NULL-MYTHS: "VAMPIRES OF THE VOID" (ALL-STAR COMICS #26, 1945)

For this week's mythcomic, I selected the second of two "Bug-Eyed Bandit" stories scripted for the Silver Age ATOM comic by Gardner Fox. In the essay I stated that I didn't rate the first "Bug-Eyed" story to be a mythcomic, but I suppose that had I examined it in depth I would have rated it a "near myth."

Over twenty years previous, Fox scripted "Vampires of the Void," in which the Justice Society contended with "metal men" from space. Apparently these aliens were not robots but had evolved as entities with a penchant for nourishing themselves by eating solid metals. Each of the segments of the story sends an individual Justice Society hero up against a small cadre of metal men, all intent upon eating up whatever metals they find. None of the heroes can beat the aliens in one-on-one confrontations, but in each segment, a given group of aliens become obsessed with consuming just one metallic element, be it copper, gold, silver, etc. Once the aliens have filled themselves with Earth-metals-- Fox calls the process "imbibition"-- the heroes are able to defeat each separate group of metal men by exploiting some weakness inherent in the Earth-metal.

For instance, Hawkman fights robots who have "imbibed" silver, so he charges them with electricity, so that he can short-circuit them.

Doctor Mid-Nite, perhaps as a contrast to his status as a healing physician, gives his group of opponents "lead poisoning." 

And the Atom exposes a bunch of iron-eating metalloids to oxygen, causing them to rust themselves to death.

Now, I mentioned in this week's ATOM-analysis that I didn't consider the first "Bug-Eyed Bandit" story by Fox to incarnate a cosmological myth even though the author inserted a bunch of factoids about insect life at the beginning. In "Void," Fox has at least spread out his factoids, so that they're are a functioning part of the story.

But do they function as cosmological myths? I would still that they still do not, more because of presentation than content. Every single episode in the story is practically a duplicate of every other, except for the supposed humor of the "Johnny Thunder" segment. Thus none of the "epistemological patterns" possible for a juvenile superhero story about metallic elements really develop. I would also say that this story fails in terms of "underthinking the underthought."

In contrast, I did validate Robert Kanigher's 1967 "Plastic Perils" METAL MEN story as a mythcomic. Despite all of the indications that Kanigher was far from serious in his attitude toward the story, he did a little more than simply research the properties of a bunch of plastics. He gave a little thought as to how to exploit those properties in terms of their potential in a fantasy-combat situation, and so each of the heroes' encounters with this or that form of plastic carried a quality of active, rather than passive, imagination. 

MYTHCOMICS: "THE BULL" (STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES #141, 1968)

I'm no expert on war-stories. In my formative years I rarely sampled read the genre in comics, and have only sampled a few classics, like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and its sequel. However, while any genre has the potential to acquire the complexity of myth, I would tend to say that the odds are a little more in the favor of aviation-related war stories. The very idea of human beings propelling themselves into the skies to do battle suggests the aerial adventures of Greek Daedalus and his ill-fated son Icarus, and so far I've cited two mythcomics in this series that relate to pilot-characters, here and here. (I've cited a second Blackhawk story as well, but it doesn't stress their status as flyboys.)

DC Comics' ENEMY ACE has long been a fan-favorite of the Silver Age, probably more for the excellent Joe Kubert art than for Robert Kanigher's writing. Some evidence would suggest that Kanigher was the dominant partner in the collaboration, since Kanigher was editor on the feature when it began in OUR ARMY AT WAR, even though Kubert edited all or most of their collaborations in the feature's longest run in STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES. The feature started out as a co-feature in the first title and got a run as a solo title in DC's SHOWCASE title, but presumably did not sell well enough to earn its own title: instead taking over STAR-SPANGLED.

Kanigher had a tendency to treat his comics-work in a careless manner, as I've shown in reviews like this one on his METAL MEN and this one on his WONDER WOMAN.  And a lot of his war-genre comics are no better: one day I'll have to decide which is the most atrocious of his HAUNTED TANK stories. Yet neither his carelessness nor his antic humor shows up in ENEMY ACE. I tend to think he may considered the milieu worthy of a sort of "high seriousness," or what might pass for as much in commercial Silver Age comic books. The majority of Kanigher's stories about Hans Von Hammer-- a German flying ace scoring a record number of "kills" during World War One, when fighter-planes seemed not much less risky than the wings of Icarus-- are not complex enough to produce mythcomics, but almost all are at least "near myths." The one exception is the story entitled "The Bull."

It's entirely appropriate that the cover of SSWS #141 should feature an impending duel between the hero-- Hans Von Hammer, "Rittmeister" of his own fighter-squadron-- and the story's titular villain, a ruthless pilot under his command. The pistol-duel is, as much the aerial dogfights of WWI, drenched in the romance of honorable combat. Indeed, this is the main reason that the cover of SHOWCASE #57 boasts that "only DC dares reveal the ENEMY side of the war:" because the Germans of World War One could be viewed through the lens of romance, in sharp contrast to those of World War Two.
This is the first time in the series that Von Hammer-- nicknamed "the Hammer of Hell" for his many men he's sent to a fiery death-- takes arms against one of his people, but the struggle has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with individual honor.

The lines are clearly drawn from the first. Von Hammer returns from a mission to his squadron, and is told that one of his men has "murdered" a fellow member of the Jagdstaffel. To be sure, it's a sin of omission more than commission:

The flyer known only as "the Bull" is so busy attacking a particular enemy-plane-- Kanigher cleverly relates the repeated attacks to the chargings of a mad bull-- that he fails to come to the aid of another flyer from his own side. Note that the story is related by Ernst, the brother of the slain man, and Ernst is drawn to be the exact physical opposite of the hulking Bull: a weak-chinned shrimp.

Being an old-school officer who does things for himself, Von Hammer seeks out the Bull, who's busy celebrating his kill in a tavern and knocking around smaller men. The drunken flyer attacks Von Hammer, who blithely warns him not to do so ("I do not wish to see you court-martialed for striking a superior officer.") Von Hammer easily outmaneuvers the Bull's wild swings and finally demonstrates his superior fighting-ability by lifting the bigger man and hurling him against the wall ("I felt like the giant Atlas holding up the sky," he thinks). Kanigher overdoes his share of bull-references, ranging from Von Hammer feeling like a "matador" as he dodges his opponent, to comparing the man to "a bull in a china shop." (It's not hard to imagine the writer penning similar asides in some Batman story.) Kanigher does better as the sequence concludes. Von Hammer drives back to camp with his unconscious burden in his car, punning on the English word "ringmaster" as he thinks, "I am the Rittmeister of a flying circus-- complete with wild animals."

Even after the lout's egregious attack, Von Hammer declines to punish the Bull, except to ground him for one week, and to lecture him: "Even in war, we are still men-- NOT ANIMALS!" Yet the Bull will not accept the verdict, and challenges the Rittmeister to the duel seen on the cover.

Von Hammer meets the Bull for their duel-- at dawn, naturally-- and Von Hammer, who has just finished a night-patrol, leaves his Fokker plane running as the prize of the contest: to be claimed by whoever survives. But Ernst demands the right to challenge the Bull on behalf of the dead flyer, Ernst's brother. Ernst is slain and Von Hammer is consumed by ungentlemanly rage, so that he attacks the Bull with his fists. Without consciously meaning to do so, the Enemy Ace knocks his animal-like foe straight into the whirling propeller of the Fokker. "My ship-- executed the Bull," he thinks, and Kanigher misses the opportunity to make some allusion to the fate of real bulls at the hands of the butcher. Yet that might have been over-thinking the matter, in comparison to the terse simplicity of the story's final lines:

"The guilty one had paid the penalty-- but in reality-- weren't we all guilty?"

Note: this particular story is, like most ENEMY ACE stories, naturalistic in phenomenality. However, some stories in the original series enter the realm of the uncanny, as when Von Hammer meets a quasi-costumed pilot called the Hangman, and when he encounters a mysterious black wolf in the forest, one that may or may not be real, but at any rate mirrors Von Hammer's own talent for dealing death.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE SHAMAN" (SHOWCASE #87, 1969)

"The Shaman" was the third and last story in SHOWCASE to feature the "white Indian" teen Firehair. All of the stories were both written and drawn by the character's creator Joe Kubert, but whereas the first two stories fall into a purely naturalistic domain, this one, as the cover clearly shows, seems to depict magical phenomena. I'll give the game away from the start, however: most of the young hero's mystic experiences take place within a fever-dream, so that the story falls into the domain of the uncanny through its use of the "delirious dreams" trope.

It's established in the two previous entries that Firehair doesn't fit into either the white or the Indian world, and thus he begins "The Shaman" alone, riding his pinto into a "strange land" that seems to be "scarred with a terrible wound" (the Grand Canyon). Firehair ponders that any tribe that might live here "must be as strange as the land on which they live." He's then immediately attacked by a hungry mountain-lion, which knocks him off his horse. As Firehair's mount flees, the young man tries to fight off the big cat. He and the creature fall off a cliff, but Firehair saves himself by grabbing a root and hauling himself back to solid ground. He's been badly clawed though, and he's forced to wander on foot, looking for someone who can help him. At some point in the real world he collapses into a dream, and the dream begins with him encountering the "strange" tribe he imagined before.

As the above section shows, the tribe immediately accuses Firehair of being guarded by an evil spirit, and the tribal shaman claims that he sent the mountain cat to kill him. The witch-doctor also demonstrates his supernatural power upon the youth, but refrains from killing him because "the death of evil should be a lesson for all." Firehair is then placed on upon a pedestal-like rock in the center of a pit filled with rattlesnakes: "the Circle of Venom." This pointless punishment takes the form of an initiatory ordeal, given that the hero must then strive to keep from falling asleep, lest he tumble into the snake-pit. Firehair blacks out briefly, but though he doesn't fall off the pedestal, he does behold that the tribal grounds have become enswathed by a "colorless sky mist." Then the tribesmen remove him from the pedestal with a bridge, and the shaman leads Firehair and a small party of braves to their next rendezvous. The Shaman goes in front, and the hero thinks of him as "the poisonous head of a writhing serpent."

The group ends up in one of the canyons-- referred to as "the earth's bowels"-- and Firehair sees the cave "drenched in a red light." The Shaman positions himself in front of a "bottomless abyss," calls out to a "spirit of the nether-world." Out of the abyss, filled with red smoke, rises a colossal man with the head of a coyote, and this spirit-figure declares that he cannot take Firehair into his domain until he faces the "supreme trial," facing "He-That-Holds-the-World."

This means that the group must now seek out the site of "the Black Pool," another cave where all of the lighting is blue and everything is cold and overgrown with ice-shapes. The Indians arrive at the shore of the forbidding Black Pool and tie their human sacrifice to a nearby "stone shaft." Then out of the pool comes He-That-Holds-the-World, a gigantic prehistoric-looking turtle, intent on gobbling down its victim. Faced with a creature too huge to fight, the hero takes his first decisive action in the dream: screaming the Blackfoot "cry of battle." This somehow results not only in the splintering of the shaft holding the hero, but also the collapse of the ceiling above. Firehair's last thought, as the dream ends, is that "all was darkness-- the end of life."

However, the next moment he awakens from his fever-fantasy in the care of a friendly tribe of Navajos. He meets in real life the same shaman he met in his dream, who informs Firehair that he's been unconscious for three days, because his wounds had become "poisonous" (by which Kubert certainly means "infected"). He even uttered his war-cry while in his delirium, and now that he's awake, he sees a kachina doll that some tribal child made to help him through his illness.

There's nothing startlingly original about Kubert's main concept: of a character who sees aspects of reality reflected in a fever-dream, but there are a lot of good touches here: that the "evil" that the dream-shaman wishes to cast out is actually the real-life infection that the good shaman seeks to defeat. The Circle of Venom is also a further elaboration of the poison-effect. The chilling effect of the second cave is probably meant to connote the hero's bodily chills, and something similar is probably true of the red cave, even though it's not specifically said to be hot. It's possible to interpret Firehair's prescient visualizations of both the shaman and his doll as dream-interpretations of things he sees in his delirium, though the possibility of some psychic intuition is also left open.

In addition, Kubert has loosely evoked familiar Native American myth-figures here for his dream-journey. Since these figures have different names in different languages, many texts simply use generalizing English names like "Coyote" and "Turtle."  However, I think Kubert might have been less inspired by actual Native American myths than by the "weighing of the heart" ritual in Egyptian myth, wherein jackal-headed Anubis weighs the heart of the deceased-- and if the dead soul is found wanting, he's devoured by the monster Ammit. Additionally, the "sky is falling" myth-theme is a vital one in general world mythology. There's a fascinating parallel between the tuirtle-creature that "holds the world," which is defeated when Firehair more or less breaks a pillar, also a common symbol for whatever-supports-the-sky-- though here the destruction of both turtle and pillar result in the end of the dream, rather than of the real world. It's a shame that Joe Kubert didn't turn his superb artistic tales to this sort of mythopoeic story more often during his nonetheless impressive career.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE MASKED MARAUDERS OF EARTH" (BRAVE AND BOLD #43, 1962)

The Silver Age version Hawkman has his mythic moments, but nothing as intense and bewildering as the origin of the Golden Age version.

Most of the DC titles masterminded by editor Julie Schwartz in the Silver Age were marked by an emphasis on SF-tropes and gimmickry, and Hawkman was no exception. The first series had presented both Hawkman and Hawkgirl as modern Earth-people, Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders, who had once lived lives as ancient Egyptians, though I believe that origin was largely forgotten and even contradicted for the remainder of Carter Hall's career. In contrast, the new Hawkman and Hawkgirl, debuting in a three-issue BRAVE AND BOLD tryout from issues #34 to 36, were a pair of "space cops" who, for reasons not explored in depth, wore hawk-costumes and flew around with the aid of artificial wings. Both were from the far-off planet Thanagar, and were for the time-period an unusual male-female team in that they were already married at the time of their debut. Initial sales may not have been strong, for DC didn't move to give the duo a starring title. Other features appeared in the next five BRAVE AND BOLD issues, and then issues #42-44 were once more devoted to the Hawks-- after which a series did follow.

Whereas Gardner Fox, the writer of FLASH COMICS #1, put forth the origin of that Hawkman right away, the Silver Age character-- the joint creation of Fox and artist Joe Kubert-- didn't get a substantive origin until the fifth of the tryout stories. Perhaps this was because that origin had to involve the rise of the Hawk-police on Thanagar, and in early issues the creators were trying to center the stories on Earth, to maximize appeal to juvenile readers. Whatever the reason, the origin of the Silver Age Hawkman never became as much of a touchstone for his adventures as that of the Golden Age one did, at least during his later revivals and rethinkings. Part of the reason is that "Masked Marauders" is not a particularly compelling story as a whole, although I find many of its parts symbolically intriguing.

Despite the implications of the title, the 'marauders" are not at all from Earth; they're the Manhawks, a space-faring race of alien bird-people. At the story's opening they appear on Earth and start stealing things with light-beams that emit from the humanoid masks they wear. (How the Manhawks decided to start wearing human masks, even those tricked out with weapons, is not explained here.) The news of the Manhawks' depredations on Earth makes it to the ears of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who at the time have returned to their native Thanagar. The crimefighters also figure out that the Manhawks on Earth are related to a group of the same aliens who, ten years ago, came to Thanagar and indirectly brought about the formation of the Hawk-police.

I should note parenthetically that even though in this origin the "Manhawks" predate the existence of Thanagar's "hawkmen" (and "hawkgirls"), patently Fox is attempting to amuse his readers by inverting the name of Hawkman for this new set of villains. On some level he may have remembered a similar reversal in the origin of his Golden Age hero, where that Hawkman borrows his look from the deity of his enemy. End digression--

The Hawks recall the events of ten years ago, when a group of Manhawks came to Thanagar, and started stealing things just for the thrill of it. Fox claims that there had never been any theft before on Thanagar, but does not explain how the whole planet ascended to such a level of moral rectitude. Structurally, this roughly aligns Thanagar with paradise-like cultures into which "sin" has not yet entered. But this ethical Eden isn't invaded by a serpent, but by creatures who seem to be hybrids of man and bird. Fox makes no direct reference to the most iconic man-bird creatures of mythology, the Greek harpies, nor does he portray the Manhawks as death-spirits, the most common modern interpretation of the harpy. However, it's possible that even in 1962 the word "harpy" had been translated as "snatchers," as it still is today-- and it may be significant that the Manhawks are devoted to snatching things, just as harpies may have once snatched the souls of the dead.

Prior to the Manhawks' arrival, there is no police force on the planet, but Hawkman's father Paran happens to have invented an outfit that combines huge feathered wings and a gravity-nullifying device, purely for the purpose of studying bird-life in high places. Eighteen-year-old Katar Hol decides to use this outfit to infiltrate the Manhawks during the night. He succeeds in "snatching" one of the ray-blasting humanoid masks that all of the creatures sport. After he analyzes the mask's makeup, he comes up with a way to defeat and capture all of the marauders.

However, the Manhawks have fouled the Garden, for their orgy of thrill-stealing has somehow spawned the rise of crime in Thanagarians, necessitating a police force. No strictly logical reason is given as to why Katar joins this force, or why the police force as a whole decides to continue using the wing-outfits. One symbolic reason would be that Katar Hol has become by his exploits a culture-hero, and that his people are imitating him. However, the only jusification Katar cites-- perhaps cleaving to the idea that heroes should be modest-- is that the continued use of the outfits is done to show respect to Katar's father Paran, who invented the wing-outfit.

The rest of the story concerns Hawkman and Hawkgirl voyaging back to Earth to battle the new Manhawk opponents. This part of the story is just a routine chess-game, in that this group of avian adversaries has learned how to nullify the weapon the Hawks used against the other Manhawks ten years ago. This means that the heroes have to come up with a new counter-weapon, before the evildoers can use the materials they've gathered on Earth to assail Thanagar. Naturally, the heroes succeed.

Largely absent from this story is Fox's almost fetishistic pattern of having his heroes use "weapons of the past." In the Golden Age this was logically justified by Carter Hall having been a weapons-collector, and symbolically justified because of the character's loose connections with the mythos of the Egyptian god Horus. In the Silver Age version, the Thanagarian heroes' reason for using ancient weapons didn't resonate nearly as well. In essence, because in their civilian identities the Hawks work at a museum, they periodically pilfer weapons from it to fight crime. (No one ever objects to this petty larceny, and if any of the artifacts get destroyed, no one at the museum raises any alarms.)

I'll pass over Fox's usage of cosmological myth-motifs, because they're a little on the lame side. ("Coal into diamonds," Fox? Didn't Silver Age readers get enough of that bit in SUPERMAN comics?) However, the myths of the sinless paradise, and that of the intrusion of evil, rate as good metaphysical myths-- even if later writers would tend to see Thanagar and its peoples in purely sociological terms.

MISSING: ONE OUTRAGED POST

An odd thing happened on THE BEAT this week: a blogpost on a particular type of fannish outrage was *bleeped* out of existence, presumably through the auspices of the editors.

As of today one can still call up either of THE BEAT's two posts on the death of Joe Kubert, and see a small display under "Related Stories" that references the missing post, but clicking on the icon takes you noplace.  Presumably the link will go away in future.

The substance of the missing post was a mini-controversy started when some publicity-person at DC Comics responded to Kubert's death by highlighting his contribution to a current BEFORE WATCHMEN title, rather than his many earlier and more esteemed productions.  It was a gaffe that DC later corrected somewhat with an amended comment stressing Kubert's long history (though BEFORE WATCHMEN was still listed).

The only point of interest for me in this minor kerfluffle was that another poster directed me to a post by Alan David Doane, on his blog TROUBLE WITH COMICS. After Doane celebrates Kubert's immense influence and talent, Doane says:

Unfortunately, and because of [Kubert's] own choice, I’ll always also remember Joe Kubert as a scab artist who chose a paycheck over decency in signing on to DC’s egregious Before Watchmen project. The disgust I felt when people like Brian Azzarello or J. Michael Straczynski signed on board was nothing compared to the enormous confusion and disappointment I felt when people like Kubert, or Len Wein, or Darwyn Cooke agreed to be a part of Before Watchmen, against the clearly stated wishes of the writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore.

I responded on the BEAT post, saying something to the effect that this was a "noxious" thing to say about Joe Kubert.  It's certainly possible to take up a moral position against DC's decision to bring out BEFORE WATCHMEN, though most of the rhetoric against it I've found poorly reasoned.  But comparing Joe Kubert to scab labor isn't even a good metaphor for the situation between Alan Moore (who is, one might like to remember, only one of WATCHMEN's two creators) and DC Comics. 

Fans may not like it, but Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons signed a legally binding agreement with DC Comics, thus making it possible for the characters to be "farmed out" in whatever way DC Comics might please.  No professional, regardless of their high or low status, owes Alan Moore the favor of refusing to execute such a continuation simply because Moore made a bad deal.

Case closed.

Except this quick ADDENDA--

I'll note that Doane originally had even harsher words for Joe Kubert than "scab artist" in his original post, and anyone curious can find reference to those remarks online.

Also, the vanished BEAT post also referenced Tom Spurgeon cursing out DC for their disrespect to Kubert's memory.  A couple of posters took issue with Spurgeon, so it's likely that McDonald took the post down for excessive toxicity.  Spurgeon later expressed regret, not for his anger, but for detracting from the appreciation of Kubert's legacy-- a general spirit with which I concur.

MY FAVORITE JOE KUBERT STORY

SHOWCASE #87, which I thought about reviewing as one of my 1001 myth-comics, was a fine little story of the "white Indian" Firehair encountering shamanic magic.  At a panel I asked the late Joe Kubert about it, unfortunately being under the impression that it was a Kanigher collaboration.  Kubert wrote this one himself, and seemed pleased that someone had remembered it, though he may've been less pleased that his writing had been mistaken for Kanigher's.

I may still write something on it when more time permits.