The Weekly Thing

Nick Fury Rides a Motorcycle Through the Helicarrier: Mondovision and Jim Steranko

Jim Steranko is probably best known among comics fans for his work on Strange Tales and Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, and well, why wouldn't he be, right? Each issue is a work of exuberant art, showcasing Steranko's love of op art and surrealism, and the sheer psychedelic energy that blossomed on every page made his too-brief run on each series something special.


Steranko made a habit of breaking the the four color border wide open and letting the sheer power of his art explode across multiple pages, treating the comic book as a canvas for his cinematic imagery. His writing (starting with issue 155 of Strange Tales) thrust Nick Fury into the pop culture super-spy canon, alongside Bond, Flint and Helm, by embracing all of the gaudy pulp-weirdness of the sixties espionage genre with a flair that left an indelible mark on comics history.


Larry Hama wrote that Steranko 'combined the figurative dynamism of Kirby with modern design concepts' with influences ranging from Andy Warhol to Peter Max. Steranko brought the techniques of high art into the playground of low art and in doing so, created something unique.
In many ways, Steranko was an indy artist made good, bringing counter-culture elements into the mainstream via the medium of graphic storytelling. While one can point to Kirby as a similar harbinger of pop art, it was Steranko's awareness of what he was doing that sets him apart. Jack Kirby, for all his skill, never set out to create art, while Steranko consciously adapted the techniques and forms of modern surrealists to the comics medium in a lunge at innovation.
Because of this, Steranko's vision of Nick Fury is both firmly entrenched in the sixties and yet somehow timeless. It exists in that same hazy pop-culture synthworld as the Bond films or the Avengers television show, an artistic metacommentary on a genre of literature and film.
...
Also, it had Nick Fury riding a motorcycle through the Helicarrier while firing two pistols. Pa-chew! Pa-chew!

Friday Night Fights: KA-POW!! Round 7

Space Booger asks, what is the sound of one man, meeting his destiny?

That's right...PLINKK! This moment in history brought to you courtesy of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Joe Sinnott, in Fantastic Four issue # 48!

Merry Christmas from AIM

In Life, I Was Jacob Marley...

"A little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

It's Monday, So...

Giant-Size Man-Thing? Why Yes, Yes I Do...

Friday Night Fights: KA-POW!! Round 6

Space Booger has once again sounded the call to arms, as FNF: KA-POW! addition heads into Round 6. Tonight we have for your entertainment, that immovable object known as the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing, meets the irresistible force of the Iron-Fist! Who will win? Who will lose? It'll be a fight for the ages, folks-

Sweet mama indeed, Mr. Cage. Sweet mama indeed. This one-punch classic was courtesy of Fred Hembeck and Ron Wilson, from The Fantastic Four Roast, issue one and only.

Dr. Doom-Going Out Strong Since The 1960's

Say what you will about him, nobody dies like Doom. The man practically makes it an art. Even when being burned alive by the cosmic hate-fire of a demonic serpent god, Doom will still find time for a soliloquy and a dramatic pose. That's commitment, that is. Today's younger super-villains could learn a lot from the Gentleman from Latveria.

The Weekly Thing

This is the big one. It says so right there on the cover, after all. Fantastic Four issue 25, was despite being the second time the FF encountered the Hulk, the first actual punch-up between the Thing and ol' Jade Jaws. And buddy, it don't go well for the Idol o' Millions. Before this issue hit the stands, the Thing had yet to meet an opponent he couldn't take on, punch for punch. With this issue, the Thing gets his white whale. The one guy he can't take down in a slobber-knocker, the one guy he's seemingly destined to tussle with over and over again. What always made this issue for me wasn't so much the fight (especially since most of the real brawl happens in the pages of the Avengers), as the fact that we get a great sequence where the Thing gets the crap beaten out of him, then, stubbornly, impossibly, gets back up and goes back in for more.
It's a theme you see repeated again and again with the character. It's much like the often repeated sequence of Spider-Man holding up something heavy with his skinny shoulders, while someone's life is in the balance-a subtle (or not, depending on how you look at things) allusion to the weight of responsibility the character bears. For the Thing, it's a repeated sequence of ass-kickings that only make him more determined to triumph. Whether he does or not is immaterial to the symbolism of the thing, if you'll pardon the pun.

By Popular Demand...More Space Monkeys!

Evil Space Monkeys and the Commies Who Love Them

Friday Night Fights: KA-POW!! Round 5

Tag-team action tonight, courtesy of Space-Booger! In the blue corner, the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing and Namor, the Submariner. In the red corner, the war-devices of the Kree Empire. The bell rings, aaaand-

That's all folks!

From issue # 2 of Fantastic Four: the World's Greatest Comic's Magazine, courtesy of Erik Larsen, Eric Stephenson, Chuck Dixon, Ron Frenz, Keith Giffen, Paul Ryan, and Frank Fosco.

The Weekly Thing

One of my favorite issues of Marvel Two-in-One, issue forty had the Thing and the Black Panther battling a zombie vampire. As in, a vampire who was turned into a zombie. A vampire zombie working for Idi Amin, no less. Is that a high concept or what?

The Joke Is On All Of Us-The Joker and the Crazy Kid

So, after the foofaraw over Grant Morrison's recent Batman RIP storyline (which I'm not going to link to, because quite frankly, there are waaay too many to even attempt to find the 'right' one*), I started thinking about the genl'man to the left there. The 'Clown at Midnight' as Morrison calls him.
The Joker has had a lot of incarnations over the years since his creation...he's gone from cold-blooded sociopath, to giggling prankster, to an 'avatar of chaos' (ugh). He's gone up against most of DC's stable of primary colored gladiators and quite a few of his fellow baddies and done the most impressive thing a guy with no powers and a day-glo fright wig can, ie. survive.
And he really shouldn't, you know. Survive, I mean. Crazy isn't a power. But he does. He survives. He prospers. He flourishes, like some deranged hothouse flower, insinuating himself into the zeitgeist. And he does it, not because of any inherent strength in the character, any uniqueness, but because he's just so damn pedestrian.
The Joker is the crazy kid. You remember the crazy kid, right? The one who sat in the back of the class, talking to himself? He had no friends, no enemies, no nothing. No social life whatsoever. Poor hygiene. He didn't cut himself to get attention, but he was quite likely to set a cat on fire or slash your tires. Everybody knows the crazy kid. Nobody likes the crazy kid, but as far as classroom dynamics go, the crazy kid is untouchable. The rules don't really cover him, you see. You can't hit him or insult him, because his retaliation will be excessive. Crazy kid has no limits. Crazy kid doesn't even realize that there ARE limits. And you can't let authority figures deal with him, because crazy kid wouldn't recognize authority if it bit him in the ass. And you can't kill him. Because you might miss, and if he stabs you in the hand for looking at him wrong, what's he going to do to you if you try and run him over with your dad's buick?
Really, you can't even have anything to do with him, because once you notice him (or he notices you) you're his new best pal. His buddy. His compadre. And he'll make your life a living hell. So instead, you give him space. You laugh at his lame jokes, you clean up his messes and you hope he'll get bored and go away. Because it's easier than dealing with him.
The Joker is the crazy kid. He's a banal sort of evil. Implicitly, unalterably, human. He's not an avatar or a super-psychopath or any of that meta-textual pop-psych-speak. He's just the crazy kid, in the back of the class, talking to himself.
Personally, I think that's scary enough.

* Although, if I had to choose...this one right here is what I'd go for.

Waitaminute....

Vs.

Okay. So, is it me, or is there a distinct similarity here? Sassy color-coded arrow-slinging hero in a relationship with equally sassy acrobatic heroine with a bird-theme? Come on...they're even all four of 'em blondes! I know I'm a bit behind on the whole pop-culture commentary deal, but has anyone else noticed this? Am I once again woefully behind the times?

Art Adams and the Giggling Grotesque

Art Adams is one of those artists whose work is as distinct as a fingerprint. It stands out on the page-extremely detailed, yet possessed of a clean, cartoon fluidity.
Also, the man loves him some monsters. Godzilla, the Gill Man, various and sundry giant monkeys. Also, semi-nude ladies. Adams draws them all with a gusto that brings them off of the page with a manic glee.
I think what really strikes me about his style is the fun inherent in it. There's a child-like sensibility to many of his images, blending the grotesque with the gleeful. Take a look at the image to the right, there.
That's a perfect 'comic-book' image right there. It perfectly captures the dizzying absurdity of the concept, but somehow lends it a firmness that gives the viewer just the smallest bit of doubt as to the joke.
Plus, hey, as I said above, half-naked lady.
It's an interesting juxtaposition, the monstrous and the amusing. Mixed signals often don't work in graphic art, but Adams manages to balance everything just so. If I were writing a comic book series, I'd be overjoyed if Adams were the cover artist for the run. He would manage to convey exactly the kind of story I'd like to write, without giving too much away or rendering the cover incomprehensible to the random glance. Eye-catching, without being seizure inducing.

Friday Night Fights: KA-POW!! Round 4

Space Booger! It's a special delivery-

This butt-whooping courtesy of Gerry Conway and Rich Buckler, in Fantastic Four # 149. An issue dedicated to Namor the Sub-Mariner's ham-handed attempts to romantically reunite Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman by...wait for it...invading the surface world.
...
Again.

Turn Your Back For A Minute, Then, Suddenly-BOOM!

BATMAN!

The Weekly Thing

Hey, remember that time the Thing teamed up with the Son of Satan to fight a ghost cowboy? No? Well, Joe Bloke does.

Modern Myth and the Future Academic

While I was in college (a hazy time to recall, I admit), I wrote my thesis on the propagation of societal omni-myths (ie. the stuff Campbell liked to blather on about) via modern myth-making tools (ie. stuff like comic books, pulp magazines, etc.) during times of societal stress.
I majored in Anthropology. Stop giving me that look.
Anyway, my point was that the basic myth-heroes (the strong/civilized/royal man, the cunning/natural/common man, etc.) that all societies hold in common had evolved along with society, becoming something seemingly different, yet still remaining undeniably the same at their most basic. And, while they were evolving towards a more complex form, they underwent periodic and regular devolutions back into their simplistic UR-forms as the pressures on society changed.
What does this have to do with comics, you ask?
I'm getting there. Hold your ponies.
Essentially, my point was that myth-heroes changed personalities based on whether times were good or bad. Myth-heroes were heroic and relatively flawless (simple) during times of societal uncertainty, while they became more flawed and human (complex) during times when things were going well. As the good times (comparatively, anyway) became longer and the bad times shorter, myth-heroes became more complex in general.
Or, if the zeitgeist is good, heroes are bad, if the zeitgeist is bad, heroes are good. Make sense? Still with me? Cool. Moving on.
During or immediately prior to the Depression, we got the pulp heroes-Doc Savage, the Shadow, Tarzan. Batman and Superman, too. Minimal foibles, maximum heroism.
As the Depression faded into the relative prosperity of the War Years and immediately after, the modern myth-heroes became more human in both ability and personality (Doc Savage is a case in point, here-he goes from demigod to super-man to above-average man within the span of a dozen super-sagas). Things get scary in the fifties-early sixties, we get the Silver Age of comics. Batman being turned 2D by the Rainbow Creature.
The Marvel Age hits us during the turbulence of the sixties, giving us the bright and shining creations of Stan Lee...more human perhaps than their DC counterparts, but still recognizably heroic in the 'super' sense of the word. But as society begins to stabilize, the characters begin dealing with the mundane (drugs, marital problems, etc.) as opposed to world-eaters.
The shifts continue. Political/social/economic uncertainty? The myth-heroes go to war against gods. Times are good? Our heroes struggle with ants.
The thing is, as our myth-heroes become more complex (continuity, donchaknow), the less they devolve come the bad times, making it harder to change them back into archetypes when we need them.
Hence, the nigh-constant periodic rebooting comic-book characters undergo.
At least that's my theory. What do you guys think? Am I right? Wrong?