THRILLS WITH THROUGH-LINES

 This post is largely just a terminological update, exploring the subject of what makes it possible for the launch of a spinoff character to qualify as a "proto-crossover." In the 2022 essay STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS ON STATURE, I explained my view as to why the early appearances of certain comics-spinoffs, such as The Black Panther, qualified as proto-crossovers while others, such as Adam Warlock, did not.

The logic set forth in STATUTE remains intact, but I came across the word "through-line" that serves to describe the difference in the two types of spinoffs. The Merriam Webster definition is as follows:

a common or consistent element or theme shared by items in a series or by parts of a whole

The relevant "element" is that of intentionality: whether or not one can show a probable intention of the creator(s) plan to use a character again in either a Prime or Sub role. In the case of the two heroes mentioned, there are numerous textual clues as to editor Stan Lee's plans to use the Panther again in a superordinate role, and those textual elements comprise a 'through-line" linking his early subordinate appearances to his slightly later superordinate status. In contrast, there are no such clues linking Warlock's subordinate appearances to his later starring status, so the former Sub appearances have no through-line and so do not have the status of proto-crossovers.

The same principle applies to the essay example of the Green Goblin. The Goblin is introduced as a new Sub in the cosmos of Spider-Man, while his partners, the Enforcers, are an ensemble-team who collectievly make up an "old" and established Sub. Thus, the initial story possesses a through-line to all of the Goblin's future appearances. However, he's an "old" villain by the time he encounters the "new Sub" Crime Master. But Crime Master will not make future appearances in the Spider-cosmos, so there is no through-line and his appearance alongside the Goblin may be called a villain-mashup but not a villain-crossover.   

In STATUTE I used Frasier Crane as an example of a character who was selected to be a spinoff character from CHEERS. Frasier made regular appearances in his Sub status on CHEERS, as opposed to the brief and scattershot appearances of Warlock in two separate Marvel features. Nevertheless, there's no suggestion of a through-line in episodes of CHEERS that Frasier was going to be launched in his own series.

The spinoff of the show ANGEL from that of the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER program is arguably a little more complex. The character of Angel is introduced as a mystery-man who comes into Buffy Summers' life in the first episode of her eponymous TV show, and he functions, like Buffy's other confidantes, as part of her bonded ensemble. (In an earlier essay, I argued that Buffy was a Prime and that her confidantes were Subs, but since reviewing all of the BUFFY episodes I've reversed myself on that statement.) So Angel became a Prime in that first episode, as much as characters like Willow, Xander and Giles, and there's no need to see him as any sort of crossover, proto or otherwise, when he branches off into his own program. However, after he gets his own show, any appearance he or one of his ensemble-mates made on BUFFY became a crossover, and vice versa with respect to BUFFY characters on ANGEL.  

The BUFFY Sub character Spike is even more involved. He's introduced as a pure Sub in the show's second season and continues in that status. The character's enormous popularity led to his becoming a regular member of the ensemble in the fourth season, though he was in the nature of a "opposed ensemble-character" after the nature of those described here. The transformation of Spike to said status is first set up in the 1999 episode "Wild at Heart." This episode, loosely inducting Spike into the ensemble, is the only one to qualify as a crossover due to a new "through-line" that affects all of Spike's future appearances. But only the first such episode that changes Spike's status gains a crossover-vibe, since only the first "phase shift" foregrounds Spike's acquisition of collective stature, as described in INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE. 

INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE PT. 4

 In Part 3 of this essay-series, I asserted that the characters Henry Pym and Janet Van Dyne were better defined through their collective statures, as members of the Avengers team, than through whatever individual stature they had accrued in their original stint as the bonded ensemble they comprised in the original "Ant-Man/Giant-Man and the Wasp" feature. This statement went in contradiction to the more general rule that when members of either inclusive or semi-inclusive ensembles had sustained their own features, as did other Avengers like Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, then their individual stature was of paramount importance.                                                                                 

 Now, inclusive teams need not always be as expansive as the Avengers, for there have also been inclusive teams where publishers united just two heroes under the same banner. The best-known is that of the GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW, but though this pairing became famous, the two heroes not only retained their individual stature from prior to the shared banner, they enjoyed individual serials afterward that added to their stature in both the quantitative and qualitative senses. But with some characters, it's hard to judge whether their individual or collective stature is greater in isolation or in tandem-- and such is the case with Power Man and Iron Fist.                                                                                                     

 As individual features, both Power Man and Iron Fist lasted somewhere between two and three years before both were threatened with cancellation. Aside from a few stories written by Don McGregor, almost all of the Power Man stories are at best just adequate formula, though still better than most of the tales in the oeuvre of the "Giant-Man/Wasp" feature.                                              

Iron Fist's solo career was roughly the same, though the character's title benefited from work by Chris Claremont and John Byrne during their salad days, including the debut of the villainous Saber-Tooth, who eventually became a major X-Men adversary. Presumably the two creators enjoyed Iron Fist enough to pitch the idea of merging his failing book with Power Man's failing book. However, Byrne was gone after the debut issue, and Claremont only stayed a few more issues. However, in issue #56 the title's assistant editor Mary Jo Duffy took over as writer and kept the title going for another three years. Though the title lasted until #125 (1986), my general impression is that the Duffy years made the team most viable and produced the most memorable stories-- although most of these, too, were also just adequate formula, like the stories in the individual titles. I cannot claim, as I did with my examples of Pym and Van Dyne, that the collective stature of Power Man or Iron Fist in their ensemble excelled whatever individual stature they had in their individual-focused features.                                           

   Further, after the original POWER MAN AND IRON FIST was cancelled in 1986, the two characters continued to appear in both solo-featured serials and in revivals of their ensemble. My scant impression is that most of these manifestations were of even less consequence than the most meretricious junk from the earlier runs. However, there is one aspect of the Luke Cage-Danny Rand ensemble that makes their collective status more significant than that of their individual adventures-- and that is the idea of taking these two exemplars of Marvel Comics responding to 1970s cultural trends-- blaxploitation for Cage, martial arts for Rand-- and creating an ensemble in which those cultural aspects played off one another in a salt-and-pepper combination. The "Netflix Marvel" serials built some of their concepts around that ensemble, and while I don't view those tv shows as supervening the comics themselves, they do at least verify that non-comics professionals found the ensemble-idea appealing for their narratives. I suppose I would have to say that the ideal of that combination, even if it has never quite been fully realized by any single story or group of stories, makes me feel that the ensemble of Cage-and-Rand gives both of them more stature collectively than they have ever possessed individually. Unless there are tons of great individual Power Man or Iron Fist stories of which I'm unaware, I would tend to say that they form a bonded ensemble, in contrast to the semi-bonded one seen in the short-lived GREEN LANTERN-GREEN ARROW feature.  

PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 5

In the second part of PHASED AND INTERFUSED, in which I discussed how the icon of "Dick Grayson Robin" phase shifted his way into the separate identity of Nightwing. Here I'll deal with the retconned origins of the "First Wonder Girl," who was declared to have had a substantial existence in the annals of the WONDER WOMAN continuity, starting in WONDER WOMAN #105 (1959).

(Side note: was this the first time a DC story used the exact words "Secret Origin" in a title?)

Writer Robert Kanigher then continued to alternate between grown Wonder Woman and her teen self in the comic, and some fans have speculated that even in 1959, Kanigher might've been trying to reach kids who were tantalized by all the emphasis on "teens" in pop culture, in order to give WONDER WOMAN's sales a boost.

At first Kanigher kept the teen and adult Wonder Women separate, though issue #120 (1961), he found a way to cross over the respective icons by having each of them encounter the same peril, "the Mercurian Menace," but at different times in the Amazon's heroic career. Then in #122 he began to play with time, showing Princess Diana getting de-aged to her younger selves, including not just "Wonder Girl" but also "Wonder Tot."

Then in WW #124 Kanigher introduced the idea that through Amazon technology all three versions of the heroine could co-exist and participate in mutual adventures. Thus, for roughly the next three years, Wonder Woman and her teenaged self both existed in what I've termed a "semi-bonded ensemble" in these stories, though both icons continued to enjoy independent stories. Wonder Tot occasionally got her own stories as well, though there were so few of these that it would fair to call her "charisma-dominant," since her main function was to appear as part of the ensemble. In contrast, the Kanigher version of Wonder Girl did sustain a minor mythology of her own, however derivative, just as Superboy did in his starring feature. Given that both Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl were designed to generate their own separate cosmoses, every story with both characters after WW #124 would constitute a stature-crossover, just as much Thor and Iron Man are in every co-starring appearance in THE AVENGERS, which is also a semi-bonded ensemble, but only for those characters whose own features reached a certain level of escalation (as opposed to the earlier example of Giant-Man and the Wasp, explained here).

COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 4

 The second appearance of Yuriko Oyama also does not bring her into direct alignment with the X-MEN cosmos, though in contrast to her DAREDEVIL appearance, this time she at least meets Wolverine face-to-face. But her dramatic arc is secondary to Wolverine's interaction with the character of Heather Hudson.

Once again, I don't choose to reread every story involving Heather or her husband James since Chris Claremont and John Byrne introduced them in the pages of X-MEN in the early 1980s, or the characters of the Canadian supergroup Alpha Flight, who were in essence a project brought into being by James Hudson. Byrne both wrote and drew the first 29 issues of ALPHA FLIGHT when they got their own title, and during that period James, who took up superheroing under the name Vindicator, was killed off. Heather took over theoretical command of the supergroup after James's death, but the next writer on the title, Bill Mantlo, determined that she should become the new Vindicator in order to join her fellow heroes in the field. But because she had no combat training, she sought out the man whom she and James had essentially fostered in his identity as Wolverine: the mystery man Logan. (And I'm sure Mantlo chose this story-path for much the same reason Wolverine was included in DAREDEVIL #196: to stoke a title's sales with the appearance of a popular character.)

I assume, without checking, that Mantlo mainly followed the broad outlines of what Claremont and Byrne had established in the backstory about James and Heather taking in the feral-seeming Logan, but it's my loose impression that Mantlo probably expanded on some details. For instance, Mantlo specifies that James and Heather were on their honeymoon at the time they found Logan, and that James actually leaves his blushing bride alone with the feral man to seek out help. Mantlo's not usually a very mythic writer, but I rather liked him having Heather think that her "Cinderella" story got turned into "Beauty and the Beast." This may also be the first time Wolverine himself witnesses how he was transformed by the Weapon X project, though the uniqueness of that experience was later overwritten by the events of WOLVERINE: ORIGIN.

As for Lady Deathstrike, she's brought in just to give Wolverine and the New Vindicator someone to fight. To this end, Mantlo quickly undoes O'Neil's happy ending for Yuriko Oyama, claiming that her lover Kira, shamed by the slaying of Dark Wind, committed suicide. This essentially caused Yuriko to do a 180-degree turn, so that in effect she became a copy of the father she had resented all her life. She considered that because Wolverine's adamantium skeleton had been created by Dark Wind's research-- even though it was the scientists of the Weapon X project who transformed the hero-- her dead father had a proprietary interest in said skeleton. This lousy motivation is matched by a rather desultory fight between the heroes and the villain's forces, after which the story kind of drops the training idea.

Lady Deathstrike quickly becomes fully aligned with the X-MEN cosmos in UNCANNY X-MEN #205, dated May 1986, which happens to be the same date allotted to the second part of the Mantlo ALPHA FLIGHT story. Given the quickness of the villainess's transformation, the editors may have flown Mantlo's idea of Lady Deathstrike before regular writer Chris Claremont, after which he, or other parties, arranged to remold the character. Thus, with the help of regular X-foe Spiral, Yuriko becomes a killer cyborg who now emulates Wolverine with her own claw-appendages. From then on, I would say that Deathstrike remains in the X-MEN cosmos no matter where else she may have appeared.

And just to bring things back to the cinematic tales, Deathstrike first makes her movie debut in X2, where she's said to be the creation of scientist William Stryker, who also assumes the role of transforming Logan into Wolverine in place of the head of the Weapon X project, one Doctor Thorton. Regrettably, Deathstrike isn't given even as much character in the movie as Mantlo gives her in the ALPHA FLIGHT tale, even though X2 remains the best of the X-films. But all this establishes in my mind that Lady Deathstrike is not in an iconic bond with Stryker or anyone else in the comics, and thus the film's use of Deathstrike and Stryker together makes that movie a charisma-crossover, even disregarding the presence of the script's other villains, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 2

 In Part 1 of this essay-series, I cited my definition for "phase shift:"

"phase shift" is my term for the process by which a function in literature-- which parallels my term "icon"-- shifts from one state of being (within the "horizontal" world of its purely fictional existence) to another state of being.

 Simply as a random choice I cited one of the phase shifts I had identified in a recent essay, but as I said at the essay's conclusion, I could have chosen many others.

My first *sustained* investigations into "crossover-ology" began with Part 1 of the series A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS. The examples in the essay concerned how icons with stature, such as Robin Hood and Fu Manchu shifted into icons of charisma when they were "demoted" into subordinate icons, which was the opposite type of shift discussed in PHASED PART 1. In this essay, I'll deal with a different type of phase shift.

GLAD TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN in June 2023 introduced the overall concept of iconic bonding. For my example of this literary process, I drew distinctions between the status of Batman and Robin during the thirty years that they were a bonded ensemble, and all the years afterward, when Robin ceased to be Batman's partner. According to some critical evaluations, DC ended the partnership for purely pecuniary reasons. Following the cancellation of the BATMAN teleseries in 1968, sales for BATMAN comics fell precipitously, and DC decided that the presence of Robin in the series reinforced the feature's association with the now unpopular concept of camp. For the first time Robin had solo adventures of his own that were not implicated with the Batman-and-Robin series, as well as entering into ensembles with both Batgirl and the 1970s incarnation of the Teen Titans. (The character had also been with the 1960s incarnation of that super-group, but that iconic bond had been qualitatively secondary to the better-known Batman-and-Robin ensemble.) 

All of the 1970s alterations to Robin's status should be viewed as a minor phase shift, akin to any other time a character in an ongoing partnership gets a "spin-off." However, a different flavor of phase shift transpires in TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44 (1984), which I previously reviewed here as part of the JUDAS CONTRACT continuity. For four years Robin had remained in the ensemble of the successful 1980s TITANS franchise, which had become his dominant source of ongoing stature.

 During that time DC also reversed its course on having a Robin in the BATMAN franchise, and since Dick Grayson already had a successful berth in TITANS, the company chose to bring forth a new Robin, Jason Todd, introduced about a year before in BATMAN #357. For whatever reasons, it took roughly a year for DC staff to decide that Dick Grayson would divest himself of the Robin identity for good, and take on a new superhero name, Nightwing.

This is a phase shift of a different nature than the spin-off status of Solo-Robin. Over time DC raconteurs had to evolve a new literary identity for Dick Grayson As Nightwing, even though textually he was the exact same person as Dick Grayson As Robin. This type of phase shift relates not to stature or charisma, but to what I will call the "narrative texture" of a character; of the set of expectations that the audience brings to a given text, separating one persona assumed by Character A from another persona assumed by Character A. By this same logic, I deem DC's Superboy to be a distinct persona from DC's Superman-- but that's a discussion for another time.

ICONIC BONDING PT. 4

 A story with a subordinate ensemble, however, has a collection of characters who function in the same way as the characters in a superordinate ensemble, except that the former simply lack the stature of one or more starring characters.-- CALLING ALL ENSEMBLES.

A somewhat different ensemble without crossover-charisma is that of the Lord With Many Powerful Servants. In the original NEW GODS universe Darkseid is the guy in charge of many such servants-- Mantis (seen above), Desaad, the Deep Six-- but there is no crossover-vibe there...-- ICONIC BONDING PT. 3.

 

In the second quote, I mentioned first two types of bonded ensembles in which villains who had been "familiarity-icons" since their introduction did not incarnate a crossover-value. My first example was a duo of villains, the Enchantress and the Executioner, who had been introduced as a team in their first appearance and who remained in that configuration in most though not all of their appearances (at least up to the point where the latter character dies). The second type, as specified, was that of a coterie of evildoers more or less permanently bonded into the service of a leader. But now I've become aware of what may a third, even more rare type, thanks to beginning a re-watch of the Fox teleseries GOTHAM.

Prior to GOTHAM, I believe every adaptation of the BATMAN franchise has utilized only Batman himself as the sole superordinate icon, or else has combined Batman with various other partners, whether bonded, semi-bonded or unbonded. Most of these iterations also include a sampling of characters from the franchise to serve the same subordinate-icon purpose that they serve in the comics, such as Alfred the Butler and Commissioner Gordon.

GOTHAM formulated a relatively new approach. It's set in the years that most iterations pass over: the period immediately after twelve-year old Bruce Wayne is orphaned. But in this universe, Young Bruce receives succor not only from faithful Alfred but also from a young James Gordon. During the five years of the series, Young Bruce grows older but does not don his caped costume until the show's last episode. Nevertheless, the youth, slowly maturing toward crimefighter status, enters into a superordinate, semi-bonded ensemble with crusading cop Gordon. I say that they're semi-bonded because though both are central characters involved in investigating crimes in Gotham City, they don't "team up" as such but rather pursue parallel courses that sometimes dovetail. 

Most BATMAN iterations also maintain a subordinate ensemble, and that ensemble usually consists of icons who are allies to the hero or heroes. GOTHAM has a wealth of such characters, but the show seems unique in that some of its villains who also belong to the subordinate ensemble, in that they're present in most episodes and are woven into major story-lines. This is NOT the case with the ongoing serial comics, even when they utilize long arcs focusing on various criminal figures. 

Some of GOTHAM's ensemble-icons are relatively mundane characters, either derived from the comics (mob boss Carmine Falcone) or created for the teleseries (ambitious lady gangster Fish Mooney). And some villains from the comics are introduced in long arcs that eventually terminate, just as they do in the comics. But from the show's first episode GOTHAM set up its analogues of three comics-villains so that they would enjoy story-arcs that lasted the length of the entire series. These three were Catwoman (a fourteen-year-old street thief who befriends Bruce), Riddler (an eccentric medical examiner who eventually blossoms into a psychopath), and Penguin (a junior mobster who eventually becomes one of the crime bosses of Gotham).

Now, I've usually said that any time a given episode of a serial crosses over two distinct icons, either unbonded or semi-bonded, that counts as a crossover, even when both are regular members of the main hero's "rogue's gallery." However, much of that logic was based on the idea of the crossover being what I've called "dynamic," something that the regular reader does not expect to see on a regular basis. 

A "static" crossover generates a different aesthetic. That's why I went into laborious detail about this type of crossover in INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE. In AVENGERS #16, three characters who had only been subordinate icons in other features-- Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch-- were transformed into superordinate icons, possessed of stature rather than charisma. But after that first change of status, the membership of the three new inductees becomes something that the reader does expect to see on a regular basis. So as far as those three icons are concerned, only the one issue in which their status changes is a crossover-story.

A loosely similar change in status takes place in the transition of Penguin, Riddler, and Catwoman from the comics-pages to GOTHAM. Within the sphere of Batman serial comics, not counting any narratives focused upon the villains as main characters, the trio are all subordinate icons. However, upon transitioning to the GOTHAM serial, they all become members of that show's cast of regular subordinate icons. None of them have stature, but they do have greater charisma than any of the shorter-term villain-adapations, like Hugo Strange and Firefly. But-- to pursue the same aesthetic I put forth with respect to the Avengers, only the first episode of GOTHAM sustains a crossover between those three characters, simply because they all have agency within the story, though none of them literally meet one another in that first episode.

Now, other episodes can be crossovers when they bring any of these characters into proximate contact with other adapted villains from the comics. A second-season arc introduces GOTHAM's version of The Firefly. The TV character has almost nothing to do with the template provided by the comics, not least in that the TV version is female. I would tend to say that Firefly just being in the same story as Penguin and Riddler is not much of a crossover, if it is one at all, specifically because the latter two have been "regularized." 

Yet in the same arc Female Firefly is befriended by Young Catwoman, and the two pull off a robbery together. And at least the specific episodes showing that interaction carry the "dynamic crossover" vibe. 

All this to say that at least the three premiere villains of GOTHAM don't automatically cross over with one another, or with other villains, unless there's a narrative effort to transition past the bond tying the three of them into high-charisma members of the subordinate ensemble.

ADDENDUM: I neglected to add "The Court of Owls," whose presence is only implied in the first episode, but who are later identified as the killers of the Waynes. They, like Penguin, Catwoman, and Riddler, are also "crossovers" only for the first episode, albeit by implication only.

ICONIC BONDING PT. 3

 In ICONIC BONDING PT. 1 I formulated three types of bonded ensembles using the Dick Grayson Robin as an example of a character who had participated in all three, to wit:

--the "unbonded" ensemble in which he has brief, semi-regular teamups with Batgirl II--

--the semi-bonded ensemble, in which he gravitates to two different iterations of the TEEN TITANS (after leaving the Batman-and-Robin ensemble)--

--and the fully bonded ensemble, such as the Dick Grayson version of Robin enjoyed with Batman roughly from 1940 to 1970.

In all of these examples, Robin is a superordinate icon, as are the majority of fictional heroes. In contrast, most fictional villains function as subordinate icons. So when villains appear in ensembles, they usually do not possess the quality of stature, only charisma. But this charisma-action also manifests in line with the three models seen above.

"Unbonded ensembles" would be any sort of short-term teams, or teamups that prove loose at best over time. For instance, there have been many gatherings of Bat-villains in the Bat-verse, ranging from RESURRECTION NIGHT to HUSH. No reader expects these peripatetic assemblages to have any durative value. The same applies to teamups that may last a few issues before dissolving, such as the alliance of Daredevil's foes the Gladiator and the Masked Marauder. However, in the above cases the charisma-crossover action depends on the fact that the villains have been previously established. So when both the Enforcers and their boss the Big Man first appear in SPIDER-MAN #10, they had no crossover-charisma because they had no previous iterations. Further, their ensemble expires with that issue, for the Big Man never returns. When the Enforcers make their second appearance, which is also the first appearance of the Green Goblin, the "familiarity" of the Enforcers sustains a "proto-crossover" with the "novelty" of the Goblin, but only because the Goblin himself will go on to future appearances.

"Semi-bonded ensembles" are those that have some impressive duration, even when the icons aren't joined at the hip. I've written a couple of times about how Stan Lee took two THOR villains who no longer fit that feature, the Cobra and Mister Hyde, and made them a semi-regular team. However, even in the period when the two malcontents were most often allied, one would occasionally appeared independently of the other, or in alliance with some other super-fiend. In the 1980s Cobra severed his alliance with Hyde and his short-lived 1970s group of serpent-themed villains, the Serpent Squad, became reworked by later hands into the Serpent Society. I can't speak about Cobra's status in current Marvel comics, but up until the end of the 20th century he became much more prominent as the member of the Society than he was as a solo player, or as the partner to Mister Hyde.

"Bonded ensembles" are those in which the durative value is even more noteworthy, and may involve qualitative escalation as well as the quantitative kind. The Enchantress and the Executioner appeared together in their first appearance, and tended to appear together more often than not, with a slightly different angle: that the Executioner desired Enchantress as a bed-partner. There's a hint that this finally came to pass in a 1970 AVENGERS story, and future stories built on that development. None of the THOR stories in which Enchantress and Executioner are the only villains are charisma-crossovers, any more than Batman and Robin are stature-crossovers when they're the only heroes in a given story. And if the renegade Asgardians appear together in a non-aligned feature like THE HULK, it's not any more a charisma-crossover than Greenskin squaring off against a single non-aligned villain like Maximus the Mad.

A somewhat different ensemble without crossover-charisma is that of the Lord With Many Powerful Servants. In the original NEW GODS universe Darkseid is the guy in charge of many such servants-- Mantis (seen above), Desaad, the Deep Six-- but there is no crossover-vibe there, any more than Sergeant Rock being separate from the grunts under his command. An exception was the Apokolips-Lord's brief role as the organizer of the first "Secret Society of Super Villains." But even there, the charisma-crossover would be between (a) Darkseid and any minions, such as the pictured Kalibak, and (b) the Secret Society as a whole, which functions as a semi-inclusive team. 

Heroes and villains may be the only two of the four personas that regularly appear in all these configurations. Even I, the author of said personas, will probably not bother trying to suss out if my models to apply to the other two, the "monster" and the "demihero."

 

ICONIC BONDING PT. 2

My entire formulation of bonded ensembles is oriented upon trying to discern which subordinate icons are, or are not, bonded to which superordinate icons in terms of alignment.

Here's my first statement on the ways in which a given subordinate icon, in particular a famous villain, is aligned with a given superordinate icon:

The first appearance of an antagonist often determines his alignment for the foreseeable future. No matter how often the Joker appears in features other than those of Batman, he remains known as a Batman foe.

Now, I said "often" because there have been times that a subordinate icon (I may as well say "villain" for the rest of the essay, since that's the only icon I'll address here) is introduced under the mantle of a given "hero," but the latter has not yet been aligned with a strong superordinate icon, Thus Thanos first appears in an issue of Iron Man, alongside a heroic subordinate icon (Drax the Destroyer), but Thanos is in a "floating alignment" until he's aligned with Captain Mar-Vell.

I've established so far that if the Joker had appeared in a Batman story before Batman teamed with Dick Grayson Robin, Joker would still be aligned with Grayson-Robin, but that no Bat-foe who meets Batman after the dissolution of the bonded ensemble is aligned with Grayson-Robin. But how does this theory apply to the next strongest form of ensemble, the "semi-bonded" ensemble?

Here, I will draw, as specified, upon the AVENGERS title as an example of a semi-bonded ensemble. 

In the earliest AVENGERS stories, all members of the team had their own features. In AVENGERS #6, Baron Zemo, making his first appearance, brings together three villains from each of three heroes' features: the Black Knight from GIANT-MAN, the Melter from IRON MAN, and the Radioactive Man from THOR. As soon as these established villains appeared fighting heroes with whom they were not aligned, this resulted in a charisma-crossover.

However, the reverse is true when a villain introduced as a foe to the Avengers-team fights one Avenger, because by fighting one Avenger, he has in essence declared war upon them all.

So when the Living Laser debuts, he's obviously aligned with all of the Avengers he fights.

But say for argument's sake the Laser never fights the Avenger Iron Man within the sphere of the AVENGERS feature, but that his first one-on-one encounter with the Armored Avenger takes place in the first of two Iron Man stories I analyzed here. This would not be a charisma-crossover, because of the ensemble-bond between Iron Man and the other Avengers. I will leave open the question of whether this bond extends to Avengers who have very limited stints as Avengers, though. Spider-Man was an Avenger for a time, but his time in the group was so short that this membership did not become a major part of his mythos. Thus in his case the Laser fighting Spider-Man in the latter's solo feature probably would qualify as a charisma-crossover, because the bond between Spider-Man and the Avengers is so transitory.

Short-lived team memberships characterize the last form of ensemble discussed, the unbonded ensemble. In addition to the example of a short-lived membership in a greater group, this applies also to such phenomena as "rotating teamups" (such as THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD) and to short-lived partnerships. For instance, for about two years the CAPTAIN AMERICA feature was transformed into CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON, but the escalation factor was not sufficient to create a bonded ensemble. Therefore the Falcon is in alignment only with those Cap-villains he encounters, but not any villains before or after the limited partnership.

Rotating teamups have a similar impermanence, but they incorporate a different alignment-dynamic. I've stated earlier that when the Second Molecule Man debuted in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, wherein he fights the temporary team of The Thing and The Man-Thing, the villain became equally aligned with both icons, despite his father's association with the Fantastic Four. But if one of the temp-team's villains has fought one of the two hero-icons, that villain remains in alignment with the hero with whom he (or she) has been previously acquainted. The above seen villain Blackstarr first appeared as a Supergirl villain. Then said villain appears later in a DC COMICS PRESENTS teaming up Supergirl and her cousin Superman, and thus there is a charisma-crossover there between Blackstarr and Superman. This crossover-over vibe would not exist, hwoever, if Superman were simply guest-starring in a Supergirl story wherein he and his cousin fought Blackstarr as the menace of the day, and both Blackstarr and Superman were subordinate icons within Supergirl's story.

ICONIC BONDING PT. 1

 So in GLAD TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN, I sketched out three types of "bonded ensembles" in which fictional icons could take part. Here I'll expand on those categories.

For all three, I used Robin the Boy Wonder as an exemplar of each ensemble-type, stating that:

--the "unbonded" ensemble in which he has brief, semi-regular teamups with Batgirl II--

--the semi-bonded ensemble, in which he gravitates to two different iterations of the TEEN TITANS (after leaving the Batman-and-Robin ensemble)--

--and the fully bonded ensemble, such as the Dick Grayson version of Robin enjoyed with Batman roughly from 1940 to 1970.

All of these bonds depend upon the principle of escalation, as described in the February 2023 essay INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE PT. 2. Most of the time the categories of bonded ensembles are determined by quantitative escalation, that is, how often the characters in the ensemble have appeared together. It's not impossible that a bonded ensemble could result from qualitative escalation, which is what determines the crossover-status of Walter Scott's IVANHOE At present no examples of bonded ensembles stemming from qualitative escalation occur to me. 

In addition, I asserted that the Barbara Gordon Batgirl participated in two separate configurations. 

In the comics, Batgirl was independent of the Batman-Robin team, so that her peripatetic guest-star appearances, both before and after she graduated to her own stature-series, so she was not in any ensemble at all, except for the brief unbonded ensemble she formed with Robin in the BATMAN FAMILY magazine. (This ensemble was not even constant for the run of the title, since some issues featured the two heroes enjoying separate adventures.)

However, when the television version of her character was created for the third season of BATMAN, she formed a fully bonded ensemble with both Batman and Robin for the duration of that season. 

Roughly thirty years from her debut, though, Barbara Gordon, in her new incarnation as Oracle, formed an ongoing "semi-inclusive ensemble" with Black Canary in the first BIRDS OF PREY tryout. As Batgirl she had enjoyed her own series, and the Canary had received her first headliner series in 1992, if one chooses to ignore the Golden Age incarnation, with which the post-Crisis heroine was no longer coterminous. So theirs was a inclusive ensemble at first, as defined previously:

The Inclusive Ensemble is one in which the members of the team all originate in other features, and thus all of the starring characters have some degree of stature when they appear in the team feature, a stature independent of the ensemble feature.

However, over time the Birds team became more of a semi-inclusive team on the loose model of The Avengers, including some temporary members who no longer had their own features (The Dove from HAWK AND DOVE) or who debuted in the BOP feature, such as Misfit. Both versions of the team would still be "semi-bonded" given that there was some degree of stature-independence due to the continued presence of Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance. 

And it's propitious that I mentioned The Avengers, because that will be one of my subjects in Part Two.

Incidentally, the essay-title ICONIC BONDING riffs on a scientific term for a form of quantum entanglement:

Ionic bonding is the complete transfer of valence electron(s) between atoms. It is a type of chemical bond that generates two oppositely charged ions.

GLAD TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN

 So, Batman. He spends about a year fighting crime on his lonesome. According to my system of interordination, he's the sole superordinate icon, and everyone in his orbit, whether allies like Commissioner Gordon or adversaries like Doctor Death (the crusader's first super-villain), are subordinate icons, aligned to his cosmos and that of no one else.

Then Robin appears in early 1940, and for whatever reason, the creators behind the comics also begin churning out many of the important adversaries-- Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Scarecrow-- and at least one of the most important allies, a tubby butler named Alfred. Now, because Batman and Robin have become the two members of a bonded ensemble, all of the icons in Batman's cosmos are also icons in Robin's cosmos. This state of affairs persists until about 1970, when the original Batman-and-Robin team is essentially terminated, perhaps to help scrub the comic-book features from lingering associations with the 1966 teleseries.

A fine point of this shared cosmos, though, is that Robin, by virtue of being in a bonded ensemble with Batman, also shares all the icons he never actually encounters, and the same is true of Batman.

For instance, Robin does not meet the aforementioned Doctor Death in either of the villain's two 1939 exploits. Dick Grayson doesn't meet a villain of that name until the 1970s. Nevertheless, by the transitive effect I've outlined elsewhere, Doctor Death is a "Robin villain" as much as he is a "Batman villain," even though Robin never meets him.

On a similar theme, Robin had his own stand-alone series in STAR-SPANGLED COMICS, beginning in 1947. Batman occasionally guest-starred in some stories but in general Robin handled each story's conflict on his own, such as the Boy Wonder's first encounter with a recurring, generally unimpressive criminal called The Clock. Nevertheless, by the same transitive property, The Clock is also in Batman's alignment-cosmos even if Batman never meets the evildoer.

All that said, the bonded ensemble of the Dynamic Duo comes to an end in the 1970s, For the remainder of that decade, Robin either operates alone, or in two other forms of ensembles: 

--the "unbonded" ensemble in which he has brief, semi-regular teamups with Batgirl II--

 --or the semi-bonded ensemble, in which he gravitates to two different iterations of the TEEN TITANS: one iteration a huge successful, the other a pathetic flop.

During this time, when he's no longer in an ensemble with Batman, no subsequent Bat-villains are within Robin's cosmos. So, even though Original Doctor Death is in the Batman-and-Robin cosmos even though Robin never meets him, Ra's Al Ghul is not in Robin's separate cosmos even though Robin DOES meet the villain when he Robin is guest-starring in one of Batman's stories. 

Robin-on-his-own does not lose his alignment with any earlier B& R villains, like Poison Ivy. Second Robin Jason Todd is immediately aligned with all previous Bat-villains as soon as he's part of the official Bat-ensemble, of course, because Jason inherits the transitive effect of the bonded ensemble through his relationship with Batman. But any villain encountered first by the Bruce-and-Jason team in the eighties, such as Black Mask, is outside the cosmos of Dick Grayson, who by that time takes on the distinct identity of Nightwing.

Now, this gets amusingly complicated with respect to those allies who weren't designed to be part of the bonded ensemble. The Barbara Gordon Batgirl is an ally, and a subordinate icon, to the Batman-Robin team for roughly the first five years of her comic-book existence. Because the character receives an ongoing series within five years of her last peripatetic appearance, all of her appearances in any BATMAN features, or in titles like JUSTICE LEAGUE or BRAVE AND BOLD, can be deemed "stature-crossovers" between her, the Batman-Robin team, and any other stature-character, because the Gordon-girl does get a clear path to the stature of a featured character. 

Because Batgirl Number Two exists in her own separate cosmos, and is not part of the bonded ensemble,a Batman-and-Robin villain like Killer Moth is in no way aligned with the Batgirl cosmos as it eventually develops, even though he's the first costumed villain Gordon-girl literally encounters. Even when Killer Moth eventually encounters the "Dominoed Dare-Doll" in a story within her own feature, the Moth remains unaligned with Batgirl and remains a "guest villain."

HOWEVER, in the 1967-68 season of the BATMAN teleseries, Batgirl becomes part of the bonded ensemble with the season's first episode, and within that separate media-cosmos, the "Dynamic Duo" becomes "the Terrific Trio." I have deemed the initiating episode of that series to be a stature-crossover, based on the separate status of the characters in the comics, but after that every subsequent episode is a non-crossover because Batgirl *has* joined a bonded ensemble within the context of the TV show. Thus, when Batgirl meets, say, Catwoman for the first time, Catwoman is immediately just as much Batgirl's foe as she is that of Batman and Robin-- and so there is no villain-meeting-unaligned-hero vibe present.