From Samson To Moran

This is a linear sequence:

Samson and Hercules (the Biblical and Classical strongmen)

Philip Wylie's Gladiator

Superman

Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel

Mick Anglo's Marvelman

Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman

There are other superheroes and other Captain Marvels but this is the main line of descent. I hope to read the most recent instalment, Miraceleman: The Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, next week.

Secrecy And A Friend Called Pete

There Will Be Time.

Jack Havig, time traveler, to Robert Anderson:

"'Uncle Jack was the ideal guide and mentor. I'd no reason to disobey his commands about secrecy, aside from some disguised bragging to my friend Pete.' (p. 39)

Clark Kent's friend, Pete Ross, accidentally discovers his secret.

"'...the necessity of keeping our secret...'" (p. 40) is a strong parallel between the biographies of those two great Americans, Clark Kent and Jack Havig. Kent inspires the Legion of Super-Heroes in the thirtieth century. Havig builds the Star Masters civilization in later centuries.

Despite their powers, Kent and Havig keep the secret because its necessity is impressed on them by their mentors, Jonathan Kent and Uncle Jack, respectively. The Smallville TV series emphasizes the deceit and duplicity involved in the secrecy which leads to a permanent conflict between Clark Kent and his former friend, Lex Luthor. Clark could have had a small team of friends, including Pete and Lex, working with him - a much better arrangement.

The Structure Of Two Series: The Sandman And Lucifer

 

Neil Gaiman's monthly comic book, The Sandman, was collected in ten volumes: three trilogies and an epilogue. Each trilogy is one male point of view narrative, one female pov narrative and one short story collection. The epilogue contains the "Wake" trilogy, its sequel and sequels to the earlier Marco Polo and William Shakespeare stories. There are related volumes, like Sandman: The Dream Hunters, an illustrated prose story, but the collected monthly series is complete in ten volumes. However, an eleventh Sandman comic book collection is P. Craig Russell's graphic adaptation of The Dream Hunters.

 

 Mike Carey's Lucifer, a direct sequel to Season of Mists in Gaiman's The Sandman, is collected in eleven volumes, differently structured. The middle volume, 6 The Mansions of the Silence, is the turning point when it is learned that God has left his creation. That turning point divides the rest of the series into two groups of five volumes. Each of these groups has a mid-point. In Volume 3, A Dalliance with the Damned, Lucifer opens gates between his new creation and every part of God's old creation. Lucifer welcomes immigrants but forbids them to worship him or anyone else. Carey's Lucifer, unlike Milton's Satan, wants not Godhood but freedom from either side of the God trip. A Satanic role as Lord of Hell is in his past but had accreted around him and he had left it in The Sandman.

 

In Volume 9, Crux, Michael's daughter/God's grand-daughter, Elaine Belloc, creates a third universe. This prepares her to succeed the departed God at the end of the series. Thus, the three turning points of Lucifer are: 

Lucifer liberates; 
his father leaves; 
his niece learns. 

By the end of The Sandman, the title character has entered the realm of his sister, Death, and we do not see him again. By the end of Lucifer, the title character has entered the Void between the worlds and we do not see him again.

These twenty two volumes should be read together with related works by both authors plus Swamp Thing and Hellblazer. John Constantine spun out of Swamp Thing into Hellblazer just as Lucifer spun out of The Sandman into Lucifer. Part of the Dreaming appeared in Swamp Thing before we saw more in The Sandman. Such multi-authored bodies of work are necessarily variable in quality but the particular works summarized here present continents of quality in an ocean of quantity.

 

 Addendum (14 Nov 2010): A damned soul becomes a Duke of Hell in Lucifer Vol 3 and Lord of Hell in Vol 9 and empties Hell in Vol 10. In Vol 11, a fallen cherub says of the angel Remiel, "Former Lord of Hell - - which is something any schmendrick can add to his resume these days." (1) So how many Lords of Hell have there been?

 

It became necessary to distinguish between Satan in Hellblazer and Lucifer in The Sandman. Each must rule his own Hell or Hellish realm. This is possible because, in this scenario, the hereafter is whatever it is imagined to be. At one stage, Lucifer co-ruled with Beelzebub and Azazel. Later, Lucifer gave the Key to Hell to Morpheus who passed it on to the angels Remiel and Duma. Later again, Duma gave it to Christopher Rudd. After Rudd had emptied Hell, one last human soul gained access to the place, thus becoming sole ruler of an otherwise empty realm: a farce following the tragedy. Elaine's new universe has no Hell but Hell still exists later in Andy Diggle's Hellblazer so the universe has split again. This happens in comics as story lines converge and diverge. However, unless it is stated otherwise, Satan continues to rule the Hellblazer Hell. Thus, there have been nine "Lords of Hell":

 

 

Satan
Lucifer
Beelzebub
Azazel
Morpheus
Remiel
Duma
Christopher Rudd
Culver Harland

(Insert, 30 Aug 2012: Satan had two co-rulers in Garth Ennis' Hellblazer so maybe the total number is eleven?)

 

15 Nov 2010: Since the first addendum, email correspondence with Mike Carey has disclosed that Garth Ennis writing Hellblazer called his Lord of Hell "the First of the Fallen" in order to keep alive the possibility that Hellblazer and The Sandman co-existed. They do co-exist somehow but it is clear that their two Lords of Hell diverged. Ennis' "First" remains a malevolent demon whereas Carey's Lucifer becomes an indifferent Nietzchean. The First actively hates Constantine. Lucifer abandons his hate for Morpheus, realising that all that really matters to him is the freedom of his own will. He casually destroys beings who stand in his way but no longer seeks to destroy a former opponent. His role in the "God and Devil" double act has tired him and become clearly pointless whereas Ennis' First remains consumed by hatred both of the divine and of the independent operator, John Constantine. 

(1) Carey, Mike, Lucifer: Evensong, New York, 2007, p. 92. 

A New Genre?

Nick Hayes, The Book Of Trespass (London, 2020).

Is this a new genre: a partly autobiographical, partly historical, documentary prose text, interspersed with illustrations, written and drawn by an author, illustrator and political cartoonist, partly covering the period when he was creating a graphic novel? Usually, I would be reading the graphic novel. This time, I am reading a prose account of its creation. Next, the book could be filmed, showing the author drawing pages of the graphic novel.

A story can be narrated, enacted or depicted. Thus, the three story-telling media are narrative, drama and sequential art, which can be creatively combined. Once, in a school where I worked, a drama group showed and discussed an animated film and, on a later visit, enacted a sequel, playing the parts of the screen characters. We need

more multi-media creativity to which Nick Hayes could contribute.

A Complicated Comics History II

Early issues of JLA downplayed Supes and Bats because both of these characters had so much coverage elsewhere. Nevertheless, Supes appeared every month in seven titles and could appear, even if briefly, in an eighth. But only one of those titles was about him as an adult and only about him as an adult all the way through. Thus, it was statistically unusual to find yourself reading a comic that focused solely on Superman.

Before and during the Crisis on Infinite Earths in the mid- to late 80s, Superman and Superman in Action Comics were solo Superman titles and DC Comics Presents was a regular Superman team-up title whereas, after the Crisis, Superman (first series), now called Adventures Of Superman, and Superman (second series), simply called Superman, were solo Superman titles whereas Superman in Action Comics had become the regular team-up title and, a few years later, became a thick weekly anthology for nearly a year. 

For a while, when Action was monthly and neither a team-up book nor an anthology, a fourth monthly title and a quarterly were added to transform four monthlies and one quarterly into one weekly with continuous narrative although by different creative teams and the quality went into the Phantom Zone. Things have changed and changed again and I have no idea what is happening now. Alienate old readers as long as you can attract new younger readers if you can.

What's Been Done With Watchmen

A prequel comic series.

A crossover comic series.

A feature film adaptation.

A TV series sequel.

The TV series brilliantly answers the question: "Who was Hooded Justice?"

Powers Unknown

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation:

The deal with the blog is that a single word or phrase in a work by Poul Anderson can generate either a reflection or a comparison with a similar word or phrase in a work by another author. We can move in any direction although we always return to our source. And here is one mysterious phrase:

"The Taverners are as merciful as their charter, or whatever it is that was once granted them by some power unknown, allows them to be."
-Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 105-123 AT p. 108.

There could be a story about an inn-keeping couple at some place or time, the punchline being that, right at the end of the story, they are appointed as keepers of the Old Phoenix - but that alone would not be enough to tell us who the power unknown is. Once appointed, do the Taverners remain in the Old Phoenix or do they, like their guests, continue to lead lives in one of the universes? The inn is outside all particular cosmic times so they could always return to it at the moment they had left.

"...there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into too deeply."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997), p. 17, panel 4.

Why not? The Endless are anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of consciousness and include Destiny, who knows all that was, is and will be, although Delirium that was Delight claims:

"...I know lots of things about us. Things not even he knows."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season Of Mists (New York, 1992), p. 29, panel 6.

- pointing at Destiny.

That might be a koan: What does Delirium know that Destiny does not?

And does she know the powers unknown?