THE READING RHEUM: THE DYING EARTH (1950)

 I did a semi-deep dive on the origins of this collection of interlinked stories taking place in the titular world. Apparently author Jack Vance was unable to sell the EARTH stories individually to SF magazines of the 1940s. However, in 1950 Vance convinced small-time paperback publisher Hillman (now remembered today mostly for their 1940s comics, AIRBOY and THE HEAP) to publish this all-original book of stories. I don't have any info on contemporaneous sales, but I theorize that Vance's exotic fantasy-stories grabbed readers in the relatively small SF/fantasy readership and so made possible the writer's long career from the 1950s through the 1980s.     

I have a rough theory that because Vance grew up reading magazines like WEIRD TALES in his youth (as he admitted in interviews), he wanted to do something like the "Big Three" of WT-- H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith-- by crafting fantasy-stories linked to one another. (Influence from the SF mags of the period is a definite possibility too.) In one interview Vance mentioned a probable (though not intentional) stylistic influence on him from Clark Ashton Smith. I don't know that Vance ever admitted that his Dying Earth stories were a reaction to the far-future domain of Smith's ZOTHIQUE. 

I probably read EARTH in the seventies or eighties, but the only story I remember really liking was "Mazirian the Magician." Oddly, Vance wanted to use that story-title as the book's title, which is odd given that Mazirian only appears in one story, while other characters appear in more than one tale-- though no single character appears in all six chapters. I like Thomas Monteleone's term "mosaic" for novels cobbled together from stories not related by a supervening plot. All that said, I didn't get much of a myth-vibe from Vance's stories. Mostly, I remembered that Vance isn't really very good with characterization. I've seen arguments that he's doing an "anti-heroic" type of fantasy opposed to the reigning American influence of Howard. But in these stories at least, Vance is not really any more firmly committed to irony than he is to adventure, so I suppose I would still consider these adventure-stories.      

TURJAN OF MIR-- This story introduces readers to the Dying Earth, a quasi-medieval domain which like Zothique exists millions of years removed from modern Earth, and one where magical entities and disciplines have returned to prominence, though there are still remnants of super-science. The titular Turjan is both sorcerer and scientist, first seen seeking to create artificial, intelligent life. He fails and decides to seek the help of Pandelume, a sorcerer in another dimension. Turjan accesses that dimension and is attacked by a swordswoman. This is T'sain, Pandelume's own failed experiment at creating life, for T'sais is mentally afflicted and views everything beautiful as hateful. T'sais runs off and Turjan solicits Pandelume's help. Pandelume requires Turjan to complete a dangerous errand for him, but once Turjan completes said task, the two wizards somehow have much better luck in creating another adult female, T'sain, the twin of T'sais. At story's end, T'sais meets her twin but cannot kill her despite the desire to do so. "Turjan" doesn't have much of a plot and largely exists to set up two other tales, which might be a big reason why it didn't sell as an independent magazine-story.

MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN-- The events here clearly take place after "Turjan," because the young sorcerer has been captured by evil sorcerer Mazirian and T'sain must come to Turjan's rescue. I think I liked the story on first reading because a large part of it contains what I'll term "the maiden's magical flight" trope, wherein a woman flees a male oppressor. In various myths and folktales, the woman either keeps changing shape, only to be matched by the pursuing male, or she throws magical objects into the hunter's path and he's delayed overcoming the obstacles. It's my recollection that I was aware of the myth-parallel when I first read "Mazirian."

T'SAIS-- This is the first emotionally satisfying of the collection, though it's not that deep. T'sais prevails upon Pandelume to send her to Turjan's Earth-like dimension, to see if she can find some way to overcome her alienation. She's able to conceive something like empathy when she meets Etarr, for he's been cursed with a hideous face by his ex-lover, the sorceress Javanne. Better delineation of the characters might have upgraded the story to something more than formula. I'll note that T'sais doesn't have outstanding sword-skills but owns a sword that kills her enemies independently of her will.

LIANE THE WAYFARER-- During the peregrinations of T'sais, she overcomes the brigand Liane but doesn't kill him despite his attempt to rape her. Liane then becomes the viewpoint character of a completely separate narrative. He hears about a beautiful witch named LIth (for "Lilith," no doubt), but when he tries to get cozy with her, she repels him with her magical arts. She swears to become his lover if he fetches for her a special item from the castle of a great wizard, but it's all a setup to make Liane the victim of both magicians. Liane is probably a dry run for Vance's amoral serial character Cugel the Clever, who became the main protagonist when the author executed his second "Dying Earth" story in 1965. 

ULAN DHOR (G)-- This story, whose title is the name of its protagonist, is the only one in the collection that I'd rate as having mythopoeic concrescence. Prince Khandive, who's mentioned in an earlier tale, assigns his nephew Ulan Dhor to travel to Ampridatvir. There, Ulan, who possesses skills in both swords and sorcery, will seek to recover the lost magicks of that city's former ruler, Rogol Domedonfors. Once he reaches the city, Ulan learns that two groups of residents who have been enspelled so that neither can see the other, apparently to prevent their fighting. Unlike a number of Vance protagonists, Ulan has a conscience, and he intervenes to prevent the needless execution of a young local woman named Elai. Togther Ulan and Elai plumb the mystery of the long vanished ruler Rogol, who rears a very ugly head to exterminate Ampridatvir. 

GUYAL OF SFERE-- This story had the most potential of all six, but Vance doesn't realize that potential. Young nobleman Guyal is an original idea in that he annoys his sire and others in the court by asking all sorts of ponderous, unanswerable questions. When Guyal learns of a legendary "curator" who possesses all knowledge, the young man seeks the curator out in order to become his disciple and to answer all questions. However, Guyal gets waylaid by a tribe and is forced to deliver Shierl, a sacrificial maiden, to the curator's door. I guess Shierl gives Guyal someone to talk to on the way, but she proves a distraction from the inventive premise. Similarly, the revelation of the Curator's nature and of his haunted domicile were merely boring standard fantasy-devices.       

None of these short stories are as evocative as the best tales in Smith's ZOTHIQUE. It's true that Vance isn't as obsessed with rotting corpses as Smith was, and that's a plus to those not looking for zombie action. But Smith had a much greater talent for mixing the pageantry of exotic worlds with the perversity of their inhabitants. Vance's style here is colorful, but not as poetic as I've seen in later stories by the author.  

NEAR MYTHS: AIRBOY 1-50 (1986-89)

Of the many patriotic comics-heroes born in and around the WWII years, Hillman Comics' AIRBOY seems to be the only American character who survived long past the war's end. This may be because, even in the absence of a shooting-war, Airboy still appealed to young readers thanks to the appeal of having his own personally owned plane. Without having come close to reading all of the character's Golden Age exploits, I'd say that in general the art and writing was somewhat better than many comparable postwar series, and of course, I discovered a high level of mythicity in these three interrelated stories. AIRBOY's last issue appeared in 1953, the same year that Hillman quit publishing comics for good. Since I'm not aware that any of their titles were attacked during the anti-comics craze, it may be that the company simply decided that comics were no longer profitable enough to bother with.

I recently committed myself to re-reading the entire AIRBOY series from Eclipse, which I've long considered one of the company's best productions. I don't know if the Hillman properties had fallen into public domain or if Eclipse actually purchased rights from someone, but Eclipse was certainly devoted to creating a "Hillman-verse." Even from the first couple of issues in 1986, writer Chuck Dixon and his various artists not only created a modern-day legacy version of Airboy, but also brought  back some of the original heroes, some of whom were simply older (Sky Wolf) and some of whom had been transformed (the armored Iron Ace gets turned into a robot).

The new Airboy, David Nelson III, doesn't know anything about his father's heroic past, knowing him only as the head of an aeronautics corporation. The relative innocence of the youth (whose age isn't specified, though he doesn't look fifteen like the Golden Age version) is shattered, both when his father is slain and David learns that his dad was selling arms to a tyrannical regime in the made-up South American realm of Bogantilla. However, David also learns of his father's heroic deeds, and that his revolutionary airplane "Birdie" is still functional, so he dons his dad's old outfit and goes looking in Bogantilla for his father's slayers. There he and his allies (among them the aforementioned Sky Wolf) find out that David II was empowering the tyrants because their master, Airboy's old sorcerer-foe Misery, has extorted the former hero's obedience by threatening his old love Valkyrie, kept in cryonic preservation for the past forty years. The New Airboy avenges his father in part, though Misery escapes, and revives his father's former lover. However, since the new hero looks the same as the old one, Valkyrie is attracted to David. As for his reaction to her, this cover sums it up.

For the next forty-nine issues, Airboy and various allies-- not least the Heap, the original swamp-monster of comics-- alternate between fighting in relatively realistic paramilitary conflicts and fending off the plots of arch-enemy Misery. But the series' most piquant appeal was the "will-they-won't-they" romantic sparks between Airboy and Valkyrie. Clearly, even though Eclipse had designed David III to look just like his father, he wanted her to see him for himself, as opposed to being simply his father's lookalike. Valkyrie, even though she's been revived after the fashion of the Silver Age Captain America, seems to adjust to eighties America pretty easily, but she's got considerable ambivalence toward her potential swain. Little is ever said about the rocky Oedipal issues that  might arise when a son courts his father's old lover, except for a throwaway line that tells readers nothing about New Airboy's actual mother except that she, like Valkyrie, was a pilot. Only once or twice does Valkyrie put her ambivalence into words, as in a dialogue from AIRMAIDENS SPECIAL #1. After a female friend (specifically, a legacy version of Hillman's Black Angel) questions Valkyrie about the latter's feelings, Valkyrie says, "It's just that Davy's younger than I am. When I'm with him, I don't think about that. But when we're apart, I feel as though I 've picked someone up off the school yard. And his father and I..."

That's about all the Oedipal exploration seen in the fifty issues, though there's not much doubt that David III is of legal age. Chuck Dixon, in concert with such artists as Tim Truman and Stan Woch, always supplies dependable action-formula, though in the final issue editor Cat Yronwode remarked that even in the eighties it was a lot harder to do an aviation-series set in the real world than it had been during WWII.

Though the series' main appeal was the romantic soap opera, it did scrupulously follow up on some of the appeal of the early Valkyrie appearances. I remarked in the above cited review that there was an age discrepancy between the Golden Age hero and his femme fatale. There was also a brief flirtation with sadism, and this seemed again on display in this cover for 1988'S AIRBOY AND THE AIRMAIDENS.

I don't know how many comics-fans of the eighties were invested in seeing the Hillman heroes back, but I for one did enjoy the revivals of such interesting obscurities as the Bald Eagle and Rackman. However, the series didn't really ever establish a modern-day identity for New Airboy, perhaps in part because its makers were so preoccupied with building the Hillman-verse. Further, Dixon didn't introduce any interesting new villains for the hero, though he did a creditable job of making Misery into a master fiend worthy to stand alongside the best of the eighties arch-foes.

Only once does the series come close to the level of mythicity in the Golden Age Misery stories: in the final issue, done by Dixon and Andy Kubert, with Adam Kubert providing inks. Like his father before him, Airboy ventures into the supernatural domain of Misery and manages to end the villain's menace-- though, unlike his father, this Airboy vanishes from the sight of his allies, and so, even though Misery doesn't claim the hero, his disappearance carries the value of a "faux death." In the final issue's editorial Yronwode mentions the possibility of reviving the hero for an Eclipse graphic novel, but it never happened, though the Airboy franchise did surface again under the aegis of other publishers.

It wasn't the best ride of the eighties. But it was worth a try, nonetheless.