The Manor

In our collective imagination, there is a Manor house where a hidden staircase descends to a secret headquarters in a cave beneath the Manor. The occupant of the Manor leads a double life as a notorious but anonymous vigilante whose costume, equipment, gadgets, vehicles, computer, archives, laboratory, gymnasium etc are housed in the Cave.

Usually, the house is called "Wayne Manor". However, it has counterparts on other fictitious Earths. Zorro's grandfather clock concealed the hidden staircase before Bruce Wayne's did. However, this is not a coincidence because a Zorro film inspired the young Wayne.

Two members of a super powered police force arrest a dog-themed vigilante in the cave beneath his Manor in Alan Moore's Top Ten and I am currently rereading Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys, Vol 2, Get Some (London, 2008), in which Butcher and Hughie of the CIA superhero watchdog team interrogate the vigilante Tek-Knight in the cave beneath his Manor.

"Old money" is mentioned in both Top Ten and The Boys. This is familiar territory to the reader even though the names and incidental details of the characters have changed as they always do on different parallel Earths.

When Tek-Knight cannot understand something, he expresses his mystification thus:

"It's a mystery. A grade one, primo, full-on, even the world's greatest detective couldn't solve this motherfucker, mystery...", (Chapter Eight, Get Some, Part Two)

And, of course, in the DC Universe, the world's greatest detective is none other than the Batman - unless we count Holmes who, I think, is still alive in the Himalayas.

Later: As I reread, I realise that Tek-Knight resembles Iron Man in that he is super powered only when wearing his armour. But this also makes him similar to the Batman who fought Kent at the end of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Parodic super heroes are derived from diverse sources.

Quiet Moments

What I like in comics is quiet moments, conversational passages with graphic art that shows the characters' facial expressions and interactions against colourful detailed backgrounds. There is a lot of this in Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's The Ultimates but the work that I am currently rereading is Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys, Vol 3, Good For The Soul.

Early in this volume, there are six entire pages of Hughie and Annie remeeting and speaking in Central Park, New York. She is so distraught that she initially embraces him. They sit and talk. We see close ups from different angles and some scenes shot from further away. There is a lot of greenery and we should look at the details of the Park.

They arrange to meet that evening and their relationship really starts from here. Neither yet suspects that they are on opposite sides. It is only by chance that a guy like Hughie is getting together with a woman like Annie.

We turn the page and are into a conversation between the Boys who start to spy on a conversation of the Seven while Hughie goes to eavesdrop on Teenage Kix. In fact, the volume opens when Annie speaks to Christ in a church while Hughie goes to speak to the Legend and Butcher talks with Rayner. All of this is more entertaining than when the Boys spend several pages trashing Supes.

Superman Writers and An Editor

Passing Julius Schwartz in a hotel corridor at a World Science Fiction Convention, I shouted, "Hi. I'm a Superman fan!", to which he replied, "Good for you!", after which we continued on our separate ways. Despite being a long time Superfan, I had not got back into reading comics yet so I had nothing else to say.

I have met Alan Moore a couple of times. Although never a regular Superman writer, he did write three good Superman stories, including the "last Superman story," "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?," edited by Julius Schwartz. By that time, I had got back into reading comics and I took the opportunity to thank Alan Moore for what he had done with both Superman and the derivative Marvelman.

Earlier today, a remark on facebook implied that local writer Andy Diggle was going to be writing Superman. A text to local Comic Book Guy Mark, then a quick google search, confirmed that Andy will follow Grant Morrison on Action Comics. I really do mean, "Far freaking out!" Superman is a myth but his story continues through the creative imaginations housed in the brains of regular guys who walk the streets of Northampton, Glasgow and Lancaster. (Well, I haven't met Grant but I assume he is a regular guy?)

As you know, Andy has been Tharg and has written a number of characters including the Moore-created John Constantine and also Green Arrow (Green Arrow: Year One - GAY1). In general, I have been turned off by what has been done to Superman in mainstream continuity, although I expect I will read Grant's run in collected editions, but, in any case, I am going to have to see what Andy Diggle does with the original superhero. The myth continues on screen and in print.

Man Of Steel Film Trailer

I have just watched the Man Of Steel trailer which conveys very clearly that Superman is a myth. On the one hand, we recognise the story. On the other hand, we always want to see a fresh new version of it. It is both old and new. Jonathan Kent played by an unfamiliar actor nevertheless is clearly Jonathan Kent.

The familiar myth is easily conveyed by the name "Clark," by a swirling red cape, by a distant human figure seen flying against the clouds.

Jonathan says that the man Clark becomes will change the world. This is as it should be. As Alan Moore made clear in Watchmen and Marvelman, anyone that powerful would change the world simply by existing in it. We should imagine that we are looking at a new version of Superman whose existence is being revealed now or the day after and that the future will be different with him in it: not only the Man Of Steel but the Man of Tomorrow.

The only other comment that I can make at present is that, having searched for images on the internet, I do not like the changes that have been made to the costume.

Verbals And Visuals

Rereading a Poul Anderson science fiction novel late at night, I suddenly wanted visual as well as verbal input so I switched to rereading The Boys Vol 4, We Gotta Go Now, by Garth Ennis.

A novelist describes a scene to his readers so that we can visualise it whereas a comics script writer describes a scene to the artist so that we can see it. The same fictive process, the transmission of an image from author to reader, is mediated differently.

Occasionally, the writer is also the artist. In that case, he does not merely relate but realises the visuals of the scene or event to be communicated. In either case, whether there is a writer-artist team or a solo writer-artist, the visualising has been done for us but it is down to us to notice the details in each panel, not just to follow the narrative from panel to panel by reading speech balloons and captions. In a purely verbal medium, our attention moves continuously along the lines of the text and from page to page whereas, with graphic fiction, we need to pause in order to look as well as to read.

Returning to the novel the following day, I immediately found one of Anderson's rich descriptive passages. Two of the characters:

"...turned north into Riverside, a road cut from the left bank of the Jayin. On their right, trees screened them from view of town, a long row of deep-rooted swordleaf, preserved amidst this terrestrialized ecology to be a windbreak when tornados whirled out of the west. Opposite, the stream flowed broad, murmurous, evening ablaze upon it...On the farther shore, native pastureland rolled into blue remoteness...a peacefulness that Sparling wished Constable could have painted...Westward under a sinking Bel, a few clouds glowed orange. Elsewhere the sky stood unutterably clear." (Fire Time, London, 1977, pp. 68-69)

There is a lot more but I can't quote indefinitely. Appropriately, for the comparison that I am making between prose and graphics, one of the characters wishes for a pictorial representation.

In The Boys, we get:

beautiful pictures of Hughie and Annie naked in a field or in bed together;
a distant horizon seen through the wall-sized window of a superhero team's hovering headquarters;
an American corporate executive talking importantly into a mobile phone while driving around a golf course;
close-ups of our characters' wistful glances, enigmatic smiles, horrified stares etc;
a gallery of covers by big name comic book artists, including Dave Gibbons of Watchmen.

Far out. Vive la difference.

Smallville: Craving

In this episode, Luthor continues to move imperceptibly towards the truth:

he visits Smallville High to check whether he can fund its computers;
he sees Chloe's Wall of Weird;
she confirms to him that she thinks meteors, not Luthorcorp, explain Smallvillean weirdnesses;
she mentions Professor Hamilton who is researching the meteors;
Luthor visits Hamilton's lab and eventually gets Hamilton to accept a cheque from him.

When looking at the Wall, Lex tells Clark for the first time how he lost his hair. Clark says he is sorry and Lex, of course, says that it is not his fault. He might revise that opinion later.

My daughter, having seen this and previous episodes, commented that Smallville High should be making the national news with a different one of its pupils being transformed every week. However, this is a TV version of the DC Universe where strange things do happen every week, or at least every month:

there was probably a superhero team during World War II;
there may be evidence that Atlantis still exists under the sea, inhabited by merpeople;
it might join the UN;
there may also be visits from other planets;
there will be evidence of ghosts and other supernatural events, maybe even of the Olympians and Aesir;
Bruce Wayne will meanwhile be travelling around the world, encountering some very strange people.

I do not think that Smallville will make it into the national news although the Planet might send someone from nearby Metropolis.

"Great Books"

Britannica published a Great Books of the Western World series, two volumes of summary and discussion followed by fifty eight volumes covering three thousand years of epics, drama, history, philosophy, logic, mathematics, science, theology, psychology, economics, political theory and novels, from Homer to Beckett.

If the series had been able to include one single work of science fiction (sf), then I suggest that it should have been HG Wells' The Time Machine, an admirably brief speculation about the nature of time and the future of mankind with vivid imaginative descriptions of "time travelling." If an expanded edition of the series were to include a volume of sf, then I suggest that the contents should be:

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus;
The Time Machine;
Last And First Men;
the first page of Superman from Action Comics no 1, June 1938.

Frankenstein, the first sf novel, addressing the issue of the legitimacy or otherwise of scientific inquiry, is listed as "Additional Reading" on "Science," which is one of the 102 "great ideas of Western thought," from "Angels" to "World," identified by the Great Books editors. The Time Machine is listed for "Progress" and "Time."

I think that Superman should be included among the works of fiction because:

it can be represented by a single page;

whereas the Great Books includes Nietzsche among the philosophers, the comic book Superman was created by an American Jewish writer-artist team during the period when the Nazis were in power in Germany;

this Superman not only represents a transition of media from prose fiction to sequential art but also initiated the transition of genres from sf to superheroes, just as Frankenstein had initiated the earlier transition of genres from Gothic fiction to sf;

it should be recognized that narrative, drama and sequential art are the three story-telling media;

superheroes, also known as mystery men, are a major modern multi-media (mainly magazines and movies) mythology;

the "Additional Reading" for Superman would include the seminal sf novel, Gladiator by Philip Wylie, a possible source for Superman, and Alan Moore's major work, Marvelman/Miracleman, which not only expresses but also reflects on ancient and modern mythology.