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.

NULL-MYTHS: "SPIDERMAN AND HIS WEB OF DOOM" (THE THING #7, 1953)

I probably wouldn't bother mentioning this minor story from Charlton's generally pedestrian horror-comic THE THING if it didn't happen to use the name "Spiderman" for its ghoul star, and if Steve Ditko didn't happen to be an occasional contributor to the title. But I'm not implying any influence, given that there's a very well-documented narrative as to how Jack Kirby brought the name "Spider-Man" to the attention of Stan Lee, who in turn teamed with Ditko on the resulting superhero. So this time the coincidence between "a title Steve Ditko worked on" and the name "Spiderman" seems to be nugatory, particularly because Ditko did not contribute to this issue and probably never read the comic except to check his own works.

An additional odd detail is that GCD attributes the story to Walter "The Shadow" Gibson, but if his other scare-stories are this lame, that explains why no one regards him as a horror-tale writer. An ordinary couple rents an old house from a creepy old fellow with the name of "Nemo" (though the name-use doesn't resonate with either Homer or Jules Verne). But Nemo tells the couple that no one should venture into the attic. He later tells the reader he knows no woman can resist opening a forbidden room, and sure enough, the wife does so. After a few false starts, Nemo, transformed into "Spiderman," attacks her, but only sucks her blood and lets her walk around the house like a zombie. The husband twigs to the plans of the arachnid menace and sets the house on fire, consigning Spiderman to burn up with his "web of doom."

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.