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Yes, really. If you want to know how you get to Carnegie Hall... well, I'll tell you when I get back.
Okay, as previously mentioned, the Martian Manhunter went from weird to weirder when he left Detective Comics for House of Mystery.
Now, I know you all think I'm INSANE ("Mad! So, my colleagues think me mad, eh...?!") for harping on the insidious evil of SURREALISM lurking with comic books, yet surrealism is exactly the new foe that J'onn was pitted against.
There was a certain bizarre logic to it. No one ever had any idea what to do with this ridiculous Martian character they'd cobbled together out of breakfast martinis, deadlines, and old pulp sci fi mags. For that matter, no one ever has. Might as well have him fight equally bizarre and ridiculous 'foes', in a symbolic struggle of classic art versus surrealism, or as a metaphor for humanity's never-ending efforts to impose meaning on a chaotic world. Who better to thrust in unknown and nonsensical territory?
J'onn was no longer fighting crooks in ties or even crooks in stupid costumes.
Even for comic books, that's a stand-out sentence.Now he fought things like...
evil sentient orchestras.
Pity J'onn's career in Zydeco never took off.Or bank-robbing genies.
Or really peevish, bioelectric Fruit Loops
Thank H'Ronmeer they didn't join forces with the Sinister Spaghetti-o People.Or presidential candidate Pat Paulsen.
But it was all a battle against SURREALISM, in a vain attempt to keep its madness confined to the canvas...
See? And you think I make these things up...!
If you're new to Barry Allen, you may not know that he was famous for finding himself in strange situations... strange even for a DC superhero in the Silver Age.
But even in the strangest of situations, Barry seldom lost his composure, and faced his role as a lightning rod for Silver Age lunacy with remarkable acceptance and equanimity. A perfect example is one of his most famous quotes:
"I've got the strangest feeling I'm being turned into a puppet."
Yes, Barry; that is certainly one of the strangest feelings. But there are others...
"I've got the strangest feeling...
I'm being characterized as an enormous geek."
He works in a lab. He talks to himself. About comics books. While drinking milk. With a straw. All this you know before you even see him. What more could they do, put him in a bow-tie?
"I've got the strangest feeling...
I'm under attack from surrealism in comics."
The second you let down your guard, BANG! You're the center of a paranoid delusion about inanimate objects, specifically, the traveling staircases from many a surrealist joke book ("A traveling staircase goes into a bar, and when the watch melted, the chicken died.")
"I've got the strangest feeling...
Zahi Hawass is going to kick my ass."
I sure hope Barry has Josh Bernstein's number; now, that's a Brave & the Bold issue I want to see!
"I've got the strangest feeling...
I'm in a Katsushika Hokusai painting."
Now, that is one classy swipe.
"I've got the strangest feeling...
I should be wearing a red handkerchief in my back pocket."
Who knew that Barry had given the FFA (um... that's...Flash Fans of America, for you kiddies) its slogan, "If you can't fit a keyhole, make it fit you"?
Okay, at first I tried to believe that the action on this cover is supposed to take place underwater. Because I see, um, ship-ish looking things. And air bubbles.
Oh, the heck with it! This can only be interpreted as a fractured surrealist landscape colored with a variegated miasma of pastels. It looks like someone put the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and R. Crumb in a blender with some art chalk, and then dipped an issue of Captain America in it.
The Shield has a rudder up his butt, bringing new meaning to "hard to port!", and is blowing off his right foot with a torpedo, surrounded by negative-space-infused textual elements, and ambiguous shapes that could be salmon or submarines, propellers or women's hats, streams or banana leaves, pontoons or hot dog buns.
These illusions disillusioned me; how could our hero, The Shield, participate in such a patent and aggressive display of wicked Surrealism, the Enemy of All That is Good in Comics? And then it hit me, like a torpedo exploding on my shinbone:
The Shield is FIGHTING. The Shield is fighting back surrealism!
Phew! NOW I can sleep tonight!
We've spent lots of time talking about how boss the Shield was, and how keen it is that he's returning.
But I bet you've been wondering how a fantastically cool character like The Shield met his end. Was he killed by a villain, like his colleague, the Hangman? Did the company that published him fold?
Well, both, in a sense. He was "killed" by the worst villain in all of comicdom. And not outright. No, he was slowly poisoned by his treacherous foe, evanescing into limbo. And his publisher did fold... to the pressure toward cheap titillation of teenage hormones.
Yes, the Shield was undone by that most terrifying force in the four-color world, the symbol of solipsism, the scion of sensationalism, the shill of thrill, the sultan of the surreal:
Archie, as long-time readers of my blog will know, is my bete noir, symbol to me of the opiate power of comics used evilly to warp the perspectives of readers, lulling them in a dazed state in which the always unhinged Archieverse opens it jaws of surrealism to swallow up their every sense of hope, meaning, and being, subsuming them in the All That Is Archie.
What red-blooded American can look at these words and fail to weep?
"Dusty is almost heartbroken at having to leave you boys and girls we have come to know and love so much -- and me, well, I don't feel so good myself."My gods, it's like watching Bambi's mother get shot in an endless video loop!
Even in defeat, the Shield is gracious, calling Archie a golden lining. YES; the gold lining the pockets of the cynical sharpies who sold you out, Shield. Who sold out patriotism for pre-pubescent pandering! Who sold out your war against America's enemies for teenage teases in tit-tightened sweaters, and sweaty-palmed punks who think of nothing but slaking their gross apetites for fresh girls and grilled flesh, stuffing it all down the insatiable maw of ... Archie.
But the Shield's grace cannot hide Archie's omnivorous evil:
"he's made himself famous from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in fact in every corner of the world (!!!!)"
Because... Everything Is Archie. Shudder.
"He's going to take over the Shield G-Man Club and call it the Archie Club. ... Take it away, Archie."
Of course he's just going to ...take it over. And rename it after himself. Everything Must Be Archie. Whatever it is, whatever you want; take it away, Archie. How can people prate on about feckless incompetent amateurs like Darkseid when there's ARCHIE, for pity's sake?!?!?
Through the existential horror, I can barely bare to read Archie's words, for fear they might sap my will like a Riverdalian anti-life equation.
"Think of taking over so many hundreds of thousands."
Yes, you automatically belong to Archie. Turn over the cards that represent your former identity; surrender yourself to Archie. In exchange for your very soul, we will imprint upon you the Mark of Archie, so that all may known that you are of the Body, that you are one with Landru/Archie.
My gods; the little bastard even stole his COSTUME.
