Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 17: Fantastic Four vol 02

books and books review, Comix
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cover of Essential Fantastic Four vol 2


Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 2
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and friends
Reprints: Fantastic Four #21-40 and Annual 2 (December 1963 – July 1965)
Get this for: Lee and Kirby gathering steam — Five stars

The second volume of Essential Fantastic Four opens with a story that should not work, but does. The Fantastic Four fight a new villain, the Hate-Monger, who is stirring up race hatred, class hatred and religious hatred throughout the country and even manages to set our heroes against each other. Which is bad luck for Nick Fury, who needs them to stop the rebellion in San Gusto which the Hate-Monger is also behind, but with a bit of trickery he manages to get all the bickering members to the little South American country. Of course they manage to defeat the Hate-Monger in the end, overcome their differences and reveal who he really is: Adolf Hitler. Even in 1963 this was corny as hell, but somehow Jack and Stan manage to make it work.

It’s a good example of their growing power as storytellers both individually and as a team. In the first twenty issues of Fantastic Four they were finding out what did and did not work, with some misfires along the way and here they’re building on that foundation. The basics are in place, they know who the characters are, what they can and cannot let them do, how they react to a given situation. Was for e.g the Thing in the first volume still a figure of menace, somebody who could erupt at any moment and become a true monster rather than just looking like one, here he has mellowed to still grumpy but essential loveable, still inclined to lash out in anger, frustration or irritation but never with the intent to hurt anyone. Mr Fantastic in the same way has evolved from the brainy, detached scientist to somebody with deep seated passions normally kept hidden, who scares even his team mates and friends when these passions are unleashed.

Villains too get more multidimensional, with both Doctor Doom and the Submariner becoming more sympathetic in the process. The latter was always more an antihero than a real villain and his own moral code is developed further here, to the point where the Fantastic Four end up fighting alongside him against the menace of a real underwater tyrant, Attuma. Doom on the other hand never becomes an ally of the Fantastic Four, but is made a tragic figure through his origin, told in the second Fantastic Four Annual. It turns out he’s a gypsy, whose mother was killed when he was still a baby and whose father died fleeing for his life from a local baron when he was a small boy. He swears vengeance, starts studying the black arts of his mother, as well as educating himself into science (no finer distinction really necessary in an universe in which a biochemist can create a malevolent artificial intelligence from scratch), gets a scholarship at the same university as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, tries to contact the netherworld and gets blown up, is thrown out, travels the world and ends up with a mysterious sect of monks in Tibet and becomes Dr Doom. Even the Skrulls when turning up again turn out not to be all bad.

The stories in this volume are in essence midway between the realive realism with which the Fantastic Four started out and the wild, unrestrained imagination Kirby especially would bring to the title in its more mature years. The stories are based around some supervillain or other menace threatening the team or the world or both and the Fantastic Four defeating it. There’s a healthy dose of soap opera as well, revolving around the Thing and his desire to become Ben Grimm again, become human again and his fear that this will mean losing Alica Masters, his girlfriend, as well as around Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Girl and the love they share but are afraid to speak out. The Invisible Girl at the same time also evolves both in power and personality, getting to be a somewhat less stereotypical comics girl, though still vulnerable to being a professional hostage at times.

On the art front, Kirby’s art gets wilder, more experimental, as he integrates photographic backgrounds in his art, develops ever more baroque looking weaponry, vehicles and scientific equipment. His figures and the way they stand and move gets more exagerrated too, underscoring the theatricality of many of Stan Lee’s scripts. The effect of reading a concentrated dose of Kirby art is, as I’ve mentioned before that I start seeing those Kirby Poses and Kirby Figures in real life. Watching sport is especially good for this…

As good as the first volume of Lee/Kirby Essential Fantastic Four was, this volume was better. One of those times when essential is no hyperbole, but the honest truth.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 16: Essential Avengers 01

books and books review, Comix
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cover of Essential Avengers Vol. 1


Essential Avengers Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and friends
Reprints: Avengers 1-24 (September 1963- January 1966)
Get this for: Kang and Cap’s Kooky Quartet — three stars

The Avengers was one of the weaker Marvel Silver Age titles. Though created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, it’s neither’s strongest work and neither’s heart seems to be in it. Of course Stan Lee was running Marvel comics at the time as well as writing the other nine series they were then putting out, so it’s no wonder he would take it easy on certain titles. And whereas The Fantastic Four from the start had its own voice, The Avengers put together five heroes with their own titles and not that much in common as a somewhat belated Justice League of America knockoff. If you then have Kirby leaving after only eight issues to be replaced by an uninspired Don Heck you have a problem.

Which is why it was a bit of a slog getting through The Essential Avengers Vol. 1, as quite a few of the stories in here are dull. The origin story is an example. Loki is looking for a way to get back at Thor, spies the Hulk and manipulates him into smashing up a train bridge. Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade attempt to contact the Fantastic Four but Loki redirects their signals to Thor, but what he doesn’t know is that Iron Man, as well as Ant Man and the Wasp have received his message as well. Off they all head to New Mexico to find the Hulk, a big fight breaks out which ends as Thor reveals the real villain. As a story it doesn’t really gell and the Hulk never really fits in with the Avengers. His replacement by Captain America in #4 is a great improvement.

But even then the stories remain a bit dull. Having Rick Jones hang around isn’t helping, as he’s just annoying. Let’s not even mention the Teen Brigade. Then there are the villains. I’ve never liked Loki, the Space Phantom in #2 is alright but not spectacular, then there are two issues with Namor, followed by no less than three issues with Baron “Help my mask is glued to my face! Curse you Captain America!” Zemo. Or there are the Lava Men, yet another subterranean menace. Or the Red Menace threat of the Commissar, slightly later on. As threats, these are all strictly from dullesville.

All is forgiven however with the introduction of Kang the Conquoror in issue eight. Now there’s a real threat, with his mastery of future super science, so confident of his victory he receives the Avengers in a lounge chair. He completely overclasses them at first, defeating the Avengers with ease. He does get his comeuppance of course, but he’s one of the few villains here you could imagine winning. Another great early issue, the next issue in fact, is that which introduces Wonderman, another villain who seems to easily get the upper hand over the Avengers before he has a change of heart.

I felt that The Avengers only reached their stride once the original members had buggered off, leaving Captain America only with three novice heroes, each of which actually started out as a villain: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Now that Lee only has to deal with one member with his own title, it gets much easier for him to get some character development going on. Granted, much of it is somewhat artificial as Lee squares off old square Cap against young hotheads Hawkeye and Quicksilver, which is again somewhat tedious. But on the whole much better than the first ten issues or so.

Artwise, while Kirby at this time was incapable of turning in bad stories, it didn’t compare favourably with his work on e.g. Fantastic Four. His replacement with Heck works in the title’s favour, once Heck has found his style. I like his slim, streamlined figures here, as well as the touch of glamour he brings to them, especially to the Scarlet Witch. In general Heck keeps improving over this volume.

Overall this volume shows a title that started out bad, got slightly better after Captain America joined, but only started really improving with “Cap’s Kooky Quartet”. This volume does not show the Avengers at their best, but ends just as they start getting better.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 15: Essential X-Men Vol. 1

books and books review, Comix
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cover of Essential Essential X-Men Vol. 1


Essential Essential X-Men Vol. 1
Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne and friends
Reprints: Giant-Size X-Men #1, Uncanny X-Men #94-119 (July 1975 – March 1979)
Get this for: the start of the X-Men revolution — four stars

Hard to imagine now, but once upon a time The X-Men were a failure, never having been more than a cult hit throughout the Silver Age, even becoming a reprint series with #67. It limped along for a couple of years, up until issue 93, while the team showed up here and there as guest stars in other titles, some members becoming Champions. The most successful was the Beast, who had his own solo series in Amazing Adventures before joining the cast of The Avengers. It all seemed over for the X-Men, but like good superheroes they came back in the nick of time and it all started with Giant-Size X-Men #1, the first issue reprinted here.

Giant-Size X-Men was followed by a renewed X-Men series, started with #94. While these first two issues were written by Len Wein, by #95 Chris Claremont had come aboard and he would remain the X-Men’s writer for some seventeen years. It takes him a while to find his voice and the first few issues are on the rough side, but it really doesn’t take long for the mutant juggernaut to start rolling. Claremont’s writing on X-Men revolutionised superhero comics and it’s here that it started: by the end of the volume the classic Claremont is established.

Some elements of it pop up even earlier. Both the most loved and hated characteristic of Claremont’s style is having long, drawn out plots and subplots, stacked on top of each other, with one menace fading into the background earning the heroes only a little respite before the next one, long foreshadowed, has to be fought. Here Claremont starts doing this as early as #96-97, the first of which foreshadows the return of the Sentinels, with #97 introducing the menace of Eric the Red, while Prof Xavier was plagued with strange dreams of a Galaxy far, far away. The first threat takes until #100 to be resolved and of course leads to the metamorphosis of Marvel Girl into Phoenix, which comes in handy for defeating the second villain, who turns out just to be a pawn of a mad emperor of the alien Sh’iar Empire, who in turn threatens to unleash the end of everything. It all gets fixed by #108.

Said issue incidentally features something I wish was still used in modern Marvel stories, the half page or full page looking in at the rest of the Marvel Universe while the heroes of the comic you’re reading are struggling to defeat the menace du jour. In this case you have Peter Corbeau onboard the Sunwatch space station briefing Mr Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, Beast and Captain America of the Avengers as well as then president Jimmy Carter via teleconference, explaining that yes, the strange blip felt at the end of the last issue was indeed the entire universe ceasing to exist for half a second and that if it happens again, the universe may not come back… This kind of scene always helped emphasise the seriousness of a threat, that it was not just the X-Men’s fate that mattered, but everybody’s. But it also helps build up a sense of interconnectness, that these adventures are not taking place in a vacuum.

From the start the X-Men are kept busy here; there are no quiet issues. After establishing the new team and sending them on their first mission in Giant-Size X-Men, they immediately have to defeat Count Nefaria’s threat of nuclear annihilation in the next two issues, deal with the death of a teammate, fight the sentinels over multiple issues, see Professor Xavier deal with futuristic nightmares, deal with old enemies gunning for them, first Black Tom and the Juggernaut waiting for them in Ireland, only defeated with the help of leprechauns (not their finest houre), then Magneto returns, but their fight with him is cut short as they’re swept up in the intergalactic adventure mentioned above. Once finished with that, Wolverine has to deal with the Canadian government wanting him back, before yet another old enemy turns up and makes the X-Men into funfair performers. The Magneto turns up again, kidnaps them to his secret base near the Savage Land, which blows up and leaves two sets of X-Men, as the Beast and Phoenix manage to return home, while the rest helps Ka-Zar fight a would be conqueror in the Savage Land, before being picked up by a Japanese vessel who drops them off in Japan just in time to fight Moses Magnum, which ends the volume. It’s all fast paced and incredibly busy, but Claremont always remains in control and keeps things understandable.

He’s helped in this by the art, which from Giant-Size X-Men #1 up to X-Men #107 is in the hands of Dave Cockrum, with the rest of the issues drawn by John Byrne. Quite different artists of course, with Cockrum having a much looser, cartoony and swashbuckling style, lending itself well to widescreen space opera, while Byrne is more realistic in his art. Byrne is also one of those artist who, like Jack Kirby have the effect on me that if I read a large run of their stories in one go, I start to see the world through their art. So now suddenly everybody on tv is standing around in those typical wide legged, slighty skewed Byrne poses… Both Cockrum and Byrne are wonderful artists here, well suited to Claremont, who adapts his stories to their strengths. Of the two I prefer Byrne, just because he does things for me Cockrum can’t.

Sadly, some of Claremont’s more annoying tics are also in evidence here, especially in the characterisation. There’s a lot of ill established antagonism between characters, which especially in the earlier issues was wearisome. There are also the first glimmers of another bad Claremont habit, the subtle and not so subtle references to the past lives of some of the X-Men, especially Wolverine. Some idiot plotting as well, where Claremont goes for the “make life more complicated for the characters through bad communication and drawing out of misunderstandings”. It’s bearable here, but I do remember at the end of his X-Men run, when it just became too annoying.

One other complaint I had was the misuse of Jean “Phoenix” Grey. Supposedly the most powerful person on the team, story after story has her being taken out easy or struggle to defeat villains she should have been able to take with one arm tied behind her back. The same goes for Storm, though to a lesser extent. Also very powerful, she again is kept out of action more than she should have been. If you have strong female heroes, use them, don’t find contrived ways to keep them out of action to keep the story going for longer…

Alanis would think it ironic

geekdom, science fiction
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The visceral anger and loathing some science fiction fans can display when confronted with anything that’s different from “how we did things thirty years ago”. In this case it’s one Taral Wayne, complaining in The Drink Tank #259 (PDF) about the wrong people winning the Best Fanwriter and Best Fanzine Hugos. With the first award, Taral was offended that Frederik Pohl had won the award, because he didn’t consider him to be a fan and blamed the voters and voting committee for not realising this:

My point is this: Pohl spelled it out, right there in his blog, that these were early drafts for a new edition of the old book. How much more plainly must he tell us that this is not fanwriting?

I think we can say why the voters nominated a professional writer for his blog. Many had likely never seen more than a small number of fanzines, perhaps only con publications such as the Worldcon’s own progress reports. I’ll make a further guess that most of the voters have little appreciation for what fanzines do, beyond discussing science fiction. They can have no sense of fanzine fandom as a community, or of fanzines as a means of expression rather than information. It is self-evident that this must more or less be the case, since there are only two or three hundred fans involved in the fanzine network at any given time… but several thousand Worldcon members with a vote.

What puzzles me is why the Hugo committee permitted Pohl’s name to appear on the ballot. If the rules are to mean anything, his name had no business being there. But odds are that the committee members were no better informed about fanzines than the majority of voters.

What annoys me about Taral’s reasoning is that a) he doesn’t engage the quality of Pohl’s work, just argues his blog has to be disqualified as fan writing because it might end up as source material for a new autobiography and b) that he accuses the Hugo voters and administration of being ignorant. That last slur is the first thing every loudmouth trots out when the Hugo votes don’t got the way they want it and honours the wrong people. It’s never “the voters disagreed with me on the quality of the candidates for Best Novel, it’s always “Harry Potter should not have won because it’s fantasy, but the voters are so ignorant that they don’t even know it’s a science fiction award”. Bonus points if, like the example here, they themselves gets basic facts about the Hugos wrong. At least Taral does acknowledge that professional writers can and have been honoured for their fan work, even if he’s boneheaded about Pohl not being a real fan for the purpose of the award.

You can certainly argue whether Frederik Pohl deserved the award, but to say that his blog should be disqualified because he may some day be paid for the material he publishes there is stupid. But apart from that Taral has no argument: if posts about the earliest days of not just organised fandom but science fiction as a genre, days Pohl was around for, isn’t fannish enough to qualify, than what is?

(As an aside, thousands may have the right to vote in the Hugos, but only 558 people did for Best Fan Writer, so Taral’s two-three hundred fanzine fans could’ve easily swung the vote to a more deserving candidate had they agree with him and/or had a con membership. Also, I wonder how accurate his guesstimate is here, or whether he’s defining fanzines too narrowly. My guess is the latter.)

Speaking of fanzines, that was his other beef with this years Hugo winners:

The fanzine Hugo has been corrupted, just as the fanwriter Hugo has been. Last year, a webpage called Electric Velocipede encouraged its viewers to vote, and succeeded in taking the award from conventional media for the first time. The debate over whether or not a webpage is a fanzine is far from over. There are arguments for both views. But this year the issue was quite clear. The winner, StarShipSofa, is a podcast. Under what conceivable circumstances can a dramatic presentation be compared to the written media? To bring up apples and oranges is a tired cliché. Let’s use a different analogy. Allowing a podcast to compete with fanzines for the Hugo makes as little sense as judging between a Gene Kelly musical comedy and a lecture by Mark Twain.

(See? I was right)

As I said on File 770, this is a luddite attitude for a science fiction fan to take, confuses form with content and is clearly elitist to boot. As long as StarShipSofa does what expect from a fanzine, it’s a fanzine, one being done through voice rather than print, just like an audio book is still a book. If you look at the contents of any given issue it’s clear that whatever Star Ship Sofa is doing does not differ greatly from a print ‘zine. The format should not matter, the content should. And Taral isn’t just dismissive of audio fanzines, but also talks about whether or not a webpage can be a fanzine.

It’s this sort of attitude that I call luddite, with excuses to the historical luddites, whose attitude to technological progress was not half as unreasonably negative as this. There’s something absurd in having science fiction fans of all people reject creative uses of new technology, new and perhaps better ways to keep the conversation going.

#followalibrary on October 1st

"Literature", geekdom, video
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A nice new Dutch originated, but worldwide initiative to make October 1st #Followalibrary Day on Twitter. The video below explains who, what, how and why:



It’s good to see such a creative, low cost promotion for something often seen as stuffy and oldfashioned as a public library. Especially now, when libraries are under threat in America and the UK as an easy target to cut spending on. It’s all a little less gloomy here in the Netherlands, but even so, in an age when we’re supposedly getting all our information of the internet anyway, the library is no longer the self evident public good it once was. Libraries are very vulnerable to misguided cost cutting attempts right now. Nobody will die if a library closes or limits its opening hours and people might grumble, but won’t get passionate about it the way they would if a local hospital would close.