all our yesterdays

My brother and I were discussing the controversial "One More Day" story arc, in which Spider-Man has had his marital status reset via diabolic intervention, the other night. Both of us are far past the point where we're capable of feeling outrage over the state of current superhero comics, so our focus was mostly on the blatant editorial-driven plothammering, the overall sloppiness of the plot reset, and the wave of self-righteous fan-ger that has followed in its wake.

That in turn led to a side discussion about how disproportionate outrage and stark raving lunacy have become the default settings for fan behavior in this internet age, especially (as a friend recently pointed out to me) since the ever-contracting audience for superhero fare means that the ratio between the hardcore lunatic fringe and the silent majority is closer to parity than it has ever been. And they're noiser. And they have access to all the opportunities "Web 2.0" provides as a wide-reaching soapbox from which to screech their rage.

I brought up the example of the old time letters page, the pre-internet delivery method for comics-related bile, adoration, and pedantry. While I acknowledged the heavily vetted nature of the venue, it still seemed to me that the individual responses tended to be on the sedate side. Even in something like the Detroit incarnation of the Justice League, an arc long considered synonymous with "failed relaunch," the negativity was mostly limited to quibbles and minor reservations, whereas a similar change to the status quo today would generate a digital lynch mob before the book even hit the stands. That's when my brother asked if I had ever read the letters pages in any 1960's issue of Amazing Spider-Man.

I hadn't, because my experience with those Silver Age stories came from the Marvel Tales reprint series or Essential collected editions, neither of which included ancillary material. "You ought to check them out," he told me. "They're crazy. Not crazy in today's sense, but still really bizarre." Since he's the one with the actual original issues, I asked him to send me some representative scans.

Here's a sample of what I received, from the back pages of Amazing Spider-Man #76 (September 1969). The old saying is true, there really is nothing new under the sun.

Above we have an early example of the "realist" school of the superheroic genre, a group of folks who think that frothy escapist fantasy should painstakingly reflect the dour and depressing state of the non-fictional world. Y'know, the world that folks read fantasy to get a little distance from in the first place. I'm not saying that there's no place for verisimilitude in escapist literature, or that books like Watchmen shouldn't exist. It's that the superheroic genre is predicated on healthy doses of suspension of disbelief and that cranking up the "realism" (which isn't that "real" at all, actually, in most cases) tends to bring the whole facade crashing down. Works like Watchmen succeed as occasional counterpoints and commentaries to the standard genre tropes, and I can count the number of creators talented enough to pull it off on a regular basis on the fingers of my right hand.

I have to wonder, though, what would have happened if there had been a massive fan demand for a Spidey 'Nam Stories series...

NEXT ISSUE: THE SWIFT-BOATING OF SPIDEY!
Some people find it surprising, but there has always been a conservative streak within sci-fi/fantasy, which is reflected in fandom. The original Buck Rogers stories were racist polemics against the "Yellow Peril." H.P. Lovecraft was an elitist bigot. I've mentioned those Sociology of Science Fiction books from the 60's I found in the college library, in which stories by progressive-minded "New Wave" writers were juxtaposed against the works of their socially conservative forebears. Norman Spinrad's satire on the fascistic nature of traditional sci-fi power fantasies in The Iron Dream was lost on a substantial number or readers, who took the tongue-in-cheek (if heavy-handed) story of racial purity as a straight-up adventure yarn.

So a member of the John Birch Society digging Spider-Man? No shock there. Considering the crude red-baiting content (which I assume is what the letter writer was referring to as "patriotism") in much of Marvel's early output, it's even less of a surprise. The question is, how did Marvel editorial react to a complaint that the SNCC (the group which gave us the Freedom Riders and played a part in organizing the March on Washington, two massive contributions to the Civil Rights movement) and CORE (another major player in the Civil Rights struggle, long since turned into a conservative front group) were being portrayed more favorably than a group that believes the United Nations is plotting a communist takeover of America and that the Civil Rights movement was a pretext for proletarian revolution organized by Walter Reuther and Bobby Kennedy?

With dissembling conciliation, of course. I know, I know -- the purpose of a publisher is to shift books, not engage in political debate, but still, the "in your corner/go USA!" part of the response is laid on rather thick.

Come to think of it, there is a link between paleo-conservatism and Spider-Man. Artist Steve Ditko, who co-created the character and drew the comic for the first thirty-eight issues, is a staunch proponent of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivist thought, strains of which run though the kindred ideologies of right-libertarianism and paleo-conservativism to this very day.

Again, to quote the Zep, it makes me wonder....

NEXT ISH: A EQUALS A -- BUT THE KANGAROO EQUALS TROUBLE!
Fun Boy Three - The Lunatics (Have Taken over the Asylum) (from Fun Boy Three, 1982) - I liked Terry Hall better when he wasn't trying to be Robert Smith.