NULL-MYTHS: "BUT BLOOD IS REDDER," "DOORWAY TO HELL" (WEIRD WAR, 1982)

I've stated that I didn't intend to write often about null-myths simply if they were imaginatively undistinguished, but I chose to do so in my general review of CREATURE COMMANDOS here so as to provide some background for the characters. In this essay, I'll look at two particular Robert Kanigher stories that show a little more mythic potential than the rest of the COMMANDOS oeuvre, though that potential is sabotaged by the writer's "underthinking of the underthought."

Kanigher, in addition to his long history with DC Comics, proves atypical among comics-creators in that he long displayed a determination to use female characters prominently, even in the unlikely venue of war-comics. To be sure, Kanigher was a formula writer, and he turned out so much work that it's almost inevitable that a lot of it is "underthought." Still, the two stories I'll examine here show some fascinating motifs, for all that they don't get developed.

In Kanigher's first script for the COMMANDOS feature, he chose to add a female member to the all-male monster-team.This two-part story, appearing in WEIRD WAR #109-110, used the same lengthy title "Roses are Red, But Blood is Redder" (with subtitles for each segment, no less). The first story is for the most part a standard commando-mission, in which Kanigher introduces his more acerbic version of the group-leader Matthew Shrieve, where he continuously calls his men "freaks." However, that mission ends with all of the commandos being swept into a raging river.

At the start of the second part, the three monsters emerge from the river more or less intact, though they briefly imagine that they see themselves as normal-looking in the river-waters. Then they scout around and find Shrieve, whose face has been severely injured by the torrent. The Commandos take their fallen leader to a medical convoy. There they conveniently find a doctor of plastic surgery, Myrna Rhodes, and turn Shrieve over to her. Griffith remarks that "he'll be a perfect partner for us now! We've heard the last of him callin' us stand-ins for monsters!" However, Rhodes has worked a miracle, returning Shrieve to his usual handsome self. Shrieve mocks them, and they leave. Rhodes tries to reach out to the embittered soldiers, but the enraged monsters stampede over a table full of chemicals. The result is that the woman who saved Shrieve's looks loses her own, as she grows a headful of Medusa-snakes. She doesn't have the Gorgon's traditional power to turn people to stone-- perhaps because Kanigher felt this would prove hard to work with-- and in fact, the only thing she can do is shock people with her looks, and (if she gets close enough) let her hair-snakes bite her enemies. Despite this limited formidability, she takes the name of "Doctor Medusa" and more or less forces her way onto the team. From then on she serves as Kanigher's vehicle for soulful femininity.

Medusa's addition to the stories doesn't really make them much better, but "Doorway to Hell" is a weird combination of banal war-action and archaic mythology. It starts by referencing the Graeco-Roman myth of Persephone, in which the hell-lord Pluto abducts the mortal maiden to force her into marriage. Then, in contrast to the classics, Kanigher invents a daughter from this union. Inferna is a fire-goddess, playing not to Greek ideas about the afterlife but Christian associations of hell and fire. Inferna makes many fruitless attempts to find mortal bridegrooms, but since she's made of fire, they all end badly.

The Commandos never interact with Inferna until the final three pages of the story, most of which is spent with them seeking out a weapons-cache in Italy. Then Inferna shows up, sans fanfare, and grabs hold of handsome Shrieve, intending to take him down with her into Hades.

For some reason, Shrieve doesn't burn up when Inferna picks him up, though it's implied that eventually he would. However, Doctor Medusa-- who apparently knows all about this made-up goddess-- talks Inferna out of her plans with some feminine sympathizing. Inferna goes away, bemoaning her solitary fate, much as Medusa does. Had this story been longer or better organized, it might've touched on the role of beauty in the female of the species. But in all likelihood, Kanigher was just trying to bang out another quick tale, using some of his favorite tropes.

THE HORRIFIC TRIO

Despite my love for the classic monsters of literature and film, I must admit I've been a very dilatory votary in terms of making posts along a Halloween theme. But I happened to pick up a TPB that collected the DC war/horror hybrid THE CREATURE COMMANDOS, and to comment on that, I need to devote a little time to "the Horrific Trio" (a term I've coined for three particular monsters, in loose imitation of the "Terrific Trio" cognomen from the 1966 BATMAN series).

There are, as I've pointed out in serial essays like RALLY ROUND THE ROGUES' GALLERY, many permutations of the "monster rally" concept. However, for whatever reason, one particular permutation has become arguably the most popular one in the United States: an ensemble-act consisting of a Dracula-like vampire, a werewolf, and a Frankenstein-like monster. Universal Studios unquestionably began this meme with a trio of forties "monster rallies:" HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN,  HOUSE OF DRACULA, and-- perhaps most widely seen-- ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.  There have been numerous works in all media that only teamed up two of the three, or that added a mummy here and a black-lagoon creature there. But no monster-meme has been more durable than that of the "Horrific Trio," as seen by works as far apart as 1980s's DRAK PACK and 2000's MONSTER MASH.

In the first CREATURE COMMANDOS story, writer J.M. DeMatteis puts forth his premise. During America's involvement in World War Two, American scientists create a commando unit able to strike terror in Nazi hearts by patterning three elite commandos on "the subconscious archetypes-- the symbols of fright and horror that all men seem to share, regardless of social and cultural conditioning." I believe DeMatteis oversimplifies Jung by a country mile, for the Americans choose "symbols" that seem more patterned on Universal monsters than on Jungian archetypes. What the Americans produce are three superhumans that have more in common with Deathlok than with Captain America, and like Deathlok, the Commandos equivocate between loyally fighting for their country and perpetually cursing the government that made them into inhuman monsters. DeMatteis wrote five stories, starting off in WEIRD WAR TALES #93, and Mike Barr wrote one. Then veteran scribe Robert Kanigher took over, writing the final eleven stories, which ended the series in issue #121, except for a one-page farewell when the title WEIRD WAR itself ended with issue #124. 

No matter who wrote the original three Commandos, they were always very crude renditions of the mythologies of the "Horrific Trio." Nor for the most part did the writers manage to give any of the sinister-looking soldiers any viable characterization. Two of the soldiers-- Vincent Velcro and Warren Griffith-- reluctantly submitted to genetic tinkering that turned them into a vampire and a werewolf, respectively. The third member-- not counting their human commander, Matthew Shrieve-- worked a little better, in that he was blown apart by an explosive, which prompted American scientists to experiment by giving him a super-strong "patchwork body." I found it risible when the comic showed me a fanged, widow's-peak-wearing vampire and a wolf-man running around in green army fatigues. However, the green-fleshed "Lucky" Taylor had a certain Hulk-like appeal, given that he was a loyal soldier who found himself into a patched-up monster who couldn't even speak coherently. In place of real characterization, the heroes merely indulged in Marvel-style whinging, and their human leader Shrieve was no better. He was pretty vanilla under deMatteis and Barr, while Kanigher's "solution" was simply to turn Shrieve into a jerk who continually disparaged his own troops as "freaks." Kanigher had a lot more generosity toward his original creation for the commando-team, Doctor Medusa, more on whom in the next essay. For good measure, the venerable DC "war weirdie" G.I. Robot (whose basic concept appeared back in 1962) pulled a couple of guest shots in the Commandos feature, before he too lost his berth with the end of WEIRD WAR.

Though I consider all of the Commandos' adventures to be null-myths due to their lack of imagination, it's interesting to speculate as to why the creative talents behind it had so little understanding of the Horrific Trio's appeal. DeMatteis gives his readers pretty much what one would expect of the Universal critters: Griffith the wolf man is a savage berserker, Velcro (hate that name!) is also bloodthirsty but has a more worldly, ironic manner of speaking, and Taylor the patchwork man is mute and sensitive despite being the "heavy lifter" of the group. Yet, while the 1940s "monster mashes" are much less mythically resonant than the individual Universals featuring Dracula, the Monster and the Wolf Man, there's some modest attention to how each of them develops as a symbolic creation. DeMatteis, though, signals an indifference to expanding on the symbolism of the three Commandos. Despite using Marvel-style dialogue, the co-creator (with artists Broderick and Celardo) of the feature apparently patterned his plotting after that of most DC war features, in which characters tend to remain static. 

Somehow, the combination of savage werewolf, urbane yet manipulative vampire, and brutal yet sensitive hulk works in many combinations, even when they don't work together, or even they're played for comedy. But THE CREATURE COMMANDOS never catches any of that combinatory fire.