Relevancy in superhero comics? Look to the letter pages!
(OR: "With Hyper-Power Comes Hyper-Responsibility")
Long-time readers know that I have no compunctions about describing myself as a mostly recovered Marvel Zombie (TM); in other words, while I used to buy a large amount of superhero comics -- primarily those published by Marvel Comics (whose product characters include Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, X-Men, Iron Man, etc., etc.) -- on a regular basis, I no longer do so.
Fact is, I'd been getting fed up with Marvel's storylines and marketing policies (i.e., gynormous cross-over story arcs running through multiple books, the vast majority of which proved to be, in the end, as deeply unfulfilling as we're told a life of crime must be; holographic, gate-fold, fold-out, wrap-around covers; etc.) through the first half of the 1990s, so it wasn't as severe a shock to my system as it might have otherwise been when the sequential fiascos of the "Onslaught" and "Heroes Reborn" storylines (anyone here feel the love for "Teen Tony" over in Iron Man? anybody? you, sir? let me guess: you like James "Jimmy" Bond, Jr. too, right? -- you closeted chickenhawk...) finally drove me to cease and desist all my Marvel Comic-buying, around 1995 or 1996. By that time I was more or less a happy consumer of certain DC superhero funnybooks anyway: JLA, Starman, The Power of Shazam!, Sandman Mystery Theatre and, eventually, JSA, Flash --when I could find it -- Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. -- yes, I really will buy almost anything even remotely pertaining to DC's Golden Age heroes, at least till I can't kid myself that it doesn't suck like an Electrolux -- and Hawkman. (I think I lasted two issues in The Martian Manhunter, and I bought about ten issues too many of the Rick Veitch-scripted Aquaman, which launched in the wake of the "Ancient Atlantis" storyline in JLA -- after, what?, JLA #75 or thereabouts.)
While I've occasionally gone on back-issue buying binges, for the most part, excepting the occasional foray into a mini-series or a much shorter than expected regular series (Marvel Universe and X-Men: The Hidden Years, I'm looking at you), I've as faithfully stayed away from Marvel's latest comics as I used to snarf them up. This means that I've missed all sorts of outrages perpetrated upon some of my favorite characters, such as Brian Bendis' run on The Avengers (specifically the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline...) and, more recently, the Civil War clusterfuck attempt at "relevancy" in the Marvel Universe (everybody with superpowers, hero or villain, is required to register with the U.S. government: Iron Man/Tony Stark and Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards lead the pro-registration faction with hi-tech fascistic aplomb while Captain America/Steve Rogers leads the anti-registration group), which concludes with Captain America (who realizes at the end of Civil War the "rightness" -- no pun intended, I'm sure -- of the Shell-Head/Stretcho cause, admits that he was a baaaaad lil' super-soldier and must be punished, and punished hard) getting kacked. By a sniper. That mess (Cap's death, if not Civil War) was written by Ed Brubaker, yet another "hot" new comic book writer whose work I've thankfully missed.
No, as fraught with languors and steaming cesspits as Marvel's back issues are (some New Mutants, madam? how about Secret Wars II? Secret Defenders, perhaps..?), I much prefer to relive -- or discover for the first time -- the past.
I don't have any religious objections to reprints, but I like to get the original issues if opportunity (and my wallet) permits. Not only do I get a certain je ne sais quoi from reading an original Silver Age issue, I get a kick out of reading said old comics' letter pages. You never know just what you'll find: a letter from a now famous industry pro; a bit of trivia as to who plotted an issue or created a certain character; or installments in an ongoing discussion in the pages of the letter col, which can serve as reminders that, while the Internet certainly made it easier for everyone to have a soapbox and engage in far more ad hominem attacks than previously possible, it didn't invent the general public's desire to pontificate and engage in free-form ass-hattery.
Another interesting revelation that a perusal of old comics' letter pages offers is that, even at "Mighty Marvel," which prided itself on being the most "relevant," if not the most "realistic," of the superhero comics of the day, in the most argentine issues of the Silver Age -- say, from 1963 to 1967 -- "relevance" was perhaps more frequently to be found in the letter columns than in the actual comic book itself.
I offer in evidence excerpts from a letter printed in The Mighty Thor Vol. 1, #129 ("The Verdict of Zeus!," June 1966 issue, which means that it was on sale by April 1966; this was part 5 of the six-part Thor-Hercules-Pluto dust-up):
"Dear Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby],
"Oh, for Pete's sake! How could our great hero Thor ever fall in love with such a stupid, insipid, selfish, childish coquette as Jane Foster? It's just inconceivable! If she really loved him, she would be proud of his strength and nobility and service to mankind. She is almost as bad as Betty Brant [in The Amazing Spider-Man]. Doesn't she know it's the responsibility of the strong to aid and protect the weak and helpless? She is the kind of girl who would demand that the U.S. soldiers in Viet Nam come home immediately, forsake their mission, and guard her house in case it might be burglarized...If you don't do something about Jane Foster, I may even (oh, perish forbid!) go back to reading Brand Ecch [a play on "Brand X" from numerous TV commercials, this was Marvel's semi-humorous name for DC in the mid-1960s; they would eventually retire the tag in favor of the more neutral "Distinguished Competition"]! Please, if you don't want to get rid of her completely, at least change her personality. As things are now, Thor is ten million times too good for her. Believe me, she should realize how lucky she is. If I were she, I certainly wouldn't behave as she does. Other than this one gigantic complaint, I really love THOR and all your other comics."
Mary M. Johnson
Elizabeth, NJ
Ooohhh-kay: given the current state of the debate over the U.S.'s adventure in Iraq, this letter from nearly 41 years ago has more than a little resonance -- not to say "relevance" -- today. The right-wing of today may attempt to garb themselves in liberal clothes and affect a Wilsonian stance, but ideologically they aren't nearly as different from their forebears as they would like some to believe. (And if there are some overly zealous lefties who are wont to see a would-be, homespun Hitler in each new right-wing tub-thumper, the right-wingers can be just as egregious: I don't think that there were too many lefties, even in 1966, who were clamoring for U.S. troops, whether Army or Marine, to be withdrawn from Vietnam so that they could police our streets. Surely Ms. Johnson had at least heard of Posse Comitatus?)
I'm going to go out on a limb here: I'd venture to say that the majority (perhaps only a "simple majority," i.e., 51%, but a majority nonetheless) of superhero comic book fans realize that you can't apply superhero comic book solutions to real-world problems. Expecting some ill-thought, bat-shit scheme to actually work without benefit of any sort of super-powered agents, a hi-tech spy agency headquartered in an aircraft carrier-sized flying fortress, the legions of Valhalla, a former herald to a world devourer, or a Cosmic Cube is just plain crazy.
Maybe we should start electing to federal offices some superhero fanboys (and -girls) with a firm grasp of the difference between the Marvel or DC universes ("MU" and "DCU," respectively) and ours. They just might do more good than our current crop of "best and brightest" are doing.
Long-time readers know that I have no compunctions about describing myself as a mostly recovered Marvel Zombie (TM); in other words, while I used to buy a large amount of superhero comics -- primarily those published by Marvel Comics (whose product characters include Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, X-Men, Iron Man, etc., etc.) -- on a regular basis, I no longer do so.
Fact is, I'd been getting fed up with Marvel's storylines and marketing policies (i.e., gynormous cross-over story arcs running through multiple books, the vast majority of which proved to be, in the end, as deeply unfulfilling as we're told a life of crime must be; holographic, gate-fold, fold-out, wrap-around covers; etc.) through the first half of the 1990s, so it wasn't as severe a shock to my system as it might have otherwise been when the sequential fiascos of the "Onslaught" and "Heroes Reborn" storylines (anyone here feel the love for "Teen Tony" over in Iron Man? anybody? you, sir? let me guess: you like James "Jimmy" Bond, Jr. too, right? -- you closeted chickenhawk...) finally drove me to cease and desist all my Marvel Comic-buying, around 1995 or 1996. By that time I was more or less a happy consumer of certain DC superhero funnybooks anyway: JLA, Starman, The Power of Shazam!, Sandman Mystery Theatre and, eventually, JSA, Flash --when I could find it -- Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. -- yes, I really will buy almost anything even remotely pertaining to DC's Golden Age heroes, at least till I can't kid myself that it doesn't suck like an Electrolux -- and Hawkman. (I think I lasted two issues in The Martian Manhunter, and I bought about ten issues too many of the Rick Veitch-scripted Aquaman, which launched in the wake of the "Ancient Atlantis" storyline in JLA -- after, what?, JLA #75 or thereabouts.)
While I've occasionally gone on back-issue buying binges, for the most part, excepting the occasional foray into a mini-series or a much shorter than expected regular series (Marvel Universe and X-Men: The Hidden Years, I'm looking at you), I've as faithfully stayed away from Marvel's latest comics as I used to snarf them up. This means that I've missed all sorts of outrages perpetrated upon some of my favorite characters, such as Brian Bendis' run on The Avengers (specifically the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline...) and, more recently, the Civil War clusterfuck attempt at "relevancy" in the Marvel Universe (everybody with superpowers, hero or villain, is required to register with the U.S. government: Iron Man/Tony Stark and Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards lead the pro-registration faction with hi-tech fascistic aplomb while Captain America/Steve Rogers leads the anti-registration group), which concludes with Captain America (who realizes at the end of Civil War the "rightness" -- no pun intended, I'm sure -- of the Shell-Head/Stretcho cause, admits that he was a baaaaad lil' super-soldier and must be punished, and punished hard) getting kacked. By a sniper. That mess (Cap's death, if not Civil War) was written by Ed Brubaker, yet another "hot" new comic book writer whose work I've thankfully missed.
No, as fraught with languors and steaming cesspits as Marvel's back issues are (some New Mutants, madam? how about Secret Wars II? Secret Defenders, perhaps..?), I much prefer to relive -- or discover for the first time -- the past.
I don't have any religious objections to reprints, but I like to get the original issues if opportunity (and my wallet) permits. Not only do I get a certain je ne sais quoi from reading an original Silver Age issue, I get a kick out of reading said old comics' letter pages. You never know just what you'll find: a letter from a now famous industry pro; a bit of trivia as to who plotted an issue or created a certain character; or installments in an ongoing discussion in the pages of the letter col, which can serve as reminders that, while the Internet certainly made it easier for everyone to have a soapbox and engage in far more ad hominem attacks than previously possible, it didn't invent the general public's desire to pontificate and engage in free-form ass-hattery.
Another interesting revelation that a perusal of old comics' letter pages offers is that, even at "Mighty Marvel," which prided itself on being the most "relevant," if not the most "realistic," of the superhero comics of the day, in the most argentine issues of the Silver Age -- say, from 1963 to 1967 -- "relevance" was perhaps more frequently to be found in the letter columns than in the actual comic book itself.
I offer in evidence excerpts from a letter printed in The Mighty Thor Vol. 1, #129 ("The Verdict of Zeus!," June 1966 issue, which means that it was on sale by April 1966; this was part 5 of the six-part Thor-Hercules-Pluto dust-up):
"Dear Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby],
"Oh, for Pete's sake! How could our great hero Thor ever fall in love with such a stupid, insipid, selfish, childish coquette as Jane Foster? It's just inconceivable! If she really loved him, she would be proud of his strength and nobility and service to mankind. She is almost as bad as Betty Brant [in The Amazing Spider-Man]. Doesn't she know it's the responsibility of the strong to aid and protect the weak and helpless? She is the kind of girl who would demand that the U.S. soldiers in Viet Nam come home immediately, forsake their mission, and guard her house in case it might be burglarized...If you don't do something about Jane Foster, I may even (oh, perish forbid!) go back to reading Brand Ecch [a play on "Brand X" from numerous TV commercials, this was Marvel's semi-humorous name for DC in the mid-1960s; they would eventually retire the tag in favor of the more neutral "Distinguished Competition"]! Please, if you don't want to get rid of her completely, at least change her personality. As things are now, Thor is ten million times too good for her. Believe me, she should realize how lucky she is. If I were she, I certainly wouldn't behave as she does. Other than this one gigantic complaint, I really love THOR and all your other comics."
Mary M. Johnson
Elizabeth, NJ
Ooohhh-kay: given the current state of the debate over the U.S.'s adventure in Iraq, this letter from nearly 41 years ago has more than a little resonance -- not to say "relevance" -- today. The right-wing of today may attempt to garb themselves in liberal clothes and affect a Wilsonian stance, but ideologically they aren't nearly as different from their forebears as they would like some to believe. (And if there are some overly zealous lefties who are wont to see a would-be, homespun Hitler in each new right-wing tub-thumper, the right-wingers can be just as egregious: I don't think that there were too many lefties, even in 1966, who were clamoring for U.S. troops, whether Army or Marine, to be withdrawn from Vietnam so that they could police our streets. Surely Ms. Johnson had at least heard of Posse Comitatus?)
I'm going to go out on a limb here: I'd venture to say that the majority (perhaps only a "simple majority," i.e., 51%, but a majority nonetheless) of superhero comic book fans realize that you can't apply superhero comic book solutions to real-world problems. Expecting some ill-thought, bat-shit scheme to actually work without benefit of any sort of super-powered agents, a hi-tech spy agency headquartered in an aircraft carrier-sized flying fortress, the legions of Valhalla, a former herald to a world devourer, or a Cosmic Cube is just plain crazy.
Maybe we should start electing to federal offices some superhero fanboys (and -girls) with a firm grasp of the difference between the Marvel or DC universes ("MU" and "DCU," respectively) and ours. They just might do more good than our current crop of "best and brightest" are doing.