MYTHCOMICS: "THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS" (THE THING #17, 1954)

Even hardcore fans of old horror comics probably don't think much about Charlton's 17-issue title THE THING except insofar as Steve Ditko contributed both stories and cover art, such as the one seen above. And I'd have to say that most of the offerings were ordinary creep-tales without the gore that aroused the ire of parents and eradicated almost everything in the genre, aside from even blander work like DC's HOUSE OF MYSTERY. 

One of the gimmicks the editors used in THE THING were spoofs of famous fairy tales, which may have been an imitation of a similar concept seen in some of EC's horror comics. And in the last issue one such story, "Through the Looking Glass," managed a stronger symbolic discourse based on Lewis Carroll's ALICE books. The art was signed "Kirk," while GCD speculates that the writer may have been long-time Charlton workhorse Joe Gill. Comics fans know him best for collaborating on such sixties superheroes as Captain Atom and Peacemaker, though IMO his best credited work was on a tough detective, Sarge Steel.

In my review of the two, I pointed out that Carroll's Alice showed a certain amount of egotism and illogicality not always seen in film adaptations. "Glass" goes further, making the little blonde cherub (apparently a 1950s version) a holy terror. Whatever ambivalence Original Alice had as to her seven-year-old status, Cruel Alice hates children's books with a passion.

I'm not sure why Gill chose to have this Alice read THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, since like almost everyone else, he doesn't stick to adapting that book, or to ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but just jumbles together elements from both novels. She falls into a dream, and then falls literally, as down a rabbit-hole, and ends up in a "pool of tears," which has no context since this Alice never grows giant-size and sheds giant-sized tears.Instead of meeting a bunch of woodland creatures, Cruel Alice beholds a group of grisly ghouls who immediately announce their intention to eat her, which is a simplified version of the Carroll-theme I termed "omniphagia." Cruel Alice doesn't seem fazed by the threat. If anything, she decides right away that all these weird things mean that she's dreaming (which never occurs to Original Alice) and that now "I can be as cruel as I want."

Compared to what she does to the ghouls, Cruel Alice is almost merciful to the Cheshire Were-Cat. She meets the Mad Hatter and March Hare at their Mad Tea Party (as well as a background character who looks a bit like The Carpenter). The partygoers show Alice that they have no mercy to their Wonderland kind, offering her to snack on the dead body of the Dormouse before they dine on her. A handy beehive full of "killer bees" solves that problem, and then she meets the King and Queen of Hearts playing croquet (though not with flamingos). They claim to be civilized cards and they even show her their lovely dam.

The dam (not in Carroll) is just a setup for another drowning-death, as Cruel Alice shows the cards how to play poker, introducing them to a "royal flush." Her next two encounters are with the scions of the Looking-Glass World rather than Wonderland, the talking flowers and Humpty Dumpty, both of whom she happily expunges, albeit only after they provoke her.

Whereas Original Alice finds her occasional egotism dwarfed by the selfish and quarrelsome nature of the natives of her dream-lands, Cruel Alice absolutely outdoes her perpetually hungry dream-folk in unrelenting cruelty. In fact, when the remaining "citizens of Wonderland" beseige her, she apparently dreams up growth pills, ducks into a rat-hole (substitute for a rabbit-hole?) and makes herself a colossus so she can stomp everyone else to death. But whereas Original Alice escapes Wonderland in part by Getting Tall, for Cruel Alice getting too big for her britches proves a crushing experience-- because, for some damn reason the author can't trouble to explain, the homicidal child isn't dreaming.

"Glass" may not be a great story, even for Golden Age comics. But it's closer to the mythic meaning of Lewis Carroll than the majority of film adaptations, much less ungodly messes like THE OZ-WONDERLAND WAR. 

Though I've reprinted the whole story here, it's probably easier to read here.

THE READING RHEUM: THE ALICE BOOKS (1865/1871)

 

What do you suppose is the use of a child without meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning-- and a child's more important than a joke, I hope.-- The Red Queen, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS.

Though both the Red and White Queens talk a great deal of nonsense, there's actually a good deal of sense in what this royal chess-piece says to Alice, even if the response is disproportionate to Alice's line, "I sure I didn't mean--" (the thing the Queen attributed to her).

Now, since Lewis Carroll was a self-appointed apostle of nonsense, "making sense" is not necessarily a good thing. The author had already expressed a dim opinion of a similar outlook in WONDERLAND, when the Duchess self-importantly informs Alice that "everything's got a moral, if only you can find it." 

Clearly Carroll means for readers to laugh at the presumption of both the Duchess and the Red Queen and to embrace the lunacy of the author's mad, mad worlds. The two ALICE books are meant to delight children (and adults) with every sort of word-play imaginable-- which is to say, telling jokes whose appeal is that they don't apparently mean anything. Though Carroll avoids taking a philosophical position in the books, since that would be too much like "sense," it seems obvious to me that he rejected the utilitarianism of his time that would say a child only has "meaning" if he or she is "moral." The ALICE books are in every way a "vacation from morals."

That does not necessarily mean, though, that Carroll's works are a "vacation from meaning." And by "meaning," I'm not talking about allusions, like the allusions to familiar nursery-rhymes or well known political figures. I'm talking about Carroll using his unique logical system to mirror mad dreams with their own internal logic, a logic drawn from common human fears and anxieties. The primary tropes I find in both books are:

(1) Frequent references to injury and death, starting in WONDERLAND with Alice speculating on what would happen after she falls off the roof of a house-- though I like better the second one, where she wonders what it would be like to he a candle-flame once it was snuffed out. LOOKING GLASS begins much the same, in that before Alice goes through the mirror, she remembers having playfully told her nurse to pretend she's a bone while Alice is a hyena eating the bone.

(2) A trope I call "omniphagia" is related to the death-and-injury trope but not identical. All children are obliged to grapple with the fact that they, as living things, must devour other living things to survive. Carroll's worlds are defined by the sense that "everybody eats everybody," and this trope extends from the cake and drink labeled "EAT ME" to the foodstuffs that come alive on the Queens' table before one can devour them. 

(3) Egotism and quarrelsomeness. Only rarely does any character tender useful advice to Alice (the Caterpillar is one exception), and that's usually because they're busy pontificating on whatever's important to them. When any of these butt-headed characters butt heads, they get into ridiculous fights, though LOOKING GLASS emphasizes such conflicts more than WONDERLAND. I tend to class all the size-changing episodes under the "egotism" trope, for when she's small, Alice has to worry about being eaten by crows or puppies, and when she's tall, she has to contend with getting her long neck stuck in the trees.

(4) Inconstant motion. In both books Alice experiences long falls that seem to take a great deal of time, and LOOKING GLASS stresses that the Red Queen must constantly keep running to stay in the same place. Though WONDERLAND includes many examples of sudden transitions, like the door in the tree that leads Alice back to the long hall, LOOKING GLASS provided a sort-of rationale for said transitions in the chessboard pattern of the domain. Not that Alice always needs to move between squares: she undergoes at least three transitions in the shop run by The Goat, a character I've yet to see appear in any adaptation.

(5) Finally, the meanings of both words and one's sense of identity are just as inconstant. Alice can't say a word without one of the Carrollian creatures inverting her words or interrogating her intent to looney effects. And when Alice can't remember the correct words to familiar poems like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "Father William," she immediately begins to doubt her identity. Throughout both books, various characters forget who they are and what they intend doing. Arguably WONDERLAND emphasizes this trope more than the other book, culminating in a group of jurors who can't recall their names unless they write them down. The arbitrariness of legal systems is also one that takes refuge in the meaninglessness of jargon, as with "sentence first, evidence afterwards." Most of Carroll's logic games in both books depend on the many-sided nature of words and expressions.

Because the ALICE books depict two nonsense-realms where all the denizens are mad and no form of logic applies, I deem them both to fit Northrup Frye's category of "the irony." With respect to focal presences, I've stated before that I consider Alice to be largely a viewpoint-character, even though her own egotism and sometimes erratic grasp of logic makes her a stronger character than most similar ones. But it's the denizens of the two weird realms who form the superordinate ensemble. In WONDERLAND, the narratively important characters are the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse, the Cheshire Cat (none of whom were in the 1864 draft), the Caterpillar, the Queen and King of Hearts, the White Rabbit, the Mock Turtle, and the Duchess. Others, such as the Gryphon and the various minor animals Alice encounters, form a subordinate ensemble. LOOKING GLASS is not nearly as rich in original characters, which is probably why many adaptations fold some or all of LOOKING GLASS's superordinate icons into the WONDERLAND universe-- usually Humpty Dumpty (whom Carroll did not invent), Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Red and White Queens, and (more rarely) the White Knight. The aforementioned Goat and the Gnat seem more like undistinguished spear-carrier types. However, Carroll allotted two subordinate "guest appearances" in LOOKING GLASS to the Hare and the Hatter, though both appear under pseudonyms.

All and all, though LOOKING GLASS hasn't been mined nearly as much as WONDERLAND, both deserve their status as literary classics for all ages. One documentary claimed that the ALICE books are the works most quoted after the Bible and Shakespeare, and that speaks to the author's incredible facility with the mysteries of language and logic.

NULL-MYTHS: THE OZ-WONDERLAND WAR (1985)

 

By coincidence, this null-myth suffers from the same symbolic deficiency as the last one I reviewed here, WONDER WOMAN: WAR OF THE GODS.  Said deficiency might be called "the shoehorn problem," in which the creator becomes preoccupied (whether out of personal taste or from business considerations) with shoehorning so many disparate elements into the narrative that none of them possess any individual charm. But whereas as a multi-crossover work like WAR OF THE GODS had to tie into a dozen or more other DC comics features, the raconteurs behind this 1985 project-- plotter E. Nelson Bridwell, scripter Joey Cavalieri, and artist Carol Lay-- might have been able to trim away a lot of the extraneous elements in order to allow the strictly necessary characters some room to breathe. (To be sure, the project's editor was Roy Thomas, so based on his eighties writing, he too might have thought that "more is always better.")

Right off the bat, the project-- henceforth abbreviated to OZ-- has to work with a team of seven main characters, the members of "Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew." This group of anthropomorphic animal-superheroes debuted in 1982, written by Roy Thomas and penciled by Scott Shaw, and the OZ storyline was originally intended to appear in the regular magazine. The feature was cancelled, so the idea of the Zoo Crew countering a threat to both the fantasy-lands of L. Frank Baum's Oz and of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland became a stand-alone opus. The narrative consisted of three issues published in 1985, just one year before Captain Carrot's world of humanoid animals would be expunged (however temporarily) by the Crisis of Infinite Earths.

I should note here that I was not a fan of CAPTAIN CARROT at its best moments, for its creators tried to walk a tightrope between adventure and humor, and succeeded in neither arena. At most I experienced a mild liking for the design of the group's "Thing," a big porcine crusader named Pig Iron. But all the others were tedious in the extreme. If they weren't just blandly designed and poorly characterized-- Captain Carrot, Rubberduck, Fastback and Little Cheese-- they also had horribly punny names like Yankee Poodle and (ugh) Alley-Kat-Abra. So on top of finding deeds for all seven of these comical crusaders to accomplish in the narrative proper, Bridwell and Cavalieri-- possibly working to Thomas's specifications-- had to find a rationale for the beast-heroes to go adventuring in both Oz and Wonderland. Further, while the title seems to suggest a literal martial conflict between those two fantasy-domains, the truth is that there's just one evil overlord, the Oz-derived "Nome King," who's attempting to subjugate both realms.

I won't dilate upon the plot, which IMO is just a patchwork of episodes in which the Zoo Crew jaunts from one fantasy-realm to another for this or that forgettable errand. This extremely loose structure allows the writers to work in numerous characters from Baum and from Carroll, which might have worked out well if Bridwell or Cavalieri had shown any ability to continue the witty characterizations of such figures as the Mad Hatter or Dorothy Gale (who appears in OZ, though there's no accounting for Alice, the feminine muse for Wonderland). But the writers might as well have been attempting to emulate stock figures for a D&D game. As with the regular ZOO CREW comic, OZ is astoundingly unfunny and underwhelming in the adventure department.

Carol Lay's art is OZ's only saving grace, for her successful tightrope-act consists of rendering all the beast-heroes in typical bigfoot style, while the Carroll characters are all rendered along the lines of illustrator John Tenniel and the Oz characters follow the conceptualizations of illustrators Neill and Denslow. And there's one decent joke at the end of OZ, for after Captain Carrot has returned to his home from defeating the Nome King, the story ends with him getting yet more barely-welcome visitors: DC's klutz-heroes The Inferior Five. Their appearance is just a nod from Bridwell, since he wrote the Five's series, which I think is probably more fondly remembered than Captain Carrot even though the former didn't even rack up twenty issues. Frankly, since Bridwell seemed in my opinion more comfortable with writing the Five's baggy-pants comedy, a Five crossover with the Zoo Crew might have stood a slightly greater chance of being funny. 

I suppose that one other positive aspect of this project is that its concentration on Oz-mythology-- a necessary result of the multitude of Oz-books compared to the two canonical Carroll tomes-- might make some readers want to sample the Baum canon. 

OUT WITH THE BAD WILL, IN WITH THE GOOD

On this blog I've written a good deal about the theories of "will" expoused by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and have formulated a literary "theory of two wills," influenced by Schopenhauer, in which literary characters are dominated either by the "idealizing will" or the "existential will." However, the English word "will" doesn't adapt well to the adjectival form, which is what I need in reconsidering the arguments stated in 2014's EGO, MEET OBJECT.

In that essay, I meditated on Jung's distinctions between "extrovert and introvert" in his book PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES, also classified as "object-oriented" and "ego-oriented." I've sometimes considered applying the former set of terms to the two different ways focal presences resolve themselves in fiction. However, the informal meanings of "extrovert and introvert" are far too limiting, while the terms "ego-oriented" and "object-oriented," while closer to my needs, are cumbersome.

Now, in 2009's SEVEN WAYS FROM SCHOPENHAUER, I defined the philosopher's idea of "Will" as "the radical root of all literary activity." This means that, no matter what sort of viewpoint character the author may choose, he may focus as easily upon the "will" within the viewpoint character (or on some figure allied to him, or an ensemble of such characters), OR upon things, people, or phenomena that are perceived as "the other" to the viewpoint character's will.

The Greek word for will is (more or less) *thel.* Thanks to the wonders of search-engines, I've discovered that one author has coined the term "thelic" as an adjective for will, and also that he's using that term for a purpose quite unlike my own. Therefore I will appropriate the term for fiction only, and apply it only to the orientation of the focal presence in narrative.

In place of "ego-oriented," I'll speak of the *endothelic,* meaning that the narrative is focused upon the will of the viewpoint character or of someone or something that shares that character's interests.

In place of "object-oriented," I'll speak of the *exothelic,* meaning that the narrative is focused upon the will of "the other," something outside the interests of the viewpoint character, though not necessarily opposed to them.

This adjectival terminology solves the clumsiness I mentioned in EGO, MEET OBJECT in that a term like "exothelic" applies as well to a place like Wonderland or a character like Dracula. In addition, since I allow for the association between the ego of the viewpoint character and any representative affiliated figure within the same "endothelic" constellation, that not only subsumes narratives like Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" prose tales-- where the star of the show only rarely becomes the viewpoint character-- but also for examples of *exteriorization,* as seen in the essay DJINN WITH SUMMONER. By this logic, the non-sentient Gigantor-- the star of the teleseries and of (presumably) the manga series as well-- is *endothelic* even though he has no diegetic "will" of his own, because Gigantor is associated with a sentient will through his controller Jimmy Sparks. In contrast, a cognate robot-hero like Astro Boy displays sentience, and therefore does not actually need an interaction with humans to be his "summoners," although the associations don't hurt the robot-boy's claims to human sympathy.

I mentioned Wonderland above, which is clearly the focus of Lewis Carroll's books, which would be *exothelic,* as are most film-adaptations, with the exception of the 2010 Tim Burton film, which becomes *endothelic* by virtue of emphasizing the will of Alice rather than of Wonderland.

Keeping to the context of environments, in OBJECTS GIVEN LUSTER. I used the example of the 1950 WEIRD SCIENCE story "The Destruction of the Earth" in order to demonstrate that the narrative's focus was not upon any of the niggling human characters, but upon the Destroyed Earth itself, whose death-throes are given the most attention. I called it "object-oriented" before, but now it is *exothelic.*

In contrast, there are hundreds of stories dealing with the world's destruction that focus upon the aggrieved reactions of the viewpoint characters, all of which would be *endothelic.* Yet aggrieved reactions are not necessary, as I noted in my examinations of Ray Bradbury's short story "The Last Night of the World." In my first consideration of the story, I averred that the viewpoint characters' sanguinity about the world's end might be viewed as a form of negative will, akin to Nietzsche's "will to nothingness." But in my revised outlook here, I decided that even though the nameless viewpoint characters do nothing to bring about the cataclysm, they are stand-ins for the author's POV.

Thus Bradbury's strategy for giving "new life and force" to the overly familiar threat of nuclear war was to undercut its power by invoking a greater power, one that simply chooses to end the story of mankind in the manner of "the closing of a book"-- an apt metaphor for a writer frustrated with the follies of mankind.

Therefore in this case, although the narrative still concerns the world's end, the focal presences are the two nearly anonymous "husband and wife" who calmly observe that ending with a dignity that the author finds appropriate-- while the nature of the world's end is at best a subsidiary phenomenon.

TEN DYNAMIC DAEMONS

Having put forth the idea of "coherent improbabilities" here, it occured to me that though I've given examples of particular tropes or literary works that fit this category, characters are probably more accessible as exemplars.  Thus here are ten characters to match each of the ten tropes with which I've illustrated the manifestation of the "uncanny" phenomenality.

In all but one case, I chose an exemplar who appeared during the period that gave birth to the phenomenon of popular fiction, though a few of my choices come from canonical literary works.

ASTOUNDING ANIMALS-- Moby Dick, from Herman Melville's MOBY DICK.  Melville's book technically remains within the causal realm in a cognitive sense-- that is, the colossal cetacean is constantly compared with godlike beings, but there's no evidence that he's anything but a formidable animal.  But the Great White Whale, like his obsessed co-star Ahab, dwell in a world that constantly pushes into the metaphenomenal in a purely affective sense.

BIZARRE CRIMES-- Juliette, from the novel of the same name by the Marquis deSade. Sade is, in his way, something of an apostle of naturalism to the extent that he constantly denies the ideas of divinity.  Nevertheless, for Sade as for Goethe the motto is, "In the Beginning was the Act!"  But for Sade the act is not creation, but the obsessive need to find new and more exotic ways to destroy human beings-- a need which seems embodied most strongly in the character of Juliette, the blood-hungry sister of the innocent Justine.

DELIRIOUS DREAMS AND FALLACIOUS FIGMENTS-- Alice, from Lewis Carroll's two books starring that prodigious dreamer.  Within this trope, even though causality seems to win the game when Alice wakes from her descent into meaningful nonsense, it's the dreams that become more real to us than the reality.

ENTHRALLING HYPNOTISM AND ILLUSIONISM-- Svengali, from the 1894 TRILBY by George DuMaurier.  As yet I haven't reviewed any of the films starring literature's most famous
hypnotist, though most moderns know the Svengali of the movies if they know him at all.  As noted elsewhere, both "hypnotism" and "illusionism" have the effect of waking persons that dreams do upon the dreamer; making the impossible and improbable become real for the subjects.

EXOTIC LANDS AND CUSTOMS-- Allen Quatermain, from H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel KING SOLOMON'S MINES.  The novel is famous for launching the genre of the "Lost World story," in which an archaic civilization has managed to survive in some remote corner of the world without contact with the onrush of history.  I have not read any of the "Allen" books aside from the one in which Haggard encountered Haggard's other great character, "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed," but have gained the impression that most of the other Allen books possess an uncanny phenomenality, rather than a marvelous or naturalistic one.

FREAKISH FLESH-- Quasimodo,from Victor Hugo's 1831.  Though Hugo's original novel hews closer to the genre of the "historical novel" than that of horror, the image of the hunchback-- be it Quasimodo's or that of some lesser epigone-- has become a familiar icon of horror.  In contrast to a naturalistic exhibition of a "freak of nature," as one sees in the 1980 David Lynch film THE ELEPHANT MAN, Quasimodo's physical freakishness in the novel is constantly tied to the dark nature of humankind as a whole.

OUTRE OUTFITS, SKILLS, AND DEVICES-- These three aspects do not always occur together in a given character, though I group them together because weapons and costumes, as much as a character's physical skills, are extensions of his persona as an uncanny spectre.  One character who combines all three in significant fashion is The Lone Ranger, spawned by a 1933 radio series.  Although the hero moves through a largely naturalistic world in most of his incarnations, the very notion of an Old West champion able to dispense justice despite wearing a bandit's mask and firing silver bullets with flawless accuracy, is a figure who resides only in an uncanny domain.

PERILOUS PSYCHOS-- Norman Bates, from Robert Bloch's 1959 novel PSYCHO.  Though Jack the Ripper is a more famous psycho-killer, he's disallowed here by virtue of being a real character, however mysterious.  The Norman birthed by Bloch and midwifed by Hitchcock seems to have the fictional psycho who, directly or indirectly, spawned the greatest number of imitators.  Some of these may be considered merely naturalistic versions of the original, as with the current BATES MOTEL teleseries.  But an uncanny psycho is always discernible by his ability to invoke more "dread" than simple physical "fear."

 PHANTASMAL FIGURATIONS-- The Phantom of the Opera, from Gaston Leroux's 1909 serial novel of that name.  Leroux also employs the trope "freakish flesh" for this famed monstrous presence, but the trope that most informs the novel is the character's ability to lurk beneath the Paris Opera House, pretending to be "the Opera Ghost."  Regardless as to whether readers believed or did not believe in the existence of this particular ghost at the outset, the Phantom remains far more than the sum of his impostures.

WEIRD SOCIETIES AND FAMILIES-- Fu Manchu, first appearing in Sax Rohmer's 1913 MYSTERY OF FU-MANCHU.  Admittedly, even in that first novel, Fu Manchu displayed more "marvelous" characteristics than any of the other characters cited here, in that he often controlled assorted weapons of "mad science." At base, though, Fu Manchu's greatest appeal to readers was one that did not depend on the marvelous elements of the series: his status as a sort of "Alexander the Great" of Oriental Evil, in that his "Si-Fan" organization embraced a wildly diverse group of Asian fiends-- Indian thuggee, Burmese dacoits, the Sea-Dyaks of Borneo, and so on.  This vast conspiracy by itself stands as one of the period's best evocations of a "weird society" that goes beyond the bounds of a mere criminal organization, and sometimes seems more like a "Pandemonium" presided over by the Satanic genius.