Last time was here.
Mr. Cream’s sapphire teeth
Since I’m writing about Miracleman, I might as well mention my favorite bit in the series so far: the assassin Mr. Cream, an elegant fellow with black skin and sapphire teeth. I wonder if a writer, at least a white writer, could invent him now. A big part of the character’s gimmick is that he’s black but named “Cream” and dressed in white. To tell the truth, I suspect that even 27 years back only Europeans, not Americans, could have gotten away with that gag. Racial etiquette is stricter here because we were a slave-holding society whereas the Europeans were slave-trafficking societies. Blacks and whites have spent much more time side by side in America than in Europe, giving American blacks more time to speak up and combat the idea that the white perspective is the only perspective.
Also part of Mr. Cream’s gimmick is that he’s black and yet elegant, cultured, the owner of an original Hockney, etc. Sadly, I think this gimmick still gets trotted out today. It has a patina of well-meaningness that allows it to get by.
But I’m getting off track. The point of this post is that so much of Miracleman concerns itself with dragging silly old superhero tropes into the light of day and exposing them to adult notions of probability: Dicky Dauntless is a silly name, Miracleman can’t just pick up his wife and fly her thru the air because the wind resistance would kill her, and so on. But it’s completely improbable that a cunning, stealthy, highly secret assassin would have sapphire teeth. In fact it makes no sense. People would see him coming; after he left the scene of the crime, anyone anywhere who had seen him that day would remember him. So the idea is absurd. But it’s still great. An elegant black man dressed in white and with sapphire teeth and he goes about killing people thru use of his superior, icy cold intellect — I don’t care if it’s laughable and borderline racist, I still dig it.
Which goes to show that our notion of cool doesn’t care about anything but itself (for me, even using the word “cool” is a horrible concession, since I hate it, but the phenomenon needs a name and I can’t think of any other). And also that genre realism is all relative: the point isn’t to be realistic, it’s to be more realistic than some well-acknowledged cultural touchstone, producing an unexpected contrast (familiar story, everyday facts) that gooses the reader. Which is, oh God, cool too. In writing this post I don’t mean to debunk Alan Moore or Miracleman, just to bring out what they actually offer, as opposed to what we imagine they offer.
Phallus Dei 5: Shambling On
Man Thing Part One;Man Thing Part Two;Man Thing Part Three; Man-Thing Part Four
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In his last post, Tucker refused to say anything about Man-Thing #3, preferring instead to talk about his experience caring for killer attack dogs. This was a wise move; I would rather hear about killer attack dogs than about Man-Thing #3. Nor do I want to hear about Man-Thing #4, in which we learn that Foolkiller has a tragic backstory. Even less do I want to discuss Man-Things 5 and 6, in which Steve Gerber introduces us to a sad clown, which is theoretically interesting, you see, because it is a clown who is sad, which is ironic. And also poignant. With a tragic backstory.
And yes, Man Thing #7 has a tragic backstory too. It’s the backstory of Man-Thing himself, actually. Remember, Man-Thing was once…a man! And in this issue renegade conquistadors slosh him with the water of life, causing him to almost remember his past, and to regrow one human hand. That’s kind of a squicky image….But you know, really, I look deep into my heart of hearts and…yeah, I still don’t care.
These comics suck. Not in an apocalyptic or interesting or surprising way; not in a way that’s even much fun to laugh at. They suck in a rote, boring way. They suck because Steve Gerber, like masses of other writers for television, stage, and screen, thinks the key to entertaining drama is pop psychology and predictable, feeble irony. If you’ve got a preacher, he’s got to be a hypocrite; if you’ve got a rich guy, he has to be a heartless bastard. If you’ve got a clown, he has to be sad. Put enough of these startling reversals together and you’ve got a story with a meaningful human moral. Add in suitably portentous contrivances (the sad clown is dead, but his ghost rises and makes a bunch of random passersby, including the oddly acquiescent Man-Thing, re-enact moments from his sad past) and maybe, if you’re lucky, somebody’ll even think you’re profound.
So there’s Steve Gerber for you; meaningful human morals and pretentions to profundity. Which would be fine, if Gerber had ever actually experienced a single thought about meaning or morals or, for that matter, humans. But he hasn’t. He’s got nothing to say, jack. He might as well be the mindless, shambling Man-Thing for all the brain activity you can detect in these pages. Calling a developer “F.A. Schist” is the sort of thing he passes off as clever. He’s the hectoring, droning drunk you can’t shut up, except he doesn’t even have that much character. The drunk at least tends to have a pungent urgency about him. Gerber manages to be bland even in his crankery.
It is frustrating that there are some indications (such as the Wundarr story that Gerber could write entertaining comics if he’d just chuck the serious messages and go for laughs. But what’s really annoying is that Man-Thing as a concept was originally pretty good. That first issue, and the seven-page Len Wein/Neil Adams follow-up really had something going for them. They were vicious and mean, built around revenge and senseless death and violence and bodily disfigurement. They even had good cheesecake. They were solid exploitation pulp, with some nifty ideas and whacky visuals. And Gerber took that and turned it into tired TV melodrama. All I can say is, fuck him.
I suppose I should talk about Mike Ploog now. Ploog did the art for Man-Thing 5, 6, and 7. He has a very strong reputation…but I have to say, I’m not exactly seeing what all the fuss is about. He tends to make Man-Thing thinner and more hunched. I think the ultimate result really is to make him cuter. I can’t really get worked up about it one way or the other, in any case. Ploog does have a talent for exaggerated faces, which is kind of balanced by the fact that his more ordinary faces tend to look awkward and unexpressive. Certainly, in terms of rendering and layout, he doesn’t seem anywhere near Gray Morrow’s level. If anything, I’d rate him slightly below Val Mayerik, the completely unheralded penciller who was doing Man-Thing before Ploog came on board.
I don’t know. I may be being overly harsh because I am thoroughly sick of this crap, and I’ve got what? twelve issues to go or something? Perhaps some titles were just never meant to be collected into big honking anthologies….
Update: More Tucker on Man-Thing Action!
Alan Moore’s purple prose
Through the corpse-orchard. Through the boneyards … Strange fruit brushes his cheeks. The skinless aristocrat of the cemeteries follows close behind, white head nodding, smiling, top hat fallen over one socket … Somewhere, a bird screams.
From Miracleman, when Mr. Cream is having a nightmare. The thing is, I like all that, and especially the description of the skeleton monster (“skinless aristocrat”), but I would tolerate it only in a comic book. There it’s okay. In regular prose, writing like this would make me groan. Oh, someone wants to show off! He can’t just say skeleton! And by “comic book,” I expect I mean mainstream comics, the sort put out in the world to entertain and make money. If a creator starts out as a presumptive artist and then gets into the purple, I want the creator to shut up. If the creator starts out as a working professional and then tries a few ambitious tricks and angles, I’ll wait to see how the tricks and angles play out. Of course, very often they crash to the ground. Moore wrote good purple prose, an effective purple, not like the endless wind of ’70s Marvel. Miracleman, at least in its first few issues, is one of the few Moore works with a caption-picture ratio of something like 1:1; the captions never go away for long, and they do a lot of talking. But they do a lot less talking than their counterparts in a typical Len Wein issue of Thor. Having made the choice to be verbal, Moore still avoids being verbose. The Marvel writers would flail about and imagine they had dreamed up gorgeousness. Moore goes ahead and gets the job done in a sentence or so, a phase. Even so, they’re very ripe sentences and phrases.
I’m not against fancy writing in general, though most often it goes wrong and, when it does, it produces a much worse stink than plain writing gone wrong. I guess what I look for are passages that produce all the wonderful things sought from fancy writing but without seeming to show off, which is a very subjective judgment. Moore’s captions definitely show off, but they’re on the same page as pictures of a guy in a weird costume, so somehow I give them a break — another subjective judgment.
UPDATE: All right, here are a couple of groaners. Miracleman’s wife gives birth:
Moments later the placenta slides out, a marvelous life-support system of glistening burgundy.
Oh, ha ha ha ha!
Two aliens reminisce:
Once, near Antares, we copulated as whale-mollusks amidst the churning methane.
Ho ho ho ho.
Oh well, genius is prodigal. Moore’s got a million of them and, as Andrew “Dice” Clay was wont to say, they can’t all be golden.
Couple of Links
Ted Rall is fed up with Obama and says he should quit: “This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.” It’s an op-ed piece, not a cartoon.
Via Matthew Yglesias, a blog titled Economics: Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science. Sample posts: “Alien Technology and Economic Growth: Lessons from Solow,” “Supernatural Disaster Insurance,” “Superman, New Krypton, and Labor Unions.” I didn’t read anything, just glanced. I assume there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek going on, he said carefully.
Partially Congealed Pundit: Joe Audubon
Last week we had Johnny Monomyth; this wee it’s Joe Audubon. This is a one-page strip I did using manipulated clip art for Bert Stabler and David Heatley’s wonderful New Graphics Revival.
(The text is a little small, but if you click on it I think you should be able to read everything, except maybe where the little alien says, “Shucks.”)
The original was actually in color, though it appeared in black and white. So as an extra bonus:
Golden Age Gallery: L. B. Cole’s Rocket Thursday
Four Star, 1947
Aviation Press, 1946
Star Publications, 1951