There are, to my memory, only three comicbook panels which have ever made me laugh outloud and uncontrollably. Though I do tend to spend a great deal of my reading time feeling amused to a greater or lesser degree, I really can count the number of tea-spat-across-the-room incidents on less than the fingers of a single hand.
On reflection, it seems to me that all of these panels share a single factor in common, namely that they were all taboo breakers at different points in my life. In these three individual frames, actions and attitudes which were utterly inconceivable to me in the context of their time was made to seem perfectly logical and indeed reasonable. In the moment between the shock of the event registering and the arrival of the super-ego's disapproval lay the explosion of a considerable guffaw, and then, in at least two of these examples, a mild degree of concern and a touch of reflection too.
It might be thought today that there aren't a great deal of taboos likely to be being broken in the pages of "The Return Of The Vulture" from 1963's "The Amazing Spider-Man" # 7. It could also be presumed that even if there were, they'd be so mild and inconspicuous that the force of any slight transgression would have been considerably diluted by the late January of 1973, when Mr Lee and Mr Ditko's tale was reprinted in the British weekly title, "The Mighty World Of Marvel". But that's not how my 10 year old self perceived the story, for what shocked him about it was the fact that the teenage Spider-Man was there-in obviously intent not just on defeating an adult super-villain, but upon beating up a disagreeable old man. (The Vulture was, after all, self-evidently past the point at which reduced fees on public transport could be claimed.) Given that I was just over a decade old, and that I imagined that Peter Parker was at this stage of his career no more than 15, meant that I was looking at the unimaginable business of a boy not yet having taken his O-Levels setting out to thoroughly assault a pensioner. After all, Spider-Man wasn't just threatening the Vulture with being caught, with jail or a public shaming or whatever polite fate school-boys tended to imagine deviant over-65's most deserved. Instead, Spider-Man was clearly intimidating and menacing the Vulture, no matter how flippantly, with the prospect of death!
Vulture: "Guns aren't my style anyway! What does the mighty Vulture need a weapon for! I've got my wings!"
Spider-Man: "You'll have a harp too, by the time I get through with you!"
Even now, there's still a pleasing sense of utter contempt and profound irritation in Spider-Man's statement, and arriving as it did placed between two kinetic and speedily-processable panels, I was laughing before I could grasp anything of what was I chortling about.
It wasn't the fact of Peter Parker's battling with the elderly, if still physically robust, Vulture which first threw me and then amused me so. Rather, it was Spider-Man's taken-for-granted assumption that he had every right to mock and assault the elderly criminal, and that the agencies typically trusted to deal with such confrontations were by their very nature not up to the task.He was taking charge at an age when he ought to have been doing was he was told, occasionally, I imagined, arguing with his aunt about a late Friday night or the radio playing too loud. Instead, this Spider-Man was quite content to be playfully threatening his aged opponent with a premature death, and for all that was so obviously a wisecrack rather than a declaration of purpose, it was still so deliciously and effortlessly disrespectful.
The second panel in this sequence merely confirmed to me of how far outside my normal expectations of correct behaviour this Spider-Man operated. In it, the Vulture has grabbed J. Jonah Jameson and is using him as a shield against Spider-Man, but Peter Parker doesn't express the slightest concern for the editor of "The Daily Bugle", in speech bubble, thought balloon or narrative caption. Instead, he simply regrets the fact that with Jameson held there, Parker "can't let go with a good punch". I was astonished! Wasn't Spider-Man's first concern to protect any vulnerable bystanders, regardless of who they were or the harm that it caused him? But Spider-Man was utterly unconcerned about Jameson's safety beyond not wanting to actively punch him in such a public forum, and instead was thinking only of landing a solid right hook onto the pointed chin of the thoroughly arrogant and unpleasant Toomes. It was as if his sometimes paymaster simply wasn't someone that Parker cared enough about to immediately worry for, as if Peter Parker, aged 15, was absolutely up for belting old super-villains while being in that moment quite unconcerned for the plight of a relatively helpless and yet still identifiably adult newspaper editor.
"Aw, go slide down a barbed-wire fence." spits Spider-Man at Jameson on the following page, and it takes a moment now to see through our communal adoration of Peter Parker the adorable victim of ill fate to note how rude, how incredibly and wonderfully offensive, he could be when in costume. He didn't just aim the occasionally sarcastic remark at those who were either obviously unpleasant or profoundly evil. Instead, Spider-Man habitually went for the throat from the off, he mocked when he was fighting, he insulted after he'd won, he was constantly cussing and knocking around characters who seemed to metaphorically stand for uncaring parents, irresponsible teachers, complacent officials, bullying fellow students and unpleasant neighbours. In truth, Peter Parker in his Spider-Man costume was in so many ways a one-boy assault upon the hypocrisy of adult society.
At 10, this was to me the world being turned upside down. It wasn't, of course, that I'd suddenly been corrupted so as to take pleasure at the beating of the aged, and it didn't feel like wish-fulfillment, because I couldn't recognise the degree of resentment and fear and befuddlement that my dealings with so many of my supposed betters and elders had generated.But something in me was capable of noting that Spider-Man was not only doing that which he shouldn't have been, but that he was also thinking and feeling with a freedom and intensity of purpose quite alien to me, that he'd claimed at least for certain moments while in costume the liberty to be himself. He wasn't even particularly angry as he leapt over desks and their protruding typewriters in order to subdue the Vulture, and he certainly wasn't fighting back as a frightened child would, driven into a tearful rage and a spasm of get-away-from-me flailing. Instead, he was acting as he was because that's what he choose to do, because that's what he'd decided was for the best.
And what of all those endless and overlapping stratas of adult power and authority? Well, in that moment, Peter Parker couldn't give a damn. Too often today we really do think of Spider-Man as a relatively innocuous loser-cum-joker, as an unlucky bent-shouldered and yet still quipping symbol of the grimmest of adolescent and post-adolescent unhappiness. But perhaps it should be remembered that, in the context of 1962, and even 1973, Mr Lee and Mr Ditko's Spider-Man was a considerably more radical and inspiring force in the eyes of at least a few amazed young boys, who saw a partial freedom from fear and a disregard for cant in his adventures that was rarely if ever portrayed in the relatively polite and generally deferent comic books of the time
The audacity of it still makes me laugh, still reveals an anger and a desire for some vague and absolute freedom that I should have entirely worked through, I know, a very long time ago. But then, to add Ibsen to Lee and Ditko, the world is run by a terrible majority of fools.
To be concluded ...
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Really enjoyed this post. Reminds me of some lines from Tom Spurgeon a while ago about Spider-Man/Norman Osborn: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/random_comics_news_story_round_up092209/
ReplyDeletePart of the joy of the Lee/Ditko Spidey stories for me is that Peter Parker, upon making an effort to use his power responsibly, to be a Spider-MAN and not boy, comes into conflict with failed/bitter/greedy/degenerate grown-ups issue after issue.
Hello Greg:- it's good to hear from you again. I hope the world is treating you kindly.
ReplyDeleteThat paragraph by Mr Spurgeon really is interesting, isn't it? It certainly shows a way to think about approaching the adult Spider-Man, and since the grown Peter has had something of the air of a teacher about him, it's funny to think of his rogues gallery as a bunch of nasty, ill-adjusted kids.
I agree with you about that aspect of the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man, I really do. But then, it can be hard to walk around without butting heads with those failed/bitter/greedy/degenerate grown-ups at times. Adolescence is, after all, that time when it becomes obvious that adults are no more moral than one's fellows students are, just a little bit more experienced and, usually powerful.
Oh, I do love those first few years of Spider-Man, like I love Asterix and TinTin. I wonder why I think of it in that context? I feel a blog coming on :)
Hello Colin,
ReplyDeleteOne panel that made me laugh uncontrollably was in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mr. Hyde's explaining to Mina Harker how the Invisible Man died, while Captain Nemo fumes in the background. It works on so many levels, none of which my superego would have approved of, if I actually had one. An interesting figure, Alan Moore's Hyde.
Hello Brian:- of course, in the strictest of scientific senses, none of has a super-ego, Freud being empirically bunkum and all that :)
ReplyDeleteI shall go find the panel from LOEG that you refer to! Hyde is indeed an interesting character. One of the things I've meant to do is to read the source stories for LOEG's main characters. I recall reading DJ&MH in the garden as summer shadows lengthened some summers ago, but I wasn't thinking of Mr Moore's scripts then.
Thank you for your suggestion. I was going to ask folks for their ideas, but I always feel a little .... presumptuous in doing so. But it is fun to know what other's favourite laugh-out-loud panels are :)
Hello Colin,
ReplyDeleteI don't know how you view Freud, as a social scientist, but for myself, I wouldn't have drawn the line at "empirically" bunkum.
I first read Freud when I was 11. When I was 9, it struck me that I could see in what sense physics was a science, for example, but I couldn't begin to see what kind of science psychology might be. Assuming you were talking about minds, whatever a mind was, and that people, Martians, and computers could all have minds, what kind of generalizations could you possibly make? It sounded as if you were talking about a dynamic system of some sort, and that you needed some kind of mathematical model, but I didn't know how to begin to think about it. That preoccupied me for decades.
Freud sounded possibly relevant, but, since I was living in a small town, I had to wait a couple of years until the library got in a copy of The Ego and the Id. It plainly wasn't the sort of thing I was after, and struck me more as a rather quaint cultural artifact. Taking it on its own terms, rather than something more general, I liked it that Freud was willing to speak directly about taboo subjects, but even at 11 it was pretty obvious that Freud had some very strange views about women, for example, and the whole apparatus was rather creaky. It struck as what Feynman called "cargo cult science." Freud's odd libido model seemed nothing more than a chance to gain respectability by imitating hydraulics.
And when you got into specifics, it got more odd. Take the Electra complex. If you started explaining this to someone on a train, they'd try to edge away quietly. But whatever it said about Freud and women, look at what it assumes: to begin with, that small girls have seen a penis, know what one is used for sexually, feel inadequate because they haven't got one, in turn because they'd need one to have sex with their mothers. There's no sense that any of these assertions might needed to be verified. (And that's probably just as well, because the idea of some researcher actually looking into children's ideas on this subject is not pleasant.)
Now if this was just a set of ideas, fine, good, whatever. At 11 I lost interest, since Freud simply seemed to be out there where the buses don't run. And at university I didn't care much, either. I was in a joint seminar once with some psychology grad students and some anthropologists, and it was very entertaining to see the anthropologists' reaction to Totem and Taboo.
Continued -- hopefully from the right starting point, since I'm cutting and pasting until this fits the HTML limits, and lost track of where I was ...
ReplyDeleteNow if this was just a set of ideas, fine, good, whatever. At 11 I lost interest, since Freud simply seemed to be out there where the buses don't run. And at university I didn't care much, either. I was in a joint seminar once with some psychology grad students and some anthropologists, and it was very entertaining to see the anthropologists' reaction to Totem and Taboo.
But if this was bunkum, it was very influential bunkum, even ignoring the impact of Freud's reluctance to credit sexual abuse. Some useful ideas, granted, such as defense mechanisms, the unconscious, and so on. They seem quite naive now, as stated, but every field starts somewhere, so fair enough. But as an approach it pretended to be science but bypassed the basic nature of science, which, to allude to Feynman again, is a method for keeping you honest. It wasn't until the Sixties that anyone actually looked at whether personality traits clustered the way Freud had claimed around oral, anal, and genital stages, and when they did the results were negative. Never mind that the hypothesis wasn't confirmed; that's fair enough. It's always good if you can frame a proposition in a testable way, since, right or wrong, you stand to learn something. What was worrying was that there wasn't much inclination for a long time to act as if Freud was formulating hypotheses at all. If you don't look at it that way, given the domain of application of these ideas, you have something closer to a personality cult. It's risky to be in a role where someone who disputes what you say can be classed as simply "resisting" and not taken seriously (even if it's sometimes legitimate to do so). It's dangerous to claim authority due to superior insight without proper checks and balances, and I've known a lot of people who let themselves get seduced in exactly that way. They'd perform therapy and, outside of that, analyze the people they knew behind their backs, without any feedback from them. It's the cheapest game in the world, like claiming you know all about your neighbors because you look in through their windows when they forget to close their blinds.
Now I'm not claiming that psychotherapy is bad or useless; on the contrary, I think it can be very valuable. I do claim that psychoanalysis isn't a very good basis for therapy, and that it's fostered a kind of arrogance in the field in general that's sometimes been harmful, for example with the parents of schizophrenic or autistic children. In general, I don't think that research suggests that there are any clearly superior schools of therapy, anyway, as opposed to good therapists, but you may disagree.
No, Brian, I’m absolutely with you on the question of Freud. He’s an inspiring man in the sense that he was intimidatingly bright, but he wasn’t a genius, because genius in science tends to result in being able to predict outcomes. Freud provoked debate, to say the very least, but the ability to start debates and inspire isn’t the mark of a scientist. Psychologists to my knowledge have remarkably little interest in Freud, though I believe there’s a touch more interest in America. In fact, although my knowledge of Psychology is but that needed to teach 16-18 year olds and so not to be trusted, the only aspect of Freud’s theories that I’ve ever read that seems at all scientific relates to repression and insect victims.
ReplyDeleteThe most influential aspect about Freud was his utter lack of any kind of any kind of scientific discipline. Since nothing that he said could ever be disproved, anything could be argued and believed. It’s all rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, which makes those who believed in it, and the idiots who still do, a fascinating case study in the irrationality of being human.
I do feel a degree of admiration for a man who reinvented himself as he did, as well as for his learning, although the use he put it all too was so harmful. What astonishes me is that the British educational system still requires Freud to be taught. He had a part to play in several English syllabuses just a few years ago, before my retirement, for example, despite being of no value at all beyond “another daft bloke’s opinion”. Freud’s work is beloved of folks who aren’t scientists and who don’t care – or perhaps don’t grasp – what science is.
It still feels daft to write that Freud’s work is a great confection of piffle, given how incredibly famous and influential he’s been. But it’s piffle, and the shame is that psychology has achieved so much and yet Freud remains the name most folks have heard of.
Certainly psychoanalysis can present no data to support its use. Given that it can't be tested, that's no surprise at all. It's shameful that folks practise it. Yes, individual therapists may be able to use it to some effect, so why not master some real-world skills and use to supplement whatever persponal qualities are being used productively?
So, in summary, (a) piffle, (b) piffle, and (c) hyper-piffle.
Next week, quantum physics! :)
My best to you, Brian.
A bit off topic, but it does concern Lee/Ditko. We're trying to place a comics story where an astronaut reaches the end of the universe and finds it's in a glass jar held by an enormous alien. It seems to me like a Lee/Ditko backup tale from one of Marvel's pre-hero monster comics. Can anybody confirm that and point out the reference? I seem to remember one where a man returns from the end of the universe laughing insanely, but we never learn what he saw; that's not it though. Thanks if you can help, and I'll be following this blog - seems to cover some of my favorite comics (I'm an Ancient One who can remember when FANTASTIC FOUR #1 appeared on the stands!)
ReplyDeleteHello Kevin:- It's the kind of playful, sub-O. Henry ending that would certainly belong in a Ditko/Lee tale. I'll certainly keep an eye out for it whenever I'm reading through an old Atlas-era tale.
DeleteThanks for following! I come from the next few generations down. My first FF was #83, towards the end of the Lee/Kirby run, of course. That was exciting enough, but to come across FF #1 in the day .... That would've been something. Hats off to you!