaguely referenced in the entire novel. La is not much more than a reference point, for in all of that character's appearances, she doesn't have much more than beauty going for her, so that La always comes off as a roadshow version of Rider Haggard's lost-city queen She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.

Nemone, however, represents ERB's attempt to produce a psychology for a female ruler with nearly unbridled power and no moral compass. When everyone else in the courtroom kneels in Nemone's presence, Tarzan does not, thus piquing her interest in him. Still, she accepts her counselors' opinions that the stranger is a spy and sentences him to face death in an arena at the hands of Cathne's strongest man. When Tarzan inevitably trounces his opponent, the ape man becomes even more attractive to Nemone.

The pop-fiction woods are of course full of stalwart heroes who nobly refuse the attentions of corrupt female monarchs, but ERB is going for something subtler. Through Tarzan, the reader becomes interested in what factors make Nemone act cruelly even toward her own subjects-- for instance, levying death or disfigurement to any Cathnean woman whose beauty might rival Nemone's. To be sure, everyone in Cathne is barbaric. Poor and rich alike hunger for the bloodsports of the arena, and no one opposes ritual sacrifice, since long before Nemone's birth, the nobles train lions to hunt human prey. One might argue that their city might be better called "City of the Lions," as their mining of gold is not that important to the story, while Athne is the City of Ivory as a consequence of their totemistic worship of elephants. Indeed, in an early chapter, Valthor, though a "good guy," tells Tarzan that both cities regularly raid each other, and remarks, "There is a sport for men!"

At no point does Tarzan seek to broker peace between the warring cities, and though he does abet a romance between a young man and a young woman, that part of the narrative is very minor. Once Nemone becomes smitten with Tarzan, she gives him enough liberty that the ape man could escape Cathne with the greatest of ease. He's given an excuse to stay, that of protecting a local noble made responsible for keeping the ape man confined to the City of Gold. But the hero's real reason is that he admits to being fascinated by Nemone despite her cruelty and insecurity. Three times in the novel the stalwart savage comes close to yielding to Nemone's seductions, until at last he exhausts her patience. Tarzan almost meets his doom, hunted by Nemone's totemic lion Belthar, and the ape man is only saved by his own "beast-mastery," in that his pet lion Jad-Bal-Ja shows up and slays Belthar.

Most of Tarzan's villains are one-dimensional power-seekers and rapists. But ERB constructs a history for Nemone rich in racial and sexual mythology, for behind the loveliness of this African White Queen is a spectre of Blackness. Nemone's mother is a raddled old Black woman and former slave who somehow convinced all of Cathne that her child was the true heir of the previous king-- a king whom Nemone's mother and the counselor Tomos probably poisoned on their path to power. A confidante tells Tarzan that some Cathneans believe Tomos to be Nemone's true father, and adds, without much condemnation, that it's believed Tomos would like to marry his queenly offspring. But Tomos is distinctly secondary to the mother of Nemone, to whom ERB gives a name suggestive of negative femininity: "M'duze."

It's plain that, even if Tomos was not Nemone's real father, he and M'duze have raised her to be their puppet, indifferent to her happiness, and this has contributed to her massive insecurities despite her glamorous attainments. And yet ERB is so in love with his character that he allows her to speak truth on her political situation. When Tarzan argues that a true ruler should show her subjects mercy, Nemone cannily replies, "If I were gracious and merciful they would think me weak; then they would take advantage of me and eventually they would destroy me." Tomos and M'Duze, being inferior villains, merely meet bad ends. Nemone, being ERB's greatest villain, meets a memorable fate. Convinced that she has a mystical connection to her lion Belthar, she dies when he dies, and none of her subjects mourn her. Only Tarzan does so, with the conviction that in death she has found the happiness that eluded her in life.

                                      

MYTHCOMICS: CIVIL WAR II (2016)

 

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. When I wrote my mythcomicsreview of CRISIS, I was more than a little aware of the serial’s numerous flaws, from the bland scripting of Marv Wolfman to the drably functional manner in which the story tossed together nearly every famous or semi-famous character in DC Comics history. Those subplots that even came close to vertical meaning were frequently botched, as with a maudlin encounter between Kamandi—Jack Kirby’s “Planet of the Apes” swipe—and Solovar, one of DC’s seemingly endless supply of intelligent gorillas. However—there was one master thread I discerned, one in which Wolfman built upon the “devilish” character of Krona and contrasted this character’s impiety with a “holy trinity” of characters implicated in the death of the old cosmos and the birth of the new.-- MYSTERY OF THE MASTER THREAD PART 2.

Where to start? I suppose by saying that I'm not the least concerned with the twenty-plus comics tied into the core tale of CIVIL WAR II, only with the nine issues written by Brian Michael Bendis and dominantly drawn by David Marquez. And even that core tale suffers from many more flaws than appeared in the twelve-issue core story of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

Flaw 1: This 2016 clusterfubar modeled itself on the previous CIVIL WAR series, meaning that it sought to duplicate the same base narrative of Marvel heroes divided over a political issue. Though I don't remember reading much of the original CIVIL WAR core story or any of its derivatives, what little I read led me to believe that it was irrelevant to my concern with symbolic discourse.

Flaw 2: It's drawn by David Marquez, who specializes in a lot of grandiose Alex Ross panoramic panels. While Marquez's up-close renderings of human expressions are good, most of his fight-scenes are static and uninvolving.

Flaw 3: It's written by Brian Michael Bendis, who makes ALMOST all of the characters sound the same-- sort of a "Buffyspeak" without the humor-- though I'll come back to the "almost" shortly.

Flaw 4: CIVIL WAR II is deeply implicated in what may stand as Marvel Comics's most fucked-up creative decision, though admittedly the policy was imposed upon them by their Disney overlords. In GENETIC FREAK-OUTS I wrote about the monumentally stupid "build up the Inhumans" decision that reigned throughout 2016, only to be reversed the next year, partly because of the spectacular failure of the INHUMANS live-action TV show, but mostly because Disney bought Fox and made the X-Men their property. WAR II's narrative depends absolutely on a running plotline where the Inhumans' "terrigen mists" got loose and started randomly transforming humans into super-powered Inhumans. One such human, Ulysses Cain, provides the narrative motor in WAR II, much as the Superhero Registration Act did in the first CIVIL WAR.

Yet, two virtues ameliorate WAR II's flaws. One pertains to the "almost" above, in that whereas the previous WAR was about Iron Man and Captain America butting heads over the Registration Act, while here the two major buttheads are Iron Man and the current Captain Marvel. With these two characters alone does Bendis transcend his habitual Buffyspeak, for he does catch the sense of how both Tony Stark and Carol Danvers ought to speak given their respective histories. This is particularly impressive with respect to Carol Danvers, who was thrust into the position of a New Captain Marvel less as an organic process than as a strategy for feminist virtue signaling.

The other virtue in WAR II is that Bendis' narrative motor is more than just political. It's true that one can reduce the quarrel of Danvers and Stark down to an intellectual opposition between "security" and "freedom." But Bendis-- whom I've never found philosophically stimulating-- ventures here into the domains of a non-political myth, the myth of free will. Danvers embraces the mutant (yes, I'm calling it that) prognostication talent of Ulysses, because it seems to offer her the ultimate means of ferreting out crimes before they happen. However, Stark is less than pleased with the results, since pro-active measures bring about the deaths of his friends War Machine and The Hulk. (I have no idea what later raconteurs did to bring the Hulk back, and even less interest.)        

The nature of the Hulk's killer comprises a subplot that probably got more development in one of the ancillary titles, and it proves very unsatisfying here. It's only in Part Four that Bendis brings forth Tony Stark's analysis of the prophet's mutant power, with a considered emphasis upon Stark's own status as a "futurist." Frankly, this section is the heart of WAR II, and all the rest is just the usual Marvel meshuga-ness. Yeah, there's a big end-fight between Iron Man and Captain Marvel, but it doesn't really add anything to the story. Further, Bendis dilutes some of his own theme with a lackluster and contradictory conclusion, so no one should take my appreciation of Bendis' "master trope" for approval of all the stuff around it.        

NEAR-MYTHS: BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 1-2 (2017/2018)

 

I finally got around to reading BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES years after having reviewed the OAV years ago. 

Plot-wise, there's not much to add, since the video closely followed most of the beats of the GN. The Turtles, Splinter, Shredder and the Foot Clan cross from their dimension into Batman's Gotham. While Shredder makes an alliance with Ra's Al Ghul, Batman and Damian-Robin fight the Turtles before becoming buddies. There's no Batgirl in the GN, but there's an early section in which Killer Croc meets the Turtles. I guess that there would have been no point for Croc to appear in the Arkham scene in which a bunch of Bat-foes get turned into half-animals. The physical action of the OAV was more bracing, but artist Freddie Williams II, by chance or design, has an art-style reminiscent of the way the original TURTLE-artists drew the characters with a rough Corben-esque style.

My OAV review does not mention writer Tynion's subplot re: all the action taking place on the anniversary of the deaths of Batman's parents, and without checking I think it a safe bet it was excised. This lends the GN a gravity the OAV does not possess, particularly in a scene where the Caped Crusader gives the hothead Turtle Raphael a primer on Why a Filthy Rich Plutocrat Became a Crimefighter.  

The success of the first series begat a follow-up the next year. The first one was light on theme since so much of the story was characters meeting each other and taking one another's measure. #2 is obliged to repeat the basic trope where a villain from one universe invades another one, and since Shredder invaded Gotham last time, this time Bane invades "Turtle-New York." Bane isn't a great villain, but he suits the theme here because he's a ruthless believer in dominion through pure strength. His absolute conviction in his power contrasts with the character who gets the most attention: Donatello. As the "big brain" of the four terrapins, he's somewhat less skilled at ninjustsu than his brothers, and that lack of confidence leads him to indirectly place power in Bane's hands. Tynion packs in some solid character moments, and works in Batgirl and Nightwing just because. Ryan Ferrier takes over art duties, and again there's a loose Corben-esue feel, but he's a bit weaker than his predecessor re fight-scenes.

I also read the third and last of these crossovers, but there's not much to say about it. The Turtles' enemy Krang causes the universes of the Turtles and DC-Earth to merge in weird ways, and things must be sorted out by story's end. I'm not putting this one in the title since it's not a near-myth, and as a null-myth it's not worth analyzing. I got more entertainment out of the "Amalgam" titles DC and Marvel executed in the 1990s.     
      

NEAR MYTHS: SWORD OF SORCERY 0-8 (2012-13)

 

When I encountered this collection of the nine-issue series SWORD OF SORCERY, I'd forgotten that DC had used the same title in the early 1970s for a five-issue series adapting Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and Grey Mouser" prose stories. The re-use of the old title was appropriate, given that all three of these "New 52" features are either outright reboots or loose callbacks to DC features from the seventies and eighties.

All nine issues of SOS include an installment of a reboot of the eighties series AMETHYST PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD. I've detailed my estimation of the original series in another essay, so here I'll just say that the basic idea-- that of royal houses in a dimensional otherworld using gemstones for sources of magic power-- was a decent gimmick, but that neither the storytelling nor the characterization proved anything special. In the new series, titled just AMETHYST, we're still dealing with a teenaged Earth-girl who finds out that she's a magic-using princess in another world, but in the original, she "aged up" from thirteen to become a near-adult, while in this version, she's 17 on Earth and 17 when she goes to Gemworld.

Artist Aaron Lopresti brings a fluid style to the series and proves generally good with individual facial characterization. Writer Christy Marx, though, didn't break her back re-inventing the Gemworld concept. This time, Earth-Amy's father is dead and her mother trains her for years until she's old enough to take to the otherworld to battle the enemies of the House of Amethyst. Marx-- who worked more in animation than in comics-- has a certain notoriety in being one of the writers who contributed to the Saturday-morning neutering of Conan the Barbarian. Marx works out all the details of her revised fantasy-world well enough. But given that she wasn't going to own the property, she doesn't bring a lot of passion to her buckling of swashes and spells. Originally Gemworld was independent of the DC Universe but became affiliated with continuity in late iterations. Here the editors decided to include crossovers with DC regulars John Constantine and Eclipso right away. I don't think it helped, as it sounds like the concept was rebooted once again in the 2020s.

 Two shorter backup strips appeared in the nine issues. One, BEOWULF, has nothing to do with an entirely dissimilar 1970s series from DC, but I deem it a callback just because older fans might wonder if the two have anything in common. Actually, whereas the seventies comic was an endearingly goofy take on the Old English poem, "New 52" Beowulf initially looks like it might actually be a serious (if loose) adaptation by writer Tony Bedard and artists Jesus Saiz and Javier Pina. However, it's no big reveal that the world of the savage Beowulf really takes place in a technological future, though I have no idea why the people of the era should sport Old English names. In the last installment Beowulf visits modern DC-Earth but meets no famous characters, though superhero images are mimicked by a shapechanger. The final part suggests a new direction for future installments, though I doubt BEOWULF got a second chance. Art and writing is better than average here, making it the best of the three features here.

 STALKER, unquestionably a reboot of a four-issue sword-and-sorcery series of the seventies, focuses upon an adventurer who's lost his soul and goes through hell to regain it. His fresh hell takes him out his archaic time into the present-era of what seems to be DC-Earth yet again. At least, it may be modern DC-Earth since the devil with whom Stalker deals is Lucifer Morningstar-- though this character doesn't seem much like the one popularized in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN. I found the art by Andrei Bressan ugly and the script by Marc Andreyko muddled.           

THE READING RHEUM: THE LIVING SHADOW (1931)

 

The opening scene of THE LIVING SHADOW--in which the mysterious crusader confronts would-be suicide Harry Vincent and convinces him to devote his life to crimefighting-- is one of the best pieces of writing in the pulps, outclassing even some early stories of Ray Bradbury. I wish that the rest of the book was as mythic as this. But since I'd read it before, I knew that after a few blood-and-thunder moments, the novel would settle down into a fairly routine crime thriller with some unremarkable villains and a forgettable crime. I will give Walter Gibson credit for writing a valid mystery, though, as I've also read a few SPIDER stories where Norvell Page shows that this was not his strong point.

Since the magazine was a response to further monetize an ongoing radio show with a radio-host named "The Shadow," it was no surprise that a few chapters suggest that the heroic Shadow actually relays information to his aides through an ongoing radio program. I have the impression that this device soon falls by the wayside.

It's astounding as to how much of the Shadow's mythology appears in the first book, indicating that Gibson devised the base concept more thoroughly than most pulp-heroes were conceived. The Shadow has his girasol ring here, though he doesn't use it to hypnotize anyone, and in lieu of the reader "hearing" the Shadow's thoughts, the solitary hero expresses his thoughts by writing out casefiles to himself. The laugh of course is there, but there's less of the illusionism and more of the disguise-mastery. 

As this novel commences, the public (and police official Joe Cardona) don't know of the Shadow's existence, but the underworld has a hazy idea of his menace to their projects. In fact, one chapter discloses much more of the Shadow's potential backstory than I would have expected this early in the game. A thug testifies:

This time I looked for his face. I saw nothing but a piece of white that looked like a bandage. Maybe The Shadow ain't got no face to speak of... There was a young guy once who the crooks was afraid of-- he was a famous spy in the War, and they say he was wounded over in France-- wounded in the face, I think. I think The Shadow is this guy come back--

I don't know how much Gibson did with these nuggets, though Robert Sampson says the author called the gimmick "the horror face." Apparently Michael Uslan remembered the device, since he and ER Cruz re-used it in THE SHADOW #11 (DC, 1975):

   

       

GOOD IDEAS, BAD IDEAS

 I'm composing a forum-response to the following assertion here before posting it to said forum. The comparison of Western and Middle Eastern culture originated with me. 

The only difference between western culture and the Middle East today is that western culture has learned to be open to new ideas, experimentation, and cultural change. It learned not to be afraid of change and learned how to grow, while the Middle East has continued to want to stick to its “traditional values” and “ultimate truths”.

First, there are comparably new ideas, but new ideas are not inevitably good ideas. In fact, there is no idea that is so good-- however one defines "goodness"-- that human beings cannot make it bad, at least in particular applications. 

Granting that there are no *purely-good* new ideas, the only way to distinguish between the *dominantly good idea* and the *dominantly bad idea* is the method of statistical predominance. 

Back in the 1800s, Marxist socialism was a new idea. Marxist adherents cannot claim, statistically, that the idea has been predominantly beneficial in its various applications in the last century-plus. They can only claim that (a) it's still better than the capitalist alternative, despite abuses, or (b) it will all become better once the world as a whole has become socialist. These are both sophistic arguments, so socialism is dominantly a bad idea, even its adherents *may* be able to point to particular applications that they deem *good."

The question of inherent human rights was essentially a new idea-- which bears directly upon the discussion of feminism here-- when it began to dominate European intellectual discourse in the 1700s. Before that, the basic credo of most if not all cultures was "what's good for my ingroup is good," and women generally believed it as much as did men. That "old idea" has never gone away and it never will. But the newer idea of inherent human rights has become an inexorable counterbalance. Has the new idea engendered a lot of strife? Sure, but arguably that was in the nature of "growing pains," and only outliers argue that we should all go back to the days when "the ingroup was always right." In contrast to socialism, one can point to dominantly positive effects of the human-rights idea, even if, as I specified, there's nothing so good that humans can't misuse it.

Statistical dominance is also demonstrated by the fact that in the US at least, both sides on the political spectrum represent their enemies as conspiracies oriented upon creating a tyrannical new world order. This use of the same rhetoric, whatever the specific differences, indicates that both sides are speaking to the fear of having one's rights nullified. It's become part of the implied social contract that such rights exist within the sphere of culture, or the myth wouldn't appeal to both sides. In this thread I'm sure I can find at least a half-dozen Leftie attempts to project the tyranny angle on the Right. But only a really dishonest Leftie would pretend that the Right doesn't utilize the same model and speak to the same fears.             

    

 

MYTHCOMICS: BEFORE THE INCAL (1988-95)

 

In my review of THE INCAL, the successful album-series written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and drawn by Moebius, I wrote this of main character John DiFool:

Clearly Jodorowsky wanted DiFool to represent the unrefined nature of humankind-- though he's certainly far from the only inhabitant of his far-future world who's moved only by egotism and concupiscence.

Immediately after concluding THE INCAL with Moebius, Jodorowsky commenced work on this prequel with another artist. Zoran Janjetov was a Serbian artist with a strong Moebius influence, though he showed little of Moebius' investment in vaulting metaphysical imagery. Further, Jodorowsky's own priorities for the prequel seem to have changed, primarily in terms of DiFool's characterization. While some sections of BEFORE are dedicated to simply clarifying events that set up the action of THE INCAL, Jodorowsky appears to have radically changed his mind on his main character. It's not impossible that even in the years of THE INCAL's composition, the author always meant to concoct such a heel-turn. But since Wiki mentions that author and artist composed INCAL via an assortment of conversations, rather than with a formal script, I deem my interpretation of INCAL's main character as valid. In contrast, BEFORE shows Jodorowsky rewriting John DiFool to endow him with greater heroism and causing him to be flensed of his righteousness in order to deprive him of his "better angels."

 INCAL implies that Di Fool is a reprobate in response to having been raised among the lower, impoverished levels of his future-city, where a privileged class called "aristos," who sport artificial halos, keep their boots on the necks of the hoi polloi. It's true that when we see DiFool as an adolescent, he still suffers from having been raised in squalor, with a petty thief for a father and a drug-addicted prostitute for a mother. Yet this DiFool still shows empathy for others, unlike the one we know from THE INCAL. After he beholds his mother commit suicide in one of the city's acid lakes to end her suffering, DiFool considers following her example, accompanied by Deepo, his "concrete seagull." He's saved by his mother's old colleague, the mutant Snailhead. Then the snail-man reveals that he's part of a secret cabal, seeking to use a special flower, amorine, in the hopes of chemically transforming the aristos' corruption into selflessness and love.

However, in the world of Young DiFool, the forces of the corrupt hierarchy-- represented by the Prezident, who frequently changes into new bodies-- are arguably far more efficient than they are in THE INCAL. The Prezident's hunchback enforcers devastate Snailhead's congregation, and DiFool is saved only because one of them is none other than-- his father Oliver DiFool, captured during his last scheme and transformed into an enforcer via surgery and brainwashing. However, the encounter with Snailhead instills in the hero a desire to take positive action against the hierarchy.

   

  DiFool and some friends attack the government with terrorist actions, but to the hero's fortune, he finds a new father-figure in Kolbo-5. a defunct cybo-cop with human emotions. Kolbo contrives things so that DiFool gets a job of an aspiring detective, the better to give him a secure position in society. In this new job the hero meets an aristo woman, Luz, who lusts for a taste of the low life, but DiFool can't become a detective unless he solves a governmentally approved case. Drawing on his own experiences as a prostitute's son, DiFool theorizes that, since he never saw kids of other female prostitutes, there may be some hidden conspiracy there-- which ironically means that he must plunge further into the very corruption that revolted him so deeply. The police department approves him to investigate the case. However, the Super-Divinoid, a computer intelligence that runs the city, plots to make certain that the young detective's quest ends in death.

              

The evil computer's first gambit is just another "honey trap" variation: since DiFool already has a huge thing for the beautiful aristo Luz, she lures him into a position where he will be legally transformed into her slave. Kolbo frees the detective, whose sense of betrayal increases his passion to solve the case. He masquerades as a pregnant hooker (with Deepo pretending to be his "baby bump") and mingles with other working girls, so that he gets taken to the secret installation where the fetuses are harvested for nefarious purposes. DiFool is even more heroic than before as he ferrets out the scheme and continues to try to expose the scandal to the populace.

DiFool also decides not only to forgive Luz de Garra her trespasses, he also brings her into his project. Though she's too debased to experience the love he feels for her, she's angry at the government for demoting her and her father after the failure of the honey-trap. DiFool and Luz infiltrate the aristo maternity ward, where the prostitutes' children are passed off as the spawn of (presumably infertile) aristo mothers. DiFool and Luz are captured and taken to an interrogator. But he seems to be an ally, revealing himself as DiFool's old ally Snailhead-- until another trap is sprung, and the young lovers are betrayed by Snailhead, who's undergone brainwashing. The Super-Divinoid attempts to make the lovers betray one another, and when they do not, his pawns arrange things to degrade the heroes in the eyes of the populace, so that nothing they say is credited. Luz is wed to a government minion and after she's packed off to deep space, DiFool has his altruistic nature erased, thus becoming the selfish prick that readers knew from THE INCAL.

  

   By Book Six, the state of affairs has become much like the ending of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, with the corrupt hierarchy in total control, just as it was at the outset. Jodorowsky provides flashbacks that clarify many of the helter-skelter plot-developments of THE INCAL, as with the relationship of the priestess-sisters Animah and Tanatah. But the main story essentially concludes with Luz escaping captivity, only to see that the only man she can love has entirely forgotten her. FINAL INCAL-- which I don't plan to read for a while-- will then reveal whether Jodorowsky chose to give his hero any break from this state of affairs. However, my sense of the author's overall pessimism does not make me anticipate any happy endings, or even a Tolkienian eucatastrophe.    

THE READING RHEUM: THE WOLFEN (1978)

 

I'm reasonably sure that I saw Michael Wadleigh's visionary-seeming adaptation of Whitley Streiber's debut novel before reading the book. I also remember thinking that the Streiber novel didn't seem nearly as ambitious as the movie.

But though THE WOLFEN is more of a straight thriller based on what I term a "cosmological myth"-- that is, a myth dealing with forces of nature-- the book deserves accolades for the creativity of is concept: a species of wolf that evolves alongside human beings, with its own form of intelligence and enhanced powers of speed and sensory detection. 

For reasons Streiber does not make entirely clear, in primitive times the Wolfen (as they are dubbed late in the novel by a human character) fixate on human beings as their prey. Even in their developmental phase, the Wolfen don't usually make direct war upon humans, but follow the pattern of other predator-animals, usually hunting and devouring the weakest or sickliest members of a given tribe. Because of the Wolfen's great speed and superior senses, they can keep clear of humans so that they become the stuff of legend, i.e., werewolves. But as human beings begin to congregate in large cities as a rule, the Wolfen insinuate themselves into those domains, again keeping a low profile by only slaying those who are feeble or marginal in some way. 

The wolf-creatures make a fatal error in killing two healthy police officers, however, for this event triggers an investigation by a pair of New York detective, fifty-something George Wilson and his younger female partner Becky Neff. While Wilson and Neff fit the bill of "the mismatched partners" in some ways, both have a level of courage and resourcefulness that threatens to expose the Wolfen's existence to human scrutiny. Streiber is skillful enough in building tension and internal conflicts that the Wadleigh film, different though it is, borrowed a fair number of crucial scenes from Streiber.

WOLFEN's outstanding accomplishment, though, is his conception of the titular menace. Though as I said Streiber doesn't supply a rationale as to why Wolfen chose to prey on humans, he articulates the habits of an intelligent predator-species with great thoroughness. The creatures don't talk, but they have formed a complex set of signs and gestures to communicate. They have a rough ethical system-- the one named Wolfen, the Old Father, finds it burdensome to slay any humans who are young and healthy-- but their priority is always the survival of the pack over the individual. Streiber expands upon the "werewolf" mythology by suggesting that in medieval times the Wolfen allied themselves with rogue humans, who were later mythologized as crude vampires. But the nature of their biological relationship to their genetic forbears, real wolves, is highlighted in a scene (told from Wolfen-view) that make clear that they feel toward their lupine fellows as humans feel toward apes. 

Though Streiber briefly centers upon a handful of support-characters, Wilson and Neff provide the novel with its best variety of character-moments. Though Neff is married to another cop of appropriate years, Wilson becomes infatuated with his partner, and she becomes aware of his feeling during their battles with the monsters. The novel finishes up without entirely resolving the romantic thread, though the fate of Neff's husband seems to improve Wilson's chances. (At least by the end Wilson's doing better than his Wolfen-counterpart, the Old Father.) There's also no full resolution to the potential for a human-Wolfen war by the time the book wraps up, though the detectives at least succeed in providing their species with a fighting-chance. And when one thinks about how lame a WOLFEN sequel would have been, that's all to the good.            

  

  

WEST FAILURE

 I came across this silly bit of trivia today:

How Adam West made the 'most comic book accurate' Batman version - AOL

Though the late Adam West is not quoted, I'm reasonably sure that I remember hearing the actor make this claim something like fifteen years ago. And no, it's not true that BATMAN '66 was the "most comic book accurate BATMAN version."

I love Adam West's work on the show. Fans will never know how much instruction he got from the writers and producers as to how to play "camp Batman." Yet, whatever guidance they gave West cannot take away from his own actor's instincts as to how to make such a fantasy-character seem consistent on its own terms. One has only to look at the test footage Lyle Waggoner did for the Caped Crusader to see how the showrunners lucked out in getting West and his faux-urbane persona (which had admittedly already appeared when the actor portrayed "Captain Q" for the NESTLE'S QUIK product).

All that said, I doubt Adam West ever did more than flip through a few of whatever comics ABC gave him. That's entirely appropriate for the job he was hired to do. But no fan of the period would agree that the TV show reflected the comics, either from the Julie Schwartz era (which was ongoing during the run of the TV show), or from the Jack Schiff editorship that had prevailed for roughly the previous nine years. (Schiff was a Batman editor before that, but I regard his tenure on the feature from 1955 to 1964 to be in its own category since everything after 1955 was in part a response to the newborn Comics Code.) Since the Scwartz era emphasized sober ratiocination as the heroes tracked down criminals-- even if they dressed like scarecrows or penguins-- West *might* have seen some of the generally wackier Schiff comics, so that he drew the conclusion that they were typical of all sixties Batman comics. Hence the "comic book accuracy" fallacy, whether it comes from West or anyone else.

I frankly don't know why anyone would make the claim. BATMAN '66 was successful, at least briefly, because it was its own animal. Producer William Dozier is credited with the idea of infusing the show with the sort of camp/pop art aesthetic that was enjoying popularity in the fine arts; Dozier just transferred the same highly-ironic approach to a show based on juvenile "commercial art."

Neither BATMAN comics nor any of DC's actual humor comics of the period had the slightest conception of irony. I've never seen a DC humor comic from the sixties or earlier that was anything but baggy-pants comedy. The closest the company came to irony was National/DC's acquisition of MAD Magazine in 1964. Some post-Code Schiff BATMAN stories are deliberately wacky in that baggy-pants manner, particularly the notorious Bat-Mite stories. But the ironic approach that made the series popular was not "comic book accurate." That's why dozens of staunch Bat-fans, whether juvenile or middle-aged, didn't like the TV show, and often expressed their disdain in the letters-pages of BATMAN titles, and even in related titles like JUSTICE LEAGUE.

The AOL article is just fluff and its writer seems to have done zero research on his subject. But he didn't need to make false statements about BATMAN '66 to build it up, because the truth is much more interesting.   

               

MYTHCOMICS" "DREAM-- THE HEART OF A STAR" (SANDMAN ENDLESS NIGHTS, 2003)

 I don't remember having noticed the collection SANDMAN: ENDLESS NIGHTS following the conclusion of the ongoing series, so all seven tales-- each based around one of the seven "Endless" characters-- were new to me. Naturally there's some mythopoeic content in all of the stories, but only the one centering around a "young" version of Morpheus achieves conscrescence. "Dream-- the Heart of a Star" is also of interest because it anticipates some of the story-tropes seen in 2015's SANDMAN OVERTURE, in that the Endless interact with stars that incarnate as humanoid entities with human-like emotions.

Another two similarities to OVERTURE: artist Miguelanxo Prado goes all-out to portray the Endless within a cosmic setting divorced from mundane realities, and Gaiman structures the story as a loosely-plotted interaction of characters. It begins with a framing-device of a "father" telling a story of long-distant events to his child, though by story's end it will be revealed that the storyteller is the sun of Earth's solar system while the child is the Earth itself, or its indwelling spirit. the story begins with our viewpoint character, blue-skinned Killalla of the Glow. The facts of her skin-hue and her manipulation of green energies-- with which she seems to be making a small humanoid image-- probably signal to any DC fan that Killalla has some connection to the immortal Guardians, who will later found the galaxy-spanning Green Lantern Corps. The second page establishes that Killalla is traveling through space in a bubble, implicitly created by her lover Morpheus, and that the two of them are attending a gathering-- though it will transpire that Morpheus has not told his paramour everything about the nature of the attendees.

  Killalla and Morpheus arrive at a gargantuan palace floating in space. Killalla will later be astounded to learn that the entire structure was conjured into existence by the gathering's host, Mizar, one of many attending stars who has assumed humanoid guise, even as the Endless do. The purpose of the "parliament," as Mizar calls it, is largely political, since the stars and the Endless are negotiating spheres of influence, though again, there seems to be no good reason for the Dream-Lord not to inform Killalla that she's the only organic being present. 

Killalla's first encounter with one of Morpheus's "conceptual family" is with Desire.  The dialogue establishes that Morpheus believes that his sister Desire somehow made possible his meeting with Killalla, though Desire's remarks on the subject suggest that she's something less than beneficial in her intent. Meanwhile, some dialogue between Mizar and other stars-- one of whom is the sun of Krypton-- establishes that one of the suns, Sol by name, is very young and clumsy, and that as yet he has no living planets within his orbit.

Killalla has a confusing encounter with Dream's sister Delight-- who will only be known as "Delirium" in the regular SANDMAN series-- while Mizar and her fellows are more than a little disconcerted when Death accepts the invitation and shows up at the gathering, albeit only briefly. Mizar is considerably less disturbed by the presence of Dream's brother Destruction, explaining to Killalla that "he is the process that fuels all the stars." Killalla also meets Destiny, who informs her that in the future her interaction with Morpheus will determine the attitude of the Endless toward romantic interactions with mortals.

Finally, after Gaiman has finished dancing around, the main conflict rears its head. One of the flame-headed humanoids, Sto-Oa, reveals to Killalla that all of his kind are incarnated stars-- and that further, Sto-Oa is the personified sun of Killalla's own homeworld Oa. The sun also proposes that he and the mortal woman get together, and like the mortals of many a myth, Killalla is instantly beguiled by one from her own stomping-ground. Morpheus witnesses the two of them kissing, and though Sto-oa expresses some trepidation that the Dream-Lord may take vengeance, Morpheus does nothing but make his excuses to Mizar and to leave the party. He does however blame Desire to steering him toward an ultimately unfaithful paramour, and here she does take some obscure responsibility, saying that she considered it "a joke." This provides a reason for the general hostility between Dream and Desire in the ongoing series  

On a sidenote, Dream's remaining sister Despair puts into the mind of Rao, the sun of Krypton, the idea of what a poetic thing it would be if a planet perished and only one mortal denizen survived. This conceit might have worked better if Krypton had perished in a supernova-- which implicitly would have been an act of Rao-- rather than the planet perishing because its core was unstable. In any case, Sol of the Future concludes the story by saying that Killalla returned to her system with Sto-oa and eventually died, though she was somehow joined in the heart of her solar lover. It's a slight story compared to the best of Gaiman, but HEART does succeed in its limited goal, to show that romance, as much as the fiery hearts of stars, has a propensity for destruction.          
   

       

THE OBSESSIVE-TRANSGRESSIVE PT. 2

 Looking back at Part 1, I don't think I mapped out the relationship of the differing forms of cathexis with respect to the Bataillean concept of transgression.

First, I wanted to specify that cathexis in both forms, syndromic and casual, could apply to any sort of "interest," such as one's sympathy toward, or antipathy to, particular foods or music. However, I should also specify that even if an artist has a syndromic obsession with a particular food or musical composition, said obsession usually won't mean anything to the consumers of whatever work the artist works his interests into. If a given director really likes bananas and works them into all his films, most consumers won't even notice. Those that do notice will either like or dislike bananas-- but that favorable or unfavorable feeling won't have any impact on those consumers' perception of the films, because who cares if the director likes bananas?

Sex and violence, however, are transgressive by nature, as shown by my previous example of Russ Meyer. Some consumers will like Meyer's fetish for big breasts, while others will not-- and both attitudes arise from social codes about what is or is not appropriate in sexual relations. The same thing is true for the ways in which Meyer associates sex *with* violence, so Meyer shows syndromic cathexis with respect to both sex and violence.

Now, simply *depicting* lots of sex and violence may not be syndromically cathexis. Producer/director Roger Corman is just as strongly associated as Meyer with scenes of sex and violence, but I would tend to rate most of Corman's scenes as examples of "casual cathexis." Corman puts routine scenes of sex and violence into most of his movies because he knows that's what a lot of viewers want. 

However, in Part 1 I gave the example of William Read Woodfield as one creator whose oeuvre as a whole doesn't display syndromic tendencies, but who managed to "amp up" and produce a syndromic work, THE HYPNOTIC EYE. Possibly Woodfield was consciously or subconsciously emulating the popular works of Alfred Hitchcock and that may be the only reason he succeeded, even if he later downgraded his own accomplishment. And in Corman's case, a full analysis of his "Poe cycle" films probably would reveal his syndromic interpretation of the sexual codes in Edgar Allan Poe. I won't examine the whole Poe cycle here but will confine myself to what has been termed his "Poe knockoff" THE TERROR. In my 2017 review, I wrote:

TERROR's pre-twist plot might be considered a standard Gothic scenario, fraught with an Oedipal theme. Usually, when a young man penetrates the lair of an older one and steals away a beautiful woman, the woman is the older man's daughter. Here, the woman's youth is an illusion brought about by a old witch, and in terms of the generation into which the fictional Ilsa is born, she's closer to being a "mother-figure" to Duvalier than being a "daughter-figure" to Von Leppe. Technically, though Ilsa is sort of both, since in life she's explicitly said to be the Baron's second wife. (I would guess that this detail came about because the actor playing Von Leppe was over seventy years old.) The original script is built upon the notion that Von Leppe was responsible for the deaths of his wife and her lover, though it's still rather confusing as to why Katrina, who appears to be a quite powerful witch, would wait eighteen years after her son's death and THEN finally conjure up the ghost of Ilsa to take vengeance upon the Baron. It's also pretty fuzzy logic as to why it takes Ilsa a full two years to break down the Baron, who isn't exactly having a lot of laughs during his golden years.

Corman's last-minute twist is that Eric, the former lover of Ilsa, was not killed in the struggle that took Ilsa's life. Instead Eric took Von Leppe's life and was so traumatized by the deed that he convinced himself that he was Von Leppe. Symbolically, the twist does have the effect of making Eric and Duvalier virtual doubles, since both are young men trying to steal an older man's wife.

So this Freudian take on Poe demonstrates Corman recycling a very standard Gothic scenario, which he and others made up on the fly-- only to undermine the scenario with something very like Freud's "primal scene," but with the traumatized child transformed into an adulterous adult who, despite sleeping with a figurative "mother," is driven mad by his act of killing an equally figurative "father," to the extent that the adulterer *becomes* the father. 

In my 2017 review I said that I didn't think Corman was trying for any great profundity with the twist ending; that he just wanted something that would cause moviegoers to recommend the film to other patrons and thus result in positive box office. However, I'd modify that statement today. Corman certainly wanted the positive word-of-mouth, but he like Woodfield had certainly seen the impact that raconteurs like Hitchcock had upon the filmgoing market with "Big Reveals" like the one Hitchcock channeled from Robert Bloch's PSYCHO into the cinematic medium. So when he realized that he could "soup up" a dull-seeming picture by channeling some of his private thoughts about Poe and Freud, he did so. And I have little doubt that Corman improved his movie by thinking about sex in a syndromic manner, even though the vast majority of his productions, both before and after THE TERROR, demonstrate only the "casual cathexis" of giving a predominantly male audience what it wanted in terms of "T and A."         

            

THE OBSESSIVE-TRANSGRESSIVE

 I'll probably never use the titular term "obsessive-transgressive" on a regular basis, for the phenomenon I'm addressing would be better called "syndromic cathexis," as opposed to its opposite, "casual cathexis." This opposition of the syndromic and the casual was first cited in my essay SADISM OF THE CASUAL KIND, and the proximate inspiration for that essay was to point out the gross fallacies of Wertham and Legman as they accused comic books of engendering millions of proto-sadists with their sexy/violent content. However, my argument-- that "cathexis," the process of investing any perceived phenomenon with mental/emotional energy, takes both casual and syndromic forms-- was grounded by an observation of Plato in the PHILEBUS:

I take the position of Plato's PHILEBUS, which asserted that the "soul" could experience many affects in the course of its "owner's" life, and that some would have transitory effects while others would permanently "make their mark," so to speak.

Now, cathexis in either manifestation is not confined to a given subject's response to sex and/or violence. On this blog I've tended to concentrate on the literary versions of those two real-world phenomena both to (1) refute Wertham, Legman, and similar faulty thinkers, and to (2) explore the writings of George Bataille on the subject. But clearly any subject can display varying levels of cathexis toward any phenomenon, such as (to cite an easy example) food. If I like a given food but can do without it for long periods of time. then my liking for that food is casual cathexis. If it's a food that I keep indulging in repetitively, possibly not only for reasons of gustatory enjoyment but also for self-esteem issues, then that would be syndromic cathexis.

Bataille's ideas about transgression probably got their greatest application to literary matters in his collection LITERATURE AND EVIL, which I explored here. Rather than summarizing Bataille, I'll confine myself here to his influence on me: "EVIL did greatly influence me to consider that every conflict in a fictional story involved a transgression against someone or something." However, Bataille's concepts seem largely applicable to what I've termed "confrontation narratives," and are not that much help in dealing with their opposite, "accomodation narratives." I discussed both of these forms to some extent in the essay ACCOMODATING ACCOMODATION. Accomodation narratives may begin with some transgression but they end with a resolution that usually eliminates the source of the transgression, at least temporarily.

While I am stating that syndromic cathexis can apply to any perceived phenomenon, be it food or sports or music, I did begin these ruminations as I sought to justify why some narratives about sex seem more "obsessional" than others. To take an obvious example, director Russ Meyer's devotion to big-bosomed women goes IMO beyond the level of simply trying to appeal to filmgoers of similar tastes. He clearly loved photographing such women, almost without exception, over specimens of more modest dimensions. And his cathexis was repeated so often that no one could seriously doubt that his feelings toward the tit-monster phenomenon was syndromic in nature.

I may explore one or two other examples of such syndromes in future. The works of Jack Cole seems like they would make an interesting subject, partly because he seemed to be cathected to almost any type of violence, not just violence with some sexual connotations, as was the obvious case of the Marquis de Sade. However, I'll close by noting an anomaly: that it's possible for a given creator to *simulate* a syndromic cathexis in just one work, yet not show any dominant trend toward such a cathexis in his other work, whose cathexes, if any, would be more casual in nature. The creator-example I have in mind is one William Read Woodfield, whose example of a syndromic-seeming work I discussed in my review of THE HYPNOTIC EYE. I quoted Woodfield in that review as saying that EYE was just a "wacko idea" that did not result in a "good movie," and that he later went on to "better things"-- a verdict with which I disagree. Admittedly I haven't seen his other metaphenomenal TV-movies in some time, such as the 1971 EARTH II and the 1975 SATAN'S TRIANGLE, but I don't think that these, or any of his genre-TV episodes, would rate that highly. (He did invent the LOST IN SPACE antagonist "Lorelei" in the episode "Wild Adventure," but I didn't detect any syndromic currents in that fairly simple rendition of the "Sirens" myth.) So if I'm correct that HYPNOTIC EYE is the only syndromic bolt to come from Woodfield's quiver, that would indicate that certain creators can work themselves into a "syndromic mood" that lasts only so long as he/she is working on a particular narrative.        

               

CATFIGHT AT THE P.P. CORRAL

 In my review of ONE MORE DAY, I said:

I also heard that this retcon came about because editor Joe Quesada-- who also furnished the art for DAY-- didn't like the status quo of Peter Parker being married to Mary Jane. Unlike many of DAY's critics, I didn't have strong feelings about the marriage. I found it mildly pleasing that Parker should enjoy a measure of domestic contentment, not least because the post-Silver Age Parker wasn't, in my opinion, ever likely to generate scads of romance-subplots.

What I should have said was "scads of GOOD romance-subplots." Even though I ceased keeping track of SPIDER-MAN continuity by the end of the nineties, I was aware that there had been various attempts to give Peter Parker girlfriends aside from Mary Jane Watson. I've forgotten most of them, except for the Black Cat, who was a lot of fun but not any real competition for Mary Jane, any more than any of the others.

This thought, however, did send me down a new rabbit-hole. Why did it work, the schtick of Peter having two beautiful glamour-queens courtesy of John Romita? Obviously, editor/writer Stan Lee wanted to promote the idea of "Peter the Swinger," and I was far from the only one who liked it, since SPIDER-MAN's preteen/adolescent audience embraced the change. 

To be sure, it wasn't totally out of left field. Parker started out with just one prospective girlfriend, secretary Betty Brant, but within a year or so Lee and Ditko gave Betty competition in high-school vixen Liz Allen. Throughout the Ditko years Parker dressed and talked like a square, but since he was good-looking, the idea of two pretty-but-not-glamorous girls competing for him was not far-fetched. 

However, in ASM #25 the creators decided to further tease the romance-loving readers by giving them an on-camera sample of a third source of competition. Up to that point Mary Jane Watson had only been referenced by name a few times, as the niece of Aunt May's friend. Mary Jane finally appears, but cagey Ditko doesn't allow readers to see her face. Lee's dialogue, however, established that when Betty and Liz lay eyes on her, they think she's movie-star gorgeous-- which was clearly meant to be a joke on Parker, since he had been avoiding any introduction to MJ, on the supposition that she was a dog.

The Mary Jane situation was dropped for the next year, during which time the decision was made to write out Liz and to officially kill Parker's relationship with Betty. However, both Lee and Ditko weren't intending at that point to leave their hero pining away, for at college Parker had his first encounters with Gwen Stacy. As abrasive as those encounters were, there could be little doubt that Lee and Ditko meant to promote Gwen as the new love-interest. Presumably Ditko didn't forget Mary Jane entirely, but when he quit the book in 1966, any plans he might have formed became null and void. Lee was thus responsible for resurrecting Mary Jane, partly in the knowledge that John Romita would be perfect to depict the red-haired gamine.

Surprisingly, given Lee's history with romance-humor strips like MILLIE THE MODEL, it took a long time for Gwen and MJ to become rivals, particularly in comparison to the rapid declaration of the Betty-Liz hostilities. Since Gwen's introduction, Parker hadn't dated Gwen or even asked her out, but he clearly fancied her. As for Gwen, in her less demanding moments she defended Parker against the attacks of Flash Thompson, whom she did apparently date (though one presumes he was always kept at arm's-length). Gwen seems indifferent when Parker starts dating MJ, but in issue #48 it finally becomes evident that the two girls are fully aware of one another's hot-titude, and that a subtle feminine gauntlet has been thrown.

                       

 With ASM #53 the duel begins in earnest. Gwen, despite not having pursued Parker before this, wangles an invite to accompany Parker to a science exhibit on the excuse that she's a "sci major." This may be the first and last time she or anyone else makes such a statement until the character shows up in the 2012 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movie. Flash Thompson gets drafted during the time-period and it seems that Gwen makes him no promises about not sitting under any apple-trees with other suitors.

Once Flash is out of the way, the duel morphs into an ongoing set of skirmishes, in which it's obvious that Gwen and MJ are both warm for the same form, and they compete with assorted putdowns and catty remarks. At the same time, it's interesting that even though there was a superficial attempt to make Parker seem less square, Lee did not keep the two competitors in an endless Betty-and-Veronica dance. Even during MJ's earliest appearances, Lee took pains to show Gwen as the "good girl," while MJ was "the good times girl." That said, in the SPIDER-MAN universe neither lady would have slept with anyone out of wedlock, so both were essentially "good girls" in practice. But Gwen's affections were the "hard get," and so she got the editorial nod of preference.

In due time, though, once the feud was over and Gwen won the field, it became readily apparent that if Parker had a permanent girlfriend, that boxed in the hero romantically. And so when Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway proposed killing off Gwen Stacy, Lee-- who was no longer writing the feature anyway-- enthusiastically agreed, according to Thomas's assertions. Presumably all of them knew that this would necessitate moving Mary Jane back into romantic prominence. And though I'm no fan of the Gerry Conway SPIDER-MAN overall, I must admit he did a decent job of elevating the "good times girl" into respectable sweetheart material.

Shuttling back at last to my main point, why did the Gwen-MJ competition work in its day? Certainly Parker was more charismatic than average shlub Archie Andrews, who also managed to become the quarry for two females who looked like professional models. But I find it interesting that while Lee could have tossed Gwen and MJ into competition right away, as he and Ditko had done earlier with Betty and Liz, Lee played out the rivalry for close to a year's worth of stories until it finally took shape. Was Lee just drawing things out because he'd allowed Ditko to plot the feature for the last few years of their collaboration? Lee may have wanted to take more time with the soap-operatics, particularly if it was the case that his main collaborator Romita needed more script-guidance than Ditko had. But for me at least, the rivalry of Gwen and MJ succeeds because the two females decide of their own accord to compete over Parker. They certainly did not do so in response to his propensity to be any sort of "ladies' man." As presented by Lee and Romita, at least part of their motivation is to see whose glamorous light shines more brightly.