NEAR-MYTHS: "THE DAY OF THE SWORD" (KULL AND THE BARBARIANS #3, 1975)

As I noted at the end of my analysis of Red Sonja's first appearance in the CONAN comic, the heroine enjoyed about five stories, either solo or in tandem with Conan, that never explained her strange declaration that no man would ever enjoy her body unless he first conquered her "on the field of battle." Various comics readers found this less than salubrious, since it suggested that the heroine was daring the male sex as a whole to attempt raping her. This is not quite the tenor of the origin story, though one can see why that reading might occur to some readers.

"Day of the Sword" is plotted by Thomas but scripted by Doug Moench, while Howard Chaykin provided the art. And to be sure, rape is foregrounded in the story's first pages. While riding through a forest, Sonja comes across three highwaymen torturing a helpless man whom they've just robbed. The robbers threaten to despoil Sonja of her maidenhead, so the warrior woman kills all three. Then she turns to their trussed-up victim-- only to find that she knows him.

This cues a lengthy flashback, showing that five years ago she was a humble farm-girl in Hyrkania, living with her parents and brothers. The text stresses that she envied the boys for being given swordplay lessons by their father, but that being a girl she couldn't even lift a broadsword.

Then the father's past as a mercenary invades the quiet farm-life, as his old comrades track him down. Apparently the unnamed leader bears some unexplained grudge, for after Sonja's father declines to join the raiders on their next job, the commander gives the order to kill all of Sonja's family. As for Sonja, the commander satisfies his lust with her, and then burns down her house, expecting her to die as well.

Sonja saves herself, at which point an unnamed deity appears to her. In contrast to some later retellings, the deity is not specified to be either a god or a goddess, but rather "shaped of neither man nor woman, yet embracing all the strength and beauty of both." The deity then makes a confusing declaration: that Sonja, by the act of saving her own life from the fire, has tapped into her hidden strength. The deity doesn't say that he/she is bestowing any special powers on the young woman, in contrast to the 1985 movie. In fact, the deity indulges in some confusing double-talk, suggesting that Sonja can, if she has the will, embrace the destiny of "a wanderer, the equal of any man or woman you meet"-- but only if Sonja vows to the deity that she will never allow herself to be "loved by another man, unless he has defeated you in fair battle-- something no man is like to do after this day!"

The origin, then, changes the implications of "The Song of Red Sonja," where the heroine says "no man" shall get busy with her unless he defeats her, not "another man." The original line implies that Sonja is an Atalanta who won't yield her favors to anyone but a superior male, and that she's implicitly a virgin. "Day" states outright that Sonja has had her virginity stolen by an unworthy man whose only advantage was biological strength. She can't change what has already happened to her, but she can become a new paradigm, that of a woman with unparalleled strength. After the deity disappears, Sonja gets the chance to test her new power, when a straggling mercenary happens across her, and she swiftly kills him.

But is it her strength, or something the deity gave her? Thomas and Moench play it both ways, having Sonja wonder at the ease with which she wields the sword and kills the raider: "A savage thrust-- learned by watching her father-- by long practice under darkness? Or was it, perhaps, a skill granted to her by a vision?" She even has a "Joe Chill" moment, swearing to find her rapist again someday. 

Then the flashback ends, and Sonja briefly exults that she's caught up with her rapist at last. But then she realizes that the man can't understand her, for the robbers' torture has unhinged his mind. (That was some really effective torture; one wouldn't expect someone to lose their mind from pain except from days and days of torment.) Sonja laughs at the cosmic comedy of it all, and then departs, leaving the still bound man to be slain by approaching wolves. I take the closing line about how the rapist's face is no longer "hideous" to her simply connotes that he no longer holds any capacity to haunt her dreams.

It's a strange story, particularly since the mysterious deity gives no reason for demanding that singular vow. (By contrast, the 1985 movie suggests that maybe Sonja comes up with the vow on her own, not through any supernatural inspiration.) But on balance I think Thomas, Moench and maybe even Chaykin meant it to be empowering. The seventies were the first time American culture as a whole seemed to accept the necessity for women to learn martial skills to protect themselves, and Sonja finding her own strength, with or without a deity's help, seems in tune with these sentiments. Other iterations on the origin may improve upon the sketchiness of "Day," but for my money, it's unlikely that anyone has done better, or will do better, than Frank Thorne. Following his much celebrated tenure on the RED SONJA feature, he came up with a rewriting of the Thomas-Moench tale, in the superlative debut story of GHITA OF ALIZARR.

NEAR-MYTHS: "RESURRECTION NIGHT" (BATMAN #400, 1986)

I discussed the most ambitious arc in Doug Moench's BATMAN run here, but as it happened the writer continued to script Bat-tales until late 1986, and within that time-frame his last one seems to be this celebration of the Caped Crusader's four hundredth issue of his own title. Oddly, the long-term Bat-writer who had immediately preceded Moench, Gerry Conway, also departed by writing an "anniversary" issue of sorts, that of Batman's 500th appearance in DETECTIVE COMICS. That celebration, like Moench's, depended on pitting the crusader and his allies against a huge smorgasbord of  villains.

Neither story is anything special, since the trope of assembling of so many evildoers in one tale creates a "too many crooks spoil the broth" situation. But "Resurrection Night" has a better gimmick, in that Moench's story was illustrated by a round-robin group of established artists, as seen on the cover above. This was the main attraction of "Night," giving fans the chance to see Batman and his cosmos rendered by many artists who wouldn't ordinarily work on the regular titles. 

The plot is necessarily simple: on the actual anniversary of Batman's genesis (I think-- Moench is vague on the matter), the mastermind Ra's Al Ghul liberates twenty-something villains from prison and from Arkham Asylum, in order to make a massed attack on the crusader and his allies. Said allies include "Jason Todd Robin" and Batman's competing love-interests Talia and Catwoman, both of whom are wearing their good-girl hats this time. I did appreciate that Moench almost immediately rids his story of about a dozen malcontents who simply refuse to play along with the big scheme against Batman. This economizing kept Moench and his collaborators from making an error like the one Conway made in his opus. That 1983 villain-rally began by showing the Penguin meeting up the rest of his criminal cronies--after which Conway evidently forgot that the Birdman Bandit was part of the story, since the Penguin vanished from the tale thereafter. 

So the villains break up into separate units, which makes it all the easier for the round-robin artists to handle separate sections of the peripatetic plot. IMO the most enjoyable outing is that of independent artist Ken Steacy, who made only irregular contributions to either of the Big Two. 

But what if anything justifies my calling "Resurrection Night" a near-myth? The closest the story comes to a "master thread" appears in a segment penciled (in a strangely hyperactive style) by Bill Sienkiewicz. Ra's, after unleashing this gang of ghouls upon Gotham, appears in the Batcave and offers the hero his idea of a "temptation in the desert;" offering to kill off all of Batman's foes if Batman will put aside crimefighting and join the mastermind's League of Assassins. Most Bat-readers will not think this an  especially well-thought-out idea, and of course Batman utterly rejects trading one evil for another. The most one can say for the master villain's plan is that he also has his pawns kidnap four innocents, including Alfred the Butler, so on some level Ra's hopes to guilt the hero into forswearing heroism. After the defeat of the pawns, Batman finds Ra's holed up in a windmill and defeats him, 

The Brian Bolland art for the near-finale is also a standout, but the coda is a little more psychologically interesting, First, after the heroes and their friends meet in the Batcave for a cheery anniversary party, It's then that we're told that the windmill where Ra's was defeated (in the usual fiery explosion) created an aftershock that just happened to punctuate the celebration with a stalactite of death. Batman being Batman, he takes the occurrence as a justification to stalk away and brood. Does he reflect on how his destiny has tied him inextricably to a world of freaks and fiends? Well, Moench doesn't exactly say so, but that's what I got out of it. As usual, some of Moench's poetic tropes are labored. The stalactite that impales the cake is a "candle?" And being just one candle, that means it signifies the "resurrection" of Batman's crimefighting career (albeit in other hands than those of Moench)? Not his most inspired symbol-correlation. But "Night" is certainly a better wrap-up for Moench's tenure on BATMAN than the rather piddling stories that appeared in the post-Nocturna months.

OUTSTANDING EPIC FANTASY COMICS

 I've been thinking about the appeal of epic fantasy-- which usually includes the subgenre of sword and sorcery, and includes at least mystical marvels even if some version of science fiction may also be present-- and then wondering about the best examples of this super-genre in comic books and comic strips (not that there are a lot in the latter medium). 

My main criterion is an epic sweep showing either a made-up world or some version of Earth's archaic past, but magic does need to be present to make it fantasy, so "sword and planet" stories like the John Carter series are out, unless magic is evoked alongside science. Mike Grell's WARLORD, which is an "inner Earth" SF-world in which magicians and demons run around, would qualify if I thought any of its arcs were outstanding in some way. For my purposes I'm also thinking only of long comics runs or arcs; no one-off short stories set in fantasy-worlds. I tend to rule out serials in which characters are too jokey or too homey, which would probably let out CEREBUS in addition to its being a domain where magic is only occasionally important to the story. Ditto ASTERIX. If someone had done original-to-comics versions of Peter Pan or the Oz books I might tend to exclude those too. I'd like to have included ELFQUEST but I'm pretty sure all of its miracles fall under the rubric of science fiction, even with all the archaisms.

So far I've come up with:

PRINCE VALIANT-- I've only read a smattering of these reprints, but I would say Hal Foster may be the only guy in newspaper comics to master the form, though I've read that the only usages of magic occur early in the strip's history

THE WIZARD KING-- technically only the first part of Wally Wood's opus is really good; he was pretty ill when he rushed out a quickie second part

CONAN-- maybe the first fifty Marvel issues. Barry Smith was the best exemplar of Conan art though John Buscema did a lot of impressive work up to that point.

KULL-- more scattershot in its first Marvel incarnation, but the second one, titled KULL THE DESTROYER at times, included some imaginative Doug Moench scenarios

CLAW THE UNCONQUERED-- a Conan ripoff, but with more emphasis on magical fantasy, with some cool Keith GIffen artwork

BEOWULF-- DC only did six issues of this character, who was a little jokey at times but still had some epic sequences

RED SONJA-- most if not all of Frank Thorne's work with the character

GHITA OF ALIZARR-- Thorne again, and the first of two albums is very good while the second is still pretty good

INU-YASHA-- medieval Japanese fantasy with an epic sweep

VIKING PRINCE-- gorgeous Kubert art in the feature's more fantastic incarnation

MYTHCOMICS: "BLACK MASK: LOSING FACE" (BATMAN #386-387, DETECTIVE COMICS #553, 1985)

(NOTE: as discussed in this essay, continued story-lines from this period of DC's BATMAN franchise alternated chapters in the pages of both the BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS periodicals. I have chosen the title of one chapter to represent the three-part story-line devoted to the villain Black Mask.)

Contrary to the cover-copy on BATMAN #386, new villain Black Mask was not affirmed by Bat-fans (so far as I can tell) as being either crazier than the Joker or deadlier than Ra's Al Ghul. But I believe he's the only villain co-created by Doug Moench who became a recurring Bat-foe in the hands of later raconteurs. The author's character of Nocturna arguably had more mythical potential, but possibly her charms became diffused from being interwoven into an ongoing soap opera. In contrast, Black Mask's myth is tightly structured from start to finish.

After a one-page intro emphasizing that the new villain will have a special enmity for Bruce Wayne, we're told that the infant version of Roman Sionis is first introduced to the "world of hard knocks" by an obstetrician in a surgical mask. Roman is not related to Bruce Wayne but baby Bruce is born only slightly after Roman, and the Wayne family is socially acquainted with the equally prominent Sionis family, who run a major cosmetics firm. As a boy Roman feels stultified by his parents, who register as superficial and indifferent. He then has a mind-wrenching encounter with a "masked" animal, a rabid raccoon who bites the youth and causes him to plunge into a nightmarish state, "an endless movie of his own making, played out somewhere deep behind his face." (This issue was published roughly a year ahead of the first issue of Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, in which young Bruce Wayne had a similar hallucinatory experience with a monstrous bat.) 

Roman recovers, and in his young manhood, his father brings him into the cosmetics business, which is given the symbol-fraught name of "Janus." Roman quickly rises to vice president of Janus Cosmetics, and in that position of power he becomes fixated upon a new model, whose real name is not disclosed and whose professional name is yet another myth-reference, "Circe." Roman's parents voice their disapproval of such a low-class liaison, and within no time, their mansion burns down, killing them both. Roman avoids any suspicion for their deaths, but his overweening pride brings him down, as he almost bankrupts Janus Cosmetics with his foolhardy schemes. Bruce Wayne extends the hand of charity to the company solely due to his family's friendship with Roman's parents, but only if Roman agrees to "lose face" by resigning as president. Roman then seeks to forge a new identity by desecrating the mausoleum of the parents he murdered, tearing a fragment of ebony-hued wood from his father's casket. From this wood he forges the visage of his new fully criminal identity of Black Mask, which he uses to organize a criminal gang, the False Face Society. He even holds the first meeting of the society in the family tomb, with his parents' coffins in full view.

If Black Mask isn't the equal of Joker and Ra's Al Ghul in all respects, he's certainly on the same level of obsession, constantly prating about how masks give their wearer new powers. In addition to sending his gang to rob Gotham businesses, he also assassinates the men who took over Janus Cosmetics with a chemical created at the firm-- so that Black Mask's mask doesn't in the least conceal his true identity as the former Roman Sionis. However, he doesn't kill Circe, his former lover who deserted him when times got tough, but he uses one of his flesh-corroding masks to destroy her beauty and make her his slave. 

When Batman and the new Robin can't track down the False Face Society, the Caped Crusader uses Bruce Wayne's resources to throw a masquerade party, knowing that Black Mask will try to attend the affair, despite his anticipating a trap. The villain dons a raccoon-mask in deference to the beast who initiated him into evil and attempts to kill Bruce Wayne. He fails at this goal but escapes. Yet Robin tracks him to the crypt, and soon the Dynamic Duo brave the crypt, battling Black Mask's thugs. The main villain again escapes, this time to the mansion of Roman Sionis, The heroes follow and fight two more of Black Mask's goons, while the mastermind raves about how he needs to kill off his old self Roman Sionis. He sets the mansion on fire and almost kills his new self, but Batman rescues him. The fire, however, scars and blackens his natural physiognomy, which from then on is Black Mask's most distinguishing characteristic.

In a brief coda, the disfigured Circe visits the jail where Black Mask is confined, but does not see her former lover. She leaves behind the mask he crafted to hide her disfigurement, implicitly rejecting Roman's obsession with drawing power from concealing one's face. She also invokes the properties of the classical Circe by referring to herself as a "witch," but unlike the sorceress this Circe would seem to be rejecting all forms of false transformation. (Though this was a good send-off for this minor support-character, regrettably Moench brought her back for a second appearance before he finished his BATMAN tenure.) In this initial appearance Black Mask is meant to be the obverse of Batman, using masks to conceal, rather than reveal, the truth of his own nature. I have the general impression that subsequent versions of the character abandon his specific obsession with masks, making him more of an all-around gang-boss, as he is in the UNDER THE RED HOOD continuity. Moench's version is more psychologically intriguing.

I should note that this is a rare mythcomic with an uncanny phenomenality. Neither Batman nor Robin use any special weapons, and Black Mask's only diabolical device is his corrosive cosmetic, which registers at the level of the uncanny.

NEAR-MYTHS: THE NOCTURNA LEITMOTIF (1983-85)

 The early 1980s was an odd transitional time for Batman. Though the character had gained some cachet in the 1970s, the crusader was not even close to being the financial juggernaut he became later, partly though not solely thanks to the 1986 DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and the 1989 Tim Burton opus. At some point in the 1980s, either before or during the hiring of Doug Moench as sole scripter of Batman in both his titular book and in DETECTIVE COMICS, DC Comics attempted to goose the sales of both titles by having the stories interconnected. That is, if one story with a villain (say, the subject of my essay, Nocturna) began in BATMAN #363, that story's conclusion would appear in the subsequent issue of DETECTIVE COMICS, and the next story in BATMAN might begin a new narrative. This editorial ploy was spectacularly unsuccessful, for most regular consumers resented being forced to buy two titles a month to make sense of the stories. Sales went down and the idea was dropped, though not before Moench left the series in 1985.

At the time he accepted the DC assignment, Moench's last major opus had been on Marvel Comics' MASTER OF KUNG FU. That series had garnered high praise from fans, particularly for Moench's ability to weave a diverse group of characters, male and female, into a bracing melodrama, and one far more intricate than most Marvel comics of the early eighties. Given that Moench had been given the chance to be the main arbiter of the mainstream Batman continuity, he may have approached the assignment with the idea of repeating some of his fan-pleasing tropes from MASTER OF KUNG FU. That series had focused upon a group of heroic individuals bound by a common code rather than by family bonds, while the only familial relation of the series was the inimical one between Shang-Chi and his father Fu Manchu.

In contrast, prior to Moench's assignment, DC had just taken the first steps to introduce Second Robin Jason Todd to take the place of Dick Grayson, who was in the process of transitioning away from the Robin identity. Thus Batman had just gained a new surrogate son to share his adventures. In addition, during the pre-Moench period an old Bruce Wayne girlfriend, Vicky Vale, had been re-introduced, and another potential romantic interest for Wayne, Julia Pennyworth, had debuted. However, Moench injected two new characters, first seen to share a loose sibling-like history: Nocturna and the Night-Thief (a.k.a. "Night Slayer.") Whereas there were no mothers of significance in the MASTER OF KUNG FU series, Nocturna was soon defined by her taking the place of Jason Todd's recently deceased mother, just as Batman had taken the place of the orphan's late father.

Nocturna comes very close to rivaling Catwoman in the BATMAN mythos as the essence of a "dangerous yet desirable femme fatale," but in my estimation she never rises above the level of a near-myth. Possibly the character's many poetic ramblings about the beauties of darkness (she's an albino who avoids the sun) are meant to sell her as the embodiment of feminine mystery, of the principle of "Yin" perhaps. However, Moench rides the metaphor like a hobby horse, thus diluting its effect. However, where Catwoman had little or nothing to do with Dick Gayson, Nocturna inserts herself into Jason Todd's life in the second part of her first story, in DETECTIVE #530. Moench is a little vague about the sequence of events, but in the first part, Batman catches the Night-Thief but fails to capture Nocturna. She then apparently just happens to use a high-powered telescope to check out stately Wayne Manor, which eventually leads to her discovery of Bruce Wayne's double identity. At this point Jason has not yet donned a Robin costume, and he's decided to desert Wayne's charity because Batman won't let him become a junior birdman yet. For no rational reason, Nocturna sees Jason leave the manor, seeks him out, and talks him into returning to Wayne's tutelage, despite the fact that she should know nothing about him at this time. 

Moench then allows Nocturna and Night-Thief to recede from the picture for several issues, until DETECTIVE #543. She then appears to Jason again, acting very mysterioso, and laying some vague maternal claim upon him. By issue's end, she files a suit to legally adopt Jason, which Wayne has neglected to do. Presumably she knows that Wayne is Batman by this time, though she does not say so until a later issue. But the reader may well assume that knowledge, for when she first meets Wayne, she proposes solving their rival claims on the boy by getting married. 

Jason's reaction to the lawsuit makes Wayne's case harder, for he claims he wants Nocturna to be his new mother. His motive, though, is loyalty to Batman, for by this time he does know that the mysterioso woman is a thief, and he abets her adoption with the idea of getting the goods on her crimes. This leads to the strangest scene in the entire Moench run, in BATMAN #379. I should note here that Jason is drawn to look about fifteen, even though some sources claim he was supposed to be twelve. Yet, on one of his first nights under Nocturna's roof, she comes to his room to tell him a "bedtime story," an activity one associates with much smaller children. I'm sure Moench's main motive was to provide yet another poetic reflection on darkness, but the "bedtime story" ends with some puzzling dialogue about whether or not Jason would be susceptible to Nocturna's charms if he were just a little older. Moench doesn't pursue the concept of hebephilic sexuality in later issues, so I assume he was just playing around with Oedipal imagery as a side-issue to his main theme, the blossoming romance between Batman and yet another "forbidden femme fatale."

Most of the ensuing issues are more concerned with the triangular romantic conflict between Batman, Nocturna and Night-Thief, but the alluring albino makes a conquest in Jason Todd, who toward the end of Moench's run goes so far as to forget legal impropriety and to refer to the enchantress as "Mom." By this time Moench may have planned to leave the series, for he arranges a send-off for Nocturna in the form of an ambivalent death. But unlike so many other comics-characters, Nocturna did not get revived in continuity with her original form-- for in the last Nocturna-arc, the Earth is suffering the first signs of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Thus once DC-reality was rewritten by the Crisis, any version of Nocturna that returned would exist out of continuity with the original-- and indeed, another Nocturna did pop up somewhere later, though I've not endeavored to check out this later character. I should also note that in the last arc Catwoman returns to challenge Nocturna for Batman's affections, and Catwoman more or less "wins" the bout. I imagine Moench had Catwoman somewhat in mind when he created his seductive lady crook, and maybe he was gratified that no other author would ever "lay hands" on his character, thanks to the exigencies of DC Comics' total reboot of their cosmos.

MYTHCOMICS: "A DREAM OF MONSTERS" (THE WANDERERS #1-5, 1988)

Most comics-fans are more than a little familiar with the many revisions of major DC Comics characters like Superman and Wonder Woman following the 1985 "Crisis" mega-event. But of all the characters revised following the Crisis, the team of future-heroes known as "the Wanderers" may be the most obscure. Prior to 1988, the team had only appeared a couple of times as guest-stars in DC's successful LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES feature, and there were no indications that anyone had designed the seven characters of the team to be a continuing franchise. I would guess that when writer Doug Moench and artist Dave Hoover pitched the idea of THE WANDERERS as an ongoing series, their interest had less to do with their fascination with the characters than with the chance to promulgate a somewhat darker vein of science fiction than what usually appeared in the LEGION's "space opera with superheroes."

Most of the Crisis-era revisions didn't necessitate killing the original version-- the pre-Crisis incarnation of Wonder Woman proving the exception to that rule-- but WANDERERS #1 starts out with the deaths of all seven heroes by forces unknown. The dead bodies of the heroes, floating around in their derelict spaceship, are discovered by a being belonging to the race called "Controllers," said race being a familiar presence in the LEGION cosmology. This individual, eventually dubbed "Clonus-Prime," finds the slain heroes while he's in the midst of tracking the monsters responsible for attacking both the Wanderers and various other alien races. (These creatures are not given a specific name as such, so for the rest of the essay I'll call them "the Hatchlings," a name given to one of their intermediary development-stages.) Clonus-Prime takes time out from his pursuit to arrange a rebirth for the deceased stalwarts, but only in an indirect (and somewhat confusing) manner. He intends to bring the Wanderers back in new bodies cloned from their corpses. However, since Prime doesn't want to get off the trail for too long, he first clones himself. This results in an identical twin, usually named just "Clonus." Clonus-Prime downloads some or all of his memories into Clonus, and then leaves. Clonus, who possesses all of his "parent's" scientific skills and also inherits the immortality common to all Controllers, gets to work and tries to clone new bodies for all seven. One of the seven clones does not take, but the other six prove viable, although for reasons not well explained, Clonus modifies most of their powers and appearances, as well as growing them to adult status in a matter of weeks. 

Once they "come alive," the six clone-heroes possess all of the memories of their "primes," or originals. Yet they're more than a little alienated by their new physical forms, and some of them are angry to have been made into lab-rats by their new "father." For the first five issues, the heroes' main mission is to learn what forces destroyed their primes. None of them seem to have any memories of their predecessors' final moments, which is perhaps just as well, since the saga of the new Wanderers is already fairly confusing, owing to its being started in media res. Moench puts forth a familiar but still appealing idea-- that of giving a murder-victim a second chance to find his murderer-- but whereas this is given an elegant simplicity in a feature like DC's DEADMAN, the concept becomes vitiated by the demands of a team-book. Team-concepts flourish when the team-members all have separate concerns and thus butt heads over their respective priorities-- but with a few exceptions, the New Wanderers all share the same overall problem: that of being reborn in mutated forms, and of finding their murderers.

Further, even in the first five issues-- easily the best arc in the feature's 13-issue run-- Moench does not succeed in creating strong interpersonal dynamics for the members, despite a transparent attempt to make two of the heroes look like, respectively, Nightcrawler and Wolverine of THE X-MEN. The two female team-members keep the names they started with, Psyche and Quantum Qneen, but the four males all assume new monickers-- Elvar, Dartalon, Aviax, and Re-Animage-- none of which are any better than their primes' cognomens. The heroes get a little time to experiment with their powers before the next catastrophe: an assassin from the Controller universe. Clonus reveals to his "children" that in that universe, cloning is expressly forbidden, which is why Clonus-Prime fled his own cosmos in order to perfect his cloning-procedures. So the Wanderers must continue their own quest for their murderers while a stalker pursues them. For good measure, both Clonus-Prime and Clonus perish, though the latter survives as a computer-program in the Wanderers' starship. One of the heroes, the intuitive Psyche, discovers an infant Hatchling in the ship and hides the imp from the others, seeking to use her mental abilities to purge the Hatchling of the violence inherent in its species.

To say the least, this overplotted narrative proves ponderous in the extreme. The mythic meat of the story, though, might be called Doug Moench's subversion of the novel FRANKENSTEIN. Clonus-Prime's obsession with cloning bears some comparisons with the obsession of Shelley's character to make a "new Adam" out of diverse body-parts, and many critics have commented that Frankenstein's primary sin was to attempt to create a human being through science rather than using the tried-and-true organic methods.

Clonus-Prime, though ultimately responsible for the genesis of the Hatchlings, does not make his monsters exclusively through science. Before he's even created his first clone, he meets a human woman of the Legion-verse, and the two of them fall in love. Clonus-Prime and Velissa repeatedly try to conceive the old-fashioned way, but they fail to bear any children due to biological incompatibility. Unlike Clonus-Prime, Velissa ages like all mortals, but rather than simply letting her perish naturally, he prolongs her life via cloning, making new young versions of Velissa and then euthanizing the aged bodies. For generations Clonus-Prime keeps making new versions of Velissa, as well as continuing to try biological reproduction. But as the Controller-assassin eventually reveals, clones can't be allowed to reproduce, or they will produce monsters. It's not clear as to why Clonus-Prime never knew this, but it's due to his ignorance that he and Velissa eventually do bear children: the Hatchings, who reproduce asexually and are hostile to all species save their own kind. Thus in a sense Clonus-Prime is ultimately responsible both for killing and for re-birthing the Wanderers (sort of like series-creators Moench and Hoover).

The climax of "Dream" also touches on Frankensteinian themes, for the Hatchlings not only escape their father, they take their mother Velissa with them, and she's kept alive by their will, as a sort of zombie-queen. Though her husband has the greater responsibility for the Hatchlings' depredations, the image of Velissa presiding over her ravening offspring reminded me of Frankenstein's fears that if he created a bride for his monster, she would become the mother of a new race of monsters. In contrast to Velissa, Psyche is the "good mother," in that she's successful in using her emotion-based powers to purge her adopted Hatchling of its violent tendencies. But Psyche can't save the whole nest of Hatchlings, and thus the arc I've named "Dream of Monsters" comes to a cataclysmic conclusion. 

For the remainder of the series, Moench and Hoover, rather than working on the dynamics of their ensemble, placed more emphasis in showing each of the Wanderers trying to find their individual destinies in various new situations. Even the best of these stories are rather predictable and unaffecting, despite the creators' attempts to play up the melodramatic angles. As a team the "X-Wanderers" were a failure, but the initial arc, however tortuous, does have a few memorable myth-moments.

MYTHCOMICS: "PLANET STORY" (MARVEL PREMIERE #61, 1980)

The Bronze Age of Comics-- which I would peg as the period from 1970-1986-- was the last era in which Marvel and DC published a significant number of new characters in their own features but not derived from earlier features. Year 1986 seems like a good cut-off point, given that the profitability of two works then published-- WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS-- encouraged many creators to quit automatically contributing to "the Big Two."

To be sure, many of these characters proved no more than minor players, and Marvel's Star-Lord-- despite an impressive translation to the cinema in recent years-- couldn't even be said to be one of the sales-failures that remained a fan-favorite for years later, such as Killraven and the Man-Thing.

The base-concept of Star-Lord was essentially "Green Lantern without the Green Lantern Corps." His origin involved an alien giving Earthman Peter Quill cosmic powers, with an eye to creating more space-supermen later. But Quill/Star-Lord was the only one created, and despite his ties to Earth, his few adventures didn't involve his home planet, also in contradistinction to DC's Green Lantern. Given an "element-gun" for self-defense and an intelligent ship named "Ship" for transport, Star-Lord tooled around various galaxies for about a half dozen stories, before disappearing for the remainder of the Bronze Age.

The title "Planet Story" does concern a planet, though it's likely that either writer Doug Moench or artist Tom Sutton also had in mind the famous pulp-magazine PLANET STORIES, which specialized in adventurous space-opera. If so, it's an ironic title, because the script bears less resemblance to space opera than to more involved science fiction meditations on quasi-sentient planets, like Harry Harrison's DEATHWORLD. Moench does not give the planet in his story a name, but for convenience I will call it "the Sharing World."

Star-Lord and "Ship" have no particular agenda, save curiosity, when they happen across the Sharing-World. Their survey indicates that the world is replete with lush vegetation but no "higher fauna." Yet Star-Lord also observes a ruined city, indicating that at some point intelligent beings occupied the planet. Under his own flight-power, Star-Lord leaves his vehicle in orbit and descends. As soon as he does, various phenomena-- a volcano, an earthquake, and a bunch of tentacled plants-- assail the hero. He makes his way to the ruined city but finds no clue to explain the absence of the city's makers, though Star-Lord suspects that the populace may have been exterminated by the hostile environment.

Once Star-Lord leaves the city, again he's attacked by planetary phenomena, such as wind and lightning, but this time, the phenomena are driving him toward a destination. The hero is precipitated into the "organic cavern" of a huge tree, and the entrance seals up when Star-Lord tries to leave. The only thing inside the tree are various honeycombed chambers, which Star-Lord mentally compares to "cadaver-drawers" with no contents. Then he learns that they do have contents: groping plant-tendrils that try to grab him, though he's able to keep his distance from them.

Suddenly, the planet itself communicates with Star-Lord through the medium of dust that arranges itself into holograms (no, there's no explanation of how this could be accomplished). Through these images the Sharing-World informs its guest of its history with its sentient inhabitants, through the vehicle of the giant tree (and possibly other trees elsewhere on the planet).

Long ago, an intelligent race of parrot-headed creatures existed alongside the glories of the sentient planet, living as "noble savages in an alien Garden of Eden" (which is implicitly Star-Lord's interpretation of things). However, the parrot-people, whom the planet calls "the Sharers of Old," begin to dislike the planet's tendency to interact with them through the tree-tendrils. (Moench's script is unclear on some points: at first it sounds like some of the Sharers are killed by having their energies drained by the "vampire tendrils," but later it sounds like a symbiotic relationship that injures no one.)

In any case, the relationship is in later sections deemed as important by the Sharing-World, because intelligent beings, unlike lower animals, can choose whether or not to participate in the sharing-ritual. However, the parrot-people choose to leave this 'garden" and build their own cities. Then they follow the usual course of tool-using sentients, exploiting the planet and giving nothing back. In response the planet begins to die, and finally the Sharers give up and desert the Sharing-World via spaceship.

Then, as soon as Star-Lord has been given a Cook's Tour of the world's history, the feeding-tendrils latch onto him. At this point Moench and Sutton shift the narrative viewpoint to that of the Sharing-World, which describes its quasi-erotic attachment to the long vanished Sharers, and its desire to have Star-Lord take up the same role. The planet's attacks were caused by its eagerness to take on a new "lover," but though the reader learns these facts, but Star-Lord isn't tapped into the planet's ruminations. He breaks free of the tendrils and returns to his orbiting vessel. Once there, he confers with his intelligent ship, wondering if he ought to use the ship's weapons to destroy this menacing world. However, "Ship" talks the hero out of doing so, and the two of them leave-- which proves a final irony, since by that point the Sharing-World wants to die for its lack of loving symbiosis.

(The entire story can be read here.)


Even without Moench's early Eden-reference, one could hardly miss the tale's indebtedness to the Old Testament narrative of Adam and Eve. In said story, God gave the first humans the choice of whether or not to obey God's commandment not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Moench neatly inverts this myth, for here it's a tree, through which the planet manifests its will, that's more or less "feeding" on the inhabitants of the "garden." There's no tempter that moves the parrot-people to leave; they do so of their own volition, and Moench largely implies that their motives are more selfish than self-protective, and they're rejecting their quasi-sexual union with the planet rather than coming to a new knowledge of male-female sexuality. Christian philosophers have opined that humankind's exile from Eden was a "fortunate fall," but in Moench's story, strongly suggestive of ecological ideals like the "Gaea theory," the Fall is unfortunate for both the world and its intelligent denizens.

The element of "choice" is also less metaphysical and more sensual: the planet wants to share only with those who have the power to choose. Tom Sutton's art emphasizes the chaotic curves of natural life as against the hard lines of sentient dwelling-laces, and Star-Lord's brief captivity by the tendrils suggests a sort of human-alien sex along the lines of Philip Jose Farmer's 1953 story THE LOVERS, though Sutton's imagery suggests rape, as does one of Moench's lines:

"...the exit irised shut with a sloppy, wet sound that made me think of ripeness and guilt."