Monday, July 20, 2020

MYTHCOMICS: [KILLJOY 2,], E-MAN #4 (1974)




The KILLJOY series, consisting of exactly two stories appearing respectively in issues #2 and #4 of Charlton’s E-MAN, was a rarity for author Steve Ditko: a comedic superhero. Ditko often used elements of comedy in his “straight” superheroes, most notably the original Spider-Man feature, and he sometimes included little japeries in his self-published comics. But KILLJOY was a lighter look at the artist’s professed Objectivism, though it was no less scornful than his serious works of societal irrationality.

The main joke in the first KILLJOY is that the red-clad avenger lives in a world constantly menaced by super-villains, all of whom firmly believe that they’re fully entitled to steal from hard-working citizens. When the hero—who never speaks while in costume, and whose face-mask features a frozen smile—jumps in and defeats such evildoers as Robber Hood and General Disaster, the defeated fiends whine and cry like little babies. Ditko gives the hero no defined alter ego, though he does present three possible candidates for Killjoy’s secret ID, in such a way that the hero might be all of them, or none of them.



KILLJOY 2 works in a few more variations. The story opens with a maddened criminal holed ip in his hideout as he exchanges gunfire with cops. He boasts, “I swear no one is taking me, Killer Ded, alive!” Killjoy steals in the hideout, disarms the crook, and sends him down to the cops with a little parachute attached to his belt. Ditko uses this running joke three more times, each time ending with the desperate criminal thoroughly humiliated by being taken alive.



Page two is devoted to the entitlement of the disenfranchised, as Killjoy rescues a solid citizen from a horde of thieves who all spout things like, “Your selfishly earned money rightfully belong to the unselfish, we who have not earned it.” The hero has a tougher time, though, with an elastic-bodied robber, S.S.S.Snake, who defeats Killjoy twice. These defeats occasion celebration from a protesting malcontent, Mister Hart, who rejoices, “The guilty have a right to succeed as well as anyone else! Why should the true always be right?” This bleeding-heart then meets his perfect complement in another rabble-rouser, Mister Sole, who has the same arguments: ”Nobody has a right to own property—anything! Everything belongs to everybody!”



For his next crime, Snake attempts to steal a valuable diamond, but about ten other crooks show up, all of whom are diamond-themed villains: “Diamond Eyes! Captain Diamond! Blue Diamond,” etc. However, Killjoy is on the scene, disguised as a diamond merchant (in which guise he utters the only words that are unquestionably from his own mouth), and the hero unleashes a trap that confuses all the diamond-hunters and neutralizes Snake’s elasticity.



In terms of delineating Ditko’s Objectivist philosophy, there’s nothing in either KILLJOY tale that didn’t appear in superior works like THE DESTROYER OF HEROES. Crime is irrational untruth and crimebusting is the reassertion of objective truth, as is shown by the final panels, where Killer Ded finally can’t take the constant humiliations any more and resigns himself to serving out his jail sentence—after which the last panel shows the silhouette of Killjoy’s smiling visage. It’s interesting that a face with but one expression connotes for Ditko the same rational imperturbability as faces with no expression, as seen in The Question and Mister A. But even if one doesn’t agree with Ditko’s fetishization of law and order, the recent George Floyd protests have shown the artist to be a prophet with regard to the pernicious entitlement of citizens who have no ability to discern any kind of truth from any kind of experience.

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