THE READING RHEUM: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1902)

I've probably read Doyle's HOUND two or three times just for pleasure, but not since starting this blog in 2007. I recall occasionally ascribing high mythicity to the novel in this or that essay, but I never analyzed the book, even though the story is one of the best-known in literature, making it something of a "popular myth." That, however, doesn't count in terms of my charting a narrative's epistemological patterns. I have reviewed at least four cinematic adaptations of HOUND on the movie-blog, and I've never discerned high mythicity even in the two best and most famous films, the 1939 Fox film and the 1959 Hammer outing. 

Having reread the book now with my myth-stalker's hat on, I find that Doyle was in no way subtle about his primary myth-theme. The author hints at that theme in the first chapter, when Holmes and Watson discuss the pedigree of their client Dr. Mortimer by consulting a medical directory (the Victorian version of the Internet). They find that the doctor has authored articles with titles like "Is Disease a Reversion?" and "Some Freaks of Atavism." This concern with the distant past plays into the case Mortimer had brought to Holmes. The doctor tells Holmes and Watson that he half-believes in the Baskerville curse, that may have killed the former baronet Charles and may yet take the life of the sole heir. Sir Henry.

I've mentioned in one film-review that there's never a possibility, in Holmes' modern London, that there exists a demon-hound that slew the Baskervilles' degenerate ancestor in the 17th century, or one that might take the life of Sir Henry. Holmes duly mocks the very idea, despite taking the case. In the end the existence of a demon-hound matters less than the fact that the world that bred such superstitions still endures. Thus the still-savage land of Dartmoor can cast a spell upon some Victorian men, as attested by Watson when, as Holmes' agent, he first views the wild moorland around Baskerville Hall:

MY DEAR HOLMES: My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy.

The curse of the Baskervilles might not extend back to the days of prehistoric menhirs, but the event that brought about the supposed curse, in which a hot-blooded lord dedicated his soul to Satan for the sexual possession of an innocent maiden, remains no less remote from the experience of Victorian Londoners. 

And yet, England has its share of non-superstitious degeneracy. Selden, the murderer who haunts the moors, is directly compared to a caveman when Watson first sees him. Master plotter Stapleton, the one who arranged his uncle's death and tries to do the same with his cousin Henry, is called a "throwback" when Holmes descries how much a portrait of a 17th-century Baskerville resembles Stapleton. Stapleton's real name is the same as that of his father Rodger Baskerville, and no one knew of Stapleton's existence because he was born abroad, when his father left England under some cloud. In fact, a fair number of modern Britons have similar clouds. Stapleton and his wife Beryl get involved in some vague corruption long before the hound plot, and Laura Lyons, one of Stapleton's pawns, suffers from having made a bad marriage, though Doyle imputes all the wrongdoing to a no-good husband. If, as Mortimer believes, all disease really is a "reversion" to some less exalted state, that would include the disease of crime, which can be cured only by the relentless logic of a master detective.

While the cinema has its own ways of conveying mythicity, so far even the most faithful adaptations of HOUND known to me haven't been able to tune into Doyle's myth-theme. After finishing the novel, I re-watched the 1939 version again. Sure enough, the script only uses the prehistoric settings briefly and doesn't even show the villain meeting the harsh justice of a death in the Grimpen Mire. It's not impossible, though, that there's some HOUND-film I've not seen that taps into the deeper theme, and I look forward to finding it. 

ADDENDUM: I didn't originally apply the "clansgression" label to the 1902 novel, because Doyle downplays the fact that Stapleton is Sir Henry's cousin. And the author certainly does not pass comment on the fact that when Stapleton seeks to pimp out his wife by causing Sir Henry to fall for the glamorous Beryl, he's "sharing" her with a first cousin, even though (1) no sexual congress takes place, (2) Beryl does not become emotionally entwined with Henry as he does with her, and (3) Stapleton/Baskerville becomes jealous of the tete-a-tete even though no transgression has occurred. The novel ends with Stapleton's death and the assertion that Beryl knew nothing of the murder plot, implying that she'll be exonerated of complicity-- though Doyle also devotes little space to the cooling of Henry's passion for his cousin's wife.  

        

MYTHC0MICS: "CALL OF THE WILD" (CONAN THE KING #28, 1985)

 

I'm sure it's been at least twenty years since I read an issue of this Marvel magazine, which began in 1980 as KING CONAN and which lasted a healthy nine years, albeit under the altered title CONAN THE KING. It was a relatively high-ticket item, starting at $1.25 and ending at $1.50, and was the last Conan project from Roy Thomas before he left Marvel for DC. I imagine KING was launched for the usual economic reasons, but I'd like to think there was some thought of giving the barbarian a venue more expansive than the regular color comic.

There's a certain irony to Marvel devoting stories to the famed sword-slinger in his mature years, since Young Conan was always the most popular incarnation in prose and in comics. Robert E. Howard devoted one short story and one novel to Mature Conan, but clearly the WEIRD TALES readers liked the hero best when he was a young freebooter ranging from realm to realm. Nevertheless, KING presented Conan at an even later phase of life than Howard ever had. By the time of KING #28-- the last Conan tale for writer Alan Zelenetz-- the barbarian has sired a teenaged daughter and a somewhat younger son by his queen, Zenobia. The text of "Call of the Wild" implies that Conan is sixty years old, though artist Alan Silvestri draws both the barbarian and his red-haired guest-star as if they're merely in their forties.

Despite having ascended to the kingship of Aquilonia, Conan chafes at the confinements of civilized life. He dons a disguise and goes drinking at a lowly tavern. Monarch's business intrudes, so Conan orders everyone to clear the hall. One hooded figure seems minded to defy the King's order but then chooses to leave. 

Back at Conan's palace, his daughter Radegund anticipates her "confirmation" (whatever that means in Hyboria) but her father has conspicuously forgotten the Big Event. He's selfishly mourning the freedom of his younger years, and he departs the castle grounds for the forest. However, his cloaked "friend" from the tavern has apparently followed him-- a good trick, given that she couldn't have known when he'd leave and which way he'd go-- and reveals herself to the startled potentate.    

Unlike Conan, Mature Sonja has remained true to the wanderer's life, never marrying or settling down. She claims to have come to Aquilonia only to fulfill a commission, and to have run into Conan purely by accident-- though she could hardly be ignorant of the barbarian's royal attainments. It's worth remembering that in the first two-part tale of the Marvel Comics Sonja, she tricked Young Conan into doing heavy lifting for her. Mature Conan is delighted to see her and dearly wishes to talk over old times. She scorns his royal ascension, and her refusal to be Conan's nostalgia-buddy very nearly crushes him. But then Sonja switches gears and "allows" Conan to render her aid.

              

Zelenetz could have had Sonja lead Conan to any number of routine treasure-troves-- a lost tomb, a wizard's castle. Instead, Sonja's quest takes them to "a death barge-- sacred to the darkest gods of the nether realm." Aboard the ship, guarded by fanatics, lies the enshrined body of a necromancer, and Sonja's been hired to steal a gem from the dead wizard's eye. The two thieves have no real compunctions against robbing the dead, though in a symbolic sense the Death Barge might represent the world of Death itself, which will eventually consume all living warriors. In fact, Married, Not So Mature Conan can't quite resist getting grabby with Sonja's forty-something charms. Yet he doesn't resent getting her boot in his face, since his desire for the allure of pure adventure surpasses all else.

While Conan kills a bunch of guards (I'm sure they were all Bad People), Sonja steals the jewel-- but the dead wizard retaliates with a spell of deadly smoke. Conan hits on the idea of flooding the cabin, which interrupts the spell for some reason. Sonja keeps only her stolen eye-jewel while Conan randomly takes a "token" in the form of a necklace. Then they swim back to land, leaving the disposition of the Death Barge up to the reader's imagination.

Conan is all for deserting his throne and returning to his old wild ways, but Sonja tricks him one last time, albeit for his own good. Silvestri does a fine job showing Sonja's stoical acceptance that she's no longer a part of Conan's life, and off she rides, leaving him to his kingship-- and implicitly to his queen and children (though Sonja's only comment on the Cimmerian's marital life is a catty remark about Conan having a "harem.") Conan's poised to pursue her-- and maybe, his lost freedom-- when he hears temple bells and remembers that he's got a daughter waiting for him to perform his paternal duties.

     

But "all's well" for the King, whose dereliction of his responsibilities put into his hands just the right sort of booty to be a gift to the daughter he completely forgot. Zelenetz and Silvestri came up with a sort of "family melodrama" take on barbarian adventure, and my vague recollection of the whole series is that it often pursued storylines more in the vein of Hal Foster than of Robert E. Howard. To be sure, the KING series never lets an issue pass where Conan isn't mightily smiting enemies with his iron thews, so a lot of his complaints about civilized life ring false. Zelenetz's title is as ironic as his conclusion, for Conan's trajectory is less like that of Buck in London's CALL OF THE WILD-- the dog who embraces the wild life-- and more like that of White Fang, the star of London's other canine outing, the wolf-dog that finally gives up the wilderness in favor of domesticity. As a further irony, it's the she-devil with a sword-- the hero whose gender is best known for "nesting"-- who remains loyal to the allure of wanderlust.

MYTHCOMICS: "BREAK YOUR DESTINY" GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI (2011?)

 

"In essence, the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation"-- Bataille, EROTISM, p. 16.

"...in these comic circumstances, the beating may be deemed a symbolic displacement for the sex-act, since the female is almost always hot for the male."-- SHOOTING THE SHIRT, 2014. 

The title "Break Your Destiny" appears only on this splash page from the second part of the final SWEEPER story. Shiina's story, and those of other mangaka, were published in various magazines and in a 2013 collection, in order to generate revenue to be donated to the benefit of victims of a devastating 2011 Japanese earthquake. 

Any readers of the SWEEPER manga would have known that Tadao Yokoshima's "destiny" was to be the beloved butt-monkey of the phenomenal ghost sweeper Reiko Mikami, so author Takashi Shiina would have been having fun with that preconception by claiming that "this man's desire is going to change Japan's history." But the history of the Mikami-Yokoshima relationship ensures that none of the Japanese history-books must be changed, and despite the title Yokoshima finds that his destiny is locked in, and by his own free choice.

One element in the story suggests that this is supposed to be set in the early days of the Mikami-Yokoshima relationship: the fact that their colleague, the sweet-natured Okinu, is still a ghost. This state of affairs came to an end in the story-arc "Sleeping Beauty" (circa 1996), during which time Okinu was reincarnated in a mortal form. Okinu forgot her friends for a while, but when she remembered, she rejoined with "Mikami GS" for the remainder of the series in her purely mortal form. And yet, if this story were supposed to be taking place before "Beauty," that would create a continuity-problem, for reasons I'll explain shortly. Since Okinu's being a ghost is not important to the narrative, it's most likely that Shiina simply indulged in a little nostalgia with his friendly ghost-girl.  

  

The setup is only loosely established: Mikami has been hired to dispel a bunch of spirits from a deserted Japanese temple, and she demands that the holdouts inside the temple surrender to her authority, or she'll wipe them out. Okinu reminds Mikami that Yokoshima's being held hostage in the temple, and Mikami seems indifferent to her male assistant's fate, as long as she succeeds in her mission and gets paid. However, to herself Mikami muses, "I am really counting on your charm towards the supernatural, Yokoshima. It's one hell of a gamble whether she might fall for you or not." In other words, though Mikami unambiguously wants to earn her fee for ghost-sweeping, she's not just writing Yokoshima off, but is gambling that he will "charm" the head spirit somehow. (How Mikami knows it's a female spirit is left to the imagination.) But in the period prior to "Sleeping Beauty," Yokoshima-- never a Don Juan at the best of times-- had not demonstrated any special "charm towards the supernatural." It's only in the later adventures that Yokoshima attracts two or three "supernatural girls" into his orbit, and that's what Shiina's thinking of when he, speaking through Mikami, credits Yokoshima with "charm."

Yokoshima, however, was not apprised of Mikami's opinion of his charms, so he's in turmoil at having been deserted. However, the head spirit-- Seiryuto, an analogue to a character from another Shiina manga-- offers Yokoshima a deal. If Yokoshima supplies her with supernatural power, Seiryuto will whisk him back in time to an era where he can become the ruler of Japan and can have access to all the women in the world. Yokoshima agrees, and Seiryuto transforms her temple into a time-traveling spaceship. 

Mikami and Okinu witness the ship take off, and hear Yokoshima bid farewell to them, and to Mikami's "boobs, ass, and thighs." Though Mikami doesn't know what's going on, she demonstrates that she's not as willing to let her assistant disappear as she suggested earlier. She uses a wirepoon gun to fasten a line to the ship, so that it hauls Mikami and Okinu along in its wake. Thus the two intrepid heroines travel in time as well and end up receiving exposition from none other than the famed warlord Nobunaga Oda. This could be deemed a quasi-crossover in that Shiina's next manga after SWEEPER was a fictionalized series about Oda in his teenaged years.

One thing the girls learn from Oda is that they didn't end up in the same period as Yokoshima. He appeared in medieval Japan half a year ago and began using Seiryuto's advanced weaponry to conquer the local lords. From Mikami, Oda finds out how the greedy exorcist offended her assistant, and Oda has a suggestion on how to fix the situation so that Mikami and Okinu can take their buddy back to their time: Mikami must apologize to Yokoshima. The 16th-century warlord shows a remarkable knowledge of the 21st-century term "tsundere," advising the heroine that it's not good to "be too much tsun and no dere." Against her instincts, Mikami tries to practice apologizing, but Oda informs her that she looks like "a complete villain." Oda, knowing that her attitude will never compel Yokoshima to give in, formulates an alternative plan.

Sometime later, Oda's army marches on Yokoshima's lands. Yokoshima doesn't care about fighting Oda, for he's surrounded by the beautiful women of his court. But Seiryuto won't let him canoodle with the hotties, because Yokoshima can only endow her with his supernatural power as long as his lust is not satisfied. Presumably the alien yokai has been blocking Yokoshima for the past months for that very reason, since he's just as desperate for sex as he was working for Mikami. Yokoshima doesn't want to confront Mikami on the field of battle, but the court ladies affirm that they won't give him nookie if he has no temporal power. Boxed in by his Faustian bargain with the alien, Yokoshima dons his armor and joins his army in the field.

Oda's alternate plan was to still have Mikami apologize to Yokoshima, but with a mask over her face to conceal her insincerity. But headstrong Mikami pursues her own destiny, and dons the horrendous mask of an oni, which just stokes Yokoshima's fear of her. Despite her mixed signals, Mikami makes a sincere (for her) effort to apologize, but her need for absolute control causes her to deny her apology seconds after making it. Yokoshima is unable to follow Seiryuto's counsel and convert his fear into anger, but his fear of Mikami's vengeance drives him to attack her with his sword. She mostly blocks his blow, but he hits her mask and it splits. Seiryuto is then surprised at the disappearance of her power-source, for even though Mikami maintains through her words that she doesn't need her assistant in any way, her "crying eyes" belie her lying words. For some vague reason, Seiryuto's loss of power propels her and the three ghost-sweepers out of the medieval era.

And what is the reward for Yokoshima's virtue, his realization of how important Mikami is to him, and he to her? Why, his reward is vice-- the vice of Mikami's wrath. But going on all evidence, she's insincere again in saying that she's punishing him for having physically attacked her. Mikami resents that Yokoshima pushed her into losing her prized self-control, not to mention any anger she might feel at his willingness to leave her. Seiryuto builds on Oda's tsundere comment by claiming that Mikami is "99.9999 percent tsun"-- which is another way of saying that Mikami has no dere to spare. Okinu tries to see the sunny side of torture by saying, "Well, but at least their hearts are connected-- I think." 

And yet Mikami does speak a truth of sorts in her final adventure-- one that makes the most sense if she utters it after she and her butt-monkey have endured all the travails of the 1991-99 series. In some of those adventures, Mikami became hazily aware that she's conceived a liking for Yokoshima, but she would never verbally admit it in his presence. But this last time, when he protests that she ought to show him "some grade of affection" after he chose her over rulership of Japan, Control-Freak Mikami makes the admission, "This is how I show affection! Through my whip of love!" 

Such a confession is entirely in line with a female who became obsessed with control after she failed to hold the attention of the men in her youth with traditional female traits. The final words of Mikami explain why she didn't fire the horny teen who kept ogling and molesting her, and it certainly was not because Yokoshima worked cheap. It's because he's so besotted with her beauty that he'll endure any rigor, any torture, to be near her-- and his passion transforms her into the perfect domme for such an intrinsic sub. As with many similar figures from Japanese pop culture, her violence becomes a "symbolic displacement for the sex-act." But at least Takashi Shiina offered some "grade of affection" for his character Yokoshima in the story "Stranger Than Paradise," in which it's revealed that (maybe) Yokoshima and Mikami eventually tie the knot-- though even holy matrimony is not enough to resolve all the conflicts in this equally sacred "battle of the sexes."

                         

              

THE READING RHEUM: THE SINGING CITADEL (1970)

 

I'm not sure how much further I'll delve into Michael Moorcock's Elric saga, since I often find the results uneven. I may just finish up with SLEEPING SORCERESS and then conclude with STORMBRINGER, the collection of stories in which Moorcock killed off his hero-- thus engendering dozens of prequels and interstitial tales. After that, maybe I'll explore his other two serials of the 1960-70s, Corum and Dorian Hawkmoon.

SINGING CITADEL was a Berkely paperback edition of four stories Moorcock had previously published in British magazines, only one of which is an Elric story, while two others were brought into the "Elric universe." Instead of reviewing them in order of collection, I'll go with the order of publication.

TO RESCUE TANELORN (G)-- This story, published in 1962 (the year after Elric's debut), is tangentially connected with the albino hero, thanks to a brief mention of Elric's rumored adventures. I don't know if Moorcock contemplated bringing this story's hero, Rackhir the Red Archer, into the Elric-verse that early, since the two character would not meet until 1972's ELRIC OF MELNIBONE. In any case, "Tanelorn" is easily the best story in the collection. Rackhir is a "warrior-priest" who served the same Lords of Chaos seen in the Elric tales. However, he and many similar warriors became weary of fighting their Lords' pointless battles, and so retired to a vaguely mystical city, Tanelorn. A Chaos Lord takes offense at these defections and summons an army of mindless beggars to destroy the city. Rackhir consults an aged magician to learn to reach a group of entities, the Grey Lords, for help, and the two of them venture into several alternate dimensions in search of Tanelorn's salvation. The conclusion seems rushed, but "Tanelorn" serves to put forth one of the author's best sketches of his nihilistic universe.

THE GREATER CONQUEROR (F)-- Published in 1963, "Conqueror" takes place in the historical domain of Alexander the Great, shortly after he made his foray into India. However, in Moorcock's version, Alexander's reign is the center of a struggle between the opposed powers of Good and Evil, represented respectively by the Persian deities Ormuzd and Ahriman (who may be a big influence on the athor's conceptions of Law and Chaos), Alexander's mother Olympias, a worshipper of Ahriman, consecrated her son's body and soul to Evil, and in some vague way Alexander's path of conquest is supposed to aid Ahriman's mastery of the world. The possessed Alexander is not the story's eminent hero: rather, a skeptical mercenary, Simon of Byzantium, is drafted by the powers of Good to take out the Macedonian monarch. Simon is quickly converted to the reality of the Good-Evil struggle by his encounter with real demons, and yet the conflict proves underwhelming, even up to a final sword duel between the hero and the possessed ruler. The characters are all flatly conceived and "Conqueror" feels like a concept that might've been interesting in a full novel, something along the lines of the Haggard-Lang fantasy THE WORLD'S DESIRE.

MASTER OF CHAOS (P)-- According to this vital Moorcock site, this story was composed in 1964, shortly after Moorcock published the 1963-64 Elric tales that became the fix-up novel STORMBRINGER, the one in which Elric dies. The hero is a valiant knight, Earl Aubec, who seeks to extend the dominion of his queen/lover, only to find that he's encroached upon the terrain of Chaos, and he never returns. The aforementioned site includes the information that Moorcock considered doing a series of stories with Aubec, but when the proposed series didn't pan out, Moorcock may have channeled some of these ideas into another character. Aubec is name-checked in ELRIC OF MELNIBONE in that the hero acquires the knight's fabled sword. Most if not all Moorcock contains strong elements of irony, but "Chaos" comes closest to being purely ironic in tone.

THE SINGING CITADEL (F)-- This short tale appears to be the first of the "prequel stories," as well as being written to clarify events in "The Stealer of Souls," (reviewed here) an Elric tale published in 1962. In "Citadel," Queen Yishana hires Elric and his Melnibonean magic-mastery to investigate a mysterious citadel into which Yishana's knights have disappeared. However, Yishana sweetens the pot by sleeping with the hero, and this pisses off her former lover, the court wizard Theleb Ka'arna. Thus Elric has to deal with sorcerous assaults from both the wizard and the master of the citadel, a minor Chaos-Lord named Balo. The tale is just okay, with the best part coming at the end. Yishana tells Elric not to bother seeking vengeance on Ka'arna, that he should just remain in her domain as her consort. But Elric is hot to pursue the wizard, and it's evident that the hero's accumulated guilt and regrets make it impossible for him to "settle down," arguably contributing to his doom.

In my crossover-system, "Tanelorn" is a null-crossover for having name-checked Elric.                    

MYTHCOMICS: "THE MAN WHO CAN SUMMON A STORM" (GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI, 1995)

 As I write this, I've not yet finished reading the entire GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI manga online, but paused at Volume 2 (1996), three years from the feature's conclusion. In MIKAMI MEDITATIONS I opined that mangaka Takashi Shiina intended to provide an epistemologically grounded psychology for his starring character Reiko Mikami, as to why she was both a peerless hero and a money-hungry businesswoman who exploited at least one employee. However, Shiina chose to dispense elements of that psychology in dribs and drabs. Shiina's biggest "drab" so far, 1995's "Storm," does not provide a total psychology for his heroine, but I'm seeing a strong pattern suggestive of Adler's compensation theory. So I'm writing this essay without reading all of the available volumes of SWEEPER, as something of a test of my method, before finishing the series and seeing what else the artist has in store.

"Storm" doesn't concern any sort of real tempest, and so far as I can tell, it's a metaphor for psychological upheaval. The story starts out largely with the status quo, although after roughly four years of acting the fool, Yokoshima has upgraded his skills, enough to function as an assistant ghost sweeper. But his ability to charm the skirt off Mikami remains non-existent.

Then Mikami learns that there's a competing GS outfit nearby, one subsidized by the Japanese government. She seeks them out, only to find that she knows the head of the agency-- and Yokoshima sees an unusual sight, that of Mikami acting "girly."

Saijou, head of the "Occult G-Men," lived with Mikami's family when she was just a child, because Saijou was training in GS skills with Mikami's mother. It's soon clear to Yokoshima that although Mikami calls Saijou "brother," her attitude toward him is hardly fraternal. Yokoshima immediately assumes that Saijou hopes to conquer Mikami's heart, especially since Saijou is taller, more handsome, and a stronger GS fighter than Yokoshima. However, it's soon disclosed that Saijou really doesn't see Mikami romantically, and his main purpose for seeking her out is to recruit her for his agency. And Mikami accepts, even though government pay is nothing like the money she makes as a private agent.

      

A flashback established that Saijou was the first crush of ten-year-old Mikami, and that she even confessed her feelings to him, though he didn't for an instant take her seriously. To be sure, Mikami only joins Saijou's agency on a probationary basis, and she expects Yokoshima and Okinu to keep running her private business, making big money for her. The young man, knowing Mikami better than Saijou does, enlists some of Mikami's colleagues to make the GS business more profitable than ever. However, when Mikami visits her agency, she's clearly depressed to see it functioning well without her.

Mikami overcompensates by trying to throw herself into her g-men work, but Saijou has seen the way she acts with Yokoshima. He gives Mikami a minor assignment to get her out of the way while Saijou has words with Yokoshima. The younger guy still believes that Saijou is a romantic rival despite the latter's denials, but Saijou still has only fraternal feelings for Mikami, and so he tests Yokoshima in battle. Yokoshima knows he's physically outclassed, so he not only flees battle, he humiliates Saijou with a variation on the old "order 100 pizzas for your enemy" trick.

   

However, Saijou accidentally pushes Mikami over the brink by giving her a mundane assignment--lecturing to schoolchildren-- that he'd easily perform with his altruistic mentality, but which is like poison to the high-spirited exorcist. Saijou, Yokoshima and Mikami's other friends find her in a hospital, not responding to anyone. She mechanically repeats the word "money," but doesn't respond when Okinu holds a pile of cash in front of her nose. She also doesn't respond when her first crush speaks to her. Then Yokoshima declares that her coma-like status means that he can take advantage of her, and Mikami immediately snaps back to normal and elbow-slams him. Saijou realizes that even though he only wanted to work with Mikami for non-romantic reasons, she's more suited to non-altruistic pursuits, so he fires her and returns her to Yokoshima. However, Saijou gets the last laugh by duplicating Yokoshima's "100 pizzas" trick, which has the added effect of putting the hapless schmuck back in the crosshairs of Mikami's wrath.

 So in "Storm," Shiina isn't quite ready to tell his readers exactly what makes Mikami coo-coo for currency. He does show that ten-year-old Mikami crushes so hard on "brother" Saijou that she acts just like a self-sacrificing female, willing to do anything to please her man. Yet when she tries to do it in her mature years, the effort almost destroys her, even though she can face down ghosts and demons without blinking. Further, whatever gave Mikami "gold fever" apparently happened between her pre-teen and teenaged years, going by the story I summarized in MIKAMI MEDITATIONS. "Storm" suggests to me that after ten-year-old Mikami was left behind by her crush when he sought altruistic pursuits, she overcompensated by pursuing a parallel course of heroic action, but only when she was well-paid. So she both followed Saijou's example and deviated from it.

And yet, if money was really all Mikami desired, she would have been pulled out of her coma by the presence of greenbacks. Instead, what awakens the sleeping beauty is not love's first kiss, but the (probably feigned) threat of rapine. Experienced readers are not likely to believe that Yokoshima would ever really rape a woman, in this story or in any other. He's a reader-proxy for very minor acts of molestation-- groping boobs, stealing kisses-- and in this story, he seems to realize, if only instinctually, that Mikami gets "fired up" when he molests her. In part, it stokes her ego to know that she can always kick his ass, while still feeding her sense of self-worth with his constant appreciation of her looks-- both pleasures she could never get from noble Saijou. Where Shiina will take his heroine from here, I don't yet know. But even if he goes in a different direction from "Storm," I expect I'll find his psychological twists just as engrossing. 

ADDENDUM: It belatedly struck me that although the title implies that the new character may be the "man" of the title, it seems to be Yokoshima who actually brings forth the full storm of Mikami's emotions, as opposed to causing her to repress them. That's assuming there's no special Japanese cultural meaning to the phrase, of course.       

MYTHCOMICS: THE INHUMANS SAGA, FANTASTIC FOUR #44-48 (1965-66)

 

The title of FF #44"-- "Lo, There Shall Come an Ending"-- is more appropriate than its creators knew, for it can be seen as the ending of the First Phase of the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR. The first phase of the title was marked by a blend of both science-fiction explorations and regular crimefighting adventures, usually done-in-one-issue stories. The Second Phase plays up the FF's science-fiction milieus, and some storylines last four or more issues. Further, the later issues of the First Phase initiated the first shakeup to the super-group's status quo, for in FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3-- cover-dated October 1965 and taking place in between the continuity of FF #43 and #44-- as Reed Richards makes an "honest woman" of Sue Storm. Most comics-critics would probably agree that the period in 1965 marked the greatest creative phase for the two collaborators. As specified before, Lee probably allowed Kirby to pursue more ambitious storylines than they'd been attempting earlier, a creative period I believe ended with issues #67. After that, the issues 68-102 comprised the Third and Final Phase, in which the creators largely returned to a new status quo, mostly repeating previously seen menaces.

Because Lee may not have been exercising as much editorial input as before, INHUMANS SAGA has a more disjointed structure than most of the previous storylines. For reasons I'll enlarge upon shortly, I believe Kirby didn't have a consistent narrative worked out for his Big Reveal of Medusa's true nature. But Lee and Kirby are entirely on the same page so far as realizing how the Thing and the Torch react to the increase in the domesticity factor at the Baxter Building. Ben Grimm becomes maudlin about the chances of his enjoying any wedded bliss with Alicia, and Johnny Storm seems manifestly uncomfortable with his sister's "Suzie Homemaker" routine. For the first time within a FANTASTIC FOUR story, the Torch alludes to Doris Evans, his girlfriend from his own solo strip. Her character appeared irregularly in the TORCH feature from 1963 to 1965, but Johnny didn't have any romantic arc in the FF magazine, just a few minor dates with characters who never appeared again. Ben Grimm would never get any fulfillment of his romance with Alicia during the Lee-Kirby years. However, INHUMANS SAGA was clearly meant to shake up the previous status quo with respect to the younger Storm sibling.

Just as the Torch decides to hit the road and seek out his girlfriend, Medusa decides to hide herself in Johnny Storm's car. She never admits that she was coming to seek aid from her former enemies, though this would seem to be the only logical reason for her to be lurking around the Baxter Building. She puts a gun to Johnny's head and forces him to drive out of the city to get away from some menace named "Gorgon," presaged by the sight of his cloven hoof creating a earthquake under Johnny's car. Johnny and Medusa get away, but Gorgon pursues by stealing a helicopter from the FF. At no point does either the superhero or his comely captor make reference to the way Johnny let Medusa go free in issue #43, so clearly Lee had decided to let that plot-thread unravel. But connubial matters seem to be on Johnny's mind, for he "coincidentally" takes Medusa to the grounds of the very university where Reed proposed to Johnny's sister. To be sure, Lee has the hero do this so that, by dumb luck, the two of them revive the android Dragon Man, plunged into a coma in FF #35.                             

Dragon Man, more or less a child in an artificial body, forms an attachment to Medusa, only to fight Gorgon when the latter arrives. Medusa tries to flee both of them, but the flying android seizes her and takes her-- back to the vicinity of the Baxter Building, for no plausible reason. The four heroes alternate between fighting the dragon-creature and the goatish-faced Gorgon, until Gorgon finally explains his purpose in seeking Medusa: to take her back to her people. But this brief convo is just an interlude to set up events in issue #45.

Gorgon escapes with Medusa, but the Invisible Wife is able to work her feminine charms so as to pacify the childlike android. The Torch gets some down-time, and readers soon learn that the only reason the script brought up Doris Evans was to dispense with her. Depressed that his steady wasn't waiting breathlessly for his call, Johnny goes for a walk and meets the first real love of his life, Crystal of the Inhumans. (Stan captures the youth's passion by having him think that Doris seems "like a boy" next to the redheaded enchantress.)

Crystal, seeing the Torch demonstrate his power, mistakes him for one of her people, The Inhumans, and she happily invites him to meet her family, which includes new faces Karnak and Triton in addition to Medusa and Gorgon. Lee doesn't tell us much about the relationships of these five characters-- six if one counts their teleporting dog Lockjaw, and seven with the absent Black Bolt, who shows up for the next installment. Again, the writer-editor might have been deferring to Jack Kirby to fill in some blanks, but neither of them bothers to account for why Medusa was afraid of Gorgon back in issue #44.

Johnny summons his partners to the conveniently deserted neighborhood, setting up a big donnybrook between the crusaders and the fugitives in issue #46. And now Kirby shifts the conflict to a new plane. The story is no longer "Medusa's afraid of being captured by Gorgon," it's "all of the Inhumans are afraid of being captured by an entity called The Seeker." It's quite possible that Kirby's original idea was that Gorgon would be working for the real villain of the story. Then he may have realized that he wanted Gorgon to be more sympathetic, so the artist changed horses in midstream and concocted the Seeker, a pretty colorless flunky armed only with super-weapons and some henchmen. When we meet the Seeker later in #45, he seems even less well-informed than Crystal as to who is and isn't an Inhuman, for he rather comically gets the idea in his head that the Dragon Man must be one of his people, based on nothing but news reports of the android's recent rampage. (I guess he would've made the same assumption had the rampager been anyone from the Hulk to the Living Totem.) Dragon Man never really coheres with the rest of the SAGA, and after one more big battle with the FF in the next issue he's summarily packed off to some installation. Kirby may have revived the monster just to give regular readers a touchstone in the midst of this panoply of new characters.

The FF-Inhumans battle wraps up when one of the Seeker's agents abducts Triton-- though the agent somehow misses the other five Inhumans (and super-pooch Lockjaw) engaged in a big fracas nearby. Crystal and Johnny are torn asunder amid many Romeo-and-Juliet histrionics. The heroes later track down the Seeker, and he finally provides the SAGA's big exposition moment, giving the good guys a brief history of the hidden race of genetically manipulated superhumans. The Seeker doesn't explain why he and his men, if they are Inhumans, don't have super-powers, nor does he cite any reason for wanting to take the six fugitives (and dog) back to the "Great Refuge." aside from stating that their return is the will of "Maximus the Magnificent." 

Reed allows the Seeker and his minions to leave with Triton but puts a tracer on their ship. The colloquy between Reed and Sue makes clear that despite Sue's contributions to the team, Reed wears the pants in the family. On a sidenote, some fans liked to believe that Lee alone was responsible for Reed's chauvinism, and that their idol Kirby would never be so toxic-- except that later in this issue, Sue displays a feminine flightiness that's clearly been concocted by Kirby.      

So where did the five Inhumans (plus dog, but minus Triton) go, when they teleported away from New York? Why-- they shunted their way to the Great Refuge, the very place they were supposedly attempting to stay away from, in order to live covertly among the humans. We meet Maximus, ruler of the Great Refuge, though it's quickly revealed that he's taken over from his brother Black Bolt, who was supposed to be the designated monarch of the Inhumans. What happened to exile Black Bolt and his fellows, whose relationships are far from pellucid (though Medusa calls Crystal her sister here)? Kirby hasn't allowed much space for exposition here, for suddenly Black Bolt re-assumes the Inhumans crown and the craven Maximus allows it to happen. The villain's only ace in the hole is that he has some sort of doomsday weapon, designed to eliminate the humans with whom Inhumans have been forced to share the planet.

Finally, when the story's close to being over, Lee and Kirby deliver the sociological moral: the Inhumans, like the Japanese before the advent of Admiral Perry, are wrong to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Reed's utterly positive that the super-powered race has nothing to fear from humans, which strikes a false note given all the times Marvel heroes got hassled for "being different." But the argument becomes academic when Maximus triggers his human-killing weapon.     

                            

In the conclusion-- wrapped up in the first seven pages of issue #48-- there follows an unintended "WATCHMEN moment," for the heroes are unable to prevent the villain from triggering his doomsday device. What defeats Maximus is not heroism but his own hubris: his belief that his people are a race apart from human beings, despite their having arisen from a common stock. No one on Earth perishes from the device of Maximus. However, the "Good Inhumans" are spared the decision as to whether to embrace inclusiveness, for Maximus seals off the Great Refuge with his own version of an Iron Curtain. Cue more fiery bathos from Johnny Storm, though he doesn't get much time to grouse, for this issue also begins the first installment of the three-part GALACTUS TRILOGY.       

As most Marvel-fans know, the Inhumans did not remain isolated from the Fantastic Four but rather became the most regular supporting-cast members of the series during the feature's second and third phases.  Indeed, for a time Crystal even takes Sue's place as the group's female member. Whereas I think that Lee and Kirby probably worked together on deciding the nature of the Fantastic Four's members, Kirby probably conceived the Inhumans without input from Lee. It's rather hard to say what the King was going for, though. Unlike both the Silver Surfer and the Black Panther, who also emerged during the Second Phase, the Lee-Kirby Inhumans have just one dominant character-trait: dourness. They all feel like road-company spear-carriers from a Shakespeare historical play, and during the Lee-Kirby years they don't bounce off one another as do the members of other Marvel teams. Only Crystal shows a range of emotions, and that may be because Kirby had some idea of her functioning to "merge" the two families. Rather than just letting the Torch have a mundane girlfriend the way Ben Grimm had Alicia, I think Kirby wanted to tap into the pomp and circumstance of stories about royal families coming together-- though I can't say he was ever consistent in putting across this ideal. I commented elsewhere that I didn't think Stan Lee ever had much interest in the Inhumans, and that may be because Kirby didn't put that much thought into the characters' eccentricities. There are various mythic "bachelor threads" that don't coalesce very well, not least the apparent "runaway bride" thread dealing with Medusa. But the master thread, dealing with the Human Torch's struggles to chart his own romantic destiny through an exogamous marriage, proves strong enough to give INHUMANS SAGA high-mythicity.