Quality Comics' DOLL MAN was one of the Golden Age's most long-lived features, lasting from almost the beginning of the Age to 1956, when the publishing company dissolved. The premise was simple: scientist Darrel Dane discovers a method by which he can shrink himself to a height of six inches, at which height he possesses his normal-sized strength as well as somehow being able to manifest a colorful costume. (Gil Kane, being an admirer of the Quality feature, explicitly based various aspects of the Silver Age Atom on the doll-sized crimefighter.) The story I'll examine is given an extremely dull title in GCD, so this time I'll choose a phrase from the opening caption of the splash page. That phrase proves relevant because in the course of the story it become problematic as to who the real "daughter of Satan" is.
Following the splash, which has a "Tom Thumb" feel as Doll Man is seen riding a frog into a fetid swamp full of death-symbols, the story's apparent villain, Yvette deMortier, makes her first appearance. (The story's unknown writer presumably did not know that in French "mortier" means "mortar;" he probably just wanted to play upon "mort," the French word for "dead.") Yvette, a "renowned physicist," gives a demonstration of a new device to a hall full of other scientists, including Doctor Roberts, father of Darrel Dane's girlfriend Martha. The scientists are refreshingly unprejudiced against a lady scientist, who's rather uncharacteristic of scientists in comic books, but it probably helps that Yvette is gorgeous. However, Yvette's ray-device turns all the scientists into babbling goofballs, after which Yvette has her henchmen write down all the secrets falling from their "loose lips." Doctor Roberts wanders home, where Darrel jokes that he's "gone on a geometric spree with the lovely DeMortire." Darrel and Martha soon learn that the other scientists have lost their reasoning minds, but since Yvette was not among them, Darrel investigates her in his Doll Man persona.
The hero finds clues (including an unidentified dead man) that will lead him to a swamp referenced as a "weird setting of silence, mystery, and death." The reader sees the villainess in repose, but though at first she gloats over the power she'll gain from all the secrets she's gleaned, she becomes angry when one of her subordinates tries to profess his love to her. She curses men as "the scourge of civilization" and compares herself to "the cold, bright lady moon." At that very time, Doll Man ventures into the swamp, observing that it's more a place of death than usual, since its mistress has poisoned the waters. The hero finds his way to Yvette's sanctum, and happens to enter through a skylight with a telescope, and so he becomes a small but intrusive male presence in Yvette's lunar domain.
In addition, Doll Man has brought along one of the clues he found: a locket holding the pictures of both Yvette and some unknown young man, and when Yvette sees the latter photo, she calls out the name "Stephan." She faints, and into the room comes the true "daughter of Satan," Yvette's unnamed sister. Artist Reed Crandall clearly gives the standard countenance of an aged medieval witch (and with what horn-headed gentleman did witches consort, hmm?) Madame DeMortier shoots at Doll Man while ranting about having killed "the memory of Stephan." Doll Man trips the witch up, but she just happens to have a can of rubber cement lying around in this private observatory, and manages to catch the diminutive crusader therein.
Doll Man rather easily escapes the cement, while the old woman, revealed to be Yvette's sister, drags Yvette into a room containing a printing press. (It's vaguely suggested that Yvette's henchmen are turning all the purloined science-secrets into pamphlets, though I have no idea how that would aid anyone in conquering the world.) Doll Man luckily happens to be nearby when Yvette's unnamed, would-be lover conveniently mentions that, contrary to the sister's rants, he knows Stephan died while fighting tse-tse disease in Africa and that the sister deceived Yvette to better manipulate Yvette;s scientific reputation. Doll Man and Henchman Guy work together so that Older DeMortier's hair gets caught in a printing press. It's a little hard to believe, in a more or less "realistic" superhero yarn, that her head gets crushed thereby, but she's not seen on the final page at all.
So with the witch at least symbolically dead, Yvette can renounce her flirtation with super-villainy (no trial needed, clearly). She not only restores the memories of the scientists, she somehow drains the poison from the swamp, thus trying up almost all the loose ends. (I've no idea as to the identity of the dead man on page three, though I would assume the true "daughter of Satan" killed him.) Then Yvette is united with her new love and ends her not very justified "hatred of men," while Martha conceives a new animosity for the wandering nature of the male gaze.
Though as a straight story "Daughter" is a mess, there is a clear development of Yvette as a femme fatale, associated with quasi-negative feminine symbols like the swamp and the moon, and she's shown "draining" men of their intelligence-- which most femmes fatales bring about using sex, not memory-rays. Then for the sake of a happy ending-- not always a hallmark of DOLL MAN stories-- all of the negativity is channeled upon Madame DeMortier, a witch-like monster of ugliness and envy and thus the true avatar of Death. I also like the way Doll Man performs the archetypal crusade of the male hero, penetrating the morass of the swamp in order to bring a little male light into the lunar darkness. Given that most DOLL MAN stories are very simple fare, the extra layer of mythicity here shows the raconteurs stepping up their game for the sake of evoking some entertaining folktale motifs.
ADDENDUM: In the above review I jumped to the conclusion that the author of the story made up the name "Mortier," but it is a real French surname. I would still hazard that the writer chose that name because it sounds like the French word for death.
No comments:
Post a Comment