Just Stay at Home

I am out of reach this week for very pleasant reasons. Rather than time-release posts without being to attend to the commentary thereupon, I'm offering a retrospective on some of our favorite topics here. [I've noticed that the labels function on Blogger doesn't always pull everything, which is why I'm not just using that to do so.]

Today's topic is one of our specialties and a bone of contention for many:
The Difference Between DC and Marvel.

The Difference between DC and Marvel, I
The Difference between DC and Marvel, II
Why Gorillas are in Comic Books
Marvel Musings
A Serious Difference between DC and Marvel
The Legion
Thus Stalks the Dazzler
Why Vibe is Nothing Like Dazzler
This Diva, This Monster!
The Absorbascon reads Spider-Man, Again
There's a Skrull in My Sub
Ivory Soap
All that No Longer Glitters
Anti-populist Rant
Marvel gets it and DC doesn't
Cerealized Fiction

As everyone of my age cohort knows, there is an absolute dividing line that splits us. Unlike divisions over religion, politics, and philosophy, it permits no synthesis, brooks no compromise, and suffers no neutrals. Since the need to maintain a unified polity and veneer of civility are essential to the continuance of our society, we lives our lives in a conspiracy of silence, never speaking of it openly to one another, lest the Western be riven in twain, brother again brother. "Never again," our elders made use swear; "never again," we repeat silently to ourselves and we look at children happily playing with others.

But we all know the truth. We are all, still and forever, on one side or the other:

Quisp or Quake.

For those of you too young to have experienced it, the Quisp/Quake conflict was the defining advertising event of my entire micro-generation. Quisp and Quake were two popular breakfast cereals for kids, similar to Capt'n Crunch, produced by the same company. But no one ate both. you either ate Quisp (named after its strange space creature mascot) or you ate Quake (named after a burly earthling miner).

That's because the commercials, masterfully produced by Jay Ward of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame, with Quisp and Quake voiced respectively by his buddies Daws Butler and William Conrad, depicted the two as archrivals. Quisp and Quake hated each other.

They appeared in joint commercials and even when they had solo commercials, the rival would often intrude himself, just for spite.


Brilliant as this hook was, it gets better: except for shape, Quisp and Quaker were... the same cereal. Same formula.

Now there are some cynics who say that Quake was never supposed to be a real cereal, that Quake was just a gimmick to drum up sales for the real deal, Quisp. Yeah, then why did Quake get a makeover from being a miner to a cowboy, huh? How do you explain the Orange Horror, huh? Nutcases; these are the same people who think there wasn't a moon landing.

The companies genius didn't end at producing one cereal as if it were two, then marketing them against each other, brilliant though that was. Once the rivalry was solidly established, war was declared. There would be an election among cereal-eaters, and the loser's cereal would be discontinued. The election ran for two years. Naturally, the loser was Quake. Because Quake SUCKED, and Quisp RULED!!!!! Ahem. Although I believe we put it differently in those days.

Quisp and Quake are the dichotomy that symbolizes all other dichotomies. Sky and earth. Speed and strength. Alien and native. Brains and brawn. Gay and straight. The future and the past. Humor and seriousness. Consistency and variability.

The world of comics has its own dichotomy: the "Big Two", as they are called. There are some who'll tell you that there is no difference between them, that the same formula is used to make both. But, they are wrong, because, as we know from Quisp and Quake, tone and form and style are what count; they are remembered, when content is forgotten.

I remember in the 1990s when Marvel was teetering toward bankruptcy. I remember exulting. "Quake" was finally going to lose. The cheery '90s would be no place for Marvel's dark cynicism!

But eventually, I reversed my thinking. Would DC start changing its tone or adding Marvel-ish characters to pick up wandering ex-zombies? Would DC's existing Marvel-style characters start to crowd out its native sons and daughters like Wolverinish weeds? Even worse, would DC buy Marvel's characters and incorporate them into the DCU, like so much trailer-trash left homeless by a financial twister, bringing with them their tawdry domestic disturbances, their raucus in-fighting, their soap operas, their gun-toting yahoos, their cigar-chomping, g-droppin', dullards, and their screeching drag-queen-faced dime-store divas and teenaged tarts? Shudder!

I realized that to keep that from happening DC needed Marvel; I needed Marvel as a gathering place for ... those kinds of characters. Fortunately, Marvel did not go bankrupt because they gave themselves over to crass commercialism; I mean, more crass. As in Hollywood.

Funny thing. Quisp and Quake feuded from 1965-1972. But after the election, Quisp's popularity steadily declined until it was removed from regular grocery shelves in the late '70s. Nowadays, they still make it, but it's available only on the internet as a nostalgia item; it doesn't really live as a current brand, and no children have ever heard of it. Turns out that maybe Quisp needed Quake more than he realized.

Long live Marvel.

Today I discovered that Marvel seems to completely understand something that DC doesn't seem to grasp at all.

It has to do with marketing their products.

On the desk in front of me is the "Marvel Reading Chronology 2009", a free publication send in quantity to retailers which presents "Marvel's stock of in-print collected editions inventory organized in a fun new way!"

This publication is, perhaps, the single greatest marketing tool I've ever received from a publisher. One of the things I do for Big Monkey is produce guides, both to specific publications and to topics. For example:


While I have done guides for eras, topics, and creators, I hadn't done any yet for particular characters. I was dreading the quantity of research needed to identify all the appropriate TPs, GNs, and HBs for all of Marvel's characters. I'm not exactly an expert on the history of the Hulk, ya know... .

Marvel, wisely realizing that customers are interested in boning up on particular characters and that it's a easy avenue of approach for retailers, has compiled these lists quite thoroughly in this new publications, which is colorfully but elegantly arranged, and includes pictures of the all the covers, what each volume contains, and who its creators were.

It's so obvious.

To Marvel. But, not to DC.

I spoke with my DC rep today to convince them to do something similar. I got some palaver about checklists of the titles involved in crossovers being listed on the DC website. That's nice, I said, but you don't seem to understand. I couldn't even get an understanding that retailers need a visual aid to sell Showcase and Archive Volumes (which are simply impractical to stock in full-- there are way too many, and, while they are wonderful and unique offerings, they do not exactly fly off the shelves). Yes, DC thanked me for having given them that idea in a previous conversation, and they were planning on making a checklist of those, too.

Yes, that's nice, I said. But you don't seem to understand.

I want a publication, something that... that combines words with pictures of what the words are taking about. I need a piece of writing with attendant images, a sort of... graphic literature. Can't DC produce some form of graphic literature that I can use to promote my sales of your products...? Surely, DC, you have some grasp of the power of combining pictures and words into a unified whole for the presentation of an idea or story?

I've stated before that Marvel's approach to comic books is more rooted in the visual than DC's approach, and that DC's is more rooted in the verbal than Marvel's. Ordinarily, I'm fine with that. Ordinarily, I like that.

But, oh, the comic book irony...! Unfortunately, it seems to mean that Marvel understands the need to create for retailers easy visual references to their products.... and DC does not understand it.

Okay THIS

is really the final straw. In case you can't access that link, I'm referring to this:

In this third issue, Bo aids Lockjaw, Lockheed, Redwing, Hairball, the new Frog Thor, and more super-hero companions in their quest for the Infinity Gems, which will lead the team to the bottom of the ocean and bring them face-to-furry-face with Giganto.

Retailers have witnessed firsthand the kind of attention a comic can receive when associated with the word “Obama.” The mainstream press had a spotlight on Bo even before he stepped paw in the White House, and adults and children alike remain infatuated with the First Dog, so make sure you order ample copies of the third issue.

Joe Quesada, I call thee harlot. Marvel, I damn thee as a whore.

Look, I own a comic book store, so I'm certainly empathetic with the desire to sell comics. But, really, Marvel. The president's dog?! That's just not right.

You want to know why people don't respect superhero comics? It's not just because they are fantastical in nature. It's because of things like Tim Gunn wearing the Iron Man Suit ("This glowing area, Tony; this worries me. Is this really practical? Attention-grabbing, yes, but have you thought about how well it will wear?").

Now, I know DC can occasionally indulge in such pop culture dalliances (ahem, Superman versus Muhammed Ali, anyone?), but Marvel is a much more serious and frequent offender. DC's a classy lady who sometimes has too many martinis and abandons her virtue for an evening to a smooth-talking beau. Marvel's a crack-whore wandering the street night and day looking for the next loudly-dressed passing fad to feature; "Hey, wanna me to put you inside my pages? All it costs is your dignity!"

Ever hear how Marvel got stuck with Dazzler, the Roller Disco Diva? Remember Razorback, with his mutant power of super-truckdriving from the CB radio era? And those are just a few fads. The list of shameless uses of real-world personalities to bolster sales or make Marvel stories "more realistic" is nearly endless. The awful, terrible, and vaguely racist back-up story in Spider-Man 583 where President Obama is used in a story ripped off from an old Booster Gold comic book is just one of the most notable examples.

Am I being snooty in my pretentions for superhero comics? Is it self-deceiving to think that my favorite part of pop culture should hold itself aloof from other parts of pop culture?

Perhaps.

But there is an objective problem with Marvel doing this sort of thing. Unlike most of the pop culture references it's making, the Marvel universe (or any other comic book world) is ideally an on-going enterprise. Its characters outlive (one hopes) the fads and personages who are intruded into its world from ours. But every time a "Tim Gunn" meets an Iron Man, a story and everything in its pinned to a point in time like a butterfly stabbed with a pin. In DC's fast and loose "continuity of the week" environment this is less painful; as long as the story is never referred to again, it doesn't really exist. But Marvel and its fans are famously slavish to their continuity. The combination of dated cultural references and guest-stars with an iron-clad continuity fetish is irreconcible and deadly... .

Marvel began as Timely, and tries to be timely still. But when you live by the sword you die by the sword. And if Marvel's characters seem less iconic and timeless than DC's, it's partly because Marvel is more interested in getting icons to appear with their characters than getting their characters to appear as icons.

Although I haven't mentioned it before, I've been reading a *gulp* Marvel miniseries. Why? Because it's The Twelve, which is about Golden Age characters that Marvel inherited from its days as Timely Comics, but hasn't used. I love the zaniness of the Golden Age and am always interested to see how its characters are portrayed.

"Interested", however, is not always "happy"; what I've read in the Twelve has not met my hopes. When I first heard about The Twelve, I thought, "Oh, good; a shot of Golden Age goodness for Marvel. That's just what it needs!"

As I've mentioned before, Marvel's heroic roots are in the paranoid pessimism of the 1950s/60s (the Silver Age), whereas DC's heroic roots are in the cockeyed optimism of the 1930s/40s (the Golden Age).

This fact colors everything each company does. There are literally thousands of examples, but I'll recap just one from this season's biggest crossovers. In the DCU, zillions of heroes fight a seemingly hopeless fight against Evil (or the Depression, or the Axis; it's all the same) but never give up. Meanwhile, in the Marvel World, disguised aliens infiltrate our world and turn heroes against one another. It's a nearly perfect example of one of the essential paradigmatic differences between DC and Marvel: DC heroes are in conflict with villains, while Marvel heroes are in conflict with one another.

I was hoping that having a fresh infusion of Golden Age blood from The Twelve would, if not lighten, at least brighten up Marvel a bit, where only poor Captain America remains to carry the torch of the can-do-ism that characterized early comic book heroes. Boy, I'd hate to think what kind of place Marvel would be if they ever allowed that character to be killed off! I was hoping that the Twelve might bring to Marvel the same kind of grounding, of nobility, of wisdom that the Justice Society has brought to the DCU since DC decided to stop being embarrassed by its Golden Age, and ended the JSA's exile in limbo.

No such luck. I hoped -- because I'm a DC fan, and that's what we do. But instead of playing to my hopes, Marvel spoke to my worst fears. Members of the Twelve are delusional, or racists, or self-hating Jews, or vain popinjays, or minions of Satan, or woefully unable to adapt to the present. Rather than being inspirations from the past, they are used to affirm that people have always been as shallow, screwed up, and chaotic as they are now (at least, as they are in the Marvel World!). Not only are the Twelve not being used to burnish the present, they are, instead, being used to tarnish the past.

They're trapped in a Watchmen-lite murder mystery, more Marvel heroes in conflict with one another, rather than banding together against external threats. Sure, I'm disappointed. Much as it might surprise you, I don't want to not enjoy Marvel Comics. If their worldview were more upbeat, I might be able to enjoy them, and I was hoping the Twelve would be a step in that direction. Alas.

But that's not what really bothers me. What really bothers me is that the Twelve is being written by J. Michael Straczynski. J. Michael Straczynski is also the person slated to introduce another set of Golden Age characters, the MLJ heroes, into DC continuity. And that includes the Shield, whom I would like to see in all his goofy Golden Age glory, broad-jumping onto moving airplanes, setting himself on fire, and breaking into song at inappropriate moments, not fighting other heroes.

I do not consider the Twelve a good sign. But I am still, of course, hopeful.

Today, I want to talk about Ivory Soap, politics, and comic books.

Ivory Soap is, of course, the greatest triumph that advertising has ever had. Even greater than the transinframetatextual product placement in Eureka (which is so stunningly bald that you have to consider it a PLUS rather than a negative, particularly since it means lots of Sheriff Carter shirtless *swoon*).

Ivory Soap is the greatest triumph of advertising -- and will always remain so -- because its makers took the product's overwhelmingly damning defect and made it the very selling point of the product. "So pure, it floats."

If you think about for even two seconds, it will hit you; soap isn't supposed to float. For soap to float it has to be less dense than water, and for it to be less dense than water, it has to be ... full of air. Which, of course, Ivory Soap is. That's why a bar of Ivory Soap the size of a miniature Dachshund disappears after about one week of shower usage. Not only have you been convinced to buy AIR, you been convinced to buy Ivory Soap precisely because it's full of air.

This takes a special kind of Harold Hill-ian chutzpah. Oh, perhaps, there was a time (say, 1891) when there actually was a great utility to the floating function, because most people took baths instead of showers. Even then, two seconds of thought could undo that advantage, but, of course, advertising's goal is not to allow you to think that long, anyway. You aren't supposed to think about the product, just feel about it, and feel good.

This takes a little cleverness: "Ivory Soap: it's full of air!" is not a particularly good slogan. "It floats!", however, is 99 44/100% genius, and had Proctor & Gamble cleaning up for decades. It's BS so pure it floats.

Once you recognize the principle, you can recognize it everywhere in salesmanship. The aforementioned Harold Hill sells band uniforms will the promise that there's no extra charge for the four weeks of anticipation that it takes for them to arrive. I "sell" Things That Made Me Happy by touting that it doesn't give you information you want.

And in politics the principle is in full swing. Inexperienced candidates are "fresh outsiders". George Bush isn't dull-witted, he's "a man of the people" or "not elitist". Instead of being a guest on Jerry Springer, Sarah Palin becomes an example of middle-class family values, precisely because her underage daughter got pregnant and now has to marry the baby-daddy.

Selling its candidates on the virtue of their flaws is more a Republican tactic, I think. The Democratic Party simply denies that its candidate have flaws at all, or pushes the idea that those flaws are private and utterly unrelated to their function as our representatives. In short, in this regard, the Republican Party is Marvel, and the Democratic Party is DC. There; that'll give you something to argue about at the comic shop today!

But enough of me on my soapbox. None of this is the real point of this post. The real point of this post is:

Armed with the Ivory Soap Principle, how would you sell some of DC's characters?

Today, I am announcing my intention to read...

Secret Invasion.

From some company called "Mar-vel". I think they're a Timely imprint.

Anyway, you may be wondering why I decided to sign on in advance for this particular ride. Several reasons...

While I've certainly read Marvel comics, I've never read any of its big crossover events. Such events seem more important to the Marvel Universe than in the DCU. Marvel Events seem like small-scale affairs that still have a real longer-term impact on the regular storylines. DCU Events are generally ENORMOUS in scale, but have little real long-term impact (other than sparking "Yeah, he was dead, but that was before Event Z" conversations and lines of collector figures).

The subject is intriguing. Civil War seemed like just another hero-on-hero slapfest; typical Marvel situation where the heroes' problems are not with villains and serious outside threats, but lie with their inability to get along with one another or with normal people.

In many ways, Secret Invasion is just such a Marvel-ous story. It's about an inside threat, not an outside one. Friends turn out to be enemies. It's a story stemming from paranoia and fear of betrayal; the emotions of adolescence and the Cold War, the fertile soils in which Marvel found root and grew.

So what's the difference? Mystery.

As I've mentioned before, one of the reasons I prefer DC to Marvel is that DC storylines tend to be detective/crime stories. Secret Invasion seems like more a mystery; Who is a Skrull? Now, perhaps that will all be revealed straightaway and the whole event will simply unravel into another slapfest among heroes (some of whom will be wrongly accused of being Commies, er, I mean, Skrulls). After all, that's what happened in Marvel's greatest "mystery event", Identity Crisis, which began ostensibly as a mystery with intimations of an outside threat, a matter quickly overshadowed instead by internal conflicts among heroes and their supporting casts.

My interest in Secret Invasion is that it seems to work in reverse. What began as an internal conflict among heroes -- Civil War -- may be revealed to be, in fact, the result of machinations by an outside villainous threat (the Skrulls, finally being used to their full potential). Instead of raising questions about characters acting uncharacteristically, it may answer them.

Of course, you may find the whole concept a cop-out, thinking it sad that what was once an honest exploration of societal and political conflict among well-meaningpeople with varying viewpoints will degenerate into a sci-fi B-film about fighting Little Green Men.

Maybe. But I'm also thinking it's going to be a lot more fun... .

It's been a while since I last read Spider-Man, so I thought I would catch up on him by reading Spider-Man 550... .

Well, not too much seems to have changed. It's not like they did anything weird or drastic with him, like marry him off , replace him with someone else, or have his secret identity exposed.

He does seem to have graduated from high school, though he still has that bizarre love-hate thing with Flash Thompson, the jock who he either wants to become or to marry.

Only two things seem to have changed, really. First, Peter Parker appears to have had lasik. That's good; I could never figure whether Spider-Man was running around half blind or whether he took his mask to the optometrist and had prescription lenses put in. Second, the old lady hunchback is gone. Maybe she died? You'd think they'd make a story out of that instead of just having her be missing. I guess the Spider-Man editors don't care much about continuity.

Oh, a third thing: he's got a new boss at the newspaper. That's good; the old guy always seemed like a silly caricature from a long-gone era. This new guy is much more believable and modern. He has high standards for his own business conduct, but they're impersonal. He'll never yell at you or try to cheat you, but neither will he remember your name. Renaming the Daily Bugle the "DB" may seem silly, but it's pretty accurate. I remember when Young Miss became YM and Metro Weekly became MW (and, yeah, I read Young Miss; it's hilarious). As for the new boss, Dex Bennett, it's pretty goofy to make his initials the same as the paper's. Who's gonna name a magazine after themselves? Except, you know, Forbes. Or Oprah. Or Rosie. Okay, never mind that. But, really, it's typical Marvel heavy-handedness; I mean, why couldn't he do something subtler and more realistic, like build a gigantic office building in the shape of his initial?

Okay, so, bizarrely, Spider-Man is stunned that someone doesn't know what the Apollo is, but he has no idea what Lexis/Nexis is. Peter Parker, smart guy, science whiz, works at a fricking newspaper. Who later manages to use an anonymous internet server to send a tip to the police. We're supposed to believe he's never even heard of Lexis/Nexis.

From this I'm guessing that writer Mark Guggenheim is at least 65 years old. I also suspect, based on what seems to be intended as "humor" in much of the book, that he was reared by Catskills circuit comedians. Or maybe he's intentionally writing Spider-Man this way. It's almost as if this Spider-Man were from another time, long ago, like when Joe Quesada and I were just tykes.

"I'm an idiot." Hey, you said it, Spider-Man, not me. Spider-Man is apparently the world's worst detective. When he finds the building plans to the Apollo Theater at the bad guy's hideout, he doesn't even Google it to discover that the Mayoral Debate is being held there that week (sponsored by-- who else? -- his employer, the DB). As if he wouldn't already know that. Batman would know that already. Heck, Woozy Winks would know that already.

I very much appreciate that it has editor's notes, "Meanwhile" boxes, and the like. But it's really bizarre and annoying that they make metatextual references and directly address the reader. Why, it's almost as if the writers/editors thought comic books were for children!

The surrounding cast? Not so impressive. So there's a redhead female crimefighter who calls Spider-Man "Tiger". Oh, and she's codenamed ... wait for it ... "Jackpot". Uh-huh. More Marvel subtlety. Plus, there's YET STILL ANOTHER ADDITIONAL ONE MORE Goblin knockoff. With the Abstract Noun Codename that's been standard issue at Marvel for 20 or 30 years now. But, really, could it get worse than... Menace?!

It's got some good things going for it, though. A nice, fast pace, accomplished with numerous short scenes. Nice art with great coloring. Seems fairly accessible to the casual reader. It references Dazzler #5; Dazzler references are always worth a few points.