MYTHCOMICS: DAY OF VENGEANCE (2005)

 

One of my main purposes in maintaining my mythcomics-project is that I'm engaged with the ideal that great myths sometimes arise from the humblest (if not literally crappiest) prima materia. But I never quite saw my thesis validated quite so quickly as today. A day or two ago, I decided to work my way through a library loaner, THE DETECTIVE CHIMP CASEBOOK, which collected all of the Golden/Silver Age stories of the analytical animal. I didn't like any of the scripts or even Infantino's artwork, but it made me curious to find out: when exactly did DC Comics decide not only to revive "Bobo T. Chimpanzee," and why did someone decide to stick the ape in the midst of DC's newly-forged "Weirdoverse?" It was easy enough to find out that Chimp started hanging out with magic-users in the 2005 six-issue series DAY OF VENGEANCE, penciled by Justiniano and written by Bill Willingham of ELEMENTALS and FABLES fame. I hadn't read that series, but since it seemed in predictated on the "Green Spectre" storyline from DAY OF JUDGMENT, I had to re-read that limited series for the first time in 25 years. As I noted in my review today, this Geoff Johns item may be one of the worst of its type out there.         

So, as I said, I never read VENGEANCE in the twenty years since it came out, and I more or less expected some adequate formula from Willingham at best, as opposed to Johns' extremely lame hackwork. The only thing VENGEANCE took from JUDGMENT was the idea that The Spectre, the divine "Spirit of Vengeance" in the DC Universe, needed a mortal body in which to exist. He apparently had Hal Jordan's body to occupy for about four years after the events of JUDGMENT, but at some point, they got a divorce, and at the beginning of VENGEANCE, the Ghostly Guardian has gone a little nuts. Eclipso, one of the Universe's foremost tempter-figures, decides that it takes a nut to crack a nut, so he manages to possess the body of Jean Loring, who joined the domain of the cuckoos in 2004's IDENTITY CRISIS. In this new female form, Eclipso-Jean uses feminine wiles to tame the unquiet spirit and give him an inventive new mission. Since the Spectre is opposed to all lawbreaking, why not destroy all magic within the Universe, since magic is based on breaking, or at least bending, natural law? The Spectre, being a sucker for a bad girl, falls for this queasy logic and begins a jeremiad against all things mystical.                 

I suppose that Willingham sorta-borrowed one other thing from Johns: a loose confederation of magic-affiliated heroes who would save "the Day." But Johns whipped together a bunch of big-name magi and gave them the portentous name of "The Sentinels of Magic." Willingham came up with a new lineup and coined the group-name "Shadowpact," which would get its own DC title the very next year. Willingham purposely got many of the "big guns" out of the way for his story-- Doctor Fate, Phantom Stranger-- and concentrated on a Defenders-like collection of oddballs: Ragman, Enchantress, Nightshade, Blue Devil, the aforementioned analyst-ape, and the sword-and-sorcery type Nightmaster, who like the chimp had only recently been revived for a handful of stories.             

Though there are still one or two powerful forces to be enlisted against the Spectre, not least being the Original Captain Marvel, the less powerful Shadowpact members have to seek to use strategy against the supremely powerful spirit. It may not be total coincidence that this was also the modus operandi of the 1980s SUICIDE SQUAD, which is also where most DC readers would have previously encountered both Nightshade and Enchantress. The heroes' chances are not improved by the fact that Enchantress herself has an "evil self" that sometimes emerges to muck things up, or that she and Nightshade shared the same body for a time during their SQUAD days.  

Shadowpact's initial strategy is twofold: Enchantress does a spell that draws power from other magicians and funnels it to help Captain Marvel, while the others take on Jean-Eclipso, who's considerably less powerful than her astral ally. As a backup plan, Nightshade and Chimp go looking for a trump card in Black Alice, a side-character introduced in Gail Simone's BIRDS OF PREY comic. It's during this section that Willingham explains how Chimp became one of the magic-users who hung out at Nightmaster's "Oblivion Bar." In line with a 1981 story that showed Chimp and Rex the Wonder Dog both becoming immortal from drinking at the Fountain of Youth, Willingham asserts that now Chimp also has the power to talk to animals as well as to converse in human speech (which wasn't a property of "Bobo T. Chimpanzee.") 

  

 

    

Suffice to say that despite lots of heady, cosmos-shattering battles-- the very thing JUDGMENT did not offer-- Jean-Eclipso and the Spectre aren't easily defeated, and a scene in which the crazed Spirit of Vengeance contends with the wizard Shazam upon the Rock of Eternity looks a bit like what might happen if Spectre contended with the standard long-bearded image of the Judeo-Christian God. Shazam has one of the best lines in the series when he tries to reach the Spectre and warn him that he can't do away with magic, that all he can accomplish will be to is to remove all the controls that centuries of magecraft have elaborated-- a topic that also figures into this 2018 JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK arc. Shadowpact does finally defeat Jean-Eclipso by sending both the insane Jean and her puppet-master into permanent sunlight. However, that's all the closure the reader will get, because Willingham was obliged to leave things in a state of partial chaos for the sake of the ensuing INFINITE CRISIS story by Geoff Johns. All that said, Willingham actually gave the nature of the "Weirdoverse" some thought, as well as coming up with some genuinely funny badinage for the motley crew of heroes. I'm not sure if he originated the idea that former S&S stalwart Nightmaster was now a greying fifty-something who ran the Oblivion Bar where Detective Chimp came to get drunk. But I liked the varied number of cameos that the writer and artists worked into the bar's background scenes, such as Arion, The Vixen, Andrew Bennett, Animal-Man, Jennifer Morgan of WARLORD and Valda from ARAK SON OF THUNDER.               

EDIT: On 5-23-25, I was able to read a supplement that more or less provided closure for the VENGEANCE series: a follow-up, again by Willingham and Justiniano, called DAY OF VENGEANCE-INFINITE CRISIS SPECIAL. Though the story wasn't as well-plotted as the six-issue series, the special showed various occult heroes (1) solved the problem of the Spectre running amok and (2) re-assembled the Rock of Eternity after the Ghostly Guardian shattered it. Thus, even though like DAY OF JUDGMENT the conclusion juggled more characters than it needed, the special counts as the conclusion to VENGEANCE-- even though the special also generated some new plotlines that played into both Geoff Johns' INFINITE CRISIS and Willingham's ongoing SHADOWPACT series that same year of 2005. 

EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS OF AUTHORIAL WILL PT. 3

In ENSEMBLES DISASSEMBLED I put forth a tentative analysis of the ensemble of heroes in the Wolfman-Perez CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. In part I argued that just because the creators tried to squeeze in nearly every DC character who ever had a series, that didn’t mean all of the heroes functioned as part of the ensemble. I might still get around to CRISIS’s stature-vectors one of these days. But since I just remarked on the unequal vectors of characters in DC: THE NEW FRONTIER, I may as well apply my theory to that work. In my analysis I said:

Numerous other characters prove central to the action—Superman’s cohorts Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, the Barry Allen Flash, all four of the Challengers of the Unknown (whose presence gives Cooke the chance to homage their creator Jack Kirby), and Rick Flagg and the other three members of his Squad. Numerous other DC figures make what are essentially cameos—the Blackhawks (who don’t get too much air action), Aquaman, Adam Strange, and even the Viking Prince. Even less central are a quintet of DC’s mystic heroes, who only appear to explain to readers their shaky reasons for not participating in the conflict, even though the island’s menace threatens the totality of the world.

Building on this loose assertion, I find that the characters who all share superior stature-vectors in NEW FRONTIER are:

SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, LOIS LANE, JIMMY OLSEN, GREEN LANTERN (Hal Jordan), THE FLASH (Barry Allen), J’ONN J’ONZZ, THE CHALLENGERS (Ace Morgan, Prof Haley, Rocky Davis, Red Ryan), THE LOSERS (Johnny Cloud, Sarge Clay, Gunner Mackey, Captain Storm), RICK FLAGG, KING FARADAY

All of the other characters embody lesser stature-vectors, although some of them have fairly large charisma-vectors, best exemplified by Ted “Wildcat” Grant, who gets a final non-superheroic triumph when he beats Muhammad Ali in the ring. 

At the opposite end are DC’s mystic heroes, who appear as little more than cameos. 

Other characters of lesser stature include:

SLAM BRADLEY, BLACK CANARY, HOURMAN, GREEN ARROW, THE BLACKHAWKS, THE CATWOMAN, the rest of THE SUICIDE SQUAD (Karin Grace, Jess Bright, Hugh Evans) JUNE ROBBINS, THE VIKING PRINCE, ROBIN, AQUAMAN, ADAM STRANGE, and three characters who will later become involved in superheroic escapades: Ray “THE ATOM” Palmer, Nate “CAPTAIN ATOM” Adam, and Doc Magnus, later creator of THE METAL MEN.

One point I want to drive home here is that just because a character is part of an ensemble in an ongoing feature does not necessarily translate into high stature elsewhere. For instance, in the CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN feature, I have no hesitation about including June Robbins to be part of that ensemble, given that she was a reasonably constant presence in the feature for a dozen or so issues. Robbins even has a minor feminist significance, since she participates with the all-male team with more distinction than did, say, Lady Blackhawk with the rather chauvinist Blackhawks. But June Robbins really doesn’t do much of anything in NEW FRONTIER, so she’s not part of the ensemble. Similarly, Rick Flagg plays a vital role in FRONTIER. However, his ensemble-mates from the 1960s SUICIDE SQUAD—whom, as I noted in this review, were really poorly conceived characters—are just hangers-on in NEW FRONTIER. They have more functionality in the narrative than does June Robbins, but as characters they’re of little consequence in terms of their stature.

This ruminations may lead me to some further formulations regarding the nature of centricity, but for now I’ll leave the analysis at this juncture.

NULL-MYTHS: THE SILVER AGE SUICIDE SQUAD (1959-66)

In this essay, which contains an explanation of my term "null-myth," I mentioned that Mark Millar's WANTED was one of the few works I considered inconsummate in every way, that is, in terms of all four literary potentialities. Now here's another one.

I hate to knock this omnibus collection of the Silver Age SUICIDE SQUAD, which, as most DC fans will know, indirectly gave rise to the SUICIDE SQUAD concept of the Late Bronze Age. Since to my knowledge none of these stories were reprinted before, the collection is of great benefit to the devoted comics-historian who wants to know the origins of everything. These tales were almost entirely executed by editor-writer Robert Kanigher and his possibly-favorite artist-team Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. (There's one story written by another writer and a couple of entries by Joe Kubert and by Gene Colan.) One group of stories were set in the 1960s, featuring four government agents, who usually battled recrudescent dinosaurs. The other group concerned an assortment of non-recurring characters who belonged to a secret commando squad, and who-- also usually ended up fighting dinosaurs. To be sure, the later batch belonged to an overarching serial concept, also mostly by Kanigher, "The War That Time Forgot," in which American GIs kept encountering big saurian monsters whose modern presence went largely unexplained. Of the two concepts, the 1960s one was a direct influence upon the Bronze Age concept, which took the first serial's stalwart hero Rick Flag and put him in command of a team of DC supervillains. I really have nothing to say about the WWII tales, except that I found them all very boring, even the one with an early version of that curious DC creation, "the G.I. Robot."

The stories of the "Rick Flag Squad" are no better, but it's historically interesting to show how poorly Kanigher works out his concept. First of all, he selects his four adventurers-- Flag, nurse Karen Grace, and scientists Evans and Bright-- for all having one thing in common: survivor guilt, after having witnessed other persons perish while the future Squad-members themselves survived.  This sounds a lot like the idea Jack Kirby and Dave Wood debuted for the long-running 1958 feature CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, wherein the four heroes all survived brushes with death. However, whereas the Challengers all pretty much forget about their trauma in their quest for fun exploits, it becomes a source of ongoing melodrama in the hands of Kanigher.

Naturally, Kanigher doesn't have any of these survivor-victims literally court death; "suicide" is only a tag-line to suggest how dangerous their missions are. To supply optimal melodrama, Kanigher comes up with a romantic schtick in which Flag and Karen ache with mutual love for one another, but cannot be seen together. Why not? Well, their other Squad-members, Evans and Bright, are both in love with Karin too, though neither man ever seems to make the slightest pass at Karin. However, virtuous Flag insists that the Squad's missions come first, and therefore he and Karen cannot wed. 

Kanigher rolls out this trope over and over with no development, as if each pseudo-romantic encounter were produced via Xerox machine. The group's menaces are the same: they're almost all dinosaurs that have survived somehow, sometimes with super-powers. The last adventure has the characters, who have never functioned as crimefighters, threatened with death by a gang-boss who pays a villain, "the Sculptor Sorcerer," to turn the quartet into gold statues. It's not a good story either, but it's certainly better than any of the dino tales.

I've often pointed out that Kanigher had an unusual ability to breed real poetry out of his endless repetition of pulp-tropes, which often seems  a minor miracle, given how much junk Kanigher wrote. But the only significance of the Silver Age SUICIDE SQUAD is that of providing a template for the superior Bronze Age creation.

WALLER NOISE

A week or so ago I first read of DC Comics' "Amanda Waller Weight Loss Program" on THE BEAT.  I was initially torqued.

However, then I saw that Tom Spurgeon was against it, so I was tempted to be in favor of the de-fattinization.

I can't quite go that far, unfortunately. However, I will say that my reasons for being against the transformation are different from his (and, of course, better).

  Tom said:

...there’s an interesting phenomenon in funnybooks in that the latest version of the character matters more than the majority of their appearances — so while super-hot Amanda Waller doesn’t mean all those issues of Suicide Squad burst into flame, the way fans and company create meaning out of these non-realities this is the version that in many ways matters. It’s not as easy for comics fans, for whatever reason, to go back to a previous iteration of a character the way it was for say, James Bond fans underwhelmed by Pierce Brosnan to fire up the Sean Connery flicks. Not sure why that is, especially since in comics those old books are probably way cheaper.

I find it "interesting" that he manages to spend less time focusing on the identity politics involved in DC's decision and more time sniping at the conservatism of mainstream fans : "this is the version that in many ways matters."  I find it fascinating that Spurgeon emphasizes their conservatism rather than their moral dudgeon.  He does admit that some alt-comics fans didn't like it when Maggie Chascarillo gained weight, for what that's worth.

However, I don't agree with his conclusion: "People are fucked up."  If anything mainstream fans are more justified in wanting images of hottitude in their entertainment than alt-readers of LOVE AND ROCKETS, in that the genre of adventure comics is centered around the idea of enjoying mass quantities of sex and violence.

To that end, standard images of hottitude are entirely justified to pursue that kind of narrative, as I addressed more fully in my essay THAT OBSCURE OBJECTIVIZATION.

Thus it's not wrong to de-fattinize Amanda Waller because it encroaches upon false ideas of diversity in an escapist genre.

It's wrong simply because Amanda was so much more awesome as a fattie.