If you're the kind of reader where the glimpse of a vaguely Vince Colletta-ish drawing turns off all of your critical facilities, The Super Hero's Journey is for you: this is a book by and for the audience of (almost entirely) men who imprinted on Marvel comics in their (now seen as idyllic) youths in the 1960s. It's by Patrick McDonnell, best known for his long-running Mutts daily strip, working in a schoolboy-collage style, grabbing his favorite Kirby and Ditko panels to incorporate into a graphic story drawn in an approximation of how the young McDonnell copied those stories back in his youth.
The characters are the Marvel universe top-line as of about 1966 - the roughly original Avengers (pre-Hulk) on one side and the Fantastic Four on the other, with Spider-Man kibitzing somewhere in the middle. McDonnell explains in an afterword that his siblings identified heavily with the FF - he was one of four; no word on whether his lone sister actually wanted to pretend to be Sue Storm - and he got to be Reed Richards, so therefore Reed is the hero and problem-solver here.
It's all utterly transparent: the adult McDonnell got a chance to play with the same toys he loved as a kid. McDonnell is so open and happy about it that it's charming, but there is a definite element of watching some obsessed elementary-schooler mashing his action figures into each other and throwing them off the arm of the couch.
Our narrator is the Watcher, of course. He introduces all of the main characters, who are all in their normal '60s Marvel conflicts - squabbling within the FF, mourning Uncle Ben, bemoaning the plot-driving problems they had at that early date (as opposed to all of other plot-driving problems that later creative teams created and solved and reinstated), and all vaguely unhappy - not just in the way that all Marvel '60s heroes were unhappy, but also in a more general "everyone is grumpy all the time" way.
This is because Doctor Doom has a new scheme to conquer the world, by making everyone angry and create "divisiveness." He has turned on the obligatory Kirby Machine, radiated the weird whatevers into the ether, and now everyone on Earth is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
McDonnell does not explicitly make this a political metaphor. But this is a 2023 book by an American. It comes down, in the end, very hard on the "everybody should just get along" side, and the anger is driven clearly and entirely by the villain figure who stands outside of society. It is sourceless, and pointless, and can be removed entirely without issue.
Anyway, there's not a whole lot of plot. The Watcher sees, deplores, and insists he can't do anything while dragging Reed around and aggressively nudging him in specific directions. Doom cackles and gloats. Everyone else punches each other. After about a hundred pages of that, Reed uses a machine to unleash an even more powerful set of Kirby Krackles, which are the Power of Love.
(I don't know if McDonnell means it that way, but there's a strong homoerotic undertone to this section, as if Reed and Doom should just kiss already and stop bothering the rest of the world.)
The philosophy is something like homeopathic Buddhism - the general idea is apparent, but so diluted that there's nothing specific, just the vague drive to be nicer.
This clearly means something to McDonnell: it is very much a labor of love. But that love is one part very vague and one part entirely nostalgia. I think you had to imprint on the '60s Marvel universe young - and have never gotten over that - to really love this book.
1 comment:
One of the best Vinnie lines I have read. His legend keeps growing.
Post a Comment