when you put it that way

Scholastic's Dynamite used to run a regular feature titled "Super-Heroes Confidential," much adored by my younger self yet completely forgotten about until I flipped through the recently purchased stack of mid-1970's issues of the defunct kiddie magazine.

It was a pretty nifty (and corporately ecumenical) method of genre evangelism from a time when kids were still the primary target audience for superhero comics. Each installment spotlighted a specific superhero -- mostly Marvel and DC characters, though I vaguely remember some representatives of the King Features comic strip stable getting face time -- with a smartly recolored reprint of the character's origin story followed with a single page FAQ covering other details and semi-pertinent information.

In a time before The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe or Who's Who in the DCU and the ready availability of comprehensive reprint collections, it offered the tykes a handy little infodump (and an opportunity to read otherwise unavailable material) to kindle the flames of nacent fandom...even if for only a short while.

The FAQ sections are especially priceless, as they attempted to distill months and years of often slapdash sequential storytelling into a couple of sentences of kid-friendly plain text. It may have escaped my notice at the time, but these nuggets of continuity-laden (and now, thanks to the endless circular grind of the medium, mostly out-of-date) trivia highlight the stupidity and absurdity of the genre in a manner that surpasses works such as Watchmen or Marshal Law.

For instance, check out this explanation of Captain America's romantic take on "family values," from a 1974 issue of Dynamite:

Naturally!
Jeepers, Cap, she's only (Agent) 13!

Roger McGuinn - American Girl (from Thunderbyrd, 1977) - I have nothing but the utmost respect for Roger McGuinn, both for his role in The Byrds and his subsequent solo career, but this baffling take on a Tom Petty classic is just wrong.....though not nearly as wrong as fucking the sexy younger sister of your middle-aged former flame.

Dead or Alive - Brand New Lover (from Rip It Up, 1987) - Don't look at me like that. Claim as much indie/punk rock cred as you want; we all have dance pop skeletons in our musical closets.

the assassin bug

No nostalgic or philosophical musings today, just a tip of the hat to one of the Great Moments in Comic Book History^TM: Captain America engaged in a life and death struggle with the VW Beetle that crashed though the window of his third-story Brooklyn apartment:

(from Captain America #222, June 1978; by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema, John Tartag, and Mike Esposito)
Was it meant to symbolize the American auto worker's sense of anomie as the industry attempted to cope with the flood of cheap, fuel-efficient imports?

Or was it another example of a writer jettisoning all pretense of plausibility in order to shoehorn an ill-considered "clever" idea into a story?

(Since it is the late Steve Gerber we're talking about, it could go either way.)

Tin Machine - Working Class Hero (from Tin Machine, 1989) - I've noticed that revisionist music historians have tried to make the claim that Bowie's Tin Machine phase was anything other than a embarrassing failure of colossal proportions. These revisionist music historians are out of their flipping gourds, as this mutilation of a beloved John Lennon track clearly illustrates.

Jimmy Edwards - Love Bug Crawl (from Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk and Rockabilly, 2006) - After his agent stopped taking his calls, Herbie was forced to paint himself purple and hire out as a contract killer in the late 1970's in order to fund his illegal fuel additive habit. A high-pitched "BEEP-BEEP" and the tinny hum of a four-cylinder engine revving up was the last thing many a snitch or mob rival heard before being cut down by a sub-compact angel of death.

Plymouth Rock would land on them

What I thought was a sinus headache has turned out to be something even nastier and more virulent, and I've spent most of the day feeling like I'm controlling my body via remote feed through a haze of electromagnetic interference.

My planned topic for today has been temporarily shelved. In its place are some highlights from the unsubtle, yet prescient What If? #44 (April 1984) -- "What if Captain America were revived today?" -- by Peter B. Gillis, Sal Buscema, and Dave Simons.

"...and the Federalist Society and the Project for a New American Century and the Board of Trustees of Regent College's Law School..." Actually, I'd be more comfortable with a secret ruling cabal that included 1930's movie serial villains, Revolutionary War re-enactors, and luchadores than with the one currently running the show.

"...and that's Giuliani's campaign strategy?" A tip of the hat to Cap for his clever decision to disguise himself as Billy Crocker.

The organizers of the White House Correspondents' Dinner thought they were making a "safe" choice by asking Cap to emcee. The video of his monologue went on to become the most viewed clip in YouTube's history.

The Cortinas - Fascist Dictator (from a 1977 single) - Straightforward, no-frills '77 Britpunk...and there's nothing wrong with that, really.

Ella Fitzgerald - Anything Goes (from Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, 1956) - This marks the second time I've used a track from Anything Goes, and it's not even my favorite musical. That honor is split between between Show Boat and Bye Bye Birdie. (Unless you consider Clambake a musical, though wise souls try not to consider Clambake, period.)

when it was over, where did you go

Poor Captain America, if only he was more familiar with MySpace, all this could have been avoided.

Unless you’ve been locked in a Faraday cage stuffed under a large boulder, you’ve probably heard the news that Captain America has been killed off in a grand PR gesture by Marvel. Mike Sterling has an excellent tongue-in-cheek summation of the meta/media circus over at Progressive Ruin. My favorite part:

Remember the 'Death of Superman' all those years ago? And all the hype around it? To this day, I encounter people who see the Superman comics on the rack and ask me, 'Superman comics are still around? I thought he was dead.' I just don't see the advantage to convincing a public that's barely aware of comics in the first place that your most recognizable, marketable characters are no longer being published, all for the sake of a storyline that'll be resolved in, at most, a few months!

I understand Marvel’s pragmatism in how they announced Cap’s death to the media (on the day the issue shipped, before most comic readers had even picked up the title), but it’s pretty telling about where superhero comics actually stand in relation to other, more popular and ubiquitous forms of media. You don’t see ABC promoting upcoming episodes of Lost or studio PR flacks hyping M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film by giving away plot twists in the headers of their press releases. It may have been a wise move on Marvel’s part, but it screams, “Yes, we still publish those things” to a public unaware (or apathetic) about superhero comics. It’s only a spoiler when someone cares.

Even though I’m well aware that this is “Comicstown, Jake,” Cap’s death – as impermanent as it will likely turn out to be – has still left me feeling a little wistful, because his title was technically the first comics series I ever followed. I say “technically” because it was a matter of fandom by proxy. My little brother was a fan of the character from a very young age, and while my nine year old self was pulling random bits of Bronze Age DC and Marvel silliness from the three-for-a-buck bins at a local flea market, my tow-headed five year old sibling sought out old issues of Captain America with a laser-like intensity.

Later, back in the room we shared, when I finished reading my short stack of Metal Men, Brave and the Bold, and From Beyond The Unknown, I’d turn my attention to my brother’s new finds, and read those as well. As I got older and more independently mobile, I’d pick up the current issue of Cap for him when it hit the racks at the local direct market shop (three miles away, on the other side of the Aberjona River valley, whose topography resembles an inverse parabola and made for one hell of a bike ride). I’d also, when finances permitted, also seek out some of the back issues that tied into whatever story was currently running in the title.

So even though I wasn’t a big fan of Captain America, I ended up having a better grasp on the character and his history than I did on many titles I was actually enthusiastic about.

My brother’s collection eventually ballooned over the years, and included complete collections of Cap’s own title and its precursor run in Tales of Suspense, nearly every crossover and guest appearance of the character in other series, and a huge collection of Captain America merchandise from lead painted drinking glasses to toy cars to (his personal favorite) a disturbing-looking Kewpie Doll wearing Cap’s costume. He even made the effort to track down the actor who played Captain America in the 70’s made-for-TV movies to get him to sign a publicity still taken from the first film.

It was the Marvel Knights relaunch of the series, a sprawling mess of nonsensical plots spun by a rapidly cycling series of creative teams, which finally led my brother to quit keeping up with Captain America, and new comics in general. (That says a lot considering he stuck with the title even through previous story arcs involving Cap becoming a werewolf or doing the chicken dance while under the influence of crystal meth.) He sold or auctioned off most of the Cap collectibles, along with large chunks of his post-Silver Age inventory of comics, and began concentrating on acquiring complete runs of Marvel’s 1961-1973 comics output. His reasoning was that if he was going to buy crappy comics, he might as well buy ones that are interesting and of some value rather that waste his money on a five minute read that would end up in a trade paperback or quarter bin in a few months’ time.

Ah, to be a sane Marvel fan during this particular era. It’s like being Roy Batty at the end of Blade Runner, sticking rusty nails through one’s hand in hopes of feeling something, anything. My advice is not to fight it; the apathy is a defense mechanism.

Vixen – Fallen Hero (from Rev It Up, 1990) – I suppose I should be ashamed, but I’m actually thrilled about posting this track.

The Business – Blind Justice (from Suburban Rebels, 1981) – I used to get shit from some folks over my largish collection of Oi records. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Oi compilations were the easiest way to get one’s hands on a lot of out of print UK82 punk material (mislabeled and used as filler on many of the comps).

Ashley MacIsaac – Captain America (from Ashley MacIsaac, 2003) – Dorian pointed this track out to me. “Sarcastic gay Canadian fiddler” (Wikipedia adds "controversial" to the mix): one of the most effective descriptions of a musician I’ve ever read, a string of words guaranteed to grab my attention and demand a listen. It’s a dig at American arrogance, so it would probably be more appropriate in reference to Ultimate Captain America.

“Surrender? You think this A on my forehead stands for France?”

“No, but given the sorry state of America’s public education system, I can understand why you might be confused about it.”