Finding the Fantastic Four in Florida

A little vacation is better than none, so my partner Jerry and I took a five-day trip to Florida in the midst of one of the worst winters in recent memory. We were scheduled to leave on a 7 AM flight on thurs. morning Feb. 3. I made the mistake of covering the opening night of Nixon in China at the Met the night before. The John Adams modern opera was three hours and 45 minutes. I got home by 12 which only left me about five hours of sleep. Fortunately, I was able to sleep on the plane; it was Spirit Airlines where they pack you in like sardines and the seats don't recline. Plus you have to pay extra for your seats and each piece of luggage is another $15, even your carry-on. I dozed in an upright position for most of the three hours.

The weather was lovely. We visited friends who have a condo in Hillsboro Beach which is near Fort Lauderdale. The best part was walking on the beach thinking of our car under a foot of ice and snow. While having lunch on Los Olas in Ft. Lauderdale, our young waiter, a transplant from New York, asked if there was anyting we were looking to see. Jerry asked if there were any used CD stores for himself and comic book stores for me. The waiter said he would call his friend who was a comic book fan. He recommended a store called CJ's Comics which wasn't far. What the hell, we thought, and drove there. It was a little place in a tiny strip mall. It appeared closed but there was a handwritten sign in the window reading "Back in 5 mins." We waited until CJ showed up and I bought five issues of the Fantastic Four from the 1990s. I finally found the one where it's revealed the Human Torch's wife Alicia--who was previously in love with The Thing--is really a Skrull. That's a whole story line I thought was a bit farfethced even for a comic book. But it turned out to be a pretty good issue with unexpected twists. I'll have to find the rest of the story arc.

Our hosts were wonderful, especially considering that on our second day, they had gotten a phone call informing them the roof over their inside pool at their home in Massachusetts had collapsed from the weight of the snow.

We spent the rest of the time with Jerry's sister and brother-in-law who have a home in Lake Worth. While we were there, we swam in the pool and soaked in a hot tub. We also saw Capitol Steps, a touring musical political revue.

Our next big trip will be a cruise to Alaska with my parents and brothers, then we stay over in Vancouver where Jerry has a conference to attend.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (19)--Supergirl and Superhorse: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Naaaah-me

A few weeks ago I acquired the largest haul of my comic book collecting career, several hundred comics from the early 1960s into the 1970s, almost all of them DC. I was at a birthday party for a neighbor when I started chatting with another neighbor. I mentioned my collecting craze. It turned out she had all her comic books from when she was a little girl and wanted to get rid of them to clean out her storage space. She wanted them to go to a good home and didn't want to have to drag them to a dealer. So I volunteered to take them off her hands.

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I say she had four boxes stuffed to the gills with Silver Age stuff. I did have quite a lot of them already, but many I did not including a lot of Teen Titans, Aquaman, Green Lanterns, Inferior Fives, etc. We agreed on a price and with my granny shopping cart, hauled them back to my place. I haven't been able to read much else since--I did finish Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow and The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion, both short novels which did not interrupt the flow of Superman, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. I also postponed my reading of the Fantastic Fours I had recently acquired, deciding to take a break from Marvel's nonstop soap opera of the past few decades.

Among the stories I had not read before where several of Supergirl's adventures. She was the second feature in Action Comics for many years before migrating over to Adventure. Hers is in interesting saga reflecting the shifting attitudes towards women in American society. When she lands on Earth after surviving the desctruction of Argo City, she is 15 and her cousin Superman decides she is not ready to start serving mankind. She must be his secret emergency weapon and hide as an orphan. the idea of a Superwoman equally as powerul as Superman was too alien and threatening a concept for the DC creative team. If there is a female superbeing, she must be a girl, not a grown woman. Later she is sprung on an unsuspecting public, but unlike her manly cousin, the maid of might is suspectable to female failings, like romance.

In one of the weirdest relationships in comics, Supergirl acquires a pet Superhorse. You know the stereotype that all girls love horses, right? Well, this one is special, and not just because he has superpowers. Comet the Superhorse is actually a centaur from ancient Greece transformed into a full horse by a magic spell from an evil wizard. Circe the sorceress cannot reverse the spell but takes pity on him and grants him the powers of the gods like flying and superstrength. He time travels to the present and Supergirl adopts him. She is unaware of his unnatural attraction to her--he is really half-human after all. When a certain comet is within earth's orbit, the spell is broken and Comet can become a man. He assumes the guise of a cowboy and Supergirl in her secret identity of Linda Lee falls in love with him. The implications of interspecies love are lost to the comic writers. Fortunately, the comet leaves Earth's orbit and Comet reverts back to being all horse. What kind of children would they have had?? Though he is telepathic, Comet never reveals his true feelings for his human mistress. Sick, I know.

More on Supergirl: The mighty Supergirl later forgets about Superhorse. Later comics in the early 1970s reveal another weird shift in her depiction. Just as the Women's Liberation movement is gaining power, DC removed Supergirl's full strength. She falls victim to a plot by a female villainess named Starfire who arranges to have a superpower-depriving pill slipped to her by a handsome stud--again she is tricked by her female weakness for love. As a result, her superpowers come and go. Interestngly just a year or two earlier Wonder Woman lost her powers and become mortal, opening a mod fashion shop and becoming a judo expert. It's no coincidence that DC decided to weaken its two strongest female heroes just as real women were becoming more powerful and demanding to be given equal rights.

There are many more observations serious and otherwise to come based on this gigantic comic haul.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector--(17)--Search for the Fantastic Four

Recently I completed my collection of Marvel Essentials reprint volumes of the Fantastic Four. Volumes 1 though 8 go up to issue number 183. So rather than wait for volume 9 to come out, I decided to catch up to the present with as many back issues and other collections as I could find. There are color reprints of the FF works of George Perez, John Bryne, and Walter Simonson but they don't cover every issue. There is a gap between issues about the 190s about 214, then 215 to 220 is covered by a John Bryne collection. Bryne picks up for issue 232 and continues way into the upper 200s, but I have only gotten as far as 230, with a few sporadic issues in there. So my mission was to find the missing issues.

I went to Cosmic Comics, Time Machine, Midtown (which had no early ones), Metropolis Collectibles--really a mail order house, but I found their address on the web--and St. Marks Comics which was having a half-price sale on back issues. I went to Metropolis before work and found a few good issues for reasonable prices. I managed to find almost every missing issue. Now I just need 195, 197, and 213. A lot happens. Reed Richards loses his stretching power, but regains it just in time for a final showdown with Dr. Doom in the 200th issue. Then the FF engages in a gigantic intergalatic battle with the Skrulls which goes on for several issues and involves recruiting Galactus, the devourer of planets, to save the world from a super-powerful being called the Sphinx. It gets very distracting when a bunch of other heroes from a defunct comic called Nova into the action in a wild attempt at crossover. It's almost like a continuing episode of Doctor Who with endless space battles, a beautiful alien queen, a battle between the Skrull general and his treacherous wife, and a planet split into four separate parts.

Byrne's work starting with 232 is way too stylized for me. Everyone looks so cartoonish. I prefer the realistic earlier issues which resembles the art of Dick O'Neal at DC. In the early John Bryne series, the Human Torch finds a female equivalent, but later falls in love with Alicia Masters, the blind sculptress romantically involved with the Thing. but it turns out she's a Skrull in disguise. I hate when that happens.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (17)--Fantastic Four

I've gone back to the Fantastic Four lately. When I was a kid in the late 1960s, they were very big and I watched the cartoon series on ABC. I even read some of the comics though at that time I was more into DC than Marvel. Marvel stories were complicated and continued from issue to issue and sometimes from title to title. DC was very simple and straightforward--which explains why kids liked DC and teenagers and adults liked Marvel.

When I first returned to the comic craze in recent years, I was only interested in the first 100 or so issues of FF because they were drawn and co-created by Jack Kirby with his bold striking images. The Silver Surfer-Galactus-Watcher saga is unparalleled in comic history for its scope and sweep, taking on almost Shakespearian proportions as these gigantic figures bestride the globe and dwarf the FF. I still love to think of the dialogue between Galactus and the Watcher as they debate the fate of Earth. When the Watcher calles Galactus "Pillager of planets," I get a chill.

Then I went beyond that into the later issues with John Romita, George Perez, etc. I've just finished Essential Fantastic Four Volume 8 which goes up until issue 183.

The fascinating thing about the FF--and I think it's what inspires loyalty to them--is they seem to exist in real time and space, and exhibit human emotions. Yes, they are in a comic-book world besides the obvious of having superpowers and not aging as quickly as the rest of us. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm are veterans of World War II which would make them in their mid-80s to early 90s if they were real people. But in a lot of other respects, their experiences parallel the rest of us. They change, get married, have children, have sex even.

For decades, Superman and Batman existed in an adolescent arrested development phase. Girls like Lois Lane and Vicki Vale were icky and the heroes hung out with younger male pals like Jimmy Olsen and Robin--surrogates for the readers. (I know it's different now, I don't keep up with the current storylines, but Superman finally did marry Lois, yet Batman remains a bachelor, having gone through several Robins.)

Reed Richards and Sue Storm actually got married and had a child. There are scenes indicating they really slept together--in the same bed--unlike Rob and Laura Petrie. In one story arc Reed's double from a parallel Earth takes his place and presumably does the nasty with Sue. The Invisible Girl is shown getting out of a king-sized bed, wearing a sheer nightie, leaving a sleeping false Reed. Her doubts about her husband apparently centered on their lovemaking. To add a touch of reality, she walks in on houseguests Thundra and The Impossible Man--a Marvel version of Mr. Mxyzplyzt (however you spell it)--watching a rerun of The Maltese Falcon on late-night TV. Their home--the Baxter Building--has an actual location in the real world, 42nd and Madison in NYC.

The current FF, they are almost at issue 600, has housed a bunch of mutant kids in the Baxter Building. Sounds kinda boring, like a kiddie X-Men. But I am now anxious to go back and read through up till the present.

Birdman and the Galaxy Trio

I've watched a few episodes of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio from the DVD I bought for $6 from a used book store in Philadelphia. I still regret not having bought that Jonny Quest DVD for only $10 in Boston. Birdman is now best known because of the parody Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law on Adult Swim on The Cartoon Network. The original series was on NBC in 1967. Birdman seemed not to have a secret identity or a normal life, yet why did he wear a mask? I remember there was another series on NBC called Super President about a chief executive who was also a super hero--now there was a secret identity. That reminds of a dream I had last night. President Obama was running in a marathon and I was saying "He shouldn't be running in a marathon, he should be running the country." What do you think that means?

I enjoyed the Galaxy Trio segements more than the Birdman ones. The trio consisted of Vapor Man, Gravity Girl, and Meteor Man. The latter was voiced by Ted Cassidy, also known as Lurch, the towering butler of The Addams Family. He was a giant who died relatively young and made a living playing monsters. He also voiced Galactus on the animated Fantastic Four and had one of the most memorable lines in cartoon history, spoken to the rebellious Silver Surfer: "You dare defy Galactus! I am power ITSELF!" I also enjoyed the line in the comic book version of the Silver Surfer saga when the Watcher called Galactus "Pillager of planets!" The story took on an almost Shakespearean grandeur. Anyway the Galaxy Trio would fly around the universe solving mysteries and fighting oppression. Gravity Girl had this cool sophisticated voice and Vapor Man had these wide shoulders and impressive pecs, yet seemed intelligent and smooth. He had the same voice as Dr. Benton Quest, so he was probably having an affair with Meteor Man while Gravity Girl was the beard. They would head towards the bohemian sections of alien planets and hang out in the gay bars.

Another trio I really liked was the Impossibles because of all the crazy villains they fought--obviously trading off the popularity of the prime time Batman series. I recall the Twister, Mother Grusome, the Dragster, Televistron, the Paper Doll Man, and many others.

Thanksgiving Friday with George of the Jungle

It's the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. This Sunday brings to mind four-day vacations from school. It also meant more cartoons--I don't recall if it also meant more Broadway musicals, because I don't think Macy's parade did numbers from Main Stem tuners back then. Anyway, one Thanksgiving we were visiting relatives in Massachusetts and the Friday after Thanksgiving, ABC was showing its entire Saturday morning line-up. They even had a commercial promoting it with an animated turkey playing a rock guitar. I recall watching it with my brother in the basement of a cousin's house. I had to be 1968 and the shows included the Hanna-Barbera version of The Fantastic Four, which was pretty sophisticated for a kid's cartoon, Spider-Man, also sophisticated, and George of the Jungle, a very funny parody of Tarzan made by the same people who did Rocky and Bullwinkle, Hoppity Hooper, the Quisp and Quake and Cap'n Crunch commercials.

When I recently visited my parents in Philly, a Blockbuster video store was going out of business and I found a DVD of George of the Jungle episodes (all 17) for $10. I had earlier not bought a Jonny Quest DVD for $10 which I had regretted ever since. So I snapped it up. Very funny, grown-up humor. George is a clumsy, hunky apeman who perpetually crashes into trees while swinging to the rescue and is so dumb he thinks his elephant Shemp is a big, long nosed doggie. As an example of the sophiticated humor, in one episode, an evil witch doctor is aiming darts at a board which reads "Medicare." In another George is exhibits his skill in animal calling. He calls for hippos and a tribe of long-haired weirdos shows up. "George, you called for the hippies, not the hippos," explains his assistant. an Ape named Ape who speaks with a Ronald Coleman accent. The George cartoons are not as funny as the supporting features which appeared weekly--Super Chicken and Tom Slick.

Super Chicken is a riotous send-up of superheroes with millionaire playchicken Henry Cabot Henhouse III who is in reality the super-powered fowl battling for truth and justice against such villains as the Zipper, the Oyster, the Noodle, the Fat Man, Salivador Rag Dolly, Merlin Brando (who lives on the Isle of Lucy), and the Laundry Man (an incredibly racist stereotype of a Chinese villain). In one episode, a mad scientist creates a giant raging toupee which Super Chicken subdoes by causing it to worry thus making its gigantic hair fall out. He is assisted by a lion named Fred who appears to be his butler, but is dressed in a red sweater with a backwards F and sneakers. (I found the above illustration with Super Chicken and Fred which is a panel from a George of the Jungle comic book which I had as a kid.)

Tom Slick is a race car driver whose overwhelming goodsportsmanship is a source of annoyance for his main nemesis Baron Otto Matic. Every week Tom would convert his car the Thunderbolt Grease-Slapper into a balloon, drag racer, locomotive, snowmobile, submarine, skateboard, etc. for a big race. He was accompanied by Marigold, a lovely young lady, and Gertie Growler, a caustic old lady (with the same voice as Super Chicken). owner of a garage and presumably his mechanic. My favorite villain on Tom Slick was Sonia Nar and her Aqua-Nuts who lived in Drown Town (a metropolis beneath the waves) and who supplied the dirty tricks to stop Slick during a submarine race. June Foray gave her the same voice as Natasha Fatale on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

This Thanksgiving in between cleaning out the gutters and putting up the fake Christmas tree, I watched a few George of the Jungle episodes and they made me feel nine again. Other cartoons of the era I remember enjoying are Frankenstein Junior and the Impossibles, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, the Super Six, Underdog ( I recently met George S. Irving who was the narrator on that show at a reading of a George Bernard Shaw play), and the Superman-Batman Adventure Hour. You can tell I spent entirely too much time in front of the TV just like now.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (7)--The Phila. Connection

Two weeks ago I visited my parents in Philadelphia and spent Sunday morning at the Philly Comic-Con held at the Ramada Inn by the airport. It was quite small and took up only two ballrooms. No celebrities giving out autographs or panels, just comic-book dealers. I didn't spend as much as at the last one (see previous blog). Here's a breakdown of the haul:

Archie as Pureheart the Powerful # 3--Archie and Reggie as superheroes

Brave and the Bold #120

Demon # 6, 11 (almost completes the entire run except from #1)

Detective Comics #310, 319, 325

Flash #169 (80 page Giant)

From Beyond the Unknown #1 (completes the entire run)

Inferior Five #4

Kamandi #3 (almost complete run of Kirby issues except for #1)

Lois Lane #60

Magnus Robot Fighter #36

Mystery in Space #28, 86, 99, 101

Strange Adventures #111, 174

Strange Tales #142

Tales of Suspense #82

Super DC Giant--Challengers of the Unknown #S-25

Thor #156 (two pages of story missing, damnit!), 160, 162, 169.

Some impressions of this haul and the last one: Lois Lane and Superman are really dysfunctional. In Lois Lane #60 (see illustration above), Lois and Lana pretend to go into suspended animation to be awakened thousands of years in the future when Superman while be dead...dead...dead! Supie attempts to bring them back by flying into the future, but their bodies disintegrate. It's all a practical joke to teach the man of steel a lesson for being short-tempered with the gals for demanding so much of his time--needing to be rescued and all that. They all laugh it off. "Oh, I thought you were dead and you scared the shit out of me, but I guess I deserved it. Ha! Ha!"

In a Superboy issue I bought at the Big Apple con (#121), a teenaged Jor-El, Superboy's father, arrives in Smallville from Kyrpton thanks to a time machine. Superboy doesn't want to reveal the true nature of their relationship since he would have to tell his future dad his world will be destroyed. "I won't reveal I'm his son," says Superboy's thought balloon, "for that would lead to telling him of Krypton's doom laying ahead. He might brood. I'll just have to enjoy my father's companionship as a...er...boy pal!" (boldfacing was in the comic) Ewwww! That is wrong on some many levels. Not the least of which is the brooding.

The Strange Adventures and Mystery in Spaces are strangely beautiful, as is the very first From Beyond the Unknown which was a reprint series from the 1970s, collecting sci-fi stories of the 1950s and early 60s from the forementioned mags. In Strange Adventures #111, published in 1959, there's a story of Earth 100 years in the future. The Star Blazer returns from a 50 year mission with crew as young as when they left, proving the theory of relativity (I think). A Spacelator breaks down, causing traffic to be stalled for a hour. A sudden downpour is halted by weather control stations. The busy day ends with an exciting broadcast from the badlands of Venus where an explorer is trapped and a quick game of space polo between earth and Pluto. Of course earth wins.

In Mystery in Space #86, the usual Adam Strange story is accompanied by a tale of The Star Rovers--a trio of space adventurers consisting of writer-hunter Homer Glint, markswoman and former beauty queen Karel Sorensen, and star athlete Rick Purvis. Each of the three encounters the same space mystery and they each have a different version of the solution. It's a sort of sci-fi Rashomon. I find these simplistic futuristic tales so fascinating. There's also Star Hawkins, a 21st century private eye with a robot secretary, and Space Cabbie, a galactic hack driver.

More in future blogs, I'm getting deeper and deeper into this like the guys on Big Bang Theory. In a recent episode, Wallowitz bet Sheldon his Fantastic Four with the first appearance of Silver Surfer versus Sheldon's Flash of Two Worlds with the Silver and Golden Age Flashes. The sad part is I knew exactly what they were talking about.

Mass. Culture High and Low

We spent the weekend in Massachusettes, experiencing the heights of culture in music and art as well as the lowest of entertainment--and you know what that means--comics. Friday we drove from Stockport, NY to Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. and experienced a beautiful Beethoven concerto with soloist Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (Before leaving we had a visit from the animal guy who set the live traps from the woodchucks. We did not have to resort to used kitty litter--see previous post. He had caught the two young ones, but the mother was still at liberty. I asked where the father was. He replied "Oh, he's a runaround" meaning the males gets the females pregnant and leave them to raise the young under people's houses.)

I can still recall a concert with Ax playing a Chopin piece at Avery Fisher many years ago. The delicacy of his playing was beautiful.

The next day was spent in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts viewing their special show on the rivalry between Titian, Tintorento, and Veronese. Separate admission tickets and everything. I liked the Tintorentos best, particularly the Temptation of St. Anthony.

We had time to look around Boston and Cambridge which I like very much. Boston is so orderly they even name the Alleys. Street signs read Public Alley No. 253, etc. The area around the museum--the Back Bay--is charming in a way that no part of New York is any more. Perhaps the Village was at one point, but I fail to see it. Maybe I'm jaded. Here everyone seems rushed and self-involved. They appeared more at ease in Beantown. But it's probably just my own feelings being projected onto others.

I visited Comicopia on Commonwealth Ave. where they have many indie titles and bought False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story, a wicked satire of the Minnesota congresswoman who's been making such an ass of herself on cable TV news--she's been spouting conspiracy theories about Obama taking over the economy and making us all into socialist zombies. Cambridge's comic book store is called The Million Year Picnic, which is the title of a Ray Bradbury story. The name is cooler than the store. Not many grabby back issues, but I did find a Jimmy Olsen with Curt Swan art from 1968 and a Marvel reprint special with the Fantastic Four teaming up with Sub Mariner, with whom they are normally at odds.