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.             

    

 

BEFORE THE INCAL (1988-95)

 

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

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

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

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

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

   

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

              

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

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

  

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

THE READING RHEUM: THE WOLFEN (1978)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

  

WEST FAILURE

 I came across this silly bit of trivia today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

               

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

THE OBSESSIVE-TRANSGRESSIVE PT. 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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