QUICKIE REVIEWS OF (FAIRLY) NEW STUFF

Probably because of my current fascination with crossovers, I've been seeking out whatever related items I could find in public libraries. None of my readings have been impressive enough for a full review, but I might as well set down a few impressions of 21st-century treatments of crossovers.

First, though, I'll note that prior to these investigations I reread all the WEST COAST AVENGERS issues written by Steve Englehart in the 1980s. I enjoyed these stories much more than the current offerings, for all that I don't have a ton of remarks on this mini-oeuvre. My main takeaway is that in the eighties, the ideal of Marvel continuity was still rigorous enough that a hardcore fan-writer like Englehart could bring together dozens of stories by himself and other raconteurs in order to forge the identity of the WCA super-group. Characters like Tigra, who had flourished neither in solo outings nor in the original, New York-based Avengers acquired much more substance as a result of Englehart's efforts. Not all his decisions were without flaw-- Moon Knight as Avenger was never a good fit-- but it's a solid series, regrettably torpedoed when fan-favorite John Byrne took over the title.

I can't pin down a particular diegetic event that made Marvel less unitary in its approach to continuity, though I imagine the two main factors in the twenty-first century were (a) the emphasis on "celebrity" arists and writers, who would often just do their take on a given character or series and not worry about being "in continuity," and (b) the fact that by the 2000s there was just too much continuity to keep track of. Thus in all of the books I explored, continuity is something of a "catch as catch can" game.

DOCTOR STRANGE DAMNATION-- One of the co-authors of this outing was Nick Spenser, who gained fame (or infamy) for the fake-out story in which Captain America was revealed to be a Hydra agent and thus a kissing cousin to Nazism. DAMNATION spins off a development in some other story, wherein all of Las Vegas is destroyed. The Master of the Mystic Arts arrives and brings the city and all its slain people back into existence (sort of a lesser version of the reveral of "the Thanos snap.") But before being destroyed the Nevada "sin city" went to hell, and now Mephisto controls the strings of the reborn metropolis. Strange then forms a team of mostly oddball choices to beat the devil. Biggest plus is that the concentration on the fate of one city proves more appealing than the usual universe-threat. Biggest minus is that none of Strange's allies play off one another in any interesting ways, so the crossover aspect is wasted.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Volumes 1-3-- These were all Brian Michael Bendis stories, and as such they're very freeform, with minimal plotting. There are a few good fight-scenes, particularly the one between Gamora and Angela. (I'd never heard that Marvel bought the character off Neil Gaiman. Way to get rid of some dead weight, Gaiman.) But Bendis most reminds me of the dozens of TV writers who tried to write like Joss "BUFFY" Whedon. Those writers missed that each of Whedon's characters had individual voices, and so just gave everyone funny-sardonic lines. Bendis is like these writers, except he's never funny.

FEARLESS DEFENDERS-- Don't think I ever read Cullen Bunn before, though I'd heard his name. This six-issue tale, titled DOOM MAIDENS, teams up one actual Defender, The Valkyie, with a motley crew of unattached Marvel femmes: Misty Knight, the New Mutant once called Mirage, and "Warrior Woman," which is a new name for the Amazon Hippolyta. Oh, and there's a lesbian scientist who tries to get it on with Valkyrie, so that helped Bunn get a GLAAD nomination, but she's pretty forgettable. The "doom maidens" of the story are a bunch of dead Valkyries brought back to life to menace the world, but Bunn can't get the vibe of Norse mythology to save his life. After being routed by the undead warriors, these dim Defenders debate bringing in other superheroes, even some male ones. But for fuzzy reasons, the Bad Valkyries can only be repelled by female heroes, which allows Bunn to work in eleven other heroines. Though this sounds like a potential Great Moment in Comics Pulchritude, the fights in FEARLESS are poorly choreographed and all the heroines sound like one another.

DEADMAN-- This was one of Neal Adams's swan songs, as he returned to the DC character that brought him to fans' attention, This godawful series might prove that a lot of old-school artists lost their discipline in the 21st century, except that I think Adams' early successes were largely contingent on his collaborators. DEADMAN makes all the other offerings look coherent by comparison, as the Ghoulish Guardian once more tries to figure who really, really killed him way back in the sixties. At least Bendis made some efforts, however limited, to distinguish his characters from one another, but here you've got characters as different as Deadman, the Spectre and the Phantom Stranger all speaking in one voice: The Last Angry Spook. In the sixties Adams' heavy melodrama was a breath of fresh air compared to the overemphasis on exposition, Now it's a stone drag, man.

SUPERMAN: AMERICAN ALIEN-- Another revisionist retelling of Superman's origins, emphasizing his identity as Clark Kent of Kansas. I don't know writer Max Landry, but he has better control of melodrama than anyone else being reviewed here. His Kryptonian hero does seem to get drunk on Earth-booze pretty damn easily, though. ALIEN contains yet another contentious first meeting between Batman and the hero who's not yet Superman, and I don't care for Superman getting the idea of his costume from the Gotham Guardian. Nice fight with Lobo at the end. Not likely to become a dominant paradigm for Superman's early years.

HOWLING COMMANDOS OF SHIELD-- I'd seen reference to this "SHIELD Monster Squad" in some SPIDER-MAN cartoon, so I had to check this out. Apparently most of the monster-themed characters had appeared in other Marvel titles, though I was only familiar with Man-Thing, Orrgo (one of those giant Kirby Kreatures from the early sixties), the short-lived Manphibian (whom I actually don't remember, though I think I have his first appearance), and SHIELD agents Jasper Sitwell and Dum Dum Dugan. Or rather, simulacra of the two agents, since Sitwell is a nearly brain-dead zombie and Dugan is an artificial version of the deceased original "Howler." The oldies and the relative "newbies" don't play off one another's powers very well, and some, like Man-Thing, just don't belong in the "spy game." However, artist Brent Schoonover provides some appealing action and emotional scenes, and writer Frank Barbiere does the best job of any writer here at giving each character a particular voice. I don't think these "Creature Commandos" went on to further adventures in the comics, but at least their one series was diverting.

MYTHCOMICS: "AND THERE WILL BE WORLDS ANEW" (DOCTOR STRANGE ANNUAL #1, 1976)

Since its inception, Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE has been such a triumph of visual design that a fair number of quality artists—Colan, Rogers, Starlin, and a host of others—sought to play baroque games of form and shape in the Sanctum That Ditko Drew. That said, though Ditko’s visual rendition of the doctor’s very strange worlds remains unsurpassed, the feature’s scripting was usually not quite as distinguished. Thus, though I’ve argued for the mythic depth of many tales from both of STRANGE’s co-creators Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, I’ve found little complexity in the Lee-Ditko stoiies of the “master of the mystic arts.” It’s been suggested that one of the two creators took some inspiration from the sixties bestsellers of alleged Tibetan monk T. Lobsang Rampa, insofar as those books introduced Western readers to complex concepts (however borrowed) of Tibetan sorcery. But if Rampa was the proximate source for DOCTOR STRANGE, neither Ditko nor Lee pursued any other aspects of esoteric tradition, Eastern or Western. While I would not have wanted to see the creativity of the feature straight-jacketed by adherence to occult doctrine—a failing of Steve Englehart’s version of the character— some metaphysical motifs might have kept the feature from having been so dominated by two principal plots: either Doc Strange goes to some alien dimension to fight tyrannical rulers there, or he defends Earth from being invaded by such extradimensional forces.

“And There Will be Worlds Anew” was ostensibly the sole creation of artist P. Craig Russell (more on that matter later), and there’s no more esoteric tradition in either his art or script than in most other adventures of Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme. However, Russell does pattern his stand-alone story on a metaphysical motif common to Western art: the close association of Beauty and Death. Many Russell works make no bones about his narrative inspirations, often adapted from or patterned after famous (and public-domain) operas like PELLEAS AND MELISANDE and Wagner’s RING continuity. In re-reading ‘Worlds,” I didn’t pin down any specific narratives on which Russell might have modeled his tale, though I did think of Poe’s little-known story “The Island of the Fay,” in which the main character fantasizes seeing the same scene from two viewpoints: a beautiful faerie-bower and a desolate wasteland.

For the first eight pages, “Worlds” isn’t much different from the average Doctor Strange story. Brooding in his domicile after a quarrel with his lover Clea, the magician receives tidings that she’s been kidnapped by an unknown entity. The hero seeks out “the Temple of Man,” which is apparently mainly a big old occult library. Strange’s characterization carries more currents of self-doubt than is usual, but it’s not significantly different from the Strange of more formulaic stories. And after the magician’s quest takes him to a never-visited dimension called Phaseworld, his first action is to engage in battle with the dimension’s ruler Lectra, much as the doctor would in many previous adventures. Lectra only wins the conflict by a standard villain-trope: she shows the hero an image of his beloved in captivity, and he’s forced to surrender to preserve Clea’s life.

However, with the standard Marvel pyrotechnics out of the way, Russell then devotes the remainder of “Worlds” to portraying the beauties of Phaseworld. The two mages set out for Lectra’s home city, Allandra, transported across “the currents of space” (and a relatively mundane-looking ocean) in a mystical ship. On the way a sea serpent attacks, and Strange wounds the creature before Lectra can explain that the beast is meant to guide them through stormy seas. Lectra thus gets to strut her stuff by forcing the storms to cease, conjuring up the Biblical motif. Once the seas are calm, the complex golden city of Allandra rises from the depths.

Russell makes Allandra a true faery-dwelling, all spires and minarets, with no indication that it was ever meant to be lived in. Up to this point Strange has seen no sentient beings except Lectra and a ship-crew of undead sailors. But the city has even fewer signs of life, causing Strange to think, “It is magnificence itself, a city of floating form and sculpture. And yet, beneath the fascination, I sense death.”

Once the two sorcerers arrive at the palace, Lectra outlines her plan to make Strange her consort. She doesn’t have the usual motive of wanting to spawn offspring, though, for her purpose is to meld her sorcerous powers with those of the hero in order to preserve Allandra from doom. She attributes the decay of her world to her sister Phaydra, who then makes an appearance, and the latter remains silent in contrast to Lectra’s volubility. 

However, the silent woman keeps company with a type of bird almost iconic in ballet and opera: a lovely white swan. The swan, name of Tempus, is able to speak for Phaydra, accusing Lectra of beginning their world’s doom by usurping the throne for “vainglorious lusts.” The two sisters battle magically. Strange interrupts the fight, wanting nothing but his missing beloved. The swan metamorphoses into an angel-winged man, and reveals that Clea was never Lectra’s prisoner. The revelation causes Lectra to hurl a spell at Tempus, but when he deflects, her magic destroys a “soul mirror,” leading to the deaths of both sisters and the world of Allandra. Strange alone escapes and returns to his own world.

The conjoined but opposing natures of the sisters is the dominant theme here, though only once does Russell gloss those natures, having the hunky swan-stud state that Lectra “possesses the evil of the mind” while Phaydra “holds the truth and good of the heart.” I’d like to say that this interpretation is supported by the Classical Greek names Russell invokes, but his characters don’t parallel in any meaningful way the stories told, respectively, of Classical Electra and Classical Phaedra. My best guess is that in the story of Electra, she represents Thanatos, since she’s willing to sacrifice Orestes so that their mutual father is avenged, while Phaedra is Eros, given that her passion for her stepson would’ve harmed no one had it not been forestalled by the priggishness of Hippolytus. But again—just a guess.

The original story appears with both scripting and co-plotting credits for Marv Wolfman, but in a COMICS JOURNAL interview Russell denied that Wolfman had done anything but provide dialogue. Many years later Russell persuaded Marvel to re-publish the story with his revisions to the art and the script, and as I have not read this version I cannot comment. Still, Russell’s art nouveau approach to the master magician was at least an improvement on the character’s generally-neglected metaphysical potential.

NEAR MYTHS: "NIGHTCRAWLER'S INFERNO" (X-MEN ANNUAL #4, 1980)

In the midst of his birthday celebration amid the other X-Men, Nightcrawler’s soul is stolen from his body. With the help of Doctor Strange, the X-Men conjure forth the spectre of the entity responsible for their friend’s “death:” a sorceress named Margali. She pulls Strange and the X-Men into the same other-dimensional prison to which she’s condemned Nightcrawler's soul: a world fashioned to resemble Dante’s Inferno.

Once the mutants and the master magician find their quarry, his “soul” has the same solidity as his body, and the heroes battle against the various demons as they follow Dante’s course of escape: descending to the center of hell. Once there, Margali reveals herself, but claims that she had nothing to do with the other heroes appearing in her other-dimensional world.

Her daughter Jimaine appears, attesting that she was actually responsible for bringing the other heroes to the hell-world, to help Nightcrawler. Margali relates that she became Nightcrawler’s foster mother when he was an orphaned infant, and that she raised him beside her natural children Jimaine and Stefan. However, Stefan apparently went mad and slaughtered people, forcing Nightcrawler to slay the young man. Margali, upon learning the truth, forgives her foster son and returns everyone, including Jimaine, to the real world.

At this point Jimaine reveals that she’s been watching over Nightcrawler for some time, disguising herself as a young woman, Amanda, whom Nightcrawler has been dating. This revelation—that Nightcrawler has been dating his foster sister—and perhaps more than dating, since he references “all we’ve done together”—raises the possibility that Nightcrawler might have had romantic relations with Jimaine while still living with her, Margali, and Stefan. Indeed, the tenuous explanation allotted to Stefan’s madness suggests that author Chris Claremont might have tossed in that rationale in place of some variation of “the Laertes trope,” in which a devoted brother seeks to kill his sister’s lover, whether out of sexual jealousy or mere protectiveness.

NEAR MYTHS: "THE END AT LAST" (STRANGE TALES #146, 1966)

Since this week's mythcomic falls into the domain of a metaphysical myth, this gives me an excuse to look at one of the most famous metaphysical myths in mainstream American comics.

Two issues prior to STRANGE TALES #146, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had just finished the longest, most ambitious story-line in the "Doctor Strange" feature, during which the master of the mystic arts was forced to run from pillar to post, fleeing the minions of his earthly enemy Baron Mordo, who in turn had been granted superior magical power by the extra-dimensional dictator Dormammu. Strange attempts to cope by petitioning another entity, the mysterious Eternity, for help-- thus giving rise to one of Ditko's most visually arresting creations.

However, once Strange does find Eternity-- made to look like the cosmos in humanoid form-- the cosmic being simply tells Strange to pull himself by his own bootstraps. What seems like a brush-off turns out to be the simple truth: Strange does manage to defeat both Mordo and Dormammu without any special resources, ending both threats for the time being in #144.

The done-in-one story in #145 is so negligible that few fans back then could have anticipated that it would give way to "The End At Last"-- which was also the end of the Lee-Ditko collaboration on the good doctor or on anything else, for reasons that have been discussed on the web in great detail.

It starts out with Dormammu, smarting from his recent defeat, deciding to make another foray against the Earth-magician. In addition, the mystic madman decides to launch a pre-emptive strike against Eternity, just in case the ethereal incarnation of the cosmos might give him some trouble.

Thus Dormammu seals Eternity away in his own dimension and spirits Strange into yet another occult contest. However, Eternity doesn't stay sealed very long.

Ditko's artistry was at the top of his game here, and arguably he would never produce another magic-scape battle equal to this "clash of thaumaturgic titans." Dormammu is apparently destroyed, and Strange just barely escapes the dimensional chaos.

Yet despite the intensity and artistry of Ditko's panels, the story lacks the concrescence I've found necessary for a mythcomic. Dormammu, as always, is no more than a typical blustering tyrant despite his unique appearance, while Eternity, while pleasingly enigmatic, remains too abstract to take on any deeper resonance. Even though I would presume that Ditko's Randian outlook permitted no religious sentiments as such, I can't help feeling that he called upon Biblical myths in order to ring down the curtain on the "Doctor Strange" universe by bringing together a figurative "God" and a figurative "Satan"-- though the tone of the contest reminds me more of the pre-Adamic rebellion of Satan and his forces against God than the final conflict of Revelations.

But, even though metaphysical myths allow for more abstraction than the other three types, Ditko's opposition of "upstart evil" and "a force beyond good and evil" simply doesn't generate the symbolic discourse necessary for a full-fledged mythcomic.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE SUMMONING" (IMAGINE #4, 1978)

The Lee-Ditko collaborations on DOCTOR STRANGE are justly celebrated as one of the comics-medium's best renditions of a "magician-hero." However, with the exception of the hero's origin, most of the stories are not complex enough to qualify as mythcomics. Aside from the creators' use of a few occult practices like that of astral travel and a few camouflaged deity-names ("Oshtur" in place of "Ishtar"), Lee and Ditko seem largely innocent of occult traditions.

Whatever the genesis of the Levitz-Ditko collaboration in IMAGINE #4, Ditko's "Doctor Strange" reputation surely contributed to the story's evolution. However, whereas the Marvel concept is principally an adventure-series with metaphysical content, "The Summoning" is right in a tradition I'll term "the metaphysical riddle." While the visuals of "Summoning" are as replete as the "Doctor Strange" feature with weird magical designs, Levitz's dialogue and captions reflect a transparent familiarity with the enigmatic language found in sections of the Old and New Testament.

The tale begins by focusing on a solitary male character in some abstract dimension. He stands within a room "that exists, or doesn't." The captions establish that he has a name, though within the scope of the story, that name is never divulged. I will style him as "the First," since one of Levitz's first lines states that "It is enough that he was the first, and will ever be the last," which seems to be the author's reworking of Revelation 22:13, in which Jesus says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." The First then leaves his room, having apparently received a summons, even though the captions are ambivalent about whether or not he can be summoned.

In contrast to the First's abstract cosmos, the remainder of the story takes place on an alien but "real" world. On that unnamed planet, three wizards descend to a lonely glade. None of these characters-- who also appear on Ditko's cover to IMAGINE #4-- are named, so I can only distinguish them by appearance: as "Old Male Wizard," "Young Male Wizard," and "Female Wizard."

The three have come to the planet-- their homeworld, now no more than a "desolate sphere"-- in order to summon the First. However, though they agree to pool their powers in summoning the First, each wizard has a different wish that he or she wishes the First to fulfill. Their dialogue establishes that they are all concerned with doing something to correct the status of their homeworld, which has fallen into chaos thanks to the magic used by the now-vanished populace to make "this world into our image" (presumably an act of hubris, given the phrase's resemblance to God's creation of man). Old Male Wizard wants the dead planet to be turned into a monument to the folly of its inhabitants. Young Male Wizard wants the First to rekindle life upon the world. Female Wizard does not want a race identical to her own to thrive once more, since her race destroyed itself, but she does want to make it possible for the "children of the stars," i.e., alien visitors, to colonize the world. Having stated their purposes and their disagreements, the wizards depart the glade to replenish their energies, leaving behind a solitary tree, somewhat scorched by their magical incantation.

The First shows up in their absence, and begins examining the world through his mystic senses. The Young Male Wizard shows up, and the First tells him that he plans to "see what gifts this world can bear." Beyond that, the First will not explain himself, or even reveal whether or not he was truly summoned by any of the fractious wizards. Young Male Wizard attacks the First with his magic, trying to compel the otherworldy being into obedience. The First easily repels the wizard's attack with a weapon that looks like a shepherd's crook, and then he disintegrates the wizard, whose "demolished cells" continue to drift about the glade like fairy-dust.

The Female Wizard appears, and again, the First will not disclose whether or not he will fulfill her desires, giving her more double-talk like, "All things are possible, and that is all that matters," The lady sorcerer immolates herself, and in so doing creates a beacon of light, though it's unclear as to whether she did so purposefully.

The Old Male Wizard then arrives, and confidently observes that since the First has not fulfilled the requests of the other two, the First must have manifested in order to fulfill the old man's desire for a planetary monument. The wizard considers the failure of the other two as proof that "I was indeed te mightiest of the triad." The wizard barely acknowledges the First's circumlocutive speech, but almost immediately changes himself into a huge escarpment of rock, in effect becoming the "monument" he desired.

The First then comments on the "presumption" of the three dead wizards, and reveals-- to the reader alone-- that he responded to another summons: that of the almost leafless tree in the glade. By indirectly causing the deaths of the three wizards, the First has annihilated the last of the world's human natives, and so the world is returned to the non-sentient flora and fauna. The First speculates that the three wizards' transformations may accomplish the goals they set for the world, but also says that he doubts that these possibilities will come to pass.

In conclusion, this is a fairly extreme look at the human sin of presumption, going much farther than any Judeo-Christian tradition. In effect, it's as if the First doesn't just "mark the sparrow's fall," but actively prefers the humble creature of nature-- a tree, rather than a bird-- over the vaulting ambitions of human beings.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE ORIGIN OF DOCTOR STRANGE" (STRANGE TALES #115, 1963)

"I must be the best--the greatest! Or else--nothing!"

Whenever the origin of Doctor Strange is retold, most raconteurs emphasize how the master of the mystic arts "gets religion," so to speak. What's often overlooked in the character's setup is the fact that the sorcerer's early selfishness is the factor that leads him to greatness, albeit of a self-sacrificing kind.

The story begins in media res, with a scraggly looking fellow confronting an Asian mystic with his importunate demands, but it quickly moves into flashback territory:

A car accident strips the arrogant surgeon Doctor Stephen Strange of his surgical prowess. Given the assertion that surgeons often display a god-complex, this might be construed as an anti-theophany, and Strange himself can't accept being reduced to the level of a mere untalented human being:

Thus Strange journeys to the temple of the Ancient One in India, not to lose his ego like most pilgrims, but to buttress his ego by uncovering the secret of the mystic's legendary "healing power." The Ancient One refuses to give him any handouts, but seems interested in the brash westerner, at which point a snowstorm springs up out of nowhere and forces Strange to remain in the temple until he can travel again. He's introduced to the temple's only other resident, Mordo, whom regular readers of the feature knew to be one of Strange's future enemies. Stuck in the company of two men who believe in the mystic arts, and thus refute the dominant worldview of Strange's western world, the doctor soon finds himself involved in a struggle between good and evil.

Mordo, instead of simply killing Strange, places a spell on Strange to keep him from telling the Ancient One about Mordo's perfidy. Mordo taunts the former physician, calling him "the witless blunderer from the far western continent," and telling the Ancient One to "send [Strange] back to the new world." For his part, Strange has become protective of the old mystic and even fears what Mordo may do if his power is unleashed upon the world-- yet his altruism is somewhat mitigated by his animus toward the arrogant mystic: ""Never have I hated anyone so much!" Strange finally figures out how to perform an end run around the stipulations of Mordo's spell, by selflessly asking for the Ancient One to train him in the arts of magic-- which is naturally just what the Ancient One is waiting for.

Prior to DOCTOR STRANGE there had been many superheroes who got their powers from Indian or Tibetan lore. Yet Strange seems to be one of the first, if not the first, to explore the ethos of magic, even though it seems unlikely that either Lee or Ditko researched Asian mysticism to any great extent. There's some irony that prior to becoming a selfless sorcerer, Doctor Strange expouses a sort of egoistic exceptionalism with a nodding resemblance to the doctrines of Ayn Rand-- with which Steve Ditko would later become more than a little occupied. As far as the origin-story goes, the western world is largely associated with greed and the eastern with wisdom and enlightenment. Thus Strange, though an American himself, effectively turns his back on many if not all of the ethical priorities of his people, in contrast to such "typical American" Marvel heroes like Peter Parker and Tony Stark-- who, despite the difference in their social attainments, are both strongly oriented around the ethos of "making a buck."

Interesting, though in the first few episodes of the DOCTOR STRANGE series, Ditko sometimes draws the hero with ambivalent features, as if to suggest that he might possess the distinct epicanthic fold of an Asian.

Yet Mordo, who calls Strange a westerner, is not given an Asian appearance. Much later, Marvel raconteurs will cite his ethnic background as Transylvanian, and though neither Lee nor Ditko ever comments on Mordo's provenance, it seems likely that Mordo-- styled a "baron" in his first appearance in STRANGE TALES #111-- was conceived as some form of East European villain. Thus beneath the overt metaphysical content of the series, one may descry a minor sociological myth as well: in which the power of the exotic East is coveted by representatives of both "the new world" and Old Europe, incarnated by a part of Europe that some writers, not least Bram Stoker, considered alien to the Europe of more western climes.

AN ENQUIRY INTO EDMUND BURKE PT. 1

As I've admitted in some of my later writings on the topic of sublimity, my earliest blog-essays depended heavily on Kant and his concept of the dynamic sublime, while more or less dismissing the author's formulation of the "mathematical-sublime" as irrelevant to my project.  I had by that time read not only Kant's primary works on the subject but also that of his predecessor, the English empiricist Edmund Burke, but I must admit that then I had a preference for Kant's superior power of categorization. Burke's signature work-- A PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL-- is marked by a tendency toward arbitrary categories, supported by what editor James Boulton calls "highly selective evidence."

Nevertheless, as I noted in this essay, Burke was much more prodigal than Kant when it came to identifying the sublime within literary works.  Recently I began to meditate once more on the possible connections between Joseph Campbell's concept of "supernormal sign stimuli," first referenced here, and the two forms of the sublime as I've now formulated them, "the dynamic-sublime" and the "combinatory-sublime." On some level I suppose I was coming back to a topic I said that I'd write about at the end of this essay, but never did.  Perhaps at the time I felt I'd said all I needed to say about Huxleyan transcendence.  In VERTICAL VIRTUES  I defined the interrelationship of this concept of transcendence with the concept of the sublime:

Csicsery-Ronay asserted that "sublimity" was produced by an "expansion of apprehension"-- an argument very much in line with philosophers of sublimity like Burke and Kant-- and added that his parallel category, "the grotesque" was produced by "a projection of fascinated repulsion/attraction." I reject Csiscery-Ronay's separation of these two affects, and instead regard them as "expansive" and "contractive" forms of the same affect: the affect of of the sublime.

I should add that in portraying "the sublime" as unitary, I was following the lead of Csicery-Ronay, who speaks of the sublime as "a response to an imaginative shock."  Within the sphere of my own system, I agree that this shock is responsible for the sublimity-affect, whether it manifests through the subject's reaction to "power" or to "endless combinations."  I must admit that in some cases, I have found the concept of the "combinatory-sublime" more widely applicable, as in the aforementioned conclusion of the essay TRANSCENDENCE WHAT AIN'T SUBLIME PT. 2:

Campbell, though not a literary critic, supplies a corrective to the overemphasis on reasonableness and ideological correctness. In a future essay I will also draw comparisons between Campbell's heuristic system and the forms of transcendence that are not reasonable; that can mount to the heavens or descend into the darkness of Hades-- and in either form, are covalent with what I have termed the combinatory-sublime.

I see now that this was a misstatement. I believe that Campbell's own evocations of the sublime-- even if he does not use that word-- depend largely on the imaginative shock that arises from "endless combinations," an assertion I demonstrated in the essay COMBINATORY CONSIDERATIONS.  However, in works by other authors, the dynamic-sublime can play just as great a role in evoking downward and upward transcendence. I established this in the later essay VERTICAL VIRTUES PT. 2, where I asserted that Melville's BENITO CERENO derived its sense of downward transcendence from the power of its demonic African character Babo, while Stowe's UNCLE TOM'S CABIN derived its sense of upward transcendence from the power of Uncle Tom's self-sacrificing imitatio dei-- even though Tom is only figuratively aligned with the Son of God, and has no power save the power of a noble example.

What would these modes of transcendence look like when applied to examples of the combinatory-sublime?
The easiest comparison that comes to mind occurs because I referenced Doctor Strange in the second TWAS essay. The good doctor exists in a world where he, a mortal human, straddles countless dimensions dominated by all manner of colorful entities and phenomena. Yet the dominant emotion is one of enchantment, since the hero's power to triumph is a given, and thus all of the varied phenomena in this series-- at least in its classic Lee-Ditko iteration-- would be an example of upward transcendence.  H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulhu," however, evokes just as many entities and phenomena, but this tale registers as an example of downward transcendence, because it suggests that the universe is infinitely horrible by virtue of its infinite variegations. (Of course, the "dynamic-sublime" appears in both of these, so neither choice represents the "combinatory-sublime" in isolation.)

So I've now concluded that if I do analyze Campbell's supernormal sign-systems further, they will be best described with reference to the two modes of sublimity rather than the two forms of transcendence, because the first deals with what kind of stimulus produces the affect while the second deals with its sympathetic or antipathetic tonality.  And with all of that in mind, in my next essay I'll finally be able at last to inquire into Edmund Burke, and show that contrary to my earlier opinion, his work on the sublime may prove more fruitful than that of Immanuel Kant.

TRANSCENDENCE WHAT AIN'T SUBLIME PT. 2

In Part 1 I asserted that "most comics-critics are of the view that the realm of the reasonable and agreeable is the one to which all other forms of transcendence should be reduced." The proof of this particular pudding can be best observed in the critical dialogue that came about in response to Noah Berlatsky's essay SUPERHEROES ARE ABOUT FASCISM, which I analyzed in a series of essays on the nature of violence, real and fictional, beginning here. Remembering that what I call "reasonable and agreeable" is also known as Huxley's "horizontal self-transcendence," I'll quickly repeat one of Huxley's examples of this form of reasonable transcendence:

most men and women choose, most of the time, to go neither up nor down, but sideways. They identify themselves with some cause wider than their own immediate interests, but not degradingly lower and, if higher, higher only within the range of current social values. 

For Berlatsky and most of his respondents, the trope of "the hero battling evil" is entirely reducible to sociological factors. If the hero aims to defend the status quo, this is "bad;" if the hero seeks to change it on some level-- as with Wonder Woman's campaign to reform male-dominated society even while beating back Nazis-- then this is "good." In the course of the thread I mentioned Marvel's Doctor Strange as an example of a world-saving hero whose adventures tended to focus on the metaphysical rather than the sociological. Berlatsky allowed that Doctor Strange was not as good a fit as the majority of superheroes but did not choose to modify any aspect of his ideologically-based critical view.

My use of the words "sociological" and "metaphysical" are by no means accidental: they are two of the categories devised by Joseph Campbell in his 1964 work OCCIDENTAL MYTHOLOGY, along with "the psychological" and "the cosmological." I've quoted Campbell at length on these conceptual categories here, so I won't spend time on further definitions. The relevance of Campbell's four functions in this essay is that it shows how each of these concepts for the organization of knowledge and/or insight can be viewed in a manner that is not "reasonable and agreeable."

Here's Campbell on Berlatsky's favorite if not exclusive category, "the sociological:"

Third is the sociological function. Myth supports and validates the specific moral order of the society out of which it arose. Particular life-customs of this social dimension, such as ethical laws and social roles, evolve dramatically. This function, and the rites by which it is rendered, establishes in members of the group concerned a system of sentiments that can be depended upon to link that person spontaneously to its ends.

It should be obvious that this definition is more comprehensive than Berlatsky's in that Campbell does not define the sociological function in terms of what he personally considers liberating or repressive.

Campbell, being human, is certainly not immune to the temptations of ideology: in this essay I pointed out a section of Campbell's HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES wherein the author's ideology does influence what he deems the "best" explanation for the ritual of the Paschal candle. Nevertheless, I also noted that HERO was written in 1949, while Campbell's more latitudinarian concept of the four functions first appears in 1964, so I for one have no difficulty in seeing the later insight as the flowering of Campbell's more mature thought.

It may be correctly pointed out that Berlatsky is only one comics-critic. But I could cite any number of other critics I've disputed on this blog, most of whom have also been guilty of similar "reasonable" reductionism, ranging from Gary Groth and Bart Beaty to the simpletons of Sequart.  Whatever their individual differences, in general all display the desire not to regard the productions of fantasy as significant in themselves, but only as signifiers of "reality" that can be viewed as either ideologically pure or ideologically suspect.

Campbell, though not a literary critic, supplies a corrective to the overemphasis on reasonableness and ideological correctness. In a future essay I will also draw comparisons between Campbell's heuristic system and the forms of transcendence that are not reasonable; that can mount to the heavens or descend into the darkness of Hades-- and in either form, are covalent with what I have termed the combinatory-sublime.