4. "Spider-Man & The Human Torch" # 5, "Together Again": writer, Dan Slott, artist, Ty Templeton
Dan Slott remembers that Peter Parker hasn't always been an entirely admirable individual. It's a fact that most readers, and indeed many writers, seem to have avoided noticing. The young Parker may well have been a lonely, bullied teenager mocked on his very first appearance for being a "bookworm" and a "wallflower", but he was also capable of sneering at his tormentors not just because they were cruel, but because they couldn't solve the simplest of equations in physics 101 either. There's always been a soft sprinkling of arrogance and resentment in Peter's nature, as well as a tendency to subside into self-pity while failing to notice the needs of the people around him. It's tough for those who regard Peter as the patron saint of losers to deal with, but there are times when Uncle Ben's boy has fallen quite short of perfection.
In "Together Again", Mr Slott subtly reminds us that while Peter Parker is very rarely unpleasant, he's a far more nuanced and compromised young man that we've often been shown. He's impatient of the Human Torch's lack of intellectual firepower, for example, and oblivious of how hurt Storm is by the fact that everyone up to and including Luke Cage has been told Peter's secret identity before Johnny stumbled upon it. And where Johnny is clearly in awe of both Peter's achievements and his often quite-unrecognised excess of good luck, Peter's opinion of the Torch is still tinged by a touch of resentment and dismissiveness. For example, he describes Storm's apparently privileged life as being characterterised by his having "all the power ... and no responsibility", quite forgetting that Johnny too has lost his parents, as well as a wife and host of lovers who've left him quite against his wishes. Peter's keen awareness of how Peter Parker has suffered is shown here as a weakness tinged with self-indulgence that prevents him noticing that Johnny Storm's had his challenges and disasters too.
By the end of "Together Again", there's a sense in which Peter simply can't work out how Johnny Storm has become such an intimate part of his life. It's not that Johnny doesn't matter to Peter, but rather that there's so many other things that matter more. But it's Johnny Storm, the golden boy, the superhero jock, who's ended up living something of a lonely life, while this take of Peter Parker has the resourceful supermodel wife, the membership card for the Avengers and the prospect of a luxury family suite at Stark Towers. The gap between the two of them is in many ways as broad as ever, it's just that the balance of power has so dramatically shifted. It's surely no coincidence that the book ends up with a typically expressive Ty Templeton panel of both Johnny and Peter wearing matching "I'm With Stupid" t-shirts; the Torch looks simply pleased to be sharing the moment with his friend, but Peter's face reflects a slightly baffled self-consciousness that approaches embarrassment. What am I doing here with this idiot, the expression seems to say, if kindly, and it's an exceptionally good question. What are you doing there with your good friend thinking about how he's an idiot, Peter?
5. "The Forever People" # 8, "Together Again": writer, artist, Jack Kirby
One of the reasons why few but Jack Kirby have ever convinced with their take on the Fourth World is that's it's rare for anyone to pay attention to the sociology of the New Gods. I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous, but I do believe that it's true. Most writers have tended to focus on capturing the broad personalities of the various Gods, but few have even made a serious attempt to replicate the idiosyncratic dialogue that Mr Kirby gave his characters. As a result, the New Gods are often presented in such a way that they seem like nothing more than an ill-connected rabble of pompously declaiming and apparently incompatible types. What's so often missing is the sense that the Gods of both New Genesis and Apokolips share a common culture of sorts, as they so obviously do in Mr Kirby's tales, where they each often live according to local variations of the same thoughts, knowledge and customs. For although Darkseid and Highfather are leading opposing forces in a civil war, they're not strictly opposites. The two powers clearly share far more of their social identity with each other than is often recognised.
At the climax of "The Power", the younger Gods have been surprised and cornered by Darkseid. The reader might expect that some kind of desperate rear-guard action on the part of the Forever People is about to break out, but something very different occurs instead. "I said be silent!" barks Darkseid at the young Gods before him, and they immediately straighten their shoulders and line up as if on parade. This isn't the result of an overwhelming fear on the part of Moonrider and his comrades, for though they're clearly scared stiff of Darkseid, they're not ready to crawl to him. "Are you warriors of New Genesis - - or some prattling gaggle of half-grown fowl!!?" Darkseid demands to know, and the stiffness and imprecision of Kirby's dialogue gives the impression of a necessarily flawed but meaningful attempt to express the untranslatable language of the Fourth World. They're words which can almost seem to suggest that the soldier-Gods of this conflict are expected to show a formal respect to their opponents in circumstances such as these, but it's hard to grasp the precise details of what's going on, just as the ultimate meaning of Darkseid's abuse of power is absolutely clear. This is of course entirely appropriate; we should be a touch thrown and confused when we're reading about the Gods, and their worlds and customs should seem somewhat familiar and yet somewhat alien too.
What are the rules that both sides of this conflict draw upon without thinking? Why is it, for example, that the Forever People should feel so obliged to trust Darkseid even as he's so predictably betraying them, and why exactly is it that he ultimately spares them? The more the reader stares at the adventures of the New Gods, the more strange and yet the more disturbingly consistent a world it is that they find staring back at them. (*1)
*1: I'm indebted to Richard Bensam for his analysis of the first version of the above, which I've as a consequence changed.
6. "Flash # 76: "Identity Crisis", writer, Mark Waid, artist Greg LaRocque
"The Return Of Barry Allen" is the story of how Wally West finds all his dreams have come true for Christmas, and of how everything in his life utterly collapses as a result. For more than five years after the death of Barry Allen, the second Flash, in "Crisis On Infinite Earths", Wally had been defined more by the fact that he wasn't his murdered uncle than by his own character and capabilities. Mark Waid eliminated this fundamental and somewhat story-stymying passivity in West by apparently answering West's prayers and delivering his beloved role-model back to life. All of a sudden, a character whose whole purpose had been to live up to someone else's saintly standards found his own self-definition redundant. Who was this Wally West, then, if he wasn't a superhero trying to be, and sometimes succeeding in being, everything his vaunted predecessor was?
It was a stroke of considerable skill by Mr Waid. There can't be many of us who haven't longed for an absent figure, a lover, a friend, a parent, to come back and make everything alright simply by their presence. It was impossible not to empathise with Wally, both in terms of his joy and because of the uncertainty and unease that any fulfilment of a dream brings with it. West's look of adoration, of absolute relief, that accompanied the returned Barry Allen's encouragement of a young boy to "keep up" with his efforts as a member of his school's track team was enough to bring tears to this reader's eyes. It's as if some secret equation had been introduced into the physics of Wally West's universe so that nothing could ever hurt him again.
Who couldn't want that for someone else, fictional or not?
Of course, the shock of reading of how this "Barry Allen" then tried quite deliberately to kill Wally in "Identity Crisis" was made all the more poignant by the scenes of happiness and unease which preceeded it. We've all dreamed of a loved one returning to us, but I doubt there's very many who've gone on to imagine the returnee deciding to kill them pretty much straight afterwards. In a genre that tends to redevelop the personalities and purposes of superheroes through extremes of physical trauma and teeth-grinding emotional anguish, "The Return Of Barry Allen" provided the requisite measure of both while adding a third quality to the mix; a recognisably touching personal crisis which anyone who's ever experienced loss could empathise with. It was that specifically human quality which made this generational tale of superheroes a great deal more than just another manipulation of continuity involving a parade of costumes and super-fast super-feats.
7. "The Spirit: July 27 1952 "Outer Space", writer, Jules Feiffer, artist, Wally Wood, inspiration and oversight, Will Eisner
If there had been a soundtrack to "Outer Space", I suspect that "September Song" would have been the first track on it. For this is a tale of space exploration where the fantastic premise and the special effects are grounded in a story of how Denny Colt, the Spirit, is becoming keenly aware of the process of growing old. "I'm no longer a kid ..." he explains to the scientists who ask him to accompany them on their trip to the Moon, but it's not just that his body is starting to betray him. His "insides" are "dead" too, his heart so levelled by long years of fighting crime that even "circling the moon" can't spark a sense of wonder in him. He's a man who can't perceive the future for all the responsibilities that he bears in the present, and the two thousand yard stare that Wally Wood gives him is enough to make any reader want to put an arm around The Spirit and guide him to a quiet and darkened room where he might catch a few restorative weeks of sleep.
There's a very real, if easily qualified and challenged, sense in which "Outer Space" marks the first appearance of the particular type of superhero which was at the heart of the Marvel revolution of the early Sixties. And the Denny Colt of "Outer Space" is something of a superhero rather than just a straight-forward and two-fisted crime-fighter; he has his mask, and the respect of all those around him for his clearly untypical abilities, and he's the lead in a science-fiction tale of space-travel too. But most importantly, he's the very model of the hero with a flaw and a self-conscious understanding of it that Stan Lee and his collaborators ran with in 1961 and 1962 and beyond, with the creation of Peter Parker and Ben Grimm and all of their wounded brethren. Colt's fatal flaw is his age and the physical and mental limitations he feels and fears his years fighting the forces of disorder have brought him. And the various reflections upon that Achilles Heel given to him by Mr Feiffer, in both dialogue and thought balloon, sit recognisably in a tradition that would later inform Stan Lee's most successful work; the self-reflective and recognisably mortal hero. Add to that the presence of the soap opera complications of the Spirit's relationship with the distraught Ellen and the deeply concerned Commissioner Dolan, and what's here is the distant but distinct ancestor of the characters and conflicts that the House Of Ideas was built upon.
It's not that "Outer Space" is important only because of the historical influence that it may or may not have had. No, it's important because it's a peerlessly moving comic strip in its own right, regardless of whatever genre it may be associated with.
I can quite literally find nothing negative to say about it at all.
To be concluded;
Coming soon; numbers 8 to 10, and the review of USM volume II, number II as promised. I'm as always grateful for your visiting, and I wish you a splendid day and a most productive sticking together!
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