Rules of Carnage

In my last Spidey villain article - which I'm not too happy with but whatever, read it for the lulzy vid in the intro - I briefly touched on the idea of the Sandman as a horror monster. It started to get me thinking about the other A-list monster foes that plague Spider-Man. Venom and the Lizard are pretty foolproof characters whose thematic appeal is obvious; I don't see any inherent conceptual problems that need to be worked out like with the Sandman, Electro and Mysterio (Part I, Part II). You can still expect a Lizard article eventually since he's my favesies and is gonna be the big bad for the new Spidey flick, but with those two rogues being so obviously sound there's only one real A-list monster villain left. One that could really use a hand these days.

Yup, Carnage, that exemplar of 90s comics excess. He managed to weasel his way into the highest echelons of the Spider-Man villain community by coasting on fan-favoritism and to this day he remains easily the most controversial of web-head's foes. A lot of people, mostly younger kids and folks who were younger kids in the 90s, really love the guy. He's stronger than Venom! He's crazy! He kills people and writes "Carnage Rules" in their blood! He's got fangs and claws and is scary and can morph his arms into swords and stuff!

A lot of other people, mostly the older, more mature readers, really hate the guy. He's derivative! He's creatively bankrupt! He's insipid, has no character, no intrinsic meaning or value! He's a shining example of everything wrong with the mindlessly ultra-violent superhero comics of his golden age!

Me? I remember as a little kid I thought he was so freakin' kool. For the yung'uns who can't remember, this guy was HUGE in the 90s. He was everywhere, probably just as overexposed as Wolverine and Venom were, maybe for a while even more. He was the star of a sweet-ass Sega Genesis game I would always play at my friend's house. I don't know how popular he is today - I get the feeling that the negative opinion of him is the norm now, if only because that's my opinion of him now - but regardless of how poorly-conceived the character may be, Carnage's position is secured. For better or for worse, he's definitely top 10 web-slinger villains material.

Wouldn't it be great, then, if he could actually be made interesting? If he could be re-assembled into a proper foe worthy of Spider-Man while retaining and expanding what little personality is already there?

Ah, but he can be! And it's not as difficult as you might think. Carnage was conceived and pitched as the Joker (or a caricature of the Joker) with a symbiote. To make Carnage a worthwhile enemy, all we have to do is take the symbiote off the Clown Prince of Crime and stick it onto Doctor Hurt.

What, you don't know who Doctor Hurt is? Go out and buy (who am I kidding, pirate) Grant Morrison's recent Batman epic. Some parts are better than others, but it's unquestionably the most innovative interpretation of Batman and his mythos since Frank Miller made him dark again in the mid-80s. And it gave us hands-down the greatest new supervillain of the 21st century. In the saga, Doctor Hurt and his legion of allies attempt to break down the World's Greatest Detective in body, mind and spirit, to unravel his mythology at the seams and annihilate him at the core conceptual level. "Twist and destroy the Batman and his legacy." It was Batman deconstructed to the brink of the abyss as his entire reality crumbled away, then reconstructed as the Dark Knight looked evil's greatest plan straight in the eye, kicked its fucking ass and stood triumphantly validated. Beautiful, inspirational stuff.


Spider-Man's never been properly deconstructed, let alone reconstructed in this way. The closest thing we've had was that Morlun saga by J. Michael Straczynski. It's a good read (JMS hadn't yet jumped the shark at that point) but the profound realizations the story explored basically amounted to "hey, all of these guys are themed after animals" and "eww, a kid with spider powers is actually really gross." It's a damn shame Spidey's never been put through deconstruction, because he's up there with the Caped Crusader as one of the most inspirational comics heroes (definitely not aspirational though, it would suck to be that guy), and because that mode of storytelling is such a natural fit for the genre. Stripping the character and the surrounding mythology, its symbols and milestones, down to pure idea, pure concept. Pure icon. Working out the representational metonymy we all find so compelling to its foundational, universally appealing core. And, since the hero-as-idea is (or at least should be) right, to then reconstruct it: to affirm the fundamental truth behind the concept and build it back up anew.

The physical and psychological agonies inflicted upon Peter is one of the Spider-Man comics' defining features, so it's strange that this has never extended to existential agonies. Obviously these come in spades in deconstruction tales. I mean, I guess there was existential agony in One More Day, but that ended up wrong. Spidey fell, succumbed to the pressure and compromised his values: he made a deal with the Devil in order to play God. The whole affair was very un-Spider-Man. So now we have a hero in need of great redemption, and Carnage, being the most explicitly demonic villain in his rogues gallery, can fill this necessary void. "The hole in things."

Oh oh oh wait, here's a more accessible analogy to tie you down while that Batman torrent finishes downloading: instead of being modeled after slasher flick bad guys, Carnage should take after the Universal monsters. And not just because I've been obsessed with them since I saw Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein when I was three years old.

To rid Carnage of his reputation as a derivative, insipid, valueless character, we need to inject some atmosphere into his stories, like the kind we see in all those great old monster flicks. But we have to derive it from something that already exists in the character or else we can't call the end result Carnage, can we? Good thing we've got everything we need. Carnage is very interesting in that he's one of the only comic book characters with an explicit philosophical leaning: absurdism. The school of thought is closely related to existentialism as well as nihilism, and asserts that if there is an inherent meaning or value in life/the universe, there is no way humanity can ever know it. One must learn to accept this human impossibility - the Absurd - and continue to live in spite of it; doing so totally frees the individual from all constraints and allows one to create personal meaning in their own life.


For Cletus Kasady, this constructed meaning came in the form of a calling to mass murder, because...umm....that's what cool villains do, I guess. Remember, we're talking about 90s superhero comics here, so Carnage's absurdist philosophy manifests in such gems as "Life is utterly meaningless! Chaos! The universe has no center! Its creator is a drooling idiot!" and "Order's just a lie, built on fantasies...like law, an' morals! I remember when I first realized that! How without those illusions, I could do anything!" and "Life is totally absurd – and madness is the only sane response." In just three lines I think Cletus has laid out every single cliché of supervillain cod-philosophy. So as you can see he's kind of a neophyte moron, expressing a pathetically bastardized/simplified version of the ideology to justify dumb senseless murder. We're not exactly having a dialogue with Kierkegaard or Camus, here. And, in my opinion, that's the problem.

Spidey has no shortage of dimwitted foes, and most of the intelligent ones are of the left-brained bookworm variety - all mad scientists and corrupt businessman. So why don't we make Carnage someone actually well-acquainted with the tenets of absurdism, someone with an intimate knowledge of philosophy? Give him the characteristics of a Universal monster - all Gothic horror veneer, deadly sophistication belying evil, deranged obsession. A person of culture, perhaps an intellectual or academic. The kind of creepy aristocratic guy who listens to Shostakovich on an old victrola and gets orchestra seats to Mefistofele at the Met. The kind of guy who reclines in his giant, bookshelf-lined study and calculates cryptic diabolical plans amidst the shadows. Less Freddy Kruger, more Dracula or Imhotep or Dr. Frankenstein (or Hannibal Lecter).

There's also another quality to these Universal monster movies that can help us grasp Carnage's endgame. People complain nonstop about how the Twilight films are ruining vampires and werewolves, how the movies are messing with the established mythologies of all these great monster archetypes by essentially making up their own rules. As a fan of all the classic monster movies I can see where these detractors are coming from, but here's the thing they don't realize: those great films took just as many - if not more - liberties with the actual mythology as the Twilight movies do today. Almost everything we think we know about these monsters is wrong, coming not from the actual myths, legends and folklore, but from the films based on them. If you go back to the source material, you'll find a very different picture of these creatures, one that might actually be closer to what we see in Twilight (purely by coincidence, because I'm sure as shit Stephanie Meyers didn't research any of this, and I haven't even seen the movies so I could be way off). I mean Christ, vampires didn't even have an aversion to sunlight until Nosferatu in 1922; even in the novel Dracula only 25 years earlier, the titular character dicks around in broad daylight all the time. And don't even get me started on werewolves, literally over half that shit we think of was made up in either Werewolf of London or The Wolf Man. Weakness to silver? Become a werewolf after being bit by one? Forced transformation specifically under a full moon? None of that exists in the source material.

I guess you could argue that these monster flicks should be considered part of the mythology and its natural evolution over time, but then Twilight - as infuriatingly unconcerned as it may be with producing quality interpretations of these archetypes - should have just as much a right to be a part of it as any other film. And besides, that would be like saying it's okay to change the comics so Peter had organic web-shooters all along, because that's how it was in the first Spider-Man film (Marvel actually did that for a while right after it came out and people flipped a shit). You know how angry we Spidey fans get when people who only know him from the movies think that's how Spider-Man actually is? It's the same deal, guys. So hate Twilight because it's poorly written, directed and acted, not because its vampires sparkle.

To relate this massive digression back to what I'm supposed to be talking about, this same idea of uprooting and corrupting the established mythology should be what Carnage is all about. Because really, what else would cause a superhero more carnage? As much as we like to try with psychology, myth is the only thing that adequately explains any of the stuff we see in comics. The mythology that makes up a hero is more than their personal oaths, creeds and world views - they are universal ideas predicated on a world with inherent significance. Superheroes - at least the iconic ones - are literally defined by the mythos surrounding them, it's the fabric that holds them together. What would it make Batman if Thomas Wayne faked his death to cover up a secret life of debauchery? The entire foundation behind "Batman," the reasons behind this mission Bruce has literally devoted his entire life to, would be utterly compromised. The ideology holding Batman together would fall apart, he would be forced to succumb to the Absurd as his entire world came crashing down on him. Probably end up a mad raving loon in Arkham...or dead in Crime Alley.

Carnage's assault should attempt to infect Spidey's mythology like a devastating virus: he would distort it with misinformation and wickedness into something of his own malevolent design, then peel back the decaying layers to reveal falseness behind any pretensions of importance or value. To rip apart Peter's very soul. "Ah, demoniacal madness!" Every important, hell, every event in his life predetermined as part of some behind-the-scenes plan decades in the making. "Spider-Man" and the reasoning behind it entirely rooted in deceit, "With great power there must also come --- great responsibility!" as a hollow dogma, Peter's decision to become a crime-fighter a meaningless, preordained exercise designed to assure his own destruction (Spider-Man as Peter's archenemy is always juicy, no matter how much it's overused). The radioactive spider was planted, Uncle Ben's murder was a hit, Gwen was a fall guy (HURR DURR), Aunt May is a deviant, Carnage is Richard Parker, etc. All elaborate lies - actually changing the established mythology would defeat the purpose - expertly-orchestrated to destroy the very essence of Spider-Man. Character assassination on a mythic scale, fatally undermining Peter's entire ideology and moral foundation. Carnage should instigate devastating mind games and unending gauntlets that challenge Spidey in ways he simply doesn't know how to deal with, all the while hissing, "Every moment of joy and happiness in your life, all your memories, lies! Your history is MINE!" And Peter, being the paranoid guy he is, would completely buy into the conspiracy theory. Little Puny Parker all alone against the void.

Now isn't all this so much more interesting than some grungy psycho who writes his name in blood? It's definitely a story I'd want to read. Hell, it's a story I'd want to write.

God I wish I wrote comics so bad...

But despite all the gloom and doom, there will be none of that One More Day shit going on here; he'll go through a hell worse than anything he's ever experienced before, but the ol' wall-crawler will come out on top in the end. Because Spider-Man the idea does have intrinsic value. Because Spider-Man is not Absurd. Because Spider-Man can take it, he can endure deconstruction. As I've said again and again, one of the most important things Spider-Man represents is fortitude in the face of seemingly unending hardship. Humanity's capacity to be indefatigable and have steadfast faith in a better future: life sucks now, but it can get so much better as long as we don't let it beat us down, as long as we work towards improving it and keep our hope alive. Carnage's motivation is clear: he has to snuff out this hope as a symbolic and literal victory on his way to engulfing the world in darkness. In the "gentle indifference" of absurdism. He's already won over Spidey's stomping grounds - this is the postmodern NYC, all unyielding cynicism and unhelpful sneering irony! Who does this freak think he is, swinging around giving people a reason to be sincere? Carnage must destroy Spider-Man because, by virtue of his very existence, our hero invalidates everything his foe very consciously represents. This town's not big enough for two big ideas.

Too bad for Carnage, the immovable object is right there in our champion's name - Peter, derived from the Greek word petros meaning stone or rock, and Parker for, well, something parked firmly in place. Spidey tells us we can't let life's apparent indifference crush our spirits, because under that one nasty surface layer - the breakups, awful workloads, financial straits, that shitty Friday night that left you a pathetic sniveling train wreck - life's a beautiful, inspiring, amazing thing. Ebb and flow. We all go through rough patches once in a while, that's why we have family and friends and our own inner life. If you're not at least trying to be a forward-thinking optimist, what's the fucking point of it all? That's certainly what keeps Spidey going; unlike Carnage, he knows that life isn't a black hole - it's a bunch of lights at the ends of tunnels.

So now that we've figured out the man inside the costume, let's finish up by taking a look at the symbiote itself. I guess the big thing here is that it's a more X-TREEM version of Venom. The villainous symbiotes are pretty obvious addictive drug metaphors (keeping in the Marvel framework of social activism in the face of ambivalence) but if Venom is da crack rock, Carnage is fucking PCP. The Venom symbiote will eventually try to assert its rage-filled sovereignty over its host, but it seems above all self-interested, for a while even taking a stab at a true symbiotic relationship. When it first bonds it seems to compromise, contouring to the body shape and skin of its host. It wants to use that body, not use it up.

The Carnage symbiote, on the other hand, still retains its goopy alien texture after bonding - it's much more domineering, controlling and aggressive. It's reckless, couldn't concern itself less with it's own well-being, completely foregone in its passion for destruction and chaotic revelry. It seeks to consume the host much more quickly, and the end result looks like a revenant flayed alive oozing fresh blood everywhere. This juxtaposition of monster and man, of life and death reveals the Carnage symbiote's overtly parasitic nature. It should sap the nutrients from its host, wither him away even as it empowers him with superhuman abilities. It should leave the host reduced to a bald emaciated skeleton, like the people in those hard-to-bear images of Holocaust victims and early AIDS patients (symbolism for the latter is already there in the character: Carnage was created when the Venom symbiote entered an open wound and mixed with Cletus Kasady's blood). And it should of course warp the mind just as badly, leaving the host a mad, babbling lunatic foaming at the mouth with macabre apocalyptic delusions. There would be a great irony at work here: Carnage attempting to break Spider-Man down to his fundamental core while the symbiote did the same to Carnage, stripping away the facade of suave, calculating sophistication to reveal the base, raving insanity and violently demonic obsession that drives him in his purest form.

Cletus Kasady could totally work if he was reshaped into something remotely believable, but I think it would be better to move the symbiote to a different host. Venom did just fine without Eddie Brock, after all. Carnage could be a priest or a demon or an occultist or a cultist or a crime lord or a Burglar or a master of disguise or a schizophrenic or a psychiatrist or a scientist or an old face back from the dead. He can be a Karloff or a Lugosi, or a Meursault. He can be any and all of these things; anything's better than what he is now, than Cletus the straw man psychopath. With the absurdism angle to ground him as a character, Carnage can take the Spidey books on an existential roller coaster to novel, wildly inventive territory. Like Doctor Hurt to Batman (that damn torrent better be finishing up) or the Universal monsters to the horror genre.


Maximum Carnage may be one of my least favorite stories in all superherodom, but I gotta say that cover is spot fuckin' on. The specter of Carnage maniacally leers - ready to pounce - above a superimposed Manhattan, like a poltergeist for the entire city. New York and sky above it scorched to eschatological blacks and reds, singed to be one with the symbiote's skin. It's Beelzebub rising atop his throne of skulls, ready to retake the city of sin in apocalyptic hellfire. And the only thing standing in his way is a single champion, one lone embodiment of everything worth saving. But how can ol' web-head defeat an enemy that can undo those very things our hero embodies?

The battle for New York's soul is at hand! No holds barred!

Carnage rules when the rules are carnage.

False Grit

So let me start out by saying that I found this stupid video on YouTube the other day (no, it's not Rebecca Black) and for some reason I think it’s the funniest thing ever. I legit can’t stop laughing at it, except when it gets really fucking loud for the last three seconds. What the hell is wrong with me?

And with that out of the way, let's talk about the Sandman.
No, not the really cool one who prowled the streets of Great Depression-era Manhattan in a sweet gas mask/trench coat/fedora get-up. No, not the other really cool one that helped secure comics' reputation as a legitimate literary and artistic medium, the one that continues to make generations of lit major goth chicks go Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally (cue awkward story about accidentally going to Katz's Deli with her son. How were we supposed to know that scene was filmed there?!).

No, I'm talking about this sad sack:

Let's not beat around the bush here, sand powers are lame. I mean, come on, in Flint Marko's big debut Spidey sucks him up with a vacuum cleaner. Seriously, that's how Spider-Man beats him. He sucks the Sandman into a vacuum cleaner bag. I suppose it also doesn't help that the Sandman's powers make NO FUCKING SENSE, even by the standards of comic book logic. Remember, he's not transmuting flesh and blood into sand when he uses his powers, because he has no flesh and blood. He's literally a pile of inexplicably living sand. His eyes? Those aren't eyes, they're clumps of silica made to look like eyes. His clothes? Not clothes at all, but part of his actual sand body. Lungs? He has no lungs; he doesn't have any internal organs, it's all dirt. He's made of tiny grains of inorganic matter pulled together into a single mass, why would he need to breathe? It's. All. Fucking. Sand. That...uhhh...can somehow change colors to recreate his appearance. And *pulls collar* can see and hear and speak and stuff. Or something. I think.

Maybe it's just me, but I just can't suspend my disbelief for what's going on with the Sandman like I can with radioactive spiders and lizard serums in the "naturalistic" framework of the Spider-Man comics. I mean how the hell is this thing alive? Does it even meet the qualifications for biological life or, like a virus, does it straddle the line between living and something other?

Kinda creepy. There's definitely a lot of mileage to be had in exploring this line of thinking, of Sandman as horror monster. But my interest with Flint Marko lies in another direction, one truer to the established conventions of the character. Now usually I HATE when writers take up the page count with technobabble, but I think a detailed comic book science explanation is necessary to come to grips with Flint's true potential. Because if you actually break down Sandman's powers and try to make sense of it, they - and he - become so much more compelling. Enough, even, to sit alongside the cool Sandmen.

So Flint Marko, reluctantly forced into a life of crime, seeks shelter at a nuclear testing site while on the lam. The guy never got his high school diploma, he's drawn by Steve Ditko with a literal blockhead, so you can't exactly fault him for not thinking that one through. Anyway, poor Flint gets caught in the middle of a weird atomic experiment and is fused to the irradiated silica grains beneath his feet, finding himself transformed into sand...LIVING sand!!! Let's work this out.

How does the Sandman work, from a purely physical perspective? To find out, we have to get this idea of Flint Marko as a human individual, as that schmuck with the green striped shirt out of our heads. Instead, we should look at him as the shapeless pile of dirt that travels in the wind or slips through the sidewalk cracks. Put him under a microscope to see, in final boss terms, his true form. For him to make any sense, the Sandman would have to be a hive mind, his consciousness dispersed through each of the millions of silica granules that make up his "body". Every individual grain of sand has to be part of a collective conscious that operates together as a single cohesive unit, like an intelligent superorganism. That's the only way it can possibly work; how else could he dissipate into a dust storm and still maintain self-awareness, let alone be able to re-form?

Let's say that in the freak accident, the electrical signals going off in Flint's brain - which combine into an electromagnetic field that some believe is the source of conscious experience - inducted or were somehow transferred to sand particles (sand is composed of silicon dioxide, or quartz, which can store electric charge). Freed from biological constraints, his consciousness becomes a will-powered, self-sustaining electromagnetic field that can course through silica particles, a massive brain that can change size and shape through the attractive/repulsive force of its parts. The Sandman can charge other sand particles with his essence via contact, assimilating them into his sentient hive-mass. He can even alter the properties of the silicon dioxide he's composed of, as evidenced by all the times he's transmuted his body parts into glass - since quartz comes in every color that makes up the Sandman's palette, this neatly explains away how he can colorize himself to not look like a lump of sand. There's no reason why he wouldn't be able to change his appearance with different colors, from bright citrine to amethyst, either.

Of course none of this reveals how Flint can talk or experience senses, but I'm not particularly concerned with all that. Maybe he's got his own version of spider-sense, à la Doctor Manhattan's quantum perception (it's practically the same origin story, after all), which allows him to interact with the world like we do. Whatever, that part isn't important. The hive-mind-sand-grain-thing was what you were supposed to get out of all this.

So the question you're asking yourself now must be why the fuck does anything I've written so far matter? Why is it important that the Sandman is a de-individualized collective united under a single will? Consider the way the Sandman always tries to swarm Peter, to completely envelop and overwhelm Spidey within his collective essence. Better yet, consider Spider-Man's greatest enemy. It's not the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus or Venom. It's not even himself, because self-doubt is externally conditioned. It's not any individual.

It's the general public. Christ, it took me long to get here. Damn technobabble...

Yes, the Sandman represents the public at large, the capricious, alienating force that "mock[s] Peter Parker, the timid teen-ager" and condemns Spider-Man as a freak; the ultimate source of all our protagonist's unending insecurities, paranoia and self-esteem problems. So it makes sense that Flint Marko is, at heart, a good man who vacillates between the straight-and-narrow, super-villainy, and at times proactive heroism (he was even a reserve member of the Avengers once upon a time), because the public opinion of Spidey changes between unanimous enthusiastic adoration and unanimous impassioned loathing at the drop of a dime. Which, when you think about it, must be so much worse, so much more nerve-wracking than if the people just always hated the wall-crawler. I mean I can't even imagine what kind of toll it takes on his sanity - to be loved, supported, validated by millions one moment and despised by them the very next. It'd be like dating an abusive partner with bipolar disorder.

It's also in no way an exaggeration of real life: public consensus has always been fickle and flip-floppy to the point of schizophrenia, that's one reason why our representatives on Capitol Hill can't get anything done. And try as he might to straddle the line between good and evil, we all know what side of the law Flint will inevitably end up on. Just as we know which side the public opinion of web-head will fall when all is said and done...as long as Jameson's still writing the headlines, at least.

But all this talk about alienation brings up an important point. I feel like in my previous articles - the Mysterio two-parter and the egomaniac Electro - I may have overstated the extent Peter's neuroses defines his character, or at least the extent it should be portrayed in the comics. Yes, it should be played up for great tragic/dramatic moments, but we're not talking about the Punisher here, these comics are supposed to be funny and FUN. There's something of a Woody Allen quality to Peter's problems. The best comedians may all be clinically depressed, but they're also awesome and funny as hell. And The Amazing Spider-Man was the first teen dramedy, after all.

So the Sandman is a very interesting foe because he establishes Spidey's angst not as an ingratiating carryover of whiny teenage hormones, but as a completely logical reaction to his situation. Pete's the straight man here: it's everyone else, it's society that's schizo-manic-depressive-crazy. And it's not paranoia if everyone actually is out to get you.

During "The Gauntlet" event, the Sandman gained the new (well not really, but, y'know, whatever man) ability to create duplicates of himself. It's a brilliant development. The story explored what would happen if Flint lost control of the duplicates, but that's not a tale I'm particularly interested in nor one I find plausible, given what I've rambled about Flint's hive consciousness and the ease with which he already controls his complex swarm powers. A Sandman in complete control of this new ability has so much more potential: now not only can he represent the collective public, he can actually be that collective public. A shape-shifter who can not only alter his appearance but also branch off copies of himself? He can't impersonate individuals, that intimate violation of identity is the Chameleon's niche, but he can be any - and, crucially, all - of the anonymous faces in the crowds.

I want to open up a Sandman story and see a microscopic close-up of thousands of flowing sand granules in one panel juxtaposed with an aerial shot of thousands of people walking down W 28th St in the panel below, their faces obscured into a horde of flesh-colored ovals. Symbolism, people! The Sandman can be a 20,000-strong protest group in Times Square demanding this Spider-Man menace be brought to justice. He can be a mob that confronts the web-slinger, right after saving the day in a public display of selfless heroism, to tell him he's not welcome, that they don't want him to be their protector and will do everything they can to make his life hell. These antics would make Peter a nervous wreck: what if these faceless nobodies, these anonymous people that surround me every day, what if they're all the Sandman?!

Which brings me to my next point. The general public itself, with its bemused ennui towards costumed antics, represents a larger concept in these stories: deindividuation. It's the social phenomenon where an individual's sense of responsibility - and any sense of self-awareness, for that matter - diffuses until ceasing to exist as a result of immersion into a group. If you took any psychology classes (I only remember this shit because my textbook had an article on Heath Ledger's Joker) you probably know all about the term, and all about its frightening as fuck ramifications in the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments. Deindividuation fosters blind deference to authority figures as well as an overwhelming apathy, and has been directly linked to the greatest horrors of the twentieth century, from the Holocaust to Kitty Genovese to Abu Ghraib.

As I've stated before - and justified by saying "go with it until I finish my big post on it" (which is almost done, definitely will be up right after the next Spidey villain article) - indifference is the greatest enemy of the Marvel Universe, the one thing every Marvel hero, all social activists in one way or another, is united against. Good vs. Evil is much more the DC Universe's deal, which is why characters like Mephisto feel so out of place at Marvel and are reduced to breaking up marriages on behalf of editorial mandate. In regards solely to the Spider-Man mythos, indifference is what let the burglar live a free man long enough to kill Uncle Ben, which set Peter on the path to heroism. The added angles of diffused responsibility and loss of individuality to anonymity make deindividuation a complete antithesis to everything Spider-Man, paragon of both proactive social responsibility and the self-actualizing individual, fundamentally represents.

And boy, is it prevalent here in New York City. People here have trained themselves to be apathetic towards everyone else around them, it's a simple fact of life. Don't stop for the homeless guy who just needs 50 more cents to buy a damn sandwich, walk past the brilliant music prodigy playing in the subway to make rent, ignore the guy next to you who could obviously use a hand right now. What's the rationale? Plenty of other people will do it, it's not my responsibility, I need to get where I am going to fulfill my role in society, etc. Deindividuation in action, right there.

I remember my first day arriving at NYU, how we were instructed specifically to ignore all the people surrounding us as we walked down the streets. It's necessary, because if you didn't A) you would never get to where you're trying to go and B) you would quite possibly get mugged or kidnapped or something my mother would be worried about, but Christ in a hand-basket what does that say about us if the norm is indifference? If one deviates from the norm, asserts individuality and separates from the group by being selfless, it makes that person a right bloody weirdo. Or someone with an ulterior motive, as the cynics would assume. And it makes them a pariah, a leper - they're cursing themselves with bad luck, because bad things happen to good people, the nice guy finishes last and so on. Their goals will be unfulfilled, their hearts will be broken.

But thank God for these people - the optimists and the good guys, the ones who persevere through wave after wave of taunting misfortune and never let it get to them. They know things will get better. They're the ones who carry the torch. Their outlooks keep hope alive for everyone else; without them we'd all be swept away in a sea of cynicism. Thank God for the people who see a cafeteria lady struggling with a bunch of big cardboard boxes and fucking help her out.

Thank God for the Peter Parkers of the world.

Just as Spidey embodies all the best qualities of New York City - "the capacity," as Michael Cunningham puts it in this awesome article, "to rise and rise again out of the rubble of whatever it used to be" - the Sandman embodies this city at its absolute worst, at its most callously uncaring. It's telling that he's literally composed of the grime and grit of the city, of the unwelcome dirt swept underneath. Similarly, the city itself - this so-called concrete jungle - seems to be one massive cluster of silicon dioxide, all glass and cement towers. It's Flint's playground: he can play Big Brother and literally be everywhere. I'm getting this image of thousands of formless faces emerging from glass skyscrapers, concrete walls and cement sidewalks, like the wailing portraits Nina psychotically hallucinates in Black Swan, following Peter as he runs home from work panicked. Yeah, Sandman as horror monster works real well.

The Sandman's established character is pretty much right on the money for this interpretation. The reluctant villain shtick can get real tiresome sometimes *coughcoughSpider-Man 3cough* but it's a great literalization of all these concepts he represents. The Sandman really wants to be a good person, but life just keeps giving him lemons day after day. Like a less-educated Underground Man, Flint totters conflictingly between potential actions, wracking his brain until he finally makes a decision: to take the easy way out and go down the path of crime. He gives up to the cynicism, compromises his values and shows how little grit he has in the face of adversity. The irony.

What makes the Sandman such a great character is that he's a distillation of all these high concepts - alienation, deindividuation, apathy/indifference, dangers of the collective, diffusion of responsibility, weak will in the face of hardship - into a single individual, a tangible (sort of) object that our hero can punch in the face, suck into a vacuum cleaner bag and defeat. I mean, that's sort of the entire idea behind superheroes and villains, isn't it?

Huh, I guess the Sandman is pretty cool after all.

Demon, Demon he's our man! It's the Demon Etrigan! This is what our prayers sent, make this beast our President!

Welcome back for the second post in this Dwayne McDuffie retrospective, where this time we'll be taking a look at his short run on one of Jack Kirby's other worldly DC creations: The Demon, Etrigan!

If you're not familiar with Kirby's hellacious creation he is basically a medieval era Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde equivalent who speaks in rhymes and is basically the Cat in the Hat of the DCU.  He was summoned by Merlin of Arthurian lore and shares a body with Jason Blood one of Arthur's knights to contain the demon. Despite his destructive tendency he usually sides with the good guys to stop the semi-annual destruction of the universe.  Other than that there's a bunch of magic mumbo jumbo that I can't do justice so you should just read all about it with pictures!

In his 4 issue run as fill in writer (Alan Grant was the regular writer at the time), the basic premise was this: The Demon runs for president.  Yes, not against a fictional character either, or President Luthor.  He was straight up running against George Bush Sr. during his re-election.  And it is batshit insane and ridiculously fun.  Just the way I like my comics.

The Demon is first summoned by accident from an expert pollster hired by the laughably named named Darrin W. Dingle III who is basically David Huddleston's character from The Big Lebowski.  The pollster is tasked to find the perfect Republican candidate, someone who would make Pat Buchanon shake in his boots.  The pollster enters his list of attributes that would make this Six Million Dollar Man equivalent of a Republican three times and low and behold!  The Demon appears, unleashing medieval kickass and some efficiently dope rhymes.

He is convinced by Dingle to run for president after convincing him that he would have the nuclear capacity to bomb HELL.  That's not a figure of speech, The Demon literally is motivated to take back Hell in any way possible, including dropping 19,000 nuclear weapons.

The rest of the story follows Etrigan blazing the campaign trail as he tries to become elected.  His hijinks include writing an appropriately Dr. Suess-esque book titled "America RULES!", being endorsed by Guy Gardner, scorching a reporter to flames for questioning his rhyming ability, beating down on mobs of Neo Nazis, Klansmen, militant police AND Superman, being baptized, and crashing a Republican debate urging them to see things his way.

But my favorite hands down moment would have to be Etrigan appearing on 'Yo! MTV Raps'. (which is better than anything on MTV for the last 10 years)

Eventually though he is sabotaged by the 90's blowhard Superman, Jason Blood, and his backstabbing bitch of speech writer.   But he does nearly reach the presidency, 'legitmately' enough, which kind of makes you wonder why Superman is involving himself with politics and being kind of an asshole. And the Demon does it all without ever failing to rhyme.  How much fun would an ongoing 'Etrigan, The President' ongoing be?  Geoff Johns, use your super revisionist pen and make this thing come true!

This is honestly one of the the most fun, hilarious, no holds barred, ideas crazy stories I have ever read.  This is how comics are supposed to be: enjoyable, funny, and wildly inventive.  If you are sane and reasonable and like fun comics (or even if you're off your rocker) this is a comic you should read.

Also there is a talking pillow that smokes cigars.

In my last post in this Dwayne McDuffie retrospective I'll take a look at arguably his best work and creation: the hilarious Damage Control.

Rock Down to Electro Avenue

Before we get into anything, wasn't the first issue of Venom supposed to come out Wednesday? Was it delayed or are writing these posts just driving me insane? I mean, I got the last issue of Joe the Barbarian (which was OH MY GOD SO AMAZING AND FANTASTIC AND HEARTWARMING AND WONDERFUL AND PERFECT IN EVERY WAY), but still.

I wanted that damn Venom comic.

Moving on...


Hey look another Spidey post!

After I finished writing my Mysterio posts (Part I, Part II), I started to think about the one other classic Spider-Man villain I don't really "get": Electro. He was a comparatively late addition to my knowledge of the Spider-Man mythos since he didn't appear in the 90s cartoon...you know, the one with the ballin' theme song (I think the reason was because he and the Sandman were slated to be villains in James Cameron's Spider-Man film, before it fell through). The first time I ever encountered Electro was when I went to the Islands of Adventure in the summer of 2001 and saw him in the Spidey ride. The moment I saw him, I immediately short-circuited; I was instantly captivated by the character, I assume because it is an established fact that lightning powers are fucking cool as shit. The power surge going on in my brain only got worse when I got Enter Electro later that summer, although I had to trade it in for the World Trade Center-less re-release after the ramifications of September 11th hit me (we could hear the plane crash into the Pentagon from my elementary school, which was probably the most terrifying sound I've ever heard. Debbie Downer, I know).

As I got older, the sparks began to fade. Yes, lightning powers are fucking cool as shit, but other than that Electro doesn't have much going for him. The problem is that Max Dillon doesn't have a discernible character. He's entirely defined by his powers because nothing else is there. That would be fine if he were just any supervillain - in fact that's the standard for most supervillains - but he's a goddamn Spider-Man foe, those guys are supposed to have complex personalities! I need more from my baddies - why bother with the hundreds of Omega Reds when there are Jokers out there? By the time I started reading the Mindless Ones and other superhero academia blogs, now over three years ago, I was ready to turn off the power on Electro once and for all.

But over the past couple days I've given it a lot of thought, and now my enthusiasm for him has been completely recharged. It wasn't you, Electro, it was me all along.


And yes, there will be more lame electricity puns as this post goes along. Deal.

Numerous places on the intarwebz tell me that Electro suffers from an enormous inferiority complex, that his air of pomposity is a front to compensate for true feelings of low self-esteem and inadequacy. That has a lot of interesting potential as a villainous reflection of Peter Parker's never-ending self-doubt, but here's the rub: I've never - NEVAR!! - encountered an Electro story that actually addresses this element of his character. After a wee bit of research, I found that the inferiority complex idea stems from a single two-issue story arc from 1997, Amazing #422-423, which reveals that as a child Max was always told by his mother he would never amount to anything. How shocking. I guess Marvel decided it wouldn't hurt to give yet another of their villains a clichéd, pop psychology-influenced childhood backstory. Like most mainstream superhero tales from the 90s, the arc is a hot sack of garbage, poorly-written and against the spirit of the original Spider-Man comics. Since the events in this story have never been brought up in anything since and not a single comics writer has revisited this inferiority complex, let's zap it once and for all right here. Cool.

Since the greatest Spidey tales are true to the spirit of the original stories, let's go back to the source material: Amazing Spider-Man #9, Electro's debut. As much as I want to rave about the electrifying fight scene at the issue's climax, let's focus on the villain's Steve Ditko-designed costume. It's telling that the face mask is what immediately draws our attention; the over-sized lightning bolts emanate on top of and around his head, like a crown or a halo, framing his static mug within the center of a star. From this we can tell pretty unequivocally that Electro has a very, very positive opinion of himself. This douchey arrogance is evident in Max's personality even before the power line accident gave him fucking cool as shit lightning powers (remember these guys? They, Franz, Sufjan and Spoon were totally my eighth grade soundtrack. Good times):


60s superhero comics are a lot like Shakespeare in that they don't contain subtext as we understand the term (e.g. Chekhov); everything you need to know is right there in the text, and can be taken at face value. We don't need to go through hoops to figure out what is going on in Hamlet's head - he lays out exactly what he's thinking in all those long-ass soliloquies, no more and no less. With 60s superhero comics, not only do we have information similarly revealed to us in lengthy speech balloon monologues, we also have thought balloons, the omniscient, objective narration in caption boxes, and of course in the images themselves. So since it isn't explicitly stated - unlike, say, the reason JJJ hates our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler - we know that Electro's supercharged hubris is entirely genuine in nature, free of any hidden pathos.

This conception of Electro, as a villain completely lacking in baggage, makes him unique among web-head's social outcast enemies; Osborn and Connors both vainly struggle to contain the very different monsters within them; the Sandman is a good guy at heart who bemoans constantly getting pushed back into crime; Eddie Brock tries to maintain his honor and humanity over the forces of addiction even after society turned its back on him; Doc Ock is the fuggin' poster child of the neurotic villain (if any Spidey foe has an inferiority complex, it's unquestionably him); Kraven - Christ, poor Kraven - became so psychotically distraught over not living up to his moniker "the Hunter" that he blew his brains out. In all these rogues we have reflections of our hero's own emotional insecurity. In Electro, we find a much-needed antithesis.

Electro should always be enthusiastically crackling with energy, always turned on, always concerned only with the bright side of his chosen vocation - a light bulb come to life. Passionately blinded with bright, white-hot pride; filled with destructive power that rages forward, authoritatively crashing down from the heavens with the force and speed of unwavering determination. Just as Spidey's ability to stick/cling to any surface with Van der Waals super-strength represents his capacity to hold on and endure - to firmly entrench himself as the immovable object, confront wave after wave of the irresistible force and rise above it - so too are Electro's powers an extension of his character. In fact, other than his costume they're the only insight into him we get. So Electro, embodying the qualities we metaphorically associate with lightning and electricity, must never question or second-guess himself, so arrogantly overconfident in his actions that self-satisfaction permeates him like a current.

(I'll stop with the electricity references now. You can thank me later.)


Look at that shit-eating grin! That smug sonofabitch!!

I should point out that Electro isn't naïve or stupid. He's no genius, but Max Dillon is an intelligent, talented guy who's damn competent at what he does. And even though Spidey will always send him back to the slammer, Electro has no reason to ever doubt himself or think himself a failure (I'll get to why later, for now just trust me that it makes sense). I imagine Electro does really well in prison, too - I mean you literally can't touch the guy, try any shit with dropped soap and you get fried to a crisp.

But back to Electro's duds. Have any of you Spider-Fans noticed anything a bit...off about his costume compared to the other classic villains? The Green Goblin looks like he came from Halloween on Middle-Earth. Doctor Octopus, the Sandman and the Lizard all wear street clothes (Doc Ock didn't get a spandex costume until John Romita started drawing him, and it's telling that when most people think of Otto's wardrobe they envision the simple trench coats from Spider-Man 2, Ultimate Spider-Man and the Spectacular cartoon). Mysterio has the esoteric crystal ball/fishbowl thing going on...and the eyeball broaches...and the weird gauntlets...and the dizzying criss-cross pattern. The Vulture has massive feather wings covering his arms and what looks like a fur collar around his neck. Kraven the Hunter wears a goddamn lion's face as a vest.

Electro is the only one whose costume is entirely composed of the standard superhero/villain tights ensemble. With the exception of Venom and his kin, Electro is the only Spider-Man rogue whose costume bears a recognizable similarity to Spidey's. In his original appearances, he also used a specific hand gesture to sling his lightning bolts, yet another parallel between him and the web-slinger (and yet another element lost when Romita took over art duties on Amazing, although to be fair I never give him the credit he rightfully deserves).


More importantly, the costume establishes Electro as a "traditional," in many ways archetypal, supervillain. What motivates this standard, villain-of-the-week brand of foe? It's never made explicit, because these types of enemies are usually created solely to give the hero something to do...but that doesn't mean it isn't obvious. Although they're usually bank robbers and thieves, greed is never the true motivation. If it was, they would wear something more practical than their outlandish, unique, individualizing full-body costumes. I imagine those are both very incriminating and very easy to spot.

No, no, what really motivates these types of super-criminals is fame, renown. They want to be important. They want to be remembered. They want other people to know who they are. With today's celebrity-obsessed culture, particularly now that anyone with a computer can have their fifteen minutes of fame, these previously one-dimensional rogues are now probably the most believable villains in comics.

And THAT'S why, no matter how many times he gets beaten and thrown back into jail, Electro should never have a moment of discouragement or self-doubt. He's achieved his goal: through sheer persistence - a negative appropriation of what Spider-Man fundamentally represents - he's managed to climb to the highest echelons of the supervillain community. He was inaugurated into the original Sinister Six and will always be considered among the top 10 Spidey foes. Hell, he'll always be considered one of the greatest comic book villains of all time. As long as he keeps breaking out and keeps doing bad shit, he's golden. Electro is the paragon of an entire category of supervillain - he's the bad guy that the Spots and Rhinos and Shockers wish they could be. Because of his undaunted persistence, everyone in the Marvel Universe knows who Electro is.

Well, persistence and fucking cool as shit lightning powers.


Of course that doesn't mean greed isn't a big part of what Electro does. From his first appearance as a master thief to hijacking the NYSE in his most recent starring role, it's pretty much the only thing he does, actually. Which, while lamentably one-note, is a natural thematic outgrowth of his character. Max wants/needs money, and he honestly believes he's so awesome that he's bloody entitled to whatever he desires. His superiority complex overrides any sense of moral decency; Electro takes anything he thinks should rightfully be his, simple as that. And wealth is the most obvious indicator of importance, after all. "Jewels! Money! No matter how much I take, I want more--much more!," Electro declares in Amazing #9. "And with my great power, nothing can stop me from getting it!" It's an effective contrast to Peter Parker, who could easily use his powers to end the financial straits he's historically been stuck in, but has the steadfast moral grounding - the sense of great responsibility - to choose otherwise.

On top of all this, I like to think that Electro is perceptive enough to see through Peter's caddy facade as the carefree Spider-Man, that he can sense the deep insecurity belying Spidey's snappy one-liners. Electro must relish it; it has to make him all the more smug, all the more self-confident knowing that his enemy is a neurotic, self-conscious wreck while he himself is so free. Spider-Man may always defeat Electro in battle, but it's clear to Max which one of them is a winner and which is a loser. Electro is literally and metaphorically untouchable; he almost reminds me of the Joker from The Dark Knight, endlessly mocking Batman by the virtue of his very existence - "You have nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength!"

What a douche.

Electro's unrestrained, self-actualizing freedom, and ESPECIALLY his indestructible self-assurance must make Peter so fucking envious. Max Dillon is everything Peter wishes he could be - everything he self-destructively tries to be as Spider-Man - except unapologetically shallow and just plain evil, in true Ditko fashion. Every nerd who wished they could be the jock: why don't I have a shred of confidence, why won't these personal demons just go away, why can't I get rid of all this fucking angst?! I HAVE SUCH DOUBTS!!! Well you can down all the Muscle Milk you want, Puny Parker, but you can't change who you are. Just stick to your own kind and be thankful you're funny.

So. Fucking. Cruel. I love it!

...

Did I mention that lightning powers are fucking cool as shit?

Just making sure.

Time Travel Tuesday: Batman #112

Last Time Travel Tuesday got me thinking me thinking long and hard (awww yeah) about the Batman megastory I would write if I ever got the chance to work in the comics biz. It's an epic, sprawling tale that incorporates -- oh fuck it, you don't want to hear my Bat-fanwankery (maybe I'll post it if there's any interest; I'll surely realize that it's considerably less awesome than I thought once I put it into writing). I'm just bringing it up because it brought me to Batman #112, where two things that heavily feature in my story idea made their debut. Let's take a look at this gem of Silver Age storytelling!


Batman #112, published in December 1957, features three 8-page stories: "The Signalman of Crime", "Batman's Roman Holiday", and "Am I Really Batman?", which the intriguing cover (if extremely predictable for the Silver Age) is derived from. The first story is the debut of the Signalman, a Batman villain at the bottom of the D-list but with the potential to become one of his greatest adversaries. The tale itself is typical of 50s superhero stories - innocent, fun, silly, extremely simple, at best mildly memorable. Phil Cobb, inspired by the gimmicky foes of Batman's rogues gallery, decides to give the whole supervillain thing a shot. Cobb dons a ridiculous costume covered in signs and symbols; now calling himself "the Signalman," he begins a crime spree, leaving clues behind. As you would assume, Batman and Robin easily put the clues together and apprehend the villain before his next big heist.

In the last Time Travel Tuesday, I briefly talked about the enormous importance of semiotics and branding to Batman's mission (you can read more in-depth analyses here, here and here, among other places; I'll probably get around to writing on it in detail at a later date). Well here we have a villain whose entire gimmick is based around the nature of symbols, on how we perceive and process them. Imagine Foucault, Derrida, Eco and (of course!) Chomsky all wrapped into a single super-expert who one day said to himself, "hey, these skills could be really useful for perpetuating an environment of crime." Or at least, "hey, these skills could be really useful for deconstructing that Batman guy."

Okay, so let me tell you just a wee little bit about my Batman story idea. It involves a group of individuals who, backed by a cabal of obscure Batman foes, decide to achieve the peak of human perfection and become Batman-like vigilantes themselves. The story stems from the idea I proposed about the Batman Revenge Squad from the last Time Travel Tuesday, and taps into the quasi-Nietzchean themes at the heart of most interpretations of Batman, with the twist that it is both unfair and useless for him to be the exemplar of fully achieved human potential if no one else can reach it (writers are always trying to apply Nietzsche to superheroes, but Batman is one of the only characters where his writings are actually applicable. Comics scribes should probably, y'know, actually read Nietzsche first, especially before they try to associate his work with Superman just because it's how some folks translated Übermensch). Of course, these pseudo-Batmen end up not being up to par with the real deal, because the Dark Knight's motives are entirely selfless and constructive, while theirs is a product of self-interested, self-conscious entitlement. Besides, he's the goddamn Batman. So these pseudo-Batmen end up being unwittingly used by the cabal in a drawn-out, almost-successful attempt to destroy our Caped Crusader once and for all.

Wow, I was right about it not sounding nearly as good after actually writing it out...


Anyway, the Signalman would serve as the cabal's symbols expert; he would be the one to educate these faux-Batmen on the importance of image. After all, if you take the Bat out of Batman, well he becomes a lot less interesting and impressive, right? He becomes just Man, a Punisher who doesn't kill, or a Defendor, just some weirdo who could never get over one traumatic childhood event. He becomes the bloodied Bruce Wayne from "Year One," weakly slouching in his armchair, furiously ringing his bell as he hangs on to dear life, in dire need of a totem. So Signalman would be the one to come up with the Batman Revenge Squad costume designs, the stylized logos and the themed gadgets. Meet and beat the Dark Knight at his own game. The Signalman would ensure that this essential aspect of Batman was transferred over to the cabal's Nietzschean experiments, and would teach them how to use these semiotic assets to symbolically and literally defeat Batman's essence, which permeates Gotham as if it were completely enveloped in his cape.

The Signalman's costume needs a bit of sprucing up, though. On a purely superficial level, the color palette is bloody awful. Much more importantly, the signs that cover the costume need greater significance, a clearer thematic purpose. In #112, they are almost entirely astrological in origin, making him seem like the Zodiac killer with Asperger's. When the character was brought back in the 70s, they were given greater variety - I can see a treble clef on there, as well as geometric shapes such as stars, crescents and diamonds. This still doesn't do the trick, and it may even be a step back. Finally, the symbol that adorns his chest is...a filled-in circle. A void, an absence. A lack of a palpable symbol. That simply will not do; it both undermines what the Signalman is supposed to be about and is just plain boring aesthetically.

Stick the triangular all-seeing eye from the back of the $1 bill in the middle of that circle - now we're getting somewhere! Fill his suit with recognizable signs that reveal just how much these images saturate and dictate our lives; corporate logos like the McDonald's golden arches and brand icons like the Pepsi symbol (screw royalties and copyrights, they'll never know!). Show us how much power they sway over us, both literally and in our imagination: the Freemason insignia, pentagrams, religious and occult icons, the mysterious, esoteric signs that continue to captivate us, to spawn the conspiracy theories about Illuminati and whatnot we voraciously consume in our Da Vinci Codes and National Treasures. Or, in a more personal interpretation of the foe, perhaps Signalman's suit is covered solely with the different iterations of the Batman logo from over the years - actually, the simple filled-in circle over his chest would be very appropriate here, appearing as if the stylized bat was ripped from its yellow oval, suggesting an inherent emptiness and meaningless to the Bat-brand.


But let's get back to what this post was supposed to be about. The next story, "Batman's Roman Holiday," introduces Carter Nichols' Time-Ray, which sends Batman (or "the Great Batmanus," as he becomes called) and Robin to Ancient Rome. It's a weird, fun, nonsensical adventure filled with camp and way out-there sci-fi. Typical Silver Age fare, which as always makes it a matter of personal taste. If you like these kinds of stories, be it for the nostalgia or the sheer zany lunacy, you'll enjoy this one a great deal. If you're the type who only likes the grim-n'-gritty, "realistic" urban vigilante Batman, don't expect to get much out of this issue. DUH.

The Time-Ray is a very interesting introduction into the Bat-mythos, and is the second key element from #112 to appear in my fanwank, albeit more as a convenient conceit than anything else. The story would ideally span across the entire pantheon of Batman's mainstream continuity, featuring the digging up and re-contextualization of stories as far back as Detective Comics #27. The idea here is that nobody actually shut off Nichols' Time-Ray, and for years it's just kept going and going and going in a dilapidated secret lair. As a result, time has gone completely out of joint in Gotham City. Too bad the Clock King is part of the cabal; he seems to be the only one aware of what's going on, using his master understanding of the situation to endow the Bat-imitators with a level of training and experience that took Bruce Wayne his entire career, his entire life to achieve. The Time-Ray is pretty much an easy, abstract way to explain away how Wayne could raise all those Robins and Batgirls, how he could accumulate all this knowledge, all these skills, have all these amazing adventures over almost 72 years of publication through wildly different eras and not age appreciably - without going into obsessive, Geoff Johnsian continuity porn retconning. Because good lord, that stuff is just the worst.

Finally, we've come to the most interesting story of the bunch, "Am I Really Batman?" Like the vast majority of Silver Age DC stories, the central theme of the tale is the sanctity of identity under fire. What makes this story stand out is its wonderful inventiveness; it is a well of creativity without indulging in the over-the-top, kitschy decadence that defines so many of its peers. Somehow, even throughout all the ludicrous - and riveting - plot twists, the story remains believable. I was wracked with suspense, wondering what would happen next, and found myself actually caring about Bruce Wayne's existential plight. Usually, the extent of my reaction to a good Silver Age DC story is an endearing appreciation of its Silver Agey-ness, similar to the way I can ironically appreciate the Lifeldian proportions and over-the-top, grungy indulgence of a 90s comic for its Dark Agey-ness. "Am I Really Batman?" truly is a standout tale in the early-Silver Age Bat-canon, one whose influence we can clearly see in Morrison's run on the Batbooks. Definitely worth checking out in a reprint.

Ahh, and now to begin my homework. 2:47 AM here in NYC...better late than never, right?