NULL-MYTHS: DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #1-5 (2024)

 

This five-issue mini-series is one of the most entertaining null-myths I've reviewed here-- and it's purportedly a complete project by Rob Liefled!

I've only read bits and pieces of Liefeld's oeuvre, but the Image star always churned out lots of big splashy panels with minimal narrative content. But here, Liefeld's placing in his co-creation Deadpool into a comics-form that really needs minimal narrative content: the "team-up book." 

Most team-up books exist just to juxtapose the brief interaction of two or more icons, who have little to no effect on one another's lives. Liefeld starts TEAM-UP off like most such crossover-stories, whipping up some paper-thin reason for main star Deadpool to interact with his first co-star: Ral Dorn, a super-obscure support-character from a 1980s FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL (though Ral was also associated in that story with ongoing FF-monster Dragon Man). But once that shaky framework has been established, Liefeld throws continuity-consistency out the window and bombards "the Merc with a Mouth" with guest-stars who pop in and out of the narrative so readily, the effect is slightly surrealistic. There is, for instance, no attention to matters like, "what was Cable doing before he decided to involve himself in Deadpool's affairs?" Characters like the now obscure Shatterstar get no explanation of who they are or what they're about, and a few better-known types, like Hercules and Doc Samson, only appear for a page or two.

That said, Liefeld did pick some oddball continuities from which to draw. When I saw that the guest list included Crystar-- a character from a failed toy line, one of many who got his own Marvel comic during Jim Shooter's editorial tenure-- I thought Liefeld might be unearthing the crystal warrior, having determined that his copyright from the Remco Toys had lapsed. But it turns out that Crystar returned to Marvel Comics in a 2015 series, based loosely on the 1970s magical-fantasy concept WEIRDWORLD. Consider me educated.

No one will find any stunning examples of graphic art; it's just lots of panels of fantasy-icons slugging each other. The two-page fight between Wolverine and Lady Deadpool is probably the best battle, as well as satisfying fans who want *A* Wolverine-Deadpool fight any time the two characters share panel-space.    

NULL-MYTHS: RECONSTRUCTION (FF #544-550, 2007-2008)

 I don't know what the overall scheme was for the clusterfubar known as CIVIL WAR: THE INITIATIVE, aside from finding another means of monetizing the CIVIL WAR. But for writer Dwayne McDuffie, the seven issues of FANTASTIC FOUR's part in this farrago seem to have been his excuse to recycle familiar FF-tropes with some minor new touches.

Though these issues are given the umbrella title RECONSTRUCTION, they're three separate stories loosely associated by (a) Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman take a "second honeymoon" break from the team, and (b) Black Panther and his relatively new wife Storm substitute for them.

RECONSTRUCTION is a pleasingly slick routine, with McDuffie supplying many wry one-liners and Paul Pelletier providing glamorous art. But the first is a "cosmic" story in which the New FF tries to save a living planet, name of "Epoch," from Galactus, which is little more than a redo of an old THOR idea with the Silver Surfer guest starring. The third story is an even more rushed idea involving the entity Eternity, who's "dying" from what might be called cosmic antibodies. Both stories are wrapped up with deus ex machina solutions. Oh, and Doc Strange guests.

The middle story shows McDuffie more in his normal vein, as the Frightful Four sets a series of traps for the New FF. Actually, this time the Frightful group is a quintet, including usual suspects Wizard, Trapster, Titania, Hydro-Man, and relative newcomer Klaw. Efficient if unremarkable superhero fare, with the odd decision to make the Wizard into Doctor Doom in one sense: that he hates Reed Richards for being the superior intellect.

The middle story's also a source of interest in that it seems to foreground a trend that took off in the 2010s: Marvel's attempt to play down the X-Men, because the film rights to the merry mutants were owned by 20th-Century Fox. In one possibly coincidental line, the Wizard mocks Storm and the Panther as "C-listers." Maybe that was just meant to be standard villain-snark, but it's hard to believe that any character in the Marvel Universe would have regarded any X-MEN member as a C-lister. The Panther, yes, if a villain deemed him just a costumed athlete. But Storm and the other X's were highly visible "in-Universe," if not nearly as popular with average citizens as the Fantastic Four.

True, the Marvel Cinematic Universe only launched with IRON MAN in 2008, the final year of this short McDuffie arc. It probably took a few years for Marvel (or Disney) to decide that when the comics hyped the still-popular X-MEN, they were actually publicizing properties that made money for Fox, not for Disney. But if the Wizard's putdown of an X-Woman was just coincidence, rather than a harbinger of things to come in the 2010s, it's still the most interesting thing about this arc.      

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 INFINITY CRUSADE (2000)

 

Technically, in my system the two-volume TPB INFINITY CRUSADE-- made up of a same-titled 6-issue series plus an assortment of crossover-books-- qualifies as a null-myth, a work in which the potential for mythic discourse has totally gone down the tubes. But CRUSADE isn't really worth a detailed discussion. It's just another of a crossover-type that I'm now calling the "clustermuck," designed to bring together twenty or more franchise-characters for the delectation comics-fans who like such assemblages.

Despite the name, there are some good clustermucks in terms of mythic discourse. The 1986 CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, despite some narrative problems, is the best of the bunch. And when Jim Starlin first began to "keep on clustermucking," he executed a decent outing in INFINITY GAUNTLET, which as most fans know was one of the main sources for the two-part conclusion of the MCU AVENGERS film-series of the 2010s. However, the very next clustermuck Starlin executed right after GAUNTLET was so mediocre, I don't even remember what it was called. Thus my working term "clustermuck" doesn't automatically signify that the work MUST be bad. But the more moving parts the author has to operate, the greater the chance that the story-action will devolve into a "muck" of cameos and posturing moments.

CRUSADE is mostly just that. A quickie description: Warlock once separated two of his soul-selves off from him. He fought one of them, The Magus, back in the 1970s. For some reason, the other one, a female entity called The Goddess, held off taking any action until year 2000. She has a complicated plan to remold the cosmos to her liking, and she enlists a few dozen heroes into her service. She's only able to mesmerize heroes who have some religious sensibility, which Starlin never defines. His humor is terrible and the action, supplied by an assortment of other artists, is ordinary except for a few battles, like one involving Thor and Drax the Destroyer.

The only thing that interested me about CRUSADE is that even though Starlin's dealing with several dozen heroes, most of them are subordinate ensemble characters. In GAUNTLET Thanos is the only superordinate character. Here Starlin puts all of his narrative emphasis upon the ensemble of Thanos and his old enemy Warlock, and everyone else is secondary to their machinations to defeat the menace of The Goddess. Some of their dialogue is okay-- certainly better in terms of characterization than all of the other Marvel manikins-- but the upshot is that CRUSADE might even be worse-written than one of my oldest unfavorites, SECRET WARS.

NEAR-MYTHS: "WILD THINGS," "TIME UPON A ONCE" (SWAMP THING #65-87 (1987-89)

 

My proximate reason for re-reading Rick Veitch's 23-issue run on the artist's run on the regular SWAMP THING was to remind myself of the setup for the conclusion of Veitch's storylines. As Veitch himself observed, that conclusion became the medium's most famous "unfinished story," since DC refused to publish Veitch's conclusion, resulting in his refusal to work with DC Comics again. DC for its part simply enlisted another raconteur to finish the Veitch storyline and went on publishing SWAMP THING comics. But now, after 30-plus years, DC decided to publish the Veitch conclusion, with the storyline unaltered though of course new art had to be produced and paid for. It's my intention to review this storyline in the next few days in a separate essay.

DC's moratorium on the conclusion did not prevent the company from packaging the Veitch SWAMP THING run-- as well as some ancillary materials I did not examine for this essay-- in three hardbound volumes, respectively titled "Wild Things," "Synchronicity," and "Time Upon a Once." Whatever the reasons for these divisions, I'd say the 23 issues break down into two distinct plotlines, and the titles "Wild Things" and "Time Upon a Once" are as good as any to denote those two stories.

Of the two, "Time" is easier to discuss, and the more pleasurable, so I'll deal with that one first-- even though it's the part that was left without a proper conclusion until recently. According to this interview, Veitch anticipated that DC's 1988 summer crossover event, INVASION, would oblige him to orient the SWAMP THING feature upon the "invading alien hordes" storyline. Instead, Veitch devoted two issues to setting up the contrivance that before the aliens could invade, they had to get rid of Swamp Thing due to his plant-based powers. So the aliens send the spirit of the muck-monster careening down the corridors of time-- which also gave the author the chance to revisit an assortment of DC characters set in other time-periods. As Veitch said:

“I figured if I got Swamp Thing off the planet and out of our time zone, then Swamp Thing comics could just be about that and they wouldn’t have to be a part of whatever that crossover was. The other aspect of the time-travel sequence was there were a few DC characters at the time who hadn’t been staked out by various creative people who wanted to retcon them. The richest vein of available characters were all in the past. The cowboys and the cavemen and the gladiators and the knights and all of that kind of stuff. I was really attracted to that, that I’d have that in my little sandbox and be able to play with all of them.”

Here's how the crossovers broke down.

#82-- ST interacts with DC's most famous war-hero Sergeant Rock in the closing years of WWII, as well as with an earlier incarnation of ST's enduring enemy Anton Arcane. With minor appearances by the Unknown Soldier and (in modern times) Jason Woodrue in his regrettable NEW GUARDIANS phase.

#83-- ST flashes back to WWI, and to the Germany of Hans Von Hammer of ENEMY ACE fame. He also meets a younger Arcane, who's been diddling his sister and almost kills his mother. 

#84-- ST takes a back seat to his girlfriend Abby as she deals with her dying husband Matt Cable, and also manages to host crossovers with Adam Strange, Morpheus and John Constantine.

#85-- It's "Go West, Young Thing," as Swampy is enslaved by a Native American wizard, and becomes entwined with such luminaries as Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Johnny Thunder and his wife Madame .44, Hawk Son of Tomahawk, Firehair, El Diablo, and that short-lived savage superhero, Super Chief. Also, The Demon makes a cameo.

#86-- My favorite of the bunch. as ST jaunts back to revolutionary times, and meets DC's long running frontier paladin, Tomahawk. There's also another encounter with The Demon, and with the once and future Batcave, complete with a giant bat--which gets more or less explained in the ensuing issue.

        

#87-- Swampy witnesses the Fall of Camelot, as well as interacting with Merlin, his demon Etrigan, the villainous Morgaine LeFey, and the Shining Knight. A couple of background figures look like Prince Valiant and Hal Foster's version of the knight Gawain. The issue ends with the Shining Knight in modern times, informing Abigail of his interaction with the time-dispersed swamp-spirit, and then swearing to locate Swampy again-- at which point the tale ends.  

So "Time Upon a Once" is a great read, with the story being told backwards as the monster-hero keeps getting flung further back. It's fun but there's no epistemological pattern uniting the continuity, just playing in the DC sandbox.

"Wild Things" is harder to suss out. Given that Alan Moore changed the parameters of the SWAMP THING feature by importing a wealth of metaphysical concepts, Veitch was a good choice to follow Moore, since Veitch was at least equally invested in mystical matters as his English colleague. Veitch pencils many fascinating visuals depicting ST's journeys into the higher realms. Yet though I appreciated the intent, I found a lot of Veitch's design-work static. Just as a brief personal comparison, six years before Veitch's ST run, I remember being mesmerized by Marshall Rogers' vivid rendition of the DOCTOR STRANGE cosmology.

The title "Wild Things" references the storyline's main conceit: that due to ST's absence from Earth during an extended Alan Moore arc, Earth's plant-consciousness "The Green" generates a new spirit destined to merge with a dying human and to become a new Swamp Thing. ST would like to give up being Earth's elemental protector and let the "new guy" take over, but for some reason all the candidates prove inadequate and just die without hosting the new swamp-spirit-- and this repetitiousness drains whatever mythic grandeur might have informed the proceedings. On top of that, ST and Abigail get the idea to let "the Sprout" inhabit the body of Abby's unborn child, at which point they stop talking about the matter of the new Thing having to die violently. My overall feeling is that Veitch let the story's complexities get away from him.

Lastly, while Moore was no shrinking violet about his Liberal beliefs during his ST run, Veitch was twice as heavy-handed. I even remember being turned off by Veitch's political asides even though I was dominantly Liberal in the 1980s). The nadir of this virtue signaling appeared when Veitch took the old character of Roy Raymond (a know-it-all 1950s TV detective) and turned him into a conservative douche who got trapped for several issues in a car being driven by a mindless New Swamp Thing clone. There are certainly some weak moments in the Alan Moore, but as a reader I felt that he had a better control of the overall narrative.  But I must admit, at his worst Veitch's follow-up was better than 90% of similar follow-ups. 

     

LEGENDS OF YESTERYEAR PT 3

I've altered my thoughts on this passage from LEGENDS 2:

Historical figures, when subjected to fictionalization, can go either the way of artifice or the way of verisimilitude. To repeat one of my earlier counter-examples to Billy the Kid, Adolf Hitler's historical record can never be diminished by fictionalization. Hundreds of years in the future, he might become a legend of evil, but at present his presence in literature is always dwarfed by his presence in history. A fiction-story can depict Hitler in dozens of completely artificial situations-- he creates the Red Skull, he gets burned to death by The Human Torch, his body (or, more frequently, just his brain) gets preserved so that he can be revived in some new, world-conquering form. But these artifice-tropes never supersede the historical record.

I've decided that "superseding the historical record" is not that important in most cases, since often legend-types don't supersede history so much as exaggerate it. The average citizen interested in Old West history usually knows that Jesse James and Billy the Kid in reality are very different from any fictional treatments. So when that consumer enjoys a fictional story of Jesse James meeting the Two-Gun Kid, there's an automatic disregard for historical facts.

If anything, a simple, uncomplicated demonization of a historical figure-- such as Hitler's contemporaries Mussolini and the Emperor Tojo-- is usually so one-dimensional that it fails to take on "legendary" status. Hitler, though, is nothing if not a demon who fits many fictional roles. I might not consider Hitler to be "legendary" when he merely appears in a cameo, as in the film INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. But he would qualify as a legend when he's used to launch schemes against WWII superheroes, as in THE INVADERS cover I printed in LEGENDS pt 2, and certainly in stories where he's a contemporary villain who's escaped the confines of his historical record. Such is the Adolf who appears in a 1947 multi-part SKYMAN story that I choose to call "Hitler on the Moon."

    

MYTHCOMICS: ONE MORE DAY (2007)

 

I quit following any of the SPIDER-MAN books on the 21st century, only occasionally availing myself of the occasional public-library TPB. But I wasn't so isolated that I didn't hear the many complaints about ONE MORE DAY, a storyline which ran in three separate Spider-titles, in which Peter Parker made a deal with The Devil to save Aunt May's life, costing him his happy marriage to the love of his life, Mary Jane.

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. I doubt the retcon improved the overall quality of Spider-stories based on my spotty readings, and in any case it's rare that any retcons have been instrumental to generating higher story quality. Yet I found that DAY, by itself, found interesting ways of playing with the often-moribund mythology of Spider-Man, particularly in its usage of guilt.

               

The web-slinger's career begins with his guilt over his accidental complicity in his Uncle Ben's death. Now, because Parker revealed his true ID to the world (something to do with the elephantine "Civil War" plotline, I think), the Kingpin sends a gunman to kill Parker but fatally wounds Aunt May. While the old lady barely clings to life, Parker makes the rounds of Marvel's wonder-workers, looking for some means to stave off the Grim Reaper. He explicitly tells Doctor Strange that while he thinks he could accept his aunt's natural death, he can't accept the calamity being his fault. 

I had low expectations for the "deal with the devil" part of the story, given how cliche the trope has become over the years, and perhaps I was influenced by all the negative press DAY received. However, though I've not liked the few comics-stories I've read by J. Michael Sraczinski, his handling of the "Satanic bargain" was the most mythic aspect of DAY.    

Once Parker's at his lowest ebb, he meets a devil's envoy who seems the incarnation of innocence: a sassy little girl who knows all about his problems, critiques him for his narcissism, and runs away.

Spider-Man loses the girl but comes across a young man in glasses. He discourses on the human need for escapism in a world that doesn't allow for personal heroism. Moments later. an older man drives up in a expensive car and takes Spidey for a little ride. He too related a life-story, a life that sounds a bit like Tony Stark's. (Earlier in the sequence, Spider-Man tells Stark that to Parker Stark was "like a father.")  He ends his story--mostly that of petty revenge against the classmates who tormented him in high school-- by emphasizing how he lost the one woman he loved.

 Parker then meets a woman in an old-fashioned dress. They discuss dreams, which gives Parker the chance to reference one of pop culture's most famous retcons. She then informs Parker of a fact most readers will suspect: the two males he met are alternate-world scenarios for ways that Parker could have turned out: Parker as complete nerd and as ruthless businessman. 

All of these discussions are primers for the subject of reality's mutability, at which point the woman reveals that "she" is Mephisto. He quickly disabuses Parker of the idea that he's offering to save Aunt May in exchange for Parker's soul. He brings Mary Jane into the discussion, revealing that he wants both of them to surrender their marriage, just for the purpose of spreading more misery. Mary Jane furthers the deal, ensuring that Spider-Man's identity will once more become secret. And as the last few moments of the Pert-MJ romance count down, Mephisto sticks in the knife: the little girl Parker met was the daughter he and MJ would have had, had they not chosen to save Aunt May. 

Then reality changes. Aunt May was never shot, and Parker never had a romance with Mary Jane Watson, though she continues to exist in his world. The tale ends with Peter at a party, as the partygoers toast Harry Osborn's recovery from trauma as "A Brand New Day"-- which was used for the name of a 2008 Spider-arc. Said arc does not follow up on any of the Spider-myths from ONE MORE DAY, and though both titles were used for the two most recent SPIDER-MAN, neither film is strongly indebted to either comics-arc. Given that I didn't find BRAND NEW DAY to be more than average, I doubt ONE MORE DAY provided any great inspiration for better Spider-Man stories. But clearly, the feature remains popular even without a "Mrs. Spider-Man," so in that respect, all the protestations of MJ fans did nothing to reverse that trend.

REVIEWS: ONE NEAR, ONE NULL

 I don't review most of the comics I read while looking for mythopoeic material, but these two items are worth a few comments.

Though I can usually find strong myth-motifs in any of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN stories, I remember being somewhat disappointed with SEASON OF MISTS when I read it in single-issue form. Putting aside the long-range plot-threads Gaiman was weaving into the background, the main idea here is that Lucifer, lord of Hell, suddenly decides to resign from his position. Further, he sticks the dream-lord Morpheus with the key to Hell, and with the job of choosing who will receive said key and thus reign over that infernal piece of real estate. Will it go to other Hell-demons, or to the representatives of other pantheons-- Egyptian, Norse, Japanese-- who desire the metaphysical terrain for rather vague reasons? With all these deities mingling, surely Gaiman's story must be filled to the brim with mythicity. But dumping a bunch of gods into the same story--even if they're reasonably respectful to the religions represented-- doesn't generate myth. Gaiman's initial postulate-- that Lucifer can just walk away from being the Hell-King whenever he pleases-- contradicts the general view that the Christian God has consigned Lucifer to his fate. One might have come up with some thoughtful take on the nature of "free will" to justify the premise, but Gaiman doesn't follow any line of logic here. And without discussing the resolution, it occurred to me, on first reading, that maybe Morpheus can't give away Hell because he's not the entity who created that domain. And indeed, the entire conflict is solved by a literal deus ex machina.         

DANGER STREET is the first of two collections of a twelve-issue limited series, with Volume One collecting the first six issues of the continuous plotline. The premise here is oriented on the comics-collector's love of historical minutiae. for almost all of the DC characters in the story appeared at least once in DC's 1970s "showcase" title, FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL. A few were revivals of previously established franchises, such as The Creeper, Doctor Fate, Metamorpho, and The New Gods. However, in fan-circles SPECIAL was best known for launching new concepts. One of them, The Warlord, spawned a long running series, while another, Manhunter, was re-interpreted and became a significant source of plotlines for years afterward. though Manhunter himself was not a successful featured hero. However, the rest of the newbies were an eccentric bunch. A couple were simply okay formulaic premises-- a new Starman (the second DC character to sport the name), or a muscular hero named Atlas. But the rest-- Assassin, The Green Team, Lady Cop, The Outsiders, and The Dingbats of Danger Street-- were singularly wacky or faux-realistic propositions,

As a fan of crossover concepts-- both the good and the charmingly bad-- I appreciate how much work writer King must have put in to stage-manage all these disparate characters into a unified narrative, even judging DANGER only on its first half. Unlike a lot of DC smorgasbords of famous and forgotten icons, King seems to be patterning this assemblage on the Moore-Gibbons WATCHMEN, devoting lots of space to the ways the characters interact. Further, the crisp yet subdued art of Jorge Fornes paces the narrative in a manner that I thought recalled Gibbons. But I won't go out of my way to read the second half of DANGER, because though I was diverted, I wasn't entertained. King too often relied on simplistic tropes of "realistic superheroes," even as Moore often did, but King lacks the greater ambitions of WATCHMEN. Often he has characters act stupidly because that's the only way his story will work, and I found none of the characters appealing, even on the level of "what if The Creeper acted like Rorshach?" So one trip to DANGER STREET was enough for me.          

DIDACTIC DOWNSIZING

 This may be a minor categorizing matter even to me, but if nothing else it's another excuse to explore a recurring question: how do the two "vertical values," the didactic and mythic potentialities, sometimes come into conflict?

In 2015 I wrote:

these examples raise another point: are only the "big events" worth considering in a pluralist "best of" list? Further, to extrapolate from a point Martin makes: are the first appearances of Batman's iconic villains their best "aesthetic" moments? Is the first Joker story the one every comics-fan ought to read? Will it tell the non-hardcore reader everything he wants to know about the Joker? Or would the reader be better off reading a less Gothic but arguably more "aesthetically pleasing" story like "The Joker's Millions" from DETECTIVE COMICS #180 (1952)? -- REFLECTIONS IN A MERCURIAL EYE, PT. 1.

This essay didn't concern the potentialities, much less the even later concepts of "ontocosm and epicosm," but the subject of "big events" showed up in a 2025 essay that did include such matters:

On a related note, while I was looking at my "greatest crossovers" series on OUROBOROS DREAMS, it occurred to me that my criteria for greatness were certainly not primarily epicosmic. There were some crossover-stories with strong vertical elements, like JIHAD and THE BOOKS OF MAGIC. But for the majority of my choices, I believe I responded to the elements of lateral storytelling. Thus I included Spider-Man's first encounter with The Avengers on the basis of both kinetic and dramatic elements, while the wall-crawler's first meeting with the Fantastic Four was, in a word, forgettable in ontocosmic terms. Other times, I might not think the lateral story was all that good in itself, but that it comprised some landmark crossover-event-- the first time the Avengers met the cowboy-heroes of Marvel's Old West, or that GAMBLER movie that brought together a dozen or so actors to play either real or simulated versions of their TV-characters. In these stories, it wasn't so much the actual execution of the concept but its potential that I found intriguing. -- A TALE OF TWO COSMS.

Now I'd say that I was incorrect to attribute, in the COSMS essay, my favoring of "landmark" crossover stories to lateral values-- even "potential" ones. If I've celebrated THE GAMBLER: LUCK OFTHE DRAW as a landmark crossover, while admitting that its lateral values are not that great-- then there must be some other factor that made me celebrate it alongside "To Become an Avenger," which did have such lateral values.           

So, while reconsidering the origins of my own take on "landmark stories," I happened to think of the REFLECTIONS essay, in which I was to some extent opposed to celebrating so-so "landmark stories" (Joker's first appearance) over better-crafted tales ("The Joker's Millions"). Why did I do in one essay what I faulted my "opponent" for doing? Well, because a liking for landmarks comprises an intellectual shorthand. "First Joker story," "first and only mega-crossover of TV westerns"-- these are quick ways of assigning didactic value to a particular story in terms of "making a breakthrough." Such a prioritizing is not exactly "wrong," because it also relates to the way the populace often judges stories. It's simply a very limited form of didactic thinking that can be incorporated into a wider perspective.           

 

NEAR-MYTHS: "THE SUPER-FOES FROM PLANET X" (WORLD'S FINEST #96, 1958)

 

I've written elsewhere about how science fiction content increased in the "Superman Family" books of the late 1950s, but I confess I usually wasn't factoring in the WORLD'S FINEST comic, which began co-starring Batman and Robin with Superman. starting in 1954. I can't see how this feature could have been ruled by the alleged dictum to make the SUPERMAN titles resemble the 1952-58 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, though I may be prejudiced in that I saw heavy SF-content in the reprints I saw in my youth. Only a thorough study of the feature during the 1950s would answer the question one way or the other.

The only credited editor on WF 96 is Whitney Ellsworth, though the real work may have been any of his subordinates, such as Jack Schiff, who in these same years had been persuaded to insert more aliens into his two BATMAN titles. Most of these Bat-tales are not well regarded. But what didn't work well in the chronicles of the Dynamic Duo had often charming results for the "World's Finest" team, particularly thanks to the combined talents of writer Edmond Hamilton and artist Dick Sprang. 

Hamilton, one of the great space-opera writers of SF's Golden Age, outdid himself in "Super-Foes" with colorful alien monsters to test the united talents of Dynamic Duo and Man of Steel. Three times a disembodied voice warns the heroes of extraterrestrial menaces, starting with the "Solar Sponge."

On Batman's advice, Superman overloads the Sponge with amplified solar power. Then the voice warns of the menace of The Storm Top. a colossal whirligig that can whip up sea-tempests.

  The heroes send the Top spinning off into space (hope it doesn't land on J'onn J'onzz's Mars, or something). The voice then directs the good guys to a third locale, where they meet The Crawler, an insect that can make humans shrink with its antenna-vibrations.

  Once again, even in miniscule forms, teamwork vanquishes the ornery arthropod. Then the voice summons the heroes to yet another locale, where, after a little more trouble, they learn what's going on-- though it doesn't make a lot of sense when read by an adult.

So the sentients of Planet X lost the power to repair many of the machines with which they'd defended themselves from their world's natural predators. Ok, the message about not becoming too dependent on technology is okay, but the delivery needed some work. What Hamilton proposes is that despite the Xians' lack of overall knowledge, they conveniently retain the knowledge of how to operate one of their starships and to load it with specimens of Planet X predators for the Earth-heroes to overcome. The aliens' rationale for setting up the creature-fights is almost a recapitulation of the WORLD'S FINEST team's raison d'etre: having been given graphic examples of how nonpowered and super-powered heroes work together, the Xians claim they'll train themselves like Batman and Robin while having their robots perform super-feats. Of course, the real reason for the complicated deception was to intrigue the reader. And even at my current age, I found myself intrigued with the question of who started the trope of "hoax perpetrated by well-meaning types rather than thieves/murderers." But that's a question for another essay.         

MYTHC0MICS: "CALL OF THE WILD" (CONAN THE KING #28, 1985)

 

I'm sure it's been at least twenty years since I read an issue of this Marvel magazine, which began in 1980 as KING CONAN and which lasted a healthy nine years, albeit under the altered title CONAN THE KING. It was a relatively high-ticket item, starting at $1.25 and ending at $1.50, and was the last Conan project from Roy Thomas before he left Marvel for DC. I imagine KING was launched for the usual economic reasons, but I'd like to think there was some thought of giving the barbarian a venue more expansive than the regular color comic.

There's a certain irony to Marvel devoting stories to the famed sword-slinger in his mature years, since Young Conan was always the most popular incarnation in prose and in comics. Robert E. Howard devoted one short story and one novel to Mature Conan, but clearly the WEIRD TALES readers liked the hero best when he was a young freebooter ranging from realm to realm. Nevertheless, KING presented Conan at an even later phase of life than Howard ever had. By the time of KING #28-- the last Conan tale for writer Alan Zelenetz-- the barbarian has sired a teenaged daughter and a somewhat younger son by his queen, Zenobia. The text of "Call of the Wild" implies that Conan is sixty years old, though artist Alan Silvestri draws both the barbarian and his red-haired guest-star as if they're merely in their forties.

Despite having ascended to the kingship of Aquilonia, Conan chafes at the confinements of civilized life. He dons a disguise and goes drinking at a lowly tavern. Monarch's business intrudes, so Conan orders everyone to clear the hall. One hooded figure seems minded to defy the King's order but then chooses to leave. 

Back at Conan's palace, his daughter Radegund anticipates her "confirmation" (whatever that means in Hyboria) but her father has conspicuously forgotten the Big Event. He's selfishly mourning the freedom of his younger years, and he departs the castle grounds for the forest. However, his cloaked "friend" from the tavern has apparently followed him-- a good trick, given that she couldn't have known when he'd leave and which way he'd go-- and reveals herself to the startled potentate.    

Unlike Conan, Mature Sonja has remained true to the wanderer's life, never marrying or settling down. She claims to have come to Aquilonia only to fulfill a commission, and to have run into Conan purely by accident-- though she could hardly be ignorant of the barbarian's royal attainments. It's worth remembering that in the first two-part tale of the Marvel Comics Sonja, she tricked Young Conan into doing heavy lifting for her. Mature Conan is delighted to see her and dearly wishes to talk over old times. She scorns his royal ascension, and her refusal to be Conan's nostalgia-buddy very nearly crushes him. But then Sonja switches gears and "allows" Conan to render her aid.

              

Zelenetz could have had Sonja lead Conan to any number of routine treasure-troves-- a lost tomb, a wizard's castle. Instead, Sonja's quest takes them to "a death barge-- sacred to the darkest gods of the nether realm." Aboard the ship, guarded by fanatics, lies the enshrined body of a necromancer, and Sonja's been hired to steal a gem from the dead wizard's eye. The two thieves have no real compunctions against robbing the dead, though in a symbolic sense the Death Barge might represent the world of Death itself, which will eventually consume all living warriors. In fact, Married, Not So Mature Conan can't quite resist getting grabby with Sonja's forty-something charms. Yet he doesn't resent getting her boot in his face, since his desire for the allure of pure adventure surpasses all else.

While Conan kills a bunch of guards (I'm sure they were all Bad People), Sonja steals the jewel-- but the dead wizard retaliates with a spell of deadly smoke. Conan hits on the idea of flooding the cabin, which interrupts the spell for some reason. Sonja keeps only her stolen eye-jewel while Conan randomly takes a "token" in the form of a necklace. Then they swim back to land, leaving the disposition of the Death Barge up to the reader's imagination.

Conan is all for deserting his throne and returning to his old wild ways, but Sonja tricks him one last time, albeit for his own good. Silvestri does a fine job showing Sonja's stoical acceptance that she's no longer a part of Conan's life, and off she rides, leaving him to his kingship-- and implicitly to his queen and children (though Sonja's only comment on the Cimmerian's marital life is a catty remark about Conan having a "harem.") Conan's poised to pursue her-- and maybe, his lost freedom-- when he hears temple bells and remembers that he's got a daughter waiting for him to perform his paternal duties.

     

But "all's well" for the King, whose dereliction of his responsibilities put into his hands just the right sort of booty to be a gift to the daughter he completely forgot. Zelenetz and Silvestri came up with a sort of "family melodrama" take on barbarian adventure, and my vague recollection of the whole series is that it often pursued storylines more in the vein of Hal Foster than of Robert E. Howard. To be sure, the KING series never lets an issue pass where Conan isn't mightily smiting enemies with his iron thews, so a lot of his complaints about civilized life ring false. Zelenetz's title is as ironic as his conclusion, for Conan's trajectory is less like that of Buck in London's CALL OF THE WILD-- the dog who embraces the wild life-- and more like that of White Fang, the star of London's other canine outing, the wolf-dog that finally gives up the wilderness in favor of domesticity. As a further irony, it's the she-devil with a sword-- the hero whose gender is best known for "nesting"-- who remains loyal to the allure of wanderlust.