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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #10 16 Apr 03 |
Memoir in Ben Day Dots |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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I can’t recall the first comic I ever
read. I’m sure they featured in my early
childhood, as my family has tattered old Donald Duck and other
Gladstone comics to prove it. There
were also, to be sure, the mini-comics that came with He-Man toys,
then Starriors, and I dimly recall with favor one Masters of the
Universe mini-comic with Skeletor in a magical pyramid that gave him
awesome power. I do remember, in the
year or so before I began to read comics seriously, asking my mother to buy
me comics at the local mall (then with wood-dominated mon and pop stores in
the same complex as sleek, plastic Wal-Mart) and her occasional
obliging. Thus did I read the likes
of Iceman #4, with its clichéd “power of love” finish, although
rereading allowed me to enjoy its dramatization of evil, fear, and loss. |
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There, on a spinner rack by the magazines and the lunch counter
populated by old men, I found the first comic I can ever remember buying with
my own money. |
I could just as easily have stopped there,
remaining a casual buying and “growing out of it,” were it not for an
unsupervised visit to the local drug store.
There, on a spinner rack by the magazines and the lunch counter
populated by old men, I found the first comic I can ever remember buying with
my own money. It cost 75 cents, and
that was a lot to me in those days.
But I liked the art and what I’d glimmered of the story, and the fact
that it was a #1 put it over the top.
How I already had that notion, having never been to a comic shop, can
only be explained by a boyish belief in the intrinsic value, both financial
and literary, of getting the first in a series before it disappears, and
missing it in those days, in my world, meant missing it forever. And so I took Flash #1 home with
me. |
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I cannot describe the magic and joy, nor the challenges, I found
with that book. |
I cannot describe the magic and joy, nor
the challenges, I found with that book.
I read it over and over, slowly, puzzling out what the words
meat. I knew similes and metaphors,
but, like all children or novices in any world, could no more tell what
should be read literally in an adult world, much less a super-hero one, than
I could in that of Buck Rogers. As a
matter of fact, the second would have been easier. What sticks out in my minds most is a
phrase at the end of a sequence in which Flash -- Wally West -- narrates the
death of his predecessor and his inheritance of the name, albeit with reduced
powers. “He” -- the narration referred
to Barry Allen, the previous Flash and Wally’s death mentor -- “left me a
picture of a hero.” Now, this
narration occurred in captions over images of Flash running through a
snowscape, leaving readers to imagine for themselves. And I couldn’t figure out how you could
get an image of the ideal of a hero into a picture frame. As silly as it was, I somehow imagined
some secret image personifying heroism, a magical talisman of visual
rhetorical power. It was not out of
line for a world in which people run at mach one. It made as much sense as any of it. But I knew I was missing something and did my damnedest to
figure it out. When Flash narrates that he didn’t have
two dimes to rub together, I understood the expression but still half
believed and imagined him doing so literally. |
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I wondered in the way a child, unsure of his apprehension, thinks
the rug’s always about to be pulled out from under him. |
The issue featured Vandal Savage played as
truly scary, legendary, and capable -- better than I’ve ever read him
since. At the end, Flash opens a box
and finds a bloody heart. Was this a
real heart? I wondered in the way a
child, unsure of his apprehension, thinks the rug’s always about to be pulled
out from under him, that the cop might be a bad guy, that the death scene
played as poignant might be faked, that the girl batting her eyelashes at you
and having her friend ask you if you’d go out with her is only trying to
trick you and embarrass you. The book made a lasting impression, most
of all, because it was mature. Not
only was there a truly savage and murderous villain, and a protagonist with a
deep sense of inferiority and survival guilt, but he was hardly an
unrealisticly noble, easily self-sacrificing super-hero. Asked to ferry a heart across country with
his super-speed, he asks how much money he’ll receive for the task: there’s big money in these heart
operations, he points out; everyone gets rich, and he could use the
money. “They act like I spit on the
floor,” he narrates; everyone assumes super-heroes should be utterly
altruistic, not demanding so much as a living wage. Here was a super-hero whose powers had real-world
implications: he was eating, always
eating, supporting the killer metabolism that went along with
super-speed. It was ultimately the
startling maturity of the writing that sucked me in. Even then, I privileged the writer. |
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Here, before The Authority or X-Statix or DV8,
was a young super-hero enjoying screwing around. I hid the comic from my mum in those days when she could be
expected to make random inspections of the comics I was purchasing if she
happened to be there at the point of sale. |
I was addicted. I bought the second issue, missed the third, bought the fourth
and the annual, and continued from there.
It only got more mature as time went on. Here, before The Authority or X-Statix or DV8,
was a young super-hero enjoying screwing around. He was fucking his old girlfriend, Francine (from The New
Teen Titans, though I didn’t know it then), for the first couple
issues. Then he got involved with
Tina McGee, later seen on the short-lived Flash TV show and still in
the book today, although always in a remarkably sanitized version, hardly a
love interest. The kicker was not
that she was a scientist investigating Flash’s powers in a real-world
context, nor that she was older, but that she was married -- and Wally began
an affair with her. This was entirely
clear -- no ambiguity about her married status here, or that they were
fucking. In one sultry scene I hid
from my mum in those days when she could be expected to make random
inspections of the comics I was purchasing if she happened to be there at the
point of sale, she slipped out of the pool at Wally’s mansion, all skin-tight
bathing suit. Her husband’s anger was
dramatized, leading to his taking drugs to gain Flash-like powers and fight
him mercilessly. When Vandal Savage
returned, he did so peddling drugs, with people decaying on the page, all
blood and muscles. Here, also, was
great violence, the best of which was that of Kilg%re, a mechanical lifeform
that observed about humans as he killed people in panel, “the most remarkable
thing about you is how easily you die.”
What’s more, as many other books would later, the issues ran in real
time, with Wally’s birthday marking the passing of a year over twelve monthly
issues. To this day I will still defend the first
twenty-six issues or so as fantastic forgotten treasures, important for
showing revisionism smartly introduced into ongoing titles following the big,
public revisionist shots of the mid-1980s, particularly Watchmen and The
Dark Knight Returns. This isn’t
bias; it was luck. I can only imagine
how different my life might have been if I had found some schlock instead. |
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Those worlds of fantasy, of imaginative science mixed with a
roadmap to maturity, to understanding sexuality and violence and drugs and
literature -- this was a world I could inhabit, reread and reread, studying
page after page, panel after panel, again and again. |
These were also tales that provided an
escape for me, at a particular time in my life. My parents weren’t getting along, and my mother confided that
they were thinking of divorce. She
also told my brother and I some horribly hurtful things no child should ever
hear from a parent, and singled me out for this verbal abuse while my father
kept largely to his room. It was a
bad time for her, and I won’t excuse her, but I could never not have
sympathy, even when I wanted not to; what’s more, I wasn’t the easiest child,
a lot of people have suffered worse, and I get along really remarkably well
with my parents and my brother today, all of whom are good people and openly
love each other deeply despite that all four of us have done terribly hurtful
things to each other at one point or another. But at the time I didn’t want to deal with my family. I wasn’t exactly depressed; I didn’t
understand enough -- or wasn’t old enough -- to be so. That came later. But it was a tough time.
And those worlds of fantasy, of imaginative science mixed with a roadmap
to maturity, to understanding sexuality and violence and drugs and literature
-- this was a world I could inhabit, reread and reread, studying page after
page, panel after panel, again and again. It later reminded me of the stories I’d heard
of my father, growing up an orphan in Wisconsin, going to the movie
theatres and watching the same film over and over, day after day --
studying. He became a film and
theatre professor -- Ph.D., M.F.A., and M.A., not to mention having published
crucial works in the history of film scholarship and teaching. Comic books not available, I went into
literature and creative writing.
Crafting stories -- long handwritten narratives of interstellar
exploration, strange planets, and totalitarian civil war -- was the other
thing I did to escape. It is worth
noting, as if the truth of life could possibly contain more literary
richness, that Flash #1 has Flash talking to a reputable and educated
science fiction writer who speaks of the power of such fantasies, of imagined
worlds. For a time, I foolishly thought that all
comics were this good and began purchasing them with some regularity,
preferring to start with first issues.
I read the premiere of Checkmate! and still recall a blade
piercing a man’s hands, the veins tensed in pain and blood. There was Starman -- the one before
James Robinson’s series -- which actually started well enough. But before long, I had to concede to
myself that Flash was a special case and not all of it was that good. |
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This was my first trauma of experiencing changing creative teams
on a beloved title. |
Before ten issues were up, Jackson “Butch”
Guice was off as penciller. His legs
had been too long, but his work had been tightly detailed and had spoiled
me. After little more than a dozen
issues, writer Mike Baron left the book, and I had serious doubts as to
whether anyone could continue. This
was my first trauma of experiencing changing creative teams on a beloved
title. Bill Messner-Loebs took over
as an unknown to me, though that was not so rare for creators then, however
traumatic it might have felt at the time. It took me a little while to warm up to
Bill Messner-Loebs, and never liked him quite as much as Mike Baron, but he
told different stories with a slower pace, more concerned with human interest
and motivation. He toned down Wally’s
womanizing without ignoring it as later writers would, and kept Baron’s
emphasis on psudo-realistic physics.
My own sense of morality was greatly influenced by a sequence, in the
conclusion of the storyline Baron had left Loebs, in which the sexy
girlfriend of a captured mobster implicitly offers to sleep with Wally if
he’ll let him go. Wally refuses, but
confesses with guilt to his friend that he actually thought about it; his
friend puts it in perspective, saying something like: “if that’s the worst you do in life,
you’re doing quite good.” Then there
was the Secret Origins Annual I read sitting in the car at the public
library while my Dad, as he often did, played in a local band. It was a fantastic issue, revealing for
the first time Barry Allen’s experience during his death in Crisis on
Infinite Earths; at the time, I thought all of this was old news to older
readers, but the story was nonetheless most excellent, and my sense of
appreciation only elevated when I later read how new and important the story
was. And there was the issue in which
Wally West visited Cuba and became favored by Castro. Later, there was the issue with him in a
movie theatre in which his super-speed kicked in, slowing everyone down to a
crawl -- an automatic bodily response to a random bullet just barely piercing
the skin at the back of his neck.
And, not long before that, the storyline in which Wally got his powers
back, having lost then in the fantastic Invasion! crossover, in an
experiment that sends him careening across country, the friction burning
through houses and people’s dogs, ending with him tripping, the skips miles
apart, ending in a crater where he hit the ground in a fireball. This was good stuff, and if it slowly got
worse as the run went on, it doesn’t diminish the power of those early
issues. |
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These were magic years full of new experiences. |
There was, of course, other titles in
those years. I had come to love G.I.Joe,
and will always remember the issues numbered in the sixties through the
nineties as the very best -- extended run, at least -- of the title. There was Kieth Giffen’s worthwhile Justice
League. There was Transformers,
which was fun and imaginative: I
remember the story of Goldbug and Blaster as exiles most fondly. These were magic years full of new
experiences. |
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I made a few mail orders, following all the procedures, a magic
spell that produced a package some weeks later. |
And, in my life, there were the mail-order
comics catalogues, received through responding to ads in the comics
themselves. There I discovered a
plethora of titles I knew nothing about, as well as the first idea of price
listings. I made a few orders, cobbling
together cash and an order form filled out in boyish scrawl, following all
the procedures of mailing something, a magic spell that produced a package
some weeks later. And I discovered
comics specialty shops. And I
attended my first conventions, seeing all the sellers and all those comics
I’d never seen and was trying to figure out. |
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Years later, I realized I’d only missed Dark Knight’s
original publication by a few years, which flabbergasted me. Of course, the years were a lot longer
then. |
I picked up Dark Knight in 1989 on
a family trip to the East Coast, along with the original black and white Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman: Year One, and a bunch of other stuff
at some comic store better than any I’d ever seen. I remember reading Dark Knight in the hotel, at lunch in
a family restaurant, by the pool, taking two or three days to go over it
slowly, meticulously, in one long single read-through. I was twelve, and I thought this was some
ancient masterpiece I was reading. I
remember, years later, when I realized I’d only missed its original
publication by a few years, which flabbergasted me. Of course, the years were a lot longer then. On the same trip, we spent a week in New
York, and I remember my little blue suitcase devoted solely to my comics --
all of them I was proud of and regularly reread -- stacked neatly in two
piles, side by side. I remember
picking up the newest G.I. Joe on the street at a magazine kiosk. I remember finding all those old issues
I’d never even seen in store after store, including one with a basement full
of more longboxes than I’d ever thought existed in one place. There the missing chapters in these sacred
stories were filled in one by one. I
remember it was Flash #3, which I had somehow missed in the spinner
rack (if it ever arrived), that I was reading, standing in line in the
glaring sun on the World Trade Center plaza, waiting to go up. I was still reading it in the glorious
lobby, still in line with my family, my mother beside me. I’d put it away by the time I leaned over
the rail in the viewing station and pressed my face, terrified of heights, to
the angled glass that let you look straight down -- and imagine falling. It wasn’t until three or so years later
that I at last read Watchmen.
Its size intimidated, but it was famous, by Alan Moore, and suddenly
no more expensive than the trade paperbacks I was now buying with
regularity. Watchmen never had
the emotional impact on me that Dark Knight had, but I took it almost
at once for something altogether more mature, more subtle, more
impressive. It too I would reread,
and to this day is probably the book I get down from the shelves most often,
just to reread some sequence and see how it worked again on so many levels at
once. |
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I remember dissecting every sentence of the early issues of Brief
Lives to figure out how he got them to work like that. I sat in high school making outlines of
issues and storylines, studying the structure of these runs. |
In 1992, I decided to branch out. Picked up every mature readers title DC
published. The Sandman was a
revelation: I still remember pouring
over #40 again and again, dissecting every sentence of the early issues of Brief
Lives to figure out how he got them to work like that. Then there was Doom Patrol, the
chaos theory of Grant Morrison. There
was Peter Milligan’s poetic savagery on Shade, The Changing Man. And Garth Ennis’s simplistic horror on Hellblazer. My world took a quantum leap forward. Within a year, on my now paltry allowance,
I’d managed to buy runs of these titles.
I wasn’t so fond of Nancy A. Collins’s Swamp Thing, and less so
of Tom Vietch’s Animal Man, but it wasn’t long before I’d scrounged up
Moore’s Swamp Thing -- and Morrison’s Animal Man and Delano’s Hellblazer
and Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing -- in the back issue bins. I sat in high school making outlines of
issues and storylines, studying the structure of these runs. When the ads for Vertigo showed up in the
letter columns -- just the logo with the words “get anxious” -- I assumed it
was a seventh title. By chance, I’d
happened to be reading every book in what was about to become a line. And for every tepid Black Orchid
ongoing it produced, there was an above average Sandman Mystery Theatre
or a spectacular Enigma or The Extremist, and I was off reading
Gaiman’s Black Orchid and being challenged by it. Soon came the stellar Vertigo Voices
one-shots, and I was in Heaven, reading all of this at sixteen, my mum daring
an occasional comment about how she didn’t approve of me reading all this,
which I just found ridiculous. After
all, I’d discovered that other people were as crazy as I was -- and, more
than that, they had a community. Before long, I was writing comic book
scripts of my own, following Neil Gaiman’s script included in the Dream
Country trade paperback. This was
before Alan Moore’s early scripts to From Hell were published and
eagerly read in my dorm room at college.
And way before the many scripts available today. I even sent a submission out to Vertigo,
violating the rules and using Gaiman’s Endless, only to have it returned as
surely as my Star Trek: The Next
Generation script had been for introducing a new alien species -- and
both, while early efforts, would have stood as well-crafted, probably above
average fare. Always a perfectionist,
in time the scripts would become more important than the comics they were
supposed to produce, as my own published books testify. |
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Gone were the days when I was collecting every issue ever having
featured a certain character with the zeal of the convert. |
And that’s about it. My journey ends there. I soon picked up a large group of
independent comics, assuming that was the next step in my graphic literary gradus
ad Parnassium, only to discover that they didn’t have the same
quality. If anything, I reached the
summit as my tastes became fragmented:
I could seek out Maus and Palestine and From Hell
and Will Eisner (buying every book I could of his) and Cages and Cerebus
and Bryan Talbot and Brat Pack -- while rejecting the overwhelming
majority of black-and-white shoddy publications. So too with Vertigo:
gone were the days when I was collecting every issue ever having
featured a Vertigo character with the zeal of the convert. Super-heroes would never again feel
mainstream to me, even if I refused to consider Watchmen or Dark
Knight less than the independents I’d discovered. Both the mainstream and independent work
of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, and
Grant Morrison played contentedly with Will Eisner, Jason Lutes, Joe Sacco,
Adrian Tomine, Dean Motter, Eddie Campbell, and Will Feiffer. Quality was what mattered now, and I
refused to transfer my super-hero enthusiasm and loyalty to comics only in
black and white, realizing that by the time you acquire that level of
sophistication, such fanboyish behavior makes little sense. I’m one of the guys who just can’t get
into Love and Rockets, but I’m as happy seeing Frank Miller doing 300
as I am Batman. |
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There are always treasures from the
past to be discovered, especially in our forgetful medium -- not to mention
foreign comics. |
But, really, that’s not the end of the
story. There are always treasures
from the past to be discovered, especially in our forgetful medium, from Neil
Adams and Englehart-Rogers and Sterenko S.H.I.E.L.D. to The Spirit
and 1940s Captain Marvel to Crumb and Phoebe Zeit-Geist -- not
to mention Miracleman and E.C. Comics. And there is always the discovery of foreign comics, from manga
before it was so common to the classic Judge Dredd and Zenith to les
bandes dessinées. And then,
occasionally, someone like Joe Quesada comes around and takes a house of dead
ideas with little but Mark Waid’s Captain America to show for itself
and transforms it into a place where Chris Claremont and his imitators are
paired, in classic bizarre comics juxtaposition, with Grant Morrison, Peter
Milligan, and Garth Ennis, making you take another look. Or someone like Warren Ellis or Mark
Millar comes along and makes super-heroes feel new again for the first time
since Marvels, which made them feel new again for the first time since
Watchmen ... . For as many weeks as there seems nothing new
to discover in the comics shop, leading to embarrassing purchases like J.
Michael Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man, there are as many weeks in
which there’s a new Andi Watson trade paperback or a team like Brian Michael
Bendis and Alex Maeev on Daredevil.
Or there’s some new trade with material I haven’t read for years and
that makes me think wow, I really had good teachers in graphic literacy from
way back when. Or there’s a new
shipment from an online store with international and independent comics. |
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See, this essay is supposed to be about how I got into comics,
how I discovered them. Only the truth
is, clichéd as it might be, I still am. And ever will be. |
See, this essay is supposed to be about
how I got into comics, how I discovered them. Only the truth is, clichéd as it might be, I still am. And ever will be. |
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