Preliminary Thoughts on Inflection Theory: Crossovers

I'm going to get back to writing about these interesting events, especially as they are now making their way into the televisual universes the comics have spawned.

Reading a crossover is sometimes like creating your own novel from pre-existing modules. For example, I'm reading Secret Invasion right now, and I'm including in it all the crossovers that I have. But I don't necessarily have to. I could read just the main series and still get the major events of the story. Add in the Avengers titles, you get a broader, more satisfying story. I would contend that this is the "necessary" reading of this crossover - without both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers, the main story doesn't quite make sense. It's still the same series of events, but more minutely. Add in ancillary titles, in my case the Fantastic Four and Runaways/Young Avengers mini-series, and the story is still broader, though still adhering to a particular chronological scale. I could, of course, choose to leave out the Runaways/Young Avengers book, and read only the "A-List" heroes (thought sometimes the FF slides down to that B-List). If I had more crossovers, I could read the crossover from a street-level perspective, perhaps the She-Hulk crossover, or the Spider-Man one. Or go international and add the Captain Britain title to see what the Skrulls did in the U.K. Each read of it would include different iterations of these events, interacting differently depending on which are mixed with which, telling the same story from a myriad of points of view.

So is this an inflectionary reading? Imagine Secret Invasion, the series, as a framework. It is a series of required moments in a sequence that constitute a basic story. Around this framework, depending on the tie-ins that one chooses, we inflect this framework story with detail - setting, genre, mythicness(?). And the particular inflecting texts we choose also inflect one another. Reading Avengers only turns the story into a Cold War, Tom Clancy-esque action-spy thriller (how's that for a specific genre?). However, the main series and the first three issues of Deadpool would be a very different reading experience. And that foundation would be inflected to become part of the kind of slapstick, meta-storytelling that Deadpool carries with it.

And then suppose we added Captain Britain and MI13? More spy thriller, international vibe, but also inflected by the meta aspect of Deadpool.

Is this fractal comics? Or is it more of a Deleuze and Guattari-ian rhizome? I suppose the entire history of the Marvel Universe is really one large crossover. That would be something to read.

But if we do go with that idea, that the entirety of the publishing history of the Marvel Universe, wherever that beginning point might be, is one prolonged crossover, the shared narrative universe, then inflection starts to bend genre. Allowing that the superhero, embodied by the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, and their ancillary titles to a certain extent, are the baseline, we can inflect the superheroic myth with other generic conventions.

This is something I've been working out in my brain for quite some time. One of the ways I consider my time in grad school is that I was developing a set of concepts and languages with which I could articulate this idea of an inflectionary reading of a shared narrative universe. I think I'll start working it out a bit more over the next few months.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1358: Marvel Super Action #33, July 1981

The Clint Barton/Goliath era of the Avengers is one with which I have little familiarity. What I have read from the 70s is mostly the horror stuff, and strange titles like Man-Thing and Howard the Duck. I've not spent much time with the superheroes in this era. Today's story was pretty good, though I was definitely coming in a little late in the tale. The make-up of the team was a bit off-putting, in that the Wasp was the sole female representation in the book. And the dialogue was a little stilted for my tastes. The designs of the Zodiac villains is pretty great, and utterly ridiculous, considering how sinister they're played off.

Also, although he appears to be in the battle with the Avengers, Captain Marvel never actually materializes in the story.

I know that reprint series like this one were simply a way for the company to cash in on previously published material, but I am glad for them. They offer a nice cheap alternative to the more expensive original publications.

All in all, not a bad read. Better than yesterday's Batman/Mr. Miracle debacle, though some of Hawke...I mean, Goliath's dialogue was almost as cringe-worthy. Clint really only comes into his own once he heads up the West Coast division.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1005: The Avengers v.1 #300, February 1989

See yesterday, re: stories. Inferno continues, and this motley crew races after Nanny and the Orphan-Maker.

What I really think is cool about this comic is that fucking Gilgamesh is in it. And he even claims to be the Gilgamesh from the ancient epic. I first read it in a course about the Bible and literature, and we read it as a precursor to reading from the Bible. The gist of the course was that there are particular needs we humans need fulfilled (like that guy Maslow says) and if you read literature, and its ancestor myth, you can see common patterns of images emerging that represent these things. It's super cool. So we looked at precursors to the Bible, then read some of that (as the course was also based around Frye's Words With Power), and then expanded the reading to imagery in imaginative literatures. It's the first course I got to start playing with the idea that eventually became my MA Thesis, so I have a soft spot for it.

This comic made me want to find a copy of The Epic of Gilgamesh, and read it with that dude up there in the main role. It's nice to see some representation from a pantheon outside of the Norse and Greek in the Marvel U, even if it does turn out that Enkidu's pal was actually an Eternal.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1004: The Avengers v.1 #299, January 1989

Or the day after.

I don't want to actually say too much about this issue, or the one that follows it. They're both part of the "Inferno" crossover, which is a crossover I really love, and they also feature a couple of particularly heinous villains that I liked, but never really found out much about: Nanny and the Orphan-Maker. But out of the context of either of those narratives, which both play out in X-related comics, these two comics don't make tons of sense. It's nice to have the Nanny story that brings the various characters together and gives some kind of arc to the two issue story, but then she and Orphan-Maker disappear and are probably never to be heard from again in the pages of Avengers.

Which, given the brutality of these villains, is not really in keeping with their mandate to battle just these sorts of threats. Actually, Nanny and Orphan-Maker are some of the darkest villains I've seen in the Marvel U, but they're often played kind of comedically. It makes for a chilling combination.

Anyway, one of these days I'm going to read their story and the "Inferno" crossover, at which point I'll tell you about kidnapped mutant children and demons coming to Earth via New York. Both of which happen in this issue and the next, too.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1003: The Avengers v.1 #298, December 1988

What does it say that the best issue in Walt Simonson's run on the title thus far only actually stars any of the primary Avengers in passing? This comic is all Edwin Jarvis, and it's fantastic. Storywise, we have a pretty nice prelude to the madness of the "Inferno" crossover, as Jarvis gads about town and, strangely, inanimate object start attacking people. Jarvis even manages to entrance a young lady whose life he saves, and ends up walking off into the sunset with her at the end of the story.

There's something to that: The young lady, Glory, tracks Jarvis down at the same time that Steve "The Captain" Rogers (having just been fired as Captain America) does. Glory is, of course, struck by his handsomeness, but in the end says she's been looking for "someone with enough courage to be a hero and enough gentleness to be a man." Which, I think, is a rather nice articulation of exactly what Jarvis is, and perhaps what those shy and retiring young boys who read the comic are.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1002: The Avengers Annual #17, 1988

Finally.

I can't say that The Evolutionary War was my favourite crossover, though I guess it's far from my least favourite. What that least favourite might me, I'm not sure.

An ad hoc team of Avengers is assembled by the abandoned computers on Hydrobase, and this hastily assembled team takes on and defeats the High Evolutionary. Unfortunately, because the story wasn't really told as a sequential piece, the stakes really didn't seem too high. There was no real build-up of drama and suspense - each chapter was just another adventure with the same person as the antagonist, but they lacked the continuity to make the tale compelling.

Ah well. Tomorrow, we'll get back to Simonson's run on Avengers, and then I think I might just grab random handfuls of comics and read those. Or perhaps another theme week or two. I just picked up some cool, old Charlton horror comics....

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 991: Avengers v.1 #297, November 1988

Yep, definitely time to take a break from Marvel's mightiest. And good timing, as this issue sees the Avengers completely dissipate with no reservists called forth to assemble.

About time, really. This team was collapsing. It really just seems that neither Simonson nor Macchio really knew what to do with the team. For my money, the best Avengers stories are the ones where the writer is settled in to tell stories for a couple of years at least. I can only imagine if this had been the case with Simonson, and this massive cosmic story he's told could be the culmination of years of hint-dropping. But this, apparently, was not how Marvel wanted the team handled since Simonson leaves in 3 issues, then Macchio comes back, and then John Byrne takes over scripting for about 10 issues, and then someone else comes along. It's a strange way to manage what really should be a flagship title for the publisher, even back in the 80s before the movie had broken big.

Tomorrow we're off to the war...the Evolutionary War, that is!

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 990: Avengers v.1 #296, October 1988

Walt Simonson has a really strange aesthetic that, usually, I find really neat. This story has proven the exception to the rule. I don't know if it's that he's better suited to being both writer and artist, or, as with the Macchio story before this one, it was rushed, but he seems to basically be using The Avengers to set up the Fantastic Four story that he's going to tell a little while after this. And that story's actually really great. I don't know what happened here. And, to be honest, I'm having a hard time caring.

The Black Knight finally seems to be returning to his old self, though he's picked up the archaic "By King Richard's Beard!" sort of exclamations usually best left to Thor or Hercules. An odd choice, but by no means completely ruinous like the treatment of Captain Marvel.

Perhaps it's time to take a break from The Avengers - it took a lot more time for me to get cranky with the title.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 989: Avengers v.1 #295, September 1988

Much as I may not be enjoying Mr. Simonson's run on this title (which, I'll admit, is pretty disappointing), we do get to see Thor fighting a robot dinosaur in this issue, and that's not nothing. From the cover, the Mechanisaurus Rex (actual name from the comic) reminds me very much of Deadeye from the Starriors series, which I'll get around to reading for the project one of these days. Today, however, this metal monstrosity gives Thor what for until the Black Knight, suffering more and more from his curse (though, strangely, sounding more like his old self in this issue), shows up and, as a result of said curse, basically slices the dinosaur in half. It seems his body is starting to take on the qualities of his sword, in that everything he touches is cut. Even, at the end of the issue, Thor.

What's nice is that it hasn't taken the Avengers long to figure out that Druid is not the altruistic hero they thought he was. And though both Thor and the Knight know this, it seems She-Hulk has fallen under Druid's spell, which means nothing but trouble for the Son of Odin. Hopefully he can take down Druid and his cohorts before too much damage comes to the Earth. Because you just know that that's what it's coming to.

Assuming I can track down the issues I'm missing, we'll take a slight detour from The Avengers in a couple of days to make our way through what I think is Marvel's first annual crossover, The Evolutionary War. Simonson writes the Avengers installment, so it'll fit into my reading of his run. It's a crossover I used to have all of, but over the years some comics have disappeared. Shouldn't be too hard to track down. And then in the middle of that we'll take a one day break for day 1000, which I can't believe is actually coming up. I feel quite accomplished!

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 988: Avengers v.1 #294, August 1988

This comic is starting to piss me off. There's been this rather radical shift in the Black Knight's personality, even before succumbing to the blood curse that's on his sword, and which Namor used on Marrina in the previous issue. For a while he spoke like an everyday person, albeit one with some advanced scientific knowledge. But now he's talking like an extra from a bad medieval drama, with lots of archaic syntax and lack of contractions. It's off-putting. And then there's the fate of Captain Marvel, who is unceremoniously shipped off to live with her parents in today's issue as she actually expended so much energy defeating the Leviathan that it depleted the mass she usually has in corporeal form.

Add to that Doctor Druid's manipulation of the Avengers's minds, and it really bears little to no resemblance to the series I loved under Roger Stern's direction. I can understand why he left the title, but I can't understand why Marvel's editorial team would think this was a good direction for the team. It's not staying true to the kernel of the series, nor is it staying true to portrayals of the characters. I'm hoping for some explanation as to the Black Knight's behaviour, but I'm not holding out hope. Dane Whitman has been a favourite of mine since the early 80s when my Mum and Dad got me a comic collecting kit that included a copy of Avengers #225. But what's been done to him here is perverse.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 987: Avengers v.1 #293, July 1988

I was not wrong, it seems. By the end of today's issue, both Marrina and Namor are no longer concerns in the annals of the Avengers. I think this is a good thing - there's a problem with characters that have to connect with the water on a regular basis. It really limits the possibilities for storytelling - either you're in a place where the character can be in the water, which generally sucks for the rest of the team, or there's no water and the character is incapacitated almost immediately.

I haven't been particularly impressed with this run on the series so far. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's issue, in that it seems to be veering into more familiar Simonson territory, which hopefully will not only remove the clunkiness of the story, but also the clunkiness of the dialogue. I can see the hyperbolic speech patterns as stylistic choices, but it's a jarring shift from the more realistic tones of Stern's run, especially bearing in mind the continuance of the art style. And in following Macchio's horrendous dialogue, Simonson's is just looking too pedestrian and cartoony.

*sigh* Will I never be satisfied?

What I do like about this arc is the suggestion that Marrina's transformation is resonant with the idea of the Leviathan in the Bible. As my comments on the Avengers/Olympus conflict noted, I do enjoy the ways that ancient or traditional myths are reiterated or reinvigorated by the superheroic myth. For myself, I would have liked to see even more explicit linkage

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 986: Avengers v.1 #292, June 1988

I know I'm only two issues in on Mr. Simonson's run, but I'm not thrilled yet. Didn't this Marrina story get done in Alpha Flight a few years earlier? Though perhaps it's a way of jettisoning Marrina and Namor from the ranks of the Avengers. Namor's never really been a favourite of mine, though the burgeoning potential for bromance with Hercules back when he joined the team was quite lovely.

The stuff with the Kangs - another council of them, seems much more in line with Simonson's usual cosmic weirdness. I'll be interested to see who's left on the team once it takes over as the main story. What gets me is that it's really very similar to the Fantastic Four story that kicks off Jonathan Hickman's run on the title - how close are Kang and Mr. Fantastic to being one another?

My other gripe, and one I don't mind airing, is the really egregious treatment of Captain Marvel. Her characterization has pivoted 180 degrees. The character that was built from her initial days to fighting the Gods on Olympus seems to have just been thrown out. There's a nice look at her history here. I haven't read it all because I think I may have caught a glimpse of a spoiler of the story I'm reading right now. Sometimes the Internet just sucks. Anyway, I think I may have to pick up The Ultimates, which is the last place she was apparently residing, and see what other good depictions of the character have happened along the way. And perhaps even track down that Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16. We'll see...

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 985: Avengers v.1 #291, May 1988

Weeellll.....it's an improvement?

I'm starting to wonder if Roger Stern has ruined The Avengers for me for any writer that's going to follow.

Though considering my love of Hickman's run, I think that's probably unlikely.

But Hickman's Avengers is another era altogether, and right now it's the handling of this one that I'm most interested in. Captain Marvel continues to flounder as leader, and is now doubting herself, as well as being subtly undermined by Doctor Druid. I wonder if this is the problem Stern had with the direction they wanted The Avengers to go? I think Mr. Stern understood here the importance of having an African-American woman in charge of one of the most prominent teams in the Marvel U. What's happening to the character now is really outrageous. Of all the characters, her shift in personality is the most prominent.

Well, hers and the Black Knight. I liked Dane Whitman a lot in the Stern run, and I remember identifying most with him when I read the comics as kid. But he's become a bit of a non-entity over the last while. I miss his ruminations.

There's still a bit of wonky dialogue in this issue, but nowhere near as bad as the Macchio run.

And, seriously, why is Marrina here? I found her to be a pretty boring character in Alpha Flight, and I'm even less-impressed with her here constantly, and vocally, fawning over Namor.

But what about that cover, you ask?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 984: Avengers v.1 #290, April 1988

Just awful.

That's really the only way I can describe this follow-up story to Roger Stern's masterful handling of the team.

This was like reading a children's board book - that's what the dialogue reminded me of. Seriously some of the worst written superhero stuff I've ever read.

The thing is, it could really have been a very good story - especially with the inclusion of Machine Man as a double agent.

One of the ways that we distinguish a work that is deemed "important" is to measure it by how much people write about it. If you compare the amount I wrote on a per post basis about Stern's run with how much I wrote on Macchio's run, you get a good idea of how that works.

Okay, Walt Simonson, the bar has been lowered. Let's see what you can do about raising it.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 983: Avengers v.1 #289, March 1988

Just. Terrible. I'm amazed at how rapidly the quality of this comic has dropped. The art is still excellent, but the writing is just terrible. Almost every speech bubble, every thought bubble, is laden with exposition, even in moments where it's just not needed. Par example:

Well, thanks, Namor. I might not have known otherwise.

When will this end?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 982: Avengers v.1 #288, February 1988

I think my biggest question about this story is why it is that Machine Man is hanging out with the Adaptoid (and not the Fixer, apparently). Though Kirby's mechanical creation has always had a contentious relationship with humanity, he's always been relatively benign, so allying himself with a group of very destructive and villainous machines seems a bit off-brand. Hopefully he's playing it cool until he figures out what the Adaptoid's up to.

Once again, there are some very bizarre narrative and dialogic choices made in this comic. The editorial text box at the end of the issue gives us what I can only assume is a sanitized run-down of Stern's departure from the title, ostensibly due to his being unable to cleave to editorial decisions without doing some injustice to the characters in his care. And, honestly, I think I'm beginning to see that. The treatment of Captain Marvel in particular is pretty awful. By the end of Stern's run, she's an obvious choice for leader of the Avengers. She's intelligent, committed, extremely powerful, and maintains a humility that some of the members (Namor, I'm looking at you) could learn from. But from the get-go of Macchio's run, she's been painted as somehow inept, her every decision questioned by Doctor Druid who, even with Namor and Hercules having been recent team members, gets my vote as most obnoxious member of the team in recent memory.

I was talking with one of my classes recently about the way that characters pass from hand to hand in superhero comics. It's inevitable, given the longevity of characters and teams. When handled well, the transition can either be smooth or catastrophic. In this, I mean that there's the chance that the new creative team will so smoothly continue the title that you hardly notice the change, or they will completely shift paradigms and establish a new status quo. This one does both, and it doesn't work out. The Buscema/Palmer/Scheele art team continues to turn out lovely pages. The sense of motion in each panel is really quite spectacular, and is very much in keeping with the previous run. But Macchio's handling of the personalities of the team is totally different from Sterns, making it seem as if the characters have all undergone radical personality shifts between issues 285 and 286. It's just too jarring and, as Stern suggests, is doing grave injustice to a few of these characters. She-Hulk's only role seems to be to drool over Namor and punch things, completely forgetting that she's an intelligent woman with a law degree, and a former member of the most scientific of teams, the Fantastic Four.

Walt Simonson takes over writing in three issues. I think in my head canon I'm going to consider this as a story that takes place on an alternate Earth where the personalities of the Avengers are very, very different. I mean, this is comics - that kind of thing happens all the time!

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 981: Avengers v.1 #287, January 1988

I generally don't like coming down on comics creators unless it's a particularly egregious case, but these Avengers comics are so far below the bar that Stern and Buscema set that it's hard to get through them. While I'll admit to being somewhat curious as to what's going on with the Fixer, the level of dialogue really sometimes reads like it was written by a small child. I read something recently (it might have been one of the "Mark's Remarks" in the back of a previous issue) noting that if you were to read aloud the dialogue of a superhero comic, it would sound ridiculous, because nobody speaks that way. While this may be generally true of the genre, I think Mr. Stern's dialogue approached a fairly realistic tenor, demonstrating for us the way in which a person might actually react in the fantastic situations the Avengers find themselves in. Mr. Macchio's dialogue is, to put it bluntly, erring on the side of the ridiculous.

Now, I have to admit, I don't know the circumstances of his having taken over the book - this issue is still ostensibly plotted by Stern, so it may have been a very sudden departure, and these issues may have been somewhat rushed. But in a lot of ways it seems like the new scripter never even read any of Stern's work, and makes no attempt to continue the aesthetic, character-wise, that makes the Stern run so very good.

I guess we'll see over the next few issues, as it solely becomes Macchio's story, whether things improve. But I can certainly see why my 14-year old self might have stopped reading Avengers at this point. It's a bit of a let down.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 980: Avengers v.1 #286, December 1987

From a plot by Roger Stern.
But that's about all.

Black Knight laments that he never "scored" with the Wasp.

She-Hulk basically drools her way through the book staring at Namor.

And Captain Marvel becomes highly incompetent as team leader.

*sigh*

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 979: Avengers v.1 #285, November 1987

About time I got to this one, right?

If you've read any of this blog, it's no big surprise that I consider superheroes to be another iteration of the kinds of stories from which grow our traditional mythologies and religions. They are our heroes, our gods, our devils, and our angels, though all with a touch more humanity than the creatures of the Judeo-Christian myths that inspired them. So to see the Avengers, a team that, unlike the JLA, tends to steer clear of deification, go up against actual gods, of the Greco-Roman variety, is a very interesting story indeed.

Hercules, as we know, was beaten very badly during the siege of the Masters of Evil. While lying comatose in a hospital bed, he is whisked away to Mount Olympus where his father decides that it must be the fault of Hercules's teammates that he is in the condition he's in. Some garbled ravings from the comatose and brain damaged demi-god only serves to further convince Zeus of this. So he kidnaps the Avengers and condemns them to torment in the depths of Hades.

The Avengers, unsurprisingly, are having none of it.

The thing that I've found fascinating about this story is the pitting of contemporary (well, sort of) mythic figures against traditional mythic figures. We can see parallels in some of the characters. The Black Knight, a scientist stands in contrast to Hephaestus, God of the Forge. Thor, himself a storm deity, stands in opposition to Zeus himself. But these are actually exceptions to the rule - none of the other Avengers really resemble traditional mythic figures in the way that we might offer such correspondences with the JLA. Marvel's aesthetic has always been to be a bit more grounded than their distinguished competition, but this grounding doesn't dissipate the mythic nature of the characters completely. I seem to recall, in a previous post somewhere, thinking about Cyclops in this manner, though now the irony of that occurs to me. I'd suggested that the Marvel heroes look toward new archetypal representations, rather than embodying the older ones that, again, the DC heroes gravitate toward. Is She-Hulk a representation of both the strength of empowered womanhood and, in her Jennifer Walters identity, the ramifications of the oppression of the feminine? Captain America is pretty obviously a personification not of America itself, but the idealized vision of that country that we know is, unfortunately, only myth. So what is the significance of pitting these new myths against the old ones?

There's a temptation to think it's a way of thinking through replacement of old gods, and their attendant ideas, with new gods and new ideas. These gods, the superheroes, are, of course, ourselves, much as any old god is, but have the added bonus of being seen as completely fictional. Their relative youth gives them flexibility, takes them out of a more binaristic way of thinking about gods and embraces the notions of plurality that often represent the best of humanity. Zeus is king of the Greco-Roman gods, and a storm god. It would be difficult for us to start telling stories of him as anything other than that since that's what he's been in our literature, and more subtly in our belief structures, for a few millennia. His fictional/mythic potential has fossilized over time. By pitting new, more fluid, deific figures against solidified older ones, Stern and Buscema suggest to us that there may be more use in putting belief and myth and archetype into vessels that are more easily manipulable, that haven't solidified quite so much.

The Avengers triumph eventually, of course. Zeus is humbled, and concedes that he made a mistake in blaming the heroes for his son's own bad judgment. This show of humility from one of the oldest and proudest mythic figures in the Western literary tradition is nothing to take lightly. It's almost, as Zeus forbays any Olympian from further stepping foot on Earth, a passing of the torch, an acknowledgment that the Avengers and their ilk are better representatives of the beliefs of humankind than Zeus and his children. And it's a very convincing argument, really. No wonder DC didn't want Rick Veitch having Swamp Thing meet Christ. Can you imagine the uproar if old Swampy somehow trumped the founder of Christianity?

Tomorrow we get on to Ralph Macchio's short run on Avengers, working, at least for a couple of issues, from plots by Stern. My understanding is that it's not a great run, but Walt Simonson comes along not to much later, and he's always entertaining. I'm very curious, as I've said, to see how the dynamic of the series changes. Will the female characters, and most especially Captain Marvel, retain the strength and depth that Stern has given them? Will the balance of action and soap opera be retained? I'm actually kind of excited to find out.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 977: Avengers v.1 #284, October 1987

The penultimate issue of the Avengers's battle with the Olympian gods. Looking forward to giving this story a good going over tomorrow.

To be continued.