Four-Color Kingdom Come, Hallelujah!
HellPope Huey
"Justice League of America" #53 highlights the core reason for the
endurance of comics, despite the industry's ups & downs and the derision
it sometimes rightly earns. It is the simple elements of humanity that
breathe life into themes that were old long before Action Comics #1 ever
appeared, the desire to make right what seems to have gone so wrong and
how we handle our well-intentioned missteps along the way.
Superman, Batman, Spiderman and the Martian Manhunter all have one
common thread: they're orphans. Superman learned it when his loving
adoptive parents revealed it to him upon his basically reaching the age of
majority. Batman's parents were shot as he watched, horrifically ripped
from him at a crushingly young age. Spiderman was raised by an aunt &
uncle; his parental loss was doubled when his self-absorbed dismissal at a
crucial point cost him his surrogate father. J'onn J'onzz lost both his
immediate, intimate family and his entire racial family in one stroke of
insane cruelty, the blow perhaps made heavier because he was an adult at
the time and thus, more able to grasp the full weight of it. Orphans,
y'see.
They're trying to fill in a hole that can never really BE filled, except
by virtue of the effort itself. Loss of another kind of loved one is
painful, but loss of family, especially parents, is so pivotal, it forms
the very marrow of why these particular characters endure and enhance the
appeal of others who are somewhat less poignant. Its the dance between
loss, validation and redemption. Odysseus would "get it" in 1/10th of a
New Yawk minute.
While I'm at it, let me also give a humble nod to the segments
describing Green Lantern's most essential need to creatively express
himself as an artist (I'd love one o' them rings, boy howdy) and Plastic
Man's highlighting of Batman's burning need for a meaningful & productive
place to put his deep anger. As a writer, composer and sometime graphic
artist myself, these two somehow-interlocking things particularly hit home
with me. Our very existence is all about filling in gaps, trying to bring
order to chaos, finding a reason to DO and to BE.
It would be a rare person who could not grasp the feeling of aloneness,
the desire to be completed, the bid to replace the irreplaceable, to
express the nearly-inexpressable. In their respective manners, these four
are living the Jewish axiom of "never again." They strive to secure the
welcome, loving bonds of family (real & adopted) and to valiantly resist
that which might violate them, for themselves as well as others. In so
doing, these characters redeem themselves daily, have become forever
three-dimensional and a welcome part of my own literary family. Some
comics should be burned, perhaps; others deserve framing. I read beyond
this realm, certainly, but it often makes great points in precious few
words.
There's the rub; which words to choose from among so many. French is
rightly known for its elegance and modern English often seen as a
red-headed stepchild because its overall syntax is a jumble of several
other tongues. It lacks enough central logic to a new inductee and can
befuddle a person born to Spanish, for example. Contractions no doubt make
cross-eyed someone confronted with "Jamie's house" when they've lived with
"the house OF Jamie" before.
I also find that those who create good fiction are informed by many other
sources. They'd almost have to be, since there is a style and history to
fiction, even fringe fiction. You'd be a real chucklehead to read only
comics. The gratifying passion they sometimes contain evidences other
things, which simultaneously veers back to the common threads we know and
takes flight from a footing solidly based in less fanciful works.
For example, I find a sympathetic resonance between two very dissimilar
books, "The Seed and the Sower" by Laurens van der Post and "The Man In
The Water", an essay collection by Roger Rosenblatt. Both celebrate and
mourn the tiny triumphs & failures that form the core of any tale worth
hearing. Both are about as far from Superman as you can get, yet the
fundamentals are first cousins. The trappings of living are a constant,
whether viewed by Faulkner or Mulder & Scully.
At a certain point, an art teacher took a drawing from my mother and
marked it with an A. "But I wasn't through with it!" "Oh yes, you were. It
takes two people to create a great work of art: one to create the art and
one to take it from them when its finished." I spend a lot of time
editing my butt off in that spirit and with no net below, only mute
readers. The range of choices is daunting, simple & breathtaking. When it
finally clicks, hallelujah.
JLA author Mark Waid has The Gift of Words the same way Alex Ross has
the Gift of Brush and Pencil. I sometimes look at the fact that I'm still
reading a few 'comic books' at the ripening age of 46 and say "Good Lord,
man, talk about clinging to yer childhood!" Then I read something like JLA
#53 and the simple core wonderment of the luminous parts of being human
are brought home yet again. Best $2.25 I've spent in a long time; I got a
helluva lot for my money that day. Now if only I could look half that good
in spandex.
HellPope Huey, hellpo...@subgenius.com
If you were arrested tomorrow,
how much justice could you afford?
Every man is entitled to be valued
by his best moments.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"And you don't know what you're doing;
you're just sitting at the keyboard
and there's a lightness in your head
that's scaring you.
You feel like a phantom,
like a stranger in your skin.
You have the oddest feeling,
this is a good way to get in trouble,
this is the way that we go crazy,
bit by bit and day by day."
-Philip Martin
"You played hockey before
the mandatory helmet rule, didn't you?"
- "Night Court"
Neck braces are SO hot...
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