Friday, September 08, 2006
Destroying My Literacy
I can't read regular English anymore. Silver Age DC has left me severely retarded. DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS SUPERMAN Vol. 1 and DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS METAMORPHO THE ELEMENT MAN is all I've read this week. Shit, all I've read since last Wednesday. I've had 40 pages left on Knut Hamsen's Mysteries for over a week, and haven't touched it. I think I maybe read the movie review in last week's New Yorker, but that's it. I don't think I still have the mental faculties to understand either of them. Trying to make sense of Lois Lane's 15th attempt to trick Superman into marrying her will do that to you, either that or reading the 15th iteration of the only damn Metamorpho story ever written.
I tended to overuse the phrase "retarded genius" back during my first year or two as a fake rock critic guy. I never fully understood the term until reading these Silver Age Superman comics. These are the most brilliantly addle-brained stories ever written. Seriously, Superman fights crime maybe 10% of the time; mostly he just foils Lois's nuptial schemes and her attempts to figure out his secret identity. In the 400 pages I've read we've seen Braniac once (in his very first apperance!) and Luthor (before he had a first name) twice. One of those Luthor apperances, though, was an off-panel flashback in a story that mostly concerned Lois trying to trick Superman into thinking she was his old babysitter from Krypton so that he would reveal his secret identity to her. That's the extent of the supervillains in the first 75% of the book. Also, almost every line of dialogue is exposition. Every character is mostly retarded, yet they can all instantly intuit the true (and mostly aburd) meanings of even the most obscure and inexplicable of each others' actions, with no words being shared whatsoever. Clark Kent is a bumbling reporter who's always disappearing in the middle of assignments, yet he wins the "Reporter of the Year" award. Metropolis has about a million museums, and none of them make any sense whatsoever (a museum of famous fictional giants? a solar system museum with displays of what science fiction authors think the planets might look like?). NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE. The only internal logic is that there is no logic (and that A SUPERNATURAL CAN'T EXIST). Crooks will go to the farthest lengths, even making up a housing development based on Krypton, with a nightly Krypton pageant that recreates the planet's destruction, solely to get Superman to squeeze a few pieces of coal into diamonds. Superman's getting blasted out of a rocket, or sticking his head into a lion's mouth, or carrying some massively heavy object, for charity in every other story. IT IS COMPLETELY ABSURD. Every right-thinking person's initial response should be, "this is idiotic, but I love it!"
DC Showcase Presents Metamorpho is almost as charmingly ridiculous, but in a much different way. Metamorpho blatantly panders to the groovy, far-out, swingin' kids of the mid-to-late '60's. It's like a comic book version of The Monkees tv show, but only if Mike was a millionaire inventor/tycoon, Davy was a hot lady, Mickey was an adventurer/playboy/racecar driver/living chemistry set, and Peter was a reanimated million-year-old caveman. Every month Rex "Metamorpho" Mason has to bail his boss/taskmaster Simon Stagg and his beautiful girlfriend (Simon's daughter) Sapphire Stagg out of some sort of trouble, which is unfailingly instigated by some form of colorful ethnic stereotype. Every month Java, the "loyal, loving" caveman resuscitated by Stagg and employed as a bodyguard, tries to undercut Metamorpho so that Sapphire will marry him, instead. Every month Metamorpho will speak in the grooviest '60's slang to prove that he's down with the kids. Month in and month out Metamorpho remains exactly the same. It's kinda awesome that way. Metamorpho was written by a guy named Bob Haney, who, between this book and the original Teen Titans, specialized in embarrassing old-man approximations of teen slang and youth culture. The Metamorpho volume can't touch the Superman, but it's still a damn good way to kill a commute.
I'm also in the middle of DC Showcase Presents Green Lantern, and picked up the first Batman volume yesterday. Prime mid-'60's WHAM!-POW! goofball action. Gonna be great, for real.
I can't read regular English anymore. Silver Age DC has left me severely retarded. DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS SUPERMAN Vol. 1 and DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS METAMORPHO THE ELEMENT MAN is all I've read this week. Shit, all I've read since last Wednesday. I've had 40 pages left on Knut Hamsen's Mysteries for over a week, and haven't touched it. I think I maybe read the movie review in last week's New Yorker, but that's it. I don't think I still have the mental faculties to understand either of them. Trying to make sense of Lois Lane's 15th attempt to trick Superman into marrying her will do that to you, either that or reading the 15th iteration of the only damn Metamorpho story ever written.
I tended to overuse the phrase "retarded genius" back during my first year or two as a fake rock critic guy. I never fully understood the term until reading these Silver Age Superman comics. These are the most brilliantly addle-brained stories ever written. Seriously, Superman fights crime maybe 10% of the time; mostly he just foils Lois's nuptial schemes and her attempts to figure out his secret identity. In the 400 pages I've read we've seen Braniac once (in his very first apperance!) and Luthor (before he had a first name) twice. One of those Luthor apperances, though, was an off-panel flashback in a story that mostly concerned Lois trying to trick Superman into thinking she was his old babysitter from Krypton so that he would reveal his secret identity to her. That's the extent of the supervillains in the first 75% of the book. Also, almost every line of dialogue is exposition. Every character is mostly retarded, yet they can all instantly intuit the true (and mostly aburd) meanings of even the most obscure and inexplicable of each others' actions, with no words being shared whatsoever. Clark Kent is a bumbling reporter who's always disappearing in the middle of assignments, yet he wins the "Reporter of the Year" award. Metropolis has about a million museums, and none of them make any sense whatsoever (a museum of famous fictional giants? a solar system museum with displays of what science fiction authors think the planets might look like?). NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE. The only internal logic is that there is no logic (and that A SUPERNATURAL CAN'T EXIST). Crooks will go to the farthest lengths, even making up a housing development based on Krypton, with a nightly Krypton pageant that recreates the planet's destruction, solely to get Superman to squeeze a few pieces of coal into diamonds. Superman's getting blasted out of a rocket, or sticking his head into a lion's mouth, or carrying some massively heavy object, for charity in every other story. IT IS COMPLETELY ABSURD. Every right-thinking person's initial response should be, "this is idiotic, but I love it!"
DC Showcase Presents Metamorpho is almost as charmingly ridiculous, but in a much different way. Metamorpho blatantly panders to the groovy, far-out, swingin' kids of the mid-to-late '60's. It's like a comic book version of The Monkees tv show, but only if Mike was a millionaire inventor/tycoon, Davy was a hot lady, Mickey was an adventurer/playboy/racecar driver/living chemistry set, and Peter was a reanimated million-year-old caveman. Every month Rex "Metamorpho" Mason has to bail his boss/taskmaster Simon Stagg and his beautiful girlfriend (Simon's daughter) Sapphire Stagg out of some sort of trouble, which is unfailingly instigated by some form of colorful ethnic stereotype. Every month Java, the "loyal, loving" caveman resuscitated by Stagg and employed as a bodyguard, tries to undercut Metamorpho so that Sapphire will marry him, instead. Every month Metamorpho will speak in the grooviest '60's slang to prove that he's down with the kids. Month in and month out Metamorpho remains exactly the same. It's kinda awesome that way. Metamorpho was written by a guy named Bob Haney, who, between this book and the original Teen Titans, specialized in embarrassing old-man approximations of teen slang and youth culture. The Metamorpho volume can't touch the Superman, but it's still a damn good way to kill a commute.
I'm also in the middle of DC Showcase Presents Green Lantern, and picked up the first Batman volume yesterday. Prime mid-'60's WHAM!-POW! goofball action. Gonna be great, for real.
