MYTHCOMICS: DARK TRINITY (RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #1-6, 2017-18)

When I picked up this compilation of the first six issues of the "Rebirth" version of DC's RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS, a lot of things mitigated against my finding anything beyond basic formula entertainment (if that). As I stated in these reviews, I've devoted only slight attention to the creation of the Red Hood, a.k.a. reborn former Robin Jason Todd. I didn't care that much about any of the early iterations of Jason, and hadn't followed the 2011 OUTLAWS title, though I remember being pleasing that it had ticked off various moral guardians with its sexploitation elements. The new version of the "Outlaws" teamed up Jason-Hood with a brand-new version of Bizarro and some Rebirth iteration of Artemis, a would-be Wonder Woman, with whom I was never particularly impressed. The title of the compilation told me that this tortured trio were meant to parody the "Trinity" of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, but I've found a number of Trinity-projects tedious. Frankly, the main reason I selected this TRINITY was because I'd found writer Scott Lobdell had a talent for humor, so even if it was formula, it might be funny.

Like a lot of Lobdell stories, TRINITY is full of cute one-liners, some good, some overkill. What I didn't expect to find was a really thoughtful dramatization of the perils of being a DC "legacy character" of one kind or another. Bizarro was conceived to be Superman's "imperfect duplicate," while both Red Hood and Artemis tried and failed to take over previously established identities. Artemis's relationship with Wonder Woman was entirely acrimonious, while Jason Todd was at least chosen to be the second Robin by the Big Bat himself. But Lobdell extends the notion of the "legacy character"-- often no more than a feeble reprise of some original character-- into a metaphor for the struggles between child and parent. For Red Hood, the struggle is about gaining respect from his Bat-dad and forging his own identity. Artemis's conflict has less to do with Wonder Woman than with the separate Amazon culture in which she was raised. This version of Bizarro has no previous history with anyone, but he is raised knowing that he was designed to be a knock-off, which doesn't do a lot for his ego.

Lobdell also cranks up the parental metaphor by choosing Black Mask as the villain of TRINITY. Though the character was conceived as something of a small-potatoes schemer, subsequent treatments, including that of Judd Winick in the RED HOOD stories, made the character into a ruthless gang-boss constantly seeking not only to kill Batman and his allies but also to eliminate all criminal competition. Without contradicting anything in the origin of the Doug Moench character, this Black Mask is given a Batman-like obsession with Gotham City. In his newest scheme to become the city's new lord and master, he reaches out to Red Hood, whose relationship to Batman many consider ambivalent. The Hood hopes to get into the villain's good graces in order to build a case against him, and so agrees to help Black Mask rip off a shipment of arcane weapons. Artemis, looking for one of those weapons, crosses swords (in a purely metaphorical way) with Red Hood. Despite lots of trash-talk, both are horrified to learn that the weapon Black Mask most desires is a clone of Superman. 

The whole "allies of convenience" is nothing special, but both Red Hood and Artemis are placed in a sticky situation in attempting to liberate a mentally-impaired Superman-clone from the control of a vicious crime-lord. Red Hood, having been reborn under circumstances not unlike Bizarro's genesis, forges a particular bond with the artificial super-being, as illustrated above. This is one of the few times that Kryptonian super-hearing is utilized in order to make the hearer relate to the chaos of the city he inhabits, as well as giving perspective on the relationship of both characters within the overall matrix of common humanity.

But Black Mask, despite his having sometimes appealed to Red Hood to become his new heir (and surrogate son), has been fully aware of the hero's hero-ness the whole time, and uses a techno-organic virus to take control of Bizarro. (Said virus is seen in the first chapter, and then ignored until the writer works it into the main plot. Wow, an actual PLOT-DEVELOPMENT in a modern comic!) Artemis, despite having no real reason to involve herself in Red Hood's battle, does the right thing and delays Bizarro until the Hood can manage to destroy the Mask's control. This includes an inventive sequence, possibly a reprise of a Grant Morrison conceit, in which the villain experiences the enhanced sight of a Kryptonian.

So Black Mask is defeated and almost left to die by Red Hood, though a joke coda gives the villain a fate worse than death, again invoking parental metaphors. For every overkill-joke, there are probably three good ones, and for a modern comic that's a pretty good average. And to top it all off is this cover, in which artist Dexter Soy riffs on the Max Allan Collins version of Jason Todd, first seen stealing the tires off the Batmobile.

 I don't imagine the regular series, which in one form or another ended in 2020, kept up this level of mythic engagement. Still, there are so many lame treatments of DC legacy characters that this arc gives me hope that the company hasn't been entirely ruined by constant reboots and political correctness.

KNOWING THE IDEA FROM THE CONCEPT

I am as guilty as anyone of having used the two terms almost interchangeably-- and by "anyone," I mean a number of philosophers, ranging from Hume to Cassirer, who use either one or both terms inconsistently. Yet, the root associations for each word still continue in demotic usage. The archaic Greek etymology stresses that an "idea" is something one sees, and in demotic use this is reflected by the proverbial trope of a "light bulb" blinking on when one gets a new idea. Indeed, comics-creator Carl Barks played with this common visual trope by giving his genius-inventor character Gyro Gearloose a little robot "helper" who had a light-bulb for a head.

In contrast, though there's no standard sensory trope associated with "concept," said word does trace its lineage back to Latin, where the word connoted the physical conception of every human being within the womb. And for human beings, the birth of a new living thing is by no means as quick a thing as the act of seeing, so I tend to think of "ideas" as simple notions that may or may not prove useful, while "concepts" are ideas that have been worked out more thoroughly in terms of real-world applications. I would not be surprised to find that this or that philosopher has used these two terms in ways opposed to the way I choose to use them, but that's my choice nonetheless. At least part of my preference stems from my readings of Cassirer. particularly the frequently raised topic of how "theoretical thought" descends from the earlier and more expressive form of "mythical thought." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides this handy summation:

Characteristic of the philosophy of symbolic forms is a concern for the more “primitive” forms of world-presentation underlying the “higher” and more sophisticated cultural forms – a concern for the ordinary perceptual awareness of the world expressed primarily in natural language, and, above all, for the mythical view of the world lying at the most primitive level of all. For Cassirer, these more primitive manifestations of “symbolic meaning” now have an independent status and foundational role that is quite incompatible with both Marburg neo-Kantianism and Kant’s original philosophical conception. In particular, they lie at a deeper, autonomous level of spiritual life which then gives rise to the more sophisticated forms by a dialectical developmental process. From mythical thought, religion and art develop; from natural language, theoretical science develops. It is precisely here that Cassirer appeals to “romantic” philosophical tendencies lying outside the Kantian and neo-Kantian tradition, deploys an historical dialectic self-consciously derived from Hegel, and comes to terms with the contemporary Lebensphilosophie of Wilhelm Dilthey, Henri Bergson, Max Scheler, and Georg Simmel – as well as with the closely related philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

As an example of my own imperfect use of at least the term "idea," in one April 2021 essay I attempted to identify the different types of tropes underlying the two abstractive potentialities:

In literature as in other cultural forms, all potentialities express themselves through processes of discourse. The discourses of “lateral meanings” deal with concrete subject matter—that of what sensations the subject experiences, and of the subject’s emotional reactions to those sensations. In contrast, the discourses of “vertical meanings” concern themselves with abstractions, with the didactic making use of “ideas” while the mythopoeic makes use of “symbols.” For the sake of argument, I will treat both ideas and symbols as if they existed as discrete monads, which is not the way either are experienced. Both ideas and symbols are best expressed in the form of typical story-tropes. Levi-Strauss was pleased to term these tropes “mythemes,” conveniently ignoring how such monadic forms were dispersed throughout all forms of human communication, not just myth.

Whenever I thought about the matter, I wasn't entirely comfortable with my opposition between mythopoeic "symbols" and didactic "ideas," particularly when I'd specified that neither of them were experienced as any sort of monadic entities. I'm now specifying that any "idea," as I use the term, is primarily a symbolic construct, given that it functions to describe a base relation between one or more symbols. In contrast, a "concept" is primarily a didactic construct, since the one who conceives it is attempting to give it a more developed form, with one's own mind providing the analogue to fetal development within the womb. So in future, whenever I refer to the types of tropes favored by either the mythopoeic or the didactic potentiality, I will speak of the former as "idea-tropes" and the latter as "concept-tropes."

I can't over-stress the importance of "the idea" as a mental construct that is first and foremost expressive rather than rigorously logical. Some ideas, as noted above, form the basis of developed conceptual systems, a familiar example being the mutation of the Judeo-Christian "idea" of "the believing elect" into a more didactic form, such as the socialist "concept" of the rise of the proletariat, which is, at least in theory, more responsive to real-world considerations.

I will conclude with an example of the sort of impractical symbol-play one encounters with pure ideas taken from my recent review of SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE. I wrote:

As poor as the script is, I can see some potential in the basic imagery here, which is the only reason I gave QUEST a "fair" mythicity rating. Superman attempts to get rid of Earth's nuclear weapons by tossing them into the sun. In rude poetic terms, the weapons "get even" by spawning their own champion who journeys to Earth and almost kills the hero. 

I assumed that I should credit writers Konnor and Rosenthal for the final form of the script, and that Chris Reeve was only responsible for the base idea of tossing nuclear weapons into the sun. Reeve's initial notion would be a fragmentary idea-trope by itself, probably derived from the opinion that a hero from a destroyed world might be proactive about preventing the destruction of his adopted world. Konnor and Rosenthal may have been given the basic idea of providing a framework for an "imperfect duplicate" of Superman by someone else, but I speculate that they would have elaborated Reeve's one-note idea into a slightly more elaborate framework of idea-tropes. It's not a didactic concept, given that at no point do the writers claim that the weapons are "angry" at Superman for "killing" them, and since they cannot act, the villain Luthor must be responsible for spawning Nuclear Man. Another didactic development of the idea-framework might have also intimated that the sun was pissed off at the hero from dumping all of these weapons in its maw, and thus the solar body is also complicit in spawning Superman's nemesis-- though once again, Luthor has to provide all the heavy lifting for any inanimate objects. Even Luthor's mode of creating Nuclear Man, that of using a hair from the hero's head to make the duplicate, embodies a symbolic idea, though as I recall Konnor and Rosenthal don't even attempt to invoke the still-nascent science of cloning to make the genesis of Nuclear Man more "logical." Frankly, the original comics-method by which Luthor birthed Bizarro was more forthright. But I can't claim that the method itself displayed any mythic idea-tropes, even though Bizarro himself did, as discussed here.

I will probably explore the process of concept-formation, as opposed to idea-formation, in a future post.

ADDENDUM 1-28-2022: Roughly six years prior to this essay I addressed some similar developmental formulations in A PAUSE FOR POTENTIALITIES, where I said:

Now, I agree with Jung's comment that "ideas" are developed out of what might as well be called "images" (Kant called these lesser elements "notions.") 

MYTHCOMICS" "BEING BIZARRO" (ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #7-8, 2007)

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?== Adam's complaint to God, John Milton, PARADISE LOST.

Milton’s famous line from PARADISE LOST—essentially a more sophisticated version of the adolescent’s aggrieved cry, “I didn’t ask to be born”—sometimes appears as a preface in some editions of Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN. The attitude proves of key importance to understanding the story of a being created to be one-of-a-kind, and thus isolated from the human society of his all too mortal creator.

In this essay I’ve discussed Alvin Schwartz’s original “Bizarro” story from the SUPERMAN comic stirp, with particularly emphasis on the narrative’s indebtedness to the story of FRANKENSTEIN. Not only does Bizarro’s physiognomy resemble the angular countenance of the Universal film-monster as essayed by Boris Karloff—although Bizarro’s flesh looks rather like chalk-colored stone—but Bizarro too is an “imperfect copy” of normative humanity. True, Bizarro specifically emulates the form of Superman, an alien being who looks human but has “powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals.” But Schwartz frequently emphasizes that Bizarro, like the Frankenstein Monster, is a form of life that stands outside the normative biological process, and which may be considered not unlike God’s creation of mankind from the medium of clay.

Mary Shelley codes her reference to the Judeo-Christian narrative by giving the book the subtitle “The Modern Prometheus.” In some legends the Graeco-Roman Titan is said to be able to sculpt living men out of clay, and Frankenstein does essentially the same thing by sculpting a monster out of the “common clay” of dead bodies. Some critics have objected to the logic of Frankenstein’s piecemeal construction of the Monster, asking whether it would not have been more practical to simply revive a single dead body, whose parts were biologically designed to work with one another. But Shelley’s mythopoeic design was sound. By having Frankenstein choose random body parts with which to make his monster, she furthers the idea of his godlike status, choosing organs as Prometheus would have chosen this or that lump of clay to turn into a human being.

Schwartz’s Bizarro is obviously not made of disparate body parts; he arises as a result of radiation interacting with what Schwartz calls “unliving matter.”  At the end of the comic strip narrative, Superman, less than pleased to have an imperfect copy of himself running around loose, manages to devolve Bizarro back to his constituent elements—his “common clay,” if you will—though the last strip is unusually coy about showing Bizarro’s inorganic remains “on-camera.”

Later iterations of the Bizarro mythos in DC comic books of the Silver Age sought to emphasize broad farce rather than tragic alienation, and thus the “imperfect Superman” was given a planet-ful of other Bizarros, mostly copies of characters from Superman’s mythos. For a time they all inhabited a faux version of Earth, but cube-shaped instead of round, and they all spoke in reverse-logic, saying “Goodbye” in place of “Hello,” and so on.

“Being Bizarro” is a re-writing of Bizarro mythology by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. It's a two-part story that takes place within a twelve-issue arc SUPERMAN arc, but the overall arc is outside my consideration here.  There are no direct references to either Shelley or Schwartz in this tale, though it’s interesting that artist Quitely dispenses with the “classic” chalk-faced look of the Bizarros, making them all look like they have faces of white clay.

In this re-imagining, the Bizarro phenomenon does not start out with one imperfect duplicate being conjured forth by some scientist’s invention. Rather, the “common clay” from which Morrison’s Bizaaros originate launches an attack against the living denizens of Superman’s world. From a domain termed “the Underverse,” also described as part of the “cosmic sinkhole” underlying normative reality, a “planet eater” organism seeks to prey on Earth. Despite the metaphysical nature of this proposition, Morrison’s script draws upon biological patterns. Thus the planet-eater takes the shape of another planet in order to mimic Earth’s appearance, but the organism botches the job and looks like a big cube in space. The Underverse then sends forth Bizarro-duplicates of living beings, one of which is a “Super Bizarro” who successfully duplicates some, though not all, of Superman’s p;owers. The duplicates that reach Earth can infect humans and turn them into Bizarros, which argues that Morrison sought to crossbreed the Bizarro mythology with the still popular “zombie infestation” stories.

Superman, after defeating the Super Bizarro, decides that a direct attack may discourage the invading planet-eater, so he launches himself into space until he reaches the planet called “Bizarro-Home,” and—he hits it. He hits the planet-eater so hard that it retreats back into the cosmic sinkhole. However, as soon as it does so, the shifts in gravity and solar radiation drain Superman of his powers. The planet, just like its clay-faced pawns, is not equipped to understand Superman’s plight, but in another display of protective mimicry, it produces more Bizarros, all imbecilic parodies of people whom Superman knows in his world. These new duplicates include goofy versions of Justice League heroes, and even a Bizarro Jor-El, who calls himself “Le-Roj.” 

(As Bizarros of the Silver Age never inverted their names, this is probably Morrison having fun with a trope more associated with Mister Mxyzptlk.)  However, one duplicate the planet does not intentionally produce is an “aberration” who calls himself “Zibarro.”

While the Super Bizarro is a “funhouse mirror” reflection of Superman’s powers, Zibarro seems a more direct reflection of Superman’s intellectual capacities. Zibarro is the only being on the planet capable ot talking in whole sentences and of feeling finer emotions. If the Frankenstein Monster and the original Bizarro were outcasts from human society by reason of their freakish physiques, Zibarro is alienated from his own people by virtue of his superior intellect. The soul-cry of the anguished nerd resonates as Zibarro complains to Superman, “Must only Zibarro search for poetry in this senseless coming and going?” The other Bizarros overhear this plaint and mock him, “Ha ha ha; Zibarro am King of Cool!”

The hero’s sympathy for Bizarro-Home’s only intelligent being doesn’t obviate his own mission: to get off the planet before it makes its complete descent into the Underverse. Superman gets an inspiration, though, from the presence of Le-Roj, who acts as if he were the father of Zibarro, even though there’s clearly no normal biological link. The Man of Steel decides to build a rocket to take him out of the Underverse, just as Jor-El’s rocket saved infant Kal-El from the destruction of Krypton. To accomplish this,, Superman has to con the other Bizarros into helping him by employing their own reverse-logic—and even then, his plan may be foiled when the Bizarros get the idea of using the rocket to get rid of the irritant of Zibarro.

I’ll refrain from detailing the way in which Superman manages to escape destruction and to return to his own adopted world. The main emphasis of the narrative is on the courage of Zibarro, forced to do the right thing despite enormous temptation, and on his role in fulfilling Morrison’s idea of teleology. While Superman promises to return and liberate Zibarro at some later date, the Man of Steel voices his real opinion of the aberration’s place in the scheme of things when he tells Zibarro, “I know you think of yourself as a flaw, an imperfection, but you’re something more, Zibarro. You’re proof that Bizarro-Home is getting smarter.” Zibarro’s sacrifice, his re-descent into base matter, resembles the devolution of Schwartz’s Bizarro, though Morrison has extended the associations in many intriguing directions. Prior to the world’s descent into “the All-Night,” Le-Roj—whose reversed name looks like “Le Roi,” French for “The King”—perishes upon a sacrificial pyre, wearing a stereotypical king’s crown on his head as he dies.

I don’t imagine that in the near future Morrison will re-visit his version of the Bizarro mythology, which is just as well, since this rethinking seems uniquely suited to his own priorities. Some myths just don’t travel well, and I for one would hate to see someone like Mark Waid put his hands on Morrison’s concepts.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE COURTSHIP OF BIZARRO" (1958)

This week's mythcomic is a little different from others, in that I'm working for an incomplete story, though I believe that I have enough of the narrative to fill in the blanks as needed.

"The Courtship of Bizarro" is the title given to a sequence of the SUPERMAN comic strip by my late friend and pen-pal Rich Morrissey. He reprinted the first appearance of the "Bizarro" character in the apa-zine kapa-Alpha, but he only had access to roughly the middle and end of the sequence, lasting from October to December of 1958. Thus the sequence does not show the actual creation of Superman's "imperfect duplicate," ostensibly by some "alien device," though the event is referred to elsewhere in the sequence. A different Bizarro appeared in an Otto Binder SUPERBOY story almost concurrently with the comic strip sequence by Alvin Scwhartz and Wayne Boring, but I tend to validate Schwartz's claim that he originated Bizarro for the strip. Since it was a regular practice for Mort Weisinger, editor of the SUPERMAN comic titles, to recycle ideas, it's not unlikely that Weisinger simply assigned Binder to do his take on the same basic idea. Ironically, though Schwartz's story is more sophisticated than the comic-book stories with the character in the early 1960s, Bizarro probably would have been forgotten by all but a tiny number of comic-strip enthusiasts, had the character not been given a second lease on life in the funnybooks.

The story as I have it implies that Bizarro has been on the loose for a while. Superman is aware of the trouble that his artificial duplicate can create, since Bizarro possesses all of Superman's powers but little intellect or restraint. Bizarro has also caught sight of Lois Lane and fallen in love with her, though as yet he has not revealed his feelings to her, fearing that he will be rejected because of his inhuman, chalk-white features. (At least I presume that the black-and-white strip intended for Bizarro to possess  the same white flesh that he did in the comic books.)

In the first reprinted strip, Bizarro casually decides to take a nap on a park bench. Naturally he attracts the attention of the authorities, and they summon Superman. But because Bizarro is not truly alive, but a creation of unliving matter-- a point Schwartz returns to again and again-- Superman mistakes the creature's deep sleep for death. Nor does Bizarro wake up when he's transported to a laboratory and sealed into a chamber for future study. However, he does wake up when no one's around to see it, and, hearing people talk about his supposed death, decides to "stay dead" so that he can continue his clandestine pursuit of Lois Lane.

The "Thing of Steel," as he was later called, sends Lois flowers and a diamond necklace. Because the world thinks Bizarro is dead, Lois believes Superman sent the gifts. This annoys the Man of Steel, whose dominant characterizaton in the late 1950s was that of extreme emotional reticence. The hero's resentment may stem in part from Bizarro's being free to express emotions Superman might like to express, were he less devoted to his superheroic duty. In addition, Bizarro's other courtship-plans include retrofitting a distant asteroid to serve as a "honeymoon hideaway" for himself and Lois. Bizarro's efforts to make this new haven include things like uprooting trees from the Metropolis parks, and since no one sees him perform these feats, Superman gets blamed for the transgressions-- though the hero soon suspects that Bizarro is still alive.

Bizarro reveals himself to Lois and whisks her away to his asteroid, still without confessing his amorous passion. Only when he reveals to her a ramshackle house and an ersatz garden does Lois react at the enormity: "Did you bring me to this horrible place just to propose to me?" Bizarro is frustrated that she deems his work ugly, and he destroys his own creations in a tantrum. However, Lois mollifies the creature, and. long before Superman shows up at the asteroid, she manages to talk Bizarro into taking her back to Earth, thus effecting her own rescue. But once back on Earth, Lois overreaches her influence by trying to make Bizarro perform some minor chores. Bizarro causes chaos as usual-- the only time in the abbreviated sequence that he's really played for laughs.

Bizarro butts heads with Superman again, resulting in another stalemate. However, the hero has gained some insight about a way to destroy Bizarro with a radioactive element that will affect the creature the way kryptonite affects Kryptonians. Superman wants Lois to lure Bizarro into a trap. Why the superhero himself can't simply approach the creature with the fatal element is never adequately explained, and Lois rightly objects to being used as a "judas goat." But Superman guilts her into cooperating by lecturing her about all the harm Bizarro might cause to innocent people through his tantrums. Neither Superman or Lois are aware, however, that Bizarro is listening in to their conversation.

Lois does obey Superman's plans up to a point, but she reneges, trying to warn the hapless artificial being. Bizarro, anxious to help Lois despite her planned betrayal, encounters the rays of the element, and falls into a cistern. Lois begs Superman to save Bizarro, but the superhero reveals that Bizarro, who was never truly alive, has dissolved into nothingness. Though Lois is angry at Superman for his callousness, the sequence ends with her wondering if Bizarro's feelings for her reveal the true emotions of the Man of Steel.

Certainly a modern reader is more likely to share Lois's opinion of Bizarro-- that he was real because he "had courage and real feeling"-- over Superman's dismissal of the creature as "only a kind of shadow of myself that somehow materialized." Schwartz's dialogue does not allow Superman to show anything but superficial pique at Bizarro's activities, but the superhero's actions are consonant with those of an attitude of personal affront at a being who infringes on Superman's own sense of identity. The "shadow" comment recalls a likely source for Schwartz's creation: the Mary Shelley FRANKENSTEIN. In the original novel, the monster created by the titular scientist then haunts Frankenstein's tracks, and acts like an evil doppelganger, devoted to destroying the creator's family and friends. Bizarro's ridged-looking skin was certainly modeled on that of the classic Universal version of the monster, and even Bizarro's stringy hair resembles that of the Universal menace more than it does the spit-curl of Superman.

Bizarro's fractured speech is also probably borrowed from the Universal film BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Schwartz doesn't indulge in the famous "language reversal logic" of later Bizarros-- like saying "hello" in place of "goodbye," a trope given pop-culture immortality in an episode of SEINFELD-- but this Bizarro's substitution of "me" in place of "I" may have given rise to the trope in the first place. Most importantly, Bizarro, like most versions of the Monster, captures the pathos of being a "thing" that looks somewhat human but is too distorted to associate with humanity.
Though the comic-book Bizarro became little more than a goofus in the 1960s, some later versions, from creators as different as Marty Pasko and Grant Morrison, have tapped into that pathos to good effect.

There are some reproductions of this sequence online, but as most of them are not very legible in reprint form, interested parties should check out Paul Kupperburg's site for readable copies.