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.

        

A GOTHIC ANCESTOR

 I'm still working, perhaps just for my own amusement, on my book re: the superhero idiom, and decided to elide this example of what I'm currently calling "the supermundane."

_________

Since Sumerian literature remains fairly obscure, I can better contrast the two supermundane modes with examples taken from the better-known culture of archaic Greece. For most persons, Greek mythology is a major source of the Greater Supermundane, thanks to the Greeks’ adaptation of even their most obscure myths into drama and poetry. The exploits of figures like Heracles, Jason and Odysseus hardly need to be outlined here. But a few stories anticipate later developments in the Lesser Supermundane. In Gothic fiction, one major trope is that of deceivers who use devices to fake ghosts or demon-hounds, and this trope is loosely prefigured by the tale of King Salmoneus. The monarch conceives that he is the earthly avatar of Zeus, and he tries to emulate the Thunder-God by flourishing torches for “lightning” and using noisemakers to simulate “thunder.” The story doesn’t mention whether Salmoneus fools any of his subjects. In any case, the real Zeus disapproves of the imposture and wipes out both the king and his city.

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.