DC
as Deutero-Canonical
Robert M. Price
Recently I essayed the theory that, since DC Comics in the
Golden Age was a pair of twins in the womb, All-American Comics and National
Comics, with different staffs and different studios, it was not surprising
that, within their combined hero pantheon one could detect the same sort of
parallels and/or redundancies one otherwise observes between the pantheons of
two different comics companies. Well, now I want to suggest a different sense
in which DC has the look of two comics lines in one, and for a different
reason. I am thinking of the great number of second-stringers, back-up
features, etc. Kind of like a secondary list of not-quite-canonical scriptures,
like Tobit, Judith, Macabbees, Esdras, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, considered
"Apocrypha" by Protestants, "deutero-canonical" (forming a
secondary canon) by Catholics. To me DC's back-up features and second-stringers
are very much like the first-stringers of a second-rate comics company.
One of
the great blessings of the DC Archives editions is that they combine all the
stories of the headline character from the various issues in which he
originally appeared, cutting the back-up features. It might be nice if they
would just publish books containing whole issues of a single title, that is, as
long as one had unlimited money and storage space, as well as an infinite time
to wait for the series to be completed (and face it: we'll never live long
enough as it is!). But, as for me, I do not want to see pages of Mutt 'n Jeff
resurrected. I don't even want to see Sugar and Spike. But between these
extremes, between the Flash and Mutt 'n Jeff, you had a number of
second-stringers, both in the Golden and Silver Ages. Nor is it difficult to
rank these.
The first
string was, naturally, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern,
the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Hawkman, etc. But then there were characters who were
intended to be big guns but never quite made it: the Guardian, Hourman, Star
Man, Sandman. Next were heroes who seem to have been created to bring up the
rear. And it is here I am saying it looks as if DC decided to create an
in-house equivalent to some competitor's less inspired or derivative efforts.
The proper second-stringers of DC would have been the heroes, just mentioned,
who were aimed at stardom but didn't quite make it. But the back-up characters
were made for the back pages, as if DC were carrying its own second-rate
competitors' imitations in tow.
Green
Arrow strikes me (and I dare say, everybody else) as an imitation of Batman, as
in that perfect scene in Mark Waid's JLA Year One series where Batman first
sees the Arrow-Cave, the Arrowmobile, etc. and muses that he doesn't know
whether it's flattering or just pathetic. The Martian Manhunter is a third-rate
Superman. The Sea Devils was a rip-off of their own Aquaman, himself a
second-stringer imitating Timely's Sub-Mariner. Poor Elongated man (not even a
back-up feature, but an occasional guest star in The Flash) was a copy of
Elastic Lad, himself a copy of Plastic Man.
Yet there
were also flashes of the imagination that led to DC features, again
second-stringers, that created strips and characters that would have been the
front rank in the line-up of any competitor. Adam Strange (essentially a
latter-day Burroughs rip-off, though I'm not complaining) and Space Ranger
(DC's Captain Future) were easily equivalent to Charlton's Captain Atom. The
Doom Patrol, second-rank for DC, was parallel to Marvel's first-rank X-Men.
Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown, distinctly second-string at DC, was close
to equivalent to both Marvel's front runner the Fantastic Four (just without
powers) as well as Harvey's Three Rocketeers (all Kirby projects, too!) The
secondary character of the FF is reflected in the brilliant 80s parody of the
FF in Superman, where a space crash gave suspiciously Fantastic Four-like
powers and shapes to the four analogous crew members, Hank Henshaw (= Reed
Richards) later becoming the Cyborg Superman. What made the FF so great was the
unparalleled characterization, which redrew the rules.
The Legion
of Superheroes was pretty much another Justice League set in the future. As in
all comics, the future is treated simply like another planet, with neatly drawn
rules to prevent continuity-destroying stories: "You can't change history,
no matter how hard you try!" So whenever Superboy flew through the Time
Barrier (read, the Jump Gate) to the "future," it was really more
like him going through the dimensional door to Earth 2, or better yet, into a
crossover adventure with the heroes of another comics company. It was like
Superman teaming up with the Fantastic Four (who were, again, directly inspired
by the Justice League). It was as if DC's second-stringers were a secondary
comics company carried along like a caboose. We can easily imagine Congorilla having
his own title over at Charlton, Ultra the Multi-Alien at Harvey. Animal Man is,
in my subjective opinion, a weak echo of the Jaguar from the Archie Adventure
series, himself a copy of Captain Marvel, a copy of Superman. The Metal Men
would be in the front rank somewhere else, like the THUNDER Agents at Tower.
Speaking
of the Legion, it provides us with a great example of the phenomenon we are
considering as it functioned as a catch-all for one-shot rivals of Superboy in
his titles. Some of these characters, Mon-el, Starboy, and Ultraboy, with their
classic Curt Swann costumes, seemed too good to throw away at the end of the
story in which they debuted, but they were also too much like Superboy to be
kept in close proximity to him, so they transferred them into the future. But
once there, they were still redundant of one another. So, to clear the logjam
of Superboy clones, each of which would have been a fine Superboy rip-off over
at another comics company, they tried to make at least one of them over into a
different sort of hero. They changed Starboy's power to making things
super-heavy, as if with the gravity of a star--what the hell? Of course, the
only natural power for someone named "Starboy" would be the same one
Sunboy already had!
If the
post-Crisis DC universe has trouble justifying two Supermen (Superman and
Captain Marvel), two Atomic heroes (Captain Atom and Firestorm), two Blue
Beetles (Ted Kord and Silver Scarab), two stretchy guys (Plastic Man and
Elongated Man), etc., having appropriated parallel characters from defunct
competitor lines, they already had similar troubles with their own first- and
second-stringers appearing in the same title. I always wondered: why is
Superman in the JLA alongside the Manhunter? Green Arrow, with his trick
arrows, alongside Batman, with his trick batarangs? And of course the same
tensions resulted from DC's revival of their own Golden Age characters
alongside their Silver Age characters. Am I saying they shouldnta oughta have
done these things? Heck, no! It's all great fun! But I have to admit that's not
my better aesthetic judgment talking. I'm talking about a guilty fannish
pleasure, the kind of speculation you spew out hanging around a comic shop:
"Hey! What would happen if the Abomination fought the Destroyer? If the
Absorbing Man tangled with the Juggernaut? If Jesus Christ battled
Superman?" The same thing sometimes occurs to the creators, too, as when
Robert E. Howard teamed up King Kull and Bran Mak Morn (in "Kings of the
Night"). We can hardly believe it, though we rejoice that they did!
And
speaking of comic shop pontifications, I half-think it might have been better
had DC segregated their back-up heroes into a separate narrative universe (like
the Marvel New Universe launch back in the mid-eighties). This way, you could
have had the Manhunter, Green Arrow, Congorilla, Adam Strange, the Doom Patrol,
Elongated Man, et. al., in their own universe, not being constantly
overshadowed even within their own stories by their better known
prototypes.