Krypton--The Place to Be

Just finished reading the new Superman Silver Age collection--Tales from the Phantom Zone. It got me to thinking that a lot was happening on Superman's home planet Krypton before it blew up and it was all happening to Superman's parents Jor-El and Lara. Before the fatal explosion, several Earth people visited the doomed world--Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, two doctors (both healed an ailing baby Kal-El), even the grown up Kal-El himself--and they all dropped in on Mr. and Mrs. El. In one version, Kal-El is a phantom because he hasn't been born yet. In other, he's just as flesh and blood as any Kryptonian and falls in love with a glamorous movie star. In addition, the Els were visited by the youthful Mon-El of the planet Daxam who later crashed on earth and caught amnesia, then thought he was Superboy's older brother. He recovered his memory but was sent into the Phantom Zone for 1,000 years so he wouldn't die of lead poisoning. In the 30th century, Brianiac 5 developed a serum to cure Mon who then joined the Legion of Super-Heroes. But I digress.

Jor-El was a jack of all trades evidently. Not only was he a leading scientist, but also an undercover agent for the KBI (Krpyton Bureau of Investigation) and chief executioner (before he invented the Phantom Zone projector--a more humane way of dealing with criminals). This leaves a question, if Jor was such a respected member of society, why didn't his fellow citizens believe him when he said the planet was about to explode? Some day I will have research this and develop a time line of all the events that occured on Krypton before the big bang. I know there is a sci-fi novel on this topic. Perhaps I'll check it out for consistancy with the mythos of the comics.

Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life

Walking along Sixth Avenue Sat., I passed a guy selling comics. He had a suitcase open with mostly recent titles. I'm really into Silver Age (mid-1950s-early 70s) books. Bronze Age followed into the 1980s and I like some of those too. We are now in the Copper Age of Comics, I think. The seller, a tall African-American in his 30s, did have a couple I could see buying if they were cheap enough. There was a Mighty Thor from the early-mid 60s (original price 12 cents). The cover by Jack Kirby (The King of Comics and an artist I collect) displayed the blonde and buff thunder god in battle with Magneto, now known through his portrayal by Sir Ian McKellen in the X-Men films, but here the Malevolent Master of Magnetism was cross-breeding on another Marvel comic. I asked the guy how much he wanted for said mag.

"It's worth $300. I could get about $1oo on ebay." Uh-oh, I thought. The most I was willing to spend on these things was $5, $10 tops. "I'll let you have it for $30," he said. I felt like saying if you can get that much on ebay, why don't you sell it there?

He read my mind and answered: "I would hold out for more, but I need the cash now. I lost my job, so I'm selling them this way." I'm not an expert, but I didn't think it was worth $300 or even $100. I would have graded it in good condition, not mint. Mint means it's in exactly the same state as when it was first printed. There were slight tears on the edges and the colors were marginally faded. I passed, thanked him and walked on. As I headed for the subway with my non-eccentric purchases from Bed Bath and Beyond (a plastic Lazy Susan) and Macy's (two pairs of pants and two pairs of shorts), I wandered what would drive a person to sell their comics on the street and not online? I thought about how much money he needed and how much he would make that day.

I started thinking about my own collecting. I must have thousands of comics. What if I had to sell them. Could I do it? I just started collecting again about four or five years ago. As a kid, I would spend all my allowance money on them. Of course, I treated them like shit--I cut out pictures I liked, wrote all over them, didn't keep them in plastic bags. They are all gone now except for a handful of mostly coverless readers--collector's jargon for issues so beat up they're only good for reading. That kernel of my original collection forms the core of the new one. I've recreated my childhood collection with them. Every Wed., the day new comics come out, I go to Forbidden Planet or Midtown Comics and look for new collections of old reprints--Marvel puts out Essentials and DC has its Showcase Presents. Few of the new ones interest me--only those by Mike Allred who does Madman who has a kind of retro cool.

Maybe it's immature, but I see a lot of guys my guy (40s-50s) in the comic book stores every Wed. It makes me feel safe to escape into this fantasy world of super-heroes. Maybe the ones I have are worth thousands (the ones I've bought recently, not the ones I treated like shit as a kid), maybe they're worth nothing. But they mean something to me and it would be hard to part with them.

Why Fox Is King

During the furor over the murder of Dr. Tiller, the abortion provider in Kansas, I figured out why Bill O'Reilly is number one in his time slot and why Fox News is having its best year ever--cringeworthy though that fact may be.

O'Reilly makes it so easy for his audience with his Talking Points, superimposed on the screen for all to see. After Tiller was shot in church, O'Reilly explained why he was not to blame for inciting the lunatic who pulled the trigger. His reasons were one-sided but they were clear and easy to understand. And they were right there on the screen so you didn't have to think about it. Fox and O'Reilly are popular because they tell the viewer what to think. Right is right and wrong is wrong and there is no pesky grey area. People find that comforting with a president who relies on nuance, doubt and cognition rather than his gut like his predecessor. "This is the right thing to do, I'm 100 percent sure of it," W seemed to say. "Look, nothing in life is certain, but this seems to be the best approach,"Obama projects.

O'Reilly takes the doubt out of every issue--he's right and that's all there is to it. Johnnies sitting on their couches and swilling their beers can just turn on Fox to get their opinions. They don't even have to listen to get them, Bill puts 'em right there on the screen for them to write down--if they can write.