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 nay stand as Marvel Comics's 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. 
      

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.