Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: March 2023

31 March 2023

What Should Be Done about the Legion of Super-Heroes?: Reboot, Deboot, or Bendisboot

Okay, first some brief history. Well, brief as I can make it.

The original Legion in action.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #321
(script by Edmond Hamilton, art by John Forte)

DC's Legion of Super-Heroes has several distinct continuities. With characters like Superman and Batman, DC will tweak their origins and histories a little or even a lot, but keep it as one ongoing story. You have to squint to make the continuity work, but they (almost never*) totally start over. DC has taken a different approach to the Legion, perhaps because it's set in the far future of their universe and thus you can totally start it over without having knock-on effects for other characters. Periodically, DC just goes, "nope" and jettisons everything and goes back to the beginning. This has resulted in a few distinct periods of Legion history:

The Original Legion (1958-94). For its first thirty-five years, the Legion was one ongoing story. Sure, the continuity was massaged here and there, especially with the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but the Lightning Lad of 1994 was the same guy as the Lightning Lad of 1958.
The Reboot Legion (1994-2004). In 1994, DC started the Legion over again, retelling the story of the team's formation all over again. It was felt the original Legion's continuity had gotten too snarled, and the last couple years of the book were kind of a creative cul-de-sac. This incarnation of the Legion last just a decade.

The debut of the threeboot Legion.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1
(script by Mark Waid, art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

The Threeboot Legion (2005-09). In 2005, DC started the Legion over again again. I am actually not really sure why. Sure, sales had fallen off, but was there not a way to bring it back without another reboot? This version didn't last long at all; even leaving aside that it died after just four years, the last year of the title saw it rejigged to remove most of the aspects that made this incarnation interesting.
The Deboot Legion (2007-13). Barely two years into the threeboot, DC undercut it by beginning to bring back the original Legion, and soon that was the only version they were publishing. Confusingly, DC didn't just roll back to the status quo of the original Legion where it had left off in 1994, but actually to 1986, so now you have two divergent versions of the original Legion. Somewhat surprisingly, DC largely let this version keep going forward through The New 52 with only minor tweaks.
The "Bendisboot" Legion (2019-22?). The Legion lie fallow for several years before DC finally brought it back with Brian Michael Bendis at the helm, starting over completely for the third time. The Bendis version seems to already be dead after just twelve regular issues and ten issues of various miniseries.

This raises the question: what comes next? Fans post this a lot on the Legion subreddit, of which I am a member. Should a new version of the Legion keep going forward from where Bendis left off? Should it go back to an earlier incarnation of the Legion? Should it totally start over again?

Princess Projectra tries to explain reboots to Superboy.
from All-New Collectors' Edition #C-55
(script by Paul Levitz, art by Mike Grell & Vince Colletta)

Many people seem to think it should totally start over. To me, though, this seems like the kiss of death. You can see from my dates above that the "reboot cycle" keeps contracting. The first version of the Legion lasted forty years, the second ten, the third five, the deboot six, and the fourth just three. I think it makes it hard to invest in any new version of the team if you think that as soon sales go a little south, DC will just toss out that version and start over again. I dutifully picked up every issue of the Bendis run as it came out, but if some totally new version came along next year, it would be a hard sell for me: I would need a really good creative team and premise to convince me to jump on board again.

As I said at the beginning of this essay, there's no other superhero premise DC does this kind of thing to on a regular basis. When Green Arrow starts getting a bit crap, DC doesn't totally start over, they just had it over to a new creative team who handles Green Arrow in a new way, but the previous run implicitly still happened even if it doesn't get referenced much. One of the things that draws me to superhero comics to begin with is how they are these weird, never-ending, eternally twisting stories across time. Green Arrow goes from being a rich playboy to a social crusader to an urban hunter to dead to a man trying to rebuild his life to a married globetrotter, but it all happened to the same guy! The Legion had this for forty years and built up an incredible history, but then it lost it all and it will never get it back if it keeps following this route.

Supergirl says goodbye to the threeboot continuity.
from Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #36
(script by Tony Bedard, art by Dennis Calero)

You could also bring back some earlier version of the Legion. Mark Waid did a recent interview where he opined you couldn't roll back the Legion now, because Bendis added a lot of racial diversity, and so any creator who brought back an earlier team would be accused of sweeping the diversity away. With all due respect to Waid, who is one of my favorite comics creators, and who has somehow managed to have multiple different strong Legion runs across different continuities, I don't buy this at all. DC displaces new nonwhite versions of characters in order to bring back the original white ones all the time! I'm not sure why having done this to Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Batgirl, &c., &c., they'd suddenly draw the line at getting rid of the black Lightning Lad.

I agree with Waid, though, that this shouldn't be done, even if I don't agree with his reasoning. The obvious continuity to bring back is the original one... but as of when? The original circa 1994, ignoring the deboot? The original circa 2013, continuing to ignore 1986-94 of the original? The original circa some kind of perceived golden age, ignoring everything since? (Almost certainly that would be the hallowed Levitz/Giffen run.)

Superboy finds out the future has been debooted.
from Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1
(script by Geoff Johns, art by George Pérez)

Again, this feels like a bad option. It's fundamentally nostalgic. You know what will really convince new readers to give this superhero team a try? Telling them it's just like it was ten/thirty/forty years ago! And thanks to the deboot, it's a really confusing bit of nostalgia. It's one thing for DC to go, "we've chucked the New 52 Superman and are bringing back the post-Crisis one from five years ago," but to bring back the original Legion requires you to chuck the chucking of the thing you chucked!

Reddit is dominated by millennials, so the Legion sub there has a lot of 1990s nostalgia, which I haven't seen elsewhere. (I think most Legion fans on the Internet come across as though they are retirement age and like it's never been quite as good as it was in 1963.) So there I've seen a lot of calls for the reboot to come back. I think this has the same problem as above. It's one thing to roll back a recent continuity change to bring back an "original" character, it feels like another thing to bring back a continuity that was jettisoned thirty years ago. Again, needing to convince a reader to jump on to the revival of a thirty-year-old premise seems like an uphill battle at best!

(Although, if some wanted to bring back Waid's threeboot, which is my favorite clean restart of the Legion, and I think poorly served, I wouldn't object.)

"Trust me, it's all the other continuities that are lies."
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #516
(script by Paul Levitz, art by Kevin Sharpe & Marlo Alquiza)

So, okay, what's left. Well, I know this is a controversial option, but I think the Bendisboot should keep going. Yes, I think he made some bad creative choices... but so what? Comics creators make bad creative choices all the time, the next creative team just comes along and ignores them or tweaks them. Someone continuing from Bendis can use the elements of his approach that worked and jettison the ones that didn't, jumping things ahead a bit. Personally, I would streamline the team a bit and bring more a genuine character focus; one of the issues I have with Bendis's version is there are a million characters and I feel like I know none of them. But you don't need to start over to solve that problem.

One of the thing that makes the Legion work—indeed, that makes any superhero character work—is the way they accumulate a history. The Legion used to have a history of almost forty years. I think it could again. Fans might call it the "Benisboot" right now for the lack of a better name, but he doesn't have to define it exclusively, any more than Otto Binder and Al Plastino defined the original team. Let's see if we can have a version of the Legion that runs from 2019 to 2054! But barring that, I'd settle for a good decade or two.

* For example, the post-Crisis Wonder Woman continuity totally erased the pre-Crisis one, though this was later rolled back. The New 52 eliminated a lot of heroes' histories, but my understanding is these later came back in some form, though I mostly gave up on DC by that point.

29 March 2023

Doorway to Hell (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 40)

Doorway to Hell: Collected Comic Strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Mark Wright, Staz Johnson, Mike Collins, David A Roach, and John Ross

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016-17
Acquired: December 2017
Read: December 2022

The twelfth Doctor has settled down for a time, stuck in one time and place. His new companion is a young, college-age black woman, to whom he acts as a bit of a teacher. Plus, his oldest enemy is trapped with him.

No, it's not series ten... it's DWM issues #501 to 511! It is a bit amazing how much this is like what would be done on screen a year later. "Great minds," one supposes, but it's a set-up that really works in both cases.

Reading the comic, I have come to look forward to those periods where the television programme is off screen for protracted runs. Even though the comic is usually solid when the show is on, the energy of a complete run with its own connections and themes makes it greater than the sum of its parts—and it's most often these sequences that reward rereading in collected form.

The Pestilent Heart, from Doctor Who Magazine #501-03 (Aug.-Oct. 2016)
story by Mark Wright, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A Roach, colour by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This is the story that has to reunite the twelfth Doctor with Jess Collins from The Highgate Horror, strand the Doctor in the 1970s, and establish a new status quo. Its strength is definitely its first installment, where Jess goes after the enigmatic Doctor she remembers from Highgate Cemetary; the later-era Peter Capaldi Doctor is perfectly presented here, funny and acerbic. Once the plot gets underway I found it all a bit less interesting, to be honest, and when the bird creatures appeared in a grave, I was a bit confused until I realized they were totally different bird creatures to the ones in a grave from Jess's first story!

from Doctor Who Magazine #504

Moving In, from Doctor Who Magazine #504 (Nov. 2016)
story by Mark Wright, art by John Ross, colour by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

Now this is where this run and its premise begins to sing. This is told in the form of four three-page vignettes, as the Doctor interacts with each member of the Collins household: father Lloyd, mother Devina, son Maxwell, and of course Jess. They're all nicely executed bits of characterization, but the best of all is the Doctor arguing about superheroes with Max. "Detectives aren't clever! What's clever about solving crimes after they happen? 'Ooh, look at my amazing powers of hindsight!'" John Ross is usually tapped as DWM's action man (see last volume for a prime example), but he's amazingly deft with the character work here: good facial expressions, really captures Capaldi's performance and brings the whole family to life. This is the kind of thing only the strip could do, and all the better for it.

from Doctor Who Magazine #506

Bloodsport, from Doctor Who Magazine #505-06 (Dec. 2016–Winter 2016/17)
story by Mark Wright, art by Staz Johnson, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

This is a fine story. Solid but unspectacular... alien hunters come to London, the Doctor must persuade them to depart. It's the exact kind of thing that benefits from the overarching set-up, because Jess and Max and the blundering cop are what make the story work, as real people around the Doctor trying to get out.

from Doctor Who Magazine #507

Be Forgot, from Doctor Who Magazine #507 (Jan. 2017)
story by Mark Wright, layouts & inks by David A Roach, pencil art by Mike Collins, colour by James Offredi, letteting by Roger Langridge

I like that Christmas strips have become a thing, but not too regular of a thing so that they don't feel repetitive when the graphic novels are read in quick succession. I am, however, not sure what I think of this one. You think the Collinses' neighbor is being controlled by a monster, but it turns out to be a hallucination brought on by grief. It's trying to say something important... but is this how grief and mental illness work? Feels a bit cheap. But I did like the last page a lot, where Devina throws a Christmas party for the whole street.

Doorway to Hell, from Doctor Who Magazine #508-11 (Feb.-May 2017)
story by Mark Wright, art by Staz Johnson, colours by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

It all comes to a (premature, I would claim; more on that soon) end with this story, a nice little epic where the Roger Delgado Master goes after the twelfth Doctor, mistaking him for a new incarnation after the third. There are two great cliffhangers, good character moments, nice dialogue, impressive hellish art from Staz Johnson, and a nice coda. It's all very well done, and DWM makes one of its rare bids for depicting a key tv-continuity moment with the regeneration of the Master. I liked it, and like all the stories, it's better because of its context.

from Doctor Who Magazine #509

I said above that this run is a lot like series ten. There's another way it's like series ten: its set-up feels like it could have been a storytelling engine for a lot longer than it was. I always think we needed a second series of the Doctor and Bill at St. Luke's; I would have liked to have had at least one more story of the Doctor with the Collinses. It very much seems like there ought to have been at least one more "regular" adventure at least between Be Forgot and Doorway to Hell.

Stray Observations:

Sometimes Roger Langridge is credited with "lettering," other times with "letters." This must not bother him, as he's the one who has to write it each time, so if it did, he could fix it! (Similarly, sometimes James Offredi is credited with "colour" and other times with "colours.")
Jess remembers the Doctor used to travel with Clara, of course, but as per "Hell Bent," he does not. So when she brings it up, he's confused... but oddly not curious. I guess in some way, he knows it's something he's better off not knowing, but it does read a bit off. That said, there wouldn't be a way to bring Jess back without this bit of awkwardness.
Staz Johnson is the first new artist to debut in DWM in quite some time, the first since Paul Grist way back in #414, ninety-one issues prior. This is the longest gap between new artists in DWM history, beating out the previous record when Tim Perkins debuted in issue #130, the first new artist since John Ridgway forty-two issues earlier. He is, on the other hand, the first DWM artist not to contribute to the commentaries that I can remember! (At least, since the detailed commentaries were introduced.) He's done some work for DC and such, but I know him best as one of the primary artists of the later, black-and-white years of the Transformers UK comic strip.
Don't confuse Be Forgot the Christmas comic strip written by Mark Wright with with "...Be Forgot," the Christmas short story co-written by Mark Wright. I guess if you have a good title, you can't afford to turn it down even if you've used it before!
Wright talks about suggesting era-appropriate actors to Staz Johnson to model characters on; Katya, the Master's henchlady in Doorway to Hell, is clearly Jacqueline Pearce!
"JUST A TRACER" WATCH: The rare DWM graphic novel where everyone who worked on it gets cover credit!

This post is the fortieth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Daleks: The Ultimate Comic Strip Collection, Volume 1. Previous installments are listed below:

27 March 2023

"With the sleekness of a jungle beast, the Prince of Wakanda stalks both the concrete of the city and the undergrowth of the veldt, for when danger lurks he dons the garb of the savage cat from which he gains his name! The BLACK PANTHER!"

from Black Panther vol. 1 #3
(script & pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer)

With the cancellation of Jungle Action, the Black Panther was available for Jack Kirby to take over upon his return to Marvel in the late 1970s, giving the character his first self-titled series. Black Panther vol. 1 lasted fifteen issues from 1977 to 1979. It's not clear to me reading it if Kirby even really knew what had been done with the character he co-created after him; there are some footnotes pointing the reader to information from the Black Panther's appearances in Avengers, but in the Kirby-written issues I didn't notice a single reference to anything written by Don McGregor.

This run is much-derided but to be honest, even weak Kirby is still great stuff. It is a bit of a jarring transition to go, as I did, straight from Jungle Action vol. 2 #24 to Black Panther vol. 1 #1: one minute, T'Challa is being beat up by white supremacists in the American Deep South, the next minutes, he is travelling in the company of a monocled dwarf adventurer named Abner Little in search of a frog statue than can send people through time. Abner is one of a group of collectors of rare artifacts, and T'Challa must work with him—despite Abner's own ruthlessness—to stop other collectors, especially Princess Zanda, from exploiting the frog... and to send a hyper-evolved human being from the year six million back to its own time!

from Black Panther vol. 1 #2
(script & pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer)

In the first issue, I was faintly baffled; by the second, I was on board. Sure, this wasn't nothing like the dark poetry of Don McGregor... but one of the big reasons I love superhero comics is how they can constantly reinvent themselves. Kirby is the king of weirdness and the continuing strange turns of the collectors story arc (issues #1-7) are a delight: soon T'Challa and Abner are infiltrating a hidden enclave of immortal samurai! Like, why not? This isn't peak Kirby, but like I said, even middling Kirby is fun to read. (This must have seemed so old-fashioned in 1977-78, though.)

The second story arc shifts the action back to Wakanda; T'Challa mentions he's been gone a long time, so presumably he hasn't been home since before the "Panther vs. the Klan" story arc that began in Jungle Action #19. A regent named N'Gassi has been ruling in the Panther's absence, but General Jakarra, T'Challa's half-brother, has begun a coup. With T'Challa still away, N'Gassi summons distant members of the ruling family from around the globe: a medical student, a racecar driver, and so on.

from Black Panther vol. 1 #12
(script & pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer)

Again, people seem to deride this, but I kind of liked it. The idea of T'Challa having an estranged half-brother is a good one... though admittedly not much is done with it, and nothing carries over from McGregor's vision of Wakandan politics to Kirby's. But the idea of these pretty ordinary people having to learn how to work together to defeat a vibranium-mutated Jakarra is a great one. (Unfortunately, however, they dub themselves "the Black Musketeers.") Meanwhile, T'Challa keeps encountering delay after delay in reaching Wakanda. One or two of these would have been fine, but they do pile up to beggar belief. I did, however, love the one where he ends up trapped by a science fiction film shooting in the Sudanese desert: a very topical reference to Star Wars.

The last few issues of Kirby's run are a bit of a fizzle, as with Jakarra defeated, a new villain is introduced, who sucks the life force from people. And then, I guess, Kirby must have abruptly left the title, as issue #13 wraps up that storyline, but is by a totally different creative team in a totally different style: Jim Shooter, Ed Hannigan, Jerry Bingham, and Gene Day. I didn't like how they had the Black Panther fail to rescue most of the people the villain had captured.

from Black Panther vol. 1 #14
(script by Ed Hannigan, art by Jerry Bingham & Gene Day)

The new creative team (minus Shooter) continues on for the series's last two issues, which abruptly change the set-up. Now T'Challa is setting up an embassy in the United States to bring an end to Wakandan isolationism, and he ends up working with the Avengers to battle the villain from his very first appearance, the Klaw. I didn't feel like the Klaw's plan made a lot of sense even by supervillain standards, and it was very jarring to me for T'Challa to be palling around with the Avengers. (I know he'd appeared in a lot of issues of Avengers by this point, but I haven't read most of those.) I get that Klaw is Black Panther's first villain, but... he kind of sucks, right?

Hannigan does bring back a couple characters from McGregor's run: Monica, Kevin, and Windeagle cameo, foreshadowing a much-deferred resolution to the Klan storyline. Unfortunately, issue #15 was the last of Black Panther vol. 1. This storyline would eventually appear in three issues of Marvel Premiere, but those weren't in the comiXology sale I got all my Black Panther comics from and don't appear in any of the collections available on Hoopla, so I won't be reading them. (Other reviewers, however, have not been kind. It does seem pretty baffling that Marvel actually tied up a three-year-old storyline from a series cancelled for low sales!)

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

24 March 2023

Reading The Yellow Knight of Oz Aloud to My Son

The Yellow Knight of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill

Sir Hokus of Pokes is one of my favorite Oz characters, introduced back in Royal Book of Oz as an Arthurian knight who was trapped in a city in Oz for centuries until freed by Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. He has a great fish-out-of-water vibe, expecting things to operate according to the conventions of medieval romance (he's always hoping to slay a dragon or rescue a lady, but in Oz the ladies mostly rescue themselves), but he's dependable and stalwart. Plus he's always exclaiming things like "Uds daggers!"

Originally published: 1930
Acquired: October 2022
Read aloud: November–December 2022

So I was looking forward to a Sir Hokus focus novel, and I think so was my son. The novel starts quite promisingly: Sir Hokus wants to go on a quest, but all the inhabitants of the Emerald City want to come with him, and he's too polite to say "no," and soon it's not going to be a proper quest at all... if the bizarre inhabitants of the Emerald City can even get organized enough to actually get started. So, Sir Hokus sneaks away in the night to do it right. He ends up almost marrying a swamp queen and befriending a giant turtle. He and the turtle, Ploppa, have a great rapport... but as Sir Hokus loves quests and Ploppa loves swamps, they can never be together, alas.

But I think my son always struggles with the ones without a kid viewpoint character. The kinds of things Sir Hokus wants (a wife, to understand his forgotten history) don't really resonate for a four-year-old. Most Oz books are careful to send their weird characters off with a child viewpoint: Woot in Tin Woodman, Bob Up in Cowardly Lion, Betsy Bobbin in Hungry Tiger. Sir Hokus is human... but he's not really a viewpoint character, it's like how Doctor Who always has to have a companion. There is a boy named Speedy introduced as a child protagonist here, but he doesn't meet up with Sir Hokus until pretty late in the narrative. And besides, my son likes the girls best! Perhaps that's why it took us almost two months to get through this one. (I am less certain about his attitude toward the Oz books than I was six months ago. Sometimes he is quite enthusiastic; sometimes he asks me when we're going to be done as though reading them is some kind of prison sentence. Recently he told me he wanted to read Wonderful Wizard again. Maybe he is just more simpatico with Baum than Thompson? He was so young when we started that if we ever do go back to the beginning, it will be as though he never read any of them!)

Like many Thompson novels, there are enchanted people and kingdoms here. In a corner of the Winkie Country, five centuries ago, the Sultan of Samandra enchanted two neighboring pocket kingdoms, Corumbia and Corabia, transforming their inhabitants, destroying their castles, and especially getting rid of the prince of Corumbia (the titular yellow knight) and the princess of Corabia; they were due to be married, and the Sultan incorrectly feared the resulting united kingdom would destroy his. If you've read any Thompson novel, you won't be surprised that 1) everything gets disenchanted largely because of a series of coincidences, and 2) that the missing royals are both members of the adventuring party. Specifically, the missing princess is Marygolden, a statue Speedy brings to life on his travels, and the missing prince is of course Sir Hokus, who ends the novel transformed from a comedy old Arthurian knight into a generic young fairy-tale prince.

What a mistake! I don't really care about the enchantment of Marygolden, but to take one of the two most interesting characters added to the Oz pantheon in the past nine books and replace him with a boring one? When I explained to my son what had happened (he didn't get it at first), he flatly rejected it. And making Sir Hokus into an Oz inhabitant, rather than an actual Arthurian knight, is a retcon that technically fits with the letter of what we learned about his history in Royal Book (that he was from England was a guess by Dorothy), but not the spirit. And besides, it violates Mollmann's Law of Retcons: "The new history must be at least as interesting, if not more interesting, as the old history being replaced." It is hard to care about the enchantment of these two kingdoms, and I know my son struggled to follow all the relevant backstory.

All that said, there's stuff to like. This book gives us Speedy, Thompson's second recurring boy protagonist after Peter (from Gnome King and Jack Pumpkinhead). Peter is fun, but I like Speedy more: he's got his essentialist ideas about gender just like Peter, but he's willing to listen to people, and works things out cleverly in a way Peter rarely does. Less brash, more what I expect from a kid in an Oz story. Speedy is sent to Mars on a rocket by his inventor uncle (!), but when the rocket turns around, Speedy crashes through the crust of the Earth into an underground country called Subterranea. I found this place pretty boring, but when he gets out, he's in Oz of course, and he has some good escapades with Marygolden, particularly in the country where people go from babies to old men and back again in the course of hours. I also liked Stampedro, the Yellow Knight's steed; Thompson always does well by horses, I reckon. (Which makes it even more of a shame she doesn't care a jot for the Saw-Horse.) It's nice for the Comfortable Camel to make a return, and we hear about his backstory too, but the Doubtful Dromedary sits out the entire story, alas.

So overall, one of Thompson's lesser efforts. Not as consistently fun as some of her others, not as kid-friendly for a variety of reasons, and based on a fundamentally bad premise. I am sorry this means no more appearances by Sir Hokus ever again. (Though I understand he pops up a couple times regardless. We shall see.)

Next up in sequence: Pirates in Oz

22 March 2023

The Highgate Horror (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 39)

The Highgate Horror: Collected Comic Strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Mark Wright, David A Roach, Mike Collins, Jacqueline Rayner, Martin Geraghty, et al.

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 2015-16
Acquired: January 2017
Read: December 2022

The strip continues its use of rotating creative teams throughout the twelfth Doctor and Clara era. Since The Crimson Hand, the strip has always tried to do an ongoing strand when the show is off the air for protracted periods of time, but it is less consistent about if it tries to do this when the show is on. Yes, ongoing stories for the Eleven/Amy and Eleven/Clara runs, no ongoing stories for the Twelve/Clara run. I wonder what determines this? Well, presumably Scott Gray knows how to make the magic...

Space Invaders! / Spirits of the Jungle, from Doctor Who Magazine #484 & 489-91 (Apr., Sept.-Nov. 2015)
stories by Mark Wright and Jonathan Morris, art by Mike Collins & David A Roach and John Ross, colour by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

These two stories perhaps exemplify the fault with the rotating creative team approach. This isn't to say that the stories are awful or anything—I feel a bit bad picking on them, to be honest—but they are also not up to much. Space Invaders! has a fun premise of the Doctor and Clara being in a gigantic space storage facility, but I don't feel like it does anything fun with it, as it basically becomes a fight between them and a giant monster. Similarly, Spirits of the Jungle is crammed with ideas and action, but the ideas are mostly just there; the story doesn't really do anything of note with the idea of a living jungle, or Clara encountering a Danny Pink simulation, or what have you. The fakeout ending is all too obvious: this is an area where the regular page length of a DWM strips lets the twist down. Clearly the story isn't going to wrap up on page three! It would be more effective to trick the reader into thinking it's a two-parter, and then having a cliffhanger at the end of part two.

from Doctor Who Magazine #492

The Highgate Horror, from Doctor Who Magazine #492-93 (Dec. 2015–Winter 2015/16)
story by Mark Wright, art by David A Roach with Mike Collins, colour by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

This is a solid enough story. Lots of atmosphere as the Doctor and Clara battle vampires in a spooky cemetery, aided by future companion Jess. But the ending—as I feel like is often the case with these two-part stories by inexperienced comics writers—seems to come out of nowhere. Like, it's ten pages of solid horror, and then the Doctor's like, "oh this previously unmentioned time thingummy can fix all out problems." But David A Roach really nails it, of course.

The Dragon Lord, from Doctor Who Magazine #494-95 (Jan.-Feb. 2016)
story by Steve Lyons, art & colour by Adrian Salmon, lettering by Roger Langridge

"Adrian Salmon, draw dragons." Well, of course it looks great. But to be honest I found the story a bit of a muddle, and got lost, especially as the Doctor seemed very angry for reasons that I never really grasped.

from Doctor Who Magazine #496

Theatre of the Mind, from Doctor Who Magazine #496 (Mar. 2016)
master of ceremonies: Roger Langridge, lighting by James Offredi

Roger Langridge has been a recurring artist on DWM since Happy Deathday in 1998, and the main letterer of the strip since TV Action! in 1999. But Langridge is also an accomplished writer of comics, something I know from his short, lamented, but very good 2010-11 run on Thor. Here for the first time in seventeen years at DWM, he writes as well as draws... and the the result is excellent, the first strong strip in what was shaping up to be a bit of a lackluster volume. The Doctor meets old friend Harry Houdini... and of course battles aliens. Langridge has a great grasp of character voice, some good gags and imagery, and real economy of storytelling. Everything here shines in both writing and art. His caricatured style is good for capturing Peter Capaldi, of course, but I was also surprised to realize that he probably does the best Jenna Coleman of all the DWM artists?

Witch Hunt, from Doctor Who Magazine #497-99 (Apr.-June 2016)
story by Jacqueline Rayner, pencil art by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A Roach, colours by James Offredi, lettering by Roger Langridge

This story I had a dim memory of reading as it came out (which was not true for the other stories here, most of which I had completely forgotten)... and I was surprised to find Clara's last DWM adventure an absolute delight. A Halloween-themed fundraiser at Coal Hill School goes horribly wrong when Clara—dressed as a witch—is sent back to the era of the witch hunts and hunted by the real Witchfinder General! It looks great of course (Clara in a simple black witch outfit is perfect) and is packed with lots of great moments: "curses" start working... but the Doctor is able to use that to his advantage by picking up a penny and giving himself luck. Clara in prison is a tour-de-force of illustration from Martin Geraghty and David Roach. There's lots of whimsy here mixed with real peril, especially when the Doctor must face down Miss Chief, a seemingly omnipotent entity who just really really gets on his nerves, the kind of enemy that Peter Capaldi's Doctor sparkles facing down. Lots of good gags, strong character moments. Jac Rayner is rapidly emerging as a new talent on the DWM strip.

from Doctor Who Magazine #500

The Stockbridge Showdown, from Doctor Who Magazine #500 (July 2016)
story by Scott Gray; art by Dave Gibbons, Roger Langridge, Adrian Salmon, Dan McDaid, John Ross, and John Ridgway; pencil art by Mike Collins and Martin Geraghty; art & inks by David A Roach; colours by James Offredi; lettering by Dave Gibbons and Roger Langridge

Five hundred issues of DWM... commemorated by a twenty-page strip featuring Sharon, Max Edison, Izzy, Frobisher, Destrii, Majenta Pryce, (kind of) Chiyoko, Dogbolter, and Hob! With art by all the most prominent current members of the DWM art team, but also bringing back Dave Gibbons and John Ridgway! Like, what can you say against or even for such a celebratory jam? It also gets in references to DWM's two dead companions, Sir Justin and Gus... and the Gus moment is the emotional heart of the strip. "No one ever remembers Gus. Except me." This is what I think elevates it, not just using the strip's history as a source of continuity, but delivering a surprise character moment. "You see, I'm not on your list, Dogbolter... you were on mine." Finally, 413 issues later, the Doctor brings Dogbolter to justice.

from Doctor Who Magazine #500

It's got lots of nice moments beyond that. It's great to see a sure-of-herself Izzy, and the bit where she points out that of course she's reconciled with her parents is great; it's nice to see her and Destrii getting along; it's good to see Destrii at all (though we don't know what she's been up to) and Majenta Pryce using her powers for good. Max gets his moment in the spotlight, and we even get to visit DWM's other mainstay of a setting, Cornucopia. The way each artist is assigned their own two-page spread is very well done; we finally get to see Dan McDaid draw Majenta again, for example.

A well-earned and well-done celebration of five hundred issues. I mean, c'mon... they got Dave Gibbons to come back!

Stray Observations:

I think I'm getting good at pegging when David Roach is collaborating with Mike Collins and when he's not. Their styles are very sympathetic, but there's some slight differences when Roach isn't inking over Collins's pencils.

from Doctor Who Magazine #497

At thirty-eight issues, Clara has the third-longest run of any comic strip companion, behind only Izzy and Frobisher, and just edging out Amy. Not sure I would have guessed she had the longest run of any tv companion! But it kind of makes sense; there were some big hiatuses in Clara's tv tenure. (Note that this doesn't mean she appeared in all thirty-eight issues of the era, just that she was the companion for that period.)
Scott Gray totally ignores the fact that Dogbolter was seemingly killed off in Death's Head #8. Look, I know, but it was written and illustrated by Dogbolter's creator! And he ignores that Hob became a vengeful killing machine in The Incomplete Death's Head #6-12. I can't imagine why!
Maybe it would have been overegging the pudding, but I could have done with a couple more cameos at the last-page celebration of Max's birthday on Cornucopia. C'mon, throw in Horatio Lynk and Amy Johnson!
Okay, it feels a bit churlish to complain about this, but whenever the strip celebrates its own history, it feels to me like what it celebrates is not the entirety of that history, but just 1979-87 and 1996-present. Sure, 1987-95 was not the best era of the strip, but it often seems like Ground Zero didn't just erase the New Adventures strips, but everything involving Sylvester McCoy's Doctor at all. I'm not saying that Olla the Heat Vampire needed to pop up here... but, I dunno, give us a Muriel Frost or House on Allen Road appearance? The strip continued to introduce original characters and concepts during that run, and surely someone out there is nostalgic for them! And it's not like this period is one Scott Gray is unfamiliar with... he debuted on DWM then!

from Doctor Who Magazine #500

Say it again. Dave Gibbons! John Ridgway! Wow! They both have still got it.
"JUST A TRACER" WATCH: Second billing! Of course, he's not "just a tracer" in this one...

This post is the thirty-ninth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Doorway to Hell. Previous installments are listed below:

20 March 2023

Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther, Volume 1 by Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, et al.

Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther, Volume 1: Collecting Jungle Action Nos. 6-24

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 1973-76
Read: February 2023

Writer: Don McGregor

Pencilers: Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, Gil Kane, Keith Pollard
Inkers: Klaus Janson, P. Craig Russell, Pablo Marcos, Dan Green, Billy Graham, Bob McLeod, Jim Mooney, Keith Pollard
Letterers: Tom Orzechowski, Dave Hunt, Art Simek, Joe Rosen, Charlotte Jester, Karen Mantlo, Janice Chiang, Denise Wohl, Harry Blumfield, Irving Watanabe, Shelly Lefferman

The second installment in my series of Black Panther posts brings me to the Black Panther's first ongoing series, a run in Jungle Action by Don McGregor, which is made up of two stories: Panther's Rage and The Panther vs. the Klan! The first story takes T'Challa back to Wakanda after his sojourn to America, along with his girlfriend Monica, who I guess must be from some Avengers stories I haven't read. Panther's Rage inspired the Black Panther movie, as it's about an attempt by Erik Killmonger to depose T'Challa from the throne of Wakanda.

At the same time he wrote this, Don McGregor was also writing Killraven, of which I am a big fan, and this is very similar: wordy and portentous, perhaps verging into pretentious, with a large emphasis on character and theme. Like Killraven, it has a lot of the trappings of superhero comics, but it is not one. Panther's Rage is a war comic, a war in a nation, a war in a people, and a war in one man. He fights grotesque villains working for Killmonger, but it's more like a fever dream at times, surreal battles that are really there to illuminate what's happening inside T'Challa.

I'll take all the Black Panther vs. vicious monsters you've got.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #10 (art by Billy Graham & Klaus Janson)

I can't say I always liked it. It gets a bit repetitive at times, and the ongoing plot doesn't move very quickly. Sometimes there were just so many words. The series had eleven different letterers across its eighteen issues, and I can see why: why do more than two issues of this when you can go letter some Captain America comic with half the dialogue and none of the narration? But Billy Graham and Rich Buckler capture power in their layouts and art, and sometimes the thing whole rises to poetry.

Monica wears the hippest outfits.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #15 (art by Billy Graham & Dan Green)

McGregor builds up a recurring cast around T'Challa, and I look forward to seeing if future writers keep these people's lives going. Indeed, if the story has a single success, it's in convincing you that though Wakanda is a strange place, it is a real place. It is a country with people and history and geography and conflict. I suspect that will be its legacy.

Maybe my favorite part of the whole run: Killmonger's two dopey followers that the Black Panther is forever getting the drop on.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #12 (art by Billy Graham & Klaus Janson)

This makes it all the more inexplicable that for its second arc, McGregor had T'Challa go to the American South with Monica to investigate the apparent suicide of her sister. The Ku Klux Klan plays a big role, as does a not-the-KKK organization, the Dragon Clan. Gone are all the characters and history he had so painstakingly built up; T'Challa himself suddenly feels less plausible as he for some reason never takes off his Black Panther outfit. There are still fun parts—Monica's solitaire-obsessed father—and interesting imagery, but the investigation moves at a crawl, and nothing has really happened at the point where the story suddenly ends because the book was cancelled for low sales.

The Dragon Clan outfits lack the effective simplicity of the real KKK.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #19 (art by Billy Graham & Bob McLeod)

Don McGregor and his collaborators would be soon replaced by Jack Kirby. I will be curious if Kirby's return to the character he cocreated keeps any of McGregor's innovations, but I fear I already know the answer...

(Somewhat weirdly, Marvel would actually get another writer and artist to finish the Klan storyline in three issues of Marvel Premiere, over three years after Jungle Action was cancelled. Like, why? If it wasn't worth doing at the time, why was it worth doing years later? I cannot imagine a comics publisher nicely capping off a mediocre run like this now. Those issues of Marvel Premiere are in another Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther volume, but alas that one is not on Hoopla.)

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

17 March 2023

Taking the Racism Out of Roald Dahl, Oz, and James Bond?

The other day I was saying something about reading the Oz novels with my older son, and one of my friends asked what I thought about removing the racist content from Roald Dahl: L. Frank Baum and Ruth Plumly Thompson were no strangers to racist language in their books. Like Dahl's, it's usually more of a casual background element—as opposed to the really nasty stuff you might find in, say, the Frank Reade, Jr. dime novels.

There are of course a couple approaches to when a book gets old like this, and what was once generally acceptable becomes unacceptable. You can reprint it as it was, you can reprint it as it was but contextualize it or disclaim it, or you can edit it to remove what is offensive.

All three approaches have been taken in the case of the Oz novels: Dover has reprinted much of Baum's writing as is, with no amendments or editorializing; ditto Del Rey for Thompson's. On the other hand, when Books of Wonder reprinted Patchwork Girl of Oz, they took out some of the racist language and deleted one picture. The terribly named "Empty-Grave Retrofit" editions* of the Oz novels make similar adjustments to stories like Silver Princess, changing the black slaves of the Red Djinn into rock servants. Books of Wonder took the other approach too, appending a note to its reprint of Thompson's Royal Book indicating there was material modern readers would find offensive, but leaving the text unaltered.

In each case, the difference is one of market. Books of Wonder's reproductions of the Baum novels were targeting the library market and contemporary readers: these were editions intended to be given to current children. So it would make sense that the text would be edited. On the other hand, their Thompson editions are aimed at a market of Oz collectors, adults who want the original texts and can also understand the difference between 1923 and 2023.

And this is reflected in my own reading. When I read the Oz books to my son, I take out the racist content. Usually this just means a couple words here and there, but in the case of Royal Book, I had to skip over a two-page screed about Chinese food. I take out other stuff that doesn't fit with the moral ethos I want to project, too: in Lost King, the main characters killed Mombi, and I took that out! My wife has read our son a few Roald Dahls (both Charlie books, James and the Giant Peach, The B.F.G., and one other one, I think), and she made similar tweaks, I believe. If Son One ever reads the books on his own when he's older, we can talk about what he's reading—but I can have an informed conversation with him because I've read them all. A kid who picks up or is gifted Roald Dahl might not have that going for them.

There's something in here, of course, about what we think children's literature does and what it's for. It is okay for an adult to read a book with racism in it, but not a child. I probed at these attitudes back when I taught a class on children's literature. We praise The Outsiders because it doesn't filter things for its reader, it shows them the good and the bad and lets them decide. But then we turn around and say, no, when it comes to issues of race or gender, you ought to decide for the kids. I don't think this is a wrong distinction to make, but I think sometimes we are not honest with ourselves that, like the Victorians, we expect our literature for children to provide good moral instruction. It's just that we've changed our minds about what good moral instruction is.

The thing that's different about Oz versus Dahl is that for Oz, the original texts can continue to circulate alongside revised ones. This isn't true for Dahl, who remains under copyright. I think that his works will not enter into the public domain until 2060! Which is, frankly, an absurdly long amount of time. Over a century from publication to public domain for some of his works! Why? Back when the similar Dr. Seuss thing was going down, I read someone's take that the real problem here is that publishers and literary estates are able to extend control over the works of dead authors far too long. If we had good copyright laws, there would be amended Dahl books and original Dahl books. Parents and readers would have the same options they already do for Oz.

Now, okay, as for James Bond. If you read a James Bond, I would argue, the imperialism is the point. As I read through the original novels, it struck me how much Bond was always classifying, evaluating, and listing things. In all kinds of ways, but most often: women, race, and food. Everything gets organized and systematized. It's the sight of empire, it's what the James Bond books are for. If James Bond isn't going around making racist jokes while eating fried chicken in Harlem, he's some other character entirely. And when he's not doing that, he's battling to maintain Britain's colonial power across the globe. Oh, he's not being casually racist while trying to reinforce a violent global hegemony? Well, that's nice I guess. Like, go read some other spy novel if that's what you want! (Though... are there really any spy novels that aren't about this?)

* Seriously, what is up with that? It makes it sound like they're going to be Pride & Prejudice & Zombies–style retellings.

EDIT: I learned after I wrote this before it was published that Dahl's publishers backtracked, and they will keep the original texts in print as separate editions... I would not be surprised, however, if they quietly let them fall out of print. I also appreciated this Guardian column about how there's some stuff you just can't take out of James Bond without it all falling apart; the series is intrinsically built around ableism, for example.