THE READING RHEUM: THE LOST WORLD (1912)

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand.-- THE LOST WORLD, p, 7

I've made a few random comments about Conan Doyle's LOST WORLD on this blog over the years. I recognized how Doyle had produced a seminal SF-idea-- that of prehistoric beasts surviving into modern times, even though a few earlier authors, such as Verne and Haggard, had contributed related notions. At the same time, I was rather conflicted about the novel's conclusion. I've frequently said that I don't reject out of hand stories that express controversial opinions on race and sexuality; these can be as "mythic," and sometimes more so, than stories that express "correct," theoretically more humane sentiments. But since LOST WORLD concludes with the modern-day explorers helping a tribe of Indian settlers in the Lost World wipe out a tribe of ape-men, I had to wonder whether or not Doyle's story reflected his real-life opinions on racial politics. I'd read a few accounts claiming that Doyle was ultra-conservative, and I'd seen occasional glimpses of such political leanings in his fiction. Was LOST WORLD meant to be a defense of imperialistic aggression? 

I have glimpsed one online essay that makes the opposite claim, but I only spot-read a few sections of that article so that I wouldn't be unduly influenced. That caveat made, I'd already noticed a number of discontinuities in WORLD that argued that Doyle was playing a larger game than simply validating the status quo of his time. One such discontinuity is the opening quote, though I'll come back to that a little while after providing a quick summary of the novel's action.

The line about "real sex feeling" goes through the mind of young Irish reporter Ned Malone when he attempts to propose marriage to a woman named Gladys. Gladys refuses Ned, expressing the desire for a mate with some glorious record of accomplishments. Fortuitously, Ned's job causes him to cross paths with eccentric (and pugnacious) biologist George Challenger, who suggests that prehistoric creatures may still exist on a remote plateau in Bolivia. When Challenger gathers an expedition, he allows Ned to come along, as well as a rival scientist, Summerlee, and a far more experienced adventurer, Lord John Roxton, who in many ways exemplifies the pattern of male courage and fortitude to which Malone aspires. Suffice to say that the expedition finds the plateau, but they're marooned atop it by conniving guides. While trying to find a way off the escarpment, the Englishmen confirm that assorted prehistoric animals have indeed migrated here, particularly saurians and pterodactyls. The explorers also encounter two humanoid species, though contrary to later "caveman films," no one implies that the primitives evolved alongside the dinos; rather, both sets of humanoids migrated to the plateau at very different times. One group are simply a branch of an Indian populace native to South America, but the other tribe consists of "ape-men," who are explicitly compared to the evolutionary notion of "the missing link" between apes and men. When war breaks out between the two tribes, the Englishmen side with the Indians, and with their superior weapons they all but massacre the ape-men. That done, the heroes escape the Lost World and return to London, exhibiting to fascinated Londoners the proof of their findings: a live pterodactyl. However, during the time of Malone's long absence, the changeable Gladys has married another suitor, a solicitor's clerk with absolutely no claims to adventurous stature.

Though WORLD is not a comedy, it means something that Doyle frames its story of high adventure between a woman's capricious challenge and her equally capricious renunciation of her supposed standards for a mate. Moreover, even the early sections include some japes at the idea of racial purity. During Malone's first interview with Challenger, the irascible scientist claims to see a "suggestion of the Negroid" in Malone's skull. A page later, when Challenger speaks of a previous South American trip where he conferred with a tribe of Indians near the disputed territory, Challenger says that their mental powers had degenerated. Racial animus, right? Except that in the same sentence Challenger says that the Indians' mental acuity was "hardly superior to that of the average Londoner." 

Somewhat later, Malone learns something of Roxton's history. The nobleman volunteered for the expedition because he's passionate about everything about South America, except one custom partly furthered by colonial Spaniards: that of slavery. Roxton has carried out a jeremiad against slavers, who according to him are all "half-breeds." Many racist authors have used the figure of the half-breed ti signify the evils of miscegenation, but Doyle doesn't seem concerned with that possibility, as he's focused purely upon the evil of Indians being enslaved. It's possible Doyle knew his readers might not accept all-white villains, and so used half-white, half-red ones instead. Still, the people being maltreated are full "red men," though it's true that many modern readers would be averse to Roxton performing the function of "white savior." Roxton's past crusade, by the bye, is responsible for getting the explorers stranded on the plateau, in that one of the bearers joins the expedition looking for a chance to avenge himself on Roxton for the latter having executed his relative.

To say the least, once Malone is stuck on the plateau with his three companions, he gets his "baptism of fire" in spades. Doyle keeps his tone varied, including some superb "sense of wonder" scenes as the explorers take in the Edenic wonders of the primitive domain, as well as many moments of comedy. But the Lost World is a land of almost constant danger, where the strong devour the weak with no reservations. Fittingly, Malone is the first to encounter one of the ape-men while climbing a tree for scouting purposes. Though the single ape-man flees, he brings his people later while Malone is off exploring, and the brutes make an unprovoked attack, capturing Challenger, Summerlee, and Roxton. Roxton escapes, finds Malone, and the two of them use their firearms to assault the ape-tribe in order to free the two remaining prisoners. 

This escapade is also not without comedy, given that Challenger, who has a hirsute, apelike appearance for an Englishman, is seen to be the spitting image of the ape-men's ruler. However, Roxton's crusade against injustice has been ignited once again, for during captivity he witnessed the true degeneracy of the anthropoids, as they amused themselves flinging Indians off a nearby cliff. And thus the Englishmen lead the Indians in a major assault upon the missing links, with only a few women and children surviving the violence. Challenger celebrates the victory, saying that "upon this plateau the future must ever be for man." Malone, detailing the many horrors he witnesses on both sides of the conflict, thinks to himself, "It needed a robust faith in the end to justify such tragic means." This is the climax of the novel and everything that follows is just a long coda.

With all this plot-action explicated, I can return to Malone's curious expression at the book's opening. Long before he meets Challenger, much less any of the missing links the scientist resembles, the reporter is aware of what happened in the "old wicked days." Malone is of course not directly referencing the clash of civilizations as Challenger is. Yet what does he mean by saying that "love and violence went often hand in hand?" He *might* be thinking that in the wicked days men just took women as they pleased and the women had nothing to say about it. Then again, men competed with other men over women, and so that may be the real "violence" being associated with "love"-- which could well mean more like not romantic love, but the consummation of sexual union predicated on the rule of the strong, which primitive women may have accepted for the same reasons Gladys expresses. Gladys does not ask Malone to fight any other suitors for her favor, but arguably her whole fantasy of his winning some great glory translates into the same thing: she'll yield him sex if he distinguishes himself with acts of bravery-- which usually must be backed by violence. Of course, she's playing with Malone because she doesn't really want him, and the actual denouement suggests that she might have wanted a mild-mannered type all the time, and she gave Malone a formidable task to get rid of him. 

Thus, my verdict is that, even if Doyle's characters may make remarks moderns would deem problematic, the writer has given those characters a lot more "wiggle room" than any doctrinaire racist would. Doyle is at least partly serious about stating that all human endeavor comes down to these ongoing civilization-clashes. Yet the unison of love and violence in human nature is not limited to any particular subdivision of humankind. Doyle's constant comparisons between his contemporaries and primitive peoples establish that he believes that all humankind is implicated in the struggles of Eros and Thanatos, and that recognizing this is the true "challenge" one derives from a visit to the Lost World.

NULL-MYTHS: THE SILVER AGE SUICIDE SQUAD (1959-66)

In this essay, which contains an explanation of my term "null-myth," I mentioned that Mark Millar's WANTED was one of the few works I considered inconsummate in every way, that is, in terms of all four literary potentialities. Now here's another one.

I hate to knock this omnibus collection of the Silver Age SUICIDE SQUAD, which, as most DC fans will know, indirectly gave rise to the SUICIDE SQUAD concept of the Late Bronze Age. Since to my knowledge none of these stories were reprinted before, the collection is of great benefit to the devoted comics-historian who wants to know the origins of everything. These tales were almost entirely executed by editor-writer Robert Kanigher and his possibly-favorite artist-team Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. (There's one story written by another writer and a couple of entries by Joe Kubert and by Gene Colan.) One group of stories were set in the 1960s, featuring four government agents, who usually battled recrudescent dinosaurs. The other group concerned an assortment of non-recurring characters who belonged to a secret commando squad, and who-- also usually ended up fighting dinosaurs. To be sure, the later batch belonged to an overarching serial concept, also mostly by Kanigher, "The War That Time Forgot," in which American GIs kept encountering big saurian monsters whose modern presence went largely unexplained. Of the two concepts, the 1960s one was a direct influence upon the Bronze Age concept, which took the first serial's stalwart hero Rick Flag and put him in command of a team of DC supervillains. I really have nothing to say about the WWII tales, except that I found them all very boring, even the one with an early version of that curious DC creation, "the G.I. Robot."

The stories of the "Rick Flag Squad" are no better, but it's historically interesting to show how poorly Kanigher works out his concept. First of all, he selects his four adventurers-- Flag, nurse Karen Grace, and scientists Evans and Bright-- for all having one thing in common: survivor guilt, after having witnessed other persons perish while the future Squad-members themselves survived.  This sounds a lot like the idea Jack Kirby and Dave Wood debuted for the long-running 1958 feature CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, wherein the four heroes all survived brushes with death. However, whereas the Challengers all pretty much forget about their trauma in their quest for fun exploits, it becomes a source of ongoing melodrama in the hands of Kanigher.

Naturally, Kanigher doesn't have any of these survivor-victims literally court death; "suicide" is only a tag-line to suggest how dangerous their missions are. To supply optimal melodrama, Kanigher comes up with a romantic schtick in which Flag and Karen ache with mutual love for one another, but cannot be seen together. Why not? Well, their other Squad-members, Evans and Bright, are both in love with Karin too, though neither man ever seems to make the slightest pass at Karin. However, virtuous Flag insists that the Squad's missions come first, and therefore he and Karen cannot wed. 

Kanigher rolls out this trope over and over with no development, as if each pseudo-romantic encounter were produced via Xerox machine. The group's menaces are the same: they're almost all dinosaurs that have survived somehow, sometimes with super-powers. The last adventure has the characters, who have never functioned as crimefighters, threatened with death by a gang-boss who pays a villain, "the Sculptor Sorcerer," to turn the quartet into gold statues. It's not a good story either, but it's certainly better than any of the dino tales.

I've often pointed out that Kanigher had an unusual ability to breed real poetry out of his endless repetition of pulp-tropes, which often seems  a minor miracle, given how much junk Kanigher wrote. But the only significance of the Silver Age SUICIDE SQUAD is that of providing a template for the superior Bronze Age creation.

SOLO AVENGERS, MIRACLE TEAMS PT. 5

To recap a part of my thesis: the institution of the Comics Code reduced the degree to which American comic books could invoke the sort of head-bashing-- and headlight-fancying-- visceral thrills available to adventure-heroes.  Thus there may have been less of a tendency to portray post-Code superheroes exclusively along the lines of the "urban avenger" type.  Over time key figures in comics sought to invoke quasi-intellectual thrills to enhance whatever visceral thrills were still available.  Some of these comics-makers, like Julie Schwartz and Jack Kirby, were long-time fans of prose science fiction and might have sought to use its tropes had the Code never existed. But others, such as Stan Lee and Jack Schiff, seem to have been using such tropes primarily to appeal to readers, rather than to express their own personal inclinations.  An increasing emphasis on sci-fi and myth-fantasy tropes brought about a fusion of the "urban avenger" and "miracle hero" types.  A newly minted hero like the Silver Age Flash still had a certain quantity of adventures beating up ordinary crooks, but this was no longer his raison d'etre, as it had been for the Golden Age Flash.  Eventually Silver Age Flash's gallery of fantastic rogues were very close to being virtual co-stars of the feature, in that readers clamored to see new stories with the Mirror Master, Captain Boomerang and the Top.

A more mundane feature like DC's BATMAN maintained its roots in the urban avenger tropes to some extent.  At the same time Batman's own gallery of fantasy-rogues grew to phenomenal proportions during Jack Schiff's post-Code years (1955-1964) with the two Bat-titles.  Granted, only a few of these characters, like the Silver Age Clayface, became particularly celebrated by fandom.  Many of them were gimmicky throwaways with names like "Mister Polka-Dot."  In later interviews Schiff expressly said that against his will he was forced to inject more SF-themed stories into the Bat-books.  However, he also claimed that he tried to make more use of Golden Age villains like Joker and Penguin. I speculate that the appearance of increased quantities of costumed villains in the Bat-features was Schiff's own idea, though it sometimes looks like he and his writers were trying to build up the Batman rogue's gallery by the old "see what sticks to the wall" gambit.

 

In this brave new world of SF-dominated superheroes of the Silver Age, however, one sees a dearth of feminine "miracle heroes," except in the positions of sidekicks to a male hero (Hawkgirl with Hawkman, Fly Girl with the Fly) or within superhero-teams.  Why?

I should reiterate that the basic idea of the "urban avenger" type was to go around looking for wrongs to right in a very simplistic, visceral manner.  In this Golden Age comics emulated adventure pulp-magazines.  Unlike the prose pulps, though, Golden Age comic books made greater use of female heroes starring in their own features.  One may observe that only a handful of these-- Wonder Woman, Black Cat, Phantom Lady-- were popular enough to support their own titles.  Some fem-centric features lasted  several years as "backups" in titles built around more popular male heroes.

I should note that "exotic avenger" heroines, particularly jungle girls, usually had better luck in graduating to the position of "most valuable players.")  But even if characters like Miss Masque or Wildfire were never the stars of their respective magazines, the mere fact that their publishers kept them going suggests that they believed some of their customers liked them, for reasons I've discussed in more detail in Part 3. 

However, during the 1950s the forces of censorship weren't the only influences on the adumbration of comics' pulplike nature.  As this article by Michelle Nolan makes clear, the 1950s also saw the slow attrition of the "anthology-format" of early comics, which had originally been a compromise between the format of prose pulps and that of newspaper comic strips.  For over fifteen years, most comic books weighed in at anywhere from 52 to 64 pages, and with various exceptions most were chock-full of a variety of assorted features.  This principle had been old when vaudeville reigned: if the customer doesn't like one act, bring on another quickly and maybe he'll like that one.  The fat-anthology format made it possible for adventure-comics to offer a lot of characters who were diverse in their physical appearance, even if there wasn't that much diversity in terms of the characters or the fantastic worlds through which they moved. 


By the post-Code era, most comics had shrunk to 36 pages, including covers. During this turbulent era of the comics-business, heroines of any genre *may* have been perceived as risky because they could be too easily interpreted as, well, "risqué."  Did comics-publishers like DC remember that Wertham inveighed not only against hypersexual types like Phantom Lady and Wonder Woman, but also female crusaders like Nyoka, whose Fawcett incarnation was, at best, mildly glamorous?  I for one think it probable, though not provable. I find it significant that following the institution of the Code DC apparently exiled the Catwoman-- the only comic-book villainess mentioned by Wertham--for roughly twelve years. 

Only in 1959 does industry leader DC take a chance on two female characters.  Supergirl, obviously, remained in a backup position to Superman in ACTION COMICS. In notable contrast, DC's STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES, previously dominated by non-continuing anthology-characters, finds its first strong continuing character in Mademoiselle Marie, who actually snags the cover-feature for issues #84-89.  Then, as if in further testimony to the proliferation of SF-tropes, someone got the bright idea of mixing soldiers with dinosaurs in SSWS-- and soon Marie found herself relegated to second banana for the remainder of her run in the title.  The mere fact that dinosaurs would sell better to comics-fans of the time than sexy French girls may say something, but I hesitate to say just what.

I find no superheroines appearing solo in the years 1960-65 unless they were spin-offs, as when Archie Comics' "Fly Girl" appeared on her own a few times in the FLY comic.  Their best moments would appear in the team-books, with this book leading the pack:

In contrast to the template of the JUSTICE SOCIETY, JUSTICE LEAGUE made no attempt to situate every member in his or her own individual story; probably an impossibility given the reduced page-count.  Instead heroes frequently "doubled up," creating more of a sense of a team rather than a loose affiliation.

Every comics-fan worthy of the name knows how the success of JUSTICE LEAGUE influenced the creation of Marvel's flagship book, Lee and Kirby's THE FANTASTIC FOUR, though FF's template was more immediately drawn from the "scientific adventurer" genre suggested by Kirby's CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN.  And though Marvel was quick to capitalize on their early success by producing both a roster of individual heroes and combining many of them in the AVENGERS title, FANTASTIC FOUR seems to have been far more influential.  Golden Age superhero teams had always been assemblages of established features.  In the Silver Age such assemblages, like JLA, Avengers, and Teen Titans, were narrowly outnumbered by superhero teams created to be nothing but teams, as with the X-Men, the Doom Patrol, the Metal Men and the Legion of Super-Heroes. 

Marvel, however, didn't take many chances on superheroines.  The Wasp was the only female sidekick introduced during this period, and though I've noted that her character has been underrated, there's no indication that contemporary fans were dying to see her on her own, though she did get a couple of solo backup stories.  In 1968 Marvel gave the FF-derived character Medusa a one-shot tryout in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #15, but that was about it for Marvel in the 1960s.

DC and Charlton just barely edge ahead of Marvel here, in that DC premiered a short-lived "magical superheroine" in STRANGE ADVENTURES #187 in 1966, while Charlton gave heroine Nightshade-- introduced in CAPTAIN ATOM #82-- a backup berth in issue #87 (1967).

Nevertheless, the dearth of solo heroines did not mean that the 1960s was a bad time for superheroines, which was my original argument. I would say that by roughly 1964 the comics-industry had shaken off its worst fears about another censorship-crackdown.  However, reduced page-count still mitigated against the sort of rapid-fire introduction of new franchises seen in the Golden Age.  Team-books, whether they were composed of original characters or characters from independent franchises, were a new strategy to offer the reader more bang for the buck.  Such books also offered heroines for those that wanted them, without the need to risk anything on heroine-centered features.  That the comics-makers felt some need to defend this strategy is testified by Reed Richards' testimony on behalf of his female partner in FF #11 . 

Fans will never know the true genesis of this supposed response to reader-complaints, but at the very least it strikes me as an attempt to mollify readers who would have preferred to focus on male heroes. 

Further, though many "miracle heroes" existed without any affiliation to teams, the superhero team was often more adept at journeying into all manner of strange SF-fantasy worlds than individual heroes rooted in particular places-- all of which served to promote the quasi-intellectual thrill of the "sense of wonder."  Obviously, not all teams were successful-- Silver Age X-MEN, despite its outre theme, never became a sales-winner in its original incarnation, while DC's FLASH lasted into the 1980s.  But historically speaking, the most important contribution of the team-books was to offer the publishers a strategy for proliferating their distaff characters.  The small quantity of successful solo heroines will doubtlessly remain a source of frustation for some comics-fans.  But to overlook the sheer creativity behind such characters simply because they showed up in team-books shows, as I originally argued, a major failure of critical imagination.