Tag Archives: Marvel

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

The Progressive Era Didn’t End Well and Alban Buns

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Last week, I told I was almost done with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and couldn’t talk about it in full yet. Now that I’ve finished it, I can say I appreciate it overall and it won’t make any list of recommended reading from me. It was a little long-winded, unevenly humorous, and the point driven home at the end is an ugly one.

Twain’s Yankee engineer is an ideal man, in a sense, and very lucky. He applies knowledge to a variety of fortunate occurrences and builds a brilliant reputation for himself. He quickly earns the loyalty of people who pull him through other scrapes, even to when he takes full credit for all actions afterward. He can practically create the entire nineteenth century in Medieval England on his own. And at the height of it, when Camelot falls apart as it does in the historic legend, he says, now we must push to destroy the Catholic Church and the order of chivalry. The final chapters depict this push with horrific bloodshed that could be taken as comic if there weren’t so many bodies on the ground.

Aside: I was offended by Merlin’s stunt at the very end, because when has he demonstrated any skill of this kind before? Is or is he not a charlatan?

What should readers take away from this application of Progressive ideals on the medieval world? Does the Yankee triumph? Does he accomplish his goals?

A Connecticut Yankee was published in 1889, the end of a pretty good decade in the United States. That was before the Spanish-American War for Cuban independence, the Philippine-American War against Filippino independence, the Russo-Japanese War in which the US worked for a balance of powers, and conflicts over the building of the Panama Canal. Theodore Roosevelt was a player in all of these. After these came World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, so one would understand if viewers came away with the impression that the great Progressive Era ushered mankind into the position he’s always wanted–to play God. If the Yankee’s ideas would not be accepted by rubes too thick to see the wisdom of them, then the rubes could die, and should die to out of the way of progress, and would die in front of the Yankee’s superior technology.

Twain was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League that opposed the U.S. war effort against the Philippines and various conflicts that gave a sense of an expanding American empire. Twain may have asked, if we were a free nation, why would we fight to subjugate other nations? Which is the very thing the Connecticut Yankee attempts in the end. He presses his ideals into tryanny and in a manner of speaking murders everyone. Maybe that was Twain’s point.

Anyway, let me share a few links before I let you go for the day.

More on Connecticut Yankee: James Turner has a long piece on Medievelists.net. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court found some of its greatest and most engaged champions with Soviet artists, perhaps unsurprisingly when you consider the novel two-pronged critique of both the inherent corruption and excesses of aristocratic society and its cautious approach to the cold heart and supposedly self-defeating exploitation of workers under the capitalist system.”

Recommended changes: Agrarian author Wendell Berry offers revisions to the Marvel cinematic universe in this piece by Jeff King. “The villains have just not been believable. Why a squinting, purple monster looking to eliminate half of life in the universe when the strip mining industry is right there?”

Hot Cross Buns: Alban Buns (the precursor to our Hot Cross Buns) were first baked in 1361 and given to the poor on Good Friday. This and more history of one of my favorite rolls from Richard Baxter.

Role Models: With Purim starting, Mijal Bitton suggests American Jews look to Esther as a role model. “Esther symbolizes the way too many Jews feel today — confronted by rising hatred against their Judaism.”

Good Fun: A little love for Don Quixote. “Cervantes is ingenious.”

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry

What’s a Bit of Fascism Between Friends?

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Fascism is a 1921 word that came from the Italian name for Mussolini’s anit-communist party, Partito Nazionale Fascista. The word Fascista actually means “political group,” but fascism has come to mean a particularly nasty political group because of its connection to the Mussolini’s policies. They were the Black Shirts, dedicated to what my 1953 Webster’s defines as a “program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

Curious that today the word seems mostly applied to those who rally for beliefs with which we disagree. No forcible suppression, just public argument, and—boom—you’re a fascist. A whole political party is committed to overregulation of industry and commerce, but no, it’s the homeschool moms who are fascists. Climate change is the reason they want to take away your gas stove, but is that fascism? Stop being silly. It’s only fascism with other people do it.

This word like many others is used without meaning, showing our society to be closer to Orwell’s 1984 doublespeak than anyone wants to believe.

Book Banning: Maybe the problem isn’t that someone complains about a book, but that public schools exist at all. Neal McCluskey writes, “The very idea of ‘neutral’ education—education that favors no idea or worldview—is not itself neutral. Elevating ‘neutrality’ over worldviews that believe that some things are inherently good and others inherently bad, and that children should be taught what those are, is a values‐​driven decision, concluding that neutrality more valuable than teaching some things are right and others wrong.”

Banning Books: The American Library Association asks why they have to hide their efforts to indoctrinate our kids.

In the PEN America report, they state, “Hyperbolic and misleading rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ and ‘sexually explicit,’ ‘harmful,’ and ‘age inappropriate’ materials led to the removal of thousands of books covering a range of topics and themes for young audiences.”

Author: Anti-racistism author Ibram Kendi has used several million dollars on plans that have not materialized. Now, he’s laying off staff.

But enough of that stuff.

Poetry: This is delightful, the poem, the painting, and the recording of the poet’s voice. “My Wife, Sewing at a Window” by Eithne Longstaff

Comic books: Penguin Classics is publishing a Marvel collection of $45 hardback reproductions of the silver age stories of X-Men, The Avengers, and Fantastic Four. But wait, there’s more! They released three such editions last year: Captain America, Black Panther, and The Amazing Spider-Man. Gosh! Who could’ve thought they’d do something like that?

(Photo: The Donut Hole, La Puente, California. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Fiction

The Incredible Hulk Has Lost Some of the Incredible Part

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Fans of comic books and some of the Marvel shows and movies have been talking about where the writers have taken the Incredible Hulk character. They compare the Ed Norton Hulk, who looks enraged while standing still, and the Eric Bana Hulk, also a rage monster, to the Mark Ruffalo Hulk, who was last seen patiently listening to his She-Hulk cousin explain how being a woman enabled her to control her anger “infinitely more” than he could.

Years ago, we talked about the first Avengers movie and the controversy of Bruce Banner appearing to be able to transform on command. The point in the movie was the wildness of the Hulk. Banner could use the Hulk’s power to a degree, but if things got out of hand, the Hulk would bring even more chaos.

In Avengers: Infinity War, the Hulk is beaten into submission right out of the gate. This takes one of the strongest characters out of the picture to make room for many others who need a few seconds of their own. The movie proceeds to follow Thanos to each of the remaining Infinity Stones and half of the time sets up an identical scenario: Thanos threatens to abuse and kill one character unless another one forfeits a stone.

But what if Thanos’s brutal beating had caused the Hulk to go wild? Initially, he would appear beaten, Thanos would leave, and the heroes would plot their defenses. Then Thanos would confront a group about the stone they’re guarding, and a wild, uncontrolled Hulk would return with more rage than ever, turning everything to chaos. It wouldn’t be repeated bad decisions that give Thanos the stones in the end. It would be the impossibly strong Avenger who couldn’t be stopped.

This movie would have villain and anti-villain with a hoard of heroes to manage both. They could even have Captain Marvel fight him. She should be able to handle him for a while. Maybe Wanda Maximoff could even save him in the end by pulling him out of his rage.

Or he could be taken by the snap, in which case he’d have to come back as Bruce to give everyone a breather.

But I guess they’ve taken that wildness away from the cinematic Hulk to make him more of a team player.

Fiction, Reviews

Secret Wars, by Jonathan Hickman

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What would you do with omnipotence? What would you do if the universe had collapsed around you, everyone and everything had died, and you were now the omnipotent being who could put something back together again?

That’s the question in the final collection of issues in Jonathan Hickman’s lengthy story of Avengers, Illuminati, alien doomsdays, and multiversal collapse. (Finally, the end! See all previous posts by searching for Jonathan Hickman or other tags to this post.)

Secret Wars and Doctor Doom

At the end of Time Runs Out, the Illuminati team run out of options and devised a lifeboat that they hoped would save enough people to restart the human race, if that chance ever presented itself because they weren’t equipped to recreate anything. The man who was equipped for the task was the Fantastic Four’s arch-rival Victor von Doom. You could say he was in the right place at the right time.

With the help of Doctor Strange and The Molecule Man (who were with him at the aforementioned right time), he pulled together as many fragments of the multiverse as he could or wanted to into a small, planetary reality lamely called Battleworld. What I read in this Secret Wars collection is the metanarrative that holds many other stories together. I had thought to say the world wasn’t filled with battle and you could hardly call what happens here a secret war, much less wars, but I didn’t read the many other issues tied to this this set. Who knows what madness ran around in its diapers over there?

But here Doom, having reconstructed bits and pieces of Earth and the known universe, reigns as a god. He seems to have gotten everything he’s always wanted–worship, unbridled power, and Susan Richards, his enemy’s wife. But after a few years, scientists discover a lifeboat ship and Thanos and his crew are onboard.

The story works, and I’m glad it’s over. The only unsatisfying part of the conclusion for me is the complete avoidance of the rebirth and reconciliation of Captain America and Iron Man. Since so much time was spent on them in the third act, I thought Hickman would bring them into the fourth act. But the story shifted to the Fantastic Four characters, which was compelling on its own, and the inclusion of two Spidermen added a nice spice.

Fiction, Reviews

Avengers: Time Runs Out series, by Jonathan HIckman

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Great! Walk away! It doesn’t matter. You’ll be back.

But make sure when you do come back–because you need me–that it’s on your knees. Both of you! Repentant!

Because I can’t save any of you, unless you realize that you need saving! And that I’m the only one on this entire planet who can do it!

Avengers, Time Runs Out

In my last post on this apocalyptic Avengers series, Captain America went on a series of time jumps that appeared to clarify his moral compass. “I rescue the helpless. I raise up the hopeless.” That’s what he said. That’s what Captain America said.

And someone said to him that Tony Stark had caused a universal load of trouble for everyone and needs to be stopped.

The next set of issues, Avengers: Time Runs Out, Volume One, the story picks up eight months later, so yeah, a few gaps in the story would be fine. But why does Steve Rogers look thirty or forty years older and appear to have handed the mantle of Captain America to Sam Wilson (who is seen more on the character list page than any panel)? How did Thor lose his arm and what is this about being unworthy to wield Mjölnir? Did Bruce Banner take his own multiverse trip and bring back an alternate version of himself? As a casual comics reader, this is off-putting (there are other off-putting things I won’t mention).

The story told over this four volume collection doesn’t follow a linear pattern, which is mostly good. When you have so many characters doing so many things, it’s normal to tell the story slant with some flashbacks and revelations from conversations you didn’t see the first run through the timeline. Threats are reexamined and mysteries explored by characters revisiting what they understand and seeing it in new light. Hickman has an interesting, spralling story here.

But Steve Rogers is labeled the good man and life; Tony Stark is labeled the monster, death. And Rogers spends 90% of his time hunting his former friends and wanting to beat an apology out of Stark for lying about the end of the world. Stark is blamed for corrupting all reality and lying to the other Avengers that they had a chance to save Earth. “You knew we were all going to die!” Rogers charges him. “Say it! You lied about that and everything.” At one point, Rogers says that bringing the Illuminati team to justice was more important than anything else, completely forgetting that they would need to act when another planetary incursion comes. A little later he accused them of doing nothing over the last eight months to save the planet.

Of course, they had been knocking out various impossible things every day before taking an early lunch. That and running from their friends.

The story doesn’t run out at the end of Time Runs Out, Volume Four. No, sir. It just keeps going. Which is good in one sense, because the heroes had run out of options and everything actually dies. But I was left asking where was the man would not entertain necessary evils, who was committed to saving as many people as he could? When they learned of great cosmic destroyers–Rabum Alal, the Ivory Kings, the Mapmakers, and the Black Priests–how could they set that aside to blame everything on Tony Stark?

Fiction, Reviews

Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross

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Artist Scott McCloud writes of his friend Kurt Busiek and their enjoyment of comics as teenagers. He says they wrote a series together of an epic battle that destroyed their high school and many landmarks of their Lexington, Mass, hometown. He and Busiek had an agreement, he says, that he would write critically acclaimed comics and Busiek would write the popular stuff that made money, but with Marvels Busiek has produced an award-winning, fan-loving hit that has sold like lemonade on hot day in a freedom-loving town in these blessed states of America.

Marvels

Marvels tells the human side of living in New York City with superheroes, aliens, and mutants emerging in the world. Photographer Phil Sheldon hopes to land a gig as a war correspondent, but when the offer comes, he declines because The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner have begun to fight through the skies of their city.

“… repeat the latest developments: The Human Torch had imprisoned The Sub-Mariner beneath a sheet of flame in an update reservoir, but the undersea dynamo freed himself — even as the Army bombed his fiery prison!”

Phil: “Blast them! Look at us — just sitting here waiting! There isn’t a thing we can do — and this is our city! Our world! Who gave them the right to just come in and take it away from us?!”

Over four collected issues, Phil works through varying emotions about the “Marvels,” his term: who or what they are, public reaction, and his own responsibilities. He doubts, he fears, he falls into public outrage at the mutant X-men and hurls a brick at Ice-Man. Then he rallies and writes a book about them that features his photography.

I looked up this series collection after listening to a Stitcher podcast based on it. Marvels reads a bit like the story of a Frenchman who survives WWII rolling overtop of him. It doesn’t tell much of the many stories it references. We just see something blow up down the street and empowered people we may or may not recognize rushing toward it.

In one conflict between Galactus and The Fantastic Four that appears to spell the end of the world, Phil runs home to spend whatever minutes he has left with his wife and kids. But the world doesn’t end, because the Marvels save it with every ounce of skill and luck they have.

The book doesn’t end on that note, because not every hero’s story moves from victory to victory, and Phil’s emotional turns flow naturally as he and the world react to many fantastic events. Fans of golden age comic book superheroes will love this gorgeously produced tale of a photographer who fights to see to wonder in the age of supers.

Fiction, Reviews

New Avengers: Other Worlds and A Perfect World

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Jonathan Hickman put a poetic balance in his New Avengers: Illuminati tale of the end of universes. Several times we read Reed Richards saying, “Everything dies. You. Me. Everyone on this planet. . . . eventually the universe itself. This is simply how things are. It’s inevitable. And I accept it, but what I will not tolerate–what I find unacceptable–is the unnatural acceleration of that end.”

The select men who form the Illuminati fear they must do horrible things to avoid the death of their instance of Earth (explained in an earlier post). So far they’ve only had to destroy planets that were dead or dying. In Other Worlds, the Black Swan tells them of a device she calls a mirror that allows someone to see into realities or universes. Because in this type of sci-fi all you need is to conceive of a thing in order have a working device in the next few days, they build this device and begin scanning for incursion points on other Earths. In this way they see other societies with other heroes being invaded by the horrifically deadly agents they have only heard about: Mapmakers and Black Priests. In the second book, Infinity, they return to Black Swan after defeating Thanos, and she ridicules them. Why worry about a dog when you have a demon charging you? she asks, because what’s coming is irresistable death.

Avengers A Perfect World

It’s never clear whether she is shooting straight with them, and as the weeks burn up they see potential threats that only make them fear the worst. In A Perfect World the worst comes in the least acceptable form. The next world incursion is not filled with abominations but with heroes who could be their superiors. Are they willing to destroy a good world to save their own this time?

In this other version of Earth, we read Dr. Richards’ dialogue with a different spin from a Superman-like figure called Zoran, the Sun God.

“Everything lives. It lives before it dies and we are judged by what we do during that time. Like a brilliant, life-giving star, we illuminate the universe, chasing away the shadows. We create life and then celebrate that creation.”

After reading Zoran’s hopeful words, I thought they may right every wrong, even if it took turning back the clock. But now I see this is only part of a much longer story. It probably won’t turn hopeful or patch certain holes in character arcs. Maybe the bottom line comes from one of the characters, who said these men were not heroes but kings. Kings have authority from birth and do not reason within normal human morality; they commit necessary evil to defend their people, and even though you may be able to argue that certain acts were not necessary, if the people are safe, then the actions were acceptable.

That’s more like embracing the shadows than chasing them away.

Fiction, Reviews

The New Avengers: Illuminati by Bendis, Reed, and Cheung

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I put aside my reading of the New Avengers series to look at this collection of five issues called The New Avengers: Illuminati. I thought it was a prequel to the other series and it does begin that way, but somehow I got mixed up on publication dates. My library site has 2019, but these issues start in 2008 and may stretch to 2010-11, putting this book well before my current series.

But it begins as I expected. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, Tony Stark, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Charles Xavier, Stephen Strange, and Black Bolt have pulled together to tackle select work of a specialized nature in light of war between the Kree and Skrulls that spilled onto the Earth. Richards has called the meeting and tells them he has one (no, three) of the infinity gems. Oh, and a gauntlet. Understanding it would be super-dangerous for anyone to have all six gems, Richards suggests they are just the super-dangerous men to collect all six in order to keep them out of everyone else’s hands.

Avengers Illuminati

Of course, they collect the other three gems, and The Watcher shows up to say, “My job is to watch and record the universe’s defining events.” (I think he’s contractually obligated to say that.) “And, Reed, I am so disappointed in you.” He says no one should have all six gems, especially a human, so Reed distributes them to the team.

What could go wrong?

In the next issue, they deal with an entirely overpowered young man who just wants to have fun. Then they handle another young man who’s really, really mad at mankind. Finally, they talk over the implications of someone they’ve found and realized their efforts to end a future Skrull invasion have kicked open a remodeled level of Hell.

When I said that reading comic books usually involves hopping into the middle of some kind of story arc, this book has more open ends than a farmhouse in summertime. While it does set up the Secret Invasion series (which might have been nice to learn from the preface), as a whole this book is like watching five disconnected episodes in an evening marathon, the last of which is barely more than a cliffhanger scene.

Fiction, Reviews

Infinity by Hickman, Spencer, Latour, et al

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Earlier I said I was missing parts of the story being framed up in Jonathan Hickman’s New Avengers series, volume two, called Infinity. That missing part was something like the whole backside of a house. I feel as if I’ve read three Longest-Day-style war stories back to back, and I’m glad I didn’t borrow this collection of issues before reading Everything Dies. While that collection begins with a page telling part of a previously told story, those details introduced the opening scene neatly. Whenever you pick up a comic book that is not issue one, you should assume you’re stepping into the middle of a story at some point.

Thanos and Infinity

Infinity by Hickman, Spencer, Latour, and many illustrators begins at issue seven in the series I’ve been reading and issue fourteen in a separate series, so yeah, if I was inclined to be lost by characters I’ve never even heard scant rumor of, then I’d be lost like the shed key I thought I put in the drawer back in October and, I assume, has since been borrowed by the little people of the house.

There’s no way to summarize this book, but I can say its plot is instigated by the loss of the infinity gems I alluded to in the other post. When the gems were used, it appears at least three powerful beings, Thanos among them, noticed immediately. War is raging through the universe, and Thanos looks over Earth and sees an opportunity to accomplish one of his life ambitions–to kill his son.

The battles are legitimately marvelous, and Captain America shines as the man who sees the winning strategy when brute force has been beaten against the wall. But sometimes the more powerful characters appear to be holding back.

One young man, maybe fifteen years old, is known by many others as having great, cosmic power, but he doesn’t know it himself. So when he has to be coached into using his strength, there’s a sense to it; when other characters use their fists until they are almost struck down before ka-booom! they let loose their unique power, I’m left wondering why they didn’t do that to begin with.

I assume this book reflects Marvel’s mythological metanarrative accurately, but that narrative may not be neatly defined. There are plenty of cosmic beings, one of whom is a beautiful woman who apparently created everything. The great enemy that brings so many disparate empires and heroes together to oppose it claims to be agents of evolution, destroyers and creators as they deem appropriate. They note they were created by the universal mother and have since rejected her. At another time, as she lay unconscious, the heroes repeat the main refrain of these books, that everything dies–men, worlds, gods, and galaxies. We’re all just dust in the wind, I suppose.

So what’s the point of it all? asks a younger team member, an Australian named Eden. “How do you make sense of it? Fate? Faith?”

Continue reading Infinity by Hickman, Spencer, Latour, et al →
Fiction, Reviews

New Avengers: Everything Dies and Infinity

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I mentioned a few days ago that I was reading a series called New Avengers, and when I began considering what I could say that would be worth reading (a barrier to entry that you might say hasn’t stopped me before) I remembered some gaping plot points. A war is started and then shrugged off. A major cosmic villain appears and is suddenly neutralized behind the scenes. What am I missing?

I am missing another entire series that fills in the story. Why isn’t there a note at the end of one issue that the story continues in another series’, because when you finish issue 6 and pick up issue 7, you tend to expect the story to pick up with you.

Avengers Everything Dies

I’m reading the 2014 New Avengers series by Jonathan Hickman, a four volume set. This is the first cover, showing Steve Epting’s excellent artwork. Each volume has a different lead illustrator; all of them impressive. In Everything Dies, seven heroes who aren’t necessarily Avengers, if that term means something, gather as the secret rulers of the known universe, the Illuminati (which is the only name that can be given to that sort of group, even if no one ever uses it).

They meet because Black Panther witnesses a woman, calling herself a black swan, jump to our planet from another one that hung perilously above. She then detonates the first one, and swoosh, all returns to normal. She claims there’s a natural order to the multiverse (infinite parallel universes, infinite parallel realities), and while everything will eventually die, something happened on an Earth in a universe somewhere that caused it to come to an untimely end. That weakened the walls between universes apparently, because it led to two universes touching each other at their point of Earth. As you’ve likely seen in the news, when two universes reject social distancing guidelines, they eliminate each other.

When universes are eliminated, it bothers people, particularly those who wear the same form-fitting suit to work everyday.

The other Earth that the black swan dropped from was an Earth in its own universe. Soon another one will appear in the sky, and if one of the two planets is not destroyed quickly, both universes will perish. The heroes begin work on an early warning system, hoping to give themselves eight hours to save one or both universes. And then someone remembers he has an old infinity gauntlet in his car trunk, and since they have all the infinity gems already, why not try using it?

Continue reading New Avengers: Everything Dies and Infinity →