WEIRDIES AND WORLDIES PT. 3

 I would say, then, that all mysteries after Poe tend to follow either the rational model of the Dupin stories, where the detective's acumen resolves all the problems, and or the irrational model of "The Oblong Box," where even the solution of a given problem merely generates a sense of greater mystery, often of some mystery that remains insoluble.-- RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL PROBLEMS, 2019.

In Part 2 of this series, I mentioned that Infantino's investment in infusing "Rational DC" with the irrationality of the Gothic was signified by (1) the "spookification" of HOUSE OF MYSTERY and the debut of DEADMAN, both in 1967, and (2) the reinvention of the 1950s character The Phantom Stranger in SHOWCASE #80, in 1969. But in between those two, another DC stalwart showed similar changes in 1968, a little before the Bat-books went full-bore Gothic. I have no direct testimony that Infantino intervened to alter the direction of DC's CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, which had dealt with rationalized versions of the metaphenomenal since its genesis under Jack Kirby and Dave Wood.

  

For roughly six years Arnold Drake had been writing the CHALLENGERS title, often with art by Bob Brown, and all of their contributions had fallen into the rational model. By some odd chance, their last two issues on the title effectively launched the irrational, Gothic direction for the remainder of the series' original run. In issue 62 (June-July 1968), Drake introduced a new set of villains for the heroes, The Legion of the Weird, which comprised five villainous wizards from different cultures: the vaguely East European Count Karnak. the Egyptian Kaftu, the possibly American Mistress Wycker, the archaic Brit druid Hordred, and the unspecifically Indian medicine man Madoga. Drake had used this multicultural approach to sorcerous evildoers before in a 1964 Mark Merlin story, which took much the same rational approach as everything else DC published in that year. 

The Legion "weirdies," as one panel calls them, uses various mystic forces against the Challengers, not least with a gigantic mummy named Tukamenon. However, for whatever reason Drake and Brown were unable to finish the Legion's battle with the "Challs."  

Though #63 ended in a cliffhanger, the next two issues of CHALLENGERS were fill-in stories written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Jack Sparling, who would be the closest thing the title had to a regular penciler. Though many of the stories that followed involved mad science as much as mysticism, Sparling, whatever his limitations, was much better than Brown at rendering freaky-deaky visuals, so it's not unlikely he was selected for just that purpose.

  

Issue #66 finishes up the Legion of the Weird story with Sparling and a Mike Friedrich script. The villains are defeated but escape, never (as far as I know) to return. Denny O'Neil then took over the series for the remainder of its original run, and he certainly showed even more penchant for supernatural mystery-stories than anyone previous. O'Neil's stories for the title were as pedestrian as those of Drake and Kanigher. but there are a couple of minor landmarks in his run. In #69 O'Neil finds a reason to get charter Challenger Prof Haley out of the way so that he can bring in the Challengers' first regular female member, Corrinna Stark, to take Prof's place. In the early sixties the Challs had a recurring "irregular female member"    named June Robbins, but Corrinna was the first regular female Challenger. 

O'Neil didn't really think that much about the character, though. She starts out helping the Challs because her mad-scientist father half-killed Prof, but though she offered to take Prof's place, she didn't really have any skill except that of being a hot girl, depending on whether she was drawn by Sparling, Dick Dillin or George Tuska. Three or four issues into O'Neil's run, Corrinna suddenly gets psychic medium-powers for the sake of some more spooky stories, and there's a moderately entertaining story in #74 that guest-stars both Deadman and O'Neil's private dick Jonny Double. Then in #75, Corrinna and the four guys finish the last of the mag's new material with a one-page introduction to a Kirby reprint, and such reprints take up the rest of the issues until cancellation with #80. (Technically the book on its bimonthly schedule ended in #77 and the last three Kirby reprint-issues appeared about two years later, in 1973.) There's a mention of Jack Kirby's new works for DC in the lettercol to issue #76 (1970), and that's probably the only reason the dying book went reprint at all. Someone, maybe Infantino, thought that Kirby fans might desert Marvel to pick up anything the King did at DC, even old work that was largely out of fashion. 

So the CHALLENGERS title spent most of its life as Rational Fantasy, detoured into Irrational Fantasy for its last two years, and then went back to its origins for its unspectacular finish. Infantino's Gothic preoccupations had some great results for the Bat-titles and tapped a market for horror-tales that Marvel never quite accessed. But despite preceding PHANTOM STRANGER into the new Weirdie terrain, "Gothic Challengers" is a mostly forgotten chapter in DC history.

WEIRDIES AND WORLDIES PT. 2

 I decided to supplement last year's WEIRDIES AND WORLDIES with further details, but realized that the original essay supplied only the rationale of distinguishing "weirdie" metaphenomenal fictions from the "worldie" type, as per the Brian Aldiss history mentioned, and then I jumped to a particular late manifestation of "weirdies at DC." So to bridge that gap, here's my essay from OUROBOROS DREAMS where I dealt with the importance of Carmine Infantino to my schema. ___________________________

DC jumped feet first into the supernatural/Gothic thing after having generally avoided that type of story for over 20 years, and it seems likely that Carmine Infantino was the biggest influence, as he himself claims in a JOURNAL interview:

I was trying to prepare for the inevitable. In my mind, “What if these things die? What if we’re back in the old days and suddenly superheroes drop off?” The reason I threw out a mess of different titles was, I wanted to sneak in The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets without people much realizing what was going on. Which I did. And also we had a chain of them out there, if you remember, and they were all successful before anyone at Marvel realized what was going on. So we had those going for us, and the superheroes going for us. Meanwhile I kept experimenting with different things.

So in Evanier's book KIRBY, ME claims, maybe a little dubiously, that when Kinney Corp bought DC in 1967, they thought they were getting the top company, only to become displeased when they learned that Marvel was such a strong second. (I think Roy Thomas claimed Marvel didn't obtain the majority market share until the early seventies though.) Still, that story isn't absolutely necessary to put across the notion that someone in management thought it was time for some changes. Infantino was made first art director and then editorial director in 1966 and 1967, and it looks like promoting horror and the Gothic was his major "experiment." Not only did he get rid of the superheroes in HOUSE OF MYSTERY in '67, he also debuted DEADMAN in the failing book STRANGE ADVENTURES. The Spectre had been revived earlier under the tutelage of Julie Schwartz, but the initial format was so rationalized that any "weirdie" appeal of the hero was nullified. Spectre also got his own title in 1967, and though it didn't last long it soon converted into spookier stories before it died. In the late sixties and early seventies, even some of the "mainstream" DC superheroes began exploiting Gothic/horror themes on their covers, such as (obviously) BATMAN but also less obvious types like FLASH and TEEN TITANS. 

One fan attributed the big change to the influence of DARK SHADOWS in '66, but I think it was more likely that DC saw that the Warren magazines had been doing well since 1964 (EERIE) and 1966 (CREEPY) respectively, and that they hired guys like EC stalwart Joe Orlando to cut into that action. That also probably led to the revival of The Phantom Stranger in 1969, as well as another fifties character, Doctor Thirteen. The intersection of the two seems to be the first regular convocation of two "weirdies" at DC Comics, in 1969's SHOWCASE #80-- though the good doctor was dropped from the Stranger's adventures pretty quickly.

 

MYTHCOMICS: "SINS OF THE FLESH" (SPIDER-WOMAN #18, 1979)

As I said in the previous essay, Jessica/Spider-Woman breaks up with her boyfriend Jerry in issue #16. Issue #17 in part concerns the "Dark Angel" trying to get back into the dating scene by attending a disco. She meets a guy named Eric and allows him to drive her home, though he ends up parking with her on a lonely knoll. The issue ends with Eric hiding his face from Jessica as his very flesh starts to dissolve. At the beginning of "Sins," he bolts from the car into a nearby forest. Jessica, concerned that her pheromones might be having a bad influence on an innocent man, follows. When she overtakes him, he seems totally fine again. He leans for a friendly kiss, and...

 "I can't hold it anymore," indeed! I'm rather surprised that in the early 2000s, when snarky comics fans entertained themselves trying to find panels that put pop-fiction characters in compromising positions, none of them apparently came across this oddball gem.

Of course, my interest isn't mere snark, but the ongoing psychology underlying the War Between Men and Women. Instead of acting like an imperturbable superhero, Jessica is quite naturally freaked out by having "worms of flesh" crawl over her after coming off the face of a melting man. She copes somewhat through her ability to zap away the flesh-threads with her venom-powers.

In her Spider-Woman guise, the heroine tails Eric to another disco, but fails to see him leave his car, considering the likelihood that the strange man may be "able to mold his face like putty and change his appearance." She stakes out the disco and sees a different-looking man drive away in the car, accompanied by a pickup. Spider-Woman surveils the house where the suspect takes the young woman, but when nothing happens for a bit, the heroine flies away, wondering if she could have hallucinated the episode. But she gets no surcease of trepidation when she goes home, haunted by the experience of "having flesh crawl on me that is not my own."

To no reader's surprise, the young woman Spider-Woman watched the previous night is a corpse in the morning. Angry at her own negligence, the Dark Angel begins hitting the discos again, trying to look for anyone who behaves analogously to the mysterious Eric. She finally meets a likely candidate, but instead of taking the man to her own domicile, she conducts the fellow to the unoccupied house of her former landlord Mrs. Dolly. Jessica leaves the man alone, steals out of the house and changes into her super-identity. As she confronts the man whom the captions call "The Waxman," he has a flashback as to how he mutated to his melting-man form. Then he hits the heroine with a gob of loose flesh and flees upstairs.

The final two pages, while not a "fight" in the usual Marvel sense, plays merry hob with the nature of identity. Waxman alters his appearance to that of Jessica herself, poleaxing her long enough to unleash a flesh-trap. But this time Spider-Woman zaps the killer and his flesh-worms with her venom, and all of his "sinful flesh" apparently collapses from his denuded skeleton.

The ambiguous ending allowed a later writer to revive the Waxman further down the road, but thankfully Gruenwald "lets the dead lie," so to speak. Despite the presence of a superhero, "Sins of the Flesh" is a better example of "body horror" than most comparable stories from later comics-generations.

ADDENDUM: Carmine Infantino only penciled one more issue of SPIDER-WOMAN after #18, while Gruenwald finished up his run the issue after that. I will probably reread the other thirty issues, but I doubt there will be much worth commenting on, since Wolfman and Gruenwald had provided the groundwork for the Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman mythos. As noted earlier, Roger Stern would weave that mythos and several other loose ends into an overarching continuity. But in the SPIDER-WOMAN title, I don't believe there were any major developments, particularly eliminating the "weirdie" vibe seen in the first twenty issues. Michael Fleischer wrote some rather pedestrian tales, Chris Claremont rendered various strong formula-stories (most often with artist Steve Leialoha), and Ann Nocenti finished up the last four issues with a controversial narrative in which Spider-Woman was erased from Marvel history. Naturally, this was soon reversed, for the essence of Marvel Comics was the potential interfusion of every element with every other element. It's my loose impression, though, that even though the SPIDER-WOMAN series was not a great sales success, few if any later iterations have eclipsed its accomplishments.

SPIDER-FEMME, SPIDER-FEMME PART 2

 As I said earlier, I'm working my way to my second mythcomic, which happens to be the eighteenth issue of SPIDER-WOMAN. I don't propose to go over each of the seventeen previous issues, but to give some flavor of the feature's early history, I want to touch on the high points.

#1-- I don't want to overstate the importance of Marv Wolfman having the insight to recycle Goodwin's idea that the starring heroine seemed to repel people, though not for Goodwin's original reason. It was typical for all Marvel heroes to have some sort of trauma or character flaw that would make them sympathetic to the audience. Yet Wolfman's treatment of his costumed champion was far more interesting than his uninventive treatment of his superhero "Nova" around the same time, and in some ways she's one of Marvel's first truly "feminine" superheroines. On the fifth page of the first issue, she's still in London, trying to make a living, but frozen out by many citizens, *especially* other women. She gets a new costume, new name Jessica Drew, a fuller origin and a potential new boyfriend, SHIELD agent Jerry Hunt.

#2-- Though I said elsewhere that Jessica's only connection with knights-in-armor were the demi-human Knights of Wundagore, here she has a Close Encounter of the Medieval Kind. While visiting a museum she finds she has a strange intuitive knowledge of Matters Arthurian. At the same time, the sorceress Morgan Le Fay-- only seen in a non-magical iteration back in the BLACK KNIGHT comic book of 1955-- projects her spirit to 1978. She uses a magic sword that's on display to take control of a petty thief, changing him into a super-knight to achieve her ends. The false knight seeks out an old, Merlin-like sorcerer, Charles Magnus, because Morgan wants Magnus's copy of the Book of the Darkhold. Spider-Woman befriends Magnus, defeats the pawn and banishes Morgan for the time being.

#3-6-- In a smorgasbord of storylines, Magnus accompanies Jessica to Los Angeles. In swift succession she meets a new villain called Brother Grimm (later revealed to be two villains in one, the Brothers Grimm), the Hangman (a WEREWOLF BY NIGHT foe created by Wolfman), the Werewolf himself, and Morgan LeFay again. The Morgan plotline links her desire for the Darkhold to the past history of the Werewolf, which is a more mainstream exposure for the evil tome than its appearances in the monster-books. Agent Jerry Hunt tracks Jessica to L.A. and the two become lovers.

#9-- After two more Wolfman issues, he departed the book. (A podcast quoted him as saying he didn't know what he was doing on the feature.) Mark Gruenwald assumed writing duties, and he, in tandem with artist Carmine Infantino, amped up the eerie qualities of the book. Infantino had been on the title since issue #1 but his arabesque artwork seemed pent-up in his work with Wolfman. Gruenwald's weird menaces gave Infantino lots of weirdness to illustrate-- the Needle, the Gypsy Moth, Madame Doll (admittedly set up for her role by Wolfman), the Cult of Kali and the albino mutant Nekra (originally from the short-lived SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL title). I felt during this period that Gruenwald showed a strong predilection for sussing out the feminine nature of Jessica Drew-- particularly when she learns that her inability to make friends is the result of her giving off "allure or alarm" pheromones as a result of the spider-serum that mutated Jessica as a child.  

Not that the title was foreign to the sort of hard-hitting action that male readers tend to prefer. Even allowing for the fact that Marvel Comics almost never showed bloodshed, the battle between Spider-Woman and the near-invulnerable Nekra is one of the most brutal fights seen in Marvel Comics up to 1978. Curiously, it's also at this point that Gruenwald, who had slowly built up tensions between Jessica and Jerry, has Jerry take his leave, so that Jessica must deal with being the odd woman out again. That leads Jessica to the world of the L.A. dating scene-- and by the end of #17, she makes her first contact with the perfidious Waxman, the subject of my review in the forthcoming essay.

Parenthetically, the main reason Infantino was available to draw SPIDER-WOMAN was because he had been ousted from his position of editorial director at DC Comics. Since he's been responsible for the "Gothicization" of DC Comics beginning in the mid-sixties-- as I described here-- it's appropriate that one of Infantino's first assignments at Marvel was one of its few "Gothic" serials.

 ADDENDUM 7-13-2024: Since I commented above on Wolfman's rewriting of Goodwin, I may as well follow up with quick comments on Chris Claremont's rewriting of both previous SPIDER-WOMAN writers during his run, particularly in issue #41 (December 1981). This story has the heroine tilt once more with the sorceress Morgan LeFay, whom Wolfman introduced into the feature-- and into mainstream Marvel-- in issue #2 (1978). Claremont has LeFay put Jessica Drew through an Arthurian illusion, which is part of a complicated plot to make Spider-Woman serve her. Wolfman had Jessica experience some unusual psychic knowledge of Matters Arthurian in his issue #2 story, but Claremont does not follow up on this never developed plot-thread. 

Whereas Wolfman's Morgan simply tried to use the heroine to acquire the book of the Darkhold, in issue #41 Claremont's Morgan believes Spider-Woman to be an embodiment of the Darkhold powers. This concept was unquestionably a response to the 1979 "Yesterday Quest" story in AVENGERS #185-187, which tied together the story-threads of Morgan, the Darkhold, Wundagore and Modred the Mystic far more intimately. Claremont also brought up the Darkhold again in SPIDER-WOMAN #42-44 (1982). Yet Claremont made the odd statement that Spider-Woman remained in stasis at Wundagore for thirty years. Since Little Jessica looks to be about five before she succumbs to radiation poisoning, that would make her thirty-five as soon as she finally emerges from stasis, feels rejected by the New Men, leaves Wundagore, finds love in some European village, and then gets recruited by Hydra. All very well, but no artist ever rendered Jessica Drew as anything but a young woman in her twenties.

These minor ruminations on the AVENGERS retcon, some of which were reversed by later Marvel raconteurs, sum up Claremont's only significant additions to the "Spider-Woman myth." I will also note, though, that Claremont largely dropped the idea that the heroine had to regularly cope with repelling certain humans with her pheromones, which was one of the more interesting tropes of the character. 

RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 9

You know sales must have been getting bad when Carmine Infantino's cover depicts the hero fighting a gorilla, and there's not so much as a chimpanzee inside.

Three thieves dressed like playing cards are routed by a plastic guy and his sidekick-- but it's not Plas and Gordy. Rather, Plas's father, the original hero from the forties, has strayed off the old people's reservation. This revelation results in a partial retelling of the Jack Cole origin and the "true origin" of the New Plas.

Plas and Gordon seek out Big Daddy at his place of business: a popular old folks' retreat. Plas soon finds out the real reason for its popularity: Woozy Winks spikes the local sulphur spring. In addition, Big Daddy was trying to get the goods on the leader of the playing-card gang because the crime-lord threatens Big Daddy's ownership of the spa. 

Plas plots to trap the crooks in a burglary attempt, but that goes south. Ironically, Woozy's alcoholic spring works out for the good guys. The gang gets drunk on the "waters" and they voluntarily confess a bunch of earlier crimes, so that their plan to take over the resort is doomed. This tale, the last contribution of Win Mortimer, doesn't boast a great plot, but I enjoyed Drake's version of Woozy Winks, even if Drake makes the character less of a doofus and more of a conman.

RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 8

 

A Carmine Infantino cover is no help this time, as the visual situation is overly busy and the gag, if it's Drake's, is one of his worst.

For the only time in the ten-issue run, an issue is split between two stories. In the first, Plas is visiting his girlfriend at a DeLute hotel. Doctor Dome shows up, intent on robbing the richies. But before the hero makes the scene, Dome and his thugs are clobbered by a new killer in town, the super-powerful Sphinx. Dome flees, and when Plas shows up, he gets distracted by that old stratagem, Tossing the Baby.

Dome then complains to daughter Lynx that three other crimes he planned were blocked by the Egyptian evildoer. He talks about some great plan he's devised, which may be offering Plas a truce until the Sphinx is defeated. The truce accomplishes its end, the Sphinx is corralled, and the long-term enemies return to their enmity-- though it's also the last outing for Dome and his devilish daughter. 

Ordinary as the Sphinx story is, it's not quite as humor-free as the other tale. In it, Plas faces a thief who can rip people off using a "gold magnet," so of course his name is "Goldzinger." Plas catches him, Miss DeLute sets the crook free with some idea of using the villain to knock off the "putty person," and Goldzinger rips her off. The rest of the story is just Plas assuming different shapes to overtake the fleeing heist artist. Naturally, there's no discussion of the possibility of charging Micheline's nawsty mothah with suborning murder.

RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 7

 

I suppose I like this one partly it was the first Drake PLASTIC MAN I bought, purchased in a secondhand store. In addition, #5 pits Plas against an international cabal of crooks, which may have inspired Drake to craft a wider variety of silly jokes.

My favorite, for example, is the name of a Russian rogue named Ivan Byturnozov. For years, I mentally pronounced the surname wrongly, until I belatedly realized the reason why parts of the name sound like "bite" and "nose."

The Russian rogue, a British bounder and a French fiend all make attempts on Plas's life, with predictable failures. But when the international crime-cabal is at its collective wit's-end, a hulking goofball, The Assassin, claims that he can do the job. After trouncing some of the crooks to show his power, the helmeted horror appears to complete the mission. But no, it's Plas in disguise, hoaxing the ne'er-do-wells. Yet the trick turns against the trickster, when the authentic Assassin shows up.

The two Assassins fight, and inevitably Plas's pliable nature is exposed. He does get neutralized by a fink with a paralysis beam, but Gordon comes to his rescue, after which Plas returns the favor. 

I've sometimes asserted that Arnold Drake was the only gag-writer in comic books who could touch Stan Lee for sheer quantity of funny lines, and the Assassin story, more than any other issue, shows the writer at the top of his game in that regard.

RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 6

A Carmine Infantino cover, the first of four, enlivens issue #4, which is the next to the last hurrah of Dull Doctor Dome.

This time Doctor Dome enlists one-shot villainess Madame Merciless, who promises that she can brainwash the Playful Play-dough Man so that he will serve Dome's evil purposes.

All unsuspecting, Plas attends a gala costume party with his girlfriend Micheline. Madame Merciless, never seen without her domino mask, uses the occasion as a pretext to get close to the hero.

Plas leaves the party with the Madame, but the truth is that he's able to resist the scheming woman's hypnotic control, but fakes subservience to suss out what she's doing. But little does Merciless know that she has competition in the hero-domination game: whip-happy Lynx, who has a nice line, "That nasty witch isn't going to get her dirty hands on him-- not before I get my dirty hands on him." So Lynx cons her daddy into letting her test Plastic Man's loyalty on a criminal enterprise.

Plas fakes going along with a theft, but Micheline and Gordon are searching for the hero since his disappearance, and they chance across the crime in progress. When the rich girl messes with the bitch girl, Lynx belts Micheline into the path of an oncoming car. Plas is forced to show his true colors, but Merciless is watching nearby, and after some complications, she manages to enslave her quarry for real.

Plas begins obeying Dome's criminal commands. But then Merciless fails to pay her hoodoo-henchmen properly, and they remotely cancel the spell on the crusader.

Recovering his senses, Plas finds himself stuck atop a high telephone wire, so of course he simply makes himself into a spring and bounces down. Ah, no, Drake kind of forgets that this stretchy fellow can't possibly be injured in a simple fall, so that he can have all three females vie for the honor of "saving" him. Doctor Dome is arrested, though apparently Lynx gets away-- which is only fair, since of the two she was a slightly better breed of malcontent.