EMINENCE AND DURABILITY

 Following up on my observations in the essays of EMINENT ICONS AND PROPOSITIONS, I'm moved to observe that eminence should be deemed a *structural metaphor* for the authorial process by which an icon or proposition assumes centricity. I also want to distinguish between eminence and the not dissimilar structural metaphor of "escalation," which serves to illustrate how durability operates for both stature-bearing and charisma-bearing icons. To do so I first have to revive my term for "stand-alone works" from this earlier essay-- that of "monads"-- as a counterpoint to the more familiar concept of "serials."

All monad-works have eminence, for regardless of how famous or obscure they may be, they all possess eminent icons that determine the centricity of the narrative's overall structure. But monads cannot benefit from Quantitative Escalation, since they only have one iteration. A monad can benefit from Qualitative Escalation, as with my frequent example of Scott's IVANHOE, which therefore possesses a concomitant durability. But this escalation comes about through social consensus, not through the formal properties of the monad. I can argue that a forgotten monad story-- such as the obscure 1951 horror-story "Death by Witchcraft"-- possesses some formal properties that prove rewarding. But only a social consensus, even within some specialized community like that of horror-comics fandom, could bestow Qualitative Escalation upon that story.

Serial works can be subject to either Quantitative or Qualitative Escalation, as I've already established, and so can possess either kind of durability. Most, though, become famous from the Quantitative form only. The Golden Age hero "Blue Beetle" lasted from 1939 to 1948, but even I, a defender of mythopoeic motifs in obscure superheroes, could never argue Qualitative Escalation took place within this series. The specialized community of Golden Age comics patrons liked something about the original Beetle, but didn't like another azure avenger, The Blue Diamond, who only enjoyed two adventures. There's no way that the Diamond could exceed the Beetle in terms of durability based on quantity, and, as I've read the former's two adventures, there's no chance that the former possessed any durability based on quality either.    

Now, because most serials need several installments to establish the perception of quality in a given audience, it's rare for a short-lived serial to demonstrate durability based on quality. One aborted serial that certainly had more potential than the Blue Diamond was Steve Gerber's 1984 VOID INDIGO, consisting of one softbound graphic novel and two "regular-sized" comic books. I must admit that INDIGO does not have a stellar reputation as a great unfinished Gerber work. But because Gerber is considered one of the important American comics-artists, an ambitious if flawed work by him will inevitably rate higher for anyone seeking to understand his creative process, in contrast to gauging the quality of a tossed-off superhero who was merely all about keeping the pot boiling. So even though BLUE DIAMOND had only two installments and VOID INDIGO had three, the latter is essentially equal to the former in terms of quantitative durability but far superior in terms of qualitative durability.      

EMINENT ICONS AND PROPOSITIONS

 A random thought struck me the other day: that, if I was trying to convey what distinguished a story's centric icon (assuming there's just one) from all the other icons in the story, I might have said that all centric icons were "organizational matrices." As soon as I thought this thought, I realized that even to most literary pundits the phrase would be about as clear as the view from beneath the La Brea tar pits.

The thought did take me back to some of the various ways I'd attempted to think about centricity in terms of categorical abstractions, at least going back to this key essay, 2018's KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY, PT. 1. In that essay, I cited a remark by author Nancy Springer about her conviction that the true hero of Scott's IVANHOE was not Ivanhoe:

Who is the real hero of Ivanhoe? Certainly not Wilfred of Ivanhoe himself, for never was a title character more palely drawn. Even though he is the common thread that strings the novel together, he is all but invisible... He is a pawn, exercising no control of the events around him, a piece of plastic with almost no personality...

 I refuted this in part by comparing Ivanhoe, a monadic centric icon, with the example of The Spirit, a serial centric icon:

From all my statements on centricity, it should be 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. In both cases the under-characterized, under-mythicized character functions as an organizing factor.   

Later in the same essay, I admitted that there were times in which a viewpoint icon might be very dull and NOT be the center of the story, using the example of Lemuel Gulliver. But Gulliver does not provide an "organizing factor" as do Ivanhoe and The Spirit. That's because GULLIVER'S TRAVELS is not about Gulliver, but about the exotic places to which he travels, making it *exothelic* rather than *endothelic." I've discoursed about these structural distinctions elsewhere, but they're not germane to the problem under discussion here, which concerns defining the nature of centricity.

However I may choose to define centricity in light of the "organizing factor" thesis, this line of thought puts paid to my brief consideration of centricity as a form of resonance, which I advanced in this 2023 essay, and then barely used thereafter. The metaphor of resonance, as I expressed it there, was something like whatever voice in a narrative happened to be the loudest-- which is not unlike the poor logic I critiqued Nancy Springer for. In future, if I use resonance at all, I'll try to keep it closer to the cited definition by Northrop Frye, where resonance connotes a reader's ability to see the universal in the particular.  

So if centric icons within a narrative are "organizational matrices," is there a better term to assign to the organizing principle? Astute readers of this blog (are there any other kind?) will guess that the previously unused term of "eminence" will now assume that position, but the rationale must wait until Part 2.  

    

 

QUICK CROSSOVER CORRECTION

 In ESCALATION PROCLAMATION PT. 2 I wrote:

This is the most important aspect of escalation with relevance to cultural significance. It does not matter that Ivanhoe had just one literary outing while Fu Manchu had twelve novels and four short stories; what matters most is that they became cultural touchstones. Once this happens, these iconic characters, no matter how much they may be changed in later adaptations, have had their stature escalated to the highest level possible for a purely literary character; the level of Qualitative Escalation.

At the time I wrote these words in 2021, I hadn't yet formulated the linked terms of "novelty and familiarity," first seen in slightly different form in 2022's THE DANCE OF THE NEW AND THE OLD. Once I had made this formulation, the description of Qualitative Escalation became strained. Yes, Ivanhoe became a "cultural touchstone" despite the fact that in his original medium he enjoyed only one story, and possibly would have become just as "escalated" had Scott not included the subplot of Ivanhoe's crossover with Robin Hood. But if I truly restricted Qualitative Escalation only to famous works, then it would be impossible for me to term the minor Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS in the ranks of crossovers, because its hero only enjoys one appearance but never becomes a touchstone of any kind.

So I will revise the exclusionary terms of my criteria for Qualitative Escalation. I was seeking in that criteria to come up with a form of "durability" to parallel that of the Quantitative type. But an icon's assumption of the stature of superordination, whether that icon appears just once or not, is de facto a Qualitative Escalation in comparison to all the subordinate icons within the text. So Tan Hadron, though never able to match Ivanhoe in any other way, does possess the same superordinate status.

This does not apply, however, to "back-door pilots," episodes of regular serials (usually but not always television shows) which attempt to launch new serials. A few such pilots may take over almost the whole run-time of a given episode, so that the pilot-characters can amass more time onscreen than the regular serial-icons. Nevertheless, such pilot episodes are still under the aegis of the ongoing serial's main characters, and if said episodes do not generate even one independent monad, and are not adapted from previous narratives, then the characters have no crossover-mana whatever. One comic-book example of this practice are the three issues of Marvel's INVADERS, in which Roy Thomas created the "Kid Commandos" team in order to hustle the sidekick characters out of the title. In this essay I expressed the notion that I might regard that team as an "adjunct" to the regular superordinate icons, but I now reject that line of thought to be consistent with my statements on other forms of "pilots" that go nowhere.

THE DANCE OF THE NEW AND THE OLD PT. 2

(Note: in writing this sequel to my one essay on the topic of novelty and recognizability, I've decided to replace the latter term with the term "familiarity." Accordingly I've altered the tag to reflect the change, but not the text of the first essay. I will try to replace the unwanted term in any other essays written since the first one, though.)

My meditations on the linked concepts of novelty and familiarity, beginning here, lead me to correct one of my earlier statements: that all crossovers are interactions of two or more familiar icons, with or without subordinate icons of their respective "universes." 

One of my main examples from Part 1 contradicts this: Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel IVANHOE. Whether the individual reader experiences Scott's story in its original prose form or in some adaptation within some other medium, Ivanhoe and all the subordinate figures in his orbit (which, as I said earlier, may even include historical figures like Richard the Lion-Hearted) comprise their own universe. And since that universe never appeared anywhere before, and since Scott wrote no sequels, the novel is forever characterized by novelty. The only elements of IVANHOE that possess familiarity are those relating to the universe of Robin Hood, and thus IVANHOE is a crossover between one "novel" universe and one "familiar" universe. Further, as mentioned in the CONVOCATION series, this stand-alone novel became such a major literary event that its universe possesses a high level of stature of the Qualitative kind, which means that despite only appearing once Ivanhoe is the same exalted company as those icons more dependent on Quantitative Escalation, such as Batman and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Books of Pellucidar.

(Parenthetically I will note that other authors created serial versions of the Ivanhoe universe-- a 1958 TV show starring Roger Moore, and a 2000-2002 teleseries with lots of XENA-style action. But, while it's possible for adaptations to outstrip their source material in terms of stature, neither of these shows did so.)

So IVANHOE is a crossover meeting of two icons, one characterized by "eternal novelty" and the other by "eternal familiarity." It qualifies as a High-Stature Crossover because the two icon-universes interact in a significant way, even though the stature of one results only from Qualitative Escalation, while the stature of the other arises from both Qualitative and Quantitative forms.

The 1972 BLACULA provides a comparable example of the intersection of a novelty-icon and a familiarity-icon, but in a mode of lower stature. Though Robin Hood and his Merry Men are subordinate icons within the story of Ivanhoe, they are important to the narrative, which affects the stature of the crossover. Dracula, despite having a Qualitative Stature as great as that of Robin Hood, exists in the 1972 film only to spawn Blacula and to bestow on him a familiar if somewhat risible cognomen. From that point on, Blacula is only slightly dependent on the mythos of Dracula, for the whole project of the film is to re-interpret that mythos in keeping with seventies cultural concepts, such as "Black Pride." Blacula, unlike Ivanhoe, has one more installment in his universe, but two entries in a series do not confer much Quantitative Escalation. Blacula has a certain degree of Qualitative Escalation, but not enough to raise the level of this crossover above a low position. 

Proto-crossovers within a serial context offer a slightly different view of novelty, in that the novelty of a newly introduced character can suggest an aura of "future familiarity." AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #14 is from the get-go a hero-crossover for the presence of starring hero Spider-Man and his admittedly fractious "guest star" The Hulk. But I've also argued that it's a villain-crossover between The Enforcers, who were familiar from one previous appearance in the title, and The Green Goblin, who made his debut here. Yet though the Goblin can only possess formal "novelty" at this point in his career, it's clear from the narrative that the authors intended for him to become a regular opponent of the hero. But The Goblin only possesses a "future familiarity" because later readers know how significant he proved to be within the Spider-mythos.

But authorial intent only counts when the intent is made manifest. A 1942 Batman story introduced a new Bat-foe, a thief named Mister Baffle (clearly modeled on the prose character Raffles). The story ended with the villain's escape and the suggestion that he might come again, though he never did, so the suggestion of his re-appearance counts for nothing in the Escalation game. In contrast, the villain Deadshot, appearing just once in 1950, was also characterized only by pure novelty. But thanks to his mid-70s reworking, he became not only a regular Bat-foe but one who was involved in a "static crossover" series, THE SUICIDE SQUAD-- though almost all of the characters had been, like Deadshot, subordinate icons within the universes of various heroes.

GOLDEN AGENCY PT. 1

 Let's see if I can get in one last new analytical term before the year ends...

I was musing on the concept of dynamis in the literary sense that Northrop Frye promoted it, or at least as I extrapolated that usage within my own Frye-influenced system. In essays like 2012's STATURE REQUIREMENTS, I focused most on the notion that dynamis, which Frye defined as a "power of action," applied specifically to the differing ways in which characters in different literary mythoi have their power of action determined by their respective mythoi. Here's my breakdown of the mythoi according to the protagonists' power of action:

Adventure-heroes always win, or at least lose so rarely that most audiences take no account of the losses.  Ironic heroes rarely win, and when they do, the victories mean nothing.  Dramatic heroes occasionally win but they go through such pathos-inducing straits that they don't get much of a thrill out of it.  What's left for the comic heroes?

Comic heroes, whether they are as powerful as Ranma Saotome or as bumbling as Johnny Thunder, tend to win out, though they tend to do so less by superlative skill than by dumb luck.  Ranma usually displays superlative fighting-skills, and he does win most of his assorted battles with other comedic kung-fu opponents, but the emphasis is clearly upon finding ways to amuse the audience by undercutting the hero's triumph with silly pratfalls, comic embarrassments and the like.  Thus his stature within his mythos exists to be a vehicle not for thrills but for the jubilative mood of the *incognitio,* the comic incongruity-- which, in Ranma's series, often takes the form of his transforming from a young guy to a big-breasted young girl.

 Anyone who reads that essay now should observe that back then I was floating my first use of the term "stature" to describe how the characters compared with one another. in terms of their mythoi-associations, which I would later bring into line with Ovid's famous formulation in 2018's THE FOUR AGES OF DYNAMIS. But I didn't utilize stature in this sense more than a few more times. In 2019's SUBS AND COES PT. 1, I tipped my hat goodbye to the old usage of that term. Then I began using both "stature" and "charisma" exclusively to describe the forms of authorial will as they manifest in superordinate ("starring") icons and in subordinate ("supporting") icons, and so those terms became completely associated with my concepts of centricity.

At one point, while loosely associating my current concept of "mythos-dynamis" to the concepts of stature and charisma, I made the correlation: "dynamis is agency," though that proved to be something of an oversimplification. "Agency," for one thing, has only one major connotation in contemporary criticism; when a critic uses the term, he or she means that a given fictional icon is empowered in comparison to some less empowered fictional icon. Since this is a determination a critic can only make by comparing icons within one or more narratives, "empowerment-agency" qualifies as what Frye called a **narrative value,** a value that relates only to relationships "from inside" a narrative. In contrast, "mythos-dynamis" was purely a **significant value,** a value perceived by a reader who examines an entire work as a whole in order to discern patterns in the work, which means looking at the work "from outside," as it were.

 I found myself then revising the current concept of agency to serve a wider purpose, to distinguish what separates a superordinate icon possessed of both stature and charisma from a subordinate icon possessed only of charisma. I've been writing about my concept of centricity since the early days of this blog, and though I feel I know it when I see it, it's been hard to describe it except through concrete examples.

Therefore from this post on, "agency" will be used to describe interordination comparisons, which will be seen to possess both narrative and significant values.

In 2018's KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 1, I agreed with Nancy Springer that the central hero of Walter Scott's IVANHOE was not the novel's most "charismatic" character. For Springer, the lack of charisma (in the ordinary sense of the word) was enough reason for her to disallow Ivanhoe as being anything more than a "common thread" who united a bunch of more interesting characters. But I believe Springer was treating her concept of "real heroism" in a **narrative-value** sense. To her, Ivanhoe was not interesting in comparison to other characters, so she did not deem him t he "real hero." I argued that Ivanhoe being the "common thread" was exactly what did make him the main character. This form of agency would be a **significant value,** because the interpreter is looking at the entire design of the work "from outside" in order to decide which icon (or group of icons) gets the most narrative emphasis, regardless as to how interesting the icon may be compared to other characters in the story.

The same principle applies to many modern fictional characters who had far less colorful lives than that of Ivanhoe. Willy Loman of Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN has no "agency" in a narrative sense, and in fact he exists to be a failure as a salesman and as a father. But this is still agency with respect to the principle of centricity, because Loman is the focus of the author's will to depict a dire and depressing outcome.

Now, how can agency also be a **narrative value?** I return to the example of Ivanhoe. I've mentioned earlier that Scott's novel is an example of a stature-crossover, in that the centric character, whose base level of stature is boosted thanks to the literary fame of the book, crosses paths with the legendary character of Robin Hood. This is a *narrative value** because Robin Hood's legend is of importance within the story as well as holding significance to the readers of the story. Even though Robin Hood functions as a Sub in comparison to Ivanhoe's Prime, the bandit of Sherwood has a special level of agency because his legend possesses an irreducible (and qualitative) stature. This means that by analyzing the relations of the characters within the narrative, IVANHOE qualifies as what I termed a HIGH STATURE CROSSOVER in this essay. 

A similar analysis of intra-narrative factors may lead the critic to determine how the vectors of agency function in other interordinate relationships, and so other crossovers may be also by low-stature, high-charisma, or low-charisma, as detailed in the essays of the CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS essay-series.

More to come in Part 2.

ESCALATION PROCLAMATION PT. 2

 My original formulations with respect to the principle I called "escalation" in this 2012 post had nothing to do with centricity or crossovers, but I've decided to adapt the principle with respect to the concepts of high and low forms of both stature and charisma.

Since beginning the crossover-series, I've mentioned that every narrative presence, whether a Prime or a Sub, can change the form of its stature or charisma when a given presence migrates to another narrative. In Part 1 I observed that Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu started out with a high level of stature in his own series, and I compared him loosely to Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

One of the main determinants of a character's "high" scores in either stature or charisma is that of sheer *durability." Whether he's a character with just one narrative, like Ivanhoe, or with several, like Fu Manchu, the character may have greater stature or charisma due to his, her, or its role in popular culture.

This is the most important aspect of escalation with relevance to cultural significance. It does not matter that Ivanhoe had just one literary outing while Fu Manchu had twelve novels and four short stories; what matters most is that they became cultural touchstones. Once this happens, these iconic characters, no matter how much they may be changed in later adaptations, have had their stature escalated to the highest level possible for a purely literary character; the level of Qualitative Escalation.

Now, the vast majority of literary characters don't become cultural touchstones. Walter Scott published a lot of other one-shot novels in addition to IVANHOE. But if for some reason he had chosen to make even a brief series out of some character-- say, Guy Mannering-- then arguably Guy Mannering would have a little more stature than an equally non-iconic Scott character still confined to just one adventure like, say, Quentin Durward. This sort of escalation I call Quantitative Escalation.

Similarly, no one aside from readers with very antiquarian tastes remembers Rohmer's serial detective Gaston Max. But in his day, he enjoyed four novels and a handful of radio-plays, so that puts him ahead of a one-shot figure like the starring villain of Rohmer's 1932 YUAN HEE SEE LAUGHS, who might be best described as a "fat Fu Manchu."

For that reason, in Part 2 of my crossover-series, I noted that I deemed the now obscure Golden Age heroine Miss Victory to have accrued a moderately high level of stature-- one related purely to how often she appeared-- so that when she was revived in the 1980s series FEMFORCE, her original stature "crossed over" with the new heroes created for the series, even if this "crossover" existed only in the initiating episode of the FEMFORCE series, since the character, re-dubbed "Ms. Victory," became thereafter absorbed into the Femforce mythos.

On the other hand, in Part 3 I mentioned that I didn't think Marvel's character Magik had accrued much stature in her one four-issue series, and so I assigned her a low level of stature in her initial crossover with the already established New Mutants team, and this too would be based on the principle of Quantitative Escalation.

The same dichotomy applies to characters who are dominantly Subs, whether they possess high or low levels of charisma. I also mentioned in Part 3 that of the three Batman villains who formed temporary team-ups with the crusader in the original BRAVE AND BOLD series, the Joker had enjoyed nine issues of a series, unlike the Riddler and Ra's Al Ghul. Yet the meager stature that the Joker garnered from his series did nothing to erase his dominant image as a subordinate figure, and so I would tend to regard even the temporary escalations of these three Subs to Prime status to be equally negligible. 

By the 1970s, though, all three possessed comparable levels of high charisma resulting from multiple appearances as subordinate character in the Batman features (as well as occasional guest-shots in other features). Such figures, having negligible stature, don't fit the category of even the low-stature crossover. However, they may generate a high-charisma crossover when comparable figures cross paths with one another, as per my example of the Joker and the Penguin in Part 4.  

The same applies to a multi-villain crossover like THE LONG HALLOWEEN-- but only to those villains-- Joker, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow et al-- who have "made their bones." This same story introduces a new villain, Holiday, but since he never appeared before or after that story, he has negligible charisma and so is not part of the charisma-crossover per se. 

Lastly, a well-traveled Sub can generate a low-charisma crossover when he appears outside his normal bailiwick in some other character's mythos, such as we see when the Riddler crossed paths with the Elongated Man.

There are certainly other permutations to consider, but I'll leave things there for the time being.

EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS OF AUTHORIAL WILL PT. 2

The visual metaphor of vectors mentioned in the previous essay has led me to invert one of the ideas stated in STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT.5. In that essay, I made a brief comparison between an earlier centricity-term, “stature,” and a newer one, “charisma.” I’ve now decided to reverse my formulations in that essay and to give stature more importance than charisma.

When I consider the base meanings of the words, stature signifies the result of physical growth, while charisma suggests a mysterious inner quality that appears from we-know-not-where. I first spoke of stature with respect to the Fryean mythoi, extrapolating the term from Aristotle’s assertion that the characters of tragedies were weightier than the characters of comedies. Thus my term “stature” connoted the different levels of conviction that readers could find in characters belonging to each of the mythoi. It now occurs to me that the idea of conviction also applies to centricity; the focal presences that occupy center stage are those around whom a given narrative revolves—which in turn means that they inspire maximum conviction in comparison to other presences within said narrative. I used “charisma” to denote this special status. Yet now it occurs to me that it makes more sense to speak of a superior vector of stature. For instance, in KNIGHTS OF COMBAT ANDCENTRICITY PT. 1, I examined Nancy Springer’s opinion that the titular hero of Ivanhoe was not the star simply because he was not as interesting as other characters in the novel. I rejected this idea. Yet I must admit that Ivanhoe does not have much of what one would call “charisma” in the ordinary sense of the word. However, what he does have is “stature.” He is the hero because his moral compass inspires maximum conviction in the reader. One may not believe that Ivanhoe resembles anyone in real life, but as the embodiment of the author's principal idea the knight is the glue that holds this particular novel together. The same principle would apply to those ensembles that I’ve judged to be distributive in nature, such as the Blackhawks and the Avengers.

However, charisma can be used to account for the fact that subsidiary characters in a narrative may hold more sheer appeal than those who enjoy the greatest stature. I would not disagree, for instance, that in IVANHOE the character of the Jewess Rowena proves more interesting than Ivanhoe. But now I would say that this fact merely indicates that Rowena has a charisma-vector superior to that of Ivanhoe, while he still has a stature-vector superior to hers. In terms of centricity, though, stature is always the sole indicator.

Charisma only affects centricity indirectly, and only in the evolution of serial narratives. For instance, in season 2 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, the creators introduced Spike as a more confrontational enemy for the heroine. One could easily hold the opinion that Spike possessed greater charisma than Buffy, even though, being both a subordinate character and a villain, he could not possess greater stature. Hypothetically, the producers might have chosen, for whatever reason, to make Spike a co-equal partner to the Slayer, and then he might have attained a distributive stature. The showrunners did not go in such a direction, and so, for the length of his tenure on the BUFFY show, Spike always had a stature-vector unequal to that of the non-distributive heroine. Then the character migrated to the show ANGEL—which for some time had been of the distributive model, with Angel sharing stature with other members—and only here, whether they outshone others in charisma or not, Spike finally acquired stature equal to that of the other regular members.

This model also proves useful for describing a work in which a subordinate character seems to steal the center stage from the apparent star. For instance, I’ve written here that even though BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE is dominated by the story of the Joker’s origin, it’s still a “Batman story.” This is because the story does not diverge from the dominant model of the continuing Batman series, wherein Batman always possesses greater stature than any of his villains. However, there’s no question that in KILLING JOKE the Joker possesses a charisma-vector greater than that of Batman, whom, as I remarked in my review of the graphic novel, often seems in the nature of a tired old cop.

The same dynamic also applies to those serials that often or always focus upon “guest stars”who never again appear in the series. Early installments of Will Eisner’s SPIRIT are structured like almost every other adventure-hero feature, in which the Spirit helps good people and vanquishes bad people. However, even in the earliest years Eisner sometimes devoted stories to one-shot characters who seemed to take center stage, in that their triumphs or tragedies received the most attention. However, the Spirit was still the thread holding all of those one-shot characters together, and so he retained the greatest stature, even in stories like THE CURSE, in which the hero barely appears. As discussed in HOSTS, HEAVENLY AND OTHERWISE, the only exception to this centricity formulation appears in certain anthology titles. When a continuing character merely appears as an interlocutor—Jorkens in Arthur C. Clarke’s TALES OF THE WHITE HART, or the many “horror hosts” in comic-book titles—then whatever focal presence inspires the most conviction in each story possesses the greatest stature-vector, though not necessarily the greater charisma-vector.

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.

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 cover 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. 

MESSING WITH MISTER IN-BETWEEN

At the end of KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 2, I said:

Thus IVANHOE would seem to be an exception of a combative work that does not have the traditional climactic fight-scene, even though it's still thematically important that the hero be willing to undertake such a conflict. These formulations may also call for a modification of my positions on the narrative-significant schism as it related to the combative mode.

However, having re-read all of my posts that I tagged with the label "narrative-significant schism," I don't think any major modifications are necessary. Over the years I've tended to favor works to be combative if they satisfied both the narrative and significant values: that is, if they featured a major clash of spectacular forces toward the climax (narrative) which in turn the reader experienced with a sense of sublime satisfaction (significant). But I find that I didn't originally specify that this always had to be the case.

In early 2013 I posed this question at the end of MYTHOS AND MODE:

Whether or not the "narrarive/subjective" schism between meaning within and meaning without can influence the modes of the combative and subcombative will be seen in future installments of MYTHOS AND MODE.

I gave myself this answer in MYTHOS AND MODE 2:

In RISING AND FALLING STARS I established that it was possible for a work to fall into a given mythoi-category (say, “adventure”) even if one of its two major aspects—“plot” or “character” aligned better with another mythos.  This would only be the case when the “adventure-plot” dominated over the “drama-characters,” my chosen example being that of the James Robinson STARMAN. In a similar manner, narrative values can trump significant values in terms of determining whether or not a work is combative.  

So in my earliest meditations on the subject, I said that "narrative values can trump significant values," in contradistinction to the later notion that both had to be satisfied. My example in MYTHOS 2 was Shakespeare's MACBETH, which gives the reader a story which culminates in a battle between opposed figures (narrative value), even though the battle doesn't quite portray what I called "sublime dominance" (significant value) in that the reader/viewer doesn't see that both men are high-dynamicity figures.

That same year, I wrote TWICE THE MIGHT BUT LESS FILLING, and though I stressed examples where one of the two values was not satisfied, my wording doesn't make it inevitable that the failure of one value cancels the influence of the other.

...not every narrative that contains two opposed sources of "might" necessarily evokes the combative mode.  It's for that reason that I've distinguished the presence of both narrative and significant values within the combative mode.  The lack of one value or the other can cancel the narrative's potential for combative sublimity.

"Can"-- but not "will." Further, over the years I've cited a great number of combative works in which a final combat was mitigated by the presence of a hero's ally who actually delivered the killing blow: what I called "the triumph of the supporting ally" in this essay. In such cases, the narrative value is not quite fulfilled, in that the conflict is not directly resolved by the *agon* between protagonist and antagonist. However, there is at least a connection between the protagonist and his ally, and so the ally's actions are subsumed by the dynamicity of the protagonist, as long as said protagonist actually displays his/her own megadynamic power.

In essence, IVANHOE follows this pattern as well. Ivanhoe has the skill and power to thwart Bois-Guilbert, given that he has done so on previous occasions. His climactic victory over the villain is only put into question by wounds he sustained from a tournament-attack by all three of the book's principal evildoers. So the "significant value" is fulfilled, in that everything in the narrative sets up the potential for a clash between "two opposed sources of might." The "narrative value" is circumvented so that Scott can place emphasis on the internal conflict of Bois-Guilbert, who, over one hundred years before 1933's KING KONG, is another "beast" slain by a "beauty," since the knight dies of his "contending passions" rather than from Ivanhoe's weapons. Yet, Scott's novel, even though it critiques some of the problematic areas of medieval martial culture, still devotes so much space to other combative scenes that the reader can obtain the "narrative value" from other parts of the novel. I'd tend to think that this sort of "transitive effect" is only possible when it's been made quite clear that both protagonist and antagonist do possess the power to bring about a major combative clash in the narrative sense, even if that clash is forestalled for some reason. There's also a minor parallel in the 1956 FORBIDDEN PLANET, which I examined here, in that the protagonists, who possess megadynamic power but not as much as their enemy, must resort to strategy rather than force to win the war. In a sense, Walter Scott solves his hero's problem by giving the villain an "Achilles heel" that kills Bois-Guilbert-- though this wound would not have been fatal, if Ivanhoe had not shown up ready to fight.

ADDENDUM: I had intended to work in a reference to the title somewhere, but forgot it. FTR, "Mister In-Between" is just a metaphor for the intermediate state that a work falls into, when it satisfies an expected narrative value but not a similar significant one, and vice versa.

KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 2

Though it's possible that I'll encounter some exceptions, there seems no way to demonstrate the persistence of the narrative combative value [in a given work] unless there is some sort of spectacle-oriented struggle at or very near the climax.-- PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX.

"Centricity" with respect to the Walter Scott novel IVANHOE, was addressed in Part 1, and in this section I'll be addressed the other subject in the post-title: combat-- or, more specifically, the way combat is handled at the climax of IVANHOE.

I wrote PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX in 2013, about a year after I settled on a definition of the combative mode in this essay. For the most part, I've been satisfied with the broad applicability of the statement seen above, but now that I've read Scott's most famous work, I'm glad that I hedged my bets somewhat with the statement about "exceptions." In this case, the exceptions don't "prove the rule," but they do make it necessary to expand the rule somewhat, to account for special cases.

For most of the novel, Scott arranges events that lead the reader to expect a major fight-scene at the novel's climax, between the title character and the principal villain, the Templar Knight Bois-Guilbert. It's established that the two of them previously clashed, with Ivanhoe coming out the victor. Their quarrel is not specified, but given that much of the story concerns the cultural tensions between English Saxons like Ivanhoe, and their Norman, French-speaking overlords, like Bois-Guilbert, it stands to reason that the knights probably quarreled for cultural reasons. Scott knows that by novel's end the truculent Saxons will be relatively placated when the righteous Norman Richard the Lion-Hearted ousts his bad Norman brother John. But even with that foreknowledge, Scott gives the reader every reason to want to see another "bad Norman," Bois-Guilbert, bested in direct combat.

Further, the two men are indirectly romantic rivals. Bois-Guilbert falls in love with the lovely Jewess Rebecca, and after taking her and her father prisoner for purposes of ransom, Bois-Guilbert is even willing to sacrifice his position with the Templars if Rebecca becomes his willing consort. However, Rebecca has conceived a "forbidden love" for Ivanhoe, though he is engaged to another woman, one of Christian upbringing. Ivanhoe's first encounter with Rebecca is marked by attraction on his part as well, but unlike Bois-Guilbert, Ivanhoe represses that attraction, obedient to the cultural laws forbidding intermarriage between Jews and Christians. (This is probably one reason a lot of readers don't like Ivanhoe, for not flouting those laws, though admittedly he's already defied his father earlier, by opposing that noble's intention to make a political marriage for Rowena.)

But later events oblige Ivanhoe to play the knightly rescuer to this "forbidden fruit." A group of Templars, having seen the extent of Bois-Guilbert's affection for the Jewess, accuse Rebecca of literal witchcraft, and plan to execute her. She can save herself only if a champion fights on her behalf, and Bois-Guilbert is assigned to oppose any champion she may summon. At this point Rebecca has once again rejected him, but he's still in love with her, and he tells himself that as long as he doesn't actually have to fight an opponent, her murder will be the fault of the Grand Templar. Then, Ivanhoe appears, and the two square off for a joust. The reader expects that Ivanhoe, even though he's taken wounds in a previous battle, will call upon inner reserves of strength and best his formidable enemy anyway. But that's not how Scott handles things.

The trumpets sounded, and the knights charged each other in full career. The wearied horse of Ivanhoe, and its no less exhausted rider, went down, as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and vigorous steed of the Templar. This issue of the combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of Ivanhoe did but, in comparison, touch the shield of Bois-Guilbert, that champion, to the astonishment of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his stirrups, and fell in the lists.

Ivanhoe, extricating himself from his fallen horse, was soon on foot, hastening to mend his fortune with his sword; but his antagonist arose not. Wilfred, placing his foot on his breast, and the sword’s point to his throat, commanded him to yield him, or die on the spot. Bois-Guilbert returned no answer.

“Slay him not, Sir Knight,” cried the Grand Master, “unshriven and unabsolved—kill not body and soul! We allow him vanquished.”

He descended into the lists, and commanded them to unhelm the conquered champion. His eyes were closed—the dark red flush was still on his brow. As they looked on him in astonishment, the eyes opened—but they were fixed and glazed. The flush passed from his brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions.

“This is indeed the judgment of God,” said the Grand Master, looking upwards—“‘Fiat voluntas tua!’”

Scott does not enlarge upon the "contending passions" that cause Bois-Guilbert to expire without taking any real injury, though the author devotes a great deal of space before the death to showing that the Templar's desire for Rebecca torments him. He has the power to kill Ivanhoe, but if he does so, Rebecca also perishes-- and since he cannot simply surrender to Ivanhoe, his only alternative is apparently to "will himself to death." The mythopoeically inclined reader may choose to view Bois-Guilbert as the "negative image" of Ivanhoe, given that he can act on the desire that Ivanhoe will not countenance.

But what does the Templar's death mean, within the structure of the novel? There's no shortage of fight-scenes throughout the story, for IVANHOE is a novel aimed primarily at male readers. True, there are a number of scenes that take issue with the 13th-century code of honor, not only with respect to the treatment of Jews but also regarding the noblemen's nasty habit of raising money by ransoming people. Rebecca is every bit a spokesperson for the feminine penchant for peace as Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert are proponents of the masculine penchant for conflict.

And yet the central appeal of the novel is not really a critique of the knightly codes of honor and combat; it's more of a side-comment. In the past I've shown how certain works proved subcombative precisely because the author led readers to expect a major conflict, and then undermined that expectation. In MYTHOS AND MODE 2 I wrote this of Shakespeare's CORIOLANUS:

Despite the suggestions that [longtime enemies Coriolanus and Aufidius] may finally sort out the question of superiority by play’s end, CORIOLANUS is, unlike MACBETH, not centered around a combat.  Instead, Coriolanus’ arrogance brings about his disaffection from his fellow Romans, leading to a temporary alliance with Aufidius and the Volscians, and finally to an ignomious demise rather than a heroic confrontation.

Shakespeare goes after the "warrior code" in TROILUS AND CRESSISA with even greater vigor, as I suggested in THE TOILS OF TROILUS.

So, in essence, Shakespeare undercuts all the glory and honor associated with the great duel [between Achilles and Hector]-- though, to be sure, Homer seems quite aware of the innate brutality of the war itself-- and makes Achilles into a honorless dog who orders his personal guards, the Myrmidons, to chop down Hector when the latter has partly doffed his armor. 

Clearly, in a narrative sense, Scott undercuts reader-expectations for a rousing final fight-scene in IVANHOE just as Shakespeare does in the cited plays. But-- does Scott do it for the same reasons that Shakespeare does it?

The answer is obviously no. The fact that Ivanhoe, even though he's not yet recovered from his wounds, is willing to risk his life for the gentle Rebecca clearly validates the better values of the knightly code; values which are entirely negative within both CORIOLANUS and TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. So how should my statement from PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX be amended?

Technically, I've already implied a solution in earlier essays. In KNIGHTS PART 1 I made a loose comparison between Scott's Ivanhoe and Will Eisner's Spirit only in terms of the relative simplicity of both starring characters. For the most part, it would be awkward to draw more extended comparisons, particularly because Ivanhoe was intended to be the star of one stand-alone work, while the Spirit was devised as a serial hero, intended to last over the course of potentially endless adventures.

However, it's often occurred to me that the Spirit himself might not be a combative hero, were I going purely by the 51 percent rule. Yet over the years I've refined this theory to take in the possibility that a series, such as that of the Spirit, may participate in the combative mode even if the majority of the character's individual adventures are not combat-oriented. In my final post on the LOST IN SPACE series, I mentioned that the series, despite various spectacle-oriented episodes, had a "dominant ethos" that was "directed away from combative resolutions." This is pretty much the same as saying that the dominant "significant value" of a series can overrule any disparate elements in the series. I have not yet applied this principle to stand-alone works like IVANHOE, but I have already implied that the subcombative significant value of TROILUS overrules the effect of any battle-scenes in the play. Thus IVANHOE would seem to be an exception of a combative work that does not have the traditional climactic fight-scene, even though it's still thematically important that the hero be willing to undertake such a conflict. These formulations may also call for a modification of my positions on the narrative-significant schism as it related to the combative mode.

KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY, PT. 1

One of the great curiosities of comic-book mythography is that even though the heroes-- and occasionally, the demiheroes-- are the protagonists with whose will the audience identifies, often much of the mythicity resides within the villains and/or monsters who are in the position of supporting players....as I detailed here, Will Eisner's feature THE SPIRIT was such a genre-chameleon that it's arguable that the titular hero had little myth to call his own, and most of his villains were no better.-- BAD WILL ON TOP (not a reference to Will Eisner), April 2016.

I touched on the importance of the Sir Walter Scott oeuvre in this 2013 essay, but the truth is that I had not then and do not now have a deep acquaintance with Scott's works, unless one counts film adaptations. I did read one book, THE TALISMAN, over thirty years ago, but despite enjoying the work, I wasn't moved to keep reading Scott, probably because he wrote little or no metaphenomenal fiction. I've now finally amended this lack somewhat by finishing what is arguably Scott's most famous novel, IVANHOE.

Though there haven't been that many film/TV adaptations of IVANHOE in comparison to assorted other classics, it's still a name to conjure with, even among people who don't know much about Scott or 19th-century literature. It seems to be the first novel to successfully revive the medieval tradition seen in European courtly romances, but in a naturalistic world, without dragons, faeries, etc.  But according to writer Nancy Springer, who penned both a foreword and an afterword to the 2000 Tor edition of the public domain novel, the knightly hero himself is something less than successful.

Who is the real hero of Ivanhoe? Certainly not Wilfred of Ivanhoe himself, for never was a title character more palely drawn. Even though he is the common thread that strings the novel together, he is all but invisible... He is a pawn, exercising no control of the events around him, a piece of plastic with almost no personality...

Springer then goes on to argue that the true heroes of the novel are two of Scott's supporting characters. One is Richard the Lion-Hearted, newly returned to England following his captivity during the Crusades, a "vibrant, quirky personality" who makes common cause with Robin Hood and his Merry Men in order to recover his throne from Prince John. (IVANHOE is said to be a key influence on the 20th century's development of the Robin Hood narrative.) The other hero is Rebecca, a beautiful Jewess and daughter of money-lender Isaac. Rebecca is easily the most vivid character in the novel. She's also, to bring in my concern for mythicity, the most mythic character, for it's through Rebecca and Isaac that Scott addresses the contemporary sociological concerns of his culture, regarding the emancipation of the Jews in England. Although the novel takes place in a 12th-century England where such an emancipation is not possible, Scott constantly calls attention to the travails of the Jewish people through the experiences of the Jewess and her father. For years prior to my reading of the novel itself, I occasionally encountered statements that Ivanhoe, who inspired romantic interest in both Jewish Rebecca and his Christian inamorata Rowena, should have wed Rebecca. I share the sentiment, though Scott sets things up so that such a marriage is socially impossible, which may well have been the state of the real world in those days.

Since my opening quote references "villains and monsters," who are usually the carriers of what I call "bad will," I should note in passing that not much of IVANHOE's mythicity inheres in its villains. These are largely the Norman overlords allied to the reign of Prince John, but except for one, most of them seem to me to be standard bad guys, only differentiated by their particular circumstances. The exception is the Templar Knight Sir Brian deBois-Guilbert, who, like Ivanhoe, has returned to England from the Crusades, though the two apparently clashed for some reason even though they were on the same side. At one of John's tournaments Sir Brian espies the lovely Rebecca, and he spends most of the novel trying to win her over. Scott does devote some attention to the torments of the lovelorn knight, whose affection is not reciprocated even before Rebecca falls for Ivanhoe. But Sir Brian doesn't sustain much of a symbolic discourse, for all that Scott makes an effort to critique the elitist and "bigoted" order of the Knights Templar through the evil knight.

From all my statements on centricity, it should be 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.

In both cases the undercharacterized, under-mythicized character functions as an organizing factor. In place of Springer's thread-metaphor, I've repeatedly used the image of the circle with diverse elements swirling about inside it, as when I described these elements as incarnations of "centric and eccentric will." My formulation suggests that there is no firm rule that the hero of a given narrative, whether it is of a serial or a stand-alone nature, must be "the most interesting man in the room." At the same time, there's no rule that he cannot be. Further, the narrative's centric will may include an ensemble of characters who are at least strongly interconnected in some way, be it no more than two or so many that their number is functionally indeterminate.

(Examples of the former, the "no more than two," would include pairings like those discussed in ENSEMBLES ASSEMBLE: the two monstrous enemies in 1934's BLACK CAT and the literal monsters in 1968's THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS. Examples of the latter would include "swarm-types" like the Aliens from the ALIEN franchise and the Martians from Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS. The latter category also takes in what I'll tentatively call the "diversified swarm," in which the entities have a common origin but take on diverse-looking appearances, like the Cartagrans from the two-film WAXWORKS franchise.)

My screed is obviously not a one-on-one response to Springer's assertion: she's concerned only with vividness of characterization. Her meditations on Ivanhoe, according to my system, concern only "the relationships of discrete personalities" and so belong to the potentiality I've called "the dramatic," while "the mythopoeic" deals with the "relationships of symbols." Further, "the dramatic," like "the kinetic," belongs in a different bailiwick than "the mythopoeic" and its kissing-cousin "the didactic."

From THE LONG AND SHORT OF WILL:

Plainly, what I call a work's "lateral meaning," glossed with a combination of two of Jung's psychological functions, is confined to what sort of things happen to the story's characters (sensation) and how they feel about those developments (feeling). The function that Jung calls "intuition" finds expression through the author's sense of symbolic combinations, which provides the *underthought* of a given work, while the function of "thinking" finds expression through the author's efforts at discursive cogitation, which provides the work's *overthought.* 

(I note, with yet another digression, that the opposite of "lateral meaning" ought to be "vertical meaning," which takes in both underthought and overthought, in keeping with my use of the term "vertical" here. More on this in another essay.)

Thus, I reject Springer's thesis that a work's "real hero" must be its most dramatically interesting person. A given author may merely wish to use the "centric will" of a given protagonist as an organizing factor, and nothing more, and there have certainly been other good stories that starred protagonists even duller than either Ivanhoe or the Spirit. Still, this should not overlook one last structural quibble: that a dull viewpoint character is not the same as a dull centric protagonist. Ivanhoe is the star of his show because he provides this linking function, and this contributes to what I've called an *endothelic* status, wherein the "narrative is focused upon the will of the viewpoint character or of someone or something that shares that character's interests." A contrary example of this would be Lemuel Gulliver. He's every bit as dull as Ivanhoe but Gulliver's not at the center of his narrative, which is focused rather upon the worlds Gulliver explores. Thus GULLIVER'S TRAVELS fits the category of the *exothelic* in that the narrative is focused on "something outside the interests of the viewpoint character, though not necessarily opposed to them."