The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, by Glen Weldon

We should start, as most any writing about Batman must start, with a confession.  As I write these words, I am wearing a Batman watch.  And, perhaps more to the point, I own two pairs of Batman socks.

Batman socks.

I know.  I know.

So it is with more than a touch of self-awareness that we read Glen Weldon’s funny, insightful and lacerating look at Batman and Batfans, The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture.  If you are going to read only one book about Batman and the fanatical devotion he inspires, make it this one.  Weldon is the perfect guide through the world of Batmania: erudite, accessible, and more than a little snarky.  Even if you have only a fleeting interest in either Batman or the hermetic world(s) of fandom, you will find this book irresistible.

Weldon shares my sense of discomfort, as well as my submission to delicious junk.  While Your Correspondent has railed against cultural decay with a Batman watch on his wrist, Weldon looks at his toy reproduction of the 1960s Batmobile upon his desk, and wonders what his hardworking grandfather would make of a 45 year old man gloating over a Battoy.  Weldon justifiably dubs us The Lamest Generation, but the good humor of the jest does not sponge away the indictment.

Weldon works his way through the gestation of Batman, showing the many influences he co-opted en route to his final realization: The Shadow, Dick Tracy, and more than a bit of Flash Gordon.  He also takes a no-prisoners stance on the contribution of Batman “creator” Bob Kane (1915-1998), who, it seems, did little more than come up with the name.  Then, stealing art and layouts and harnessing the talents of various writers (and more gifted draughtsmen), Kane managed to mint a fortune in coin through his creation and ceaseless self-marketing. 

Weldon is crystal clear in his assertion that, as conceived, Batman is a protector of Moneyed Interests; it is not just tenor and tone that made early Batman the antithesis of Superman, but inherent philosophy, as well.  Kane, a poor Jewish boy from the Bronx, dreamt of a world of socialites, supper clubs and celebrity, and Batman delivered that to Kane in spades.  Oddly enough, Batfans tend to find Batman more “relatable” than Superman, arguing that most anyone can become like Batman though application, discipline and hard work.  Weldon dismisses those risible fantasies, arguing that one of Batman’s key superpowers is his incredible wealth.  Without it, the entire world of Batman would be impossible.  (Left unsaid: the strange irony that Superman has steadily diminishing cultural currency in a world of growing economic inequality.)

Weldon manages to touch upon every era and incarnation of Batman, from grim avenger in his first-year, to smiling scout master in the 40s and 50s.  His affection for the 1960s Batman television series is sincere and well-placed; and he chronicles how much of the Batman material to follow in comics and movies are a response against that show and its astonishing success.

The 80s saw the most dramatic change in Batman: he was more than just a grim avenger of the night, but an out-and-out violent psychopath.  The comics grew increasingly dark and nihilistic and, strangely, this is the stuff that hardcore Batman fans seemed to relish the most.  Batman fans were serious, and Batman was serious, and what better way to demonstrate seriousness of intent than a wallow in testosterone-driven, adolescent nihilism?  Or, as Weldon so wonderfully puts it:

What these fans saw when they looked at Batman was the object of their childhood love legitimized.  It was as if Winnie the Pooh had escaped the Hundred-Acre Wood and run amuck on the mean streets of New York.  Where he brutally mauled Piglet.  And ate Christopher Robin’s face off.

Because that would be real.  That would be badass.

His assessments of the Batman films are largely spot-on, though Your Correspondent disagrees with his dismissal of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), an arch gothic fantasia that seems to get better every year.  Weldon finds most of the Batman films of a piece – all rather dark and somber, but not necessarily good.  His affection for the animated Batman series is as great as his love for the 1960s show, though motivated by different aesthetics.  Weldon finds the animated Batman series to be the perfect fusion of obsessive, fannish desires, and the good, uncluttered story-telling necessary for non-obsessives.  More importantly, the animated series gave Batman back to the children, an audience that the comic book industry turned its back on long ago.

Weldon argues that Batman is very much an inkblot, and readers and viewers see in him what they bring to him.  He also posits that Batman changes with the times, and that the Batman of each succeeding era is both a reaction to, and a comment on, the times that generate him.  (In this regard, Batman is very much like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula – a core idea that can be continually reinterpreted in changing times.)  It is this protean quality that has ensured Batman’s longevity; and it is a crucial fact that hardcore Batfans seem to miss.

The key beauties of Weldon’s book are his chronicle of fannish reactions to each new incarnation of Batman, and how the Internet harnessed fannish power to be a powerful cultural force.

Weldon calls fans Nerds (a handy shorthand), and non-fans Normals (not quite so felicitous).  Nerds see the object of their affections as a deep and murky pool in which they happily swim, looking for inconsistencies, searching for new insights in the darker eddies, and creating little fiefdoms within the turgid waters.  Normals want to swim in a clean pool in which they can see bottom, then get on with their normal day.

For Nerds, Batman (or Star Trek or Dr. Who or ….. insert the nerdish obsession of your choice here),is more than a comic book and movie property, but a way of life, a religion.  And while they delight in his cross-cultural (and out-of-fandom) successes, there always remains an undercurrent of resentment.  A Nerd loves indiscriminately, but jealously.  Weldon argues that when mainstream culture appropriates a source of Nerd-love, he feels as if someone is telling HIS joke in a roomful of strangers, telling it badly, and still getting a better laugh.

Filmmakers now attempt Batman at their peril; as scripts, costume choices and plot points will be endlessly debated and the film judged (and often executed) on the Web before it’s released.  The proprietary feeling Batfans have for the Caped Crusader has been largely responsible for the manner in which the character has been stewarded over the last 35 years or so.  In short, the fans have been making the creative choices, and most of them have been dire.  Weldon believes this is finally beginning to correct itself as greater diversity in fandom is leading to a wider range of “acceptable” Batmans … but time will tell.

Perhaps my sole criticism of this involving and amusing book is that Weldon chronicles the rise of fandom, but fails to put it into any kind of perspective.  The first Comic-Con in 1970, for example, had some 100 attendees.  In 2015, that number was 170,000. What happened to us as a culture and a people to drive those numbers up so high, and what does it mean today to be a fan of anything?  And if we all love junk … do we have any passion left for weightier material?  Has online technology enabled us to trap ourselves in a perpetual adolescence?

Tune in tomorrow [same Bat-time, same Bat-channel; sorry, can’t help it] while we try to answer some of those questions.

Billy’s Booger, A Memoir (Sorta), by William Joyce

This week, we look at some books that make for perfect summer reading, and we start with something special.  Any new book by author, illustrator, filmmaker and poster boy for high-spirited shenanigans William Joyce (born 1957) is a cause for celebration.  But his new book – Billy’s Booger, A Memoir (Sorta) – is sufficient for bursting out into song, headstands while doing a Tarzan yell, and unrestrained fits of the hokey-pokey.

Not that Billy’s Booger is your ordinary, wonderful book.  It’s snot.  It is something quite unique – an illustrated memoir by a master of the form.  In it, he chronicles his participation in a school-book competition, and includes his first opus, Billy’s Booger – The Memoir of a Little Green Nose Buddy.  In short, this is the portrait of the artist as a (very) young man, and provides an insight into the formative components that make up Joyce’s protean imagination.

The story does snot have many fairy tale elements, despite its very traditional beginning of Once upon a time.  Or, as Joyce starts his narrative, Once upon a time, when TV was in black and white, and there were only three channels, and when kids didn’t have playdates -- they just roamed free in the “out of doors” there lived a kid named Billy.

And we’re off for an in-depth look into the Joycean imagination.  Most books in Joyce’s oeuvre exist largely as showcases for his stunning depictions of glowing, nostalgic Americana.  Billy’s Booger, however, is different – it has the full complement of stunning illustrations (some, the finest of his career), but is more of a masterpiece of design than anything else.

Consider – Joyce includes his initial foray into book creation as a special insert into the book itself, published on different weight green construction paper (and printed in what appears to be white chalk).  In addition to that, Joyce reproduces the illustrative style of 1950s-60s hygiene texts, along with loose-leaf paper doodles, and also includes several loving homages to classic newspaper comic strips.  Nor does he miss an opportunity to display his obsessive creativity and imagination: the endpapers include schoolboy doodles of the most mischievous sort, including my favorite: Replace Hallway Floors with TRAMPOLINES – why has this not happened? 

Joyce fills the book with quotations of his many obsessions, as well as many of his early books.  In what may be my favorite illustration in the book, Joyce’s depicts his younger self creating his first magnum opus.  In the background, just perceptible, is the poster from the 1933 King Kong, one of Joyce’s seminal influences.  Nearby is a model spaceship in the mode of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers (Joyce’s sense of science fiction, like that of your correspondent, is locked in 1930s art deco futurism).  On his desk is a brontosaur that may well serve as the model for his later creation, Dinosaur Bob, and doodles on his desk bring to mind his most recent book, The Mischievians.

In other parts of the book, you will see references to his earlier works, including George Shrinks, Roli Poli Oli, and perhaps even a nod to his sometimes collaborator, Michael Chabon.  There is even a little doodle that will become the logo for his animation and imagination company, Moonbot.

And Joyce simply never lets up.  In those pages where he recreates classic comic strips, I was able to spot homages to Peanuts, L’il Abner, a gorgeous Little Nemo page, Flash Gordon (of course) and Dick Tracy.  It is in his affections and deeply-rooted loves that Joyce reminds me most, perhaps, of the late Ray Bradbury (1920-2012).  Like Bradbury, one of the great writers of the last century, Joyce wears his heart and his loves on his sleeve – which is perhaps where they belong.  It is not a fashionable way of looking at the world; and certainly the last thing anyone could ever accuse Joyce of was being “ironic.”  But it is honest, and sweet and boyish and … peppy.  I can’t read Joyce (or Bradbury, for that matter) and not feel young again, or at least young at heart.  If for no other reason, Joyce deserves a medal, perhaps with an oak leaf cluster, if they have one lying around somewhere.

More literal minded readers will wonder how much of Billy’s Booger is “true.”  Well what does it mean when one promises the truth in a memoir?  Is this the actual book Joyce created in his boyhood, reproduced here without editorializing?  Did he, in fact, have such a happy relationship with his principal?  (If so, Joyce was doubly, if not triply blessed.)  And … are these pages lit by the glow of personal nostalgia?

Well … what does it matter?  Billy’s Booger is thickly crusted with enough biographical data to have more than a kernel of truth, and this is the artist’s biography as he remembers it.  Perhaps, one day, there will be a full-fledged autobiography or third-person biography to enjoy in addition to the Booger.

In a culture that values its heroes and children’s entertainment when it’s “dark,” the wonderful world of William Joyce provides a much-needed corrective.  His world is a place of sun-kissed landscapes, mid-century American optimism, and unfettered fun.  His books are for very young children, very old people, and everyone and anyone in between.

For those reasons, and many others, the book Billy’s Booger is our pick of the week.

Master Magicians and Phantoms: An Interview with Lee Falk, Part IV

Today we conclude our weeklong interview with Lee Falk (1911-1999), the creator of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician!

 

What do you think of the recent incarnations of The Phantom, like the cartoon series Phantom 2040, or Defenders of the Earth?

First off, the animator of Defenders of the Earth concentrated on Mandrake, The Phantom, and Flash Gordon. They figured the kids would like something in a future time, with interesting technology and what not. So they grouped them with Flash in the future. I rather reluctantly agreed, thinking that maybe that was the way of the future, so let’s do it. We made The Phantom the 25th generation of the character, and the great-grandson of Mandrake. But when the animators depicted them, they just used the three, Mandrake, The Phantom, and Flash Gordon. I asked why they had excluded Lothar from it all. Here’s a hero who happens to be black, and millions of black and brown fans think of him as a role model. I argued that he had to be in the posters as well.

The show came out fairly well, in the end, I guess.

Now with Phantom 2040, they again wanted something that has futuristic technology. So I told them to set it ahead, with the 23rd Phantom. We had to set it in the future, because if there was any change in the current character, the Swedish and Scandinavian fans would be furious! They want the “classic Phantom.” So we worked around that by making this his grandson. We put some armor on his arms, and gave him futuristic weapons, but at least they didn’t change him too much. At first, they wanted to put wings on him! But it’s pretty well done.

What can you tell us about the new Phantom film?

The movie is to me, and I’m a bit prejudiced, just great. Billy Zane is the perfect Phantom, he looks wonderful. I saw the dailies everyday while I was on the set for two weeks.

Is the plot an adaptation of one of your stories?

Yes, several of them. It deals with pirates and it has all of the elements that Phantom fans expect. Jeffrey Boam did a terrific screenplay, and came up with an original gimmick for the story. I told him that in all the years where I’ve written over 1000 stories for the character, the twist he came up with was one I had never tried. It’s a good story.

Is it set in contemporary times?

It’s the 1930s, and the cities have a 30s feel. But the jungle scenes seem as if they could be any time, so it feels contemporary, too. But it is the “classic” Phantom, just as his fans like him best. Billy Zane is marvelous. They first showed me a picture he had done called Dead Calm. Do you know the film?

Yes, it’s a tight little shocker.

They did it about eight years ago, when he was 23, or 24. Billy played a psychopathic killer -- but that’s not what I saw. What I saw was a nice looking young man, slim; a very strong actor. He also had charm and strength, and this is what I wanted for The Phantom. I didn’t want just a muscle man, I wanted that charm and elegance. He had all of that, but he was slim, didn’t really look like The Phantom, but rather like a young man. I figured, though, if he were good enough an actor, they would pad him up.

When I met Billy in January, he came over to say hello. He said he wanted me to see him before he went out on the set. And there was Billy, looking like The Phantom, without padding! It turns out that when he was hired by Paramount, in 1994, he went into training with a professional trainer, and did four hours a day for two years. So he wound up with a beautiful, powerful body, along with the same charm and elegance. He’s a good strong actor. The whole cast is good. Treat Williams plays the bad guy, and he’s a fine actor. Kristy Swanson plays Diana, the girlfriend. She was in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. She a beautiful girl. She's also in Flowers in the Attic.

Based on the V. C. Andrews novel.

I must say you’re a knowledgeable young man! I had never heard of the novel. The other woman, the bad gal with the heart of gold, is Sallah. She’s based on a character in a story of mine called “The Sky Bandit,” from the 30s. It was about a female gang of sky pirates, and that’s well before feminism. Sallah is the number two gal, and I remember her very well because I designed her to look like Louise Brooks. Do you remember her? In the film, she has long black hair, which is a change, but Cathrine Zeta Jones, a beautiful English-Welsh actress, plays her. She wears a skin tight costume, and she’s magnificent. If I were 60 years younger, I’d marry her! They’re all fine.

You know, Sergio Leone wanted to do a Phantom picture. I had met him in Mexico, and he was an enormous man. He just loved The Phantom, and he wanted to do a jungle picture with pygmies, all of that. We met again at his house in Rome, but he died and nothing came of it.

What are your future plans?

Well, after more than 60 years, I’m still writing Mandrake and The Phantom. When I write a script, it’s like film script, broken into panels. I include descriptions of characters, place, and detail, as well as dialogue and narration. So my plans are just to go on living and working.

Master Magicians and Phantoms: An Interview with Lee Falk, Part III

We go back again to 1996, when your correspondent interviewed creator Lee Falk (1911-1999), the man behind The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician.

Would you say that there is some kind of inherent difference between comic strips and comic books?

Yes. For one thing, there was self-censorship, which we picked up years ago. The violence we eliminated pretty much ourselves. These days the adventure strip is pretty much gone, there's not much left. Flash Gordon, unfortunately, has a very slim readership, even though it's beautifully drawn by John Cullen Murphy. Of course, Alex Raymond was one of the very best in the field. Prince Valiant has a limited circulation, but still fabulously drawn. There are very few of them in newspapers still, but they never had that kind of violence in them. It was a rich field with great stuff like Smilin' Jack, and Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon.

I think that, if I can interject for a moment, that the real difference between the comic strip and comic books is that strips are more a more literary medium than comic books. Particularly in work like yours, there was a greater depth and development of characters. Strips were actually more adult than comic books are now.

I write for adults. I always have. I figured that the kids would read it, too, which they have. I was over in Scandinavia for The Phantom Fan Club. They told me that the club was the biggest youth movement in the country, bigger than the Boy Scouts! They had a 140,000 member in The Phantom Fan Club. But these are mostly children to young men and women, some kids, too. I understand that the King of Sweden was a member when he was boy.

I don't want to knock other people's work, though. There are a lot of great people working in comics now. I've always admired Stan Lee's work, and I don't think he ever got too violent.

Could you tell us about The Phantom novels you wrote a few years ago?

Yes. We did about 15 of them in the 1970s. They wanted me to do a novelization of my strip every two months! At that time, I was not only doing both of my strips, but I was very active in the theater. I had five of my own theaters, some of them with stock companies, and I was writing and directing plays. I've had a whole life in the theater independent of comic strips, and I told them I could only do the first one. I took one of my stories, and wrote about The Phantom's trip to Missouri as a boy to become educated, I think he was the 21st generation, and how he had to return to the jungle to take over as The Phantom.

That was number one. Then they got some other writers, and I gave them proofs of my original stories with outlines, and they wrote some of them up. Every six months I would do one, myself. So in the course of a few years, I did five of them. I'm rather proud of them, worked hard on them, and think they're rather good.

The others, I was very disappointed in them. I gave them the stories, but I think they did a hack job, and knocked them out. I told them to take my name off them, and just put based on my strip. Put their name on it. If it's good, I want the credit. But if it's lousy and I didn't do it, I don't want it.

Killer's Town was one of them, and I thought that was pretty good.

What can you tell us about your Mandrake the Magician and Phantom musicals?

That was good! A couple of young guys in Stockholm, Sweden, wrote me and asked permission to do a Phantom musical. I told them it had to stay over there, because there was always talk of doing something with the property over here. I went to see it, and the guy who wrote the music also played the Phantom. It was their equivalent of Off-Broadway. Pretty good, though it was in Swedish, of course. It had one number called The Bronx Blues, also in Swedish! It wasn't bad!

The Mandrake musical, I wrote the book for that. George Quincy did the music, and his wife did the lyrics. That was produced up in Massachusetts. The theater was quite nice, and the fellow who played Mandrake was very good. A producer took a Broadway option on it; he was a big industrialist who wanted to do a Broadway show. He left, trying to raise money. But it turns out the King Features, without my knowing, sold the option to someone who wanted the movie rights. The industrialist couldn't raise the Broadway money without movie rights in the package, and the film fell through too.

The score still exists, and it may be done some day.

What about working with Wilson McCoy and Ray Moore on The Phantom? How was that?

Well, Moore, as I told you, was inking Mandrake. When The Phantom took off, I knew one man just couldn't do all this work. It's illustration. It's not like Chick Young who could do all his stuff on a Monday morning, before going off for golf, which is what he did on Blondie. You can cartoon very quickly, but you can't do that on adventure strips, they're illustration and take time.

Ray Moore came onto The Phantom, and when World War II came, went into the Air Corps. Wilson McCoy, who was an artist who did work for advertising companies, and a pal of Ray Moore's, took over when Ray was gone. When Ray came back, he was slightly debilitated. He said he was hit by a propeller, but I think he actually got into a fight and was hit in the head with a monkey wrench. It left him with a nervous disorder, and one side of his face was paralyzed. Anyhow, his hands were shaking, but I still kept him on the payroll for a long time, and continued until he died.

I was grateful to McCoy because I had joined the Army, and had done all of scripts ahead of time, so I didn't have to worry about that. I never liked McCoy's work too much, because he started out copying Moore exactly, which was good, but then he got into his own style which was more simplistic. I know in Europe they enjoy his work more, but I didn't care for it at all, actually.

How would you explain the overwhelming popularity of Mandrake and The Phantom abroad?

They're very popular in Mexico, South America, Argentina, and Brazil. I've been to these places and spoke to the people, talked at press conferences, and all that. In Barcelona, they started publishing a complete works of The Phantom, and he got out about six big volumes of comic books before he went bankrupt, publishing them in Spain and Portugal.

For a number of years, they published in Stockholm a Phantom magazine. They kept redoing my stories. In a one magazine, they could run a story that would take three or four months in the newspapers. They'd just chop it down and cut out the necessary repetitions that are in a daily strip.  So they asked if they could occasionally publish some of their own, which we granted. So they have a very good group of artists, from all over the world, doing their own stories of The Phantom, along with reprinting my original work. It has just grown into an industry, it's huge!

The Phantom is popular almost everywhere. In Scandinavia, it's amazing. There's a complete saturation in all the newspapers. Last time I was there, they had Batman, Superman, all the rest. But they told me that The Phantom outsells all the others, combined. Isn't that something?

Another story, somewhat painful, was during War, as people of my generation call World War II.  Norway was under Nazi occupation, a very cruel occupation. They controlled the newspapers, and put out misinformation like Washington bombed, New York bombed, America was crumbling, that sort of thing. It turns out that during this time The Phantom was appearing everyday, including Sunday, in Norwegian papers. And the Nazis did not change the text. The Phantom had not run in Germany, and they did not know him, but the Norwegians did.

Now the following is true, I had a Norwegian publisher who I met after the War come up to me, embrace me, and tell me the story. During the first two years of the War, I was in the Office of War Information, and still writing the strip. It turns out that this whole time The Phantom was being smuggled into Norway, and published in Norwegian, and that it raised the morale factor enormously. The Norwegians figured that if I was still at home, managing to put out The Phantom, that things could not be that bad in America! It was a big joke on the Nazis. But more than that, “The Phantom” became the password for the Swedish-Norwegian underground. I always liked that. Just about a year ago, oddly enough, I was at a dinner table with some other people, among them a woman who had just come from Norway that summer. She said that her brother, who was part of the Norwegian underground, took her out to the barn to show her a radio hidden under the straw, where during the war he would broadcast to the states as The Phantom. When she told me, I was so amazed -- that not only that it mattered then, but that people still had memories of what he meant to them then.

But both of these characters loom very large in the history of comics.

Well, especially The Phantom.  In some places The Phantom's Oath, The Oath of the Skull, where he says he devotes his life to destroying piracy, which stands for all kinds of criminality, cruelty, and injustice, is no laughing matter. Now in those places of the world where there is cruelty, where there is no justice, he has had quite an impact. Some places, like Haiti, for one, there was a rebel movement, a revolution under Papa Doc. After the big parade after the Lenten mass, young officers were coming out in Phantom costumes! The thing fell apart, and they were caught as it happened, but I was told about it by someone who managed to get out of Haiti. So in many places, they take The Phantom Oath very seriously, and it gives the strip another dimension that other strips simply don’t have.

That must be very satisfying to you as well.

It certainly is! You asked me why it’s so popular -- I don’t know, but fortunately it remains that way, or I’d have to go to work!

More Lee Falk tomorrow!

It’s a Turd! It’s a Pain! It’s the Man of Steel!

It sure isn’t Superman…

It was with a mix of elation and trepidation that I realized two iconic Pop Culture figures from the previous American Century would be resurrected this summer: Superman and The Lone Ranger.  Though such figures do not normally fall under the purview of The Jade Sphinx, both have had such a long-lasting and profound impact on the way we view ourselves and our culture that attention must be paid.

But the America of 1933 (the birth of the Lone Ranger) and of 1938 (the debut of Superman) are very different places from that of 2013.  Could both figures survive the transition into what we laughingly refer to as modernity without losing some vital essence, the very things that made these figures what they were?

Well, in the case of Superman, the answer, sadly, is no.  We do not often go to big budget junk pictures, and it is rare that we find them satisfactory.  However, Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, must hit a new low for a genre with a decidedly low bar.  Never have I seen a blockbuster film so cynical in its conception, so ham-fisted in its execution or so bleak in its worldview.  What should have been an exhilarating romp that left one with a sense of wonder instead is a grim and dour computer game, devoid of life, sentiment, wit, intelligence or fun.

This creates an interesting aesthetic conundrum.  For those who know the core of the Superman mythos (and surely he is as mythic to modern America as Theseus was to the Ancients), the story runs thus: on the planet Krypton, scientist-statesman Jor-El realizes that the planet will soon explode.  He unsuccessfully tries to convince the powers that be that doom is imminent, so he builds a rocket to send their infant son, Kal-El, to the distant planet earth.  The ship leaves just before the planet explodes and lands in the cornfields or rural America (usually Kansas, in most tellings).  He is raised by the rustic Kent family, given the name Clark and taught American virtues and a sense of honor and of duty while growing to manhood.  He moves to the big city (literally a Metropolis) and becomes a great protector and savior, a symbol of courage, honesty and purity by which all humanity can aspire.

The aesthetic conundrum at the core of The Man of Steel is simply this: how can Snyder and his producer/writer (Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, respectively) take this same material and fashion out of it a film so grim, so lacking in warmth, so devoid of hope and so ugly to look at?  Every artist brings something of themselves to whatever theme they approach, but surely some themes are, at their core, immutable?  Surely the fundamental message of great myths – be it hope or despair, transcendence or degradation – would shine through?

Apparently not.  Every choice made by Snyder and company was calculated to leech Superman and his mythos from any sense of grandeur, any sense of fun, any sense of transcendence.

First, let’s look at Krypton.  In both the comics and the films, the planet is often presented as a kind of paradise.  The comics showed us a primary-colored super-science wonderland worthy of Flash Gordon.  And the latter Superman films with Christopher Reeve opted for a futuristic Greco-Roman splendor, with a sparse purity often associated with Greek drama.

In Man of Steel, Krypton is as ugly as the nightmares of H. R. Giger.  Its inhabitants wear gray latex drag while moving through what looks like a massive digestive track.  Snyder and company have Jor-El die when he is stabbed in the gut by the film’s villain, General Zod – saving the explosion for Superman’s mother.

We then see the grown Kal-El finding himself while bumming through the US.  Reporter Lois Lane has a run-in with him, and soon investigates the story of the mysterious man with strange powers.  But soon General Zod and his cadre of Krypton survivors come to earth, looking for Kal-El because it seems that Jor-El downloaded all of Krypton’s genetic information into his infant son.  With this information, Zod hopes to recreate Krypton on earth… leaving no place for humanity.

Where to begin?  First off, Snyder shoots the film with a near complete de-saturation of color.  Imagine a black and white film poorly daubed with a waxy crayon and you get the effect.  Worse still, the thudding, repetitive and unpleasant score by Hans Zimmer is more reminiscent of the antics at a stoner’s rock concert than a glorious science-fiction romp. 

As for the special effects – they are not that special.  When Superman and Zod battle at the climax (seemingly forever), it is blurred motion and fast-cutting, more computer flummery than cinema.

The performances are nearly invisible.  Henry Cavill may be the handsomest man to don the blue-and-red suit, but he lacks the charisma of Brandon Routh or Christopher Reeve.  (Or George Reeves!)  His Superman is a cypher.  No one else manages to make any impression at all except for Kevin Costner as Pa Kent – and a film is in trouble when the most energetic player is … Kevin Costner.

But the fundamental problem with the seething mess that is Man of Steel is one of tone and artistic vision.  It seems that Snyder and Nolan wanted to do an “adult” take on Superman, but to them “adult” can only mean gloomy, negative and nihilistic.  I weep for the intellectual and emotional maturity of both men if that is indeed their yardstick of adulthood, because it is both horribly restrictive and blinkered.  Transcendent joy is as much an “adult” aesthetic as the cheapest form of tragedy, but try telling that someone with the emotional sense of a 15 year-old.

The filmmakers nail their own coffins finally with their vision of Superman, himself.  For more than 70 years, Superman was the “good guy;” the man we looked up to, the person we all aspired to be.  This vengeful, glum and, finally, not terribly bright man may be many things, but he will never be … Superman.

Tomorrow, a special Fourth of July message.

The World Loses Ray Bradbury, Part II

Yesterday, we were talking about Ray Bradbury and love.  His heart was huge and copious – it had room for Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and Capt. Ahab and Shakespeare.  As with all great lovers, Bradbury was somewhat indiscriminate, but his passion could not be faulted.

Because of his love, others found love, too.  The artists inspired by Ray Bradbury in one way or another would read like a list of some of the most popular voices of the past several decades: Stephen Spielberg, Stephen King, William Joyce, Rod Serling, Robert McCammon and Michael Chabon.  All of these writers/filmmakers have mined that deep vein of American nostalgia laced with science-fantasy, a cornerstone of the American literary voice.

Bradbury loved the movies, writing several himself.  His screenplay for Moby Dick (1956), directed by John Houston (1906-1987), is a masterpiece of concision and a model of adaptation.  His screenplay for his own novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), is something of a disappointment, as he felt the need to make changes to the plot.  These changes (including a whole reinterpretation of the Dust Witch, one of his greatest characters) greatly hampered the finished product, though it still has much to commend it.

In fact, much of Bradbury’s post-1960s work is a mixed-bag.  In The Bradbury Chronicles: The Lift of Ray Bradbury, Predicting the Past, Remembering the Future, biographer Sam Weller sums up Bradbury’s life from 1974 to the present in a scant 30 pages.  It’s possible that Bradbury, incredibly prolific and certainly promiscuous with his gifts, wrote himself out by the time he was 55 or so.  Sadly, the great man sought to sometimes go back to earlier masterpieces and ‘improve’ them, like a master craftsman handling his own work with wet varnish on his fingers.

But there was much to savor, still, in the later Bradbury.  Indeed Bradbury, always more of a short story writer than a novelist, actually started working seriously in the long form, producing some interesting work.  Perhaps the most interesting things about Bradbury’s later work was his persistent wish to rewrite his own life story.

A Graveyard for Lunatics, written in 1990, is a journey in nostalgic re-writing.  In this novel, young screenwriter Bradbury teams up with young stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen (both long-time real-life friends since adolescence) to solve a crime in a movie studio.  Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) rewrites his own experience working with Houston in Ireland on Moby Dick, and is a diverting fictional memoir.  From the Dust Returned (2001) is his homage to friend Charles Addams (creator of The Addams Family), inspirited by an Addams illustration intended for one of his books, but never subsequently used.  His two mysteries – Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002) – take him back to the Venice, California of his youth.

In 2006, Bradbury wrote a coda to what his perhaps his finest work, Dandelion Wine, called Farewell Summer.  In this slim book his protagonist, Douglas Spaulding (a thinly veiled Bradbury) experiences his own sexual awakening.

As the world mourns the loss of Ray Bradbury, perhaps it’s best to remember the things most notable about him: his gifts as a stylist, his love for all the artifacts of the great American Century, his central role as the bridge between High and Popular Art.  But more important, to your correspondent, is the man’s temperament.  Bradbury had a sense of wonder, and he wrote with a boy’s touch.  It was this eternal youth and strong sense of optimism that I think the world will miss the most.  Bradbury himself expressed this perfectly when, in an interview to have been published in The Paris Review, Bradbury spoke of the difference between himself and Kurt Vonnegut.

He couldn’t see the world the way I see it. I suppose I’m too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past—a combination of both. But I don’t think I’m too overoptimistic … It’s the terrible creative negativism, admired by New York critics, that caused [Vonnegut’s] celebrity. New Yorkers love to dupe themselves, as well as doom themselves. I haven’t had to live like that. I’m a California boy. I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

I was lucky enough to meet Bradbury several times.  Each and every time I did, I made sure to tell him that he had a profound impact on my life and that I loved him dearly.  Today, I’m so happy to have had that chance.