MYTHCOMICS: RAT GOD (2015)

Richard Corben’s meditation on both the era and the art of H.P. Lovecraft is a rara avis indeed: a critique of turn-of-the-century American racism that eschews ego-boosting righteousness in favor of a plain-spoken realism about the ways human beings treat one another. And despite being a dramatic work at its core, RAT GOD is also brilliantly funny in many places.

The main setting is New England in the 1920s (taking place partly in Lovecraft’s fictional city Arkham), and the main character is a physical doppelganger for HPL, here given the staidly respectable Anglo-Saxon name of “Clark Elwood.” Though none of the Lovecraftian gods appear in the story, Corben has Clark swear by Cthuilhu and Yog-Sothoth, and use fancy words like “gibbous”  and “eldritch.” However, before the reader encounters Clark, RAT GOD’s first eleven pages deal with two Native Americans, a brother and sister, fleeing from tribal enemies in the wilderness, apparently back in the days before the advent of Columbus. A totem with the image of a “rat god” appears once, but Corben does not explicitly align either tribe with this repulsive deity.

Though the title of Corben’s work begs associations with HPL’s  “The Rats in the Walls,” the greatest similarity is that of protagonists are, at the outset, initially sure of being at the top of the ethnicity-totem pole. After page 11,  the physical struggles of the aboriginals give way, via a time-shift, to the struggles of Chuk and Kito, a brother and sister who are implicitly descendants of the first siblings—though by the 20^th century, their struggles  have more to do with defining themselves in a world now owned by white people.

In point of fact, Kito, sister to Chuk, does not appear on page 12, but she’s the subject of a conversation between Chuk and Clark. Chuk informs Clark that though they’ve never met, Chuk is aware that Clark is dating his sister. Clark, having been unaware that Kito is at least partly Indian, is not pleased with Chuk’s revelation. Clark picks a fight with Chuk and gets quickly beat down. (Clark is far more pugnacious than any HPL protagonist: he’s something like a Robert E. Howard character who can’t really fight but sometimes wins by sheer doggedness.) As Clark licks his wounds he remembers his encounters with Kito in Arkham, with whom he falls in love even though “she’s kind of funny looking.” In the course of their dates, Kito reluctantly relates her escape from a “rat hole” called Lame Dog. 

This town was originally an ancient settlement of the Cthanhluk tribe, but it was taken over in the 1800s by white gold-hunters. The gold-seekers soon left, leaving Lame Dog to be dominated by what Kito herself calls a “mongrel hybrid” made up of white and red people. However, even with most of the white settlers gone, there’s still one rich white guy in charge of things, Zachariah Peck, whose ancestor studied the pagan practices of the Cthanhluks. Kito relates how she and Chuk escaped Lame Dog without Clark ever tipping to the idea that she too may be of mixed race. The two lovers quarrel when Clark finds out how she makes her living, and though Clark intends to forgive her her trespasses, he learns that she’s fled back to Lame Dog. Despite all of his Anglo-Saxon misgivings, Clark pursues the object of his desire.

The town of Lame Dog might be termed an “Innsmouth for rats.” The residents, all of whom encourage Clark to get lost, often have a rodent-like look about them, regardless of their race or social station. One such is Gharlena, a grotesque but earthy young white woman who tries to seduce Clark. Far less earthy is Damon Peck, son of the patriarch Zachariah, who initially tries to get rid of Clark as well, only to change his mind when he gets the idea that Clark may serve as a catspaw with which to slay Zachariah. The patriarch follows in the footsteps of HPL’s evil de la Poer family, having built up a religion based on human sacrifice. However, instead of using regular-sized rodents, Zachariah’s religion worships a giant flesh-and-blood rat-creature. Damon asserts that the giant animal is some sort of mutant. However, given that Corben has suggested the existence of an aboriginal rat-god, Damon may not be privy to all the mysteries of his father’s cult.

Without giving away all aspects of the story’s ending, suffice to say that Clark’s quest for Kito has a more satisfying conclusion than the story-arcs of most HPL characters.  To be sure, Corben doesn’t let Clark keep his delusion of racial superiority. By the end of RAT GOD, he’s a long way from the man who starts out the story claiming that “my family has been the racial backbone of New England for generations.” Rather, he becomes thoroughly implicated in the mixed-race world of Lame Dog. Thankfully, though, Corben resists any impulse to cast even margjnalized races as suffering, sinned-against innocents. Whereas Lovecraft took the position that all humans were doomed to descend into a hell of degeneracy, Corben plays with the images of miscegenation and perhaps some sort of spiritual bestiality in order to emphasize the common visceral heritage shared by every ethnicity. And, for what it’s worth, it’s also a world where women are free to be every bit as visceral and degenerate as any man.

THE READING RHEUM: THE RATS IN THE WALLS (1924)

                         

SPOILERS (story’s ending discussed herein.)

As I’ve stated elsewhere, there’s no doubt that H.P. Lovecraft was what I term a “passive racist," though the meaning I give the phrase probably differs strongly from the way more ideological types use it. HPL indubitably took pleasure in believing his Anglo-Saxon heritage to be superior to most if not all other ethnicities, even those that shared roughly the same skin coloration. I call his racism “passive,” however, because I’m aware of no evidence of his taking either private or political action to marginalize other ethnicities, and by this standard his racism largely seems to come down to a lot of  “big talk” between Lovecraft and his intimates.

His stories and poems, however, stand as the great exception. It would be foolish to see HPL’s stories of horror and fantasy to be about primarily about racial matters, even with a story like the one considered here. For modern audiences “The Rats in the Walls” has the reputation of being one of the author's most offensive stories, since its protagonist Delapore constantly flings about a forbidden epithet in the form of his black cat’s name, “Nigger-Man.” Given the fact Delapore owns more than one cat but only mentions the name of the black one in the course of the story, it’s not unreasonable to imagine HPL taking a childish joy in maligning persons of the Negro race. At the same time, though, Delapore—one of the few HPL narrators with a detailed background— may be displaying a particular animus toward black people in keeping with said background. Though the bulk of the story takes place in the 1920s, Delapore as a child witnesses the burning of his family’s Virginia plantation during the American Civil War. Aside from the name Delapore gives his cat, though, black people play no role in “Rats,” except for a brief mention that one of Delapore’s distant relatives left the family, allied himself with Negroes and became a “voodoo priest.”

Though HPL was not above writing stories suggestive of racial miscegenation, “Rats” is not one of them. Delapore, though born in America, is aware that his English forbears have a vaguely sinister reputation, dating back to the Roman era. In his middle years, Delapore,  having lost his wife to childbirth and his only child to World War I, travels to England to reconstruct Exham Priory, the ancient dwelling place of his family, originally known as "the De La Poers." During this project Delapore hears many horror stories about his ancestors, who are deemed as the scions of evil by local villagers. His own research suggests that the de la Poers were the result of religious rather than racial crossbreeding, combining the traditions of Druidic sacrifice with the Roman cult of Cybele. (For some reason, in HPL’s world Cybele’s forbidden rites have nothing to do with castration and everything to do with cannibalism, but then, cannibalism was one of HPL’s preferred sources of horror.)  One legend from antique times claims that the locals suffered a plague of rats proceeding from Exham Priory, and once Delapore moves into his new digs, imagine what he starts to hear scuttling around in the walls…

Delapore eventually learns the dread secret of the de la Poers, which involves the use of rats to devour dead bodies, and even some suggestions that the family was acquainted with at least one Lovecraftian demigod, Nyarlathotep. This being, to whom HPL gave the epithet of “the crawling chaos,” was a particularly appropriate choice. There’s no doubt that at the time of the story’s writing, HPL would have considered his branch of the Caucasian race to be at the top of the heap, so he isn’t undermining his belief-system by showing the degradation of the de la Poers. But it’s significant that, in contrast to ideologically racist writers of the same period, such as Thomas Dixon, in HPL’s world being white is not any sort of protection from degeneration. Chaos is everywhere in HPL’s world, and neither the right skin-color nor the right religion is any protection.

HOSTS, HEAVENLY AND OTHERWISE

In KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 1, I argued against Nancy Springer's view that Ivanhoe was not the central character of the book named after him. I compared him to the serial hero The Spirit, saying in part:

From all my statements on centricity, it should plain that I have no problem with a main character having little color-- or mythicity-- of his own. For me Ivanhoe is as much the star of Scott's only story with the character as the Spirit is of his long-running serial adventures. Springer's metaphor of a "common thread" catches some of the sense of Ivanhoe's role in the narrative, but she apparently does not realize how often famous works may be organized around an essentially unremarkable character. The Spirit is not really any better-characterized than Ivanhoe-- Eisner tended to refer to his hero as something along the lines of a "big dumb Irishman"-- and as I mentioned above, most of the mythicity of the Spirit's serial adventures inhere in his supporting characters, just as figures like Rebecca, Richard and Robin Hood are more mythic than Ivanhoe himself.

To adjust this slightly to the new terminology introduced in the STATURE REQUIREMENTS essays,  both Ivanhoe and the Spirit enjoy the centric position because their respective authors have invested them with charisma, which is identical to the "organizing factor" I used in place of Springer's "common thread." In the case of non-serial hero Ivanhoe, his charisma is established early in the novel and remains the main organizing factor based on the "charismatic action" he takes then, even though other characters later shine more brightly. Ivanhoe doesn't even get to best the villain at the climax, though the hero's mere presence does ensure the villain's defeat.

Now, though one might say that Ivanhoe "plays host" to the supporting characters of his novel-- making him what I would call a "non-distributive" type-- the Spirit, as a serial hero, has a related but distinct dynamic. Though the Spirit is the undisputed star of many of his exploits, he plays very little role in some SPIRIT tales, sometimes appearing for no more than a single panel, having no actual impact on the story's events but still serving as an organizing factor. It should be a narrative given that no serial feature lasts long by focusing only upon the hero: usually he is required to become involved in the dilemmas of other people, whose stories take the forefront in a literal sense even if they still remain under the aegis of the star. In STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT. 5, I pointed out how the Joker provides most of the plot-action in THE KILLING JOKE, while Charlie Collins is the plot-center of the TV-episode "Joker's Favor." But I maintained that these were still Batman stories, that his charisma was only distributed to a partner such as one of the Robins.

The Spirit's only long-term partner was Ebony, but none of the Spirit's charisma was distributed to him, nor was it distributed to any of the many characters who provide the main plot-action of stories like "Wild Rice"  or "The Curse." The Spirit is thus non-distributive. There are many other ensembles that are arguably more varied than that of Batman and Robin: the three-man team of Kirk, Spock and McCoy in Classic STAR TREK, Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates in RAWHIDE, and some (though not all) of Jason's allies in THE ARGONAUTICA. However, though these ensembles are distributive in the sense that there isn't just one non-distributive character at the center of the mix, one might view the ensembles themselves to be non-distributive in comparison to a given narrative's support-characters. Thus all of the fabled TREK side-characters, despite their fame, do not receive any distributed charisma due to the original serial's concentration on its "holy trio."

Structurally, though, many exploits of THE SPIRIT are much more obvious about their status as "short stories brought under the SPIRIT umbrella" than are comparable TREK stories in which Spock, Kirk and McCoy have to involve themselves in, say, the personal affairs of the problematic lovers in "Metamorphosis." Both the Spirit and the TREK-team are non-distributive with respect to all of the (usually) one-shot characters they encounter, but the Spirit seems much more akin to the figure of "the storytelling host."

I won't try to trace the lineage of the storytelling host in modern times, but will note that one of the oldest examples of a continuing host would be Lord Dunsany's "Jorkens tales." In modern media everyone is familiar both with real-life celebrities playing the role of story-host, such as Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock, and with totally fictional characters created for this purpose, as with EC Comics' famed characters the Old Witch and the Crypt Keeper.

But here's the rub: though it could be argued that the presence of, say, the Crypt Keeper provides a familiar point of reference within a given narrative, he does not become an "organizing factor" because he's not actually a part of any of his stories (with the exception of one humorous "origin of the Crypt Keeper" tale). Thus none of the charismatic action from the author centers upon the Crypt-Keeper, Doctor Graves, Baron Weirwulf or any of these fictional types, except in those rare cases where they become focal presences in a given story. In contrast to the way Charlie Collins is a player in a BATMAN story, or Zephram Cochrane is a player in a "Kirk, Spock and McCoy" story, the stars of a TALES FROM THE CRYPT story like "Lower Berth" are the two monsters who join in unholy bliss-- not the familiar Crypt Keeper.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE BATTLE OF THE GODS" (ACTION COMICS #351-353, 1967)

My recent re-examination of the Golden Age Captain Marvel series-- unquestionably sparked by the appearance of the SHAZAM movie, though I've not yet seen it-- reminded me that I had one unused essay from years ago, based on an Otto Binder-Wayne Boring SUPERMAN story in which Binder recycled some of the tropes he'd used during his Captain Marvel tenure.

This is definitely the last of the essays I wrote in this format: starting out with a summary of the narrative's action and then analyzing said action separately, like the first "official" mythcomics I produced for this blog.

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QUICK SUMMARY: Superman encounters Zha-Vam, a mysterious eight-foot-tall villain whose name is an anagram of six Graeco-Roman gods—Zeus, Hercules, Achilles, Vulcan, Apollo and Mercury—whose powers the villain possesses.   In addition, Zha-Vam wears a belt studded with “buttons," each of which is inscribed with a letter (in English!) When a button it pressed, it temporarily gives Zha-Vam an extra power associated with some myth-entity whose name starts with that letter (for instance, the first button he presses is “T,” which makes him a gigantic “Titan” who flings Superman out into space.)  Zha-Vam shows no interest in power or gain, but merely exists to constantly one-up the Man of Steel.  Superman finds himself unable to cope with the vast array of powers the villain can call forth, but determines that Zha-Vam not only possesses the invulnerability-power of Achilles, but the “Achilles Heel,” as well.   But when Superman seeks to vanquish the “Super-Olympian” by attacking his heel, the hero finds that Zha-Vam has protected it with a “sock” of Kryptonite beneath his leaden boot.   Zha-Vam almost kills Superman, but decides to spare the Man of Steel for further humiliations.   At last Superman journeys back to ancient Olympus and learns that Zha-Vam was created from a body of clay by certain Greek gods who foresaw that their glorious legends would be obscured by the Man of Steel’s great fame.   To counter Zha-Vam’s advantage, Superman seeks out other gods who have quarreled with the Olympians, and these gods bestow on Superman a belt containing their powers.   Superman and Zha-Vam duel until Zha-Vam resorts to his Kryptonite weapon. However, Superman calls up Atlas, who having lifted the Earth is stronger than Zha-Vam.   After disposing of the Kryptonite and knocking out the villain with a blow to his heel, Superman returns Zha-Vam to Olympus, whereon the gods turn the villain back into clay and resolve not to attack Superman again.

If one knows something of the history of the story’s writer Otto Binder, one might be tempted to ask, “What the SHAZAM got into Binder when he created ZHA-VAM?”

The simple explanation is that Binder, one of the most prolific contributors to the mythos of the Golden Age Captain Marvel, was doing what all longtime writers do: re-visiting old concepts, whether out of sentiment, creative economics, or a little of both.   And in this case the concept was one of the keystones of the Captain Marvel mythos—though not one Binder originated—that is, the anagram of “Shazam” that gives Captain Marvel his god-derived powers. For the uninitiated, Cap Marvel’s mythic donors were Solomon, Hercules, Achilles, Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury.  Four of them also appear in the name of Zha-Vam, and one is invoked by Superman, but tellingly neither Solomon nor any other Judeo-Christian figure makes an appearance in the Superman tale.  Still, creative economics aside, one cannot help but think that Binder would’ve found it ironic to invent a character based on Captain Marvel to battle Superman, since Fawcett’s Captain Marvel and DC’s Superman also contended during the Golden Age—albeit in a legal battle, in which DC claimed that Fawcett had derived the Captain from the Man of Steel.   Indeed, the lengthy suit certainly contributed to Fawcett ending its use of adventure-characters in 1953 (the company dabbled in comics in later days, most notably with a DENNIS  THE MENACE line). Fawcett’s capitulation was the first “victory” of Superman over the “World's Mightiest Mortal”—a victory recapitulated by the Zha-Vam saga.  However, such was Binder’s mythopoeic imagination that he made much, much more out of this faux “battle of the comic-book gods” than one could ever have expected for what seems a simple children’s comic.

Even discounting legal wranglings, the literary process by which characters derive from one another, play off one another, and sometimes even cannibalize one another are not far different from the way archaic gods frequently absorbed one another’s characteristics, occasionally making a total turnabout from their original natures.   Not a few critics have pointed out that during the Golden Age Captain Marvel’s magical origins allowed for more fairy-tale-ish whimsy in the Captain’s adventures than were seen in those of the SF-based Superman.   And yet, with the demise of the Captain, some sort of cannibalization did seem to take place, as during the late fifties and early sixties Superman’s mythos became much more consciously “mythic” than it had been in the forties.   But though some critics have credited Binder with this rennovation, he was only one of several writers employed by editor Mort Weisinger, and for that matter, other extrinsic sources may have helped midwife the change in emphasis.  Indeed, one could as easily say that, if Hercules and cognate figures began to appear more often on Superman covers, it could also stem from the growth of fantasy-films of the period, also aimed at the same juvenile audience—Harryhausen’s “Sinbad” and “Jason” films, the Italian “Hercules” movies, and so on.   But, even having said that, Binder was one of the key figures in putting new wine in the old bottle that was the Superman mythos.

Oddly, though Superman and Captain Marvel were both figures with multitudinous wondrous powers (one of the aspects that Zha-Vam plays upon), they developed in diametrically opposing ways.   According to an anecdote in Steranko’s history, Captain Marvel was first conceived as a team of heroes with varied talents, but the success of Superman led to the “team” being re-conceived as a solo hero with assorted powers of mythic donors.   However, once conceived, Marvel’s powers remained fairly steady, while Superman, who started off as simply an embodiment of strength (including super-tough skin and super-strong legs for jumping), accreted over the years a veritable cornucopia of wild powers.   In the Binder story, Superman seems outclassed by a foe with powers far more multitudinous than his; powers drawn from the storehouse of archaic myth of many lands (although most of those named are from the Norse or Graeco-Roman pantheons, excepting only one Hindu deity).   It might even be said that Zha-Vam is that very storehouse, from whom both Superman and Captain Marvel take their natures, even as modern-day myth-figures.

To be sure, Binder plays fast and loose with many of the myth-figures he invokes. (He sometimes even footnotes his own changes, such as noting that Zha-Vam’s “Jason” power allows him to sow dragon-teeth that give rise to real dragons, not human warriors as in the Argonautica tale).   And the device from which Zha-Vam draws his powers, though possibly indebted to the archaic Thor’s “belt of strength,” could as easily be derived from the precedent of Batman’s utility belt.   (The 60’s show was still on the air when this saga debuted in 1967.)   Yet the way Binder uses the belt is more resonant of archaic myth-stories than most comic-book uses of such gimmickery (such as the aforementioned utility belt).   For instance, the first part of the three-part tale, Action #351, merely establishes for Superman the endless variety of his opponent’s powers, but the middle part, in #352, Zha-Vam invites Superman three times to press a belt-button himself, to choose which of Zha-Vam’s powers the hero will grapple with.   This motif aligns Zha-Vam with the myth-figure I call the “Task-Setter,” since he/she often gives the hero some impossible task to achieve (sometimes even associated with the task-setter’s own defeat).   Two times Superman tries to choose an “easy” power to contend with, but he is bested and humiliated both times.   The third time, though, he tries to circumvent the task and attack the villain’s Achilles Heel, not unlike Alexander “solving” the puzzle of the Gordian Knot by cutting it.  Though the hero is defeated thanks to Zha-Vam’s kryptonite back-up plan, it does get the superhero thinking “outside the box,” so that his next major move, in #353, is to discover Zha-Vam’s origins.

Said origins are perhaps the most symbolically resonant of Binder’s hidden mythopoesis.   For instance, nowhere in the story does Binder mention the story of how the Olympian gods overthrew their forbears the Titans (even though the name “Titan” is the first power conjured by Zha-Vam).  But clearly Superman (whom the gods call an “upstart”) is to the gods what they themselves were to the Titans; the new kid in town.   And even though Binder could have had any or all of the six donor-gods actually create Zha-Vam (indeed, the classical Vulcan/Hephaestus was said to have had his own “manmaking” talents), the script has Zha-Vam brought to life from clay by the Titan Prometheus (drawn by artist Wayne Boring to be physically taller than the gods, and as tall as his “offspring” Zha-Vam).   Apparently, though the Prometheus of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound is best known as an arch-rebel against Zeus, this Prometheus is reconciled to serving Zeus (an event loosely foreshadowed in the same Greek play).   Or, if Binder did not know his Aeschylus, he may just as easily have patterned his villain’s creation on a less far-removed invocation of the Prometheus myth, for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is subtitled “The Modern Prometheus.”  Certainly the visuals of Zha-Vam’s birth from a clay body recall the filmic birth of the Frankenstein Monster--  who is, like Zha-Vam,  a “man of parts.”

Perhaps the most mythopoeic theme of the story’s third section, though, is that, though Superman wins the battle, he does not do so with his own powers, but by taking on powers analogous to Zha-Vam’s.   Faced with a villain who uses a Zeus-given belt full of powers, Superman seeks out a similar belt from Neptune, brother to Zeus.   And the last figure Superman calls upon is the Titan Atlas, whose feat of “supporting the world” is a punishment for rebellion against Zeus—in other words, it takes a Titan to defeat the creation of a Titan (note: in Aeschylus, Atlas is brother to Prometheus.)   But perhaps the most telling trope is that Superman’s calling upon the reservoir of myth to defeat his enemy could be viewed as a comment on the aforesaid “cannibalization” of Captain Marvel’s mythos, by Binder and others, to feed the mythos of Superman.   Personally, I consider the melding of the Shazam-style whimsy with Superman’s science-fictional settings to have resulted in the best version of the character yet seen.  And while not all critics equally esteem the Weisinger-edited period of the Superman feature, most are agreed at least that this period birthed the greatest number of characters and situations that are still considered to be the touchstones of the Superman mythos, making the Weisinger years the feature’s most “myth-friendly” period.

Admittedly the Zha-Vam saga may in some particulars appear a bit too whimsical  to many contemporary critics (I found myself chuckling a bit at the notion of the kryptonite sock).   But one can also read the saga as a sort of a comic-book version of Star Trek’s “Who Mourns for Adonais,” in which an ancient deity makes a bid to regain lost fame in contemporary times.   It’s a given that by the story’s end such gods must pass away, but in the Star Trek tale, one is still filled with regret for the lost glory of the gods.  Superman himself does not mourn the demise of the gods.  To him, they are dangerous menaces to his career,  rather than being the perceptors they were to Captain Marvel. Yet it’s hard to believe that Binder didn’t script this story as a way of delving into the phantasmagorical creations of archaic myth-makers.   As a modern writer, he might never truly be among their company.  But he does, in this critic’s opinion, hew closely to their spirit.

THE READING RHEUM: THE BLACK MONK PT. 2

The aforementioned CLASSIC HORROR post came about when a poster mentioned this essay on the blog GOTHIC WANDERER, wherein author Tyler Tichelaar makes this argument with respect to the King Richard character in MONK:

The Crusader: This last character is the real superhero of the novel. He arrives at the castle while Sir Rupert is away and attempts to put things to rights. All the while, his identity is kept hidden because he wears a velvet mask. He is described by Eldred as “a whopper,” meaning he is large and strong, true heroic elements, yet his mask is more reminiscent of the Gothic. It is interesting that his name in the book is “The crusader”—he is the masked crusader, but that is not such a far cry from the “caped crusader,” Batman. In the end, it amounts to the same thing—he is fighting crime to see the castle saved and returned to its rightful owner. The astute reader will guess his identity before the novel is over—he is King Richard, and his return restores the social order to not only the castle but also to England.

I'm glad Tichelaar drew my attention to the book, and I can see why he draws attention to the resemblances between the "crusader" (not given a capital in the reissued novel) and later types like Batman. However, I see some objections to this comparison.

As I said in Part 1, I don't view "the crusader" or any of the other goodguy character in MONK, to be the main characters. They all exist to react against the schemes of Morgatani, much as Nayland Smith and Petrie define themselves by striving against Fu Manchu. Now, when one is dealing with putative ancestors of the superhero, it might not be strictly necessary that all such ancestors should be the stars of every show. Indeed, I tend to view Dirk Peters, a supporting character in Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 CONFESSIONS OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, to have certain "superhero-like" qualities.

Like Peters, the disguised Richard is, as Tichelaar says, shown to be very strong. However, there's nothing really "super" about his strength: he's just a tough, experienced warrior. Furthermore, the crusader doesn't actually do much in the story. He fights off a trio of assassins, and bullies Eldred and Agatha-- and that's about it. Morgatani tries to take his life a couple of times, but the two of them never engage directly, though Richard does seal the Black Monk's doom at the end.

I surmise that Tichelaar's biggest reason for viewing the crusader as a proto-superhero is that during part of the novel, he wears a mask, in contrast to the Richard of IVANHOE. However, the mask is only briefly an element in the crusader's getup. When he first comes to Brandon Castle, posing as a pilgrim, he enters with his regular face hanging out, and is simply fortunate that no one there recognizes him. The author then reasoned that a subtle fellow Morgatani probably would recognize the true King of England, though-- and for that reason, the author belatedly has the disguised king wear the velvet mask, at least until he's ready to unveil himself to all and sundry.

In a word, I don't consider that everyone who wears a mask fits the mold of the superhero. In this essay,  I noted how a character in Zane Grey's 1912 RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE went around in a mask, and was even given a fancy name, but that this character in no way participated in the superhero idiom:

This employment of a "masked rider" trope is thus entirely functional.  Bess wears a mask not to create an attitude of awe, as Zorro and the Durango Kid do, but only to camouflage her gender. (Since she is not known by any locals save the rustlers, the mask doesn't even serve to conceal her identity.)

Richard's mask does conceal his "secret identity," but again, I don't consider that he has created a double identity by donning a mask. Until the other characters in the novel are made privy to the Big Secret, he's just a pilgrim who evinces some weird habits.

If the crusader even had a moment in which he crossed swords with the main villain, as Nayland Smith and Petrie do with the minions of Fu Manchu, I might deem King Richard to be sort of a "subordinate hero" figure. But like the Richard in IVANHOE, the crusader is little more than a plot-device. He's less a subordinate hero than the "wild man" Nemoni, or a couple of the knights who more or less stand in for the absent Sir Rupert.

So-- supervillain yes. Superhero no.

THE READING RHEUM: THE BLACK MONK PT. 1

This review will cover two separate aspects of the 19th-century penny dreadful THE BLACK MONK, much as I did with Part 1 and Part 2 of my Fu Manchu-review. As usual, I discuss stuff about the ending, so SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS:

When a post on CLASSIC HORROR suggested that this serialized novel might be "the first superhero novel," I naturally had to give it a try. Though a prologue specifies that the book may've had more than one hand contributing to its rambling structure, the credited writer is the English author James Malcolm Rymer, best known for other "penny dreads" like VARNEY THE VAMPIRE and one of the first SWEENEY TODD books. 

Though MONK is not a rewrite of Scott's 1819 IVANHOE as the prologue claims, both stories take place in or around the 12th century, ostensibly the time when England's King Richard had gone off to the Crusades, leaving his brother John to run the country. MONK has definitely borrowed a Scott subplot. The primary plot of IVANHOE concerns the young titular knight's attempt to claim his bride Rowena while incidentally rescuing the Jewess Rebecca from an evil Templar Knight. However, a major subplot involves the covert return of Richard the Lion-Hearted to England. Scott imagines that Richard, after being ransomed from captivity in Europe, makes a clandestine return to his native land, hobnobs a little with Robin Hood, and then finds time to restore his rule over England and oust his ambitious brother John from the throne. 

I don't know how conversant the average "penny dreadful" reader would've been with IVANHOE by the time BLACK MONK was being serialized in 1844-45, so maybe the revelation of its mysterious "crusader's" secret identity was a really big surprise for that reader. Maybe I wouldn't have seen this plot-thread so transparent had I not recently read IVANHOE for the first time. Suffice to say, though, Richard is even more dilatory here about getting back to his throne, as he stops for several days at the fictional "Brandon Castle."

Brandon Castle is a great Gothic domain. First of all, there's one section of the castle, "the Grey Turret," where no one goes anymore because it's rumored to be haunted. The novel begins as the castle's lord, Sir Rupert Brandon, mourns over the untimely death of his wife Alice, and eventually leaves the castle to expunge his sorrows in the Crusades, Once he leaves, the castle is the site of two contending forces. One faction is made up of the various servants and men-at-arms who are loyal to Rupert (and who, though clearly viewed by the author as "good guys," were a little too "bully-boy" for my taste). The other faction is overtly represented by two of the lesser nobles who were siblings to the deceased Alice: the domineering Agatha and her cowardly brother Eldred. But the only reason that the two of them have any chance to gain dominion over the castle is because they have their own resident demon: the titular Black Monk, an evil Jesuit priest. Though banished from the castle by Rupert, the Black Monk conspires to have revenge upon the absent knight through the use of conspiracy, apparent hauntings (which he *may* create through psychic projection), alchemy, poisons, and his own Herculean strength.

Or so we arrive at the reason THE BLACK MONK is not IMO the "first superhero work," even if by that one means the first thing to emerge after the decline of the chivalric romances, circa the 15th-17th centuries. It might technically be called "the first supervillain work," though, for the novel is not based around a hero, but a villain. MONK has less in common with IVANHOE, which is the story of a hero's conflict with a memorable but subordinate villain, than with the popular Gothics of the previous generation, where fiends with named like Manfred and Montoni were the most powerful presences. The Black Monk himself, given the single proper name Morgatani, is not any deeper than any of the novel's other one-note characters. But Morgatani is definitely not just a mundane villain on the level of Dickens types like Uriah Heep and Daniel Quilp. Morgatani, thanks to his metaphenomenal attainments, is definitely an ancestor to the "super-villain"-- and unlike many other Gothic villains, Morgatani's even a combative type, able to stand toe-to-toe in a swordfight with his major opponent, a mad forest-dweller named Nemoni (possibly named for Heracles' beastly foe the Nemean Lion). When, toward the end of the novel, he declares, "I am the evil genius of Brandon Castle," he takes his place at the head of early super-villains like Robur and Fu Manchu.

Now, I've written in other essays that I believe that the superhero and the supervillain are part of the same idiom, so in THAT sense, THE BLACK MONK has some importance to what I've termed "the superhero idiom." Still, on balance I feel that MONK is more of a transitional work to the fully formed idiom, much like (to name an even earlier putative ancestor to the superhero) Rudolf Raspe's 1781 wonder-working fictionalization of the real-life Baron Munchhausen.

As to the claims of any of the book's heroes to be a "superhero"-- see Part 2. 

MYTHCOMICS: "THE SIVANA FAMILY STRIKES" (MARVEL FAMILY #10, 1947)

During the Golden Age of Comics (1938-54), DC Comics' Superman and Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel competed on newsstands for the dimes of juvenile readers and in courts for the right of the Big Red Cheese to challenge the Man of Steel. But who won the aesthetic battle, if one concentrates only on the stories that appeared up to 1954? (Partly in response to the court-case, Fawcett quit publishing Captain Marvel and its other adventure-characters in 1953.)

Both of these super-powered characters had extremely resonant origins, as I've analyzed here and here. However, later adventures of Superman, Captain Marvel, and the various starring characters linked to the Captain tended to be very simple, gimmick-oriented short stories. This shouldn't be surprising, since the majority of all Golden Age stories in all genres are on the same aesthetic level. The most one could say is that the level of writing and artwork in the Captain Marvel universe was probably a little higher than was seen in the Superman mythos.

The Fawcett universe builds up some features of the hero's mythology-- the role of the Captain's literally spiritual mentor Shazam, the role of the ancient gods in assorted stories-- while, in contrast, DC only rarely used the world of Krypton to give Golden Age Superman a mythic background. Yet even though mythic elements were more present in the Captain Marvel cosmos, they still weren't all that well developed-- with the exception of this 1947 story, authored by Otto Binder and drawn by a bevy of artists, including C.C. Beck, Pete Costanza, Jack Binder and Bud Thompson. Binder may have striven to come up with something a little more elaborate this time, given the momentous nature of the encounter between the heroes (the Captain, his sister Mary Marvel and buddy Captain Marvel Jr) and the titular "Sivana Family." Although Doctor Sivana had appeared in Marvel's first outing, while his evil offspring Georgia and Sivana Junior had shown up in separate stories, this was apparently the first time all the Sivanas joined to fight all of the Marvels. In many ways this story combined both a "brains vs. brawn" theme and a "science vs. magic" theme, with the result that magic is represented by good-looking brawn (including the demure-looking but powerful Mary Marvel) and science by ugly nerds.

Sivana starts the hostilities by informing his kids that he can soon destroy the Marvel Family with a special machine, though his machine needs "power even greater than that of the atomic bomb." Binder, building on erroneous research to the effect that atom bombs back then used two existing elements (plutonium yes, neptunium no), has Junior tell his papa that there's another powerful element capable of yielding the power they want. The element exists in three different forms-- electrium, neutrium, and protium, which Binder has transparently named after the traditional three particles of the atom-- but these forms don't exist in the same temporal era. Protium is the earliest form, which will transform into neutrium in 10,000 years, and then into electrium in another 10,000 years. None of the element-forms alone will give the Sivanas the power they want, but the villains can obtain all three forms by using time-travel.

Here's one of two places where Fawcett's concepts of magic and science overlap willy-nilly. Sivana and his kids board a spaceship, for the good doctor has already invented FTL travel. "According to Einstein"s formula," the mad scientist exults, going at light-speed will throw the ship "out of the universe, into Eternity." I rather doubt Einstein said anything like this, especially since Fawcett's idea of this realm of space-time is that it's dominated by Old Shazam's personal mountaintop, the Rock of Eternity. Unscientific though the trope is, it provides one of Fawcett's most mythic uses of the mountain, as a cosmic axis around which real space-time revolves. Once Sivana's ship lands on the Rock, it's easy for him and his kids to employ three separate space-crafts to zoom through time to the respective eras where they'll find the necessary element-forms.

The spirit-form of Old Shazam, seeing the villains' advent, alerts the Marvels. The heroes change from their mortal forms into the Marvel Family and each of them pursues one of the time-ships.

Now, Binder could have simply sent the Sivanas and their pursuers to three unrelated locations. Gardner Fox had done something similar in a 1942 JUSTICE SOCIETY story. Instead, Binder links the element-quest to one of the West's enduring legends, that of the sunken city of Atlantis.

Mary Marvel follows Georgia Sivana to the ancient era when Atlantis had not yet sunk beneath the ocean-waves, so Mary's segment gets to explicate the pattern for the next two segments. Georgia uses archaeological remains to track down the element protium to a scientist, Chal-Patzun, who, like another Jor-El, has failed to convince his fellow Atlanteans of their common danger. The scientist plans to use the protium to prevent the city's inundation, but Georgia interferes by trying to steal the precious element. Mary Marvel arrives to stop the nasty girl, and then finds out that Chal-Patzun has laid plans to assure that, even if he can't save Atlantis, future members of his family will revive the sunken city in a far-off era.

Binder's attempt to extend the family-metaphor not only to the scientist and his descendants but also to the element-forms is a bit strained, but better too much ambition than too little. Since Mary can't be allowed to win this easily, she suffers a reversal when she transforms into her mortal form. Georgia gets hold of one vial of protium, but leaves two others behind, so that over thousands of years they will take on the forms that Sivana and Sivana Jr, will seek. Georgia also absconds with the bound Mary and leaves Atlantis to its historical doom.

The segments devotes to the exploits of Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr inevitably follow the same progress. Sivana seeks out the 20th century, where a scientist named Patterson, descended from Chal-Patzun, rather improbably knows all about the situation with the three elements, and even knows (but has never revealed) the location of the sunken city. Sivana forces Patterson to seek out Atlantis, and once there, the villain promptly steals a second vial of the element, which has now converted into neutrium. Captain Marvel shows up, but Sivana uses an artificial means of transforming the hero into his helpless mortal form. For good measure, Sivana shoots Patterson dead, but since the scientist was too good a villain to lose, there are never any consequences for this murder.

And much the same happens in the far far future to the two Juniors. In the future a young scientist, Chass Passon, finds his way to sunken Atlantis after locating the records of his ancestor. Miracle of miracles, the ancient machine built by Chal-Patzun, and it even works with the one remaining vial, which now contains electrium. Captain Marvel Jr attacks Sivana Jr, but can't keep the wily youth from getting away. In due course, this hero too reverts to his mortal form and gets knocked out by Junior, who gets away with the electrium and with his captive. Chass Passon is injured but apparently not slain, and perhaps lives to enjoy the repute of re-discovering Atlantis.

The evildoers converge on Sivana Senior's laboratory and power up his mystery machine with the three element-forms. Then Sivana twists the knife on the three de-powered heroes, revealing that they can no longer call down their magic lightning because the machine sets up an "electron shell" around the planet Earth.

For the second time, magic and science overlap in a way that another junior, John W. Campbell, would never have countenanced. And for the capper, the Sivanas-- who believe that their great science will make them lords of the world once the Marvels are gone-- decide to execute their enemies through the supposed "sport of kings"-- which should really have been called "the most dangerous game."

However, even if the Marvels don't have deep-thinking brains, they possess as much if not more cunning than the villains, and in due time the Sivanas are once more defeated and imprisoned.

Golden Age Superman stories often avoided the fantasy-potential of their heroic character in favor of mundane mysteries and romantic melodrama. In contrast, the Captain Marvel line never suffered from a shortage of fantasy-concepts. Yet it was rare for the fantasies to be given the symbolic density of this Binder story. All too often, Fawcett authors "coasted" on the general sense of fairy-tale whimsy. Ironically, after Fawcett was out of the superhero business, DC's Superman line began employing ex-Fawcett people like Binder, and the Super-Universe began using more fairy-tale elements. However, perhaps because Superman had more of a romantic tradition-- in contrast to Fawcett, which usually avoided romance-elements-- the Silver Age super-books crossbred fantastic whimsy with the deeper emotionality of melodrama, yielding a product superior to either of the Golden Age concepts.

Here's the entire "Sivana Family" tale.