A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 3

 At the end of A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PART 2 I said I would next discuss "non-distinct replacements," but a better term would be "non-differentiated replacements."

In Part 2 I mentioned two examples of differentiated replacements from comic books: the forties hero The Black Owl and the Marvel villain The Molecule Man. I paid particular attention to the latter, noting that even though the first and second versions of The Molecule Man had no personal names in their debuts, and barely any personal history, they are nevertheless differentiated in that the reader assumes that they are living human beings with distinct backgrounds. Such differentiations are harder to make, though, with respect to non-human entities, because their non-human nature confers an aura of otherness that obscures differentiation. 

The most visible example of such a non-differentiated replacement is that of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. The first monster to go by this name perished at the end of his debut film, presumably because his creators had no idea that he was going to be bigger and more sequel-worthy than any other giant monster from any country. When the 1954 GODZILLA scored big, Toho Studios quickly followed up with GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. Instead of finding some way to reconstitute the dissolved body of the original King, the producers simply had another "Godzilla-saurus" emerge from the bowels of the Earth, and for the remainder of the original series, this pinch-hitter became, to all intents and purposes, the only Godzilla whose adventures anyone followed, even though hardcore viewers were entirely aware that the first rough beast had long passed on. A much later film purported to revive the first Godzilla, but for a couple of decades, no one cared about the debut creature.

Aliens are even more susceptible to becoming non-differentiated characters. The Martians of H.G. Wells, the archetypal alien invaders, are not differentiated from one another in either the original novel or in latter-day creations like Marvel's KILLRAVEN serial. Thus if Killraven fights a horde of Martians in New York, and then travels down to Tallahassee to fight a separate horde, both sets of Martians are essentially coterminous. The same principle applies from the ETs from the ALIEN film franchise, even though there are some morphological differences between particular representatives of the species, such as the male warrior from the first film and the Alien Queen from the second. 

The ETs of the PREDATOR series have the potential to be more individualized, though the hunters in the first and second films are not significantly differentiated from one another. I recall one comic-book story which made a minor attempt to distinguish two Predators within the context of that story, making one a "hero" and the other a "villain." But from what I can judge, the Predators' appeal lies in the fact that they're cookie-cutter menaces, whose raison d'etre stays the same regardless of any particular movie, even when played off against another "swarm" type of ET in the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR films.

Other examples include the various sharks in the JAWS franchise, at least two loosely related "killer bee" movies, and assorted fantasy-creatures like Al Capp's Shmoos.

Of course, it's not impossible for one film to coast on another's rep, using the name of a somewhat-established monster but substituting a beast with a different origin. The producers of the 2000 DTV film PYTHON in 2000 came out with another giant snake film, BOA, in 2002. Then the filmmakers engineered what looked like a crossover of the two serpentine beasties in 2004's BOA VS. PYTHON. However, though the Python used was essentially coterminous with the one from the 2000 film, the modern Boa had no connection to the prehistoric giant from the 2002 film. However, the two Boas are still the same species, and so it's arguable that the second one is a non-differentiated replacement of the original.  

MYTHCOMICS: “MOURNING PREY” (AMAZING ADVENTURES #39, 1976)

When mainstream comic books began a somewhat more adult-oriented phase during the Early Bronze Age—which was also the time when I began thinking more coherently about comics characters as myths—I might have judged most of the better works “mythic” simply because they dealt successfully with larger-than-life topics. This POV didn’t prevent from perceiving that a lot of stories that played around with such topics were just pretentious twaddle. But when I did encounter a well-executed series with genuine mythic concerns, I probably saw the whole series as mythic. These days, however, my analyses depend on closer reading. Thus, some stories in a given series may seem primarily dramatic or didactic in their appeal, and only one or two are truly mythopoeic.

Marvel’s KILLRAVEN series, a post-apocalyptic take on H.G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, started out as largely generic and unremarkable. The series took on its greater complexity (mythic and otherwise) once writer Don McGregor began collaborating with penciller P. Craig Russell, and many of the stories they executed are enjoyable on the purely dramatic level, such as issue 32’s “Only the Computer Shows Me Any Respect.” One of their strongest mythopoeic tales, however, was also the one that concluded the series. Years after the termination of the KILLRAVEN series, McGregor and Russell re-united one last time on a Marvel Graphic Novel featuring one more adventure of the heroic title character and his roving band of Martian-fighters. This reunion was interesting but flawed in many respects, suggesting the Wolfean aphorism “You can’t go home again.”

The letters-column of AMAZING ADVENTURES #39 notes that the featured story was not intended to be a conclusion to the peripatetic series, since the news of cancellation came down after the story’s completion. Indeed, “Mourning Prey” even devotes one panel to foregrounding a story for the next issue, which tale would of course never be told. But the unnamed person answering the letters opined that “Prey” did provide a “haunting” conclusion to the series, and with this sentiment I readily concur.

“Prey” is rife with allusions to various ambivalent states of mind. On the extrinsic level, this parallels many of the ways that post-apocalyptic stories enact their charms upon their readers. The readers realize that within the story, the characters suffer greatly from having their formerly peaceful world severely restructured. But remodeling the world gives the author the chance to shape things to mirror his own preferences, and from that flows the basic appeal of the subgenre. On page 16 Killraven says, ‘Earth will never be the same as it was before the Martian invasion.” Readers identity with the hero’s travails, but at the same time they know that their pleasure stems from that chaotic upheaval.

Like most of the McGregor-Russell collaborations, “Prey” starts out with Killraven and his band of Martian-fighting “Freemen” wandering through some strange environment for some ill-defined purpose—in this case, the Okefenokee Swamp in January 2020. January usually connotes the demise of the old year’s troubles and the promise of a new year’s bounties. Russell’s art certainly conveys the sumptuosity of a swamp far more baroque than any in ordinary reality, but McGregor’s prose contradicts this impression, as Killraven is made to think that “the morning future seems empty and dead.” Throughout the story McGregor finds three or four other ways to work “morning” into the tale, though none of the characters—Killraven, M’Shulla, Old Skull, Carmilla Frost and their local guides Huey and Louie-- ever draws the parallels that McGregor wants the readers to draw between this word and the homophone “mourning.” Carmilla is the first character to voice the latter word when she bestows the name of “Mourning Prey” upon the creature that attacks the Freemen during their trek. Here too McGregor combines ambivalent content — “mourning” because of the creature’s “melancholy quality” and “prey” because she seems intent on making the Freemen her victims. Omitted from Carmilla’s exegesis is the likelihood that the name really stems from a play on the words “morning prayer,” a religious observance which usually connotes hope, not unlike the month of January. No one in the story uses the word “pray,” though toward story’s end we do get mention of a “communion.”

The story not only opens in media res, it skips back three times from real-time to yesterday-time before finally remaining in real-time for the duration. I’ll forswear all the diegetic hopscotching and stick to a linear telling. While Killraven, his friends and the guides are tromping through the swamp, they find their way blocked by a series of webby cocoons hanging from the thick trees. Not willing to go around, Killraven blasts the cocoons with his pistol. Out rain dog-sized caterpillars that attack the travelers. While in the process of fending off the creepy-crawlies, the hero spots a golden-hued, unspeaking woman flying overhead with butterfly-wings, glaring at them. Later that night the rebels make camp, and Carmilla meditates on the butterfly-woman’s genesis, without ever explicitly claiming that she’s the result of Martian genetic manipulation. Moments after Carmilla puts a name to the “sentient identity” of the strange female, Mourning Prey attacks the group, commanding a horde of golden butterflies able to spit formic acid. Killraven himself seems to suffer a telepathic assault from the woman, who seizes him and lifts him into the sky. Killraven levels his pistol at her head, but for some reason does not fire. Then, before she’s flown high enough to injure the hero, Mourning Prey drops Killraven into the swamp-waters. While both he, M’Shulla and one of the guides are knocked out of action, somehow Mourning Prey spirits away Carmilla, Old Skull, and the other guide. Killraven and M’Shulla tromp around the swamp looking for their friends and having flashbacks to the yesterday-action.

Then the sound of Old Skull’s flute leads them to a blissful arbor, where Mourning Prey and her butterflies are entertaining the missing trio. Old Skull claims that through telepathic contact the butterfly-woman has realized that the travelers didn’t mean her any harm (a conclusion not entirely believable: surely Killraven guessed that giant cocoons had some sort of living beings in them?) But in any case Mourning Prey forgives the injuries done her, and by coincidence just happens to be ready to send forth her butterfly-progeny to seek out their individual fates, whatever they may be. Russell sells this shaky conclusion with intense images of “an embrace by sight, a communion of hands,” and Killraven watches raptly as the butterfly-mother’s brood—who may or may not develop as she did—fly off into the sunlight.

The poetic trope of the ugly caterpillar metamorphosing into the lovely butterfly sees sustained usage here, almost as much as all the references to the “sunsets and dawns” mentioned in McGregor’s closing paragraph. Indeed, Mourning Prey’s chimerical change of heart may mirror the dual nature of reality as it’s experienced both by fictional characters and real readers: the dark experiences of loss and death, counterbalanced by hopes for renewed life and rebirth. This ambivalence appears even in a possible but unconfirmable inspiration for the butterfly-woman’s cognomen: the “mourning cloak” butterfly. The living creature was so named by various Germanic/Nordic peoples in reference to a myth-image of a widow who, though garbed in the dark colors of mourning, allows just a little bit of color to show in her attire, the better to express her hopes for a renewal and recovery of future life.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE 24-HOUR MAN" (AMAZING ADVENTURES #35, 1976)

H.G. Wells' 1897 WAR OF THE WORLDS novel spawned countless "BEM-chases-babes" stories along the lines of this image from INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN:

Despite later uses of Wells' alien invasion concept, though, the novel barely alludes to sex. Marvel's 1970s "War of the Worlds" comic book, however, almost had to delve into such matters, given that it was designed to emulate the success of the company's own CONAN comic. That said, whereas the original "Conan" stories and most sword-and-sorcery stories replaced "BEM-and-babe" with "beast-and-babe," Marvel's take on Wells was not nearly as given to outright usages of sex appeal. "War of the Worlds"-- later retitled "Killraven, Warrior of the Worlds"-- thus kept a foot in both the world of barbarian fantasy and that of the science-fiction invasion-drama. When the Martians return to Earth after their failed attack at the turn of the 20th century, their second invasion proves wildly successful, and one of the few Earth-men capable of mounting a defense is buff, long-haired warrior Killraven, who wields a sword as often as he fires a ray-gun. Killraven is joined by a small coterie of freedom-fighters. though in issue #35, Carmilla Frost, M'Shulla Scott, and the slightly dim stalwart Old Skull are the only ones following the main hero. Hot female characters, good and bad, are frequently seen, but rarely does the hero get rewarded with sexual favors, as did most sword-and-sorcery heroes. Indeed, the only ongoing sexiness was between Carmilla and M'Shulla, one of the first white/black racial hookups in commercial comic books.

Further, Earth under the Martians sometimes resembles Wells' ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU, for almost every issue pits Killraven and his buddies against some perversion of humanity, brought into being by Martian experimental science. Even Killraven himself is a perversion of sorts, since from the first issue by Gerry Conway and Howard Chaykin, he's been given a special psychic affinity with the invading aliens, the better to spy on the Martians and learn their weaknesses.

Not until writer Don McGregor teamed with artist Craig Russell, however, did the series earn plaudits with Bronze Age readers. Thus at the time they worked on "The 24-Hour Man," the creators had been receiving some acclaim, which may have encouraged them to experiment along lines of science-fiction speculation. (I should note here that Russell only supplies layouts to this 1976 story, with Keith Giffen receiving pencil-credits.) As in many science-fiction novels, the apocalyptic devastation of the existing world is an excuse to cast aspects of real history into new shapes. This may be one reason that McGregor chose to set the story in Atlanta, Georgia-- though, as I noted here, he barely references the city's Civil War history, except in relation to the movie "Gone with the Wind." McGregor's allusion to the spousal rape of Scarlett O'Hara has little or nothing to do with Margaret Mitchell's meaning, so it would seem that McGregor largely mentions the Mitchell work simply as a jumping-off point for his own concerns, the evocation of the Gothic theme of the persecuted woman.

Killraven and his friends stumble onto a cemetery outside the no-longer-inhabited Atlanta, and in said graveyard they find a never-named young woman ranting over the body of a withered humanoid figure clad in golden armor. When the apparent madwoman flees the cemetery, the warriors chase her, to keep her from harming herself. Then it becomes apparent that the woman has a guardian, a huge, multi-legged serpent-beast, whom she calls by the name G'Rath, and who prevents her from leaving. Killraven and the others intervene to defend the woman, but unbeknownst to them, G'Rath has a ally named Emmanuel ("God is with us" in Hebrew). human-looking except for possessing green hair and green skin.While the heroes battle the monster, Emmanuel covertly takes the gold armor from the dead humanoid, dons it, and proceeds to steal Carmilla from her allies.

Given the earlier mention of rape on the story's first page, the reader would be justified in assuming that Emmanuel abducts Carmilla in order to rape her-- though the unnamed madwoman's has already raved about having carried "G'Rath's child." In Emmanuel's conversation with Carmilla, it's implied that he does not plan to violate her. He wants feminine understanding from her, but he and G'Rath are symbiotically bound to one another in some way. The previous child of G'Rath perished after nine months in his mother's womb and one day outside it, for he was a "24-hour man"-- and so is Emmanuel. McGregor supplies no details as to how this symbiosis came about, nor does he even attribute this biological anomaly to Martian science. In apocalyptic worlds, of course, "mad science" sometimes just happens on its own, and apparently that's what gives a non-human creature like G'Rath the power to impregnate a human woman with a changeling. Emmanel's role in the symbiosis is never clear, though if he didn't have green hair and flesh, maybe he could pass as a "judas goat," able to move freely among humans long enough to catch a potential mate for his "father/sibling."

At any rate, Killraven's group manages to interrupt G'Rath's impending nuptials, and though both G'Rath and Emmanuel are destroyed, the heroes mourn the passing, since the two of them no more chose their own biological destiny than does a mayfly. One page is particularly strong in evoking Carmilla's fear of having her own biology hijacked by an invader, of possibly going as mad as the unnamed madwoman as a result.

Though I'm not a Freudian, it's hard not to perceive some psychosexual symbolism here. Though in actual mythology serpents can be as readily feminine as masculine-- a point Freud missed in his analysis of the Medusa figure-- it's hard to imagine G'Rath as anything but a "penis-monster." And if G'Rath is a penis, then what could Emmanuel be, but that which transmits male genes, that which is doomed to perish if *it* does not unite with a female egg? As I said, this similitude begs to be acknowledged, though not for a moment do I think that it "explains" the story, which is more concerned with grand tragedy than with Freud's reductive concepts.

McGregor and Russell even manage to tie Emmanuel's tragedy in with that of Killraven, the only member of the group who has been biologically altered. Toward the story's end, Killraven says, "You were right, Carmilla Frost. We could not save him. By our  separate natures and needs, we were forged as opponents, for our own survival. He would shattered you, the way his mother was shattered-- but it is more than passing odd-- it is still as if we shared a common curse."

The common curse may be that of all humanity in the Killraven world has been permanently reduced to a state of abjection by the Martian incursion. And yet McGregor adds in the final panel that the heroes "are only vaguely aware of the hint of beauty amid the darkly perverse events." This observation might bring some critics back to the jumping-off point, wherein spousal rape is more "romantic" than vanilla sex-- or it might also say something about the interactions, however unwelcome, of violence and sexuality.

BRIEF RETURN TO FAKE-RAPE

I summarized my views on the use of rape as a fictional trope in the "Fake-Rape" series, beginning with this 2014 post. The topic will be coming up in this week's mythcomic, but this essay concerns how the comic's author seems to have misread one of the most famous of all "literary rapes."

In "The 24-Hour Man" from AMAZING ADVENTURES #35, Don McGregor makes one reference to Margaret Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND, apart from his general strategy of setting the tale in Atlanta, where the main action of  Mitchell's novel takes place. At the story's opening, McGregor writes:

Scarlet O'Hara led Rhett Butler to distraction in this city, till finally he swept her into his arms with Clark Gable finesse-- only to leave her with a casual farewell-- "Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn!

Following a caption designed to bring the reader into the (futuristic) present, Mc Gregor adds:

--and there are still women, even here, in these ruins, who can make a man curse, yet still be lost!

There's no way of telling from the story whether or not McGregor read the novel, but the mention of Clark Gable leads me to guess that he's referencing only the movie-- though strangely, he gets one of the most famous lines in cinema wrong. It's "My dear, I don't give a damn" in the book, and the movie adds the emphatic (and rather courtly) "frankly," but neither line addresses Scarlett by name-- a name which McGregor manages to misspell twice.

My analysis of "24-Hour Man" will touch on some of the larger issues of rape, both in its literal and metaphorical aspects, but I feel constrained to point out that McGregor's interpretation of the story is strangely off-kilter, even if his main motivation was to enlist the icons of GONE WITH THE WIND to enhance his very different theme.

Still, given that McGregor must have  known how well the events were known to educated readers, it's peculiar that he would misrepresent Mitchell's events so egregiously. He telescopes the event of Scarlett's spousal rape with Butler's leavetaking, as if Butler left once he's had his fun. Even the ill-chosen word "casual"-- which doesn't apply to the Butler character, either in the book or the film-- seems calculated to make Butler seem like a "love-'em-and-leave-'em" cad, when in fact he's in love with Scarlett for a much longer period than she is with him. Here's my summation of the spousal rape and the emotions behind it, from the second part of the FAKE-RAPE series:

Yet GWTW's rape is more than a mere "bodice-ripper:" it speaks to specifically female issues, not in terms of the relationships of women to men, but of women to other women.  Few if any female readers will fail to realize my earlier point, that Rhett has fallen in love with Scarlett even at a time when she primarily thinks of him as an attractive scoundrel who has a lot of money.  Scarlett commits many sins for which readers will want to see her punished, as do her detractors within the novel-- but for many readers this will be her worst sin: failing to love the man devoted to her, and forbidding him from her bed simply because she does not want more children.  In addition, her continued pursuit of Ashley Wilkes-- although somewhat on the wane by the time the spousal rape takes place-- adds fuel to the fire that causes Rhett to lose all control. Of course, as both the book and its film-adaptation make clear, the "punishment" is something less than punitive. By the generally sunny disposition Scarlett displays the next morning, Leslie Fiedler surmises that Scarlett has had her first orgasm, though Fiedler admits that Mitchell does not say this in so many words.

 It's at least true that Scarlett drives Rhett "to distraction," though McGregor isn't concerned with the Southern belle's specific, quasi-adulterous actions. "Finesse" is a word that could apply to a lot of Clark Gable's courtship of Vivien Leigh in the film, but it hardly applies to the spousal rape, and indeed it's not finesse that seems to have impressed Scarlett in the book/movie. McGregor's final reference to Mitchell's heroine comes closest to capturing the icon's original appeal, that she has the power to make men curse, and yet cannot save herself from being "lost."

With this bit of cross-comparison out of the way, I can concentrate better on the story proper in the forthcoming mythcomics analysis.