The Fractal Hall Journal

Wolverine gets a lot of stick, some of it deserved. Though I’ve never been much of a fan, there’s obviously something going on there because there aren’t many characters created specifically to fill a team role who go on to sustain not only their own books, but who can be deployed as a guaranteed sales-raising guest star. Whether or not this is a good thing is, as always, open to conjecture.

Core Genre: Wolverine is the super-hero version of the Man With No Name, an outlaw with a violent, uncertain past in line with the darker, more ambiguous post-Leone kind of cowboy. So I’m enclined to place him under Western, although considering his nationality that’s more of a North Western. The Frontier Fiction of Jack London, maybe.

Before the Jemas/Quesada/Jenkins/Kubert Origin, it was accepted that to give Wolverine a definitive backstory would kill the mystery of the character, and take the character with it. I’ve seen the series criticised by some for doing exactly that. I disagree.

First of all, the idea that Wolverine’s backstory is in anyway mysterious is wrong. From the very beginning his creator Len Wein intended for him to be a mutated wolverine, though thank fuck they didn’t follow through on that. Claremont and Byrne, the creators most responsible for shaping the character’s early days, also intended for the character to be old enough to have fought in the Second World War.

Of course, the readers didn’t know all this yet, but it wasn’t long before the gaps started to get filled in. Alpha Flight, Weapon X, a long history with Sabretooth, fighting alongside Captain America in the ’40s; not a definitive timeline, perhaps, but plenty of things to delineate his history. Heavy hints of wetwork for intelligence agencies. And as soon as we get into his solo series we have the Japan stuff, a bizarre story about a boy raised by actual wolverines, life with Silver Fox and her subsequent murder, and so on. Although how much of this come under the ‘implanted memory’ get-out clause is anyone’s guess.

Regardless of how much of this is later retconned or proven false, it shows how his writers have been playing around with his origins for a long time. Considering how much fans and creators protest that his backstory should be hidden, they’ve certainly engaged with a lot of books over time that deal with possible origins. Ditto for the ‘angry loner who hunts alone’ thing. Guy’s supporting cast is bigger than the Batman Family.

A) Healing factor
B) Animal senses
C) Claws
D) Adamantium-laced skeleton
E) Berserker rage
F) Is (sigh) the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t pretty.

If nothing else, Wolverine is a survivor. His healing factor is the centre of his character, survival as mutant power. I like the idea that the reason for his memory issues is the healing factor crudely patching up a damaged psychology.

Who are Wolverine’s villains? Every damn thing. Everyone he’s ever met, every situation he’s ever been in. He’s his own worst enemy, and that doesn’t just mean the character as he’s defined in his present, but also the person he used to be. Every different aspect of his past, whether nobleman, frontiersman, assassin or samurai, becomes a different enemy, and creates a new conflict that Wolverine has to survive. Wolverine never triumphs. The best he can hope for is that he sees another day.

Actually, considering everything he’s been through, maybe that’s wrong. He can’t really be killed, not considering his core power, so he can’t escape any of his actions. He won’t even get the peace of the grave. Even survival itself becomes his enemy, because the best he can hope for is achieving a measure of peace.

There’s some depressing stuff behind that yellow spandex.

But it’s not really the nihilism people come for. Everyone likes a rogue, and if we think of the action movie culture that brought characters like Wolverine and the Punisher to prominence in the 80s we can see that the attraction was mostly a surface one. Blood, rage and Rambo. Luckily for Logan, there was still enough to him that he stayed popular after circumstances changed.

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Dead Space

Holy crap, is this game terrifying. And that’s just the intro. Sure, the creepy nursery rhyme theme is a little derivative but I think that’s something computer games are actually really good at. You take the really good bits from genre work (films mostly) and you squish it all together (see Halo, amongst many others). It’s not art, but it’s fun. And this game is packed full of blood-squirty dismembering fun.

The only possible hiccup is that like Condemned and Call of Cthulhu before it, it may be too scary to finish.

Why yes, I am a scaredy cat.

Fallout 3

Depending on what mood I’m in, I could well call Oblivion my favourite computer game. It’s certainly the game I’ve spent the most amount of hours on, by a hee-uge margin. I got it years ago, and because of the finding time thing, I still haven’t completed it. So I’m very much in the target market for a post-apocalyptic version.

Not spent loads of time on it yet because I really do want to finish Dead Space, but I should imagine a lot of ‘09 is going to spent on this one. And, hopefully, Elder Scrolls V in ‘10.

The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire

I’ve been meaning to get this one for a while. The follow up to Deadly Genesis (reviewed here previously), and like the previous story an entertaining yarn. Brubaker’s an excellent writer, and very good at doing a Claremont-style story in the modern Marvel house style. I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but that’s not the intention. To be honest, it’s nice to read a superhero comic that doesn’t irritate me on any level.

Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror and Cthulhu Tales

Sorry, that last one got a bit catty.

A couple of Mythos comics were added to the haul this year, and although I haven’t had chance to read them yet I’ve skimmed through. The MAX title is the hardcover of Richard Corben’s straightforward Lovecraft adaptations, and looks gorgeous. The second is the first paperback collection of BOOM! Studio’s ongoing anothology title. BOOM! Haven’t made a single misstep yet with their Cthulhu titles, and I doubt they’re going to start here.

Arkham Asylum 15th Anniversary edition

Really needs a post to itself. In short: brilliant, better than I remember it. Unfortunately the good bits were all left in Morrison’s original script, so this is the first version I’ve ever read that makes a damned bit of sense. A flawed masterpiece.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Late to the party on this one, as I’ve only just upgraded to a graphics card that can handle the game. I assume we’re all geeks here, and we’re all familiar with the Games Workshop property that is, perhaps, nerdness incarnate.

Let’s just say, if Fallout 3 doesn’t suck up all of my time, then Dawn of War will be getting the rest. Hoo boy, I hope you’re all ready for another dip in productivity. Damn shame I’m fucking awful at RTS games.

The Steel Remains, by Richard Morgan

Britain’s best SF writer tackles fantasy. Half way through this, and it’s very good.

The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom

Picked up at random for being a haunted house book on the cheap at Asda. Last book I got from there was Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box, and that one was fantastic.

Again, only half way through it. Good points and bad points and I haven’t made my mind up about it yet, but it’s entertaining and it cost about three quid so I shouldn’t really complain either way.

That’s that faint praise thing again, isn’t it?

Anyway, turns out there’s a competition running in connection with the book, and the first prize is a weekend in that haunted hotel in Ludlow (Ludlow?) that’s been mentioned here before, more than once. The town’s obviously cornering the market in this kind of thing.

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I’ve said before that I’m not likely to be doing a delineation on Spider-Man. The character’s one of the most over-examined in comics, and writing a breakdown of the basics doesn’t strike me as worthwhile. Spider-Man seems to be forever getting back to basics, most recently during the notorious Brand New Day thing. Add in the discussions about the roots of the character that have been occuring over the past few years outside of the comics “community” due to the popularity of the films, then I’d guess another go around by me wouldn’t interesting to read, or all that interesting to write.

There is one thing I do fancy a crack at, though. Let’s posit, as I have been doing, that Spider-Man is Peter Parker’s arch-enemy, and vice versa. What does this tell us about what villains are for, and what does it tell us about their purpose in superhero stories in particular?

Let’s accept the truism that the mechanism of story is conflict. The primary conflict in superhero stories is between the heroes and the villains, obviously. And what is Spider-Man, as a character, always praised for, ad nauseum? Peter Parker’s real life (ho ho) problems. Can’t pay bills, can’t look after his aunt, can’t bring assault charges against Flash Thompson. The reason these problems are compelling in a superhero story, as opposed to being seen as an annoying tangent, is because they are Spider-Man’s difficulties. By a similar token, Spider-Man’s actions have repercussions for Parker. I’m not saying we’re dealing with separate personalities here; I think of all the superhero identity dichotomies, Spider-Man has probably the most integrated personality consistant across both identities. I’m saying that the two identities, while the same person, are in conflict with each other. And conflict in a superhero story means conflict between heroes and villains.

So, how do we define what a villain, or a hero, is? Not exactly an easy question. Maybe back in the day we could identify the two according to the colour of their hats, but it didn’t take long for ambiguity about even that to creep into popular culture. There’s plenty of things about modern culture that we can moan about, but one thing we have got right is that, regardless of our tendency to label anything we’re broadly unfamiliar with as strange, unnatural, even sinister, it doesn’t take that much time for a vocal opposition to that standpoint to spring up. I suspect that we’re good at pre-judgement, but we’re better at picking a fight. I suppose both things rise from the same instinct.

Why have superheroes, or supervillains, at all? At the most simple level, they were created to make money, obviously. They were successful- hugely successful, by any metric, and continue to be- because they’re a relatively simple way to show the extraordinary. Even today, the cinema fulfils the same purpose. We could argue that there’s nothing simple about the lengths a production goes to to film something that costs over a hundred million dollars, but I’d wager it’s a hell of a lot simpler than figuring out how to actually make someone fly.

People respond to the demonstration of the extraordinary. That’s the key. The drama of conflict is the simplest template to use, and the almost comical simplicity of good vs. evil the most efficient engine. Using incredible powers against plain criminals soon becomes too easy, offering no challenge, so soon we have villains that mirror the heroes, less altruistic characters with fantastic abilities.

There’s an elegance in symmetry, and as we’ve already fallen hook line and sinker for a black and white world, we begin looking for characters that mirror and invert our heroes. Was the Joker ever really meant to be the Batman’s arch-enemy? Did Bill Finger sit down and decide that a dark hero needed a bright villain, a twisted inversion? I have no idea, but organically that’s what the Joker came to be, perhaps not deliberately but as the most obvious vessel for the concept.

A shortcut to giving a hero an arch-enemy is to either mirror or invert the character. I doubt this is an original observation, by the way. It strikes me as the kind of thing that would have come up over at the Absorbascon, say. I don’t recall reading it elsewhere, though apologies if I’m repeating something someone else has already talked about.

An inversion of a character is the character’s opposite. The Joker is the antithesis of the Batman, and I’m sure we don’t need to go over the whole dark/bright, order/chaos thing to prove this. A character’s mirror, on the other hand, is essentially identical, but has opposite motivations. Batman’s most direct mirror would be the Wrath, though he’s rarely used. I suspect Catwoman would be the most obvious equivalent in his classic rogue’s gallery, or maybe Simone’s take on Catman.

There are plenty of others to be found. Luthor is Superman’s inversion, a man who thinks he’s a god to Superman’s a god who thinks he’s a man, while General Zod is his mirror. Iron Man has many mirrors, from the Crimson Dynamo through the Iron Monger to the Armour Wars’ Firepower (anyone remember him?). The Mandarin is his most obvious inversion, though time has weakened this. In the past, he was a communist sorceror to Stark’s capitalist science-adventurer. These days, communism isn’t an issue and his magic is just alien technology. Here’s an idea; Stark needs an inversion, a Mephisto-like being of magic. By the same token, actually, Dr Strange could do with a technology-based nemesis (his mirrors being numerous, Baron Mordo chief amongst them). Along with, you know, an ongoing title. Actually, I can’t believe he doesn’t have one, so it’s probably just me having not read enough of his comics. Suggestions in comments, please.

Thinking about it, I think this is the very thing that Mark Waid realised when he thought up leather-clad Magical Mister Doom. Change the Fantastic Four’s nemesis from mirror to inversion, open up new avenues of conflict. I know some criticise, but I liked the leather-Doom stuff and I think a lot of Waid’s FF work was spot on, although I lost interest during the somewhat hamfisted WMD-laden invasion of Iraq Latveria.

But back to the Spider’s “real life” problems. Spider-Man and Peter Parker’s conflict is between two halves of the same person, and as such the are both mirrors and inversions of one another. Which isn’t to say we don’t see external examples of this, of course, Venom being the mirror and the Green Goblin (perhaps) being the inversion. But Spider-Man and Parker are mirrors of each other (they have the same powers in and out of costume, and the same personalities) and inversions (Parker is seen as a kind, clever but dopey and largely useless man who’s secretly a criminal and who lies to everyone who’s close to him, Spider-Man is seen as a criminal but is in fact a selfless hero, and so on) at the same time.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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A few things from the past month that I didn’t get to talk about, what with everything.

Batman RIP hits, with somewhat mixed reviews. I’m not quite sure what to make of it all, really. I had decided to wait for the trades on Batman, because I’ve found Morrison’s run to read a hell of a lot better in one chunk rather than on an erratic monthly schedule. Now, I’m not sure whether to bother or not. I’m sure I’ll pick it up eventually, but there’s plenty of other things I’m more enthusiastic about.

Part of the problem here is how much the storyline has been hyped. These days, COMIC HYPE more often than not makes me less inclined to pick something up, and even the fucking British press got in on the act with RIP. My overall impression is that RIP’s just a middle-act storyline to a larger Morrison plot that ended up getting the metaphorical fridge nuked out of it by the DC marketing department. I think I’ll wait to see if there’s ever a proper resolution to all of this before plonking my cash down. And I’m certainly not buying any of the pointless spin-offs.

One thing I did notice in a lot of the commentary was the idea that DC isn’t properly capitalising on the success of the movie. I’m not really sure if they can, to be honest. If superhero blockbusters had any effect on comics sales, I’m sure it would’ve happened by now, so I doubt taking Bruce Wayne out of the regular title for however long is going to make any difference.

That said, I’d love to see an ongoing Batman title out of regular continuity in the style of The Dark Knight. I know All-Star was kind of DC’s answer to the Ultimate U, but it didn’t quite work out that way (to Superman’s benefit, and Batman’s detriment). I say, balls to it. Outright steal Marvel’s initial attempt to capture Movie X-Men’s style in the Ultimate X-Men title, only do it for Batman. Hell, call it The Legend of the Dark Knight, with “the legend of” in little writing.

And you know the key to getting the tone right? Making sure Batman’s cowl is drawn with eyeholes rather than blank lenses. It would make the world of difference in terms of atmosphere, and it would be a fresh spin because as far as I know (and I’m happy to be corrected, as always) the mainstream Batman has never been drawn with, you know. Eyes.

(Odd coincidence: In the middle of drafting this, I looked at the new site statistics under the new domain provider, and one of the recent searches that led to the Journal was “why doesnt batman have any pupils?” Well-timed.)

Speaking of waiting for the trade, I picked up Geoff Johns’ Superman and the Legion of Superheroes hardback during the downtime. Now, you should understand that I have almost zero interest in the Legion, I’m ambivalent if not hostile to the 70s throwback storytelling we’ve been getting in comics for the past couple of years, and that I really dislike the concept of there being a Superboy before Superman.

Because I really fucking loved this story. Seriously, one of the best Superman stories I’ve read in ages. It just highlights what a good writer can do when he doesn’t mess around with Crises and crossovers and events and things that get your comic mentioned in the Daily pissing Mail. This six-issue run beats every single Brand! New! Changes! Everything! Forever! storyline I’ve ever read, because it just lets Superman be Superman. A damned shame Johns follows it up with a year’s worth of stunt storytelling, kicking off with Pa Kent kicking the bucket.

Oh, and there was one excrutiating thing that, while not really Johns or Gary Frank’s fault, I found to be completely unacceptable in this day and age. The first double-page spread of the Original Legion has dozens of characters, apparently from dozens of different planets in a galaxy teeming with different cultures. Yet every single one of them was white.

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Ah, the long delayed Hulk post. This was meant to be the next delineation, and then The Incident happened. So this may not be the post as it was originally envisioned.

Core Genre: SF or Horror? Bruce Banner is, next to Reed Richards, the Marvel U’s most significant scientist (if we accept that until the film, Tony Stark wasn’t as well known and besides, he’s more of an engineer), and the Hulk has very few ’supernatural’ elements seen in other titles. On the other hand, the Jekyll/Hyde character is a horror archetype. I suspect the Hulk is mostly SF; the more straightforward ‘horror’ take Bruce Jones wrote a few years ago wasn’t very well received, after all, although I thought it was an interesting premise that was worth a shot. But it’s the Original Star Trek/Forbidden Planet kind of SF, packed with sinister overtones and dangerous, alien beasts.

The Bad: Definition of a tricky character. Not in story terms, mind. Banner’s life is tailor-made for drama. The problem is that, as far as popular culture is concerned, the Hulk is one of the characters that everyone knows about. DC’s Trinity, then Spider-Man, then the Hulk, just ahead of Captain America and Aquaman. As a result, the twists and turns taken in the Hulk comic have often been completely at odds with the greater understanding of what the character is. Isn’t he a scientist, on the run with a brutish, superstrong, green alter ego? Well, sometimes his alter ego is smart, sometimes he’s a space-king, and sometimes he’s, er, grey. Or red.

Thing is, it’s easy to roll our collective eyes at some of the creative decisions made where other characters are concerned. Superman shouldn’t be blue and electric, Batman shouldn’t be anyone other than Bruce Wayne, and so on. And it’s crazy to think that these things are limitations on story. We are no where near the point where we’re out of stories to write for these characters. We don’t need to make these dramatic changes in order to create a compelling story.

The problem with the Hulk is, his status quo may well be that limiting. I think this is why so many of his stories move away from the ‘lonely man’ perspective. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately for the true-blue old-school Hulk fans), eventually we do return to that kind of story, because that’s what everyone believes Bruce Banner’s story is. He runs from those that hunt him, even as he runs from himself.

The Good: The Hulk is an absolute classic character. Hulk stories, when done well, can have both a satisfying emotional element and lots and lots of violent punchings. What I find particularly interesting is how the prevailing storytelling tendencies of the 2000s so far have served many otherwise simplistic characters well by providing a certain psychological complexity (take almost every recent depiction of super-villains at either of the Big Two as an example); and yet, the modern take has diminished the Hulk. Super-villains have been elevated, in story terms, while the Hulk has been reduced and, by the same process, become a super-villain. Simply put, Ultimate Hulk, the Hulk in JMS’s Fantastic Four run, and the Hulk that Brian Bendis shot into space are boring. A sub-par Godzilla, with nothing better to do that property damage. And property damage is interesting for about five minutes, if done prettily enough.

The idea that the Hulk has never killed anyone may be laughable and ‘unrealistic’ (unreality in a comic? Surely not), but it makes Bruce Banner more interesting. Personally, I quite like Greg Pak’s take, that because the Hulk is an aspect of Banner, on a subconscious level he was ensuring no-one got hurt. Besides, if the Hulk is going around murdering hundreds on every rampage, then Banner is a coward for not taking himself out, and who wants to follow that guy’s adventures?

Characteristics:

A) Transformation…
B) …into a big, green, superstrong invulnerable monster
C) Mad science

Is the Hulk a superhero? Well, I’ve already claimed he shouldn’t be a villain, so I have to say yes. But what kind?

If he’s not a bad guy, then within his story, who is? Can we claim that, like Spider-man and Peter Parker, the two identities are each other’s enemies?

I don’t think so. I think we can certainly take that viewpoint, and I know I’ve read more than one story that does. But I think that, really, the better take is seen in the last film. That eventually, Bruce Banner and the Hulk must accept that they aren’t separate beings, but aspects of the same one, and in doing so may be able to do some good against monsters that are far worse than they are.

These worse monsters are the Hulk’s villains, the characters he must put into context. They can be other gamma-mutants (the Leader, the Abomination, et al), or evil bug-eyed space aliens. But, as in almost every classic creature story, the arch-fiend, the greatest monster of them all, is humankind.

The Hulk is chased, harrassed, and prevented ever from finding peace or solace by us. In a reversal to the other delineations, it’s not the Hulk who locates his villains via any of the above factors. It’s these factors that allow humans to locate him. His transformation reveals himself to people otherwise unaware of his presence. His search for a cure (via factor C) puts him in a position where he can be located. And factor B ensures that when he does appear, he can’t go unnoticed. The Hulk doesn’t so much interact with his villains, than ends up in a situation where he cannot avoid interacting with them. That’s the difference between the Bendis/Millar/Ultimate type Hulk. That Hulk goes looking for trouble, as he’s nothing more than a psychopathic beast. The real Hulk wants to be left alone.

Conclusion: There’s so much more to say about Banner and the Hulk. I’ve limited myself in this post by talking about the archetypical Hulk. Needless to say, Peter David did some very, very good work during his long run, and by necessity wandered down paths that won’t match with the ‘lonely man’ take. It would take a far longer post to discuss the twists and turns of the various Hulk personalities, and I suspect we’ll be returning to this character at some point in the future.

By the way, I very much recommend Planet Hulk to almost anyone. It’s a really, really good story, and far better than I ever expected it to be.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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Halloween is finished for another year, and winter has begun. With the spirit night shenanigans done with, we’ll be returning to the delineations this week. And as you may have noticed, the site has undergone a couple of changes. Very, very purple changes.

I started this Journal in June 2007, although I suppose the real anniversary is October 15th, when regular posting began (and for those interested, we’re fast approaching the 300th post, which is hard to believe). I would have mentioned something a couple of weeks ago, but we were in the middle of the delineation posts and I was on a roll, so I forgot. I think a bit of a change after a year is a good thing, although I may get fed up of the new layout and go back. For the moment, we’ll see how this goes. Anyone spot any problems or issues, or if the new template borks things up for anyone, or if you just find it unbelievably hideous, I’d appreciate a comment or an email and I’ll see what I can do.

A few thoughts on superheroes, as we’ve been discussing them a fair bit recently. With the secret identities that almost always go along with them, they’re an excellent tool for examining themes of duality, dishonesty, masks, and identity itself. I think that in recent years, the superhero genre has become obsessed with these themes, and with good reason. If you want to look grown-up and artistic, you need to define a theme, and this is the easiest and most obvious one.

How many times do we need to see the concept of ‘dichotomy’ addressed in strip form? At which point can we move on from the first ‘artistic’ interpretation of superheroes creators have been eager to play with? At some point, it needs to stop being good enough to crap out something that gives lip service to psychological analysis in order to be complemented on insight. You don’t need a story that can be dissected on multiple levels, anyway (says the man who’s been dissecting away for a couple of weeks). You just need a good superhero story.

I find myself repeating this point over and over, but it is the heart of these posts: superhero stories boil down to interactions between heroes and villains. The drift towards writing stories about how superheroes interact with themselves, how they resolve inner conflicts, is the natural extension of psychological analysis. But it’s very inward-looking, and not the ideal way to tackle a set of characters who were created as a way of externalising various things. Heroes fight with themselves, heroes fight with each other, but rarely do their comics show anything meaning from their fights with supervillains.

This is a deliberate decision on the part of creators. It’s very post-modern to characterise fighting villains as pointless, as a kind of distraction. Millar’s Spider-man sees villains deliberately created by Norman Osborn to divert heroes from doing anything meaningful (oh, by the way, Geek Fail of the day: I had to check what spelling of “Osborn” the character uses. I suppose Norman Osbourne sounds more like a banker, or a dodgy MP). Joe Casey’s Iron Man miniseries The Inevitable has Stark growing ‘beyond’ old fashioned villains. Superman and Lex Luthor’s eternal cycle of battle wastes the potential of both of them.

Very modern, very self-aware, very cynical. We must only enjoy these stories ironically, or not at all. We all have to giggle at a dumb guy in a dumb goblin costume. We are all meta now.

But I tell you, the best stories are ones where Galactus is about to eat the planet, and only the Fantastic Four can save us. Where the Joker’s burning Gotham, and Batman puts out the fires. We don’t need an excuse to enjoy this, or a way to laugh at ourselves. It is more than good enough to engage with the material within its own context. This isn’t to say I don’t like a bit of Clever in my comics. I just don’t want the same fucking Clever I’ve been reading since Alan Moore thought that having Alec Holland be really dead was Clever.

Galactus is a good example, actually. He is coming to eat your world, and you’d better find a way to stop him or everyone’s dead. Conflict doesn’t have to be dumb, just two people slugging it out. Think of the mechanics of dealing with a cosmic threat. Man versus god, Mr Fantastic’s advanced intelligence versus a mind eons old. Brute force and power in play, the Thing becoming a breed of immovable object. And the Surfer: a superb villain, one that is eventually won to our side at an enormous cost to himself. And how evil is Galactus, really? Any more evil than any creature that requires sustenance? That realisation that Galactus has an important purpose comes later than in Fantastic Four #48-50, but the seeds are there. Sure, the resolution via the Ultimate Nullifier is copoutery of the highest order, but it doesn’t negate anything that comes before. There’s a lot in here, and that’s not bad for disposable kid’s entertainment.

So let’s get our superheroes out of their own heads. Let’s have some meaningful external conflict, and not worry quite so much about how our heroes war with themselves. We’ll be addressing the matter of the Hulk this week, and it will be worth bearing some of this in mind for that, because the Hulk is perfect for both these elements: at one level, he’s at war with himself, and as a creature of almost limitless strength, he’s at war with the rest of the world, too.

That reminds me: I’ve been meaning to do some posts to illustrate what I mean by some of the concepts I’ve written about here, by way of good (and bad) stories. I haven’t so far because (a) using the scanner’s a bit like hard work and (b) I don’t tend to use many images here because I like to keep the Journal optimised for sneaky reading at work. Of course, my consideration for where you good people may be reading this blog has just gone straight out the window with the big purple manor house I’m now using as a background, so, you know. Bollocks to it. Time for some pictures.

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Halloween’s a-coming, and it’s getting a little creepy here at the Hall. So today’s subject is appropriate to the season.

Core Genre: Horror

In some ways, Ghost Rider represents one part of a triumvirate that emerged from Marvel’s horror titles in the 70s. The most enduring, maybe, iconic enough to see interest in him renewed every few years before it ebbs once more. Ghost Rider’s tales were based around themes of hellfire and damnation, an overtly religious (or, perhaps, Christian mythological) approach also seen in companion titles such as Son of Satan. While still under the horror banner, Tomb of Dracula took a more classic, Gothic approach, overlapping with Werewolf by Night and other traditional monsters, while the final corner held the archetypical shambling nightmare of Man-Thing.

The hell-based Marvel titles were edgy by the standards of the time. In some ways, they’re still controversial today; after all, Essential Son of Satan was marketed as Essential Marvel Horror, presumably from fear of offending people’s delicate sensibilities with the smallest mention of Old Scratch.

Well, I say edgy. They really aren’t. The liberal use of satanism and satanic imagery is perhaps a little jarring to see in a (for want of a better word) ‘mainstream’ comic book, particularly a 70s superhero title, but overall it does come across as tame after the video horror boom of the 80s. The 70s Ghost Rider really hasn’t aged well, with his origin as a daredevil biker dating him badly. There’s a lot here that’s cheesy as hell. While other comic book films can be criticised for straying too far from the original material, the biggest mistake in Nic Cage’s Ghost Rider was in staying too close to a story that just didn’t hold a lot of water.

That said, there are still some fantastic ideas here, and an iconography far stronger than the stories that initially delineated them. There’s something intriguing about supernatural Westerns (just look at Ennis and Dillon’s Preacher), in the image of a modern-day cowboy with a flaming skull and a motorbike. Or maybe I’m mixing up ’story-worthy imagery’ with ‘makes a cool belt buckle’.

Let’s not discount the elements that came later, during the 90s revamp. We can disparage the Image era for a lot (a whoooooooole lot) of crap, but the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider had a far better design than the somewhat odd jumpsuit they stuck Johnny Blaze in, even if it was a little overly spikey. And having said that, it wasn’t until Garth Ennis and Clayton Crane’s recent miniseries that they finally gave him a decent bike. Even so, we should remember that 90s Ghost Rider was hugely popular.

We can see how the Rider is a constantly updated, imperfect character. A title with a hell of a lot of unfulfilled potential, a protagonist who gets dragged to viability by a series of increments over a long period of time.

The nuts and bolts:

A) The Spirit of Vengeance
B) Supernatural powers (hellfire/chain weapon/penance stare)
C) Flaming skull
D) A bike with flaming tyres

A bit of explanation may be required here, the character’s popularity being what it is. For a character with a relatively simple initial origin (son sells his soul to save his adoptive father, father dies anyway and he’s stuck with the curse), Ghost Rider’s story arc has become enormously convoluted over the various series. The reasons for his transformation have changed, the specific demon that empowered him has changed, the specific spirit his soul was bonded to has changed; he’s even had more than one host, and seen more than one host die. And with a supporting cast that includes Johnny Blaze, Noble Kale, Crash and Roxanne Simpson, the book has some of the stupidest names devised for a Marvel comic. I hope the purists will pardon me if I generalise a little here, because while (despite everything) I’m quite a big fan of the guy I don’t quite understand all the ins and outs myself. It’s probably best to highlight all the best bits from the various incarnations.

Factor A is important to understand, in particular should we chose to differentiate between vengeance and revenge. An odd thing to do, maybe, if we consider them synonyms, but in general usage (and feel free to argue against if you think I’m barking up the wrong tree) ‘revenge’ suggests spite and vindictiveness, which isn’t quite right as applied to the Rider. By the same token, he isn’t the Spirit of Justice, either, as that suggests a more balanced approach. To see justice done does not mean someone has to be punished, and Ghost Rider is most certainly all about the punishment.

Take the penance stare, one of the best ideas to come out of the 90s run. A way of inflicting the pain of innocent victims on those who prey on them. A perfect way to contextualise villains by their own actions. The theme of fire, of burning, but also of cleansing, is obvious in Factor C and D, with C also a mark of death and mortality. As far as locating his enemies goes, it’s interesting to see in the original series how the transformation was initially governed by the arbitrary change of day into night and back, but later became triggered by the presence of evil.

Personally, I prefer Danny Ketch as the Rider’s host rather than Johnny Blaze. The teenager-with-secret-powers is a little derivative, certainly, but it’s hard to see what there is left to do with the original host. His history has become a little tangled, and God knows what’s happening in the current run. And speaking of God, while I enjoyed Ennis’ miniseries, the ongoing took its lead from his brand of Heaven-bashing, full of corrupt angels and both sides being as bad as each other. Which is all very well, but it’s a tired angle these days. It’s one thing to be a pale imitation of Ennis, another to be a pale imitation of Spawn. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a little tired with comics writers working out their Magic Invisible Sky Daddy upbringing in print.

Short version: angels are boring. If anything, Ghost Rider is more interesting in a corrupt kind of world where heaven is irrelevant if non-existent, as he’s better defined by demons and hellfire. A little bleak, perhaps, but more faithful to the few decent elements of his 70s origins. One approach he may well benefit from would be an ongoing theme to tie him to Lovecraftian horror. That was one of the best angles taken in Ennis’ series, and come on, who doesn’t want to read a story where Ghost Rider comes to Arkham? Not as a complete redefinition of the title, but certainly a limited run that owes something to Boom! Studios’ Fall of Cthulhu.

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Frank Miller’s Daredevil run is a classic work, defining the character so well that creators still follow his lead almost 30 years after his debut on the title. This isn’t a bad thing, at all, because Miller crafted one of the most efficient storytelling engines ever with his take on Matt Murdock. Daredevil as initially conceived had some great hooks; a blind lawyer with every other sense enhanced, with the background of a street fighter and the skill of an acrobat. But the character was unfairly considered a Spider-Man take off, and never made the A-list until Miller. As I mentioned earlier this week, it wouldn’t be that difficult to define the character differently pre- and post-1980.

Core genre: Now this is interesting, because here we see a way to reconcile both eras, in a way. Miller places the character very clearly within “crime”. That’s where his interest was, that’s the direction he wanted to take the character in. It’s probably fair to say he was more interested in the Kingpin and his henchfolks that in Murdock. The earlier Daredevil was more of a swashbuckler and adventurer. And as with Green Arrow, it’s easy to see the overlap between pulp-adventurers and noir-type crime stories. I think Daredevil lies somewhere within that overlap.

A) A blind man with super-senses
B) Radar sense
C) The skills of a street brawler and an acrobat
D) A devil costume
E) Lawyer alter-ego.
F) A contradictory inner-conflict

It’s a fairly long list of factors, all essential. It’s a testament both to his creators and to Miller that Daredevil’s engineering is so simple, obvious and elegant, yet is the foundation of so much conflict and complexity.

I’ll get the psychology out of the way first. This is maybe Miller’s most important addition, a recognition of contradiction in a Catholic who dresses as a devil while engaged in good works. He’s a blind man who’s more aware than any around him, a wealthy man in a white-collar job with working class origins in a dangerous neighbourhood, a lawyer who breaks the law every single night.

From a pulp-adventurer standpoint, it doesn’t matter that Daredevil hasn’t got particularly supervillainy bad guys. A largely faceless set of common crooks, organised criminals and ninjas are in keeping with a protagonist who needs a lot of cannon-fodder to prove his mettle. Personally, I’m not keep on Daredevil’s ninja stuff, but it’s in keeping with his genre. I suppose the reason I question it is that I prefer Daredevil to be more of a brawling street fighter than a Batman-type martial artist, Murdock being the son of his father, a working class boxer. And I think Daredevil would be comfortable with playing dirty if he had to. Again, we see another contrast within the character: a graceful acrobat but a brutal fighter.

Because of his enhanced senses, he’s one of the characters who can locate and contextualise his villains most easily. One perspective the film took that I thought was quite interesting was the way he fought one battle in the courtroom every day, and continued it at night if justice wasn’t done. Of course, he’s not really meant to be a prosecutor, so it doesn’t quite work as a status quo, but it’s an interesting take. It’s better in the comics, I think, because as a defender, it gives him the chance to rehabilitate these villains, to mitigate their circumstances. There’s the good works again, and yet another contradiction: the very same man who hunts and maims them so brutally is responsible for dusting them off the next day. His day job becomes essental as a way of placing his villains, of understanding his villains, in a context beyond the hunt/fight/tie them up for the police pattern of most heroes.

The radar sense is an important element, mostly because it’s really cool. Seriously, it’s one of the all-time great powers. I can see why it’s sometimes played down, in particular when writers want to make him more of a skilled ninja who senses his environment via sound and the movement of air (see Miller and JR Jr’s Man Without Fear miniseries), but I think it serves a good purpose as part of Murdock’s power set and his story themes. It means he sees nothing, and everything.

Addendum: After writing the above, plok mentioned a few things in regard to Daredevil in the comments of another post. There are a few things in there that made me think (and if you’ve been following these delineation posts without taking a look at the comments, you’re missing some excellent points and counter-points from plok, Will and Will). One thing that is obvious is that this post has been almost entirely about post-Miller DD, unavoidable generally because his take has become the dominant one, and specifically because I haven’t read that much of the 70s Daredevil. That’s something I need to remedy, and I suspect will lead to a post in the near future that addresses this.

1) “The very most topmost important thing about DD is that he’s blind.” Absolutely. Not least because it drains colour from Murdock’s viewpoint, setting up yet another contrast. The Marvel U is a colourful world, even in the noir-corner Daredevil inhabits. The use of colour (red in particular, of course) is very important in Miller’s run, and even in the blurry murk of the Bendis/Maleev stories (I really need to start introducing examples to back some of this up. Bear with me, these follow-ups are coming). But colour, and light, are things Murdock hasn’t seen since he was a child.

2) “I maintain the difference between him and Batman is… he enjoys his crimefighting life.” I haven’t touched on this, but I certainly should underline that just because I think Matt Murdock is contradictory and conflicted, it doesn’t mean I think he has to be particularly grim. To play him straight down the line miserable is a mistake, I think, and something that takes subtlety from the character. I think it’s interesting that even though he gets shat on more than almost any other hero, the writers still aren’t able to go all the way and portray him as bloody and merciless. He isn’t, after all, the Punisher.

3) “DD isn’t driven (he caught his Joe Chill in issue #1).” Which ties in to the above. If he’s at all compelled in his adventuring, it’s because he loves to do it. This character loves conflict, thrives on it. He has to, considering what the writers usually inflict on him. Murdock takes pleasure in these contradictions.

Lawyer and criminal, hunter and defender, grinning adventurer and tortured Catholic. Matt Murdock and Daredevil.

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Marvel’s big gun, and hugely important to both companies in that it was with Thor that Jack Kirby started to cut loose with concepts that would end up shaping both respective universes.

Core Genre: Fantasy. Very much so. There are always the SFish cosmic overtones you get with Kirby’s work, but the bottom line is he’s a magical viking.

Anyone remember the Books of Magic ongoing, the one that followed Neil Gaiman’s initial miniseries? Great little title, with a very spooky atmosphere. It managed to have a distinctive voice that wasn’t a slavish recreation of Gaiman’s style.

Tim Hunter, the main character, was a kid with great magical power who would create creatures without realising it. One of these creatures was the Wobbly, a squiggly monster with a bird’s skull, an imaginary creation that lurked in a disused plot of land and disposed of things that Tim threw away. The Wobbly’s trapped there, but when Tim needs it to take away the broken-down car that his mother died in, he gives him permission to leave. “You can always come back, you know,” says Tim. “I’d just as soon you did.”

But this isn’t possible. “To go from a small here to a greater,” says the Wobbly. “That is to be living. But to go from the great to the small? That is death.” It’s a great little bit, in a great standalone issue (#14). John Ney Rieber wrote a lot of good stuff in the course of his run, and Peter Gross after him. The minis that followed the end of the ongoing series were a little ropey, but that’s more due to DC’s need to take the character in a less than ideal direction after Harry Potter pissed in the Bespectacled Young Wizard pot than any fault on the part of the talent.

To go from the great to the small; that’s what Marvel’s Thor is all about. To be diminished, to be humiliated, to die a little. And then to learn from it.

There’s an obvious Christ metaphor here, but it’s one I’m not keen on. Partly it’s because the motivations are completely different, but also because Norse mythology doesn’t need any bed-wetting hippy shit to prop it up. We’re not talking about aspects of a single god, we’re talking about an army of the fuckers, dead-set on getting arseholed and thumping people.

Controlling factors:

A) Big hammer
B) Elemental powers (specifically storm/weather based)
C) Humbled human alter-ego (medical background preferable)
D) An accompanying pantheon

There are a few elements to this character that aren’t really common to other superheroes. Firstly, he’s probably the most popular superhero taken from pre-existing myth. I mean, there’s not a Robin Hood title that’s run for several hundred issues, and is currently bothering the top of the sales lists. The creator credit for this character’s going to be interesting when they get round to making the film, because while he’s undeniably Jack Kirby’s baby, you can’t exactly say he’s created by the King.

His special powers are self-evident. There’s probably room to define his weather abilities, but he’s meant to be an all-powerful storm god so it’s best not to get too hung up on his limits. More important is an alter-ego that humbles him, that both raises and diminishes him. With Donald Blake’s recent return, it’s probably safe to suggest it has to be him, although I have to say I liked the Jake Olson EMT identity in the early days of Dan Jurgens’ revamp, and thought it was quite an elegant modern twist. Unfortunately then it got a bit silly and a lot confusing, and I’m certain there must have been some behind the scenes shenanigans because the first 12 issues were intriguing and consistant and the ones after just seemed to contradict things that had been set-up.

Also, JR Jr’s art was gorgeous.

I think the medical background is essential. First of all, it’s a contrast to the more barbaric image we have of viking berserkers, a civilising influence. Secondly, it suggests Thor would have to have spent a long, long time in the Blake guise, learning and training in a field that is, shall we say, somewhat tricky, requiring not a small amount of sacrifice. Thirdly, it’s seen as a selfless, humanitarian vocation (to which, considering some doctors I’ve dealt with, I say ho ho). It’s a deliberate role meant to inform the thunder god’s character, to give him a reason to protect humanity instead of the more attractive pursuit of pillaging his way across the cosmos in a goat-drawn shagwagon.

I think Thor is also unique in that the context that defines him isn’t as dependent on his rogue’s gallery. Instead, the facets of his character become illuminated by his relation to the other gods that surround him. His supporting cast are largely made up from the mythical Norse pantheon, with a few invented gods thrown in for good measure. There’s scope for decent stories in his search for them when they go missing (which seems to happen a fair bit), but a Thor series with them completely absent would be unthinkable, or at least so divergent from the average that it wouldn’t really be a Marvel Comics’ Thor story anymore. It would, however, still be a Thor story, in that the character has existed for a very long time prior to Marvel’s take, and it’s worth noting here that obviously there is a distinct difference between the two.

By incorporating the mythological pantheon, a different spin is given to the usual superhero template. It makes the non-mythical rogue’s gallery less important (which is good, because that side of things tends to be weak), but gives the character a strong supporting cast, and some absolutely cracking mythological bad guys. I mean, elsewhere in comics we see a lot of myth-based evildoers, but are any of them as good as Loki? Surely Thor’s arch-enemy is up there in the list of all-time great comic book baddies. The practical result of the pantheon’s existance is that there’s less of a need for the comic to deal with Thor locating these antagonists. At the simplest level, he knows them because myth tells us he’s been engaged in battle with them for centuries. Thor didn’t need to ‘discover’ Loki, or the frost giants, and neither does the audience, because of the pre-existing literature (which isn’t to say the writer shouldn’t still define them within the context of the Marvel U, of course).

Finally, one aspect of the character that always interests me is how, considering his all-powerful nature, Thor is the Marvel character best suited to deal with the theme of death. A lot of that is inherited from the mythology, of course. Norse culture was very clear that all stories had to have an ending, and that a hero’s tale wasn’t complete without his or her death. With Ragnarok, the people of the north made it very clear that not even the gods could escape from this. What’s fascinating is how the Marvel version of the character embraces these themes. As I said at the beginning of this post, to diminish Thor from god to human is in one sense to kill him. The Marvel U not only incorporates Ragnarok, but has inflicted it on its characters several times (and not even the vikings were that cruel to their gods). Death becomes just another element of a cycle, a reflection of an overarching superheroic theme: our heroes die, but they always come back. And Thor becomes Donald Blake, yet always returns to godhood.

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Core Genre: Science Fiction. Duh.

If superhero stories really are ultimately the interactions between heroes and villains, then Iron Man’s tale is all about how Tony Stark reconciles or contradicts the different aspects of himself.

The Bad: The alcoholism storyline did the character’s storyline a huge favour by adding relevance and realism (ho ho), as well as a theme (his own worst enemy) to focus an otherwise rudderless character. Before that point Iron Man, the adventure capitalist, was nothing more than Marvel’s least subtle anti-Red hero (and this is 60s Marvel we’re talking about, so that’s saying something).

The problem is that, like Batman-the-psycho, this has been taken to it’s logical conclusion and back so many times there’s really nowhere else to go with it. His story arc is more of a story ECG reading, where he’s had more ups and downs than a kangaroo with a speeding ticket*. First it’s crime-fighting whilst shitfaced, then it’s having your designs stolen and used to kill people, before topping it all by cloning a close mate and letting the resultant abomination murder another hero. I’m not sure you can top this without having Stark exterminate the world as he buggers children (which, incidentally, would have been Warren Ellis’ second arc on his reboot).

The Good: Millionaire industrialist superhero? There is just so much to say with a character like this. I’ve got a post coming up where I get a little irate at the way Green Arrow-as-lefty descends into caricature. Well, Iron Man seems of late to be even more prone to political caricature, to become a cartoonish Republican supervillain. First of all, of course he’s going to be a little more right-wing and a little more authoritarian than other characters. But have the writers really thought that through? Wouldn’t he more likely be the kind of person who opposes governmental interference, who believes citizens are better placed to take their safety into their own hands? He bootstrapped himself to power and influence; wouldn’t he at a minimum expect this from others? I don’t know, controlling the superheroes of the world as the Director of SHIELD doesn’t seem very neo-liberal to me. Underfunding and understaffing them into obsolescence, I could probably buy that.

My point is that there are some fascinating elements to play with here. They shouldn’t be so quickly bulldozed just to mould Tony Stark into a bad guy.

These delineations are going to get a little tougher the further away from the A-list we get. We could perhaps say that a lower-tier hero has lower-tier villains, but I suspect it’s the lack of quality in the villains that shapes the hero; if our central argument is that all superhero stories are at their core interactions between the two, then a fault in one side of the equation will effect the other. This makes a definition of our heroes difficult because it becomes more difficult to find the villain’s context. Batman’s bad guys are superb, of course. Plenty of layers and gimmicks for the Dark Knight to immerse himself in. But Whiplash and the Living Laser? Yeah, good luck with those two.

By necessity, the further away from the A-list we get, the more we may have to resort to projecting what a character’s contextualising factors should be, rather than what we can extrapolate from the evidence. I don’t really see a way round this, as it comes down to the mathematics of the thing. The fact that Batman has so many more stories in so many different media than Iron Man has means that the simple weight of numbers will skew towards a higher proportion of decent stories. There are always going to be exceptions that buck the trend, but I suspect they will be few and far between, and will rely on very specific circumstances.

Anyway, back to Stark:

A) The armour
B) Scientific curiosity and creation
C) Analysis (the converse being any weakness resulting from a lack of analysis)
D) Super-rich.

I think Iron Man’s major sub-theme is responsibility/irresponsibility, but I suspect that this is more a derivation of the other factors than a factor on its own.

Tony is saved from a fairly lacklustre set of rogues by the hypothesis that he himself is his own arch-enemy. But I don’t think that excuses us from ignoring his external world quite yet. The armour is his interaction with his world, and his enemies. His way of locating them, of placing them in their context, is by a combination of analysis and curiosity. Essentially, the Iron Man armour is also used as a way of extracting data from the world and displaying it in a way that allows Stark to quickly analyse it. Internally, this is enabled by Stark’s own ability to create, which is in turn enabled by his own sense of curiosity and experimentation. Externally, it is enabled by the fortune Stark has amassed almost as a by-product of his other skills.

By the same token, his interaction with the various aspects of his own psyche are also governed by his ability to self-analyse. In short, he’s not very good at it. Whether it’s his alcoholism, his inability to safeguard his own weapons designs, or his monumental idiocy in cloning Thor (although frankly, that’s more of an awful plot point than a decent use of Stark’s character), Stark shows time and again that he has trouble turning his analytical skills inward. I know I try to stay away from commenting on psychological motivation in these delineations (er, except for yesterday, when I spent a whole post on it), but when the character’s biggest bad guy’s himself, it’s really unavoidable.

Conclusion: Politically dodgy, but probably due to mischaracterising the conservative mindset rather than an error in assigning Tony Stark that inclination. Iron Man’s greatest challenge is in analysing himself, and his greatest skill is in analysing the external world. An Iron Man story should embrace creation, but not dismiss its consequences.

[*^ Who would, of course, be hopping mad.]

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