SPIDER-FEMME, SPIDER-FEMME PART 1

 Though Spider-Woman is hardly the worst character to debut during the chaos of the early Bronze Age of Comics, her initial origin is certainly one of the least prepossessing.

Most Marvel fans know that Spider-Woman was born from an attempted trademark violation. Sometime in 1976, the year after Modred the Mystic made his two appearances, Filmation Animation Studios contemplated a new set of superheroes for Saturday morning television. One of those superheroes was going to be named Spider-Woman. Marvel Comics, who held the trademark on Spider-Man, may have made some legal protest to Filmation. The upshot of the conflict seems to have been that in order for the company to claim "Spider-Woman" as a Marvel trademark, the company needed to publish a Spider-Woman. Thus, in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #32-- dated February 1977 and thus actually issued in late 1976-- a Spider-Woman was introduced. Presumably Marvel so informed Filmation, for when the studio debuted its cartoon lineup in late 1978, their arachnid-character had assumed the new name "Web Woman." The lineup failed so quickly that had Filmation done their own Spider-femme, few would have remembered her.

The debut of Marvel's heroine was not much better. Archie Goodwin cobbled together a loose story in which an amnesiac woman named "Arachne" was captured somewhere in Europe when agents of the organization Hydra observed that she had strange powers. Hydra's leader Count Vermis formulated a plan to turn Arachne into an assassin to kill Hydra's foremost enemy, Nick Fury of SHIELD. Hydra apparently makes Arachne's costume for her and gives her the Spider-Woman name (though Arachne never uses that cognomen). Rather than taking time to devise some brainwashing device, the evildoers command a handsome blonde Hydra agent, one Jared, to make love to Arachne. Then the schemers arrange for Jared to be captured by SHIELD's European division while Nick Fury happens to be present.

 Arachne attacks SHIELD, apparently willing to kill Fury even though Jared is still a living prisoner. Arachne herself accidentally wounds Jared fatally, after which Fury reveals how Hydra tricked the heroine, and Jared dies expressing revulsion for having even touched his super-pawn. Arachne then speeds to Hydra's base and decimates it, chasing down Vermis. The master villain then reveals that he knows that Arachne was the creation of the mad scientist The High Evolutionary, who mutated animals to become the demi-human Knights of Wundagore. Arachne was ostracized by the other creatures there, and thanks to Vermis' prodding, she breaks through her memory blocks and remembers that the reason for her outsider status was her heritage of being a mutated spider, given a human body.

Perhaps Arachne would have retained that status had she never been revived. But for whatever reasons, those of good SPOTLIGHT sales or of long-term trademark protection, Marvel decided to launch Spider-Woman in her own title. However, to give her some early exposure, the heroine became entangled in a very messy five-issue arc by Marv Wolfman in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #29-33 (July-November 1977).

Though the spider-femme's origin is only incidentally touched upon, the sequence does end with the revelation that she's actually a human mutated by exposure to a spider-serum, which story would be expanded upon in the series proper. It isn't necessary to go over every beat of Wolfman's five-part story. It's only relevant that Spider-Woman is recaptured by Hydra, that she becomes part of a whole world-conquering scheme, and that, though it's revealed that she's not repugnant because she's a reborn spider, Wolfman loosely repurposes Goodwin's idea that she somehow repulses people for an unknown reason.

The only other interesting point is that all five issues are confined to England-- and I theorize that Wolfman chose that setting so that he could revive Modred the Mystic, in whose creation Wolfman was loosely implicated. True, one of the other guest-stars who teams with the series-star The Thing is also Shang Chi Master of Kung Fu, and his character was based in England. But Shang Chi vanishes from the sequence after issue #29, while other, more important aspects of the story evolve from the release of four elemental demons who are trying to capture Modred, who's still a resident of Old Blighty. At the story's conclusion, Modred is actually the individual who divines that Spider-Woman is a human being. Wolfman would later seek to explicate this facet of the character's nature in the first eight issues of SPIDER-WOMAN.

I don't know if Wolfman cherished some hope that Modred would accrue some strong repute from the story. But what happened was that roughly two years later, Roger Stern made Modred one of the puzzle-pieces of the aforementioned AVENGERS arc, "The Yesterday Quest"-- and for the most part, Modred did not come off looking good in said arc and the character remained a minor figure for several years after.

As for Spider-Woman, neither her SPOTLIGHT debut nor her TWO-IN-ONE appearances cast her in a very strong light. Yet as Modred declined, she advanced-- and the early issues of her own title show that she had more staying-power than the trademark-swipe that led to her creation.

NEAR MYTHS: ["THE YELLOW CLAW'S RETURN"] (STRANGE TALES #159-167. 1967-68)

At a time when all the other comics-publishers believed that their audience wouldn't support funnybooks with continued stories, Silver Age Marvel succeeded in capturing juvenile imaginations with a wealth of mini-epics-- the Master Planner storyline in SPIDER-MAN, the "Galactus Trilogy," and many others. Arguably, Jim Steranko's two long continuities in the NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD feature were just two more among this august company. Yet whereas the stories of the Lee-Kirby FURY had just been traditional comic-book shoot-em-ups, Steranko brought an approach that combined traditional thrills with experimental touches.

Of the two long stories Steranko did when he took over from Lee and Kirby (and occasional fill-in personnel), the first, "the Death Spore Saga," is still fairly routine, and I won't discuss that one here. But the second long continuity, to which I've given the semi-ironic title of "The Yellow Claw's Return," shows a greater audaciousness in its mining of adventure-tropes from earlier fiction. Indeed, in one of the main hero's few meditations on his past life, Fury recollects that he was raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen, right at the time when "the talkies" were coming in, and that he idolized such transitional heroes as Tom Mix and Joe Bonomo. Patently Steranko was trying to adhere to the established history of the character, who had to be in his early twenties by the time America entered WWII. But the artist's mention of serial-heroes, even those unknown to patrons today, suggests that he wanted to stress a common heritage between these heroes of cinema and the Marvel superspy.

Steranko also had a vast knowledge of pulps and comics from the early 20th century, including the works of his artist-predecessor on FURY, Jack Kirby. Steranko and Kirby had worked together on FURY, with the younger artist provided "finishes" to Kirby roughs, and there was some degree of mutual admiration between the two. I don't know at what point Steranko came across the short-lived YELLOW CLAW title that "Atlas-Marvel" published in the mid-1950s. Yet as I've shown in this brief overview of that title, Kirby's three issues of that feature weren't exactly his best work, even if one only compares those issues to other Kirby-works of that decade. So why did Steranko choose to revive-- and I use that word advisedly-- a character whom few if any of his contemporary readers remembered?

First of all, anyone who reads Steranko's two-part HISTORY OF COMICS (1970/1972) would have noticed that the artist possessed a near-encylopedic knowledge of adventure-oriented pop culture dating back to the early 20th century. Because he was a fan-turned-pro in a more methodical manner than his predecessor Kirby, he probably remembered Kirby's YELLOW CLAW series better than Kirby did back in The Day. Not only does Steranko revive a version of the central villain, a patent Fu Manchu emulation, he also brings back the other support-characters from the series: the Claw's aide Voltzmann, his niece Suwan, and the evildoer's Asian-American opponent Jimmy Woo (with whom Suwan was in love, providing the only real trope-link to the prose works of Sax Rohmer). 

Still, there are clear departures. Steranko borrows some elements of the original costume-design for the villain (originated not by Kirby but by Joe Maneely), the character from the 1950s series looks like a reserved older man despite his reputation for uncanny long life. Steranko's Claw is lanky and powerful, clad in body-armor and a skullcap reminiscent of the Lev-Gleason CLAW, and whereas all Asians in the 1950s series had canary-yellow skin, the 1960s version is the only one so colored. Steranko's Yellow Claw has a bony face, heavy eyebrows that emphasize his epicanthic folds, and bony fingers with inch-long nails-- the latter visual trope taking us back to the whole "Asians with claws" trope I examined here. Further, unlike the fifties Atlas character, Steranko's villain has a nodding resemblance to the forties actor Richard Loo, seen above playing a mean Japanese officer in 1944's THE PURPLE HEART.

The only strong resemblance between Kirby's Yellow Claw and that of Steranko is that under Kirby, the 1950s Claw channeled a lot more wild super-science. But in the Lee-Kirby NICK FURY, both the good guys and the bad guys were constantly hurling dozens of super-science gadgets against one another, and Steranko, by taking over the custody of the feature, did the same. Did Nick Fury have a "sonic shatter cone" and a "magnetic repulsor watch?" Well, then, the Yellow Claw can have an "id-paralyzer," an "infinity sphere" with a "nucleo-phoretic drive," and an "ultimate annihilator,"-- well, OK, he does steal that one from the organization AIM-- but still! 

Now, Steranko's Claw is occasionally more recherche in his use of Asian tropes than the 1950s character was. The new version speaks in a flowery, pseudo-Oriental lingo, and when Fury briefly disguises himself to be Asian to hoax the villain, the hero thinks to himself that he got all his dialogue from "old Charlie Chan flicks." Yet one good effect of all the techno-overkill is that this Yellow Claw doesn't really have any roots in the world of any Real Asians, aside from his long nails and his dialogue. (Only once does Steranko make an egregious all-Asians-are-alike goof, by having the Chinese fiend address the hero as "Fury-san.") I theorize that to Steranko, Asian villains were simply a useful, familiar trope dispersed all through pop culture, with no particular political content.

As breakneck as Jack Kirby's pace could be in his action sequences, Steranko barely allows for any characters to take a breath in the eight installments of RETURN. The pace of the narrative is akin to that of the most raucous Republic serials, with frequent use of teleportation tech to send Fury and his opponents zooming from one locale to another. Fury has various aides-- many familiar faces introduced in RETURN for the first time, such as The Gaffer, Clay Quartermain, and Fury's gal-pal Countess Val-- and there are even some superhero crossovers, such as Captain America and two members of the Fantastic Four. But Fury's really the whole show, careening through hordes of heavily armed killers with his forty-year old hardbody and his handful of super-gadgets. 

I won't go into the many ways in which Steranko incorporated contemporary design-elements and artistic tropes into RETURN, but if one moment most captures Steranko's channeling of the swinging sixties mood, it's the conclusion to RETURN. After Fury's tumultuous battle with the Claw, it's revealed that this Claw was a robot, as were Suwan and Voltzmann (but not Jimmy Woo, who came back only to see a simulacrum of his love get killed). The entire battle between SHIELD and the Claw's forces was an enormous chess-game that the diabolical Doctor Doom played against a robot chess-master. This was the closest Marvel Comics could come to something like 1967's THE PRISONER, in which the viewer sees the whole game of genre-battles exposed as a "magic shadow-show." 

About five years later, the real Yellow Claw came out of retirement in a CAPTAIN AMERICA continuity, and Steve Englehart gave this version a lot more of that old Sax Rohmer exoticism, mere months before the same writer linked up the Marvel-rented property of Fu Manchu with the new character, Shang-Chi Master of Kung Fu. But though the real villain mouthed a few lines about getting even with whoever had played game with his image, I don't believe the "revised original Claw"-- who of course looked just like Steranko's robot-- even crossed paths with Doctor Doom. The revived character never really became a major player at Marvel Comics, and later got substantially revised so as to purge him of any fiendish Asian tropes. Naive though Steranko's mini-epic might be, it's still the high water-mark for this curious character.

AERIAL ACES, GROUND POUNDERS AND SEA SWABBIES

Before abandoning the subject of Darwyn Cooke’s NEW FRONTIER, I should note that after reading it I found myself giving more thought to the dynamics of the military genre in comic books.

I watched war stories on the big and small screens, and even in my teens began to have a fair sense of what sort of military-themed conflicts were deemed critically respectable. But I didn’t collect war comic books. As a kid my funds were limited, and I’m sure that was a major reason for not investigating that genre. I did devote no small amount of coin to the western genre,, though, so I didn’t save all my money for superheroes and horror-SF anthologies. I remember dimly thinking that most of the war comics of my time seemed repetitious blood-and-thunder, and though I was aware of quality work—particularly that of Joe Kubert-- I just didn’t buy into the genre. Even when war comics included crossovers with super-types, as when Nick Fury met both Captain America and “Doctor Zemo,” I didn’t plunk down any pennies.

Some fifty years later, I have a broader understanding of the high and low points of the military genre in comics, and I can see why Jim Steranko devoted a full chapter to the subject of aerial-war comics. There’s something pristine and liberating about stories of air war, ranging from the crazy pulp-stuff of the Hillman repertoire (Airboy, Sky Wolf, et al) to the mordant, downbeat tone of ENEMY ACE. Steranko implied that the years of the aviation comics ended with the Golden Age, even though DC Comics kept a few pilots in service, notably Johnny Cloud. In any case, the aerial-war comics seem to have been the aristocrats of the battlefield in terms of their emphasis on skill and derring-do.

In contrast, the “ground pounders” have to their credit most of the really long-lived soldier-heroes, represented principally by Sergeant Fury and Sergeant Rock. The infantry, even in the form of skilled commandos, tended to engage the reader on the gut-level, constantly evoking a kill-or-be-killed aesthetic.

As for the “sea swabbies,” they don’t seem to have done well in comic-book serials. I believe DC had a PT boat guy named Captain Storm. But despite the success of fictional series-heroes like Hornblower in prose, seagoing protagonists never seemed to rule the waves of the comic-book market.

Since I’ve barely gleaned the genre even today, I’ve no definite conclusions regarding the overall execution of the genre in funnybooks. But as time permits, I plan to give military comics more than a passing glance in future.

THE BAD APPLE DEFENSE PT. 2

And now for something completely disconcerting-- a meditation on comic-book diversity that isn't based in ideological overthinking. Said meditation was written by Bryan Hill, a ROC (Reader of Color) who refers to DC Comics' Batman as his "personal totem," for reasons that I won't attempt to summarize here. Nevertheless, Hill, while making the upfront admission that "diversity is an uncomfortable conversation," asserts that the very ideal behind Batman runs counter to the lazy stereotyping of POC.

I never minded that Batman didn’t look like me; most old money billionaires didn’t. What began to bother me, over the years I continued reading Batman comics, was the only people who looked like me were the people Batman targeted. My face was never the grand villain with the Aristotelean tragedy. My face was never on the character that elicited both sympathy and fear. My face was on the thug. The people who looked like me sold drugs, mugged people, and they ended with an armored boot in the stomach and a hog-tie from a lamppost.

What's extraordinary about this essay is although this section sounds superficially like hundreds of other complaints about "lack of comic-book diversity," there is at least an attempt to understand that there may be reasons as to why the conversation about diversity might seem "threatening to the pure joy of reading stories." Most persons stumping for diversity cannot even recognize that there might be a conflict between the "entertaining" and the instructive.

In Part 1, I cited my own example of lazy racial caricatures, those of the many "good Indians" and "bad Indians" of American westerns, so I can hardly deny the possibility that most POC characterizations may be lazy as well-- though I read very little current DC. Based on the Batman stories that I do know-- which I consider reasonably thorough up through the 1990s-- I recall few black people at all, either grand villains or street-muggers.

Here's the closest thing the 1970s spawned to a grand Afro-American villain in the Bat-universe.

And here's a scene from DETECTIVE COMICS #421, which may come closer to capturing the undesirable characterizations Hill describes.

I'm not attempting to support or deny Hill's interpretation of what he's read, since a close study of modern Batman comics might indeed show a propensity toward lazy caricatures of POC. But in line with my current theme, I would guess that most if not all of DC writers would justify their use of negative characterizations with some version of the "bad apple defense." I consider this to be a bad defense when used applied to bad work.

Hill doesn't call for a moratorium on the appearance of low-life black crooks in comic books, or accuse writers who have used such characters as racists. He simply calls for more positive role models. And yet, Batman stories are about his encounters with crime, so he's just not going to encounter that many memorable citizens of color, except as victims. as recurring characters involved in Bruce Wayne's life, or-- as villains.

I don't have any solutions to Hill's concerns, but in line with my remarks on Fu Manchu earlier, I think the comic-book world would be improved by the creation of a "better breed" of POC villains. I would not say that racial caricature should play no role, but it should be intelligent caricature when used at all. For instance, I can imagine the political correctness crowd screaming bloody murder at this Luke Cage villain:

However, though I won't say the story is anything but a decent thrill-ride, the Black Mariah character rates as an intelligent use of a ruthless gang-leader, not least because the term "Black Mariah" is allegedly based on an actual black person from 19th-century America. 


That said, I would also like some race-neutral POC villains as well, my favorite being Jim Steranko's one-shot "Centurius" from NICK FURY #2.

In short, even if I might not agree with all of Hill's interpretations, his is a rare voice in asking for an open-ended conversation.