ACTIVE AND PASSIVE ANOMALIES PT 3

 

Arguably a lot more uncanny narratives invoke passive potency than do marvelous ones...-- ACTIVE AND PASSIVE ANOMALIES PT 2.

Aesop's famous tale, "The North Wind and the Sun," has often been used to describe the difference between "active power" and "passive potency"-- more typically known as "force and persuasion." The titular wind and sun make a bet as to who can make a certain mortal man take off his coat. The wind bombards the man with chilly gales, but that manifestation of force only makes the fellow clutch his coat around him more tightly. Then the sun slowly increases his heat-- and in due time, the man removes his coat of his own volition.

I just lied a bit, for effect. Both of the sky-entities are exerting force/active power; the sun's exertions are just subtler. A true illustration of passive persuasion might involve the sun assuming the appearance of another mortal, and in that form, he could mess with the coated man's head, suggesting how hot it was, until the power of suggestion caused the guy to remove his garment. Since the folktale-sun would not be exerting direct force, only indirect persuasion, my ad hoc revision of Aesop would fit the category I've termed "passive potency." The example loosely parallels that of Mulan's supernormal allies cited in ANOMALIES PT 1, who don't give the heroine any active aid, only bits of information or (often unhelpful) advice.      

In the quote above I mentioned the generalization that "the marvelous" most often deals with "power" and "the uncanny" with "potency," and in many past essays, I've drawn the distinction between marvelous and uncanny as that of "reality" and "fantasy," as in this statement from 2015's OUTRE OUTFITS OVERVIEW: 

When attire is not actually marvelous-- that is, when it does not confer marvelous power on a character, like Iron Man's armor-- it must conform to the rules of causal coherence. However, it can still be "uncanny" rather than "naturalistic" on the terms cited in POWER AND POTENCY PT. 2.  It's not that clothes "make the superman," as they do with Iron Man. But if they are uncanny, they can make the man SEEM LIKE a superman.

 

This is not so much a rule, though, as a broad generalization with respect to all twelve of the "uncanny trope" categories I devised.  (Tangentially, it doesn't look like I've done any surveys of all twelve categories here since 2014's THE INTELLIGIBILITY QUOTIENT PT. 2 -- and that was written before I severed the "outre outfits" category from those of "superlative skills" and "diabolical devices.") At present I can't think of any uncanny costumes that confer "passive power." They only confer "passive potency," in that they persuade witnesses to deem the wearers to be larger-than-life representations of justice or of corruption. 

However, in Part 2 I briefly referenced Tarzan. He doesn't "seem" like a superman within the uncanny domain; he would only "seem" like a superman if compared to a superman from the marvelous domain. But Tarzan possessing the utmost strength and speed attainable to a human makes his skill "superlative." Both Tarzan and Superman possess "active power" despite their disparate phenomenalities, while the previously mentioned Major Victory has only "passive power" by virtue of having been restored to life after his death. "Passive potency" applies to beings that may be marvelous or uncanny, but who operate more on the level of suggestion. Mulan's dragon is marvelous but cannot do anything beyond the level of "persuasion," and every hero who dresses up in a non-powered uncanny costume is using the art of persuasion to make himself seem more than normal. 

Finally, the best examples of "passive power" would seem to be in the category of "diabolical devices." As originally conceived, the Batarang was just a fancy version of a naturalistic boomerang, and so it possesses the same level of power when used. Aside from that usage, the Batarang can't do anything but look a little cooler than a regular 'rang.

However, if Batman attaches any sort of specialized tech to his Batarang-- even something as relatively simple as a smoke-bomb-- then it's no longer functioning as a boomerang, and the tech-addition registers as "active power" once more. Fin ally, examples of "active potency" are rare by my reckoning, with the most fruitful category being that of "enthralling hypnotism," since hypnotists are using specialized skills of persuasion. Somewhat similarly, the metaphenomenon that started these ruminations-- a Chinese doctor's use of weird acupuncture in LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING-- coheres with active potency, since the doctor was working with his patient's "chi meridians" to produce a curious metaphenomenal effect.

                  

VARIANT REVISIONS PT. 2

 Some of my current terminology re: "originary and variant propositions" was preceded by the two essay-series CRYPTO-CONTINUITY AND DOPPELGANGBANGERS, starting here. In those essays I more or less used "template" to stand in for the current "originary proposition," "template deviation" to stand in for "variant propositions," and "total deviation" to stand in for "null-variant propositions." All of these terms, though, are predicated on analyzing the propositions "from outside," seen from the POV of the "real" reader.

However, it's not impossible to see many if not all such variations "from inside," as if all of the propositions weren't just created by isolated raconteurs but were instead variations on archetypal tropes that precede even the first "originary proposition." 

It's true thar often the originary proposition is the strongest one in terms of evoking one or more of the four potentialities, which is why I previously compared such propositions to the sort of template used, say, in early printing technology. I mentioned in the CRYPTO series major icons like KING KONG and DRACULA, and it would be hard to argue that any of the variations on these figures, however entertaining, exceeded the originals in any way. 

      

  However, there are times that the originary proposition is not the most compelling, even on simpler levels. The durable Terrytoons stars "Heckle and Jeckle" are known by most viewers as a pair of wisecracking male magpies. However, the first cartoon in the series, 1946's "The Talking Magpies," posited them as a married male-and-female couple that caused no end of trouble for Farmer Al Falfa. Paul Terry then chose to issue a "rebooted" Heckle and Jeckle that same year with "The Uninvited Pests," and as two identical males with differing accents, the characters enjoyed another 51 theatrical cartoons. So in terms of popular success, the variant proposition was the more successful, not least because two obnoxious males could be used in many more slapstick situations than a married magpie pair.

Now, if one wanted to take the archetypal perspective I suggested above, one could imagine two parallel worlds, one in which Heckle and Jeckle were both male, and one in which they were a married couple. Most fictional propositions regarding parallel worlds are not much less chimerical. The parallel-world explanation for duplicate versions of DC characters such as Flash and Green Lantern sometimes verged on expressions of archetypal realities, though usually in fairly clumsy terms. The first Green Lantern begins very poorly-- I read the first volume of Golden Age reprints and could barely see any reasons for the success of the character beyond the base idea of a hero with a wonder-working "magic ring." Later in the series writers conceived a few subordinate characters-- Solomon Grundy, Vandal Savage-- evocative enough that DC Comics made them major figures in the company's later cosmology. But I'm not sure that, taken just on their Golden Age appearances, Grundy or Savage were as good IN THEIR TIME as the better villains of that era, from serials like Batman, Wonder Woman, or even Airboy and The Hangman. In contrast, the Silver Age Green Lantern, which crossbred the rudimentary Alan Scott concept with the "space ranger" ideas of the prose "Lensmen" series, displayed excellence in the kinetic and mythopoeic potentialities within a few years.

Even "soft reboots" within the same cosmos-- which make no use of "parallel worlds" as such-- are often treated as constituting variant propositions in, say, fandom-wikis like the DC Database. The 1988 ANIMAL MAN, reviewed here, dispenses with any idea that two separate Animal-Men co-exist in two distinct worlds. Rather, the first one knows that he was created by one author and rejected in favor of an updated hero with the same name by another author. Yet at the same time, Grant Morrison suggests that there's some loosely archetypal limbo where even the lamest characters ever created (hello, Ultra the Multi-Alien) continue to exist. And some soft reboots are performed not through intention but through error. In the first VARIANT REVISIONS, I took pains to analyze how Bob Haney first created a reasonably evocative mystery villain in one TEEN TITANS story. Yet when Haney later needed a make-work villain to plug into a hastily conceived scenario, the writer simply rewrote the established character's motivations to suit his current needs. As if to compound the error, George Perez constructed yet another ramshackle artifice on top of Haney's blunder and, to the extent that DC fans think of The Gargoyle at all, they probably defer to the Perez interpretation.

Some soft reboots even occur simply in response to changing tastes or priorities. Jerry Siegel's original Superman, while always devoted to justice, sometimes played fast and loose with legalities. DC editors didn't like that, possibly fearing a profitable character would get targeted by moral watchdogs-- which eventually happened anyway-- and so Silver Age Superman became an absolute stickler for obeying the law, even the law of made-up planets. Here too I would probably argue that Silver Age Superman surpassed the originary proposition in many though not all respects-- though the more creative Golden Age concepts of Siegel and his collaborators became the essential foundation for the Silver Age proposition.  

More to come.

        

GUNN SHOTS

 

"Our plot has nothing to do with All-Star Superman, but some of the aesthetics of what Grant wrote and what Frank drew were incredibly influential," he continues. "They also had that sort of science fiction, and the idea of Lex as a mad science sorcerer, almost. You know, science is his own sort of sorcery. And the giant, you know, the monsters and the threats and all of that the Silver Age look through a green lens. I think a lot of that was taken from All-Star Superman, and that was my biggest one, for sure. Also my favorite."-- Total Film.

This comment, made by James Gunn to various press-reps while publicizing a SUPERMAN LEGACY trailer, seems to be all that he ever said about the influence of the Morrison-Quitely ALL-STAR SUPERMAN on his film. The opening sentence, where he notes that he's not attempting anything like the ALL-STAR plot, didn't stop a lot of fans from speculating that the Morrison work would be a major thematic influence, rather than just influencing some aesthetic aspects of the movie. (I note that the Total Film essay specifies that some members of the cast took inspiration from the GN as well.)

Now that I've both reviewed the film and re-examined ALL-STAR, I don't even think Gunn took much from Morrison/Quitely in terms of aesthetics. Gunn and M/Q are both making use of the garish, larger-than-life imagery of Silver Age comic books. But Gunn takes those images at face value, while M/Q find ways to illuminate the symbolic potential of such images. For instance, Gunn's Fortress of Solitude carries no sense of wonder: it's just a repository of things Gunn needs to make the story work: a solar-ray healing machine for Superman's wounded body, and robots to attend his recovery. Interestingly, David Corenswet is quoted in this IGN piece as to how affected he was by the M/Q depiction of the Fortress, allowing him as a performer to have insight into the "gentle loneliness" of the Superman psyche. I think Corenswet conveyed in his performance the sense that, even with human friends and a few fellow Kryptonians, Superman is still terribly alone. In my ALL-STAR review I considered the possibility that the M/Q "vision of interconnectedness...makes Superman so devoted to helping others, and it may be the only thing about ALL-STAR to influence James Gunn, even though Gunn chose a totally different direction." But now I don't think Gunn, even though he may have comprehended what M/Q meant re: the connectedness of people, took any influence from ALL-STAR there. 

Gunn does want to convey a sense of Superman as being motivated by a deep and soulful caring for all living beings, even the kaiju-creature Luthor sends to tear up Metropolis. But the closest Gunn comes to articulating that motivation comes in the final scene between Superman and Luthor:

I'm as human as anyone. I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human. And that's my greatest strength.

        

Now that's a vision of commonality, but not of interconnectedness. It doesn't really explain the hero's extraordinary reverence for life-- something not shared by his fellow superheroes. Hawkgirl cheerfully executes one of the villains, saying, "I'm not Superman," thus channeling the sentiments of many of the harsher comic-book vigilantes, some of whom Gunn has adapted, such as Peacemaker. This scene suggests that even though Gunn was trying to convince viewers that Superman's great kindness is the new "punk rock," he knew that the audience would want to see at least one villain pay the ultimate penalty, and Luthor was clearly not going to be knocked off. Barring new info from seeing the movie a second time, I think Gunn was just trying to find some way to rationalize Superman's dominant Boy Scout image. He might have built more upon a possible "savior complex" the hero had built up in reaction to his understanding of the "legacy" left him by his Kryptonian parents, but if Gunn meant something along those lines, the concept didn't make it into the finished movie.

More Gunn Shots to come, possibly.

    

MYTHCOMICS: "SUPERMAN IN EXCELSIS" (ALL STAR SUPERMAN #1/ 10-12, 2007-08)

 

Even before I saw and reviewed SUPERMAN LEGACY, I'd heard somewhere that James Gunn might have been influenced by Grant Morrison's 2007-08 limited Superman series, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. I don't intend to research what Gunn might have publicly said about the Morrison work, though I assume he did make some statement or other. My reaction to the assertion was that I thought Gunn might have borrowed this or that storytelling trope, but I highly doubted that he would have any interest in Morrison's predominant themes of archetypal realities and creative evolution. But now that LEGACY is a box-office success, that leads me to examine ALL-STAR through the lens of myth-explication.

Previously I reviewed just one two-part story in ALL-STAR, the Bizarro sequence, without saying anything definitive about all twelve issues. I will now state that even though the ALL-STAR series is almost certainly the best Superman story of the 21st century (and may continue to do so if the comic continues until 2099), its diverse stories don't all sustain my concept of symbolic concrescence. Morrison made a studied effort to bring all his concepts under his chosen theme, the aforementioned ideal of creative evolution, but I don't think he was successful across the board. He formulated a sort of "frame-story" in which the villainous Luthor finally manages to doom Superman, and this frame starts with issue 1, becomes a leitmotif throughout issues 2 through 9, and culminates in issues 10-12. The stories in 2-9 are many times better than what usually passes for a good Superman story in this century, but their purpose is not predominantly to illustrate the main theme. The "in-the-frame" stories are Morrison's attempt to isolate all the quintessential tropes of the Superman series up to that point-- mostly the tropes of the 1955-70 Silver Age-- though he works in references to other eras (Steve Lombard of the 1970s, Doomsday of the 1990s). For me, the frame-story, for which I've used the title Morrison gave to the last installment, is the only segment that thoroughly fulfills the theme of creative evolution.

         

 

"Excelsis" begins with daredevil billionaire Leo Quintero (note the possibly coincidental resemblance of the name to "quintessential"). He and a crew of androids fly a spacecraft to the periphery of the sun, ostensibly to map the solar body, though there's also a reference to taking fire from the sun in some Promethean endeavor, in line with a couple of references to the Ray Bradbury short story "The Golden Apples of the Sun." However, Lex Luthor, who's apparently aware that Superman is watching over this scientific project, smuggles on board an android timed to blow up the ship. Superman bursts in and expels the android, but in so doing, he like Icarus (not a Morrison reference) flies close to the sun. Even though the sun is the source of most or all of Superman's fantastic powers, the hero's not able to simply barrel his way his way through the solar mass here, as he did in so many other comics-tales. The Kryptonian's system is poisoned by too much solar "information," and Quintero informs Superman that he's likely to die soon. As something of a measured boon, Quintero also states that if he can't save Superman with his science, he'll try to create "replacement supermen."

While anticipating his death, Superman seeks to arrange his affairs for that contingency, though he still has to deal with continuous menaces to Metropolis. One of his most vital decisions is to reveal to Lois Lane the truth of his double identity, as well as giving her a guided tour of his Fortress of Solitude. Among the many wonders he shows off is a "baby Sun-Eater," which is Morrison's only reference to the history of Superboy's involvement with the Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes-- though the creature pops up later in a more essential role. Lois doesn't entirely believe the hero, and he isn't truthful about everything. Superman informs Lois that his recent visit to the sun "tripled my curiosity, my imagination, my creativity"-- which seems to be true in a general sense-- but the hero doesn't tell the girl reporter that too much sun has also killed him. (I wonder if there's a parallel to the psychotropic drugs that appear in many Morrison stories, though I don't know how often such substances result in death in his stories.)

   

Superman keeps busy despite the sword hanging over his head. As Clark Kent he interviews Luthor, who's been sentenced to execution, and the hero isn't entirely able to conceal his revulsion at the mad scientist's waste of his talents. He finds a new world for the Kandorians to inhabit. He visits the Kent farm, recollecting the circumstances of Pa Kent's passing, which in Morrison's world involves a meeting with "Supermen of the Future." And, to experiment with seeing how Earth would get along without him, he creates his own pocket-planet, "Earth-Q," which is essentially our own world (complete with an artist, implicitly Joe Shuster, creating the fictional Superman). Morrison presents this Superman as a modest god who constantly seeks the best for mortals, albeit a god with human limitations.   

   

Morrison's intra-frame stories are loosely united by a "twelve tasks of the hero" motif, but the final and most important feat is that Superman, unlike Captain Ahab, succeeds in "striking the sun itself." But this isn't the non-sentient solar orb that accidentally poisoned the hero. Rather, this surrogate sun is Solaris, a solar computer from the future, an entity who wants to usurp the position of the regular sun and become the object of Earth's veneration. Luthor's responsible for Solaris' presence as well, apparently because the villain didn't want Superman to go off and die in private. Instead, Solaris bombards Earth with red sun radiation, so that Luthor will be able to personally torment and execute a powerless Superman.      

However, in a moment of irony, Superman outthinks his enemy-- using "brain over brawn," a line which James Gunn more or less recycled for LEGACY. The hero uses a gravity gun that accelerates Luthor's metabolism, to burn out the super-powers the villain gave himself. And on top of that, Luthor is forced to see the universe through Superman's eyes: "this is how he sees all the time, every day. Like, it's all just us, in here, together. And we're all we've got." This is implicitly the vision of interconnectedness that makes Superman so devoted to helping others, and it may be the only thing about ALL-STAR to influence James Gunn, even though Gunn chose a totally different direction.      

So both Luthor and Solaris are defeated. But because Solaris poisoned the sun, Superman doesn't expire on mundane Earth, but ascends to the Heavens, becoming joined with the body that has slain him. Back on Earth Lois keeps the faith, telling Jimmy that the hero hasn't died, but is only seeking to heal the sun with a new "heart." Morrison suggests but does not affirm that this may be true, but clearly, in this sequence, the writer is using the trope of the hero's death to sum up, not simply his accomplishments, but all the creativity that gave him the status of a modern myth.    

Finally, the Latin phrase "in excelsis" translates to "in the highest," and appeared in a Christian hymn within the phrase "Glory to God in the highest." But within the context of the ALL-STAR stories, "in excelsis" connotes humanity's need to emulate its highest creative potential. This is underscored in issue 10, where Morrison and Quitely give the reader a glance at Earth-Q, where its version of the 15th-century philosopher Pico del Mirandola states the following.

“Let us not yield sovereignty even to them, the highest of the angelic hierarchies! Become instead like them in all their glory and dignity. Imitation is man’s nature, and if he but wills it, so shall he surpass even imagination’s greatest paragons.”

Morrison seems to be alone in drawing a connection between empathy for all beings and "imagination's greatest paragons," and that may be the thing that keeps ALL-STAR on a "higher plane" that most of what passes for "Superman mythology" in this era.       

    

ICONS AND IDENTIFICATION

In MY SHORTEST POST YET I sated that what I term "icons" are the parts of narrative through which readers identify with various presences in fictional narrative, and without such identificatory figures, no one would ever invest any thought or feeling into the broad plot-scenarios called "tropes." This assertion brings me back to an elaboration of my "law of identification," which I gave its first full elaboration in the 2011 essay HERE COMES DAREDEVIL, THE MAN WITHOUT IDENTITY.                                                                                                                                                                                   Briefly, the essay addressed a speaker's failure to define fictional characters as vessels of identification, choosing to simply deem them "unreal" by a positivist philosophy. I responded by contrasting my law of identification with the "law of identity" attributed to philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, to wit:                                                           

"Daredevil is not a phenomenon with a real existence (at least not in materialistic/positivistic terms), but a fictional construct.

Ergo, neither Daredevil nor any other PURELY fictional character is subject to the "law of identity."

Rather, the Man Without Fear is, like all other purely fictional characters, is governed by "the law of identification."

Now, there is a "law of identification" out there in the Googleverse that has been coined in respect to religious matters. However, my current usage applies principally to literature. It can be *applied* to religion with some alteration, which may make for some future essay.

My law goes like this: Because Daredevil is a construct whose sole purpose is to be identified with, whenever anyone does so, that person brings into being the only reality (or "truth" if one prefers that term) that Daredevil can possibly have.

Therefore, neither a foolish child nor a discriminating adult is in any way wrong to say "I'm Daredevil," as long as either of them has actually identified with the character. Both would be wrong to apply that identificatory process to the world of real phenomena, as the poster points out in his tut-tutting manner. But if the act of identification is real, one can say with complete accuracy, "I am Daredevil-- or David Copperfield-- or Captain Ahab-- or Freewheelin' Franklin Freekowski."                                                                   

I have sometimes wondered if, before Plato wrote down a sentence or two that Socrates may (or may not) have spoken, these respective philosophers were aware of pre-Socratic traditions, or even religious concepts, that asserted that two unalike things could be the same in some quasi-mystical fashion, and that the later philosophers were reacting against that idea in forming the rudiments of the "law of identity." Be that as it may, art, particularly in the form of literature, was already devoted to forging identification between fictional characters who did not exist and non-fictional readers/audiences who enjoyed at least a temporally fixed existence. In any event, it should be further noted that no individual's identification with a fictional character is completely identical with another reader's identification. It's only the broad process of bringing a character "to life" that is identical in all "real readers." The reader takes his cue from the expectations that the author sets up as to the "reality" of the text. But that reality can fluctuate, as noted in this essay: '"phase shift" is my term for the process by which a function in literature-- which parallels my term "icon"-- shifts from one state of being (within the "horizontal" world of its purely fictional existence) to another state of being.' By extension, this means that although in the real world, Old Gene Phillips sustains "the law of identity" with Young Gene Phillips, there is no such law governing Superboy and Superman, or Dick Grayson Robin with Dick Grayson Nightwing. The latter pairings have different end-results for their identificatory processes, even if the overall process remains the same, and so Superman can be "phase shifted" into the different identity of Superboy-- even though anyone reading the stories of either character knows that they are the same character at different age-ranges.         

THOUGHTS ON BILL FINGER

I've recently finished two DC ARCHIVES collections of Golden Age Batman comics, and once more I am impressed with the level of quality in comparison with other formula-comics from the period. Yet the nature of this extra quality is hard to define.                                       

Whatever that "je ne se quoi" might be, it has nothing to do with a flouting of formula, that tedious preoccupation of the comic-book elitists. During the Golden Age, the dominant practice of comic-book publishers was to load their magazines with short stories of about eight pages each. This seems to have applied whether or not the magazines featured continuing characters, and the strategy probably evolved from the idea that the kid-readers had short attention spans and were more likely to pick up issues if they offered a lot of varied content. For adventure comics in particular, there evolved the formula that some have called the "three-act structure:"   

   (1) Villain, whether new or recurring, launches his first crime, defying either conventional lawmen or the starring hero, but escapes, (2) The hero crosses paths with the villain again, and the villain either simply escapes or subdues the hero and leaves him in a death-trap, (3) The hero either escapes a trap or finds a new means to track down the villain and defeats him, whether he's captured, dies, or merely seems to perish.                                                                       

 I haven't read every Bill Finger out there, even in comics alone. But I think I'm aware of all of his "career highs," and Rik Worth's book on the early days of Finger and his BATMAN co-creator Bob Kane has helped fill in a lot of blanks on this era of comics-history. Going by this biography, as well as an interview with Finger's grown son in ALTER EGO magazine, it appears that Finger didn't have any pretensions beyond making well-crafted formula adventure-stories for most of his life.                         

 What Finger seemed to have, though, was an inordinate talent for creating characters who transcended the limits of their formulaic stories. Dozens upon dozens of other writers followed the aforementioned "three-act structure" for such characters as Vigilante, Wildcat, Star-Spangled Kid, Tarantula, Human Torch, Black Terror and all the rest. But most other formula-stories in other features never escape the bounds of their own restrictions. Finger seems not only to have possessed the ability to take the formula-elements to their furthest extremes-- far more, I'd argue, than many more critically lauded talents like Jack Cole and C.C. Beck-- he also seemed to have inspired most of the other writers in the Bob Kane "stable," such as Edmond Hamilton and Gardner Fox. I'm not saying that any such imitations came about for abstract artistic reasons, though. If Gardner Fox wrote better stories for BATMAN than he did for RED MASK, it's probably because he recognized that the people writing the checks expected a special level of craft.                 

Finger also holds a special place in forging the trope of "the criminal who makes his crimes follow an artistic pattern." There were "pattern criminals," in the sense I'm using the term, in the pulp prose fiction on which most Golden Age adventure-comics patterned themselves, and a few preceded the rise of Superman and Batman. But what I've encountered in those earlier sources usually fit one of two types. First is the "one-gimmick villain,"-- an evildoer who gains control of one distinctive weapon, like the poison vampire bats of the Spider's 1935 foe "The Bat Man." Second is the "all-purpose villain," who can conjure a lot of weapons from an illimitable arsenal, like the 1938 "Munitions Master" from DOC SAVAGE, or Superman's first two "mad scientist" foes, The Ultra-Humanite and Luthor. Barring any new revelations, though, the Joker appears to be the first exemplar of a third type: the "pattern criminal," who repeatedly keeps using gimmicks that reference some particular fetish or propensity. The Joker only uses one humor-based gimmick in his debut, the famed "Joker venom," but Finger and other Bat-writers kept finding new gimmicks for the Clown Prince of Crime to employ in his war of one-upmanship with the Dynamic Duo. 

Jerry Siegel debuted Luthor a month or so after the first appearance of the Joker, but as stated he was always an all-purpose villain. Siegel didn't tap into the appeal of "pattern criminals" until he launched his own somewhat risible take on Batman and Robin with the duo of "the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy" in October 1941. The Kid and his partner began battling arguable pattern-types like The Needle-- though I imagine Finger's second big antagonist, The Penguin, predated all or most of these by some months, since he popped up just a couple months after the Kid's debut. Superman's first recurring pattern-criminals, The Prankster and The Puzzler, both debuted in 1942.                                                                                   

  I think Finger's power to create good villains-- and, hypothetically, his ability to inspire other creators by his profit-making example-- sprang from his interest in figuring out at least rough psychological motives for his evildoers, just as he may have done for his heroes. This interest in even shallow psychology outstrips most of Finger's contemporaries. Jack Cole had an artistic talent which none of the BATMAN artists could have emulated had they wanted to, and also a taste for the ghoulish that exceeded the best japes of the Joker. But Cole's villains are almost entirely one-dimensional, and his best-known hero Plastic Man is not too much better. Both Rik Worth and Fred Finger suggest that Bill Finger was a dreamer who never quite grew up, so that he was rarely able to manage money or time. But I'd argue that even in his weaker stories-- and Finger did a lot of goofy, poorly conceived stories in addition to his quality fare-- he shows a greater, perhaps childlike ability to take the weirdest ideas seriously, in a spirit of uninhibited play.                  

NEAR-MYTHS: DARK KNIGHTS OF STEEL (2021-2022)

I've not reviewed many of DC's "Elseworlds" projects-- which is what DARK KNIGHTS OF STEEL is, even though it does not use that tag-- because they tend to be no more than gaming-scenarios, where the creators move various characters into new positions for nothing but novelty's sake. An example of such an aesthetically nugatory work is 2015's DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM. An awful lot of STEEL consists of just the usual aimless moving of franchise chess-pieces around for little effect, so in one sense there's not much that's special about this effort by writer Tom Taylor and artist Yasmine Putri (assisted by various artists drawing in her style).

The basic concept: Krypton still explodes, but this time Jor-El and his still pregnant wife Lara escape their doomed world and migrate to a "high-fantasy" version of DC-Earth. By "high fantasy" in this context, I mean that there's no necessary connection with anything in real-world history or with anything in regular DC-Earth, which theoretically is "our" Earth with superheroes and magical critters. The STEEL world is made up of assorted faux-medieval kingdoms inhabited by rough facsimiles of DC characters, and although magic is a regular presence, science is just barely getting started. 

Through assorted contrivances Jor-El and Lara ascend to the monarchy of one land after the deaths of the previous rulers, Thomas and Martha Wayne. In addition to Lara birthing Kal-El, she also births "Zala Jor-El," a.k.a. Supergirl, who seems to have been partly named for her "real" DC-Universe father "Zor-El." And then there's Bruce, who goes around in a Bat-helmet and is one of the few double-identity characters called by his superhero name. He's called a "bastard" in the genealogical sense, for reasons not revealed until halfway through the story, and the relationship of teenaged Bruce and teenaged Kal-El was the one or two elements that kept me curious about how the story would turn out.

The other thirty and forty characters are all spawned on the high-fantasy Earth and range from close approximations to the originals (John Constantine, "court jester" Harley Quinn, Princess Diana, Jefferson Pierce) to '"in-name only" congeners (The Metal Men, a bunch of knights who use the names of metals). We get two lesbian relationships, one more or less canonical (Harley and Poison Ivy) and one out of the blue (Diana and Zala), but they don't consume a lot of space. John Constantine gets the second longest arc, as he's responsible for a doomsday prophecy that seems to condemn the El Family. The prophecy appears to come true in such a way that three major kingdoms go to war, but Constantine eventually discovers that the menace behind the conflict is tied to a different flavor of DC-alien. I confess Taylor surprised me with his subterfuge here.

I said that the witty, lively relationship between Kal-El and Bruce was one of the things I esteemed about STEEL. The other is Putri's art. In a period when an awful lot of comic-book art is banal and ugly, Putri's designs possess a grandiose quality that reminds me of the strong fantasy-work of stellar figures like Richard Corben and Craig Russell, just to name two. Even when Taylor's just giving readers a jejune rehash of "How Oliver Met Dinah," Putri's art has an elevating quality foreign to most 21st-century comics art. I can see myself coming back to enjoy STEEL years from now, just to see how Putri gave the various DC heroes a "Brothers Hildebrandt" treatment.

PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 3

Successful spinoffs, in contrast, usually take a path opposed to that of funneling charisma-characters into ensembles, where they have collective stature. Usually a given icon is introduced in a Subordinate relationship to a Prime icon or icons, and then the Sub icon gets a separate serial, thus accruing some degree of stature, depending on how the serial fares in terms of either quantitative or qualitative escalation. -- INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE PT. 2.

In PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 2, I described how a particular stature-bearing icon, Robin the Boy Wonder, completed a phrase shift away from being an icon within a superordinate ensemble to being (in the identity of Nightwing) a stand-alone superordinate icon. Here I want to deal with a phase shift related to a subordinate icon graduating to a qualified superordinate status-- qualified, because the icon remains stature-dependent upon the icon from which she was derived.

For most of her existence, Lois Lane was a part of Superman's subordinate ensemble. Starting in SUPERMAN #28 (1944), the girl reporter got a backup series in that title for about a year. Now, for the length of time that said series existed, Lois Lane was the superordinate icon, while Clark Kent/Superman, whenever he appeared, became a subordinate icon. But for Superman that was a very qualified status, since Lois's popularity was contingent upon that of Superman. 

Now, in the essay referenced in the quote above, I went on to describe how the "spin-off" Batgirl functioned as a subordinate icon within the Batman serials up until the point that she graduated to her own serial. However, BECAUSE Batgirl appeared to be fast-tracked to getting her own series within about five years of her debut, she was also a proto-crossover. Lois by contrast was a pure subordinate icon, and neither her 1944 serial nor the Silver Age one that lasted for about thirteen years-- SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND LOIS LANE-- really did anything to lesson her standing as what I've labeled a "Charisma Dominant Sub." My same verdict holds even given the existence of a couple of television shows in which Lois and Superman were arguably equal Prime types, those being LOIS AND CLARK and SUPERMAN AND LOIS.   

Now, all the serials in which Lois is a stature-dependent Prime and Superman is her Sub do not count as crossovers, the way all of Batgirl's appearances in BATMAN serials do hold that status, simply because Batgirl became a "Stature Dominant Prime." By the same token, Superman does not have any crossover-status with Lois in her own serials, in the way that he does when he teams with Batman in the WORLD'S FINEST feature. The "phase shift" associated with a support-icon being spun off in a separate feature, but a feature that does NOT alter the overall status of the feature's star, is distinct from the one in which such an alteration of status does take place. For this, the example of Robin-turned-Nightwing is instructive, because once Nightwing is independent of Batman he's no longer automatically aligned with the Bat-universe. One example I cited was that because Batman meets Ra's Al Ghul after discontinuing his partnership with Dick Grayson, Ra's Al Ghul does not belong to the Grayson-verse. Thus, whenever Nightwing and Ra's Al Ghul cross paths in any story, that's a charisma-crossover, because Ra's is exclusively Solo Batman's foe. If Ra's has a later encounter with one of Batman's later Robins-- Jason Todd, Tim Drake-- then there's no crossover, because those Robins at that time are aligned with Batman. If one of those Robins phase-shifts his way into a new identity, as "Jason Todd Robin" did to become The Red Hood, then any encounter between Ra's and Red Hood would be a charisma-crossover.

Now, in the Silver Age LOIS LANE feature, unlike the short-lived Golden Age one, the Prime star sometimes met other icons who belonged to Superman's Sub-cosmos, such as Lex Luthor. Everything in Superman's cosmos is also in the dependent cosmos of the girl reporter, so Luthor and other Super-villains have no crossover value, as they would if they interacted with Batman under the WOR LD'S FINEST umbrella. 

Lana Lang presents a slight anomaly, because, by the rules I set up in Part 2 of this series, Lana belongs to the SUPERBOY cosmos, not to that of SUPERMAN, because the personas are different even though they belong to the same person at different ages. Further, at the time that Lana made adult appearances in LOIS LANE, she also continued to appear as her juvenile self in the SUPERBOY title. Lana Lang remains a "Charisma Dominant Sub" in the SUPERBOY feature, but Mature Lana Lang's status is not identical with that of Juvenile Lana Lang (who, incidentally, had only debuted two years previous). 

The former first appears in a 1952 story, "The Girls in Superman's Life," in SUPERMAN #78, but this story is just a one-off. Mature Lana does not show up again until the first Silver Age LOIS LANE comics, 1957's SHOWCASE #9. The two stories don't blend, because the SHOWCASE story ignores Lois having previously met Mature Lana in 1952. Mature Lana is a Sub to Superman in 1952 and a Sub to Lois in 1957, and she continues in that capacity whenever she appears in either feature from then on. She's arguably more strongly aligned to the LOIS feature than the SUPERMAN one despite having probably made more total appearances in the latter. This superior alignment to the LOIS feature s qualitative in nature, because Lana as a competitor to Lois for the hero's heart proved much more significant in that feature than any function(s) she served in assorted SUPERMAN stories. Since "phase-shifted Lana" makes two separate but not congruent debuts in both 1952 and 1957. I would regard that both debuts are crossovers, whether between Superman and Mature Lana in 1952 and between Lois and Mature Lana in 1957. 

DEPARTMENT OF COMICS CURIOSITIES #30: ACHILLES HEALING

 While kryptonite was still waiting in the wings to be introduced, Jerry Siegel occasionally showed his hero being adversely affected by various vulnerabilities, like an ancient Mayan weapon that channeled sunlight, in SUPERMAN #30.

One issue later, the hero voluntarily undergoes a ray-bombardment experiment and loses his memory, eventually turning into his new secret identity, Mary Worth.

QUICKIE REVIEWS OF (FAIRLY) NEW STUFF

Probably because of my current fascination with crossovers, I've been seeking out whatever related items I could find in public libraries. None of my readings have been impressive enough for a full review, but I might as well set down a few impressions of 21st-century treatments of crossovers.

First, though, I'll note that prior to these investigations I reread all the WEST COAST AVENGERS issues written by Steve Englehart in the 1980s. I enjoyed these stories much more than the current offerings, for all that I don't have a ton of remarks on this mini-oeuvre. My main takeaway is that in the eighties, the ideal of Marvel continuity was still rigorous enough that a hardcore fan-writer like Englehart could bring together dozens of stories by himself and other raconteurs in order to forge the identity of the WCA super-group. Characters like Tigra, who had flourished neither in solo outings nor in the original, New York-based Avengers acquired much more substance as a result of Englehart's efforts. Not all his decisions were without flaw-- Moon Knight as Avenger was never a good fit-- but it's a solid series, regrettably torpedoed when fan-favorite John Byrne took over the title.

I can't pin down a particular diegetic event that made Marvel less unitary in its approach to continuity, though I imagine the two main factors in the twenty-first century were (a) the emphasis on "celebrity" arists and writers, who would often just do their take on a given character or series and not worry about being "in continuity," and (b) the fact that by the 2000s there was just too much continuity to keep track of. Thus in all of the books I explored, continuity is something of a "catch as catch can" game.

DOCTOR STRANGE DAMNATION-- One of the co-authors of this outing was Nick Spenser, who gained fame (or infamy) for the fake-out story in which Captain America was revealed to be a Hydra agent and thus a kissing cousin to Nazism. DAMNATION spins off a development in some other story, wherein all of Las Vegas is destroyed. The Master of the Mystic Arts arrives and brings the city and all its slain people back into existence (sort of a lesser version of the reveral of "the Thanos snap.") But before being destroyed the Nevada "sin city" went to hell, and now Mephisto controls the strings of the reborn metropolis. Strange then forms a team of mostly oddball choices to beat the devil. Biggest plus is that the concentration on the fate of one city proves more appealing than the usual universe-threat. Biggest minus is that none of Strange's allies play off one another in any interesting ways, so the crossover aspect is wasted.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Volumes 1-3-- These were all Brian Michael Bendis stories, and as such they're very freeform, with minimal plotting. There are a few good fight-scenes, particularly the one between Gamora and Angela. (I'd never heard that Marvel bought the character off Neil Gaiman. Way to get rid of some dead weight, Gaiman.) But Bendis most reminds me of the dozens of TV writers who tried to write like Joss "BUFFY" Whedon. Those writers missed that each of Whedon's characters had individual voices, and so just gave everyone funny-sardonic lines. Bendis is like these writers, except he's never funny.

FEARLESS DEFENDERS-- Don't think I ever read Cullen Bunn before, though I'd heard his name. This six-issue tale, titled DOOM MAIDENS, teams up one actual Defender, The Valkyie, with a motley crew of unattached Marvel femmes: Misty Knight, the New Mutant once called Mirage, and "Warrior Woman," which is a new name for the Amazon Hippolyta. Oh, and there's a lesbian scientist who tries to get it on with Valkyrie, so that helped Bunn get a GLAAD nomination, but she's pretty forgettable. The "doom maidens" of the story are a bunch of dead Valkyries brought back to life to menace the world, but Bunn can't get the vibe of Norse mythology to save his life. After being routed by the undead warriors, these dim Defenders debate bringing in other superheroes, even some male ones. But for fuzzy reasons, the Bad Valkyries can only be repelled by female heroes, which allows Bunn to work in eleven other heroines. Though this sounds like a potential Great Moment in Comics Pulchritude, the fights in FEARLESS are poorly choreographed and all the heroines sound like one another.

DEADMAN-- This was one of Neal Adams's swan songs, as he returned to the DC character that brought him to fans' attention, This godawful series might prove that a lot of old-school artists lost their discipline in the 21st century, except that I think Adams' early successes were largely contingent on his collaborators. DEADMAN makes all the other offerings look coherent by comparison, as the Ghoulish Guardian once more tries to figure who really, really killed him way back in the sixties. At least Bendis made some efforts, however limited, to distinguish his characters from one another, but here you've got characters as different as Deadman, the Spectre and the Phantom Stranger all speaking in one voice: The Last Angry Spook. In the sixties Adams' heavy melodrama was a breath of fresh air compared to the overemphasis on exposition, Now it's a stone drag, man.

SUPERMAN: AMERICAN ALIEN-- Another revisionist retelling of Superman's origins, emphasizing his identity as Clark Kent of Kansas. I don't know writer Max Landry, but he has better control of melodrama than anyone else being reviewed here. His Kryptonian hero does seem to get drunk on Earth-booze pretty damn easily, though. ALIEN contains yet another contentious first meeting between Batman and the hero who's not yet Superman, and I don't care for Superman getting the idea of his costume from the Gotham Guardian. Nice fight with Lobo at the end. Not likely to become a dominant paradigm for Superman's early years.

HOWLING COMMANDOS OF SHIELD-- I'd seen reference to this "SHIELD Monster Squad" in some SPIDER-MAN cartoon, so I had to check this out. Apparently most of the monster-themed characters had appeared in other Marvel titles, though I was only familiar with Man-Thing, Orrgo (one of those giant Kirby Kreatures from the early sixties), the short-lived Manphibian (whom I actually don't remember, though I think I have his first appearance), and SHIELD agents Jasper Sitwell and Dum Dum Dugan. Or rather, simulacra of the two agents, since Sitwell is a nearly brain-dead zombie and Dugan is an artificial version of the deceased original "Howler." The oldies and the relative "newbies" don't play off one another's powers very well, and some, like Man-Thing, just don't belong in the "spy game." However, artist Brent Schoonover provides some appealing action and emotional scenes, and writer Frank Barbiere does the best job of any writer here at giving each character a particular voice. I don't think these "Creature Commandos" went on to further adventures in the comics, but at least their one series was diverting.

STRENGTH TO DREAM, THE SEQUEL

 In the first two parts of STRENGTH TO DREAM, STRENGTH TO AWAKEN, respectively here and here, I pursued a comparison between Samuel T. Coleridge's comment about "the suspension of disbelief" and Stephen King's response to that concept. I then followed up with a third essay based on my two categories of the metaphenomenal. I applied some of my observations to King's comments in his 1981 book DANSE MACABRE, concluding that what he and Coleridge called "disbelief" was more like "disengagement." Naturally, since King only talked about the metaphenomenal in general terms, there were no explicit comparisons between what he wrote in DANCE MACABRE and my NUM theory.

However, when I reread BATMAN #400, reviewed here, I was reminded that this very special anniversary issue included an essay by King, entitled "Why I Chose Batman." In this essay, King explains that as a comic-reading kid he far preferred Batman to Superman, and the reason he gives for that preference seems to be rooted in his personal sense of disbelief-- even though the way he frames that disbelief would seem to contradict everything he wrote in his DANSE essay. In that essay, King seems to disparage those who can't allow themselves to roll with a good fantasy-yarn:

They simply can't lift the weight of fantasy. The muscles of the imagination have grown too weak.

Now, in the following segment of the 1986 essay, King seems to be endorsing a lack of imaginative muscle.

I remember the ads for the first SUPERMAN movie...the ones that said YOU'LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY. Well, I didn't... But when Batman swung down into the Joker's hideout on a rope or stopped the Penguin from dropping Robin into a bucket of boiling hog-fat with a well-thrown Batarang, I believed. These were not likely things, I freely grant you that, but they were possible things.

Now, King probably did not know anything about any theories about fantasy-fiction, least of all those of Tzvetan Todorov and his theory of the uncanny, which I've refuted here numerous times. But he-- or at least his younger self-- is validating his Batman preference over Superman (though he says he did like the Man of Steel somewhat) simply because he didn't think Batman violated Young King's sense of what was possible in the real world. And nowhere in "Chose" does Older King invalidate what Young King thought about these matters, even though five years earlier he'd turned a pitying eye on audiences who couldn't place credence in Nyarlathotep, the Blind Faceless One.

Of course, everyone has blind spots, and I'm reasonably sure that King, having been asked to celebrate the Caped Crusader for an anniversary special, just reeled off his kid-memories to serve that purpose. He certainly wasn't making an aesthetic statement. However, what he said is not unique, since a lot of comics-fans have expressed a similar preference for the Bat-dude over the Super-dude. And often the criteria of these fans is similar: Batman seems possible, Superman impossible. 

Of course, in fiction nothing is impossible; readers only make that judgment if they are of the belief that fiction MUST reflect the reality of everyday experience. Years ago I played around with the idea that I might define the marvelous and the uncanny in terms of probability. But as I recall, I abandoned this notion, because I don't think fiction must reflect everyday experience, and indeed, fiction is attractive specifically because it is not tied to external reality, the reality of "one cause=one effect." Some people don't want fiction to indulge in impossibilities, and that's their prerogative, but by King's own 1981 standards, their disengagement from overt fantasies might be deemed a sign of imaginative underdevelopment.

Lastly, just to pick at King's analysis on one more point, I don't know exactly what Batman comics he read. But I don't think that there was ever a time when Batman didn't have substantial encounters with marvelous, "impossible" phenomena. King cites examples of bizarre criminals that in themselves conform to the domain of the uncanny. Since he was born in 1947, he wouldn't have seen the hero's contentions with vampires or mad scientists who change people into destructive giants. But if he was reading comics in the 1950s, then he certainly would have seen Batman contending with super-crooks who used freeze-rays and force-fields, even if he King made it a point not to buy any of the "Batman vs. aliens" entries.

On a side-note, King's essay also mentions in passing the same-year success of Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. In 1986, this only meant a new validation for Batman after years of being deemed the Number Two DC hero after the company's Kryptonian mascot. But neither King nor anyone else could have guessed how sweeping the influence of Miller, and after him Tim Burton, would prove, so that today, more often than not, the Gotham Guardian gets top billing over the Metropolis Marvel. And so King's essay seems slightly prescient, even if I don't think people prefer Batman for exactly the same reasons he specified.