DENSITY=EXCESS

 This essay exists for the most part to draw a line between both 2013's THE NARRATIVE RULE OF EXCESS and its corollary from 2017, EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE, and the more recent LOVE, DENSITY AND CONCRESCENCE from 2025. In the last of these, I wrote:

because density has a stronger association than does concrescence with the quality of some physical substance, it also proves somewhat better for describing the finished product. I might say, using my most recent emendations of my potentiality terminology, that "Dave Sim's work excels at dealing with didactic cogitations, while Grant Morrison's work excels at dealing with mythopoeic correlations." That quality of excellence can be metaphorically expressed as a given work's density, in that such density shows how thoroughly the author was invested in a given set of fictional representations (sometimes, though not usually, on a subconscious level).

In contrast to my meager usage of the term "density," I probably have many references to "excess" scattered throughout this blog, since that philosophical concept was thoroughly explored by one of my major influences, Georges Bataille, particularly in the first of his works I ever read, VISIONS OF EXCESS.  In the two linked essays above, my main concern was to apply Bataille's concept to my own concepts of the two forms of sublimity. I won't get into those formulations here, for I'm concerned that excess is a general rule, like density, for judging the presence or absence of excellence in fictional works.   

The difference between the two concepts relates to authorial motive. The author who achieves excellence in one or more of the four potentialities does so because he/she becomes engaged enough with the material to DESIRE to give it a density, a thoroughness, that seems to be like that of lived experience. The creator of a poor work, within whichever potentiality one judges the work by, has no desire, or next to none, to convey investment in the material to his audience. The creator of a fair work has some desire, but only up to a point. It's only the creator of a good work who's totally invested with respect to at least one potentiality.

One example of authors investing "excess effort" in various potentialities can be seen in a comparison I floated between the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR and the Drake-Premiani DOOM PATROL. I still believe that the Lee-Kirby work shows an excess of the mythopoeic imagination and that the Drake-Premiani work does not. However, I now realize that the later issues of DOOM PATROL put forth a density of specification with respect to the dramatic potentiality. More simply put, even though the Lee-Kirby FF set the early standard for using soap-opera dramatics, one might argue that Drake was, over time, better at finding interesting ways to exploit the dramatic conflicts of the team and its opponents, at creating the illusion of character progress. In contrast, though Stan Lee was the boss in the collaboration with Kirby, he often let Kirby "have his head"-- and Kirby was not really a "details man." On close study the sixties FANTASTIC FOUR has a rather herky-jerky progress with respect to its characters' serial development, even if Lee's dialogue usually managed to paper over any perceived discontinuities. I said that I doubted that artist Premiani contributed much original material to the collaboration; he probably just drew whatever Drake related in his full scripts. Drake wasn't often capable of mythopoeic imagination, unlike Kirby. But he conveyed a sense of density in the interrelations of the Patrol members, because that was the part of his inspiration to which he best related.              

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.       

NEAR-MYTHS: "LO, THERE SHALL COME AN ENDING," FANTASTIC FOUR #41-43 (1965)

 

For my four-hundredth mythcomic, I'm going to put the original "Inhumans Saga" under the myth-scrutiny lens. But Lee and Kirby built up to that ambitious multi-parter with a less impressive three-part arc, lasting from FF #41-43. I'm not going to examine this arc-- which I'll just call "Ending" after its final installment-- in depth, because the story doesn't really have any. But "Ending" does play into one of the major elements of the Inhumans Saga in the way the arc presents the character of Medusa.

Before getting into the story proper, I have to make the usual disavowals: I don't believe Jack Kirby created the FANTASTIC FOUR stories on his own, as he (in)famously claimed in a JOURNAL interview. But I believe he created most of the iconic characters in a process of discussions with credited editor/writer Stan Lee, and that creative interaction made even a minor story-arc like this one more consequential than many of Kirby's solo outings. Also, it is indisputable that after a certain point Lee did start to follow Kirby's lead more than in the earliest collaborations, because Lee himself said that he did so.   

There's nothing very venturesome about the villains of this arc: the Frightful Four, making their third appearance as a team here, following their previous appearances in issues #36 and #38. Three of the members were just recycled reprobates from other strips: the Sandman from the Lee-Ditko SPIDER-MAN and both the Wizard and Trapster from HUMAN TORCH. The fourth member of the so-called "Evil FF," though, made her debut in FF #36 under the name "Madame Medusa." No origin is provided for the long-haired villainess, nor does she voice any particular reason for joining these three criminals-- all of whom at least had previous jousts with the Human Torch-- in their mission to overthrow the Fantastic Four. I could easily believe that Kirby created Medusa and worked her into the story without yet knowing what he and Lee would do with her, in terms of origin or motives. So Kirby and Lee just played her as a standard super-villain, eliminating crimefighters for some vague purpose of gaining power later on.   

"Ending" is largely formulaic. At the start of #41, the Thing quits his partners, feeling like they've been taking advantage of him. He's captured by the Frightful Four, and the Wizard brainwashes the hero so that he wants to destroy his former allies. The three older villains are all routine in their characterization, but Lee and Kirby do start expanding on Medusa a little. As the "evil counterpart" to Sue Storm, Medusa seems briefly interested in Mister Fantastic, and by the way Kirby depicts this scene, it's pretty standard "evil girl has a yen for noble hero." But nothing more comes of this momentary infatuation, here or in any other FF story I've come across. As Lee's dialogue for the scene states, Medusa has no feelings about the other three heroes, and in the second part of the tale, she shows her willingness to mousetrap the Torch, knock him out, and deliver the youth to the Wizard's tender mercies.

         

However, in the concluding installment, all one can say is that by that time, Kirby had decided that he wanted that story to end with Medusa getting away, so that she could make a separate appearance in the beginning of the Inhumans Saga, starting in FF #44. Judging only from the art-- which might or might not have some ancillary story-notes in the margins of the original artboards-- the Torch chases the long-haired villainess and seems to pause while she gets away. The Torch returns to his partners-- including a de-brainwashed Ben Grimm-- and from the art alone, one can't be sure that Kirby meant (a) to have Mr. Fantastic question the younger hero about failing in his task, or (b) to have the older hero imply that Johnny Storm allowed the comely criminal to escape just because she's hot and he's a horny teenager. Then nothing more is said about the hypothetical "torch" Johnny might be carrying for Medusa for the rest of the Lee-Kirby run. However, in issue #44 Medusa will meet the Torch one-on-one again, and though there's no romantic vibe between them, here Lee and Kirby introduce the idea that Medusa is a member of a race of hidden superhumans, and Johnny does forge a love-connection with one of them-- to be sure, one more age-appropriate than Medusa would have been.

It's not impossible that Kirby never meant to imply that the Torch had the hots for Medusa. He might as easily have hesitated to overtake the villainess because his flame was getting weak, which was a common thing in those days. (Note the above panel where Johnny complains that because his flame has gotten weaker, Medusa can defeat him with the equivalent of a wet mop.) Lee might then have decided to toss out the idea of Johnny having a fiery twinkle in his eye for the older female, just because it was more dramatically interesting than Johnny just complaining that his flame was about to go out. If Kirby hadn't mentioned his burgeoning plans for Medusa to Lee, then to Lee that would have been as good an idea to pursue as any other, even if they didn't follow through. But whether the two creators were on the same page when they ended "Ending," they soon began a new phase in the career of Marvel's First Family.          

NEAR MYTHS: THE THING VS. THE IMMORTAL HULK (2019)

 

Though "TTVTIH" (FF vol 6 #12) doesn't have the symbolic discourse of a mythcomic, it does ring in one of the best takes on that near-mythic question dear to the hearts of Marvelites: "who's stronger, the Hulk or the Thing?"

 

Now, in a technical sense the real question wasn't "who was stronger." If Lee and Kirby had been in any way ambivalent when the two characters first met in FF #12, "The Hulk vs. the Thing" in FF #25 made it abundantly clear that the larger Hulk had the strength advantage. The real question was "what can the Thing, the FF's heavy hitter, do to beat an unbeatable adversary?" Issue #25, which focuses mostly on the Thing and the Hulk, and its second part in #26, which brings in the Avengers as well, is practically a masterclass from Jack Kirby in the depiction of dynamic combat-scenes (even despite the ham-fisted inks of George Bell). During the same period, the Thing often had battles with other powerhouses, such as the Sub-Mariner and the Silver Surfer, and some of these battles were repeated. But without checking I'd guess about 10-15 later artists attempted to exploit the suspense of a Thing-Hulk battle once again. Some of these latter-day battles were adequate, and others mediocre, but none of them even came close to the high standard of Lee and Kirby-- until 2019.

The great cover by Esad Ribic presages what turns out to be an exceptional story built around yet another contest between Orange Guy and Green Guy, drawn by Sean Izaakse and scripted by Dan Slott. And, almost unbelievably, Slott makes a silk purse out of one of Marvel's hoariest "sow-ear" plots: the one where the villainous Puppet Master uses a radioactive puppet to force one hero to attack another hero.

 Now, unlike many writers who resorted to the "Puppet Master plot," Slott set up a special connotation to the villain's actions. The Puppet Master, currently in prison, has become aware that his stepdaughter Alicia intends to marry Ben Grimm, one of the evildoer's worst enemies. So the irate puppet-maker takes control of the Hulk and sics the behemoth on the Thing when the hero is beginning his honeymoon with his new bride. Thus, the villain's motives are much more personal than usual. In addition, in contrast to every other such story I've read, this time the Hulk is aware of being controlled, but he has such a long-standing grudge against the Thing that he somewhat cooperates with Puppet Master. Slott does this, I believe, because when he comes up with a unique way for Ben Grimm to win his battle, the writer wants readers to feel like the hero finally beat his green-skinned nemesis "fair and square"-- that is, with the Hulk largely in control of his faculties, even while being controlled.

And how does Ben win? Well, even though I don't have a large readership, I won't say, on the chance it might compel even one person to check out THE THING VS THE IMMORTAL HULK. And "not revealing the ending" is a courtesy I almost never extend to any other thing I've ever reviewed.

TTVTIH doesn't top THVTT. But it's now a close second.                   

COSMIC FLIGHT, SPIDER BITE

 I'm currently working on an extensive FANTASTIC FOUR critical evaluation that will encompass the two mythcomics posts I have planned for this month, respectively posts #399 and #400. (Since the first time my posts reached 100, I have endeavored to make each hundredth-post something special, as do many comics-serials.) Since I'm planning to eschew my critical jargon where possible, I decided to get at least some of that out of my system by expanding on the following remarks from last year's DUELING DUALITIES PT. 3:

I should qualify this, though, by stating that the L/K FANTASTIC FOUR still had a very strong ontocosm with respect to developing the kinetic and dramatic potentialities, in comparison with even the best of the other contemporary Marvel offerings from the Silver Age... In fact, the kinetic qualities of the Lee-Kirby FF are at least equal to those of the Lee-Ditko SPIDER-MAN. However, with respect to the dramatic potentialities, the L/D SPIDER-MAN is more fully devoted to the soap opera model, generating a superior level of melodramatic intensity with what must have been comics' largest-ever ensemble of regular support-characters. By comparison. the L/K FANTASTIC FOUR concentrated most of its energies on the four principals, and the most-used group of support-characters in the series-- The Inhumans -- didn't so much mesh with the four principals as randomly bounce off them.

Here, then, are some demonstrations of my perceptions re: the four potentialities in each Silver Age serial.

 The kinetic potentiality in fiction concerns anything that's an analogue to physical sensation. Often I've referenced this potentiality with respect to those immortal selling-points, "sex and violence," but it also includes all sympathetic and antipathetic affects linked to sensation. Within the sphere of the L/K FANTASTIC FOUR, Jack Kirby designed an almost unparalleled rogues' gallery of unattractive villains to engage in combat with the generally attractive heroes (and yes, over time the Thing becomes cute than horrifying). This cover to FF #100-- which I for one wish could have been Kirby's last contribution to the series-- shows a good cross-section of the heroes and their opponents.

Ditko's run on SPIDER-MAN was not as long as Kirby's on FF, and he never showed a literal assemblage of all his best villains. (To be sure, both artists produced a handful of loser-foes, whom no one would particularly want to see again.) The closest thing to a Ditko "greatest hits" would be the "Sinister Six" tale in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1.

Despite how long each artist worked on each series, they're both in the same domain as far as how well they exploited the kinetic potentialities for repulsion and attraction. However, as I said above, the ways in which each writer/artist combo approached the dramatic potentiality took very different forms.

In the L/K FANTASTIC FOUR, melodramatic tragedy arose every once in a while, as in the story "This Man, This Monster." Yet I believe editor Lee chose most of the time to soft-pedal such emotional tumult, if only because he was always writing about four characters in an ensemble that had to remain together for the series' sake, no matter how often they talked about breaking up. Thus I'd argue that comedy rather than tragedy tended to rule the FF-realm, as seen in these pages from FF #54:         

In contrast to this series, though, SPIDER-MAN was a loner. Thought the series displayed an ample amount of comedy-- often in the form of playing jokes on J. Jonah Jameson-- there was a marked emphasis upon Peter Parker being caught in a tangled web, woven by some dispassionate god and in which Parker was tormented as for sport. From AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #17:

I'm not in any way devaluing comedy over drama; that's the sort of thinking that makes the Oscar Awards such a drag. But I am saying that because Lee and Ditko focused so much on teen melodrama, with some parallel crime-melodrama content, they often didn't veer into the vertical level of meaning very often.

 All of the famous Spidey villains seen above are just crooks in costumes; they want to steal things, Spider-Man gets in their way, and they want to kill him so that they can go back to stealing with impunity. That's why I've found so few mythopoeic or dramatic complexities in the L/D SPIDER-MAN, or, for that matter, in later iterations of the franchise. A couple of Spider-foes have world-conquering ambitions, like Doc Ock and the Lizard, but arguably Lee and Ditko devoted less space to their abstract motivations. 

The Red Ghost, in his first (and only good) story, wants to dominate Earth's moon for the glory of Communism. The Puppet Master has more interest in controlling other people's lives than in interacting with his stepdaughter. Doctor Doom is obsessed with being the best at everything and thus wants more than anything to prove that he can beat his detested rival. All of these motivations BEGIN in the dramatic potentiality, but as I've argued in the various mythcomics essays I devoted to each FF-villain, the creators found ways to organically develop the mythopoeic and the didactic OUT of the dramatic motivations.       

And with all that in mind, my next essay will deal with a quick and dirty history of the Fantastic Four after Lee and Kirby.
              

THE LOVER, THE DILETTANTE, AND THE CLINICIAN

 For once the new terms I'm tossing out are not full-fledged aspects of my personal literary theory. They're just approximations of the different orientations I find in different creators. 

THE LOVER is the type of creator who finds something deeply important to him/her in whatever fictional narratives he/she encounters, and who seeks to reproduce those moving elements or tropes in his/her own works. That doesn't preclude working on projects that do not excite the Lover personally, but if the Lover has a sustained career, the Critic can usually see one or more favored tropes, often a "master trope," repeated again and again. As a kid Jack Kirby (born 1917) belonged to the first generation of American juveniles to be exposed to periodicals centered upon the still gestating genre of science fiction (beginning with AMAZING STORIES in 1926). The totality of SF-tropes, far more than the related tropes of horror and fantasy, became an endless resource for Kirby, and I would venture that his creative "master trope" was the ceaseless exploration of all the most famous sci-fi scenarios-- lost cities, prehistoric domains, alien worlds. I for one see this trope in everything from TUK, CAVEBOY to FANTASTIC FOUR to CAPTAIN VICTORY.

 THE DILETTANTE might sound like a putdown in comparison to the Lover, but it merely signifies that the creator in question didn't become strongly cathected to a particular theme or trope. From what I've read, Stan Lee probably enjoyed the SF/adventure pulps of his time as much as did Kirby, but I don't see any particular trope from any particular genre looming large in Lee's oeuvre. That doesn't mean that he didn't have particular tropes that he used again and again, only that he used them more for professional convenience, rather than for personal expression. I might argue, hypothetically, that over time Lee became invested in using the trope of "the suffering savior" that one can find in his fifties SF-stories (like this one) on through SPIDER-MAN and SILVER SURFER. But I can't really claim that trope dominates his work anymore than that of the "quarreling best buddies" trope I see in pairings from "Millie and Chili" to "Ben and Johnny."

For THE CLINICIAN I cheated on my categories a little, for my initial example is Timely/Atlas publisher Martin Goodman, who was not to my knowledge a creator of any kind. However, the ALTER EGO article referenced establishes that at times he did show a rough, if not always correct, instinct about what sort of stories would prove popular with his target audience. Of course, Goodman is most famous for indiscriminately flooding newsstands with quickly produced titles, purely to grab shelf-space, so it's fair to say that he didn't make many, if any, decisions based on what moved him personally. I call him a Clinician because I see in him a clinical attitude toward creative efforts. 

       

But of course I can find many more examples of all three types in all media. Michael Carreras, who wrote and directed several movies for Hammer Films (founded by his father James), strikes me as another Clinician. I've never read a biography of MC, but from looking over the movies he did before and after the birth of Hammer horror, I get the sense that he like Goodman just went with the flow most if not all the time. In my review of THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB, I took note of how he used a complex Egyptian myth-tale for no better purpose than to make one more mummy-movie. A Clinician type of creator can produce exemplary work, though in Carreras's case, CURSE and the risible PREHISTORIC WOMEN are probably at the top of his creative roster.

In line with some of my recent ruminations on LOST, I tend to think that some of its blown potential stemmed from the different creative types involved. In the early seasons, I might have believed that head honcho J.J. Abrams to be a Lover ensorcelled by a multitude of tantalizing tropes. But exposure to his work on the STAR TREK and STAR WARS franchises showed me that he was at best a Dilettante. Had he remained active in guiding the six seasons of LOST, the show still might have emerged as a media landmark. But the producers to whom he relegated LOST were in my estimation just Clinicians with not much skill at keeping the tone and content consistent-- which is why, in this month's LOST essay, I said that the only way I could analyze the program would be to go armed with both a "good shit" detector and a "bad shit" detector-- or words to that effect.        

TO BE HULK-KORRECTED

 Useless boomer-kid recollection #337: back in the Silver Age of Comics, a few HULK comics, upon ending on a cliffhanger, would end with the goofy phrase, "To Be Hulk-inued." Hence, my title.

So on the CRIVENS blog, I was talking with Kid on a response-thread about the evolution of the HULK comic in the sixties. I wished I could have found a certain old article by Will Murray, in which he discussed the Hulk's sixties career in detail. But not only did I not remember where it appeared, I was briefly on a listserve with Murray, and when I asked him where he'd done the piece, even HE did not recall. So I did my own quickie history of the period of the Hulk's career in between the cancellation of his own title and his getting a berth in TALES TO ASTONISH.

So HULK 6 is dated March 63. It's roughly 7 months later that Stan and Jack have Hulk join the Avengers. Two months after that, they do a callback to FF#3, where the Torch splits from his group--- but the guys keep things unpredictable. Not does the Hulk not rejoin the super-group, he becomes an ally of a Public Enemy, the Sub-Mariner, in AVENGERS 3. (That by itself might've got the pardon revoked.) But after #3, Hulk-- still more or less "Tough-Guy Hulk"-- doesn't do much of anything. The Avengers supposedly keep looking for him but somehow don't manage to cross paths with Greenie until FF #25-26, starting in April 64. Was Stan thinking about launching the TTA series even back then, which began in Oct 64? In the FF stories, I might argue that Hulk is more obsessive than he is in the "Tough Guy" stories, getting into a massive snit because his kid-partner has supposedly started hanging out with the WWII living legend. SPIDEY 14 follows two months later, which also might be advance publicity for the TTA series. One issue before the Hulk officially gets his own berth, he also fights Giant-Man in Sept 64, suggesting to me that Stan may've thought that even though Greenjeans had been cancelled before, he still couldn't do worse than Gi/Ant-Man. And from here, it looks like Stan's policy of farming the Hulk out in various features built up reader curiosity about him, improving TTA's sales enough to jettison Henry Pym-- who certainly went on to a better class of stories once he rejoined the Avengers than he'd ever had in his own title.

17 December 2025 at 16:51

All the dates are correct, but I'm not sure I was correct about the Hulk-promotion being Stan Lee's idea. ALTER EGO #60 (2020) contains an overview of the career of Timely/Atlas/Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, and in the course of said overview, author Will Murray (him again) paraphrases an unsourced Ditko quote:    

Circa 1964, Steve Ditko recalled Lee telling him that Goodman directed him to revive three underutilized characters, the Hulk, Sub-Mariner, and the old pulp hero Ka-Zar. Lee gave Ditko his choice of which to work on...    

Now, I absolutely believe that Ditko quoted what he recalled Lee saying. That doesn't necessarily mean that Lee was accurately reporting what Goodman had told him, though there would seem to be no obvious reason to prevaricate on the subject of his boss's commands. So Goodman probably said something along those lines.

At the same time, the overview gives evidence that Goodman only intermittently interacted with editor Lee about the operation of Goodman's comics-line, so the statement seems a little anomalous. All we know, as crusty old fans, is that Goodman's bottom line was always whether or not he could make a comic temporarily popular, preferably by following a trend or imitating a show from a more mainstream medium.

So I'll break down the three characters Lee mentioned to Ditko.

What would have prompted Goodman to stump for more Sub-Mariner exposure? By early 1964 Namor had become a regular featured player in FANTASTIC FOUR for about two years and had appeared in various other Marvel comics. Still, I don't get any sense of a huge fannish demand for a new SUB-MARINER comic, and not until 1965 does Namor displace Giant-Man in TTA. It does make one wonder if Stan would have put Namor, rather than Hulk, into TTA had Ditko said he wanted to draw the sea prince.

Why Ka-Zar? Unlike Namor, the jungle man hadn't been anything but a backup feature in Golden Age comics, and even his own pulp had only lasted three issues. But maybe in 1964 Goodman looked around at the still popular Tarzan movies, and at the Dell/Gold Key comics for the character, so the publisher just thought Ka-Zar could coattail on his inspiration. That at least might explain why Ka-Zar started showing up as an occasional guest star in DAREDEVIL-- though the first of the DD appearances didn't occur until late 1965.   

The Hulk is a little odd, though, because his only comic had not sold well. One possible motive might be that Hammer Films was still producing Frankenstein films in the early 1960s, and maybe Goodman thought kids would still buy HULK comics because he looked like the Monster. As I said, Stan almost certainly made the decision to stick the cancelled colossus into the AVENGERS in late 1963, and then to have Greenskin depart the super-group in the second issue. But the only result of Hulk's defection is that he teams up with Sub-Mariner in AVENGERS #3 (dated Jan 64), and when that coalition breaks up, the Hulk wanders off and not much happens to him until the FF issues (dated April 64). 

So if the Hulk's appearances in FF and SPIDER-MAN were meant as advance hype for the TTA series, dated for October of that year, that only gives Lee roughly three months to start pouring on the juice for the Hulk, maybe to make sure that Greenie's second shot at stardom would get every chance to succeed-- which it did. Another alternate explanation for Goodman's Hulk-positivity could just be that AVENGERS #3 sold really well and the publisher wanted to jump on that success. I don't think for a moment that Goodman would have cared about the character for any reason but that of sales potential. But Stan could still have made the decision to take things slow and build up the Hulk's profile in Marvel's best sellers, because he appreciated the Hulk's dramatic potential and thought he could do good, profitable stories with the character.   

The only other nugget from the ALTER EGO piece is a mention that when 1950s Goodman found out about an impending WYATT EARP TV show, he had Lee launch an EARP comic that came out a few months before the show hit the airwaves. This sounds a little counter-intuitive, trying to coattail on a show that hasn't appeared yet. But apparently Goodman did the same thing with Atlas' YELLOW CLAW feature, which also appeared on stands a month or two before the airing of the ADVENTURES OF FU MANCHU teleseries.

KEEPING VS. SHARING PT 3

 In my previous recent essays, I've been examining the way two ethical systems, the Ethos of Keeping and the Ethos of Sharing, have interpenetrated human history in the past and continue to do so. principally through their modern manifestations as "conservatism" and "liberalism." However, I added a couple of subdivisions to the mix. Keeping and Sharing can both manifest into extreme forms, both of which can be subsumed under "radicalism." The less extreme forms of both are best described as "meliorism"

Routine political discourse often distinguishes between radical and meliorist forms of liberalism. In the meliorist form, the ethic recommended to those that hold power can be summed up as "You Should Share" such things as rights and privileges with those that do not have (or do not think they have) said capacities. In the world of American civil rights, it's almost de rigeur to name Martin Luther King Jr as an exponent of persuading powerholders to cede power to the marginalized. In the radicalist form, the prevailing argument says, "You Must Share" and the best-known advocate from the same Civil Rights era, Malcolm X, favored the stick rather than the carrot.

Conservatism, though, displays the same two subdivisions. Liberals are usually only able to recognize the extreme form, so that everyone from the KKK to the guy running the Christian cake-shop are viewed as equals in tyranny. Naturally there are specific agents who want to Keep Power under all circumstances and cede nothing.  However, meliorist conservatives display the ethic that "You Should Share," albeit only under the right conditions. Franklin D. Roosevelt earned the reputation of a Liberal for measures like empowering the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Yet, the act of interning Japanese-Americans was fundamentally a conservative act, even if one takes the most charitable view of FDR's action.

And so I come to my first fictional example, that of the opposition between meliorism and radicalism seen in SPIDER-MAN #68-70 (dated January, February and March 1969). Yet to examine this scenario, a little grounding is necessary, since the conflict revolves around one of Spider-Man's support-cast, Joe Robertson. Though introduced in ASM #51, not until issue #55 does Stan Lee set up the newsman's role as a regular character, where he's a voice of reason as against the mule-headedness of publisher J. Jonah Jameson. He's also the epitome of a Liberal meliorist view: Joe Robertson ascends to his position of authority purely on the basis of merit. 

Jumping forward a year and some months, Joe's son Randy Robertson is briefly seen in ASM #67, but only in #68 do we see Randy's purpose: to show Stan Lee's negative view of radicalism. Thus, almost as soon as Peter Parker encounters Randy on the campus they both attend, up comes the shadow of Randy's friend Josh-- who, since he never has a last name, might as well be called Josh X.

Though Lee was often criticized for the piddly nature of the "campus protest" involved here, he shows considerable acumen in showing how militant Josh X is. There's no "hey, how they hangin,'" just, "are you joining the cause?" Lee obviously means readers to find Josh abrasive here and later, even though Peter Parker nominally approves of his cause. The campus protest will tie into Spider-Man's adventure with his frequent foe The Kingpin, but the cause is less important here than showing how Randy, the offspring of a meliorist parent, is being influenced by a radical who demands that the campus authorities "Must Share," while said authorities are taking the radical conservative posture, presumably currying favor with alumni to garner donations (though Lee does not say this).

Josh X is even less appealing in his second scene in the story. Though Randy is the first to invite Parker to help the students fight the good fight, Josh not only acts like Parker owes him allegiance, he addresses a near-stranger as "Whitey" as if he doesn't owe Parker the slightest courtesy. Stan Lee doesn't have Parker react to the racial slur, but rather to Josh's statement that the young militant doesn't think he has to listen to, or account for, the response of the authorities to the protesters' demands. On the next page, an unnamed Black protester casts aspersions on Randy for being "the son of an Uncle Tom," and Josh, for whatever reason, defends Randy as a "soul brother." But it's not hard to imagine Josh flinging the same insult if Randy failed to follow Josh's lead.

The battle between the spider and the gang-lord continues into ASM #69 and #70, but Stan Lee devotes just a handful of scenes to winding up his mini-debate about meliorism and radicalism. In the first of the two scenes above, Joe is aghast that a son of his was involved not just in protest, but in causing damage to personal property, which is something neither Randy nor Josh apologizes for. (In the next issue, Lee changes his mind and says no damage was caused by the protesters.) Randy, probably channeling whatever Sidney Poitier movies Stan had seen, complains that he has to be more "militant" because his meliorist father is part of "the White Man's establishment." Joe makes the more reasonable argument about proving oneself, though oddly, Josh gets the last word, claiming that "we" (meaning Black people) won't get anywhere unless they "kinda shake Whitey up a little." Given that Stan Lee was almost certainly a meliorist, it's fairly generous that he at least acknowledges the rationale of the radicalist in this issue. In #70 the voice of the "Must Keep" authority is at last heard, as the dean admits having failed to listen to the voices of his students, and that he was on their side but was busy fighting the real entrenched interests. the college's trustees. Josh admits the need to think about things a bit more, but no one's ever privy to his thoughts since I don't think he ever appears again.  

So in this late 1960s tale, some respect is accorded the "You Must Share" ethos even if the "You Should Share" is clearly the superior ethic. Yet what about one of the principal franchises of the era of identity politics?

The 2018 MCU film BLACK PANTHER presented audiences with a world where "You Must Share" is the only game in town. However, it's not a power structure based on the racial politics of America. Rather, Wakanda, an idealized African fantasyland, is called upon to pledge fealty to the radicalist ethos. In a loose way Wakanda is also governed by an Ethos of Keeping, though it's implied to be a world without the racial divisions found in the outside world, only a heritage of tribal quarrels that can be solved with rituals of combat. Wakanda keeps its miracle element vibranium out of the hands of the powerful and the powerless alike. However, their isolationism takes a major blow thanks to a poor relation of the realm's hereditary ruler, The Black Panther.   

Considering that T'Challa's uncle N'Jobu is critical to the end of Wakanda's isolationism, the character is barely more than a bare function of the plot. We are never told what radical influencer managed to persuade N'Jobu, brother of the reigning Wakandan king T'Chaka, to betray his country's policies and try to sell weapons to radicals in that hotbed of political activity, Oakland. Nor does the film tell us why T'Challa is so traumatized by the death of his traitorous uncle. N'Jobu's main purpose in the movie is to spawn Erik Killmonger, whom many critics described as the film's "real hero." Even though Killmonger takes over Wakanda with zero concern for its people and with the agenda of using their weapons for his network of blacktivist conspirators (also never defined), all that counts is forcing Wakanda to Share with the downtrodden, "By Any Means Necessary." Of course, Whitey is still the main villain even when no White person is directly involved in Killmonger's plans. Thus CIA agent Everett Ross is automatically a "colonizer" according to one of T'Challa's guardians. Yet none of the Wakandans uses that term for Killmonger, even though he's applying CIA tactics to ruin their country for his own agenda. Even though Killmonger dies, he succeeds in ending Wakanda's isolation. And the audience knows this must be a good thing because the nation starts donating money to American Blacks-- who I guess are supposed to be way worse off than all the impoverished tribes of real-world Africa.            

It's clear from BLACK PANTHER that without any sort of compensatory ethos, the radicalist ethos loses all control of whatever moral compass it might potentially possess. I would like to think that PANTHER's success at the box office was a short-lived anomaly, since most of the radicalist MCU movies since then have tanked. But as another famous Liberal-with-Conservative-tendencies observed, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."                 

   

NULL-MYTHS: ANGEL AND THE APE VOLUME ONE (1968-69)

 

The best thing about the original run of DC's ANGEL AND THE APE -- lasting just one SHOWCASE issue and six issues of a regular magazine-- was the above house ad.

Now, whenever I first saw this 1968 ad, I had been collecting superhero comics for at least two years. Thanks to an easy-to-reach used bookstore where a lot of kids dumped their comics, I had amassed a substantial collection. (Just as a marker, by the time the first SPIDER-MAN cartoon debuted on TV in September 1967, I had read reprints of all the Spider-stories that the show was kinda-sorta adapting.) I didn't have much interest in DC Comics' comedy features, so I never bought any issues of AATA. 

I would have been at least twelve whenever I saw this ad, so I'm not sure my memory is entirely accurate. But what I seem to remember is wondering if the opposition of the "Angel"-- a lithe-looking young woman-- with the brutish (albeit clothed) "Ape" was supposed to have some weird romantic vibe. I may or may not have seen the 1933 KING KONG by 1968, but I'm sure I had heard that there was at least a one-sided amour fou going on there. And everyone knew, without being able to put into words, that the classic fairy tale BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was all about an angelic human female getting mixed up with a hideous male brute. As it turned out, there were no real romantic vibes between the titular "funny detectives" Angel O'Day and her partner, intelligent gorilla Sam Simeon. However, I still think that the artist who drew the ad had a little salacious intent-- for I now notice something I didn't in 1968. I might have mistaken the shape with the logo, the form separating Angel and Sam for an angel's wing-- but now I realize that angel-wings don't have stems. The object separating angelic female and brutish male is the venerable fig-leaf of Judeo-Christian art.     

Two years before AATA, one of the feature's creators, E. Nelson Bridwell, had been responsible for another DC humor-title, THE INFERIOR FIVE. But though both IF and AATA boasted roughly the same sort of cornball comedy, IF at least had a rationale for its parody of superheroes. AATA was a detective parody in which a martially-trained human girl and an intelligent gorilla went around solving mysteries. The creators-- which seems like a committee of three or four guys throwing crap at the wall-- don't supply even a minor rationale as to why the two of them run a detective agency, which kind of conflicts with Sam Simeon's regular job, that of drawing comic books. (He sometimes used Angel as his model.) 

Given the short duration of the original title, I gather most readers weren't even slightly curious about the feature. It didn't help that most of the time the stories wandered about from one comic schtick to another with no rhyme or reason, as if the creators thought the fans would simply go ape over a funny gorilla-- or, in a different fashion, over the toothsome hottie Angel, ably rendered by artist Bob Oskner. Probably those Silver Age fans who remember AATA at all recall that it was one of the first times any comic satirized the figure of Marvel editor Stan Lee, in the form of Sam's wacky editor Stan Bragg. However, Stan himself had already produced better self-satires than anything in this comic.

The only story that stays on point in spoofing detective cliches is issue #3. In "The Curse of the Avarice Clan," Bridwell produces a decent sendup of the "old dark house" subgenre, in which some mystery killer seeks to murder all the heirs to a fabulous will. But how many kids in 1968 even knew what an "old dark house mystery" was? 

The last story in the last issue was the only one in which there was a very minor suggestion of gorilla romance. In it, Angel goes on a date with a handsome rich guy, and Sam spies on their date, allegedly because he doesn't think the judo-savvy lady detective can defend herself against a masher. The main schtick of the story is that Sam repeatedly masquerades as human beings like waiters and cabbies, and that only Angel can see through his transparent disguises. It wasn't much of a story, but it's the only one in which there's a little conflict between the two principals-- and though the jealousy angle is only potentially present, it would finally get some development (albeit not much better executed) in the 1991 ANGEL AND THE APE reboot, to be discussed in a future post.     

ADDENDUM: I posted the house ad on CHFB and another poster thought the "leaf" was a bunch of bananas. If any of the serrations along the edge of the shape were rounded, I would agree that this was a good possibility, since banana jokes were frequent in AATA. At the same time, I admit that the shape dividing the characters doesn't look like a real fig leaf-- and in both canonical and pop art, most fig leaves need to have those compound blades in order to cover all the unmentionables.  My revised theory is that the house-ad artist knew he needed to leave room for the letterer to place the logo on the shape, so what he produced is more like a standardized serrated leaf-- and there's no reason to associate leaves with angels and apes unless you're thinking about primeval angel-ape encounters.