Realpolitik, funnybook style.
I've mentioned before how much I dig comic book writer Steve Englehart (and posted a review of the only novel to date published under his own name, The Point Man, over on LibraryThing) and how I've noted, as the present century has ticked onward, how relevant a lot of the politically-themed storylines from certain early-to-mid 1970s Marvel Comics titles seem today.
Both points were recalled sharply for me when I re-read Englehart's cursedly brief run on Marvel's Super-Villain Team-Up (which ran for only 17 issues in its regular, 17-paged format, after two giant-sized issues, the first of which largely consisted of reprints, and the second of which incongruously reprinted the "Living Brain" story from Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1, #8 [Jan. 1964]), a measly four issues (#5-8), before he apparently left Marvel for the first time to work at DC.
(SIDEBAR:The announcement of Englehart's departure in the letters page of SVTU #8 [Oct. 1976] gives an inkling as to how cut-throat and riddled with internecine conflicts the comic book biz, like most other publishing ventures, really is: "In all honesty, many of us will miss Steve...but, life and deadlines go on." The fact that the anonymous "armadillo" [as Marvel dubbed its letter page editors in the '70s] felt it necessary to state "Honestly, many of us will miss Steve" speaks volumes as to the circumstances of Englehart's first departure from Marvel after so many triumphs [the retcon explanation of the 1950s Captain America -- who is actually Captain America IV, although he was the second in order of publication -- and Bucky; the Watergate-inspired Cap storyline whereby he learns of supervillainous malfeasance in the White House, gives up his CA identity in disgust and despair at the state of the country, and briefly assumes the identity of a new costumed [and originally caped...] crusader, the Nomad, only to resume his ID as Cap after the Red Skull tortured to death a hapless Bronx kid who had attempted to take over the Cap ID; the Celestial Madonna storyline over in The Avengers, which has been collected in trade paperback; etc.], and gives the lie to the air of conviviality and good-natured japery that Stan Lee, the then-publisher and former editor-in-chief and chief writer, ascribed to Marvel's bullpen.)
Specifically the real-world relevancy comes from Super-Villain Team-Up Vol. 1, #7 (the Aug. 1976 issue), which was the second issue featuring the most insidious, the most horrifying super-villain team-up of all: that of Doctor Doom (a megalomaniacal despot-cum-scientific genius who is primarily the Fantastic Four's main nemesis, but who has also tangled with pretty much everybody from Daredevil and the Dazzler [originally dubbed "the Disco Dazzler" -- arrrgh!] to Galactus and the Beyonder) and -- wait for it -- Doctor Henry Kissinger, the then-U.S. Secretary of State:
(Note to non-comic book nerds: the pointy-eared shirtless fellow in the above panel is not Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, but rather Prince Namor of Atlantis, the mighty Sub-Mariner, a character created by Bill Everett in 1939 under the auspices of one of Marvel's predecessor companies, Timely Comics; Sub-Mariner was/is a phenomenally powerful hybrid mutant amphibian [his dad was a human ship's captain, his mom was a water-breathing Atlantean princess] who periodically attacked New York City before the Nazis came along [in the comics, the Nazis bombed Namor's underwater city of Atlantis in an attempt to conquer it], and was revived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the pages of Fantastic Four Vol. 1, #4 [May 1962]; as far as I can tell, based on the paucity of reprints of Golden Age titles [i.e., comic books published from the mid-to-late 1930s to the late 1940s] I've been able to read, Sub-Mariner has been usually used in a more interesting fashion in Silver Age [i.e., comic books published from the late 1950s/early 1960s to the early 1970s] and more contemporary titles than he was in the Golden Age, even if he's had trouble hanging onto his own series.)
Englehart had Dr. Victor von Doom, absolute ruler of the tiny (though armed with fearfully advanced weaponry) Balkan nation of Latveria, sign a non-aggression, non-interference pact with the U.S., with Henry the K serving as the U.S.'s signatory in lieu of then-president Gerald R. Ford. It's arguable as to which man signed said pact with the greater degree of bad faith, Doom or Kissinger. (I'm sure that Christopher Hitchens would have some definite opinions on this subject.)
As a disgustipated FF (short for Fantastic Four, natch) walk away from Doom's castle to their Fantasticar (hey, if Batman could have an "Alphabet Soup Bat-Container" in the 1960s Batman TV show, the Fantastic Four can have a Fantasticar...) -- they had flown to Latveria to confront Doom and rescue Namor, a sometime ally, from Doom's clutches -- the squabbles between the Thing (Benjamin J. Grimm), an irate Human Torch (Johnny Storm; this was the second Human Torch, BTW: the original was an android created by Carl Burgos in the first issue of Marvel Comics, published by Timely Comics in 1939) and the here unusually uptight and reactionary leader Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) -- although, in all fairness, Reed was probably just as PO'ed as Ben and Johnny were at being told to go peddle their papers by Dr. K, but was trying his damndest to be the voice of reason -- have amazing currency in our present-day "War on Terror", and failing-fast wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Johnny using the Churchill / Chamberlain / appeasement argument against Reed is pretty funny, given how much the neo-conservatives and Bush "43" love to use just that analogy for Iraq and Iran, and how "Dubya" had a bust of "our Win" installed in the Oval Office. (Geoffrey Wheatcroft has some interesting things to say on this phenomenon in his review essay of four new books on Churchill -- two praising him, two attacking him [one of which was written by Pat Buchanan: the forthcoming Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost the Empire and the West Lost the World] in the current issue of The New York Review of Books [Vol. 55, No. 9; May 29, 2008 issue], "Churchill and His Myths.") Reed's pettish rejoinder of "Listen to you two! You talk like revolutionaries!" is pretty amusing too; not since the Roy Thomas-plotted, Gerry Conway-scripted generational gap story in Fantastic Four Vol. 1, #136 & #137 has Reed sounded like such a reactionary: Marvel writers in the 1970s tended to write Ben Grimm as the FF's reactionary, and depicted him as an avid fan of the TV sitcom All in the Family, even to the point of unironically idolizing Carroll O'Connor's willfully ignorant, gleefully bigoted, Archie Bunker.
Given all that's come to light in the years since, the handshake between Doctor Doom and Dr. K, as well as Doom's professed admiration for Henry the K, is a wonderful bit of satire:
And I can't help but think that Namor's internal soliloquy on page 4 -- particularly in the first panel -- pretty much sums up in a nutshell the political cross-currents over Iraq and, increasingly, Iran:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, history is cyclical; yeah, yeah, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce; and yeah, history repeats itself only because nobody paid attention the first time. But man, why do I have to be one of the lucky souls stuck living through a re-run of one of history's Teh Suck cycles and not one of its so-called golden ages? (OTOH, Gore Vidal has argued that the U.S.'s last -- and only? -- "golden age" was mockingly, maddeningly brief: from the end of the war in Europe and against Japan in the latter half of 1945 to 1950 -- presumably the date of the first U.S. military intervention in Korea, on July 5, 1950. This "golden age" reminds me of that Harlan Ellison story where the main character learns, in the midst or on the cusp of middle age, that the pinnacle of his life was when he was eight years old and he caught a softball that enabled his team to win the game. Talk about news you can lose...)
Much as I love a well-done mindless slugfest, I'm all for superhero comics with a bit more meat to them, to provide food for thought as well as "mere" escapist entertainment; but sometimes the food proves to be a bit too astringent for comfort. Even if it sometimes takes over thirty years for the bite to be felt.
Both points were recalled sharply for me when I re-read Englehart's cursedly brief run on Marvel's Super-Villain Team-Up (which ran for only 17 issues in its regular, 17-paged format, after two giant-sized issues, the first of which largely consisted of reprints, and the second of which incongruously reprinted the "Living Brain" story from Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1, #8 [Jan. 1964]), a measly four issues (#5-8), before he apparently left Marvel for the first time to work at DC.
(SIDEBAR:The announcement of Englehart's departure in the letters page of SVTU #8 [Oct. 1976] gives an inkling as to how cut-throat and riddled with internecine conflicts the comic book biz, like most other publishing ventures, really is: "In all honesty, many of us will miss Steve...but, life and deadlines go on." The fact that the anonymous "armadillo" [as Marvel dubbed its letter page editors in the '70s] felt it necessary to state "Honestly, many of us will miss Steve" speaks volumes as to the circumstances of Englehart's first departure from Marvel after so many triumphs [the retcon explanation of the 1950s Captain America -- who is actually Captain America IV, although he was the second in order of publication -- and Bucky; the Watergate-inspired Cap storyline whereby he learns of supervillainous malfeasance in the White House, gives up his CA identity in disgust and despair at the state of the country, and briefly assumes the identity of a new costumed [and originally caped...] crusader, the Nomad, only to resume his ID as Cap after the Red Skull tortured to death a hapless Bronx kid who had attempted to take over the Cap ID; the Celestial Madonna storyline over in The Avengers, which has been collected in trade paperback; etc.], and gives the lie to the air of conviviality and good-natured japery that Stan Lee, the then-publisher and former editor-in-chief and chief writer, ascribed to Marvel's bullpen.)
Specifically the real-world relevancy comes from Super-Villain Team-Up Vol. 1, #7 (the Aug. 1976 issue), which was the second issue featuring the most insidious, the most horrifying super-villain team-up of all: that of Doctor Doom (a megalomaniacal despot-cum-scientific genius who is primarily the Fantastic Four's main nemesis, but who has also tangled with pretty much everybody from Daredevil and the Dazzler [originally dubbed "the Disco Dazzler" -- arrrgh!] to Galactus and the Beyonder) and -- wait for it -- Doctor Henry Kissinger, the then-U.S. Secretary of State:
(Note to non-comic book nerds: the pointy-eared shirtless fellow in the above panel is not Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, but rather Prince Namor of Atlantis, the mighty Sub-Mariner, a character created by Bill Everett in 1939 under the auspices of one of Marvel's predecessor companies, Timely Comics; Sub-Mariner was/is a phenomenally powerful hybrid mutant amphibian [his dad was a human ship's captain, his mom was a water-breathing Atlantean princess] who periodically attacked New York City before the Nazis came along [in the comics, the Nazis bombed Namor's underwater city of Atlantis in an attempt to conquer it], and was revived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the pages of Fantastic Four Vol. 1, #4 [May 1962]; as far as I can tell, based on the paucity of reprints of Golden Age titles [i.e., comic books published from the mid-to-late 1930s to the late 1940s] I've been able to read, Sub-Mariner has been usually used in a more interesting fashion in Silver Age [i.e., comic books published from the late 1950s/early 1960s to the early 1970s] and more contemporary titles than he was in the Golden Age, even if he's had trouble hanging onto his own series.)
Englehart had Dr. Victor von Doom, absolute ruler of the tiny (though armed with fearfully advanced weaponry) Balkan nation of Latveria, sign a non-aggression, non-interference pact with the U.S., with Henry the K serving as the U.S.'s signatory in lieu of then-president Gerald R. Ford. It's arguable as to which man signed said pact with the greater degree of bad faith, Doom or Kissinger. (I'm sure that Christopher Hitchens would have some definite opinions on this subject.)
As a disgustipated FF (short for Fantastic Four, natch) walk away from Doom's castle to their Fantasticar (hey, if Batman could have an "Alphabet Soup Bat-Container" in the 1960s Batman TV show, the Fantastic Four can have a Fantasticar...) -- they had flown to Latveria to confront Doom and rescue Namor, a sometime ally, from Doom's clutches -- the squabbles between the Thing (Benjamin J. Grimm), an irate Human Torch (Johnny Storm; this was the second Human Torch, BTW: the original was an android created by Carl Burgos in the first issue of Marvel Comics, published by Timely Comics in 1939) and the here unusually uptight and reactionary leader Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) -- although, in all fairness, Reed was probably just as PO'ed as Ben and Johnny were at being told to go peddle their papers by Dr. K, but was trying his damndest to be the voice of reason -- have amazing currency in our present-day "War on Terror", and failing-fast wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Johnny using the Churchill / Chamberlain / appeasement argument against Reed is pretty funny, given how much the neo-conservatives and Bush "43" love to use just that analogy for Iraq and Iran, and how "Dubya" had a bust of "our Win" installed in the Oval Office. (Geoffrey Wheatcroft has some interesting things to say on this phenomenon in his review essay of four new books on Churchill -- two praising him, two attacking him [one of which was written by Pat Buchanan: the forthcoming Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost the Empire and the West Lost the World] in the current issue of The New York Review of Books [Vol. 55, No. 9; May 29, 2008 issue], "Churchill and His Myths.") Reed's pettish rejoinder of "Listen to you two! You talk like revolutionaries!" is pretty amusing too; not since the Roy Thomas-plotted, Gerry Conway-scripted generational gap story in Fantastic Four Vol. 1, #136 & #137 has Reed sounded like such a reactionary: Marvel writers in the 1970s tended to write Ben Grimm as the FF's reactionary, and depicted him as an avid fan of the TV sitcom All in the Family, even to the point of unironically idolizing Carroll O'Connor's willfully ignorant, gleefully bigoted, Archie Bunker.
Given all that's come to light in the years since, the handshake between Doctor Doom and Dr. K, as well as Doom's professed admiration for Henry the K, is a wonderful bit of satire:
And I can't help but think that Namor's internal soliloquy on page 4 -- particularly in the first panel -- pretty much sums up in a nutshell the political cross-currents over Iraq and, increasingly, Iran:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, history is cyclical; yeah, yeah, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce; and yeah, history repeats itself only because nobody paid attention the first time. But man, why do I have to be one of the lucky souls stuck living through a re-run of one of history's Teh Suck cycles and not one of its so-called golden ages? (OTOH, Gore Vidal has argued that the U.S.'s last -- and only? -- "golden age" was mockingly, maddeningly brief: from the end of the war in Europe and against Japan in the latter half of 1945 to 1950 -- presumably the date of the first U.S. military intervention in Korea, on July 5, 1950. This "golden age" reminds me of that Harlan Ellison story where the main character learns, in the midst or on the cusp of middle age, that the pinnacle of his life was when he was eight years old and he caught a softball that enabled his team to win the game. Talk about news you can lose...)
Much as I love a well-done mindless slugfest, I'm all for superhero comics with a bit more meat to them, to provide food for thought as well as "mere" escapist entertainment; but sometimes the food proves to be a bit too astringent for comfort. Even if it sometimes takes over thirty years for the bite to be felt.