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The Origins of Ultron

Well, the first big summer blockbuster comes out this weekend – Avengers 2: Age of Ultron.  Based on the original Avenger’s movie success, the fantastic track record of Marvel’s cinematic universe, including the shows made for television, and the marketing undertaken by them and their parent company, Disney, it is likely that this installment will make well over a billion dollars.  Clearly, with a draw like that, the majority of moviegoers will be people who have only a cursory familiarity with the comics history that is the backdrop for the movie.  So, this week I will try to give some background about the villain called Ultron.

I would venture a guess that most people know that Ultron is some sort of artificial intelligence that has grown too big and fast and has now become hostile towards its creator and, by association, the whole human race.  Given the demographics of the audience, it is likely that people will say that this particular concept is reminiscent of the Matrix or Terminator movies.   Ultron, however, appeared on the scene much earlier than either of these films.

The original appearance of Ultron was in Avengers (1961) issue #54, where he went by the equally bizarre name of the Crimson Cowl.  He appears on the scene as the sinister leader of the new Masters of Evil – a group rounded out by the bunch of lesser-known super villains comprised of Klaw, the Radioactive Man, Whirlwind, the Melter, and the Black Knight (I guess pithy names were hard to come by in the 1960s).  Nothing in either his appearance or in his mode of speech reveals his mechanistic, man-made origins, and no doubt he would have passed Alan Turing’s test.

Crimson_Cowl

The ensuing clash between the Masters of Evil and the Avengers features a set of one-on-one battles:  Hawkeye vs. the Melter, the Black Panther vs. Whirlwind, Klaw vs. the Wasp, and Giant Man vs. the Radioactive Man.  Despite being betrayed by the Black Knight, the Masters of Evil gain the upper hand and quickly subdue and imprison the Avengers.  After some meaningless plot twists, including Jarvis, the Avengers butler, being subjected to mind control so that he appeared for a time as the Crimson Cowl, the real Crimson Cowl finally reveals himself to be Ultron-5.

Ultron_Revealed

The Avengers manage to get free and defeat the Masters of Evil, but they fail to catch Ultron-5.  The story closes with a melodramatic threat from the robot that has more of the feel of a human villain simply dressed as robot rather than the artificial intelligence with thought patterns and behaviors quite different than Man’s.  This overly abundant mimicry plagues almost every story of Ultron going forward, and the metal menace is often portrayed as having an inferiority complex, as being jealous that he is not quite human enough.

Ultron reappears a few issues later in #57.  This issue not only fills in the back story of his origin, but it also includes the first modern appearance of the synthezoid called the Vision.

Issue_57

Visually patterned after the Golden Age hero of the same name, this Vision has a robotic body but a human mind.  He quickly rebels against his ‘father’ and sides with the Avengers against the ambitions of Ultron.

Vision_origin

It seems from the Avengers 2 trailer that we will be seeing at least a glimpse of the Vision in the movie as this still shot shows.

A2_Vision_in_the_Trailer

Issue #57 is also notable for the iconic ending involving the remains of the Ultron-5, who is destroyed in his clash with the Vision.  A young boy discovers Ultron’s severed head and plays with it against the narrative of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandius.

Iconic_ending

The Ultron saga doesn’t end there.  Issue #58 fills in some of the gaps in both the Vision’s and Ultron’s back story.  It seems that Ultron was created ‘accidently’ by Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man [the original], Giant Man, and Yellowjacket) and that the nascent intelligence quickly grows beyond his ability to control it.  Feeling (exactly how?) malevolent towards his creator, Ultron erases Pym’s memory, and then chooses not to kill him but to exact revenge on him when he least expects it.  When the Crimson Cowl ploy proves useless, this metallic Frankenstein creates the Vision as his agent of retribution, but rather than giving the Vision a machine mentality, Ultron imprints on him the brain patterns of the deceased Wonder Man, an old foe/friend of the Avengers from Issue #9.

Over the next decade, Ultron shows up in a variety of roles.  Each time, he emerges with a new model number but with the same old insecurities, hostilities and delusions of grandeur that led to his defeat in earlier incarnations – so much for machine learning.

The interested reader can consult the Wikipedia article on this robot menace, but I advise against it.  Ultron never rose to inspire the dread or wonder that other machines-run-amok have in other venues.  It/he lacks the frightening, single-minded and logical purpose of Proteus from Demon Seed.  Ultron never demonstrates the ruthlessness of the Terminator or the utter disdain to man that Agent Smith from The Matrix does.

Fortunately, the movie version of Ultron, what little has been revealed, seems a great deal more sinister and powerful; perhaps because the writers have borrowed from these more successful versions of out-of-control a.i., perhaps because our level of sophistication has increased.  In any event, Avengers 2 looks to be a blast.

Herald of Things to Come?

When I saw the solicitation for Herald:  Lovecraft & Tesla (HLT) I was intrigued.  Action Labs originally billed this title, by the creative team of John Reilly, Tom Rogers, and Dexter Weeks, as a 3-part limited series starring Nikola Tesla and H.P. Lovecraft and what’s not to love about Tesla or Lovecraft.  In addition, the action takes places in one of the most interesting periods of world history, firmly sandwiched in that era between the end of the Great War (World War I for those of you unfamiliar with the notion that WWI would be the war to end all wars) to the beginning of World War II. And the supporting cast is filled with some of the most intriguing historical figures, who are perhaps more interesting than the main protagonists.

The promise of the book is mostly realized in the execution and there are a number of delightful twists on the historical narrative but there are also a number of flaws that detract from the overall presentation.  In order to understand all these points better, what follows is a brief recap of the action so far presented.

The story starts at an undisclosed airfield in October 1923 where we see a thin, young, and glamorous woman, clad in aviation attire, standing next to a twin-propeller airplane.

Amelia_Earhart

The young woman is none other than Amelia Earhart, seeking to travel solo across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.  Just before she boards the plane, we catch sight of an odd ring that she sports upon the ring finger of her left hand, prompting one of the reporters to ask if the unusual piece of jewelry is an engagement ring (see below for just who Amelia’s love interest is).

Strange_ring

The scene jumps to a brooding Nikola Tesla sitting in his workshop pondering dynamos, induction and electromotive forces, the concept of fields, and the farewell letter from ‘Melia’ saying “Sorry.  Off to make history.  See you soon.”

Tesla_Workshop

Suddenly a contraption on his desk whirls, pulses glows, and then winks out of existence and into another dimension.  As we find out later, the same contraption is aboard Earhart’s aircraft and, alarmed by the possibility that she is in danger, Nikola leaps into action.  His attempts to rescue Amelia from this trans-dimensional fate form the main thrust of the story and the reason for his eventual partnership with H.P. Lovecraft.

He packs and begins to leave his laboratory when an odious, toad-of-a man barges in, declaring himself the duly designated legal representative of Thomas Edison.  He rudely points out that Tesla has failed to live up to his contract with the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’.  In particular, Tesla was required, in fine print no less, to deliver an eighth invention 24 hours after delivery of the seventh one (or maybe before – carefully read the word balloons below).

Edisons_Lawyer

The action then switches to Boston, Massachusetts, where a rapt audience watches as a man defies death, being released from an air-tight, water-filled canister after a 20-minute imprisonment, still alive and well.  Backstage, we find our escape artist, none other than Harry Houdini, sharing a few words with the second key player, Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft.

Houdini_and_Lovecraft

Lovecraft threatens to expose just how Houdini pulls off his amazing ‘illusions’ unless Houdini buckles down and investigates someone who ‘calls himself the beast.’  Houdini is not interested in eventually calls upon his bouncer to help Howard find the door out.

In the meantime, Tesla is having his own form of consultation with a historically notable personality.  This one is certain patent clerk going by the name of Einstein.  Nickola (Nik as Albert addresses him) shows his plans for the unfinished prototype contraption that so violently shunted itself off to another world.  Tesla goes on to confess that he is in love with Amelia and has proposed to her (hence the ring?), that he fears for her safety, and he begs Einstein for help. Albert solemnly advises Tesla to retrieve the device before it can throw her off course but he has no tangible advice how to rescue her should the worse happen.

Tesla_and_Einstein

Fortunately for Tesla, a would-be inventor had eavesdropped on his conversation and advises his to seek out and consult with H.P. Lovecraft.

And so, Tesla journeys to Rhode Island to find the semi-famous writer of bizarre fiction.  Arriving at Lovecraft’s home, Nik discovers a rather strange household headed by a domineering mother, who casually asks to be addressed as Ms Lovecraft as her ‘husband’s heart was eaten by a demon’.  She waves aside Tesla’s concern that he has breached social etiquette by arriving unannounced since she knew he was coming and she insists that he go down to the basement and interrupt her Howie since he would be writing ‘more of that nonsense.’

Tesla descends and finds Lovecraft hard at work writing.  An interesting exchange take place between the two, where each of them, one firmly committed to science and the other as deeply committed to mysticism, talks down to and past the other.  This dialog shortly interrupted when a lobster-like entity (latter identified as a Mi-Go) attacks them both.  After a prolonged battle, they manage to repel the monster’s assault but not before Lovecraft is stabbed through the chest by the creature’s large claw.  Fortunately, Howard’s mother seems to be a witch of some sort and she miraculously heals his wounds.

After a hasty consultation, our two heroes reach an uneasy alliance and head to Brown University in search of the Necronomicon.  Having no success with obtaining the whereabouts of the university’s copy through normal channels, they each resolve to break into the library using different routes.  They make it in only to be caught by the ‘bad guys’.

Bad_guys_in_the_library

More mayhem, violence and destruction take place, before Telsa and Lovecraft escape with a clue to the Necronomicon’s whereabouts.  The ‘bad guys’ are in a position to pursue but the head villain holds them off with a mysterious comment clearly hinting that one of our two heroes is the ‘Herald’ from which, I gather, the series takes its name.

Herald

Now if the narrative so far disclosed sounds complicated rest assured that it is even more confusing than my text makes out.  While the visual exposition is nice and clean – each distinct character looks clearly different, the written exposition has several gaps.

First and foremost, there is a substantial amount of prior knowledge and participation required of the reader.  As an example, consider the magic act that Lovecraft attends in Boston. I don’t know if most readers would immediately understand that the escape artist is Harry Houdini.  His last name never appears, except on a show bill that is mostly covered by a word balloon.  The readers are left to ferret this information out for themselves.  In addition, Lovecraft alludes to the familial reason why Houdini can ‘hold his breath’ so long underwater but I doubt that many of the readers would understand that the creative team is implying that the Houdini family are Deep Old Ones and may have got their abilities by marrying into the Innsmouth population (see Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth).  Other examples include knowing that Einstein was a patent clerk, that Mi-Go are the lobster creatures featured in The Whisperer in Darkness, and that Amelia Earhart disappeared while on the trans-pacific leg of her world flight in 1937.

Another set of confounding items are the anachronisms and historical inaccuracies that creep into the narrative.  I can’t tell whether they are intentional twists on the accepted record or are due to ignorance on the part of the creative staff.  The most disturbing of these is the mixing of dates.  Earhart was lost at sea in 1937 while flying over the Pacific Ocean rather than 1923 (when she was just starting to learn to fly).  Other less egregious examples include Lovecraft referring to transistors and diodes

Lovecraft_worries_about_the_future

decades before their invention and the fact that Einstein was a patent clerk in Germany not in the United States.

Also worth noting is some queer language associated with the confrontation between Tesla and Edison’s lawyer (see the appropriate figure above).  Explaining how Tesla defaulted on the contract, the nasty, insufferable word-stretcher says “An additional device must be generated in its entirety and submitted precisely twenty-four hours in advance of the seventh project’s completion.”  It’s not clear if the writer meant to have the text read “…twenty-fours hours after…” or whether there is some hidden time-travel or legal mumbo-jumbo afoot.  Perhaps he believes that a reader will figure it out or forgive a mistake but I have seen too many shoddy expositions in modern comics to have much patience for a teams that lack attention to detail.

So overall, I find HLT to be a mixed bag.  The motif, setting, and characters has a lot going for it.  The art style is clean, crisp, and easy to figure out who is who.  The story requires some yardstick for the average reader and would benefit well from either footnotes and/or endnotes, a technique almost completely forgotten in the modern comic.  I suppose that I will refrain from final judgment until issue 4 of 3 comes out.  And no, that isn’t a misprint on my part.  The team apparently is aiming for the all too common approach of offering the book as a limited run and then extending the story if they 1) can’t fit it all in or 2) have good enough sales to warrant milking the story line for more money. Hopefully the team will clear up several of the dangling plot threads including what exactly is the ring that Earhart is wearing, is it connected to the strange contraption with the dimensional hopping instability, and why does a new character that seems to be Adolf Hitler, show up in the final pages of the third installment talking to two men, one of whom is wearing the same mysterious ring we first saw on Amelia’s finger.

Re-imagining Image

I’ve been collecting comics, in some fashion or another, since 1973.  As a kid, I remember being attracted by the cool art and the bright colors and being mostly confused by the storylines.  Things were complicated by the fact that I rarely had the money to purchase a whole set of comics to complete an arc.

As I got older, somewhere just shy of my teens, I really began reading comics for the stories.  I still remember when I actually started paying attention to the credits and could remember who the authors were.  My first clear remembrance of an author’s name was Steve Englehart, and his work still remains a favorite of mine.  It was through his work that I began to see comics as a vehicle for philosophy and drama and the examination of the human condition.  His work on Doctor Strange was a particular favorite, from the cosmic Sise-Neg storyline in Marvel Premiere #13 & #14 to his very spiritual exploration of life and death in the Silver Dagger saga in Doctor Strange (1974) #1-#5.

Over the following years other authors touched upon those core areas.  Jim Starlin and his compelling cosmic stories about Thanos provided much food for thought.   Alan Moore’s wonderful stint on Swamp Thing was very fulfilling and well-thought out.  J. M. DeMatteis produced a beautiful set of stories about good and evil in in his Six-Fingered Hand run on the Defenders.  John Ostrander’s successful revival of the Spectre in the mid-nineties was a treat for the theologically minded.  I could go on but I think the point is clear – story drives my interest in comics.

That brings me to Image Comics.  For those who don’t know, Image Comics started as a reaction by some of the ‘biggest creative’ talent at Marvel Comics in the early nineties. The core group seems to have been comprised of Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefield, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silverstri, Jim Valentino, and Chris Claremont.  Protesting the lack of creative ownership and the page rate and the limited royalties afforded them at Marvel, this group went off to create their own company.  A founding principle behind Image was the idea that creators owned the fruits of their labors.  And, while I applaud their entrepreneurial spirit, I could not applaud their creations.

From the start, Image offered the same ‘eye-candy’ that made the founders work (Claremont notwithstanding) so tiresome at Marvel.  Everywhere I looked there were testosterone-laden men, with ridiculous anatomical exaggerations protruding from arm, leg, and torso – all wielding bizarrely constructed slabs of metal that passed for guns of some sort.  The women were impossibly thin and scantily clad, with spines so sharply rounded and concave that they looked like a yoga pose gone horribly awry.  Buildings, backgrounds, and breakdown art were simultaneously far too detailed and yet strangely unfinished.  In short, it was an adolescent dream of what the world should be.

All of this might have been tolerable if they had stories to offer that actually probed humanity and the state of being in this world.  Unfortunately, their approach to stories was as adolescent as their art.  All told, I regarded their books as the junk food of the comic world.  And I wasn’t alone in this viewpoint.  I was present at Comicfest ‘93 in Philadelphia when Peter David debated Todd McFarlane on the tension between artist and writer, their stint together on The Incredible Hulk, and on the foundation of Image Comics.  I call it a debate but it would be more accurate to call it a lecture on the part of the older, wiser, and smarter David against the petulant, incoherent, and childish McFarlane.  And so Image and I went our separate ways.

Well, time has passed and somehow we’ve found each other again.  The original cadre of artists who founded Image are, for the most part, still there, but I don’t care because their influence isn’t.  Somewhere in the intervening years Image discovered a soul and attracted real talent – writing talent, imagination talent.  Gone is the one size fits all eye-popping, cookie-cutter, pedal-to-the-metal action of the past.  Now there is a wonderful variety of books to discover and explore.

Some of my personal favorites include East of West, Saga, Fatale, Pretty Deadly, Five Ghosts, and Satellite Sam.  Each of these is quite distinct in look and feel, in story and pace, and in line and color.  None of them are burdened or compromised by a shared universe or by what has come before.  Some of the best ideas are coming out under the Image banner and I hope that they keep at it.

Faustian Tale

Well, it seems that my circle of friends and family are as devoted to the Marvel television show Agent Carter as they are to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..  And since I filled in the backstory of the Inhumans and Calvin Zabo/Mister Hyde from the Marvel publication, the expectation arose that I would do something similar for Dr. Ivchenko.

To be fair, I brought this task on myself during the course of this past Tuesday’s episode, SNAFU. The episode starts with a flashback vignette from the Russian front during World War II.  A Russian doctor approaches Ivchenko, asking for the later to use his ‘techniques’ to help in a surgery to save a young man’s life.  It seems the man’s leg must be amputated in order to keep the infection that has invaded his wound from causing his death, and that the field hospital has run out of anesthetic.  Reluctantly, Ivchenko agrees to help, and as he rises to follow the surgeon back to the operating theater, he closes the book he was reading.  We get a glimpse of the title for only a few seconds, but that was enough to see that he had been pondering the old renaissance tale The Tragic Life of Doctor Faustus.

Ivchenko_reads_Faust

At this point, I believe I muttered something to the effect of “Ah, so that’s who he is,” at which point the questions began to fly.

To begin, we need to take a step back about 500 years and briefly look at the German historical figure of Johann Georg Faust (why are these guys always called Johann?).  History seems to know very little about the life of the original Dr. Faust, except that he was an alchemist, astrologer, and purported magician.  Above all else, he seems to have been a fraud or charlatan, and he was denounced by the Church as being in league with the devil, although I suspect that, in this regard, he was like Aleister Crowley or Ozzy Osborne or Marilyn Manson, having a reputation for dealing with demonic forces that was based more on the hysteria of those around him than on actual fact.

Johann Faust’s most lasting work was to give birth to the legend that currently bears his name.  Tales about his demonic side remained largely oral until the publication of The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe in 1604.  In Marlowe’s telling, Faustus (the Latinized version of Faust) is a scholar of prodigious talent.  Having mastered all of the fields of academia of his time, he remains unfulfilled and dissatisfied.  He resolves to turn his skill to magic and, summoning the forces of Hell, he makes a pact with Lucifer.  In exchange for his soul’s damnation, Faustus will receive tutelage in the mysteries of the universe from his own personal demonic servant Mephistopheles.

Later, in the 1800s, Wolfgang von Goethe published his two plays about the legend of Faust.  The basic premise of the plays is identical to Marlowe’s tale, although the religious and philosophical implications that are explored are quite different, reflecting differences in both time and space between Calvinist England of the 17th century and Lutheran and Catholic Germany of the 19th.

And, so, by the middle of the twentieth century, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had a rich literary tradition to draw upon when they were looking to introduce a sinister character into the pages of Captain America.  First appearing in issue 107, Doctor Faustus was not intended to be the kind of traditional super villain who battered the hero with his fists or blasts of energy.  Rather, Faustus battered minds with a wide barrage of techniques ranging from pharmaceutical & chemical manipulations, to carefully contrived scenes and social cues.  All meant to inflict harm to the victim’s sanity.

Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, explains how he met Dr. Faustus

Steve_explains

and has come to depend on the ‘good’ doctor’s his help in dealing with his guilt at Bucky Barnes’s death.  Unbeknownst to Steve, Faustus has been hired to rid the world of Captain America, and Faust boasts at his confidence that he can deliver.

Faustus_explains

Faustus almost succeeds in breaking Rogers, but at the last minute he slips up and stands revealed as the fiend that he is.  Sadly, Lee and Kirby fell back to the old standby of physical violence.  Rather than depend on his wits and biding his time, Faustus decided to rely on his immense size.  He challenged Captain America to a fight,

Lee_cops_out

which he lost in short order.

Faustus was a bit player in the comic from then on.  He made minor appearances throughout the run but never quite reached a height of evil that made him particularly memorable.

I don’t know if Ivchenko is intended to be Dr. Faustus.  Perhaps he is the first to develop these techniques and will eventually pass them onto a contemporary Dr. Faustus – much in the way that Natasha Romanoff was apparently trained in a long line of Black Widows.  Perhaps the appearance of the book in the hands of the doctor is just a nod to the longtime fans of the comics.  All I do know is that the character of Dr. Ivchenko is loathsome, horrible, and scary – all the things that make you love to hate him.

Skye’s the Limit – Hyding in Plain Sight

In this final installment, I’ll be covering two different topics related to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they pertain to Skye and her father.  The first topic is a historic look at just who Calvin Zabo is and where he was introduced into the Marvel universe.  In the second topic, I’ll speculate on what is in store for our beloved 0-8-4 and how the writers may be deviating from the published works.

Who is Calvin Zabo

First let’s talk about Calvin Zabo.

I must admit that, when Skye’s father was introduced and the connection between Skye and the Inhumans (via the Kree) became increasingly obvious, I assumed that her father would end up being Maximus.  This was a natural fit, since dear-ole-dad was clearly super-human and mad as the proverbial hatter.

So, it was a bit jarring when it was revealed that he was, in fact, Dr. Calvin Zabo.  Since his introduction in Journey Into Mystery #99 in 1963 until now, Zabo has been a secondary villain, derivative and disgusting, and a bit of a pathetic loser.

For those who aren’t familiar, Journey Into Mystery (JIM) was an anthology title that featured short tales of weird fiction.  The character of Thor was introduced in JIM #83, and the title was renamed to Thor by issue #125.

When we first meet Calvin Zabo in JIM #99, he is in his twisted ugly alter-ego Mister Hyde.

Hyde_reflects

As he stands on a street corner, heedless of the fear and loathing of the people around him, he contemplates his upcoming confrontation with Dr. Donald Blake.

For those more familiar with the modern incarnation of Thor, Donald Blake was the name given to the human guise that Thor would assume in between outings.  For a long time, readers were led to believe (and most likely the writers as well since they hadn’t retconned the story yet) that Blake just happened to be bestowed with a Thor alter-ego during a trip to Norway.  Later it became convenient to say that frail and crippled Donald Blake was a disguise Odin forced upon Thor to teach him humility.  It is this narrative that survives to this day in both the publication and cinematic universes.

In any event, Hyde’s hatred for the good Doctor began months earlier.  Before his transformation to Mister Hyde, our villain was simply Calvin Zabo, a knowledgeable doctor and chemist but a complete crook whose modus operandi was to work for other doctors, gain their trust, and then rob them blind.  Unfortunately for Zabo, Blake heard of him first and turns him out:

Zabo_and_Blake

Bitter at this rejection (and apparently dejected that he doesn’t have a beautiful nurse), Zabo devotes himself to revenge.  Inspired by the Robert Louis Stevenson story The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde, Calvin set out to recreate Jeckyll’s elixir.

Zabo_narrates

After weeks of experimentation, Zabo achieves success,

Zabo_transforms

if you can call success being transformed into an ugly lout with a violent attitude and the strength of twelve men.

The remainder of the story is as uncreative and derivative as its beginning.  Hyde confronts Blake and throws him out a window, but Zabo doesn’t stick around to see Blake produce a red splat at the end. As a result, Blake is free to transform into Thor on the way down.  A typical melee occurs, evil seems to have the upper hand, but good triumphs in the end.

Mister Hyde remains in orbit about Thor for a while, eventually teaming up with another Thor foe by the name of the Cobra.  Due to their different personalities and the fact that Hyde is a completely vulgar creature with no scruples, their alliance is an uneasy one, and they fail to bring down Thor.  Even with a significant power boost from Loki

Loki_takes_charge

Hyde and Cobra are unable to prevail, and they soon separate and go their different ways.

Mister Hyde then kicks around other Marvel comics.  He spends some time battling Daredevil, but is always defeated despite the fact that he is so much stronger and powerful.  He also makes appearances in both Spider-Man and the Avengers, but despite the company he keeps, he never seems to shake off the B-list status.

His most ‘notable deed’ is that he manages to impregnate a prostitute during one of his business calls.  The daughter grows up to be Daisy Johnson, aka Quake, who becomes a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. and one of its few level 10 operatives.

AOS and the Cinematic Universe

Clearly the writers of the Marvel cinematic universe are taking liberties with the published material, and I say that’s all for the good.  The original Mister Hyde was completely unsympathetic, which would have been OK if he also weren’t boring and pathetic.  In addition, it was hard to see how Calvin Zabo, a man who uses a chemical elixir to change into his alter ego, and a prostitute with no known special abilities, would produce a baby with super powers.  It is even more farcical to see how that child, born into a very disadvantaged position, would then make it into S.H.I.E.L.D. and achieve a level 10 security rating, putting her on par with Nick Fury.  I’m willing to concede that she might have inherited super powers from her father, but why does that make her so special compared to all the other paranormals in the Marvel world that she belongs in the inner circle of the most secretive spy organization in the world?

The current direction the show is taking is both more enjoyable and more logical.  It seems that Zabo, while mad, is not the vile creature that we saw jumping from the pages of Thor.  He is sympathetic, and perhaps driven to his madness by the horrible crimes committed by Daniel Whitehall against his wife, who, I assume, will be revealed in later episodes to be an Inhuman.

This approach nicely ties together a bunch of dangling plot points from the publication universe.  And, so, I am going to kick back and wait eagerly for what I believe will be a wonderful half of Season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Skye’s the Limit – Kree and Klear

The Kree and the Inhumans

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Inhumans is the ultimate explanation of how they evolved leaps and bounds beyond their human brethren.  When Kirby and Lee first introduced their origin in Fantastic Four #46, published in January of 1966, the Seeker simply said that the race of Inhumans dates back to pre-historic days when they were creating an advanced civilization, while humans were still living in caves and attacking each other with clubs.

There was no hint of an extraterrestrial involvement in the course of Inhuman history until Fantastic Four #64, published in July of 1967. This issue is the first time that the Kree show up in Marvel comics.

FF_64_cover

After some preliminary pages associated with cleanup from the previous issue, the story switches to focus on two explorers who’ve come ashore to explore an uncharted island ‘a half a world away’ from our heroes.

Explores_awaken_the_Kree

The ‘energy waves’ emitted by the professor’s gadget quickly reveal a subterranean lair of the Kree. The two enter and soon find themselves witness to the amazing, millennia-old, remains of the alien race of the Kree, who walked on the Earth in ages past.  As the pair enters the abandoned space port, the guide begins shooting at a monster in the shadows.  The monster, stepping forward into the light, announces itself as Inter-galactic Sentry 459.

Kree_Sentry_Activates

Owing to some strange coincidence having to do with selling comic books, at the same time these events are happening on the island, our intrepid team decides to take a vacation in the same region of the world.  By the time Reed, Sue, and Ben have packed and are in route to the South Seas, the Sentry has erected a force field extending in all directions. The two parties are brought into close and violent contact when the FF’s plane collides with the force field.  The melee that follows is pretty much a draw and ends when the base’s energy supply is breached and begins to build to an overload.  The Fantastic Four retreat from the island while the Sentry stays behind to face his doom.  In his last moments, the Sentry sends a message to the Kree Homeworld letting them know of the destruction of ‘outpost 10’.

The Homeworld’s response follows in the next issue (FF #65, Aug. 1967) in the form of a warning from Supreme Intelligence

Kree_Supreme_Intelligence

that the team will be punished for the demise of the Sentry.  Ronan the Accuser is dispatched, and shortly arrives on Earth

Ronan_the_Accuser

looking amazingly like Lee Pace

Lee_Pace_as_Ronan

right after he heard about the cancellation of Pushing Daisies.  Ronan seeks to punish the Fantastic Four for their crimes, but they resist arrest and, through a clever maneuver, manage to bring down on the Kree Accuser the very punishment meant for them.  Seeing that he is beaten, Ronan’s transport whisks him away and the end comes to the first Kree storyline.

I don’t suppose that we’ll ever know if the Kree were introduced in these two issues as a prelude to weaving them into the Inhuman’s history or whether, once introduced, Lee and Kirby seized the opportunity.  In any event, three months later, backup stories featuring the Inhumans began running in the Thor monthly title.  The key issue is Thor #147 (Dec 1967) where we learn that the Kree experimented on a small tribe which became the Inhumans.

Kree_Sentry_explanation

From this point on, the Kree become a mainstay in the Inhuman storyline, showing up from time to time, usually with disastrous results.

As discussed in the last post, the Inhumans maintained a strong presence in the Fantastic Four monthly until about 1975.  In October of that same year, they were launched into a new bi-monthly book that focused on their relationship with the Kree.  In this excerpt from issue #2, we find that the Kree regard the Inhumans as cannon fodder

Kree_War_of_Three_Galaxies

genetically engineered as weapons in the upcoming War with the Three Galaxies.  Maybe the creative team felt that they were onto something big but looking back at the series run it is clear that it was doomed to a short life.  The plots were confusing and the writing ponderous and the bimonthly publishing schedule killed any momentum before it could build.  By August of 1977 the series was canceled and the storyline hurriedly resolved in Captain Marvel #53 (Nov. 1977).  Inhuman fever had run its course.

Over the next 30 years or so, the Inhumans were relegated to guest star status, showing up in a variety of books but with very little involvement in pivotal stories.  The one exception to this was the reintroduction of Crystal into both the Fantastic Four and Avengers monthlies, but that is a tale for another day.

Modern days have seen a resurgence of interest in publishing stories about the Inhumans (in both comic and in the Cinematic Universe). I won’t dwell on these as there are very good summaries available on the web but I will note that one of the arcs, called the War of Kings, involves the Black Bolt assuming the rule of the Kree empire.

The Moving City of Attilan

One of the most fantastic aspects of the Inhuman canon is the notion that their home can actually be relocated – not only from place to place on the Earth – but off of the Earth as well.  When first introduced, the city of the Inhumans bore only the name ‘The Great Refuge’.  This name stuck for a number of years but finally in Thor #146 (Nov 1967), we found out that its proper name was Attilan.

Attilan_by_the_sea

When it first appeared, Attilan was on an island far from the Himalayas. It was to this island paradise that the Kree Sentry, who conveniently shared his thoughts about the ultimate origin of the Kree, visited them so many millennia ago.

So then how did the city relocate from seaside to mountain?  Well, it took about 13 years for that answer to surface in What If #29 and #30 (Oct and Nov 1981).  It seems that as a young man, Black Bolt decided to move the entire city, in one go, from the sea to a more attractive clime in the mountains of Nepal.

Blackbolts_ambition

 

His outward reason being fear of rising humanity, but I often think it was simply that island life was too hot for someone who wears a skin-tight, black costume covering him from head to toe.  Whatever the reason, this brief storyline is notable in that it links the Inhumans to another genetically modified human offshoot, the Eternals (yet another Kirby creation).

I don’t know how many years elapsed between Attilan’s settlement in the Himalayas and the first visit by the Fantastic Four, but soon after, the pollution of the human world finally chases the city from the Earth entirely.  Fantastic Four #240 (March 1982) chronicles the relocation of Attilan to the legendary Blue Area of the Moon, where a small earth-like atmosphere exists, free of contaminants.

Attilan_moonward_bound

Somewhere in the intervening time, Attilan returned to Earth where it was subsequently destroyed (not to worry it is destroyed and rebuilt often in the course of ‘ordinary’ events) and the Terrigen mists, exposure to which makes each Inhuman acquire their unique power, were released all over the Earth.

Okay, next week I will actually talk about who Calvin Zabo and then I’ll try to tie all of this back into Agents of Shield.

Skye’s the Limit – Love Won’t Find A Way

The last we saw of the Inhumans, Maximus, the mad would-be king, had isolated the Great Refuge from the rest of the world behind a barrier that only he knew how to penetrate.  This final, little, spiteful bit played out in the first few pages of Fantastic Four #48 before Kirby and Lee shifted gears and began another influential storyline – the first Galactus story.

It seems to me that at this point they weren’t sure what to do with the Inhumans and whether this new group of super beings would be a hit.  I suspect that the fan response was rousing and sales were brisk because, after a few sporadic appearances in FF #50 and #52, the Inhumans were sharing front cover space with Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny starting in issue #54.

FF_54_cover

This trend of having a significant Inhuman presence persists, uninterruptedly, from Fantastic Four #54 until issue #159, and then again, briefly, from #301-#317 and Annual #21.  The Inhumans were such a hot commodity that, for a while in late 1967 and early 1968, stories concerning them were running concurrently in both the FF and Thor monthly titles.  The stories appearing in Thor were standalone stories that filled-in the backstory of key characters and of the race as a whole.  There was also a brief appearance of Medusa and Black Bolt on their own in July 1968 in Marvel Superheroes #15.  The following diagram shows a publication timeline from October 1965 until July of 1968.

Inhumans_Publication_Timeline

Obviously, during this time frame, the Inhuman canon was growing in leaps and bounds, and it is impractical to summarize every jot and twiddle.  I’ll content myself with summarizing three major or core ideas: the star-crossed love between Johnny and Crystal; the ultimate explanation of their origins in the influence of the Kree; and the propensity of the Inhuman city to move from place to place. These last two themes are particularly relevant to Skye and her involvement in Agents of Shield and to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.

The Star-Crossed Love of Johnny and Crystal

I include this component of the Inhuman canon mostly because Lee and Kirby and many subsequent writer/artist teams have latched onto this theme and it forms one of the main ribs in the Marvel Universe.

This summary begins just after the resolution of the first Wakanda arc within the Fantastic Four.  That storyline, which spanned FF #52-54, introduced the Black Panther (the first black superhero in mainstream comics in the USA).  In gratitude for their assistance, the Black Panther gives Johnny Storm and his college roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, a vehicle called the ‘Gyro-Cruiser’ that will transport its occupants effortless over any terrain.  Eager to return to the Inhumans’ Great Refuge in the Himalayas, Johnny takes the helm of the Gyro-Cruiser (which, incidentally, looks like a large hamster ball with a futuristic driver’s compartment inside) and off they go.

About two days out from Wakanda, the pair suddenly finds the ground giving way beneath them and they are quickly plunged below the sands of some undisclosed desert and into a time-forgotten ruin.  Here we get to see another installment of Jack Kirby’s fascination with ancient cultures, golden ages, and lost cities – a theme that he pursued many times, including his exploration of King Solomons mines in the 1976 Black Panther series.

Prester_John_found

Upon waking, the lone figure tells Wyatt and Johnny a strange tale.  He claims to be Prester John of the Arthurian legend, and the red wand that he guards is the Evil Eye, a device of unimaginable power.  Johnny, thinking he’s found the ideal method to shatter the barrier surrounding the Great Refuge and get reunited with his love, takes the Evil Eye and speeds off.  Unfortunately, the artifact was building to an overload and, in the last possible second, Wyatt shoots the Eye out of the Torch’s hand before it detonates.

Wyatt_takes_the_shot

This is a famous comics scene, and the final outcome of these events echo through many later stories, most notably the Defenders/Avengers ‘war’, one of the first major crossover events in comics, and in Matt Fraction’s very trippy, very weird stint on the Defenders (2012), where Prester John is retconned into being a lynch pin of the multiverse.

The drama plays out over issues #55-59, during which we learn that:

  • Maximus’s madness comes from his grievance for losing the crown
  • Black Bolt’s reason for not speaking is that his merest whisper can destroy buildings
  • Johnny and Wyatt tame Lockjaw and try to coax the poach to take them to the Inhumans

Finally, desperate to deliver his people, Black Bolt screams and shatters the dome, destroying the Great Refuge in the process.  The Inhuman Council of Elders confers and conveniently send the 6 core Inhumans (Blak Bolt, Gorgon, Medusa, Triton, Crystal and Karnak) back into the world.

One_big_happy_family

Crystal, now free to reunite with Johnny, eventually becomes a permanent hanger-on to the team in issues #66-#80 and an actual member, replacing Sue during her maternity leave, in issues #81-#105.

During this run, some plot devices are introduced that become reoccurring and tiresome in the years that follow.  The most prominent offender is the ‘Maximus reclaims the crown’ storyline.  It was first introduced in FF #82 and ended in the next issue with Maximus and his ‘evil Inhumans’ fleeing in a rocket.  It wasn’t bad the first time, but this storyline never goes away (I count at least 5 other occurrences), and much like a cold sore, lying dormant until another virulent outbreak, spoils the fun every time it appears.

Another example is the ‘Separate the happy lovers’ theme.  The first time this occurs is in FF #95, when Medusa forcibly carries Crystal off to the Great Refuge, much to the despair and overreaction of the Torch.  Johnny follows and engages in a fracas with the other Inhumans until peace asserts itself (#99), and it is explained that Crystal was needed temporarily to help Black Bolt recover.  The next separation occurs (#105) when, seemingly out of nowhere, Crystal is afflicted with a debilitating weakness.  Reed is able to trace the problem to the pollutions of the modern world (#105).

Pollution_sickness

 

Crystal must return to the Great Refuge, the only pristine place on the planet (despite the fact the much of the Earth is untouched by human pollution).  Curiously, this weakness doesn’t afflict her when she is turned into a puppet by Diablo (#117-118); perhaps the master alchemist cured her, but no sooner is she reunited with Johnny than she heads off to overthrow Maximus, who once again has claimed the throne.

The final installment in this soap opera begins in FF #129-#132.  Johnny resolves to join the Inhumans and sets out to the Himalayas.  Upon his arrival he finds a less-than-warm welcome from the woman he loves.  It turns out that Crystal, ‘purely by chance’, had come upon a battered and severely injured Quicksilver in the ruins of some battle or another.  Hoping to spare his life, she takes him back to the Great Refuge and nurses him back to health.  Nature takes its course, one thing leads to another, and before you can say ‘Flame On!’ we have a love triangle on our hands. Crystal picks Quicksilver and eventually marries him (FF#150 & Avengers #127).

Next week, I’ll cover the more interesting aspects of how the Kree are involved in the history and future of the Inhumans and what makes their city move around.

Skye’s the Limit – The Origin of the Inhumans

This next set of posts grew out of the eager questioning by family and friends to help them get up to speed with what it means for Agent Skye

Agent_Skye

to be an Inhuman and for Calvin Zabo

Daddy_Dearest

to be her father.  As the primary television offering for the Marvel cinematic universe, Agents of Shield gathers many people who are not primarily comics readers.  In addition, the show’s core demographic regard the years in which both the Inhumans and Dr. Zabo first appeared on the scene as ancient history.  So much like Herodotus, “The Father of History”, preserved the events of antiquity for generations to come, so too do I offer this brief history of the origins and doings of Inhumans and Calvin Zabo from the misty corridors of the 1960s.

The first appearance of any of the Inhumans occurred in Fantastic Four #36 from 1965. The issue’s drama starts to unfold with a meeting between the Sandman, the Wizard, and Paste-Pot Pete.  These somewhat inept super-villains contemplate becoming a foursome so that they can take down the Fantastic Four and, in typical comic book logic of the era, they discuss their need to add a lone woman to their ranks so that they can be the evil analog of the FF.  The Wizard regales the others with a story about a woman he glimpsed on a Mediterranean island.  Here is a snippet of his flashback

Medusa_first_look

This mysterious woman, identified as Madam Medusa, is the first Inhuman that readers ever glimpsed.  I’ve pondered from time to time whether Stan Lee and Jack Kirby planned on her being an Inhuman or whether that idea occurred later to them.  I suspect the latter interpretation is the correct one as there are clear signs of evolution in all the comics of this time and in the Fantastic Four as well.

In any event, it’s only a short matter of time (or a few pages) before Madam Medusa is decked out in a colorful outfit and ready to lock horns with Marvel’s first family.

Medusa_costumed

Initially, the Frightful Four, as our super-villains now call themselves, get the advantage over Reed and company, but soon the tide turns, and Fantastic Four emerge victorious.

In her next appearance, Medusa (for the most part Lee & Kirby have dropped the Madam) is given a back story and the Inhumans proper have been introduced.  This storyline ran in FF #44 through FF #47 (with a bit dribbling over into #48).

FF_first_Inhuman_Arc

In the space of those four slim issues, almost the whole structure of the Inhuman’s mythos is introduced; a structure that remains mostly unchanged to this day.

Events begin to unfold when Medusa crosses paths with the FF for a second time.  Instead of being the hunter, she is now the hunted.  Desperate and on the run, she kidnaps the Human Torch in a vain hope that he can help her elude Gorgon.  As it turns out, Gorgon is a fellow Inhuman who was sent to bring Medusa back into the fold.

Gorgon_explains

As is usual, a melee ensues, property is damaged, and melodrama jumps off the page.  When the dust has cleared, Gorgon has spirited Medusa away to parts unknown.

Shortly thereafter, the Human Torch is roaming around a run-down section of New York City when he comes upon a beautiful blond girl perched wistfully on a crate in the middle of the slum.  As he approaches her, this mystery woman summons a wind storm to knock him down as she flees.  Johnny has no choice but to return back to the Baster Building. Unable to get her out of his mind, the Torch returns to the slum to next day where the girls now uses fire to block his approach.  Finding himself in at home with this tactic, the Torch bursts into flame and quickly catches her.

Crystal_first_look

Impressed by his ‘hidden powers’, the girl, now identified as Crystal, assumes that Johnny is also an Inhuman and she immediately reverses course and befriends him.  She takes him by the arm and leads him to a secret gathering place where he meets other Inhumans, including the martial arts expert Karnak and the amphibious Triton.  Naturally, he also comes face-to-face with Gorgon and Medusa, who instantly blow his cover.

Narrowly escaping a trap, the Torch manages to summon the rest of the FF to the scene.  After an initial skirmish with Karnak and Gorgon, Black Bolt arrives on the scene.  Black Bolt, who graces the cover of issue #46, is incredible powerful and fights the team to a standstill.  During the course of this battle, Triton panics and blurts out that the Inhumans are hiding from the Seeker.

Triton_strikes

The fight ends inconclusively, with the Inhumans teleporting from the scene thanks to their dog Lockjaw.

Unwilling to let the matter drop, the FF continue to investigate.  This investigation brings them into contact with the Seeker, who captures them and then, as expected, fills them in.  It seems that the Seeker is an Inhuman as well, and his job is to capture all Inhumans who have fled from the Great Refuge.

Seeker_explanation

He goes on to explain that the Inhumans are a master race living side-by-side in an exotic locale far in both sophistication and in distance from mere mortals.

Inhuman_summary

This idea of a hidden race with fantastic powers and sophisticated science is a common theme in many of the creations that Jack Kirby touched.  This theme is seen in the creation of the Asgardians in Thor, the Eternals, the New Gods, and so on.

In any event, the Seeker soon leaves for the Great Refuge, taking Triton, who has been captured by the Seeker’s men.  Seeking to rescue Triton, both the FF and the Black Bolt’s party of Inhumans follow the Seeker, although each group is unaware that the other is on the way.

As the Black Bolt and company arrive, we are privy to a discussion that fills in one more story point.  It seems that the Great Refuge is ruled by Black Bolt’s brother Maximus, who, through some trickery, usurped the crown.  Maximus is quite mad, and his first gesture is to unleash the Alpha Primitives, a slave race of savages that the Inhumans rule, onto his ‘guests’.

Alpha_primitives

However, the Alpha Primitives prove no match and, shortly afterwards, Black Bolt claims the crown and is recognized as the rightful king.  Moments after the crown changes hands, the Fantastic Four penetrate the Great Refuge and Johnny and Crystal, who seem to have fallen in love with each other, are finally reunited.

But the bliss is short-lived as the Inhumans stand in the way of Crystal being with an outsider.  It seems that the Inhumans generally dislike and mistrust humans.  Maximus, who is quite mad and power hungry, activates his ‘Atmo-Gun’ intended to kill all human life.

Master_stroke_of_Maximus_

The weapon detonates, bathing the entire Earth, but it only causes a minor annoyance to the world’s population.  It is in that moment when the Inhumans realize that they are humans too.

All_one_big_family

Now pushed into despair, Maximus modifies the output of the Atmo-Gun creating an unbreakable barrier between the Great Refuge and the outside world, sundering the newly discovered kinship between the Inhumans and their more numerous if somewhat blander cousins and, heartbreakingly, separating the newfound love between the Human Torch and Crystal.

And thus concludes the main foundational arc of the Inhumans.  Next week, I’ll provide a brief summary of their further exploits in the Marvel history.  The following week, I’ll give the Calvin Zabo backstory and I’ll speculate on what the future holds for Skye.

A Roche Limit Review

I don’t normally like to write about a new comic until the creators have published at least 6 issues, my logic being that it takes a while for the writer and illustrator to find their voice and hit their stride.  But, letting my ‘geekier instincts’ get the better of me, I’ve decided to try something different and put down some thoughts about the new Image dystopic, science fiction comic Roche Limit.

My reason for ‘jumping the gun’ is that I am really fond of the dystopian, science fiction genre for a variety of reasons, and I was excited since Roche Limit touches each one. First off, I have a long and abiding interest in the look-and-feel of science fiction in the visual media (films, video games, and comics).  The lines and forms that can be expressed in these contexts are usually so much nicer than what can actually be engineered or manufactured that it is a treat for the senses simply to immerse oneself in the fictional world.  Second, I enjoy the grittier presentations of the future where improved technology serves to enhance what is best and worst about us.  The greater the technology a character has at his disposal, the greater a magnifying glass we have to examine his soul.  Third, I enjoy that form of detective fiction where the tracing of a small crime leads to a large and profound discovery.  There is a certain pleasure in pulling on a seemingly insignificant thread and finding that it unravels a deep secret.

A prime cinematic example employing all these elements is found in the movie Outland.  In Outland, a small-time and washed-up sheriff comes to a mining colony on the Jovian moon Io and, in the course of his normal duties, discovers a lethal conspiracy by the mining company’s management to improve productivity through the use of some creative chemicals (i.e. drugs). Similarly, the video game Bioshock offers these three elements in an engaging storyline in which the player ‘finds’ himself introduced into the futuristic underwater city of Rapture, where this closed community is suffering under the influence of a turf war between opposing political factions and a bad case of DNA-splicing technology run amok.  Small choices quickly lead to interesting discoveries and troubling ethical questions.

Roche Limit is constructed to deliver a similar experience in comic form, mostly, it seems, by heavily borrowing inspiration from Bioshock with liberal dashes of flavor from Outland to round out the recipe.  The basic premise of the story is that, sometime in the not-too-distant future, a gravitational anomaly has been found in a nearby galaxy.  An eccentric billionaire, by the name of Langford Skaargred,

Langford_Skaargred

has funded the colonization of the dwarf planet that is in orbit about (or otherwise gravitationally bound to) the anomaly.  Thus is born the Roche Limit colony.  However, Skaargred’s dream of a shiny, happy future has been quickly corrupted by the realities of human nature, and Roche Limit has turned into something a lot darker.

At the start of the story, Sonya,

Sonya_(searching_sister)

a cop from Earth, has arrived on Roche Limit to look for her missing sister Bekkah.

Bekkah_(missing_sister)

As her search progresses, Sonya becomes acquainted with the seedier elements of Roche Limit.  Primary amongst these is Alex Ford,

Alex_Ford

the only person in existence who knows how to make the drug Recall

Recall_drug

using a secret refining process of a mineral peculiar to the dwarf planet’s composition.

He quickly joins Sonya in her search, as Bekkah and Ford were in a relationship up until her disappearance.  Using Ford’s connections as the preeminent pusher in perhaps the whole galaxy, Sonya soon comes to be acquainted with a whole host of the colony’s most lovable playmates.  These include: Gracie,

Gracie

the one-eyed madam with a heart of gold for women and vicious streak for men who abuse them;  Moscow, Gracie’s rival in crime,

Moscow

who seems to be as addicted to Recall as he is blood thirsty; and Doctor Watkins,

Dr_Watkins

a shadowy scientist who is experimenting on human subjects by sending them into the anomaly and then retrieving what is left over.

The whys and wherefores of this story are still developing, and I don’t want to spoil too much, but it seems that there is connection between the Recall drug, Bekkah’s disappearance, the collapse of Langford Skaargred’s utopia, and some mysterious creatures that seem to be in touch with an intelligence that is in or beyond the anomaly.

On the surface, Roche Limit has all the makings of an excellent story.  Futuristic technology – check; Gritty underworld drama – check; Dogged cop on the trail of something big – check.  But, somehow, the whole that I’ve seen so far is less than the sum of its parts.

The characters lack originality.  It’s not that they are one-dimensional, but more like they are clones of characters that have been done scores of times.  Sonya is monolithic in her zeal to find her sister, but I suspect that somewhere along the line she and Ford will become involved.  And the tension between Gracie as the good criminal and Moscow as the bad one seems also familiar and a bit tired.  Most likely, Moscow will go completely off the rails, and Gracie will come out on top as the tough and reluctantly benevolent leader of Roche Limit.

The verisimilitude is also limited.  The creative team seems to want to be true to real-world physics and even include a formula and some diagrams on the cover that are associated with the astronomical concept of the same name.  Nonetheless, in trying to be realistic, they actually undermine their story.  They would have been better off invoking a new and unknown physics rather than trying to adapt to what is known.

Despite these limitations, I remain hopeful that Roche Limit will come through with a compelling story in the end.  The segment about the beings associated with (coming from?) the anomaly, the nature of the anomaly, and the back story of what Watkins is doing with the missing girls, seem quite novel.  And there is a tantalizing subplot involving two young girls who have made a mysterious discovery that is most likely linked with the anomaly.Discovery

Only the months that follow will tell whether or not Roche Limit lives up to its promise, and I intend to stick around for some time and see what happens.  I hope you will, too.

The Pros (and Cons) of the CBLDF

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) is, in their own words,

“[a] non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment rights of the comics art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers. The CBLDF provides legal referrals, representation, advice, assistance, and education in furtherance of these goals.”

 

The CBLDF steps in on legal cases where censorship or infringement of first amendment rights is involved with the creation, distribution, or sales of the comic books.

I first became aware of the CBLDF in 1993.  At that time, my wife and I were thinking about opening a comic book shop. During that period, the Department of Justice was headed by then US Attorney General Janet Reno.  Reno had a long history of controversial techniques that she employed as Florida’s State Attorney General to prosecute (some would say persecute) alleged child molesters, and she seemed to have brought that same willingness to her efforts and duties at the federal level.  Her clashes with the Branch Davidians and other militia groups may have been the most remembered events of her tenure, but she also engaged a variety of prosecutorial activities designed to limit free speech.

At the Comic Fest ’93 in Philadelphia, we attended a panel put on by the CBLDF, in which we heard about one such effort.  Unfortunately, the passage of time has dimmed my recollection of the actual names involved, but the vividness of the outline of the story stuck with me, as these details were enough to cause my wife and I to reconsider the whole venture.  The story we were told was, in broad form, as follows.

There was a man who owned a comic shop on the first floor of the building in which he also resided.  As part of his offering, he provided adult comics. On one occasion, a young boy entered his shop and tried to purchase an adult comic.  The man refused to sell the comic to the boy, stating that the latter was an underage minor and that sale of adult material was against the law.  A few days later, the boy returned with his mother, who asked to purchase the comic.  The man asserted that he couldn’t sale it to her if her intention was to give it to the boy, as it was against the law to distribute adult material to a minor.  The woman insisted that she be allowed to purchase the comic, and that she had no intention of providing it to her son.  The man was sure that this wasn’t the case, but he relented anyway.  A few days after the sale, the woman, apparently, actually looked at the material in question, and found it to be offensive.  She complained to the local authorities, who then promptly arrested the man and seized his store (and as a result his home) and his financial assets under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.  Although my wife and I would not have considered stocking adult material, this tale ‘scared us straight’, and we abandoned the idea of owning a store.  We donated to the CBLDF on the spot at that convention, and we have been supporters since that time.

Over the years, I have supported the CBLDF by way of regular donations, and I believe that this financial support has been money well spent. I say this because, in general, the CBLDF goals of combating government censorship are laudable, and they have defended a variety of worthy causes centering on the creation, sales, and consumption of comics in all its many forms.

Having said all of that, my admiration for their good work does not blind me to some places where their rhetoric crosses the line, and where I judge that their tactics do more harm than good.  My attitude towards them changed a bit for the worse when I attended their presentation on comic book censorship at the 2014 Otakon.

The presentation was entitled “History of Comics Censorship” and consisted of a set of Power Point slides that were shown by a CBLDF representative in an hour-long panel.  A prose version of the same information is available on their website as a six-part set of web pages – part 1 of which can be found following this link.

In a nutshell, my problem with this presentation (and, as I infer from it, with their viewpoint) is what I will call their overly broad application of the word censorship to divide the world into a sort of ‘us versus them’ picture.  As in almost all cases of disagreement of this kind, the root of the problem is the definition.  For the record, I cite the following response as an acceptable definition of censorship (received from Google when the search string “censorship definition” was entered):

Censorship – the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.

 

The operative word in this definition is ‘officially’, which can obtain widely different meanings depending on context. To illustrate these different meanings, let’s examine a few different social contexts.

First consider a household consisting of two parents and one or more minor children.  In this context, ‘official’ equates with ‘parental’, and parents can and are expected to act as censors of the materials to which their children are exposed.   The fact that different parents will arrive at different conclusions for a given book, movie, or comic in no way invalidates either the permissive or restrictive end that results.  It is the responsibility and the privilege of the parent to raise their children the way they see fit.  More correctly, I should say that parents are free to raise their children within certain acceptable boundaries as determined by law (i.e., they can’t kill, enslave, maltreat, sell, etc. their children). I have a bit more to say about these boundaries later.

Next consider a business that employs a number of people.  In this context, ‘official’ equates with ‘management’, and typically the managers can and must act as censors of the materials that are allowed in their business.  Employment law generally demands that managers provide a safe work environment, free from all forms of racism and sexual harassment.  As a result, one of the central responsibilities of management is to limit what books can be brought in, what videos can be watched on the internet, etc.

Finally, consider a local, state, or federal government.  In this context, ‘official’ equates to ‘law’ or ‘government’.  It is in this context that the picture becomes the fuzziest.  How much individual liberty should be afforded versus protection to the politic body as a whole? What are the acceptable boundaries in a family or in a business?  Can a parent allow his children easy access to pornography?  What forms of expression are ‘out of bounds’ for employees and managers?  How can a society set acceptable definitions of obscenity?  There are no easy answers.

And this is exactly what I find troubling about the presentation I saw from the CBLDF.  Their entire motif was one of easy answers.  People who are against comic books and comic book creators are bad – people for comics are good. People who burned comic books in the streets are portrayed as ignorant peasants, when they could as easily be portrayed as righteous protesters exercising their free speech?  Public school boards who remove certain materials from a library or who ban certain books are put on par with the Nazis.  But every day, school boards ‘ban’ many books either through budgetary reasons (they can’t afford to buy them), or regulatory reasons (e.g., the anarchists cookbook or child pornography) or through a sense of good taste (e.g., the manifesto of the Ku Klux Klan).

I had hopes to see an adult discussion that recognized that there are valid points on both sides, and that what must be combatted is the coercive arm of the government in all contexts. I expected to see civil liberties broadly embraced – including the liberty to burn books and persuade school boards, and to lobby Congress.  What I saw instead was a set of propaganda materials that divided the world into black and white; that ridiculed their opponents as being ignorant, or stupid, or reactionary jack-booted thugs.

For those who are wondering, I still plan on donating to the CBLDF in 2015, but I hope that by writing this blog I can coax them into seeing a few more shades of gray.