UNTIMELY RUMINATIONS #1

The end of 2016 also brought the end of the oldest comics-oriented fan-apa in the U.S., CAPA-ALPHA, of which I was a member. The apa will continue in an electronic format but I chose to terminate my participation with the conclusion of the paper format.

I'm also in the process of sussing through a lot of the old apa-zines I accumulated. I only want to keep stuff that I think I may use for reference later, including my own works. However, I'm egotistical enough to want to preserve a few observations I made back in the olden days, possibly to build on said insights later

Here's something I wrote (with a little language clean-up) back when the 1996 SUPERMAN cartoon premiered.

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I agree that SUPERMAN has not proven to have a "vision at work." Maybe it's because it's harder for creators to agree on what Superman means than Batman. As a very loose comparison I can see more agreement on Batman's meaning within the works of Englehart, Miller, and O'Neil-- different as each writer may be from each other-- than I see regarding Superman's meaning in works by Maggin, Moore and Byrne. I did get one mythic buzz from the first episode, though. In the concluding scene between Superman and Luthor-- largely copied from a similar scene in the LOIS AND CLARK premiere-- there's a line where Luthor says something about "owning" Metropolis. The line itself is not special, but it made me realize that Luthor stands in the same position as the somewhat corrupt master of Fritz Lang's film METROPOLIS. This character, name of Fredersen, controls the city in a ruthless manner, but he's brought back to a sense of common humanity by his son Freder. In the cartoon Superman becomes a more combative version of this "son" figure. I don't know that anyone ever explored the Luthor-Superman relationship as being between "evil father and righteous son" in a sustained manner. However, there is a weird Jerry Siegel tale in which Luthor journeys through time and space to Jor-El's Krypton. There the villain seeks to inveigle Superman's mom into marrying him instead of Jor-El, with the idea that when he Luthor returns to his own time and space, Superman won't be able to interfere with anything his "father" does. It's a pretty weird story, even for 1960s Weisinger-Superman, but it may contain a dollop of psychological truth.

MYTHCOMICS: "HOW LUTHOR MET SUPERBOY" (ADVENTURE COMICS #271, 1960)

Now that a new version of Luthor has made it into film-theaters, it seems appropriate to discuss the first time Superman's arch-villain achieved mythic status.

In some ways it's surprising that the original character caught on so well with 1940s readers of Superman comic, for in his first appearance he seems like just another garden-variety mad scientist, out to conquer the world.

In the second appearance of Luthor-- who had yet to acquire a first name, or even a backstory-- Jerry Siegel gives him one mythic motif: Luthor is a "brain" who perpetually seeks to prove himself the superior of Superman's "brawn." Given that Siegel's first version of Superman, appearing in a prose fanzine, was actually a super-brain with no fabulous physical powers, one might consider this a case of an early version of Superman seeking vengeance on his successor. But this minor motif is as far as Siegel takes it, and it seems to me that the only thing that made Luthor popular with audiences-- enough that he was featured as the main villain in the 1950 ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN film-serial-- was that his bald head made him eminently recognizable.

"How Luthor Met Superboy"-- drawn by Al Plastino and written by Jerry Siegel at a time when he had returned to DC Comics as a simple wage-slave-- was an overt attempt to give Superman's most prominent enemy his own myth-- and, as most comics-fans know, it was a myth founded in his lack of head-hair.

The 1960 story-- reprinted in full on this site-- begins with Superboy hearing that a new resident, a teenger, has moved to Smallville. Though the Boy of Steel doesn't typically go around serving as Smallville's welcome-wagon, he shows up at the new boy's farm. At the same a kryptonite meteor crashes to the ground, and Superboy falls victim to its rays. The new boy saves Superboy by pushing the meteor into a nearby lake, after which the young man introduces himself as Lex Luthor, budding boy scientist, and informs the superhero that he Luthor is Superboy's biggest fan-- which was meant to be just as ironic then as when Annie Wilkes spoke similar lines in Stephen King's MISERY.

Grateful for his life, Superboy uses his powers to build the farm-boy-- who's currently living without adult supervision, for reasons loosely explained later-- a brand-new laboratory. Luthor isn't entirely forthcoming about the direction of his experiments, resulting in a clever scene wherein the conflict of the prideful young boy and the somewhat nosy superhero is foreshadowed.

Luthor's attempt to create protoplasmic life may also carry something of a Frankenstein-vibe, though the headless foam-creature seen above never fully comes to life. Luthor is so happy about his breakthrough that he instantly decides to find a new way to reward his super-buddy: by discovering a potion that will immunize Superboy from kryptonite radiation. Since the lab was payback for Luthor saving Superboy's life, one might almost think that on one level Luthor was seeking to use his scientific skills to "one-up" his hero, albeit in a beneficent manner. Luthor's own exultation causes him to start an accidental fire, and Superboy's attempt to save his friend results in a permanent rift between the two:

To be sure, Luthor briefly pretends to set aside his maniacal obsession, but only so that he can taunt Superboy by withholding the kryptonite antidote. "Superboy will regret the day he decided to steal the glory of Luthor," the nascent super-villain rants to himself, which is Siegel elaborating the simple early motif of "brain vs. brawn." Luthor doesn't immediately turn criminal, though, but instead tries to steal from the superhero the regard of the local Smallville residents. Luthor's streak of juvenile carelessness causes the project to turn sour, and Superboy s obliged destroy it.

Luthor tries a second time to ingratiate himself with Superboy's 'worshippers," and he fails again, thus enduring yet more humiliation from an enemy who doesn't regard Luthor as anything but a wayward youth who hasn't received enough parental attention from his "traveling salesman" father. (Nothing whatever is said of Luthor's mother, but one assumes that she's no longer among the living.) Luthor finally crosses the line and tries to kill Superboy, but the young superhero manages to take advantage of the scientist's desire to twist the knife, and save himself.

Still generous to a fault, the Boy of Steel refuses to arrest Luthor for his crime, claiming that Luthor's attempt to take Superboy's life nullifies the scientist's having saved it earlier. This is the only time in the story Superboy shows himself to be something more than a goody-goody, as if he were a juvenile version of a western sheriff, deferring justice from an old friend gone bad.

Many later comics-readers-- and comics-professionals, some of whom worked on later Superman comics-- were affronted by the perceived banality of this motivation; of Luthor becoming a super-villain simply because he lost his hair. In an essay I wrote long ago for AMAZING HEROES, I pointed out that Luthor's baldness was simply an objective correlative for his feeling marginalized and overshadowed by Superboy's prowess. I pointed out that in myths the loss of vitality was sometimes indicated by a character's loss of hair, most famously in the story of Samson, though the Greeks had a not dissimilar character in Nisos, King of Megara. Many later versions of Luthor would minimize the baldness-motif in favor of a Luthor who hated Superman for some other reason, most prominently because of the latter's alien nature.

But regardless of whatever new motive is indicated, that hair-denuded head keeps popping up in every iteration; the 20th-century superhero equivalent of the Fisher King with the Wounded Thigh.

GOALS, OR ROLES?

In 2012's THE NARRATIVE DEATH-DRIVE PT. 2  I ended the essay thusly:

As a closing clarification, I am not saying that concrete goal-affects do not appear in hero-villain narratives.  Maybe the Joker sends Batman a mocking note so that Batman will come chase him, but clearly the Penguin would rather get away with the loot rather than tilt with the Caped Crusader again.  But the act of reading about Batman's struggles with both types of villains is in itself an example of an "abstract goal-affect," since the pleasures we derive from reading fiction cannot be said to promote either gain or safety in a direct relationship.

I have the general habit of recalling fragments of stuff I've written and wondering whether or not it fits into the overall schema-- which, I have no doubt, is the same way synoptic critics like Frye and Fiedler also work, since no system springs out of anyone's head a la Athena. I became concerned as to whether this statement had overemphasized the role of "goals" within the diegesis of a given story-- say, a Batman vs. Penguin story-- and had thus come into conflict with the principles stated in HERE COMES DAREDEVIL, THE MAN W/O IDENTITY:

 Daredevil is not a phenomenon with a real existence (at least not in materialistic/positivistic terms), but a fictional construct.

Ergo, neither Daredevil nor any other PURELY fictional character is subject to the "law of identity."

By that principle, the Penguin too is a fictional construct, and though he's been constructed so that he does possess what I called "concrete goal-affects" within his own diegesis, he's defined more by his "role" as a fictional construct than by his "goal" as an actual willing subject, since he isn't one. Unless one of the raconteurs working on him re-defines his roal, the Penguin is defined by the abstract affects of villainous glory than by getting gold, jewels, etc.

Parenthetically, something like this did happen at one point with the Riddler. In some Bat-universe stories-- I can only attest to a story-arc in GOTHAM CITY SIRENS-- the Riddler reforms and becomes a private detective. For all I know the character may have turned back to crime by now, but during that arc he ceased to be a villain as such, though it's debatable as to whether he then assumed the role of "hero" or "demihero."

Fortunately, a quick survey of some of my writings on "persona-types" and the forms of will they incarnate don't seem to place undue emphasis upon the diegetic motives of characters, and I see that in ESTRANGED SPORTS STORIES I did stress "role" over "goal:"

 ...it's the intent behind the narrative, not the conscious intent of the protagonist, that denotes the nature of his persona.

This observation helps me out with a related problem I've been considerering recently. I've defined the monster-persona against the hero-persona as one relating to whether or not their primary role emphasized the "idealizing will" or "the existential will"-- two terms I devised after I wrote this passage in MONSTERS, DEMIHEROES AND OTHER WILLING BEASTS, and which I've interpolated in place of the original, now outdated terms:

King Kong, Gamera and Godzilla may follow the plots of heroes in these assorted works, but I assert that in terms of fundamental character they still represent "existential will," while the not much more intelligent Hulk represents "idealizing will."

But the concept of "existential will" is harder to sell when the monsters are clearly intelligent human beings, like my sometime examples of Doctor Moreau and Victor Frankenstein. Still, I've argued that their obsessions, even if they are motivated by a desire for glory, are subsumed by the "intent behind the narrative." Unlike a genuine glory-oriented villain like Fu Manchu, the two monstrous mad scientists embody the quality of "negative persistence" as much as do big hulking monsters like Kong and Godzilla.

Similarly, because of my tendency to identity Sadean activity as examples of Bataillean expenditure rather than acquisition-- probably best summarized here-- I find myself thinking twice regarding two monsters who are very popular for their overt Sadean qualities.

The first is Freddy Kreuger of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST series. He's become popular, I'm convinced, not because he's a nasty child molester (if indeed that was the intention in the original series) but because he stalks and slays his victims with an imaginative panache atypical of the average slasher-monster.

The second is Pinhead of the HELLRAISER film-series. He doesn't warp his infernal domain quite as flamboyantly as Freddy does with his dream-worlds. But he incarnates the idea of suffering as Sadean glory, and so he does have a highly imaginative "ideal" behind his depradations that is foreign to most monsters.

But in both cases, the narrative's intent supersedes Freddy's snarky cleverness and Pinhead's cerebral viciousness. Their obsessions imprison them far more than do those of the great villains like the aforementioned Fu Manchu, and so I can still align them more with the quality of persistence than with glory.

Perhaps a useful distinction also arises from the concept of "paired opposites' I've formulated: to wit, "hero is to villain as monster is to victim (or, more formally, 'demihero.'"  The monster is designed to prey on a victim who is usually weaker than he, although in many cases the demihero may "step up" and conquer the monster through strength, guile, or a combination thereof. The villain may be just as obsessed as the monster, but characters like the Joker and Lex Luthor-- who make rather good comic-book parallels to Freddy and Pinhead-- are always oriented on challenging heroes, often despite having been beaten by said heroes on many, many occasions. That kind of glory may have only negative consequences, but it's still the same glory we descry in Milton's fallen Lucifer.

On a closing note, I've read that Pinhead has recently been executed by his creator Clive Barker in the world of prose. Pinhead did not appear in the last HELLRAISER film, which I have not seen, and it seems unlikely that Doug Bradley will essay the role again, any more than Robert Englund will again play Freddy, after publicly claiming that he would not do so. I personally won't mind if the characters never appear in film again--

But the crossover-loving part of me wishes that someone could engineer a comic-book meeting between Freddy and Pinhead, one worthy of their respective forms of sadistic nastiness. True, one such comic-book crossover I reviewed here  turned out awful. But the idea of a good writer managing to do justice to both Freddy's American wisecracks and Pinhead's dry Brit humor is a tempting one indeed-- though admittedly, not tempting enough to make any Faustian bargains.