MYTHCOMICS: "THE GREAT OXYGEN THEFT" (THE MARVEL FAMILY #41, 1949)

 For a change, here's a Golden Age story in which the name of its artist is lost to time, but GCD attests that the writer was Otto Binder, known to Fawcett fans as having been responsible for a great quantity of stories about Captain Marvel and his kindred. "The Great Oxygen Theft" is not one of Binder's more celebrated stories, but it merits a little notoriety for rendering elementary-school environmental science into a decent cosmological myth.

  

THEFT wastes no time in setting up the action of this 10-page tale. A radio summons from the evil Doctor Sivana lures the Marvel Family to an unnamed, inhabited world in the star-system of Sirius. Sivana gives the heroes a story about his having reformed and directs their attention to the fact that the world's plant life is almost gone thanks to a plant-killing blight. The inhabitants haven't noticed this mass extinction, but they start paying attention when they start finding it hard to breathe, due to the lack of plants generating oxygen. Sivana then leaves the good guys to sort things out while he jets back to Earth, revealing that he created the blight just to keep the Marvels out of his non-existent hair.

   The Marvels' first task is to save the populace. Mary Marvel purifies the soil of Sivana's poison, Captain Marvel Jr disperses the excess carbon dioxide that has built up in the absence of plant life, and Captain Marvel brings in a glacier of frozen oxygen to give the air-breathers temporary relief.

The Marvels then play Johnny Appleseed, transporting Earth-plants to the Sirius-world. Naturally, Binder doesn't trouble with ALL the scientific niceties regarding the practicality of one world's vegetation adapting to a totally different environment. However, on one of the heroes' trips to Earth, they find that certain areas of their own world have been hit with the plant-blight. Before they even have to wonder if the blight might have travelled back to Earth on their boots or capes, Sivana announced that he's responsible, and that he wants supreme power to keep Earth's plants healthy.

  Since THEFT is as I said just a ten-page story, Binder needed a quick wrap-up, so he cheats a little. Captain Marvel gets the bright idea that just as miners had used canaries to test for bad air inside mines, he and the other Marvels can just pick up a random potted plant and use it to "detect" the presence of plant-poison in Sivana's ship. It would probably made just as much sense for the Marvels to race all around the world until they made a visual sighting of the ship-- which, after all, they all got a look at, back on the unnamed planet. But Binder also knew his audience would like a little ironic touch at the end, in which a villain who poisoned a world's plants gets defeated by the use of another plant. The unknown artist even shows, in the penultimate panel, Sivana "wearing" the potted plant atop his bald head, leading one to assume that some hero "crowned" him with it. THEFT probably violates as many scientific principles as those that it gets right, but the payoff at the end, with the Marvels expressing their appreciation for plants and the order of nature, is not diminished by said violations.    
  

MYTHCOMICS: "NOAH'S ARK" (MIGHTY SAMSON #27, 1975)

 

In my kidhood, I was aware of the Gold Key title MIGHTY SAMSON, but I don't even remember looking at it. I probably was busy emptying my pockets for much of the output of the other companies, so something had to be overlooked. In retrospect, though, MS does have some points of interest. It was probably the most successful Gold Key franchise not owned by some company other than Gold Key and was created by the celebrated Otto Binder in 1964. Binder wrote the first twenty issues, after which other writers pinch-hit on an irregular basis until the series ended in 1975. 

Though Binder had authored a healthy quantity of mythcomics, his main idea with MS seems to have been, "Kids like monsters, so I'll give them lots of monsters." To this end he devised a post-apocalyptic world recovering from long exposure to the radioactive fallout of devastating wars, which had leveled cities and bred all sorts of weird mutations. In fact, the main hero was a mutant as well, born with immense strength, not unlike many of the strongmen Binder had written for other comic books. Samson, accompanied by the scientist Mindor and his hot daughter Sharmaine (implicitly but never literally Samson's main squeeze), wandered the ruined world, seeking to rediscover the lost principles of science for the betterment of all humans. This quest brought the protagonists into conflict with numerous petty tyrants, religious fanatics, and of course, monsters. Binder seemed to take some pleasure in concocting all sorts of freaky combinations of actual animals, with such names as "The Kangorilla" and "The Horned Rhinophant," most of whom Samson slew with his fantastic strength. To be sure, the Biblical Samson wasn't that notable as a beast-killer, being credited only with the slaying of one lion, while his Greek counterpart Heracles racked up many more monsters, including a lion said to be invulnerable to spears. Binder did toss in one element derived from the Biblical strongman, that of blindness. But Archaic Samson was blinded by his captors the Philistines, while in the comic, Mighty Samson loses an eye in his first major creature-battle, with a monster combining aspects of a lion and a bear, a "Liobear."     

 But none of the mighty one's adventures had the density of myth, except this one, written by one Al Moniz, who apparently worked in comics only during the middle seventies, and then mostly for Western/Gold Key. "Noah's Ark" in issue #27 is not precisely the first time in the series any writer evoked the "original apocalypse" of The Deluge, but it's the first time any writer did so with conviction.       

For instance, the opening intro specifies that the mutated "plants and animals now match the monstrosity of man's self-destructiveness in size and horror." Moniz then alludes to Mighty Samson as a heroic counter to the monsters and then wonders if "Noah" may be just as significant.

Naturally the Noah of this story is no more related to his Biblical counterpart than Mighty Samson is to the Nazirite, and Moniz gives his character a significant surname, that of "Caine." In the Bible Cain is the first murderer and so is often viewed as the ancestor of all wickedness-- not least the wickedness that dominates humankind when God sends the flood to wipe out almost all life on Earth. So Moniz eventually answers his own question in the negative.

Samson, Sharmaine and Mindor stumble across a rarity: a fawn, a creature from the era before the great wars. The fawn leads the trio to a devastated zoo, only to discover a laboratory, where Doctor Noah Caine dwells.  
     

Caine explains that he was a zookeeper before the atomic war, and that he anticipated the coming destruction. Though other humans did not take Caine's project seriously, Caine built an ark, stocked it with the animals he loved, and placed them, and himself, into hibernation. Caine arose from his coma and made it to shore. However, he could not free the entire ark from its subsea location thanks to some big mutant critter impeding it, so he asks for Samson's help at monster-dislodging.

Once the colossal critter is vanquished, Caine is able to release the purebred beasts of the pre-apocalyptic age upon that of the mutated world. However, Sharmaine is able to learn, from some long-preserved library, that Noah Caine deliberately banned humans from his ark out of his near-worship of animals. He also hoped that the beasts of his time would "inherit the earth," but it soon becomes evident that the "normie" animals begin transforming into freaks as soon as they breathe the polluted atmosphere.

Caine is even more crazed than before when he realizes that humans alone have (apparently) built up an immunity to mutating radiation, unlike his precious pre-lapsarian animals. He announces plans to unleash his mutated creatures on humans and sets his mutant-fawn Bimbi upon Samson. The strongman himself doesn't win the battle, but the very nature of the fawn's deranged nature works against the animal-master. Bimbi hallucinates that Caine is identical with one of the native mutants of the post-apoc world, and attacks Caine's bully pulpit. Caine perishes, and Mindor decides to send all the "normie" animals back into their ark-hibernation, in the hope that someday the earth will be capable of sustaining their lives again. There's a certain irony in "Ark," since ordinarily one thinks of Biblical Noah as a great preserver of life, while a monster-killer like Biblical Samson is only good insofar as he protects his tribe from predators. But even though Caine is correct in assigning blame for the world's ruination to humans, his unconditional love for the lower beasts makes him just as destructive as any other human-- though his good intentions, at least, will be venerated in some future era, when the earth's actually ready for rebirth.              

MYTHCOMICS: "MARY MARVEL GOES OVER THE RAINBOW" (WOW COMICS #14, 1943)

This 1943 tale, written by Otto Binder and probably drawn by his brother Jack, is "metaphysical" in the sense of taking discriminate phenomena and attributing abstract aspects to them. I analyzed a story with a similar trope-- that of "light versus darkness"-- in THE PERIL OF PAINGLOSS. Here Mary Marvel encounters a war between "color" and "blackness," the latter to be understand in the visual sense, as the absence of all color perceptions.

In her civilian ID of Mary Batson, the heroine reads a newspaper story in which a reputable scientist claims that the legend of the "Pot of Gold at the Rainbow's End" is real. Mary, being patriotic, wonders if this treasure could be used for America's war effort. At the same time, a crook named Porky Snork talks his gang into seeking out the same golden horde. Meanwhile, Mary finds out that the person claiming to have seen the pot of gold is not reputable science-guy Tinkerman but his self-important son Creighton.

When Porky and his thugs show up, Mary changes into her heroic identity, but can't manage to stop the malcontents from stealing the balloon Creighton meant to use to track down the rainbow's end. Mary flies after the balloon, towing Creighton behind her, perhaps less for his guidance than for his potential for comedy relief. When both protagonists and antagonists arrive at rainbow's end, they learn that the rainbow actually creates the pot of gold, as all the colors of the spectrum "drip" off the rainbow and coalesce into the fabled treasure.

Mary contends with the petty thieves, and the balloon drifts to the top of the rainbow, where all see a colorful city dwelling. Mary rather rashly punctures the balloon, and the crooks fall from the basket. However, the greedy men are rescued by a "Batplane" piloted by Mister Night, a mysterious figure in black. Mary clouts the new villain, but he escapes with Porky's gang, so Mary and Creighton decide to investigate the city. It turns out to be inhabited by "sky spirits" whose purpose is to dispense color to the mortal world.

King Color informs Mary that Mister Night was exiled from Rainbow City, and that he's probably planning some fell scheme against his former brethren. Sure enough, Night has apparently been waiting around for some plug-uglies to fall into his lap, since his first gambit is to send the thugs after Jack Frost.

(Jack Frost, incidentally, comes into the matter because there was a tradition in which the frosty fellow was portrayed as being the entity who "painted" plants with autumnal colors.)

Mary thwarts the thugs but Mister Night rescues them, while revealing that his real purpose was to kidnap "Aurora, Spirit of Dawn." The dark villain's true plot is to eliminate all colors from the mortal world, so that he can become Earth's ruler. Mary flies to "Night Land" to rescue Aurora, without whom dawn can't transpire on Earth. However, for all her myriad powers, Mary can't see in absolute darkness. She changes to her human self so that the magic lightning will illuminate the landscape. The same light allows Night to see and capture the intruder. However, because the story's running out of space, the fiend doesn't take the time to either clobber or gag Mortal Mary. She easily "shazams" her way back to her super-powered ID and slugs Night, though he escapes into the darkness of his domain. 

With Aurora returned to her celestial duties, all that's left is the wrapup, as Porky's gang once again tries to acquire the pot of gold (with the use of a toboggan, yet), only to be captured by Mary. She also returns Creighton Tinkerman to his home, though one can wonder how much approbation he received for the discovery of Rainbow City, whether Mary donated the pot of gold to the war effort or not. I haven't found evidence that Mister Night ever returned, though Binder helpfully equates the shadowy evildoer with real-life world-beaters like "Hitler and his henchmen."

The inventiveness of Otto Binder's story is underscored by the writer's clear avoidance of the standard association of "pots of gold" with "leprechauns." How this association came to pass has received some online speculation, and I rather like (without necessarily advocating) the idea that rainbows became associated with wealth because at times heavy rainfall might uncover buried gold. Of course that's probably too reductive by half, and the real correlation is probably all sorts of supernatural spirits have been tied to underground stores of wealth, whether of natural or man-made provenance. Binder makes a strong association between "wealth" and the pleasures humans feel at the variety of natural colors, and extrapolates those pleasures into a race of color-bestowing spirits. Of course, the title suggests that Binder was aware of the use of the phrase "Over the Rainbow" in a famous song for the 1939 WIZARD OF OZ. There aren't any strong similarities between this story and the OZ film, though of course the latter also foregrounds the experience of prismatic beauty. It's interesting, though, that he includes Jack Frost as one of these dispensers of color-beauty, because when Frost paints plants with autumnal hues, that presages the "temporary death" of such plants worldwide, when Winter, the time of darkness, holds sway. I suppose Binder could have had Mary capture Mister Night like she would any common troublemaker. But it's fitting that he did not do so, since the darkness symbolizing Death is inextricably intertwined with the forces that bring forth light and Life.   

MYTHCOMICS: "THE WITCH OF METROPOLIS" (LOIS LANE #1. 1958)

This post by A. Sherman Barros reminded me the cover story for LOIS LANE #1, whose winsome witch-incarnation appears six years before a similar and better known image in the BEWITCHED TV series. However, even on an image-to-image basis the LOIS LANE cover is more interesting. Not only does the cover-copy suggest that witchy Lois is going to one-up her super-powered swain at last, artist Kurt Schaffenberger puts her in ragged clothes, as if to suggest that by so doing the sorceress-reporter has put herself outside the bounds of standard attractiveness-- though she does have enough feminine modesty to ride side-saddle only.

In my comments-response to Sherman I said I saw this story as a near-myth, but on reflection, Otto Binder's "Witch of Metropolis" plays into a rich tradition of "the war between men and women" that began with Superman's debut in ACTION COMICS #1. The fact that Lois doesn't really become a witch-- and I doubt any adult reading this blog will find this much of a spoiler-- doesn't take away from the story's ability to play to the main character's resentment of her often elusive boyfriend.

Within the decade of the fifties, this first issue of Lois Lane's own comic had been preceded by two tryout issues in the SHOWCASE title. Those issues and the other two stories in LOIS LANE #1 quickly established that Fifties Lois was going to be a lot like Fifties Jimmy Olsen, a somewhat admirable protagonist who nevertheless got involved in a lot of wacky escapades, often prompted by egotism. Yet one thing interesting about "Witch" is that the story doesn't begin with Lois doing anything wrong or unseemly, unless one counts laughing at old superstitions. And some of Lois's scorn is justified, since I strongly doubt that any "Jekyll and Hyde" witches existed outside Otto Binder's imagination. One might argue that Lois's imagination is also working overtime, since page 2 shows her imprudently sniffing the fumes of an experiment involving a "youth serum"-- and yet she, unlike even the more clever kid-readers of the comic, ought to have known that her getting old might have a little something to do with said serum.

Even her next-page encounter with Superman doesn't show Lois in a foolish light; at most, one might say that she lets her feminine ego keep her from confessing her embarrassment to the Man of Steel. Having totally bought into the idea of a curse passed on to her from the long dead witch Molly Todd, she also buys into the idea that she has magical powers.

I'll jump ahead a bit and reveal that Witch-Lois doesn't have supernatural powers. Superman has seen through her charade, and he uses his powers to keep her delusion going, for the usual hard-to-believe reasons. Later in the story, the hero's rationale will be that he played along with her fantasy so that she wouldn't have a hypothetical breakdown. However, even though the girl reporter isn't the victim of a curse, the idea of having magical powers does bring out her inner Hyde. After exulting in her ability to ape one of Superman's powers, she uses her "magic" to spy on a film project to get a great scoop. It's only at the end of this page that Lois expresses some invidious emotions toward colleague Clark Kent, who "gets the juiciest jobs."

While Lois didn't spy on the film-set with any idea of one-upping Clark, it's her express reason for doing so when she swipes the documents Clark was assigned to pick up. From there, it's just one step to making an assault upon Superman's most prized secret, by conjuring up kryptonite to discover his double identity. 

Obviously, the whole dumb-show of Superman managing to anticipate every one of Lois's whims is absurd, particularly giving her fake kryptonite. (And what was going to be his plan, if "Miss Hyde" won the internal struggle and tried to zap Clark Kent with her fake chunk of Kryptonian real estate?) The moral of the story is that even though Lois's "Miss Hyde" personality is totally the result of her own fantasia, she does manage to resist the urge to cause harm to her beloved, even if it means he continues to exclude her from his confidence. However, on a mythopoeic level "Witch" serves to put on display some of Lois's feminine resentment of her often manipulative love-interest, which even extends to the desire to expose and at least wound him. Superman's not nearly as much of a dick here as he is in many other Lois-stories, and Lois isn't as much of a blockhead-- and for those reasons this feels like a variation, albeit a minor one, on the "men and women at war" theme.

On a side-note, though other artists depicted the lady reporter in the SHOWCASE stories, all three stories in LOIS LANE #1 were illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger, the artist who would be most associated with Silver Age Lois-- though he was much better known for making her a glamour-puss than a glamour-wielding sorceress.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE DEMOCRACY SMASHER" (MARVEL FAMILY 67, 1952)

 In the last few years of Fawcett Comics' existence before the lawsuit with DC forced them to shut down their superheroes, premiere writer Otto Binder showed no sign of flagging creative powers. In CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES #125 (1951), Binder and artist C.C. Beck introduced a new villain, King Kull, the last survivor of a race of ancient beast-men. 

He was also supposedly the source of all mortal legends about "boogiemen," though I have to say that this character-- whose name may owe less to the Robert E. Howard hero than to a traditional king of Irish myth-- doesn't really look like he could terrify anyone. In his original appearance, Kull pops out of the Earth for the first time in decades and immediately starts trying to kill off modern mortals, the descendants of the ancients who slew his people (admittedly in self-defense). Kull, who possesses incredible technology for a caveman type, starts unleashing a cataclysmic doom on the world, and Captain Marvel comes to the rescue. The hero wins but the villain escapes.

I'm not sure if "The Democracy Smasher" from MARVEL FAMILY #67 was Kull's second outing or not, but the book-length script shows a much greater concentration by Binder on the thematic thread of ancient horror menacing modernity. 

This time, before Kull strikes, the three members of the Marvel Family just happen to be taking part in a newly minted local holiday, "Democracy Day," in which Billy Batson and his buddies celebrate the historical tradition of democracy. Slightly later, Old Shazam summons the Marvels to his sanctum, claims that he gave Billy the idea for the new holiday, and shows the heroes three statues of "three torches" that "are the world's hope for democracy and peace."

Kull, once again emerging from the chthonic womb of the Earth, swears to destroy the democratic way of life, and tries to make the statues of mankind's great evils help him crush his enemies. 

Batson and friends transform into their heroic identities, but while they're saving themselves, Kull not only steals the torches, he extinguishes them with a pill filled with "distilled evil" in a nearby subterranean river. Kull escapes and lights a "torch of evil" that makes modern humans despise their democratic traditions. 

The Marvels figure out that the only way to re-light the three beneficial torches is to travel back in time to each of the three times when democracy's light was kindled. First, they go back to Athens, and manage to ignite one of their magical torches from the original one, though they have to fight an earlier incarnation of King Kull to do so. Binder of course was writing for children, so he oversimplifies the extent to which Greek philosophers championed democracy, to say nothing of conflating that supposed tradition with the practice of "torch races" in the early Olympics. 

While Mary Marvel takes her lighted torch back to 1951, Captain Marvel and his junior partner journey to England to light another torch during the signing of the Magna Carta. Naturally this idea of a "flame of freedom" from that historical period is based in nothing but Binder's imagination, and thus this is the least interesting of the three voyages. Still, Marvel Jr gets to light his fire and he also returns to 1951.

Captain Marvel soldiers on alone to 1776, for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and we finally get to the heart of all this torch-imagery: that of the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps to get around the fact that the authentic statue was not erected until 1886, Binder imagines that three of the grey eminences supposedly present at the signing-- Ben Franklin and the country's first two presidents-- just happen to have a simulacrum of the Statue of Liberty there in the room. Kull raises his beastly head again, but the hero sends him packing and re-lights the last of the magical democracy-torches. (One witty line: Washington remarks that they've been "saved by a redcoat.") Then, back in 1951, all three heroes return and douse Kull's torch of dictatorship, but can't prevent the sub-man from returning to his subterranean domain. The story ends on a predictable but still pleasing denouement, in which the heroes once more affirm the traditions they hold sacred.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE BATTLE OF THE GODS" (ACTION COMICS #351-353, 1967)

My recent re-examination of the Golden Age Captain Marvel series-- unquestionably sparked by the appearance of the SHAZAM movie, though I've not yet seen it-- reminded me that I had one unused essay from years ago, based on an Otto Binder-Wayne Boring SUPERMAN story in which Binder recycled some of the tropes he'd used during his Captain Marvel tenure.

This is definitely the last of the essays I wrote in this format: starting out with a summary of the narrative's action and then analyzing said action separately, like the first "official" mythcomics I produced for this blog.

______________

QUICK SUMMARY: Superman encounters Zha-Vam, a mysterious eight-foot-tall villain whose name is an anagram of six Graeco-Roman gods—Zeus, Hercules, Achilles, Vulcan, Apollo and Mercury—whose powers the villain possesses.   In addition, Zha-Vam wears a belt studded with “buttons," each of which is inscribed with a letter (in English!) When a button it pressed, it temporarily gives Zha-Vam an extra power associated with some myth-entity whose name starts with that letter (for instance, the first button he presses is “T,” which makes him a gigantic “Titan” who flings Superman out into space.)  Zha-Vam shows no interest in power or gain, but merely exists to constantly one-up the Man of Steel.  Superman finds himself unable to cope with the vast array of powers the villain can call forth, but determines that Zha-Vam not only possesses the invulnerability-power of Achilles, but the “Achilles Heel,” as well.   But when Superman seeks to vanquish the “Super-Olympian” by attacking his heel, the hero finds that Zha-Vam has protected it with a “sock” of Kryptonite beneath his leaden boot.   Zha-Vam almost kills Superman, but decides to spare the Man of Steel for further humiliations.   At last Superman journeys back to ancient Olympus and learns that Zha-Vam was created from a body of clay by certain Greek gods who foresaw that their glorious legends would be obscured by the Man of Steel’s great fame.   To counter Zha-Vam’s advantage, Superman seeks out other gods who have quarreled with the Olympians, and these gods bestow on Superman a belt containing their powers.   Superman and Zha-Vam duel until Zha-Vam resorts to his Kryptonite weapon. However, Superman calls up Atlas, who having lifted the Earth is stronger than Zha-Vam.   After disposing of the Kryptonite and knocking out the villain with a blow to his heel, Superman returns Zha-Vam to Olympus, whereon the gods turn the villain back into clay and resolve not to attack Superman again.

If one knows something of the history of the story’s writer Otto Binder, one might be tempted to ask, “What the SHAZAM got into Binder when he created ZHA-VAM?”

The simple explanation is that Binder, one of the most prolific contributors to the mythos of the Golden Age Captain Marvel, was doing what all longtime writers do: re-visiting old concepts, whether out of sentiment, creative economics, or a little of both.   And in this case the concept was one of the keystones of the Captain Marvel mythos—though not one Binder originated—that is, the anagram of “Shazam” that gives Captain Marvel his god-derived powers. For the uninitiated, Cap Marvel’s mythic donors were Solomon, Hercules, Achilles, Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury.  Four of them also appear in the name of Zha-Vam, and one is invoked by Superman, but tellingly neither Solomon nor any other Judeo-Christian figure makes an appearance in the Superman tale.  Still, creative economics aside, one cannot help but think that Binder would’ve found it ironic to invent a character based on Captain Marvel to battle Superman, since Fawcett’s Captain Marvel and DC’s Superman also contended during the Golden Age—albeit in a legal battle, in which DC claimed that Fawcett had derived the Captain from the Man of Steel.   Indeed, the lengthy suit certainly contributed to Fawcett ending its use of adventure-characters in 1953 (the company dabbled in comics in later days, most notably with a DENNIS  THE MENACE line). Fawcett’s capitulation was the first “victory” of Superman over the “World's Mightiest Mortal”—a victory recapitulated by the Zha-Vam saga.  However, such was Binder’s mythopoeic imagination that he made much, much more out of this faux “battle of the comic-book gods” than one could ever have expected for what seems a simple children’s comic.

Even discounting legal wranglings, the literary process by which characters derive from one another, play off one another, and sometimes even cannibalize one another are not far different from the way archaic gods frequently absorbed one another’s characteristics, occasionally making a total turnabout from their original natures.   Not a few critics have pointed out that during the Golden Age Captain Marvel’s magical origins allowed for more fairy-tale-ish whimsy in the Captain’s adventures than were seen in those of the SF-based Superman.   And yet, with the demise of the Captain, some sort of cannibalization did seem to take place, as during the late fifties and early sixties Superman’s mythos became much more consciously “mythic” than it had been in the forties.   But though some critics have credited Binder with this rennovation, he was only one of several writers employed by editor Mort Weisinger, and for that matter, other extrinsic sources may have helped midwife the change in emphasis.  Indeed, one could as easily say that, if Hercules and cognate figures began to appear more often on Superman covers, it could also stem from the growth of fantasy-films of the period, also aimed at the same juvenile audience—Harryhausen’s “Sinbad” and “Jason” films, the Italian “Hercules” movies, and so on.   But, even having said that, Binder was one of the key figures in putting new wine in the old bottle that was the Superman mythos.

Oddly, though Superman and Captain Marvel were both figures with multitudinous wondrous powers (one of the aspects that Zha-Vam plays upon), they developed in diametrically opposing ways.   According to an anecdote in Steranko’s history, Captain Marvel was first conceived as a team of heroes with varied talents, but the success of Superman led to the “team” being re-conceived as a solo hero with assorted powers of mythic donors.   However, once conceived, Marvel’s powers remained fairly steady, while Superman, who started off as simply an embodiment of strength (including super-tough skin and super-strong legs for jumping), accreted over the years a veritable cornucopia of wild powers.   In the Binder story, Superman seems outclassed by a foe with powers far more multitudinous than his; powers drawn from the storehouse of archaic myth of many lands (although most of those named are from the Norse or Graeco-Roman pantheons, excepting only one Hindu deity).   It might even be said that Zha-Vam is that very storehouse, from whom both Superman and Captain Marvel take their natures, even as modern-day myth-figures.

To be sure, Binder plays fast and loose with many of the myth-figures he invokes. (He sometimes even footnotes his own changes, such as noting that Zha-Vam’s “Jason” power allows him to sow dragon-teeth that give rise to real dragons, not human warriors as in the Argonautica tale).   And the device from which Zha-Vam draws his powers, though possibly indebted to the archaic Thor’s “belt of strength,” could as easily be derived from the precedent of Batman’s utility belt.   (The 60’s show was still on the air when this saga debuted in 1967.)   Yet the way Binder uses the belt is more resonant of archaic myth-stories than most comic-book uses of such gimmickery (such as the aforementioned utility belt).   For instance, the first part of the three-part tale, Action #351, merely establishes for Superman the endless variety of his opponent’s powers, but the middle part, in #352, Zha-Vam invites Superman three times to press a belt-button himself, to choose which of Zha-Vam’s powers the hero will grapple with.   This motif aligns Zha-Vam with the myth-figure I call the “Task-Setter,” since he/she often gives the hero some impossible task to achieve (sometimes even associated with the task-setter’s own defeat).   Two times Superman tries to choose an “easy” power to contend with, but he is bested and humiliated both times.   The third time, though, he tries to circumvent the task and attack the villain’s Achilles Heel, not unlike Alexander “solving” the puzzle of the Gordian Knot by cutting it.  Though the hero is defeated thanks to Zha-Vam’s kryptonite back-up plan, it does get the superhero thinking “outside the box,” so that his next major move, in #353, is to discover Zha-Vam’s origins.

Said origins are perhaps the most symbolically resonant of Binder’s hidden mythopoesis.   For instance, nowhere in the story does Binder mention the story of how the Olympian gods overthrew their forbears the Titans (even though the name “Titan” is the first power conjured by Zha-Vam).  But clearly Superman (whom the gods call an “upstart”) is to the gods what they themselves were to the Titans; the new kid in town.   And even though Binder could have had any or all of the six donor-gods actually create Zha-Vam (indeed, the classical Vulcan/Hephaestus was said to have had his own “manmaking” talents), the script has Zha-Vam brought to life from clay by the Titan Prometheus (drawn by artist Wayne Boring to be physically taller than the gods, and as tall as his “offspring” Zha-Vam).   Apparently, though the Prometheus of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound is best known as an arch-rebel against Zeus, this Prometheus is reconciled to serving Zeus (an event loosely foreshadowed in the same Greek play).   Or, if Binder did not know his Aeschylus, he may just as easily have patterned his villain’s creation on a less far-removed invocation of the Prometheus myth, for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is subtitled “The Modern Prometheus.”  Certainly the visuals of Zha-Vam’s birth from a clay body recall the filmic birth of the Frankenstein Monster--  who is, like Zha-Vam,  a “man of parts.”

Perhaps the most mythopoeic theme of the story’s third section, though, is that, though Superman wins the battle, he does not do so with his own powers, but by taking on powers analogous to Zha-Vam’s.   Faced with a villain who uses a Zeus-given belt full of powers, Superman seeks out a similar belt from Neptune, brother to Zeus.   And the last figure Superman calls upon is the Titan Atlas, whose feat of “supporting the world” is a punishment for rebellion against Zeus—in other words, it takes a Titan to defeat the creation of a Titan (note: in Aeschylus, Atlas is brother to Prometheus.)   But perhaps the most telling trope is that Superman’s calling upon the reservoir of myth to defeat his enemy could be viewed as a comment on the aforesaid “cannibalization” of Captain Marvel’s mythos, by Binder and others, to feed the mythos of Superman.   Personally, I consider the melding of the Shazam-style whimsy with Superman’s science-fictional settings to have resulted in the best version of the character yet seen.  And while not all critics equally esteem the Weisinger-edited period of the Superman feature, most are agreed at least that this period birthed the greatest number of characters and situations that are still considered to be the touchstones of the Superman mythos, making the Weisinger years the feature’s most “myth-friendly” period.

Admittedly the Zha-Vam saga may in some particulars appear a bit too whimsical  to many contemporary critics (I found myself chuckling a bit at the notion of the kryptonite sock).   But one can also read the saga as a sort of a comic-book version of Star Trek’s “Who Mourns for Adonais,” in which an ancient deity makes a bid to regain lost fame in contemporary times.   It’s a given that by the story’s end such gods must pass away, but in the Star Trek tale, one is still filled with regret for the lost glory of the gods.  Superman himself does not mourn the demise of the gods.  To him, they are dangerous menaces to his career,  rather than being the perceptors they were to Captain Marvel. Yet it’s hard to believe that Binder didn’t script this story as a way of delving into the phantasmagorical creations of archaic myth-makers.   As a modern writer, he might never truly be among their company.  But he does, in this critic’s opinion, hew closely to their spirit.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE METAL WOMEN BLUES" (METAL MEN #32, 1968)

The DC feature METAL MEN provides a variety of good examples of my current metaphor for literary complication as seen in this essay.

The original creators of the franchise, writer Robert Kanigher and penciler Ross Andru, didn't work on this particular issue, though they had collaborated on most if not all issues up until issue #29. The next two issues were written by Otto Binder and penciled by Gil Kane, and on #32, Binder's story was illustrated by Mike Sekowsky. Since Sekowsky became editor on the feature with #33, replacing long-time writer-editor Kanigher, it seems very likely that Kanigher was being edged off the title, even though he collaborated with Sekowsky for a time. However, clearly before Sekowsky became the new boss, Binder was instructed to follow the storytelling example of the almost-old boss. Back in the day, I could hardly tell the difference between the Binder stories and the preceding Kanigher tales, though now I can see that Binder's plotting was much tighter, despite his emulation of Kanigher's writing-practices.

"The Metal Women Blues" begins typically enough. Tin is being fawned over by his girlfriend Nameless, the only robot in the group not created by Doc Magnus, and the second of two female group-members, the other being Tina, the platinum doll infatuated with her creator. The other male robots-- Gold, Lead, Iron, and Mercury-- petition Magnus to creates mates for all of them. Magnus initially refuses, until Tina points out that if he creates a mate for her, she might become less enamored with Magnus. (Admittedly this is something Kanigher's lovelorn platinum robot would never say, but possibly she's merely trying to help her male comrades.)

In no time, five new robots join the group, known collectively as "the Metal Women" even though they have one male member-- which is just good payback for the years in which the Metal Men sported not one but two female members. However, though the four lady automatons are attracted to their opposite numbers, Platinum Man has no desire for Tina, preferring to keep their association formal-- which puts Magnus back behind the romantic eight-ball.

Just like in a Kanigher story, the two groups are immediately called into action against an alien threat: a giant automated machine. And it's at this point that the girl robots evince something less than shrinking-violet behavior.

"I know I made a mistake," says Magnus, "when I didn't incorporate 'timidity' in the metal women's responsometers. But I didn't want them to be too 'tame' for the Metal Men." However, not only are the lady-bots fairly aggressive, they're actually good at the business of being mechanical superheroes, which causes the males to label them "female glory-hogs." (To be sure, Nameless is unchanged, though for a time she sides with the other "girls," and Lead Girl isn't a glory-hog, just so dumb she makes Lead look swift of wit.)

However, the beings who sent the automated destroyer are observing the contumely, and they decide to take advantage of the situation. The villains are a group of nearly identical 'female robot Amazons," who are all haggish-looking and who are given no raison d'etre at all, just as many of Kanigher's menaces came from no place and had no rationale for their existence. (Maybe some robot-maker made them all look like his shrewish wife, a la I, MUDD?) The Amazon Queen, realizing that the males' vanity has been wounded, sends a "cute girl-robot" to lure the metal guys into a trap. (The cute but unnamed robot-girl even goes armed with "Chan-oil #5 perfume.")

In no time, the trap closes on the guys, who are reluctant to fight "weak women.' The Amazons promptly kick the Metal males' asses and get their broken bodies out of sight, except for Platinum Man, who gets his weight boosted so much that he sinks beneath the earth.

The girls do follow, but they catch sight of Platinum Man in his hole, and he briefs the lady-bots on the strategies the Amazons used against the Metal Males. Thus the Metal Women defeat the Amazons tout suite.

However, since the feature's status quo had to be maintained, the Metal Women then try to rescue Platinum Man, just as a flood of magma flows up into the hole he made. And so the Metal Men return to their normal lineup. Magnus offers to build more inamorata but the guys all decline-- though as a final joke, Mercury gets caught trying to keep the cute girl-robot for himself (being an inferior creation, she simply falls apart in the wake of her creators' destruction).

"Metal Women Blues"-- which is titled "Robot Amazon Blues" on the cover-- is as cornball as anything Kanigher wrote. However, it does maintain a good level of symbolic complexity as well. It begins by showing the guys, who just want women to fawn over them, having their lives complicated by female crusaders generally as competent as they are. While the Metal Women are just "sisters doing it for themselves," though, the Robot Amazons are thoroughly negative incarnations of negative female aggression-- made even less appealing by the fact that they're all ugly.

Binder's most interesting symbolic touch isn't, strictly speaking, necessary for the story's plot, and it illustrates how even a juvenile story sometimes has deeper layers. While the Amazon Queen is busy working on the cutesy robot, the former observes that the unnamed femme metale is made of an alloy of all the metals being lured-- mercury, lead, tin, iron, and gold-- which brings up the loony but amusing idea that in this universe, intelligent robots "stick with their own kind."