CATEGORIES OF STRUCTURAL LENGTH PT. 4

 Prior to posting my second mythcomic review for the month of January 2021, I find that I need to add a new category to the ones set forth in the original STRUCTURAL LENGTH essay.

In that essay, the first four categories I mentioned were “the vignette,” “the short arc,” “the short story,” and “the long arc,” I further stated that the short arc could take the form of a subplot within a greater context, be it a novel or a continuing feature, though the short arc did not always take the subplot form. This quality of “relatedness” is the main thing that distinguishes the short arc from its relative-in-length, the short story. A short story by its nature suggests an item that can read apart from any greater context, as per Edgar Allan Poe’s encomium on the form. Though his three “Dupin” stories qualify as a series, a reader need not read them all to understand any single story. The short story takes a moderately different form in a more regularly published series, such as a Batman comic book. Any given Batman short story makes more sense if the reader does know something about the Batman mythology, about the ways in which he battles crime and the types of criminals he encounters. That said, before one reads a particular standalone story of Batman fighting the Penguin, one does not have to read any other particular Batman-Penguin story to understand what’s going on. However, not every medium handles the short story identically. It’s rare, though not impossible, that anyone ever issues a prose short story in installments, but the practice is fairly common in the comic book medium. A relevant example appears in the two-part QUESTION story “Saving Face.” As much as any prose short story, “Face” has a definite beginning, middle and end, though it’s extended over the course of two serial issues. I would say, however, that there’s a limit on how much an author can extend a short-story continuity within a comic book format before said continuity morphs into something else. I would tend to say that in comic books three issues would probably be the upper limit.

Now, a short arc has similar length-restrictions, but it parts company with the short story in being more intimately tied in to a greater continuity. A relevant example is the three-part TOMB OF DRACULA narrative I’ve entitled “Where Lurks the Chimera.” The plot also has a beginning, middle, and end, but the events of “Chimera” are not independent from other ongoing TOMB stories as the events of “Saving Face” are independent from other stories in the QUESTION series. The main plot of “Chimera” revolves around the vampire-lord’s search for a mystical relic, and it concludes with Dracula failing to obtain his goal. Yet the narrative also intertwines with other events from previous narratives, such as the Count’s ongoing conflict with another villain, Doctor Sun, and his ongoing romance with a young woman, Sheila Whittier, and the reader who has not read previous or subsequent Dracula-tales dealing with these characters has missed a lot of content.

Going by my original list, the “long arc” would be the next category, but I’ve come to think that a new category is necessary, to signify an arc that’s a little more involved in terms of both length and story-content. This I’ll term the “medial arc,” and as far as installment-fiction is concerned, I would say that it usually lasts from six to eight installments, while its narrative is much more strongly imbricated with the ongoing continuity. One example of the medial arc is the five-part arc “Motherland” from the series Y THE LAST MAN. Now, “Motherland” was published late in the history of the ongoing feature, and it happened to solve a lot of the mysteries the author propounded about why almost all the males on Earth perished. But it’s just as possible to see the same level of continuity-involvement in a medial arc published at the beginning of a series. “The Black Pearl” occurs near the outset of the INU-YASHA series and serves to establish one of the dominant plotlines of the narrative: the relationship between the heroic Inu-Yasha and his more ruthless brother Sesshomaru.

At present I would not seek to fix a length of chapters for a long arc. I mentioned in LENGTH PART 1 that long arcs were best known to audiences through the form of the television soap opera. Since the only soap opera I’ve seen in its entirety is the 1966 DARK SHADOWS, I would tend to regard each season of this program as comprising a long arc—which, in the case of Season One, came to 135 30-minute episodes. With such a quantity of episodes, there’s certainly no sense of a unifying beginning, middle, and end. Every time a given story-conflict is resolved, some other conflict emerges from the metaphorical wings to take its place, and the final episode of the season is usually just a stopping-point rather than an organic conclusion.

Long arcs in comic books are rarely that long. In practice, I would say that they rarely exceed twenty installments, allowing for variations in story-length, before the author shifts to another arc or short-story. The events of the plot are not as strongly focused as those of the shorter arcs, though there may be an overreaching purpose unifying all the events. In the NISEKOI long arc I’ve entitled “Limit,” all sixteen installments are principally concerned with the teenagers rescuing their classmate Marika from an arranged marriage. Given this expansive narrative, each of the principal characters is given some feat to perform that serves the aim of rescue, and, given that NISEKOI is a comedy, many of these feats draw upon running jokes in the overall series. For instance, one such joke involves the erratic cooking skills of Kosaki, whose meals are almost always vomitous in nature. During the rescue operation, the operation’s planner assigns Kosaki to cook for the guards attending the wedding, with the humorous result that any guard who ate the girl’s meal become sidelined by virtue of stomach pains.

I mentioned in the cited essay that some comic-book serials are unified enough that they could function as “episodic novels” in the vein of Melville’s MOBY DICK. I noted that some long serials, like Akamatsu’s LOVE HINA lacked a “structuring principle,” be it related to plot or to theme, and thus I did not regard these as episodic novels, only as assemblages of arcs and short stories. NISEKOI, however, qualifies as such an episodic novel, in that it combines several of these structural forms into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

MYTHCOMICS: {THE FALL OF DRACULA], TOMB OF DRACULA #45-70, 1976-79)

[SPOILERS, SPOILERS everywhere]

During the Silver Age the long story-arc (defined here), long a standard in the comic-strip medium, became both fiscally and artistically rewarding to comic-book practitioners. However, the very success of features that allowed for the development of long arcs-- FANTASTIC FOUR, THOR and SPIDER-MAN-- may have made it tough for other features to compete. The Early Bronze Age is littered with unfinished fantasy-epics, and even Jack Kirby himself, partly responsible for the Silver Age arcs, saw his "Fourth World" wrecked on the reefs of market preferences.

Marvel's TOMB OF DRACULA-- the company's most popular "monster comic"-- lasted almost the entire decade of the 1970s. But initially the feature conceived by artist Gene Colan and writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway took an episodic approach to storytelling typical of the early 70s. The vampire count, brought back to life during the 20th century, sought to find new ways to establish a new empire among the living. His main opponents were a group of vampire-hunters: one was Frank Drake, a distant descendant of the mortal Dracula line, while the other two were descendants of characters from the Bram Stoker novel: aged Quincy Harker and his protege Rachel Van Helsing. With issue #7 (1973), Marv Wolfman took the scripting reins, and he and Colan continued to their collaboration on the title until it ended in 1979 (though other Marvel-Dracula stories by other hands appeared elsewhere). Although Wolfman's long tenure included many episodic, "done-in-one" stories-- indeed, many such stories are interpolated in the long arc I've termed "Fall of Dracula"-- he gave the continuing characters more emotional continuity than they had possessed under previous writers, including the star himself. Dracula was not just a thirty bloodsucker, but a medieval aristocrat who believed absolutely in his right to command, as illustrated by the vampire's words in this 1974 storyline:

Man does not have his choice in things. He follows the will of his betters—and he is destroyed if he does not.

Though TOMB OF DRACULA was a steady paycheck for both Wolfman and Colan, they surely saw many other features dying around them, not least other "monster-titles." I've avoided looking at anything Wolfman or Colan may have said about the disposition of the TOMB title, except for responses in the letters-columns. The specific rationale for working in a possible conclusion to the undead count's saga does not matter. it only matters that in TOD #45 (1976), Wolfman took the first step toward chronicling the ruthless vampire's downfall.

In issue #45, Dracula has just survived a crossover-encounter with Marvel's resident sorcerer Doctor Strange. Possibly in response to his near-defeat, the vampire conceives of a new way to wield power in the human world: that of starting a religion. Earlier issues establish that in antiquity Dracula forswore the Christian beliefs of his upbringing and affiliated himself to God's enemy Satan, though there are no indications that the Count was a true believer in anything but himself. Drac hits upon the idea to create a Satanic cult that will somehow become dominant in world government, though the vampire seems pretty sketchy about the details of his program. He happens across an abandoned church and decides it's the perfect place for a Satanic hang-out. But although the church has been divested of most of its religious accoutrements, one memento remains: a large oil painting of Jesus of Nazareth, looking soulfully outward. Dracula finds that he cannot remove or even come near the painting. Instead of giving up the church as off limits, the villain defiantly swears to make the former place of worship the bastion of a religion in which Dracula himself will become a living god.

Dracula seeks out a nearby Satanist cult, a small coven run by a nasty customer named Anton Lupeski (note the "wolfish" name). Since Dracula sees the cultists attempting to summon Satan himself to marry a female cultist, the vampire hits on the idea of pretending to be Satan given human form. The cult buys Drac's imposture, though Lupeski knows better. However, since the coven was in the middle of conducting an unholy marriage-ceremony, Dracula finds himself expected to make an infernal union with the female cultist in question, name of Domini (explicitly translated as "belonging to God.") Since Domini is a good looking woman, the vampire has no objection to assuming the role of her husband.

Following this initial step in the Count's plans for conquest, Wolfman begins to emphasize the presence of angelic/ Christ-like figures in Dracula's world, figures which had been largely absent in earlier issues. Flashbacks in issue #48 establish that even back in medieval times Dracula had a few episodic contacts with ambivalent beings who seem to be heavenly emissaries.  Issue #50 features another crossover with the mainstream Marvel universe, but the choice is more metaphysically interesting than Doctor Strange. Lupeski, seeking a way to get rid of his new boss, mystically persuades the Silver Surfer, Marvel's secular Christ-figure, to attack Dracula. Dracula survives the alien hero's attack in part when the Surfer gets a look at the Jesus-painting. The hero apparently has some sort of communion with the powers behind the painting, and thus decides to leave the undead Count to the destiny of Heaven.

Domini (no last name) emerges as the mediator between Dracula and his heavenly opponents. Wolfman does not spend much time explicating her history: for reasons unknown Domini was sent to a nunnery by her unnamed father, but she eventually escaped to join the Satanists-- not out of any devotion to that religion, but seeking some anodyne for her own sense of weakness. She comes alive as a character, though, because she seems the opposite of the relentless count, and the two genuinely fall in love despite Dracula's original purpose. In fact, Domini's father shows up at the Satanist church, using a rifle against the cultists. Dracula, brooking no opposition, slays Domini's father, though Domini is inscrutably sure that her dead father will not be doomed to vampiric resurrection.

It's decided at some point that Dracula and Domini will conceive a child, the better to promote the new cult with a messiah-figure, and the mystic rituals of the Satanists serve, apparently, to make an undead person capable of conceiving. Dracula's motivations here become somewhat fuzzy: on one hand, he wants to be the center of the cult, yet, because of his frustrations with earlier offspring, he also wants an heir to his throne.

However, in issue #52 Dracula makes a new enemy: a nameless, golden-skinned man who attacks the vampire with assorted super-powers. Dracula wounds the attacker, who flees-- and apparently disappears into the Christ-painting, signalling that he's some sort of angel-figure like the ones that dogged Drac in medieval times.

Despite interference from Quincy Harker's gang of hunters, Dracula's child is born, though the vamp is duly vexed to see that the infant has golden skin like that of his adult adversary. Domini has no real explanation for this, and even Drac doesn't seem inclined to wonder if she's been unfaithful to him. In issue #55 Lupeski, seeking to drive a wedge between the vampire and his messianic spawn, rather high-handedly bestows on the child the name of the Roman god Janus, "the god of "beginnings and endings" (or maybe "Alpha and Omega," as per the New Testament?) However, though Dracula and Domini begin the life of Janus, Lupeski provides an ending: during a battle in which Lupeski suborns the vampire-hunters against Dracula, the cult-leader accidentally slays the infant. Dracula slays Lupeski but becomes distraught at the loss of his son and heir.

Though Domini joins Dracula in mourning their son, issue #61 reveals another bolt in her quiver. In a parody of vampiric revival-- itself a parody of Christian resurrection-- Domini brings her infant son back to life by causing the dead child to merge with the unnamed golden angel. The angel thus takes on some of the personality of the human child, and announces with supreme regret his intention to slay his father.

Despite Dracula's replacement of Domini's father as "the only man in her life," Janus's battles with the vampire-lord don't verge into the realm of the Oedipal, though Wolfman ratchets up the melodrama for all it's worth.

However, yet another player enters the game in issue #64. Satan himself summons Drac, Janus and a human witch named Topaz into his infernal domain, and waxes wroth with his alleged servant for having upset the balance between Heaven and Hell:

You brought into existence a child-- a son who destroys the carefully woven tapestry that permits our survival.

The gist of Satan's remarks imply that he's punishing Dracula in order to keep the celestial heat off himself. Satan releases all of his captives back to the mortal world-- including Topaz, who mainly served in the capacity of a glorified guest-shot-- but now Dracula has lost all of his vampire abilities. The Count is thus forced to scrabble for existence like an ordinary mortal, and though he's still a tough old bat without his powers, Satan hits Drac in his weakest point: his inordinate sense of pride in having the powers of the undead. The Devil only returns Drac's powers when the latter has foolishly forsworn Satan as well as God, which, according to the demon-lord, is going to put the vampire in big trouble in the final accounting.

If Wolfman had any intention of a final contest between Dracula and his son, this plan is abandoned. Instead Dracula's last challenge is from an older vampire, one Torgo, who turns all of the Count's legions of undead against him. Even though the doughty Drac again triumphs, for the first time he's unable to find any glory in the victory, and so is ripe for slaying by his oldest living foe, Quincy Harker.

To be sure, even in the feature's final issue, Wolfman mentions plans to re-launch the Count in another format, so it was a given that Marvel wasn't quite finished with Dracula. Nevertheless, this broad breakdown of the events of "Fall of Dracula" should indicate that Wolfman and Colan managed to send the bloodsucker to a doom which, while entirely deserved, nevertheless carries the aura of solid melodramatic tragedy.

MYTHCOMICS: "WHERE LURKS THE CHIMERA" (TOMB OF DRACULA #26-28, 1974-5)

The 1971 modification of the Comics Code sprang from both economic and cultural forces. As I pointed out in this essay, in the late 1960s American comics-publishers needed new outlets beyond the standard juvenile audience. The original Comics Code came about because the genres of crime and horror brought the industry unwanted publicity. Crime never made a major comeback, but horror never entirely left, surviving throughout the Silver Age in relatively restrained “mystery” tales. But the Warren line of black-and-white magazines, beginning with CREEPY in 1964, consistently demonstrated a market for more visceral horror. Thus it was only a matter of time until other publishers sought to capture that market in four-color comics. It would be interesting to know what cultural indicators convinced the industry leaders that the game was worth the candle, but in any case, the early 1970s saw a marked increase in horror-titles from “the Big Two." With a few exceptions DC Comics focused largely on anthologies, while Marvel usually chose to feature particular characters related to the theme of terror.

Marvel’s most long-lasting success in this department was TOMB OF DRACULA, launched in 1972. In some respects thiis version of the vampiric count had a lot in common with Marvel’s world-beating villains, in that Dracula preened and postured almost as much as Doctor Doom. But Marvel’s count was crafted so as to take advantage of certain constant themes in vampire mythology—in particular, that of religion.

“Where Lurks the Chimera” is the title of the first of three stories running from TOMB #26-28. Though the title displays a cookie-cutter portentousness typical of Marvel story-titles, this time it’s actually relevant to the theme of the story.

In Greek myth, a chimera is a fearsome monster, notable for being a tripartite beast, with a goat’s head, a lion’s body, and a serpent’s tail. In the Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan story, the chimera is a magical statue created long before the nation of Greece existed. Wolfman possibly chose to name his fictional statue after the Greek creature to address a major plot-point: that in the past the statue has been broken up into its three constituent pieces, and that only recently have the pieces been recovered and brought together. The statue is rumored to confer immense powers upon its owner. This is reason enough for a certain world-beating vampire to chase after it.

Though vampire stories appear around the world, the tradition of the fictional vampire is rooted in Christian belief and folklore Most of the TOMB stories prior to this one did not stray far from these origins, but Wolfman expanded the compass of the central character’s adventures. This time Dracula contends not only with a rival villain who also wants the Chimera—later revealed to be an evildoer named Doctor Sun—but also with a young Jewish man who seeks to protect the statue from falling into evil hands.

Though many comics-professionals of the period were Jewish, including Marv Wolfman, Jews were not given much literal representation in comics until the 1970s. The statue of the Chimera, though, is first seen in the hands of two yarmulke-wearing Jews living in London: young yeshiva-student David Eschol and his father Joshua. Joshua is the image of the saintly old learned Jew, confident in his unwavering faith and his ability to remain uncorrupted by the availability of the Chimera’s power. He might be deemed a descendant of the “Rabbi Lowe” character of the classic "Golem" narrative. 

David is much more uncertain about handling a “creature of nightmare,” and as things turn out, he’s proven right. Joshua’s acquisition of the Chimera’s three sections prompts Doctor Sun to send a gang of thugs to the old man’s shop. The thugs kill Joshua, club David unconscious, and abscond with the Chimera—or rather, two parts of the Chimera, for David manages to keep hold of the tail-piece.

Dracula arrives at the Eschols’ shop too late to claim his prize, but he does see that David still possesses the one segment. While Dracula himself goes to look for the other two segments, he sends one of his human agents—a previously introduced young woman, Shiela Whittier-- to contact David and to keep tabs on him. Shiela, in contrast to most of Dracula’s pawns, is actually in love with the vampire. The count is at least slightly moved by her loyalty, though, given his aristocratic ego, he believes that he’s owed such fealty from all those who serve him.

I’m omitting various irrelevant subplots, as well as Dracula’s peril when he tracks down Doctor Sun and is almost slain in a death-trap. But once the vampire recovers, he tracks down David and Shiela. As if seeking to assuage his ego—he was almost killed by Sun, after all—Dracula confronts David and demands the tail-piece. He then demonstrates his ability, even with the incomplete segment, to conjure forth a giant fire-lion in the sky, which spits fire down on London, and then sends a shower of rain to put out the fire.

Wolfman’s script is a little vague as to why David so quickly yields the segment to Dracula, even though the vampire does not use his hypnotic power on the young man. Why does David do so?

Early in issue #26, one of Wolfman’s captions reads: in part, “for all these years David Eschol has never once strayed form the path outlined by his forefathers. But before the night is done, the path of his youth shall venture down many new roads—all but one of which shall lead to hell.”  If his father is the face of the unwavering Believer, David is cast in the role of the Doubting Thomas. As David comes to a realization that Dracula incarnates the evil his father foreswore, David defends himself, using a Star of David to hold off Dracula after the fashion of the more popular cross.

Yet Dracula’s evil is seductive. He plays upon David’s religiosity by claiming that the Jewish god, if he created the world, is therefore also the creator of all evils. David weakly refutes the charge with the “free choice” argument. Dracula fires back with the “great man” argument:

“Man does not have his choice in things. He follows the will of his betters—and he is destroyed if he does not.”

Despite never having met David Eschol before, the count intuits that the young man is gnawed by doubts, and promises to give David a sense of ”order,” much as his own father did, albeit in a thoroughly demonic mirror-image. David does not exactly give in, but he lowers his guard, giving Dracula the chance to attack. However, David wounds the vampire with the Star of David—at which point the henchmen of Doctor Sun arrive, capturing all three; David, Sheila and the vampire.

If the story;s second part is largely about David’s temptation, the third places its emphasis upon lovelorn Shiela—though the last part of the “Chimera” tale suffers from incredibly poor plotting by Wolfman. The story opens with Doctor Sun—still not as yet named or seen on-panel—gloating over his captives and boasting about the fact that he now possesses all three parts of the Chimera, giving him access to “the power of the cosmic eternal.”

Yet, the only thing Sun does with this power is to torment his captives with horrific visions. Dracula is surrounded by all of his regular enemies—Blade, Rachel Van Helsing, and so on—who try to destroy him. David sees his own father speaking the same heretical words Dracula spoke earlier, such as, “There is no God! There is no supreme being! I lied!” Only Shiela is actually shown a vision that reflects an unwelcome truth: a vision in which Dracula seems ready to make love to her, and yet turns into a skull-headed avatar of Death in the end.

Since Dracula is the star of the comic, he alone manages to break free of the false visions. He overcomes Sun’s henchmen, though the master villain escapes. Dracula reclaims the Chimera-statue, but his blasé trust in Shiela’s unconditional love causes him to drop his guard. Shiela snatches the statue from him and shatters it. Dracula is of course enraged, but even David reviles Shiela for her actions, saying that, “you had no right”—showing that he has to some extent internalized his father’s mission of being the custodian of arcane objects. Only Shiela is practical enough to realize that that the Chimera could bring only death to the good and the evil alike.  She and David leave together, and Dracula is too overcome with indecision to stop them. To be sure, though, both young people meet unhappy fates in the next issue, in keeping with the tone of a horror comic.

On a minor note, Wolfman’s history for the creation of the Chimera hearkens back to the pre-historical eras of Robert E. Howard, whose works Marvel had the license to adapt during this period. The statue’s maker is given the name “C’thunda,” and since a lot of Marvel writers back then made ample use of Lovecraftian references, this name might be a shout-out to Lovecraft’s demon-god Cthulhu. On the other hand, “C’thunda” also sounds a lot like the Greek word “chthonic.” This signifies things pertaining to the earth and the underworld, and, coincidentally enough, a Marvel writer later used this word to make up their own earth-deity, “Chthon.” It doesn’t seem entirely appropriate to the creator of the Chimera, an airborne beast, unless one sees the creation of its demonic power to be nothing but another road leading to the domain of Hell. Regarded in this light, the answer to the question "where lurks the Chimera" would seem to be "in the depths of the human soul."