Honestly, if you thought that Ambush Bug thing was geeky…this one will make that one look like a beer commercial.
When Comics Writers Don’t Understand their Characters
I’ve been on a Doom Patrol kick recently, one that was only intensified by Gorjus’ recent ode to Grant Morrison and Alan Moore and by the team’s recent creepy-cool appearance in Geoff Johns’ suprisingly readable Teen Titans. In addition to picking up the trades of the Morrison run and bidding on the occasional archive editions that pop up on eBay (and usually losing those auctions), I’ve been scouring the quarter boxes for issues from the Alan Kupperburg late-80s revival that immediately preceded Morrison’s run, as well as picking up issues of New Teen Titans that involve the attempts of Beast Boy/Changeling—adopted son of DPers Elasti-Girl and Mento—to track down his adopted family’s killers and bring them to justice. Because they’re cheap and because I’ve got a mean completist streak, I’ve also been picking up old Titans issues featuring the Brotherhood of Evil, even when the stories are only tangentially related to the DP.
Which brings me to Teen Titans Spotlight #11 (June ‘87), “The Brotherhood is Dead,” story by R.J.M. Lofficier and art by Joe Orlando, both of whom have done better work. It is not a very good comic. The story itself has promise: Dr. Mist of the Global Guardians has manipulated the Brotherhood—including team leader The Brain and his super-intelligent French gorilla lackey Monsieur Mallah—into journeying to an alternate Earth, where they must aid a band of freedom fighters struggling to escape a dying planet, etc etc. Like I say, the premise is just fine, but the execution—well, it’s a bit lacking. The issue isn’t worth a full-scale deconstruction, but let me just note here the story’s most egregious howler.
Let’s read that again: “Of course it worked! That is why I am called The Brain!”
Really? Is that why? His brilliant tactical mind? His strategic genius? Something about that dialogue rings false. Is there, I wonder, another reason, another way he might have earned that moniker? Hmmm…perhaps a better picture of The Brain would help us. Perhaps one drawn by George Perez…
Oh right! He’s a brain in a jar with a little skull face and tiny casters on the bottom for him to scoot around! That may also have something to do with his sobriquet, the being-a-brain-in-a-jar thing. Do you think? Maybe a little?
On this subject, kind of, I was pleased to see that Johns and company are keeping the Morrison-created Mallah-Brain doomed romance plot alive. Indeed, it’s not just alive, but it’s driving one of the major plots in Teen Titans and The Outsiders—the Brotherhood is trying to clone a body for The Brain so that he and Mallah can finally be together. (Their mutual confession of love is from the classic Doom Patrol #34; that’s The Brain in Robotman’s body at the link there).
However, I find it just a bit disturbing that DC’s current most prominent (only?) gay male couple—that I know of—is comprised of a French super-gorilla and a brain in a jar, a brain to whom said gorilla has not just a romantic but also a paternal connection (since The Brain is the one in charge of expanding Mallah’s brain and has led him in The Brotherhood for so long). Something is amiss here. There seems to be an implicit suggestion that all non-heteronormative relationships are akin to bestiality and even incest—a connection that hysterical homophobes like Rick Santorum would be more than willing to embrace.
(Caveats, caveats: Yes, I realize than speaking of a brain-in-a-jar and a gorilla as a “gay male” relationship is troubling as well, but that’s the way it’s represented in the comics, and some folks on the internet, such as “The Gay League” site which I linked above, a site which bills itself as a gay tour through comics history, treat them as a gay male couple. I don’t know what to do with Renee Montoya or the much discussed Batwoman yet, except to note as many others have that comics fandom is much more likely to accept hot lesbians than it is gay men.)
I’m just saying.
Special Bonus Scan from DP #34: The Brain v. Robotman (whose brain is temporaily floating in a jar)!
Sure hope my family does something crazy but harmless soon.
i used to run a comic shop. or 3. anyway, guy walks in. “hey man. you like doom patrol? yeah, well i dunno. i hear its good and kinda weird. I’ve heard that there was a run a few years back (this is the very beginning of hte vertigo era).” The guy says ‘wait a minute.’ runs back to his car and leaves.
he returns and says ‘here you go’, handing me a complete run of Doom Patrol in mint condition, starting with G. Morrison run. just gives it to me. arguably nicer than the guy that once (12 years ago or so) traded me a 50 issue run of Hellblazer (no No. 1 issue, but i had that anyway) for…i swear to god…an unopened box of Knightfall POGS. he was SO FREAKING HAPPY. i mean, i MADE his day. i never undrstood pogs. like ‘shitty’ trading cards.
i actually went to a comic retailers convention (when the industry was big enought to support that) and met this nice couple waiting in line for something. it was interesting to hear the different store owner’s take on things. anyway, this nice couple was telling me about their business and how they had some extra money, so they figured they’d dump everything they had in this new POG thing that was coming out. they were ‘getting in on the ground floor’
shudder
I remember pittying them THEN. certainly they’ve moved on to greener pastures.
Nice write up prof.
For a fella who doesn’t even read comics, I find your takes on ‘em to be both refreshing and elucidatory, for while my interests include such throwaway things as charitable volunteering and performing with my local symphony, some of the heroes which garnered a holding on pop culture during the mid-nineties certainly do retain a warm and super place in both my heart and imagination—archangel, gambit, ninja turtles, etc.—
Food for thought, what is/could be Springsteen’s super power? I know you’ve considered it on sleepless nights.
Atomic Doggedness. No question.
your passage on the problematically “gay” relationship between the brain in the jar and the clever monkey is hi-fucking-larious.
OMG WTF, it totally is!! As a young lad, I thrilled to the sheer absurdity of that passage—it’s absolutely one of the wackiest things I’ve ever read. I loved what King Grant did for Mallah and the Brain—two of the flat-out weirdest characters ever—and I’m excited (and worried) about the Geoff (“Jeff”) Johns (“Ghons”) rubbing his grubby ham-hands all over them.
As Sue says, nice leap to Santorum insanity. Mallah is his lover and his son and a monkey! Awesome!
“Face to face in open combat.” Ha ha ha!
I’m there with Danny Chase. I don’t do comics, but your critiques are entertaining. The seeming obscurity of your topics is encouraging me to write down some thoughts I’ve been having on the symbollic meaning of Fafner’s relationship to Fasolt and what the building of Valhalla means. Not quite as good as gay relations in DC comics, but it too could be a real lead-in to family craziness.
O, Fafner and Fasolt!
What I find most interesting when comparing early (Slavic?) narratives with modern Western ones is the contrast between their uber-external conflicts, (giants fighting powerful so-and-so’s) which seem to merely indicate an inner realm, and our more modern preoccupation with the inner turmoil of existence in the midst of an external world killing itself to maintain its singularity—One nation under God and all that. Specifically, I’m speaking about the ideological climate of modern life, the difficulty in believing anything at all in our info-drenched world—legitimate ideological stances are so rare that all become suspect, and so anyone with a salvific confidence in their personal brand of belief must also carry a Herculean apologetic. And yet comics, with their ellaborate settings and characters, actually seem to attempt a balance of such extremes—the fractured hero.
Any comic lovers can pipe-in, but if comics can establish a place where a character battles extreme pressure both within and without, does that give us something valuable? Has it yet? Or does it merely water-down the very real difficulty of contemporary belief? O, and am I gay if I have a loving relationship with a (not nec. my) monkey?
Danny, I’d say Stan Lee and Jack Kirby predicated their entire company, Marvel, on just that supposition. The classic example is Spider-Man, the superhumanly-strong nerd who suffered constant indignity and loss as both hero and civilian (the death of Uncle Ben, the death of Gwen Stacy).
Under their tutelage, all heroes “battle[d] extreme pressure both within and without.” I think there is a value in that: it reminded us that even our myths, gods, and heroes could be vulnerable and human. It removed the yawning abyss between the democratically-elected bourgeouise of yesteryear (FDR, &tc.) with a feeling that “we could do it, too!”
Marvel Comics certainly grew up and alongside a “people power” movement, and I think the comics reflect that. What might be more noteworthy is how the various failures and weaknesses of the early characters are now erased: Spider-Man’s greatest fear, that his identity be disclosed, is now a moot point; Iron Man no longer has the crippling heart condition that tied him to his armor; the Hulk no longer struggles with his rages, but is simply one creature of balance, now; Thor has no need of the “humility-teaching” Don Blake identity; Bucky isn’t even dead, so Cap can’t worry over that.
So the question is to me, how is the growing “invulnerability,” or inhumanness, of our myths mirror our current society?
Perhaps it’s seen in our society with the profound emptiness implicit in much of our cultural output (with the wonderful exception of our ability to comodify damn-near anything, even beliefs/values!)
By creating myths that we ourselves have no capacity to achieve (whether it be myths of super powers or divine righteousness), I wonder if an unconscious aesthetic is being forged whose only characteristic is the binary between IS and ISNT—meaning, whatever is worshipable (the heroic, the Other, the salvific) belongs to the nonavailable ISNT, and that the only things left for our society to “worship” is the comidifyable entities like race, gender, class, belief—the very things God doesn’t even possess.
Thoughts?
Wow! This is a marvelous discussion. The discussion of myth and is vs. isn’t strikes cord with my reaction to the movie I say the other night that I’m sure everyone else in the world saw a long time ago, Crash. The piece is so interesting and comic-like, perhaps, in it’s attempt to create characters with the Yin and Yan out there on the sleeve.
I’ve got to go to the supermarket, but I must come back and read this again. Thanks Danny Chase, et al. I’ll comment more on the giants.
I wanted to chime in yesterday, but was out of time. I’m ashamed of the typos in the post I did make. Fury, are your Teen Titans related to the mytho-titans or Fafner and Fasolt of Das Rhinegold fame? The newest bio of Wagner, The Last Titan seems to beg some connection.
I was charmed by the depth of the interaction here, from fractured hero to the culture that leaves us without an attainable bridge between hidden self and sustainable worship. I’ve been working on something related to this and think that “fractured” and immolated Brunnhilde devoid of deity but embracing love moves in the direction that art, and theology (perhaps even comics) could stand to go.
Gorjus, what you identified as the loss of vulnerability within the comic hero genre is truly a loss. It is the vulnerability and the frailty that makes the hero, don’t you think?
Theologically, it is Jesus as wounded healer, suffering servant, crucified Lord, who helps to make me make sense of the world, much more than Jesus as perfect Superhero.
I’m seriously convinced Morrison was still on his drug kick when he wrote that issue. Drug-induced or not, it’s still the most hilarious thing in the history of this or any other Earth. For those who haven’t, you should really read the full issue. It’s even better IN context.
Also think he did the Brain/Mallah thing more for laughs than anything else. It was kept because DC has more respect for Morrison and his work than, say… Marvel.
I did notice the paternal ties as well. Their relationship could also be considered Pygmalion (taking something and molding it to your perfect mate; not sure what that says about the Brain…). But it’s still a fun, and by far more interesting couple than any other. People who see it as some kind of metaphor for the gay community as a whole are probably looking too deep into it. Morrison even defended the couple against some homophobe who wrote in (issue 39 letters), and stated that homosexuality is a “fact of life”.
Also, that issue was #34 The Soul of a New Machine. Just FYI.
Whoop! I’ll make that correction—thanks!
[...] superhero comic—let’s say it’s an all-out space battle between Gorilla Grodd and Monsieur Mallah, with the love of The Brain in the balance—and say “It’s like this was written [...]