Pop Culture Will Eat Itself

I haven’t been making much use of this blog lately, and it’s not because I don’t want to—just the opposite. I keep coming up with ever more elaborate and baroque ideas for blog essays, many of them part of a putative in-depth series, but my problem is that I never want to launch into them without getting my ideas organized first. Clearly this is leading to literary paralysis, so I’ve decided to just launch into a post, or series of posts, and let it develop as it comes. All of this is to say, if the following seems somewhat on the vague side, you may understand why.

Aaaaaanyway.

Being a geek on the internet, I can’t help but notice the contentious tone that’s settled into fandoms of various stripes. (Thank you, doctor obvious.) I choose to stay away from the more sordid corners of the net and cleave to the more intelligent and thoughtful writers on pop culture, but that doesn’t mean I’m more likely to avoid contentiousness. Just the opposite, in fact. Some of the smartest and most insightful bloggers in geekdom, or any subdomain thereof, have (often delightfully) acid tongues. But there’s an interesting attitude that’s been forming for a while now among the nerd literati—the desire to inject some much-needed self-awareness into the culture of geekdom through criticism. There’s no getting around the fact that the more ravening segments of fandom have gotten out of control, feeding a sense of entitlement grown ludicrously bloated (see, for example, the petition or whatever it was to change the ending of Mass Effect 3) and bizarre tribalism centered around serving the finances of huge corporations (here see the decision by many geeks to side with Marvel against the Kirby heirs, or, slightly less toxically, the caterwauling over The Dark Knight’s failure to win Best Picture or beat Titanic at the box office.) And of course, it’s become de rigeur for nerds to reject considered criticism of their Favourite Thing as a mortal insult that cannot be allowed to stand, leading to an unfortunate watering down of serious analytical reviews. In the face of all this, an attitude of contempt and disdain towards geekdom is not only understandable but often laudable.

And yet.

A knee-jerk attitude from an intelligent contrarian standing against mindless groupthink is nevertheless a knee-jerk attitude, and I feel like we’re starting to see some negative blowback. Essentially, there’s an ultra-defensive elitist mindset forming that seems to feel they can take it for granted that [pop culture property X] is a waste of time propagated by the dregs of the net, and that anyone who speaks up in its defense is by default an unwashed, unselfaware nerd. This is the “Oh, now a bunch of NERDS are gonna complain that I dissed Arkham Asylum” response, and it seems to tilt perilously close to shutting down debate just as the rabid hordes of fanboyism do. If you post your thoughts on the internet, you’re likely to find people disagreeing with you; that’s sort of the point of the internet.

But I didn’t really want to talk about the Great Nerd Wars in particular, I wanted to investigate a particular aspect of this attitude: namely, the way some pop culture properties are elevated above others, both in the short term and the long term.

Here is a list of things:

--Lord of the Rings.
--Mass Effect.
--Marvel Comics.
--DC Comics.
--Watchmen.
--Scott Pilgrim.
--Firefly.
--Game of Thrones.
--The Wire.
--Star Trek.
--Doctor Who.
--Star Wars.
--The Prisoner.
--My Little Pony.
--Rap music.
--They Might Be Giants.
--The Beatles.
--The Coen Brothers.
--David Cronenberg.
--Joss Whedon.
--Rob Zombie.
--The Boston Red Sox.

I’m guessing that you see that as a pretty varied list—I don’t just mean your personal likes and dislikes, I mean that these all seem to occupy wildly different places in the pop cultural sphere. Some of them are “classics”, part of the canon of the 20th or earlier 21st century, and some of them are trash culture or ephemeral entertainments, and some fall somewhere in between. I bet your mind sorted them out to an almost subconscious degree. And yet, all of these are the subject of passionate pop cultural fandoms—what we’ve collectively decided to refer to as “geekdom”. Some of these aren’t thought of as “geeky” per se, and yet the passion they engender seems very much of the same quality. And to a degree, it’s rather surprising that we separate them in this way.

Please understand, I am NOT trying to make an argument that everything’s subjective, as a springboard to excusing my own taste’s or anyone’s. This might seem like the first step down the path towards the argument that Citizen Kane and The Transformers Movie are both equally valid works of art*, and that isn’t my intention. I’m just saying that these properties all have essentially the same qualities, in the scientific sense; they’re all, fundamentally, the same kind of thing. So why are some easily dismissable and require a burden of proof from anyone trying to argue in their favour, while others demand to be taken seriously, even by their detractors?

Look at Lord of the Rings, which is the one thing on this list that could potentially escape this little Pop Culture Ghetto I’ve devised. (And I think “ghetto” is precisely the wrong word for it, but let’s leave it for now.) LOTR was written as a sideline, a hobby of sorts, by a literary professor with a day job. It was his life’s work, and it was produced as an artistic statement rather than an attempt to make money or win an audience**, and it’s had a significant literary impact; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to elevate it to the position of “literature”. But it’s a work of pop culture, too, one whose fanbase and impact are very much in the same mode as all the others on this list, if perhaps more literate and thoughtful than the average Rob Zombie fan.

…And see, there I go—knee, jerking away. The fact that I personally find Tolkien’s work to be more deserving of merit than Mr. Zombie’s oeuvre doesn’t mean that I somehow “outrank” them. Or that LOTR doesn’t occupy the same nerdosphere. I know for a fact there are supremely intelligent horror fans out there who have elegant arguments in favour of The Devil’s Rejects, and I know just as surely that there are some awful dimwits out there who love LOTR and think that that alone makes them discriminating and classy.

“Classy”. That might be a useful word for this discussion.

I actually don’t want to dwell too much on Tolkien, because he’s something I’ve been wanting to blog about in depth and I’ll probably have lots to say in another series of posts, but for now my question is this: If Tolkien had come along a decade or two later, would we be as quick to elevate him above stuff like Star Trek? That’s not a knock on Tolkien so much as it is an elevation of everything else; after all, Star Trek was an intelligent, ambitious show. But it also shares with Tolkien, and the rest of my little canon there, a world of arcane details to which the fans have developed an attachment beyond mere entertainment. They even share made-up languages that have spawned real-world speakers.

Let’s move on to something closer to the other end of the scale, or rather two things: Doctor Who and old Superhero comics. These are two properties to which my exposure was limited as a kid, but in which I began to take an interest as an adult partly because they have so many intelligent defenders, particularly on the web. Neither of them escapes being seen as a “nerdy” pursuit by the mainstream, or as silly or inaccessible to outsiders, and yet, within geekdom, both are taken relatively seriously. There’s an underlying belief that there are fundamentally interesting and intelligent stories to be told by these properties, and the people who blog passionately about them are able to articulate these arguments more than most fandoms. They are, to return to the word, “classy”, in a way that 80s cartoons and video games aren’t. And yet, it’s often hard to argue for the merits of a given Silver Age comic or an early-80s episode of Who, which are not only frequently threadbare or slapdash, they’re often outright nonsensical. Even stupid. And it’s not like the defenders of these two properties will argue otherwise. So what makes these particular pop cultural emanations “classier” than others?

To be continued….

*Well, I’m not going to refuse to entertain such an argument if it’s well-reasoned enough, but that would have to be one hell of an argument. “They both have Orson Welles in them” might not be the place to start.

**Probably a drastic oversimplification, but it’s surely not unfair to say that Tolkien wasn’t really dreaming of tearing up the paperback bestsellers list, right?

Game of Thrones Day

Having now seen the whole first season three times...(SPOILERS, obviously. If you haven't seen it yet, what the hell are you waiting for?)

THINGS THAT ARE BAD

--Dany's relationship with Khal Drogo. For all the nice bits of characterization that the showrunners lent to many of the characters, this business in the first couple of episodes felt like they were going down a plot checklist, and of course there was the dubious wedding night scene that makes Dany seem like a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. They also missed a nice chance at a reversal--I feel like we should have been watching Viserys and expecting HIM to be the important character, so it's more of a shock when he gets kacked.
--The Dothraki in general were treated a bit too much as Noble Savages, except without the "noble" part. We sort of came around to them by the end of the season, but for large stretches in the early going, you half expected them to pop Dany into a cartoonish cast-iron pot and try to eat her, the racial stereotyping was so unsubtle.
--The lack or mishandling of the dream sequences, and magic and supernatural in general. I realize part of the appeal of this show is that it's "grounded" and doesn't have people tossing fireballs at each other or fighting krakens all the time, but it's still a fantasy show, and in the books, when magic DOES show up, Martin handles it amazingly. Here, with one exception, everything remotely supernatural is stripped of its poetry or impact--it's back to the aforementioned checklist. Particularly disappointing is Mirri Maaz Duur's healing of Khal Drogo, which for some reason takes place in broad daylight, without the awesome visual of horrific shadows dancing on the tent wall (how much would that effect have cost? Seriously!) and with everyone just treating her use of magic with a shrug or, at worst, mild disdain. Dany's sudden "oh, can you do some magic?" was a particularly huge gaffe, because she's never supposed to have seen anything like that in her life. Ditto the White Walkers' attack on Commander Mormont late in the season--that at least had a nice horror-movie vibe, but it was too perfunctory, and the Night's Watch in general seems too comfortable with the idea of the supernatural. Even if they are on the bleeding edge of Westeros, they really ought to be as surprised as anyone that the dead might suddenly spring back to life. There's too much Harry Potter syndrome here, where magic is something you can take for granted. That can be powerful in other fantasy stories, but here it's supposed to be something wild and terrifying.
--Aiden Gillen, the one cast member I find unconvincing. His performance is mannered and kind of bizarre; not for a second would I trust him, making his heel turn kind of a "well, DUH" moment. It reminded me of Zack Snyder's moronic Watchmen adaptation, where he all but holds up a sign pointing at Adrian Veidt screaming "THIS DUDE'S EVIL!!!" which kind of makes the whole mystery aspect pointless. GoT wasn't as bad as all that, but why waste an opportunity to keep the audience guessing?

THINGS THAT ARE DUBIOUS

--Ned the chowderhead. Obviously he's not supposed to be the sharpest tool in the drawer, but D&D really make him seem like a complete cretin at a few points, and Bean's slack-jawed performance doesn't help. Not saying I didn't like Bean in general, but there's a few scenes where he comes off as borderline stoned. Particularly dodgy is the first part of the scene where he strips The Mountain of his titles, where Littlefinger exposits at him like a developmently disabled child, and the bit where he twigs to Joffrey's parentage.
--Everybody Hates Theon. There's obviously a need for Theon to feel a bit resentful towards the Starks, since he's a more sympathetic character in the show than the book (I'll say no more for people who haven't read them). But they do it by having basically everyone treat Theon like a dick for no reason, including and particularly his adopted brother Robb.
--The underpopulated Dothraki horde and tournament, plus battles that egregiously take place offscreen. This is obviously a budget thing (and yes, the battles were mostly offstage in the books, too), so I give it a bit of a pass, but it's still a bit ridiculous to see Tyrion conveniently knocked unconscious right as the fight starts.
--The direwolves. I give this a pass because I know there was a lot of behind-the-scenes turmoil with the dogs, and budget issues. Still, it's a shame we didn't see more of them.
--Ros. Nuff said.

THINGS THAT ARE GOOD

--That amazing cold open (literally cold, in this case), the one exception to the whole "mishandling the supernatural" thing. Set up too high a set of expectations for the later White Walkers to live up to, though I'm sure they'll correct this in the coming seasons.
--Turning minor characters into awesome supporting players. Bronn is the all-star superpro here--he was a complete cypher in the books, part of the scenery, but I'm guessing he's a lot of people's favourite character in the show. Slightly more important in the book but still elevated hugely by the actors: Shae, Varys, Barristan, Renly, Yoren, Gendry, and Viserys.
--The entire cast, really, aside from Gillen. Just an entire world of awesome characters here--someone said in a forum that this is one of the few shows with lots of sprawling storylines where you're never disappointed when they cut back to a particular set of characters, and I agree.
--With special props to Peter Dinklage, of course.
--And Maisie Williams. Obviously Arya's an important character in the books, but Williams leaps out of the screen and demands attention. Even more so than Dinklage, who was handed a great character to begin with, Williams makes Arya one of the stars of the show in a way I'd argue she wasn't in the books.
--Making the Lannisters more sympathetic out of the gate. Except Joffrey, who they've delightfully cranked up to eleven on the Douchebag Scale.
--New scenes with King Robert. Mark Addy knocked them out of the park, and made his otherwise somewhat abrupt death seem like a sad inevitability.
--Pretty much everything I haven't mentioned yet.

On the whole, a somewhat uneven first season that shows signs of being rushed...and yet still a compulsively addicting piece of television, with every sign that it's going to improve vastly from here.

Fourth World Fridays: The Forever People #54--"Sunny Sumo!"

There was a sketch featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien a few years ago. In an effort to combat “harmful stereotypes”, Conan introduced a new character, “The Asian Guy Who’s Bad At Math”. The Asian Guy then ran out in a coolie hat and a kimono, rang a gong, stuffed his face with eggrolls, broke a plank in half with a karate chop, then turned to the camera and announced, “I’m bad at math!”

This sketch came to mind as I read today’s installment of The Fourth World, featuring yet another new character, Sonny Sumo.

I’m a longtime believer in the power of pop culture, not simply to influence (at least, not in the hamfisted way most Hollywood “message movies” or the baldly expositional fashion of “The DaVinci Code”) but to inspire in a broader context. A heartfelt, indie work of art may have more to say, but there’s nothing to compete with seeing a concept splashed up on the big screen, the TV, or the bestseller lists. This is why I think most popular media have an obligation to portray as much variety in its characters and viewpoints as possible—especially when it comes to race, gender, and sexual orientation. All the well-meaning lip service in the world can’t compete with creating a powerful and engaging character who captures the public imagination.

Superheroes are perhaps the ultimate pop creation, so it was a big deal when Kirby and Lee created the Black Panther, the first true black superhero. It may seem like a frivolous thing, but there’s something undeniably empowering about superheroes when done right, and it’s not surprising that people responded to the character. Apparently, around the same time, Kirby promised a Marvel production artist and letterer named Morrie Kuramoto that he’d create a Japanese superhero as well, and Sonny Sumo was the result (albeit five years later and at another company).

This kind of thing really is a big step forward for pop culture, but at the same time, it can present problems. Superheroes especially tend to be simplistic and iconic, being a personification of various ideas…which means that superheroes of a certain race are often highly stereotyped. Obviously I’m talking about the more benign kind of stereotyping here, the kind that paints a Japanese superhero as a modern-day samurai with all kinds of mystical martial arts skills and the last name “Sumo”. But hey, at least he’s bad at math. Sorry, I mean, at least he’s a superhero.

The opening caption calls him “the mystic type of a vanishing breed—the noble warrior!…At the mercy of today’s world, when nobility is a twisted credo and the warrior is a commercial enterprise, Sonny Sumo struggles to hold fast to an enigma which seems to make his life meaningful!” Whew! This run-on sentence seems to confirm that Kirby was trying to avoid having his heroes fight for money. Granted, that’s pretty much the M.O. for superheroes, but since Mr. Miracle and now Sonny are performers first, the money issue has to be dealt with. I actually find Sonny more interesting, in that, unlike Mr. M, he’s kind of lost and adrift, and has been reduced to (shock) (horror) taking money for his skills. Obviously this doesn’t reduce his nobility at all, and Mr Miracle will be taking his act on the road for cash soon too, so obviously Kirby had been doing some thinking. Even superheroes need to make a living, after all, and there’s nothing wrong with entertaining the people for cash as long as you don’t charge for your superheroic services. But I do like the image of Sonny, a warrior from another time, lost among the seedy underground world of robot fighting.

Yes, as a showcase for a fight promoter, Sonny’s manager, Harry Sharp, has obtained a gigantic kill-bot named “Sagutai” (which is Japanese for “vaguely Japanese-sounding word”) and turned it loose to face Sonny. When Fisher, the promoter, expressed understandable surprise that a low-rent underground fighter would have the capacity to build a fully-functioning, *talking* robot, Sharp responds, “I didn’t build him, Mister Fisher!” This obviously implies that either Apokalips or New Genesis was behind Sagutai’s creation. This is pretty weird, since we never get any indication that Sharp is in with either gang (at least, not in this volume). Is the New Gods technology starting to trickle down into the daily lives of Earthlings? An interesting idea, anyway…

As Sonny grapples with the tin-plated menace, which is twice his size and nearly manages to trap Sonny’s head by twisting a steel bar into a knot, we cut away to the Forever People, still in mortal peril in Desaad’s nightmarish amusement park! Why, they could be…scared…by the monsters Desaad is projecting! Or, if Serifan gets tired from having to press a level with his foot every few minutes, Vykin dies! Or, Mark could be…trapped in a glass box some more! What a horrific fate! Much more exciting than the raging robot battle!

The credits announce that this was written, drawn and edited by Kirby, “And inked by—who else?—Vince Colletta!” Man, THAT statement is going to seem pretty ironic by the next issue in this volume.

Desaad, in classic supervillain fashion, sits watching the sufferings of the FPs, with a “fear siphon” attached. Basically, it looks like a stethoscope, except he puts it to his neck instead of his ears. The FPs terror and (cough) pain take the form of a freaky, Francis Bacon-type montage of screaming faces…which also happens to resemble the spectral army of wraiths sent out by Doctor Bedlam in the last issue. But hey, it’s a good image, why not reuse it?

Back to Sonny, as Sagutai unleashes a bunch of hidden weapons—knife blades and a flamethrower. That second one torches Sonny but good, leading to consternation on the part of Fisher, the promoter, who seems to care more for Sonny than his own manager. But Sonny has a Special Feature or two up his own sleeve. Invoking his Ancient Vague Oriental Abilities, Sonny can call upon “Wound Rejection”, which enables him to revert to his pre-burned self just by concentrating (this is a neat sequence):



Roaring back with a vengeance, Sonny takes down the bot. “You’ve fought like the thing you are, Sagutai!” Whoa, how Zen. So, he fought like a big robot programmed to fight?

Sagutai is down on the mat, and deactivated. Wow, Mr. Miracle could learn a thing or two from Harry and Sonny. Imagine, NOT destroying a gigantic killer robot if it can be used again to make money! Gigantic killer robots are a finite resource, and Harry Sharp is doing his part to conserve them.

Sonny makes his way backstage—then suddenly collapses, his wounds reappearing. Apparently Wound Rejection is a temporary thing, which sort of re-raises the issue of his manager throwing him into a pit with a deadly robot. I mean, it’s one thing if he’s got a Wolverine-like healing ability; it’s another if it’s going to come back and scar him for life afterwards. Of course, Sonny and Sharp talk vaguely about how “this won’t be easy to heal”, and Sharp doesn’t seem too concerned about the horrible scars suddenly reappearing on Sonny’s face, so who knows. The main reason for this sequence is to allow Mother Box a chance to step in and do the healing for him.

Finding himself once again unblemished, Sonny starts talking to the magic box he found last issue. Apparently he’s now in communion with it, and gets an infodump regarding the trapped Forever People. Being a Noble Warrior and all, he leaps at the chance to save the FPs, and Mother Box teleports him away to Desaad’s Happyland amusement park of HORROR, where he glimpses the trapped Mark Moonrider, disguised as a skeleton attempting to break free of a glass box.

“But the skeleton can’t! Because his prison is made of more than Earthly glass!! Because an invisible scrambler has distorted his true image! Because he’s a captive of Desaad!” Because because because because becaaaaaaauuuuse…because of the wonderful things he does! La la la la la la la, la la!

Sonny frees Mark, leaping over a boatload of tourists to do so. We don’t get to see if they find this frightening or alarming, because we immediately cut to the shooting gallery “where the main attraction is a “Big Bear”--and apt name for the target! See, it’s apt because the target is a big bear, and also, it’s Big Bear in disguise. Just so we’re clear.

Sonny, wasting no time, literally rips the wall from the side of the gallery with one hand. I guess this is his Ancient Vague Oriental Abilities again, because Mark makes it clear that he’s a human, despite the fact that even Big Bear couldn’t escape from the gallery. Mark crouches over Bear’s body: “You moved! You’re still alive, you big, blessed bear!” Yes, he certainly is big. And a bear.

Desaad, meanwhile, has twigged to the fact that the FPs are escaping, just as his “psycho-fuge” explodes (apparently thanks to Mother Box—man, is there anything that crazy computer can’t do?) Desaad mobilizes his troops to wipe them out: “If I destroy the young Forever People--Mother Box will destruct!” Desaad has this weird delusion going. Remember in the last issue when Mother Box disappeared, and Desaad was all, “Whoo! I made her commit suicide! No really! I’m sure she won’t just reappear later and subvert all my plans!”

Meanwhile, the non-captive FPs are freeing Beautiful Dreamer, who you may recall had been placed in a glass box and was being forced into seeing the onlookers as hideous monsters, i.e., she got off pretty damn easy. Mark frees her by the thoroughly unimpressive method of telling the customers that the exhibit is closed, then using Mother Box to cancel out the monstrous illusions. “Only a psychotic like Desaad would subject you to the stress of facing endless fright and horror!” Nope…sorry. Doesn’t matter how much you talk it up after the fact, Mark, I’m still not buying it as anything more than a mild inconvenience for Beautiful Dreamer.

With Desaad’s troops hot on their heels, the mostly-reunited gang bust into the room where Serifan is being held. Big Bear, in typically awesome fashion, pounds a henchman’s head into the wall with the flat of his palm while going “Yea and verily! Pardon our anxious behaviour, sir! But we feel rather insecure in Happyland!” Serifan is released, as is Vykin from his moderately pathetic death trap via remote control, but Desaad’s gang followed him in. “We’d rather destroy you as a complete unit!” they declare. Someone didn’t get the memo about how the Forever People as a “Complete Unit” tend to form an all-powerful being who can pretty much kick anyone’s ass.

But that’s not what happens. Suddenly, energy crackles around Sonny and he booms out, “SLEEP! ” Next thing you know, Desaad’s shock troops have collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.

That’s right, folks: it was no coincidence that Mother Box found Sonny Sumo, for he, alone among mortals, is the mind Darkseid has been seeking. He’s the possessor of the Anti-Life Equation. And in conjunction with Mother Box, he can order anyone to do anything.

Personally I find it a little creepy that the good guys are the ones who get control of Anti-Life, and use it the way they do in the next issue. I mean, there immediately follows a page of talk about how evil the ALE is and how it destroys everyone, but it’s makes for a bit of cognitive dissonance that this destroyer of free-will, this spiritual superweapon, is in the mind of an unabashed hero and can only be unlocked using that tool of good guys everywhere, the Mother Box. Other than Big Bear quickly dismissing these concerns as “If Mother Box doesn’t fear you—neither do we!”, there’s no discussion of the morality on display here. Clearly this isn’t a Lord of the Rings-type situation, where the good guys have control of a tool of evil and realize they must never use it. Sonny and the FPs use the ALE pretty much without hesitation. Hey, what’s a little free will between buddies?

Anyway, both Sonny and the FPs find themselves trusting each other pretty much instantly. Darkseid, however, has been watching all this (despite the fact that he left the park last issue), and since the FPs didn’t hesitate to spell out their ownership of the ALE even though they knew the bad guys were listening, it looks like they got themselves a situation.

Again, Kirby tries a bit desperately to hype the next issue with some hilarious Stan Lee-isms: "WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WILL ASTOUND YOU!!!" By George, It astounded even me! And I, Jack Kirby, am much closer to this saga than you, reader! There's been nothing in comics that's equalled its like! I've seen it--and I'm still shaking!" Yes...it's...THE HYPERBOLE EFFECT!

Oh, wait. THE OMEGA EFFECT. Yes.

There’s an extra little four-page story at the end about a barbarian warrior type named Lonar. Basically, he’s a New God who wanders New Genesis by himself. Because he’s a Lonar. He explores an ancient city from before the cataclysm that destroyed the old gods, finds a living “battle horse” and rides it out as the city crumbles. It’s kind of an interesting attempt to flesh out the world of the New Gods with yet another character, and one of a genre that I don’t recall Kirby ever tackling before, the sword ‘n’ sorcery type, but the story’s too short to make much of an impact. Here’s hoping we see more of Lonar in future issues.

Fourth World Fridays: Mister Miracle #4--"The Closing Jaws of Death!"

Let’s talk about female characters in comics. If you’ve been reading superhero comics for any length of time, you’re familiar with the Women in Refrigerators syndrome...and if you’re not, a quick click on the link will fill you in. Short version: there’s an unfortunate tradition of sexism or outright misogyny in superhero stories, with female characters frequently being reduced to cheesecake, depowered, or, worst of all, killed off in a hackneyed attempt to motivate a male character. Obviously, this is an ongoing debate that’s not going to be resolved anytime soon, and the fact that we’re dealing with an entire genre, or even an entire medium, makes it hard to speak in generalities, but it certainly seems hard to argue that superheroes are dominated by the mindset of male geeks, and as such, frequently present a somewhat…skewed…vision of femininity.

What’s interesting about this whole trend, to me at least, is that in many ways this comics misogyny seems to increase as you get closer to the present. Some of the most powerful and interesting female comics characters, including the ur-superheroine, Wonder Woman, are products of the 30s and 40s. Sure, there’s always that streak of sexism native to the era—the infamous cover with Batgirl adjusting her makeup while Batman and Robin fight for their lives being somewhat typical—but back then, comics were actually written about girls and for girls, which necessitated a healthier viewpoint almost by default.

Which is not to say there weren’t issues. Most of the female characters Kirby himself created at Marvel were really, really bland—Susan Storm and Jean Grey were virtually made of cardboard in the early 60s—when they weren’t slightly offensive (Janet Van Dyne, like most early Marvel characters, had a single character trait, and hers was “boy-crazy”). By the time of the Fourth World, however, Kirby had a better handle on his female characters. Corny jokes about “Women’s libbers” aside (and believe me, there are plenty of them in the pages to come), the essentials of women’s empowerment seem to have penetrated Kirby’s worldview along with all that other counterculture stuff.

Which brings us to Big Barda, who makes her abrupt debut on the opening splash page, standing right behind Oberon as he frets about Scott. A rebellious member of Darkseid’s “female task force”, the Female Furies, Barda’s a gigantic lady even by Kirby’s standards, and her costume is one of the most bizarre he ever designed, being basically a cross between an Egyptian sarcophagus and a medieval crusader’s chainmail.



She’s also ungifted in social niceties, demolishing Oberon’s table just to get his attention, before resentfully declaring herself to be Scott’s friend and ally. Oberon takes an instant dislike to her, but nevertheless makes her a sandwich and milk. Geez, I guess the guy’s just stuck in permanent “servant mode”.

As you may remember, last time we saw Mr. Free he was being locked in a trunk and thrown off a balcony by the residents of an office building driven to homicidal madness by Doctor Bedlam’s Paranoid Pill. As soon as Oberon mentions this, Barda leaps up and teleports herself away to Chandler towers to help Scott, who we now cut to in media res, still tumbling through the air, as the crazed mob shoots at him. Barda beams in (the mob instantly declares her a witch) and sees the falling trunk: “Knowing Scott Free and his talent for trapping himself in strange places—I have the feeling that I’d better break the fall of this trunk!” Of course, after falling fifty stories, being “caught” isn’t really going to break his fall, but as it turns out, it’s a moot point. When Barda tears the box in half, it turns out to be empty—Scott is standing many floors above, having escaped under his own power. Obviously this makes sense—Scott gave his word that he’d escape without help, and besides, he wouldn’t be much of an escape artist if he couldn’t get out of traps himself—but it still kinda feels like Kirby wrote Barda in to come and save him and then suddenly realized it wouldn’t fit the story. Oh well. You can’t go wrong with having Big Barda show up in your comic for any reason.

Scott now reiterates that the wager is his alone to win or lose, as the mob grabs hold of him. They’ve now decided that he’s a vampire...apparently for the sole reason that he wears a cape. I guess he could be some kind of Ethiopian vampire… Anyway, they grab a wooden stake and a pipe to use as a hammer, but Scott’s too fast for them—in fact, he appears to literally vanish and reappear a few feet away. But as far as I can tell, he didn’t use any gadgets to escape. So…um…he got out of his ropes SO FAST that the mob didn’t even notice he was gone until the stake came down? “It takes a master to play it that close and cool!” Scott proclaims, humbly, and then he’s off again.

For the next two pages or so, he’s dodging the spray from fire hoses and sliding down banisters, and then something wonderful happens: he’s accosted by a guy in a medieval torturer’s costume, who lays him out by hitting his chest and producing a “BOK!” Here, see:



Yeah, I bet you were wondering what that cover was about, weren’t you? “Klieg lights!” gasps Scott. “Cameras! Good gravy! This is a movie studio! Of course! Galaxy broadcasting films its TV specials on this floor!” Yes, Scott has been captured by the cast and crew of one of those Spanish Inquisition TV dramas that were all the rage in 1971. You know, like Roots. Except with torturing. And Spanish people instead of African-Americans. This whole sequence is just a wonderful example of what makes Kirby Kirby. He’s got a killer premise, more than enough to keep him busy for another 12 pages, but he just can’t help going off on a completely random tangent. Come to that, the director and actors are behaving totally different than the rest of the mob: instead of just calling him a vampire or whatever, they’re determined to make him the real-life victim of their drama so they can win an Emmy (seriously, they say this). “A paranoid director and actors!” Thinks Scott. “How bad can things get?” Clearly, Scott has not spent much time in Hollywood. Come to think of it, maybe this has nothing to do with the paranoid pill at all, and these are just your usual early-70s filmmakers, doing a dry run for Apocalypse Now. I heard they killed, like, five superheroes on that set.

The hooded torturers drag Scott into their dungeon, spouting “thee”s and “thou”s and “varlet”s all the while. “The dialogue is terrible!” Thinks Scott. “But they mean every word of it!” Hey, that’s pretty much what I say whenever I read a Fourth World comic: the dialogue is terrible, but Kirby means every word of it. Mr. Miracle escapes from the fourth wall!

Scott is overwhelmed by the torturers, who shove him into a nearby iron maiden, bristling with spikes. Uh oh, it looks bad for our hero! Meanwhile, Barda is now finding herself confronted with more mob members, who didn’t get Bedlam’s memo about how this is just supposed to be about Scott. “I’ve no time to coddle your neuroses!” proclaims the Amazonian warrior, ripping a pillar from the wall and using it to beat back the hordes. Man, do I love Big Barda. She’s even more awesome than Big Bear. Basically, if anyone in the Fourth World has “big” in their name, they’re awesome. Though it was kinda cold to just flatten all those mob members like that. But then, there are probably dozens of casualties being caused by all this rampaging anyway, what with guns being discharged and railroad workers running amok and whatnot.

Anyway, Barda finds she can’t sit back and watch any longer—“I try not to worry about that wizard, Scott! But I can’t help myself!” This might be a good time to point out that Barda was, apparently, based on Kirby’s wife Roz, who made it her business to protect her husband from shysters and keep people from bothering him while he worked.

Barda uses her “Mega-Rod”, which is basically her own variation on a Mother Box, to blast her way up into the studio and subdue the crazed torturers. Again, though, Scott has managed to escape the trap set up for him. Now, for the first time, they have a chance to really talk—or rather, this being a Kirby comic, to exposition at each other—and they both remark on what a long, strange trip it’s been. As you may have guessed by now, both of them are former pupils of Granny Goodness, and Barda apparently helped Scott escape way back when, but she herself chose to remain. It’s not yet clear when she decided to switch teams, but it’s pretty obvious why she did it, judging from how she’s reduced to stuttering breathlessness every time Scott reveals that he’s still alive.

The hallways have suddenly gone quiet, and the reason becomes clear a moment later, as the pair are confronted by the disembodied spirit of Bedlam. He accuses Scott of cheating, given that Barda is helping him, and in retaliation he unleashes “every monster that has haunted every nightmare since time began” to rile up the rampaging mob. Um…wait…weren’t they already pretty riled up? I’m not sure how a few hallucinations are going to make people who had mistaken Scott for Bela Lugosi a few moments ago act MORE insane.

And apparently we’re not really going to find out, because we now cut to Oberon, sitting at home, fretting about Scott, wondering what he can do to help. Suddenly, he’s struck by a brilliant notion: call the police! Of course! It’s so obvious! I mean, it literally is the most obvious thing anyone would think of! And it kind of makes Oberon look stupid that he didn’t think of it before this! But never mind, because Mr. Miracle and Barda suddenly appear in a crackle of energy, and tell Obie that the cops are already at the scene. Again, nice job, Obie.

The rest of the comic is given over to Oberon’s continued bickering with Barda—one might say he seems a little jealous of her—and to a flashback recap of how Scott made all his wondrous escapes. We started this recap with one of my favourite things about the Mister Miracle comic—Big Barda—so it seems appropriate we should end it with a discussion of one of my least favourite things. That would be the way we tend to cut away from a dramatic escape to see the aftermath, and then get Scott’s summary of how he did it. Actually, this wouldn’t be so bad, except that the answer, without fail, is always, “I used a convenient gadget that I had on me and that you may or may not ever have seen before.” In this particular case, Scott plays coy about revealing his secrets (to his own assistant?) but says it’s OK to “do some supposing”:

SCOTT: Now, you take that trunk in which Mister Miracle was bound—falling to certain death—fifty floors below! It was indeed a time to panic! But was Mister Miracle that type? Suppose he wasn’t!

Whoa, whoa, hold on there, Scott! You’re totally blowing my mind!!!

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that he has a miraculous device called a “multi-cube”—not to be confused with Mother Box or that “cocoon spinner” he used in the first issue—that fired a laser to get him out of the trunk and fired a cable that he used to haul himself up. Then later he used it to squirt a corrosive spray to destroy the rear of the iron maiden, and finally, it produced an “electro-sonic signal which blanketed the brain of every paranoid in the building” thereby rendering them all unconscious.

…WHAT?!?

Scott had a device that could have rendered everyone in the building unconscious…and he didn’t think to use it until he was almost out?!? GIVE ME A BREAK. Hopefully it’s clear why I don’t like this “deus ex machina” approach to Scott’s escapes anyway, but this takes it to a whole new level of sloppiness. Gah. Let’s not dwell on it, and hope Kirby improves in later issues.

Fortunately, that’s not where the issue ends. As Oberon is voicing his concerns about Barda to Scott, and Scott’s dismissing her as “A child, you know! A powerful, deadly child—playing soldier!” Barda enters in the outfit she wears when she’s not in uniform—basically, a jazzy red bikini kinda thing and a headband. She announces that she’s starving, Scott and Oberon do a double take and make some “That’s our Barda!” cracks as the audience applauds and the closing credits roll.

What was I saying about sexism, again?

Fourth World Fridays: Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #141--"Will the Real Don Rickles Panic?!?"

(Note: Jimmy Olsen #140 isn't included in the omnibus, as for some reason it was a reprint issue, not drawn by Kirby, and with nothing to do with the Fourth World. Hence the skipped issue.)

I’ve been defending Kirby’s writing on this series since the very beginning, but it wasn’t that I thought he was unreservedly talented as a prose stylist so much as I thought he was about on par with a lot of the hacks writing comics at the time. If I’m totally honest, I find what few early-70s Roy Thomas and Steve Engelhart comics I’ve read to be really verbose, and they tended towards fanboy pedantry rather than the demented imagination Kirby brought to his work. If I have to read an awkwardly-written, pretentious comic, I know which of the two I’d choose.

Still, though…after two issues of Superman vs. Don Rickles, I’m prepared to throw in my lot with the conventional wisdom. Kirby really did seem to have trouble with the English language this early in his career as a writer. Here’s a few samples from the first three pages of Jimmy Olsen #141:

“…A strange galaxy never before seen by man! – That is, until Superman, in his guise as Clark Kent, has been hurled into the unknown—trapped in a bizarre space craft!!”

“…Clark Kent gazes helplessly as he drifts past awesome wonders that stagger all imagination!”

“But the unknown says nothing! It glides by—a silent, shimmering animal – tense – and waiting for the kill!”

That last one’s my favourite. Only Kirby would describe the void of space as a shimmering animal, tensing up to pounce on the “helpless” Clark Kent. Who, just in case you’ve forgotten, is Superman. He can fly through space and move planets. But apparently he’s helpless in the face of mixed metaphors.

The situation, in case you’ve forgotten, or deliberately repressed it, is this: in the previous issue, Jimmy and Clark put two and two together and realized that their new boss, Morgan Edge, had made an attempt on their life. They marched up to his office to confront him, but gave up when Edge’s secretary Miss Conway told him Edge wasn’t in, and gave them a new assignment. Which they went on. And which turned out to be another attempt on their life. Wotta couple of schlemiels.

Clark Kent was trapped in a spacecraft that instantly transported him to Shimmering Animal Space. Meanwhile, Jimmy, the Golden Guardian, and a (sigh) Don Rickles impersonator in a superhero suit named Goody Rickels were kidnapped by Intergang, forced to eat food laced with an explosive chemical that would cause them to combust within 24 hours, and thrown out on the curb.

Makes sense to me!

Superman drifts through deep, uncharted space, as represented by another one of Kirby’s patented, and patently weird, photographic montages (to which he’s added some colour this time!) It quickly becomes clear exactly where Clark’s been extradited to when he spots “two giant planets!—One, brightly green and beautiful – the other, in its shadow…” and then spots a human comet coming his way, one immediately recognizable as our friend Lightray. Clark’s inner monologue describes him as “hardly the kind you’d meet at the office!” Well, I dunno, Clark, depends on where you work. If you were a gymnast or a ballet dancer, maybe…

But enough of this “interesting” stuff, let’s get back to Jimmy! And the Guardian! And fucking Goody Rickels! They’re busy expositing away about how doomed they are, despite how unbelievably unthreatening and pointlessly complex the method of their destruction has turned out to me. I mean, if I were in that situation, the first thing I’d be wondering is, “Why did Intergang just go to such lengths not to kill me?” I don’t think I’d even believe there was such a thing as “pyro-granulate”, but even if I did, the hospital is probably nearby, and I’ve got 24 frickin’ hours. But then, I’m not a crack cub reporter or a superhero, because *their* first idea is to go after the RV from which they were ejected in search of a cure…while Jimmy and Goody go to Morgan Edge for help.

…

…Wait, what? No, I must have misread that. Carrying on…

The Guardian gets into his new role as a rooftop-jumpin’ protector of the innocent pretty quickly, using his implanted knowledge of the city in which his predecessor was born and raised (which, again, is now Metropolis, not Manhattan). “Life at the D.N.A. Experimental Project never gave me this sense of freedom!” he monologues. Yeah, you’d think so, Jim, seeing as how the Project kept you in a giant glass jar.

Back at the Galaxy Broadcasting System, Miss Conway is freaking out over the impending arrival of the real Don Rickles, and so, in short order, is everyone else. Simply walking through the office, Rickles is assaulted from all corners by rabid fans begging for autographs, and amourous secretaries who demand to be insulted. Was Rickles really *that* big at the time? I mean, I know he was popular, but Kirby’s treating him like it’s 1963 and he’s all four Beatles rolled into one.

I mean, not that I’m denying he’s a sexy, sexy man and all.



There follows several pages of what can be charitably described as corny schtick. I’ll confess, right here and now, that I’ve never heard Rickles’ act, except in movies like X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes and, um, Toy Story. Sure, he’s pure Borscht Belt, but he always seemed relatively funny to me. I’d like to think that, at his peak, his material was at least a little bit stronger than the stuff Kirby has him spouting, much of which isn’t really “funny” in any sense…just kind of sarcastic and shticky. He meets the wave of adulation with “Relax, you cockamamies! You’re liberated! The Nazis are gone!” Then, after they tear his clothing and are scared off by Edge: “Savages! I’ll send you thirty pounds of raw meat tomorrow morning! And may the Gods rain on your memos!” Then he exhorts a delighted Miss Conway to “get yourself a bikini and start a chain of heart attacks at a garden party!” and refers to Edge as “Mister Smoothie on the outside—‘Mac the Knife’ on the inside!”

I dunno, maybe it loses something on the page.

Meanwhile, we’re getting the historic meeting between Superman and Lightray, out in space. “I was in this sector – and curious to see what sort of specimen was on its way to Apokolips!” declares our merry funster. Lightray, I mean. “You speak my language!” Exclaims Superman. “Are you able to communicate by probing one’s mind?” Wow, a more astute observation than I was expecting. Not that Lightray evinces the ability to read minds anywhere else. And…hmm, he actually kinda brushes Superman off, saying, “You haven’t time for small talk!” Wait, does that mean Kirby was trying to conceal some kind of secret about the New Gods’ language? Is it to do with my hair-brained theories that the New Gods are the descendants of a parallel universe, specifically Marvel’s, and thus have a store of human knowledge? I’m going to pretend it is!

Anyway, the thing Lightray’s concerned about is the fact that they’re looming closer and closer to Apokolips, which Superman remembers hearing about from the Forever People. “They also mentioned a name--Darkseid!!!” Yes, Superman, they mentioned that name right before you met and fought him. I guess it’s possible that Superman is trying to cover his secret identity here…though why he would bother with a cosmic being on the other side of the universe from Earth, I don’t know. And besides, he’s pretty blasé about mentioning that he knows the Forever People. Lightray generously offers to save him from the Parademons rising to intercept the craft, and Clark accepts. Again, I’m gonna hope that was a secret identity thing. I mean, Superman has a tendency to forget his powers, but I don’t think he’s ever gone so far as to forget that he’s Superman and doesn’t really need other superheroes to help him, unless Kryptonite or red suns are involved.

Nevertheless, this B-plot is infinitely more involving than the main story, to which we’re now forced to return. Oh look, Jimmy and Goody are riding the subway. Goody is complaining. Ha ha. Actually, I have to say I appreciate everyone on the subway yelling at Goody to shut up. Also, Goody starts steaming and is about to die. Ha ha!

Seriously, let’s just move on to the Guardian, who’s caught up with the mobile home and comes crashing down through the top hatch, only to be met by Ugly Mannheim and his goon squad. “The pastry’s all gone! – But we’re servin’ plenty of ammo!” You mean, the ammo you could have used to kill Jimmy and the Guardian back when you had the chance? That ammo? Oh, don’t mind me, I’m living in a non-Comics-Code-approved reality. The long and the short of it is, we get this issue’s de rigeur Kirby stompfest as the Guardian beats the antidote out of them.

Meanwhile, the moment none of you have been waiting for, as Jimmy and Goody come face to face with the real Don Rickles. Can you stand the excitement? Bursting into Edge’s office, where he and Rickles are still thrashing out some kind of deal that Kirby never sees fit to explain properly, Goody proclaims, “I’m back, Mister Edge! And, now that I’m dying, I can find the nerve to really tell you what I think of--” and then, for no reason except that it makes for a funny…I mean cool…I mean intensely predictable panel, the real Rickles then repeats his dialogue exactly. Which makes no sense, in the context of the conversation they were just having. I mean, the real Rickles just said he was dying. Despite the fact that he’s still alive and well almost 40 years later. Then we get have a page of “HUH? B-but…you’re me!!!” type reactions, Edge starts blustering, Goody begins to smoke, and Jimmy…begs him for help.

OK, WHAT??!? Jimmy, you idiot, you know Edge was trying to kill you! You got into this mess because of an assignment he sent you on! He’s obviously the one trying to have you killed, even if it is in the most Rube Goldbergian way possible! I mean, we’ve long known that you, Lois, and Clark are all terrible, terrible reporters, but you’d think you’d be able to put the extremely obvious pieces together in order to save your own life!

The story just gets dumber from there, with Jimmy and Goody beginning to glow and then catch on fire--the art making them look like they’re virtually going supernova, as Jimmy remarks, “Strange! I don’t feel any heat!” Edge shoves Rickles out the door—literally shoves him out like an uninvited guest—and tells him to read a magazine. Then he calls the bomb disposal squad. Then the Guardian comes crashing through the window (sure, why not?) and Rickles comes back into the office. Then something explodes—no, not Jimmy or Goody, because next time we see them they’re safe and sound, sipping the antidote Guardian was able to procure. (“It’s not unlike cheap wine!” announces Goody, approvingly.) There’s literally nothing about this sequence that makes any sense at all in terms of internal or external logic, and the obnoxiously lame shtick from the two Rickles—seriously, they’re pretty much equally unfunny at this point—just makes it all the more painful.

Rickles yammers weakly while Edge fumes via thought balloons, wondering how this brilliant, completely foolproof scheme could possibly have failed. Then a Boom Tube materializes in the office, depositing Clark and unceremoniously blasting Rickles out of his chair. The look on his face in this panel is the one mildly amusing moment in this comic:



There, I saved you ten minutes. Except…I guess it probably took you that long to read this recap. But not as long as it took me to write it! Seriously, this is time we all could have spent curing cancer or something, and now it’s gone. Thanks a lot, Kirby.

But wait! There’s a page left! Surely there must be some hacky komedy cliché that hasn’t been milked yet!

Of course! Comical insanity! The bomb disposal squad arrives, Edge proclaims that the bomb threat has been neutralized, and the now-insane Rickles contradicts him: “I’m the bomb! And I’m primed to blow! Get me outta here! Stop me from killing! Tick-tick-tick-tick--”

“Poor guy!” Mutters one of the disposal guys, “With your routine—this had to happen!”

Seriously, is it just me, or do like 50% of all dumb humour comics end this way? With a character who’s experienced some mild weirdness being dragged away to the insane asylum “hilariously”? Yeah, I think it’s safe to say, as we bid a blessed adieu to both Rickles, that comedy is something Kirby ought to have steered clear of. Forever.

Rickles wasn’t the bomb. The bomb was this comic. Handle it with care.

So: the Watchmen Thing.

I think it’s important to note that there are several different issues at play here. Let me break them down for you so I can explain why DC making up a series of Watchmen prequels makes me so angry. So very very angry.

First off, there’s the actual quality, context aside, of the books. I notice people, no matter how critical they are of this, are already saying “well, I’m sure some of the books will be quite good, with those creative teams,” but even this seems a little generous. I mean, the artists involved range from good to great, but look at the writing lineup: You’ve got Len Wein, whose presence is at least explainable as a guy who was involved in the original book, and who was a decent writer back in the day, but what little I’ve seen of his recent work hasn’t exactly been earth-shattering. I don’t want to sound dismissive of the guy who co-created Wolverine, but I think of Wein as one of those old school journeymen of the Bronze Age, a reliable writer who could pump out fun comics but never really aspired to anything more; a “company man”, as it were. Please, correct me if I’m wrong.

Then you’ve got Darwyn Cooke, who’s obviously a spectacular talent as an artist and as a storyteller, but who I’m not convinced of as a writer, per se. He works in a certain mode that suits him but doesn’t really fit well with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ dense, idea-packed storytelling. I mean, the last time the guy tried to put his own spin on a classic comic, the result was The Spirit, which was a solid comic but really didn’t live up to expectations, and certainly didn’t do justice to Will Eisner’s vision. I doubt he’ll be able to do better with Watchmen.

And then there’s Azzarello, whose work I’m only passingly familiar with, but what I have read strikes me as solid but unremarkable; and J. Michael Straczynski, who, I’m sorry, is just a flat-out hack.

Maybe being called upon to write a Watchmen story will make these guys step up to the plate and really push themselves to deliver something spectacular, but colour me skeptical. Watchmen isn’t just a great comic, it’s a remarkable, multilayered achievement, dense, intelligent, and packed with ideas. Even at their best, these writers strike me more as the kind who can deliver solidly on one level, delivering stories that you read once and enjoy but don’t return to over and over again. I’d love it if they proved me wrong, but as it is the impression you get is that DC editorial literally just randomly pulled names out of a hat to “keep the franchise going”.

Which is another issue, and it’s where I start to get really steamed. Before Watchmen is clearly, unequivocably, being driven by profit. Well, you might say, of course it is, DC isn’t a charity. But working in a creative field, being a company that produces art in any form, there’s a way to balance profit and achievement in an honest way. The ideal way is that a writer, artist, or other creator approaches editorial with a story they want to tell, the publisher decides to go for it, and the result is a success, a genuine artistic accomplishment that provides entertainment and makes stacks of cash. Even if one or two of these elements doesn’t come to pass, the point is that creativity is driving the product. What isn’t a good sign is when a company decides that it needs to milk more money out of one of its properties and assigns a bunch of journeymen to churn out product…which is obviously what’s happening here.

In a weird way, if this had come from a creator marching into DC HQ and announcing, “I wanna do a bunch of Watchmen sequels!”, even if said creator was possessed of Mark Millar-level arrogance, and even if the result blew chunks all over the industry, I would have less of a problem with it on this level. Because at least the motivating factor would have been someone with a story that they wanted to tell, an actual spark of creativity. Not just a soulless money-generating machine.

Now, I’ve already heard people shrugging this off, or, God help them, defending this nonsense, by pointing out all the times existing characters have been tackled by other creators, or needlessly sequelized. Moore himself, of course, invites criticism by virtue of the fact that he’s been writing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics for over a decade now, starring hordes of classic characters. And while Moore’s own statements about this project are problematic for this reason, I think my comments in the above two paragraphs are still valid: there’s a world of difference between a creator deciding to use, say, Dracula in a story, and a corporation that owns a property and has the ability to give it the mark of validity deciding to “extend the brand.”

And this is what truly pisses me off about this: for over 25 years, Watchmen has occupied a place of reverence in the comic book world; now that’s being cast aside for a quick buck. All sacred cows eventually get slaughtered, of course; that’s the nature of culture, and it’s both healthy and necessary for people to puncture any air of self-importance that starts to build up around a work, no matter how well-earned. But this isn’t being done by some punk-rock rabble-rouser who wants to cause trouble, and thereby enrich comics; it’s being done by a soulless corporation that views this great work merely as grist for the mill. It’s one thing for someone to paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa, as Marcel Duchamp did; it’s another thing to use the Mona Lisa as toilet paper because there wasn’t anything else handy. The former is challenging. The latter points towards a world where art has no value, except in a purely utilitarian sense.

By doing this the way they’re doing it, DC is announcing to the world that Watchmen has no value to them except as a source of money. Yes, the original work is in no danger of being damaged, and will survive long after these misbegotten prequels (I want to remain open-minded, but come on, how likely is it that these will be any better than “OK?”) are forgotten. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the comics industry is in a place where its willing to sacrifice the standard bearer for the idea that comics can be more than cheap time-killers and content farms on the altar of commerce. I don’t care about what this bodes for Watchmen; I care about what it bodes for the industry that would do such a thing.

Further reading: David Brothers has some intelligent thoughts on the subject, and the hordes of annoying fans who are already coming to this project's defense.

TheFourth World Fridays: New Gods #4--"The O'Ryan Mob and the Deep Six"

The most common theme associated with Kirby’s work is “cosmic” (well, and “weird”), but of course he had other idioms he came back to over and over again too. One of these was the hard-boiled world of gangsters and crime-busters, talkin’ tough, wearin’ fedoras, ventilatin’ each other, and embeddin’ their nicknames in a forest of quotation marks. You can definitely see how this would appeal to Kirby, especially the quotation marks. He’d already sprinkled a liberal helping of gangsters into the Fourth World in the form of Intergang; now, in this issue, he gives us, essentially, a crime comic, with a lot of Fourth World stuff lingering around the margins.

Well, OK, it starts on a distinctly Cosmic note, with Metron and his young…I’m going to say, “apprentice”, Esak, who we’ve never seen before, hovering above a primitive planet in the Mobius chair. You know, before we continue, I’m just going to point out that I’m not going to make any dumb NAMBLA-referencing jokes about the fact that Metron is chairing his chair with a young boy in short shorts. I mean, enough with that kind of thing already. I’m not saying comics are innuendo-free or anything, but there was a time when people didn’t automatically assume two characters who hung out together were having sex. And when an adult spent a lot of time with a kid, even one to which he was unrelated, that was called being a father figure. Not HA HA HA THEY’RE TOTALLY GAY. I mean, sheesh, folks. The real irony here is that this is exactly the kind of thing the much-despised Frederick Wertham was so obsessed with, and comic book fans consider him to be a few rungs below Osama Bin Laden on the ladder of hate, yet everyone on the internet is constantly making pedophilia jokes about Batman and Robin. Yes, it’s easy to do. Yes, they wear tight outfits and live together alone. Yes, they fought a guy who spent an entire issue obsessing about “his boner”. But the horse has not only been beaten to death, he has been crushed into glue at this point. MOVE ON ALREADY.

…You know, I just realized that this entry is going to be the first Google hit for anyone searching for “Osama Bin Laden pedophilia gangsters boner NAMBLA”. I’m going to try not to think too hard about that.

Aaaaaaaaanyway. Metron and Esak are casually hovering mere feet ahead of a pair of alien monsters that just so happen to resemble T-Rexes. Esak is afraid, but Metron assures him that they can never match the chair’s speed. Of course, considering that they’re about six inches off the ground and neither of them are looking where they’re going, I’m not sure speed is the only factor involved here.

Metron quickly wises up and, in a breathtaking two-page splash, we see the pair moving up into the air, past a smoldering volcano, with two packs of aliens clashing in primitive battle below. One group looks distinctly caveman-ish, the other like some kind of green goblin-men. “Those creatures below bear the image of man!” marvels Esak, presumably referring to the first group. I wonder if he means “man” in the sense of “humans”, or if he’s including the New Gods in that as well. Either way, note the old-school SF assumption that the evolution of alien life will more or less exactly parallel our own.

Metron mentions that they will return in what “will be a millennium to them!”

METRON: Time to them is not as time to us—is it?
ESAK: Tell me, Metron! Are we truly beyond time? – Are we beyond death?
METRON: My sensors indicate there is an answer in New Genesis!

...Well, that’s one way to avoid answering the question. He could also have tried “My sensors indicate that you should shut the hell up.”

Actually, what Metron’s referring to, obliquely, is the announcement High-Father makes on their arrival back at New Genesis: one of the New Gods has fallen. And of course, he’s also referring to the very end of the series itself, but that’s still a long ways off…

The fallen one, as we learn in abrupt cut to Earth, was a New Genesisean frogman named Seagrin, who the police are currently fishing out of Metropolis harbour. P.I. Dave Lincoln and Orion, in his secret identity of…O’Ryan, have just arrived, and the latter does all but throw himself across Seagrin’s lifeless chest and break out sobbing. Describing him as “a gentle warrior” (riiiiiight), Orion immediately intuits that he’s met his death at the hands of Apokoliptish agents deep beneath the ocean. This being a cosmic being inhabiting a Kirby comic, he needs a proper sendoff, so Orion somehow summons a storm to demolish the pier and give Seagrin a Viking funeral. (Which is appropriate, since this whole sequence would make a hell of a lot more sense if it was in Marvel’s “Thor”.) Invisible through the leaping flames, the Black Racer swoops in and spirits away the soul of the departed (see, that’s how death is supposed to act) before heading back to his apartment for a boring rehash of last issue. (Seriously, how was Kirby planning to build a whole comic around this guy? It’s the most static premise ever—he doesn’t even do anything heroic, really. Was it going to be like an “EC” type comic where he comments wryly on the events of the issue?)

Fortunately, this only lasts two pages, and the next one is one of the most famous splashes in the entire run of the series: it’s a close-up of Darkseid at his creepiest, peering around a corner and delivering an elaborate internal monologue, the most famous line of which is “Yet they know better than most that war is but the cold game of the butcher!” Which, mixed metaphors aside, is a truly iconic line.



Again, either Kirby was improving as a writer, or the influence of Evanier was starting to make itself felt. Remember, Evanier was originally going to write the series, with Kirby being more of a project manager, shooting off the basic ideas. Honestly…that probably would have lead to a more polished series, and perhaps a better one. Kirby could have played to his strengths as an idea man and composition/breakdown artist, and left the prose and specific plot points to Evanier, who’s a more conventionally talented writer (at least nowadays). Evanier tends to downplay his own role in the Fourth World, but I think he definitely had at least a holistic influence.

By the way, this seems a good time to note that Comics Should Be Good just devoted an article to the New Gods (and another to Mister Miracle…will tomorrow’s be The Forever People?) and in it, they make a point that’s so obvious I hadn’t even thought to mention it yet. The Fourth World saga was coming out as America—not just the counterculture--was getting really, truly sick of the Vietnam war, and reflections on the futility of combat were becoming hardwired into the mindset of a generation. Of course, Kirby was a WWII veteran, as well, and he seems to have had a conflicted attitude about the honour of soldiering, but Darkseid’s little musing here seems to sum up the basic ideas about war.

Meanwhile, we’re back with “the O’Ryan mob”, and a lame mob it is. Honestly, I really do like the idea of a bunch of normal people having an experience with a cosmic power greater than themselves and being forced to become adherents of a War God, but these guys can get pretty annoying. And it’s ironic that, facing one of the famously best pages of the series, we also get one of the most infamously awful. This is the bit where Orion’s followers reintroduce themselves via the most hilariously clunky dialogue ever:

LANZA: But I’m Victor Lanza! An insurance executive! A family man! My wife makes me carry an umbrella in case it rains! And now, this! New Genesis! Apokolips! And things that would scare John Wayne!
SHANE: What about it, Lincoln? I’m Claudia Shane, simple but worried secretary! What am I involved in this time?—
LOCKMAN: And me, young but cool, Harvey Lockman!

Admittedly, I think Harv was going for a “hiply ironic” thing there, but man oh man. That is some hilariously bad dialogue.

Orion enters and lays out the plan: basically, they’re going to pose as a rival gang, muscling in on Intergang’s turf. This is, um, ballsy, in that exactly one of them (not including Orion himself) could pass as thug, and the other three are pretty obviously hapless bystanders. I do like that Orion’s first major mission for his followers is to rope them into a life of crime, though.

Asking that they place their hands on Mother Box so they can “see what Mother Box sees in her effort to penetrate Intergang,” Orion sends the four Earthlings a vision of a hatchet-faced goon and a glimpse of his thoughts. They catch that his name is “Snaky Doyle”, that he works for Intergang, and that he’s thinking of something called the “Jammer”, which is what’s allowing Apokoliptians to pass undetected among Earth society. OK, I’ll just say it: Mother Box is really getting to be an annoying Deus Ex Machina. She can do whatever the plot requires at any given time, and is virtually omnipotent when people are paying attention. But rarely do Orion or Mister Miracle or The Forever People think to use her to read minds, which she can apparently do. Nor do they use her to activate remote machinery very often, the way she did in the last issue of New Gods. Mostly she’s used to create illusions—which is ironic, since at least one of the Forever People can apparently do that by herself—and later she plays a key role in computing the Anti-Life Equation. And she summons Infinity Man, of course. With all these powers at her beck and call, the characters forgetting about her to further the plot reaches the same level of annoyance as Superman constantly forgetting his powers.

Anyway, rather than simply grabbing Snaky and beating the information out of him, Orion has a plan to pull a con on Snaky. You know, it’s funny—in virtually every non-Kirby appearance he’s made, including the current “Death of the New Gods”, Orion is portrayed as something akin to a late-90s character, all hypermuscled torso and teeth-baring grimace, and his first thought is always violence, violence, violence. In Grant Morrison’s JLA run it was suggested that Mother Box’s soothing beeping was the only thing that kept him from being a total psychopath. But of course, the character was never like that when Kirby drew and wrote him—sure, he has a tendency to lose it in the heat of battle (as we’ll see next issue) but when he’s not actually fighting, he’s as calm and calculating as any other New God, if a little on the grim side. The relatively elaborate trap he’s about to set for Intergang demonstrates this.

As Snaky leaves the pool hall later that night, he’s grabbed and held at gunpoint by Dave Lincoln, spouting amusing “tough guy” dialogue like “If yuh unzip yer lip, I’ll plug ya!” He frisks him and finds a tiny radio transmitter, which conveniently enough is just at that moment transmitting a message to Snaky to come and “baby-sit” the Jammer. Lincoln cuts him loose, telling him to let Intergang know that the O’Ryan mob has taken over the territory (what, the whole city of Metropolis?). Orion, of course, will follow Snaky from above.

Phase two begins once they’ve tracked Snaky to an old mansion on “a little-used sea-coast road,” where Claudia pulls up in a car and does the “stranded motorist” act. While the Intergang thugs patrolling the area try to help her get her car started so she can clear off, Claudia rolls up the window and presses a trigger that releases knockout gas that “Orion whipped up for this occasion.” The thugs are knocked out, allowing Lincoln, Lockman and Lanza (did Kirby come up with their names by pulling a random page from the phone book?) to emerge from the bushes.

Phase three involves Lanza impersonating a representative of the O’Ryan mob in order to make Intergang tip their hand, something he doesn’t seem to be up to. “You don’t have to play Little Caesar,” reassures Lincoln, “just his smart business manager!” But Lanza is still drenched in flop-sweat.

His entry into the inner sanctum is met with little surprise by Inter-gang’s representative “Country Boy”, who mistakes Lanza for O’Ryan: “We’ve been expectin’ ya! Seein’ that our boy Snaky practically gave yuh a road map!” Glad to see I’m not the only one who thought Snaky acted kinda dumb in heading straight to his headquarters after being accosted by a rival gang. Snaky’s tied to a chair in the office, about to become a cautionary example for Lanza, as “Country Boy” shows off his devastating…fly-fishing ability.

Yes, this is how “Country Boy” intimidates Lanza: by hooking the trigger of a nearby gun with his fishing rod and using it to shoot Snaky. Well, I guess Snaky’s still dead, after all, and—

COUNTRY BOY: Aaaaa—Snaky ain’t dead! – But he is stiff! Paralyzed! And our guns can get spookier than that!

Thank you, Comics Code.

Lanza, needless to say, is immediately reassured that he’s dealing with a bunch of complete tools, and grows more confident. “We know about Intergang,” he says nonchalantly, puffing on a cigar, “But not enough! Frankly, what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t spend a penny on!” Country Boy, being the easily provoked moron that he is, proceeds to immediately show Lanza the Jammer, which he accesses by pulling a secret lever and causing a wall to roll back. “The party we deal with can take this thing apart and set it up again in minutes! That’s organization and power, man!”

…Does it feel to anyone else like Country Boy is overcompensating for something? And doing a lousy job of it?

Anyway, that concludes the crime comic portion of the evening, as Orion immediately blasts through the front door and incinerates the Jammer with a quick burst of Astro-Force. At the same moment, Lanza lays a roundhouse blow to the nearby thug, who was in the process of pulling his gun. Well, what do you know…Lanza AND Claudia both turned out to be competent! Now if only Harvey had done something, anything, to contribute…

But anyway, we’re now leaving the Normals behind and following Orion as he streaks into the wreckage of the Jammer and into a secret passageway beyond. (Hilariously, the Jammer appears to be about as thick as a piece of drywall in this panel.)



Orion shoots down the passageway, while expositioning that Mother Box has now detected the culprit behind Seagrin’s murder: Darkseid’s underwater shock troops, The Deep Six. He shoots out an airlock into the open ocean, Mother Box providing an air bubble for him to breathe (seriously, is there anything Mother Box can’t do if it’s convenient to the plot?) and immediately comes face to face with Slig, leader of the Deep Six.

We’ll be getting to know Slig and the Deep Six better in the next issue, but for now, we quickly (a little too quickly) learn of his ability to mutate creatures simply by touching them, which he proceeds to do to a clump of seaweed. The tendrils reach out and overwhelm Orion, but he blasts free using the Astro-Force, only to be stopped dead in his tracks by a glimpse of…something off-panel.

“What does Orion face? It has destroyed a God—and threatens the entire Earth! Don’t miss—SPAWN!!!”



What, really? That was a pretty terrible comic and all, but I don’t think it threatens the entire—

Oh, OK. Different Spawn.

So, we now have all three of the “real” Fourth World books embroiled in a multi-part storyline, which, perhaps not coincidentally, seems to have elevated the level of the storytelling and the intensity. However, whereas this was a sudden improvement for Mister Miracle and the Forever People, I can’t help but notice that (with the arguable exception of the last issue, which featured the last-minute inclusion of the Black Racer), The New Gods flows extremely smoothly from the first issue to this one and beyond. Each issue is discrete, but the stories evolve logically out of the end of the prior issue, and there’s even ground being laid for future story developments right from the start. That Comics Should Be Good article I linked to above calls The New Gods the best comic Kirby ever did, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks so.

But then, I’m just Adam Prosser, simple but snarky cartoonist and blogger. What do I know?