Comte book lament
Burned collection doesn’t in cinerate childhood memory
By Charles Lieurance
What did Superman ever do for Me?
The big, mean evil dad came
into the adolescent’s room, looking
like some Jack Kirby Olmec demi
god with circuitous head gear and
some kind of light-emitting amulet
around his neck. What was he
looking for?
He was rattling about in the
closet, where I’d hoped the Gene
Simmons poster, spewing blood
from its venomous tongue, would
frighten him off. But he continued
his search. Beingajack Kirby Olmec
demigod however, and using a
clever combination of X-ray vision,
astral projection and tapping for
hollow spots in the paneling, he
found the secret panel in the back
of the closet. He whistled between
his teeth and swore, disgust and
admiration, the same sound I heard
him emit when there was a streaker
on the Academy Awards presenta
tion.
Jesus Christ, it s endless.”
I felt a twinge of pride. The
unwieldy stacks toppled at his
touch. Maybe he’d be pul off by the
precarious heights of the stacks, by
their helter skelter, every-which
way imbalance. Maybe he’d spot
the issue where the Silver Surfer
discovers he might have to destroy
the world to save it. Then, he’d
know. I’d find him in the morning,
sitting in the closet in his boxers
and undershirt, filling out order
forms for onion gum, sea monkeys
and miniature revolutionary war
soldiers.
But this was some kind of ’60s
fatherly ritual and his hand would
not be stayed. Any obsessions at
my age were bad obsessions. If I
wanted an obsession I’d have to
resume it beyond the family. I was
to be wea ned away, always weaned
away.
He toted the slacks out of the
room one by one, grunting and
cussing as he went. I didn’t try to
stop him. I knew it had to happen
someday. I’d heard about these
midnight raids from my friends.
They advised me to hide the collec
tion , but they a Iso told me it wouldn’t
do any good. When the comic
books were gone, there would
come masturbation, and whe/t it
was time for me to stop that, well,
I wasn’t sure what my father would
do then.
i went to the window ana
watched my father i n the back ya rd,
standing dappled orange by the
incinerator. The Mighty Thorswung
his hammer uselessly around and
around as his upper torso caught in
the wind and fire and burned away.
At least it was an appropriate Nor
dic death. Swamp Thing was
plucked from the mire and sent
brooding off into space. It was
dazzling, watching the pantheon
immolated. I was almost proud of
my father.
The last stack had fanned like a
peacock’s tail atop a sprawl of rag
weed. One by one, slowly now, he
popped these stragglers into the
flame. The last one he leafed
through. I couldn’t tell what it was,
but he smiled and shook his head.
He tucked it under his arm and
came inside. I stood in the hallway.
“That’s that,” he said, clapping
ashes off his hands. Hemadealittle
ash cross on my forehead with his
forefinger and handed me the last
comic book. It was The Shadow,
with the circus freak assassins, the
deadly harlequin twins.
"I used to love that radio show,”
he said. “The weed of crime bears
bitter fruit.”
He did The Shadows laugh as he
walked into the darkness and I read
along with it on the page. The
laugh started out small, little letters
that began to coil around the dark
ened streets of New York, around
lampposts, becoming louder and
more magnificent, the letters thick
anddrippingwith frost on the chilly
docks. The criminal, in his long
coat and baggy trousers, fired his
.45 automatic uselessly into the
dark as The Shadow’s laughter built
an invincible helix around him.
In the beginning, there was the
3 inch by 5 inch James T. Chick
pamphlet, published in
Cucamonga,California, butshipped
worldwide. Chick has probably
frightened more kids into the arms
of the fundamentalist Christ with
his little comic books than all the
Revelationsdocu-dramasandjimmy
Swaggarts put together. Like
Dostoyevsky’s novels, Chick pam
phlets may end with redemption,
but it’s not that you remember.
What arc captured most vividly
are the contorted faces of anguish,
the exaggerated abyss of evi 1. Chick’s
black and white pamphlets a re filled
with virulent human monsters Jim
Thompson would be proud of: ci
gar-chomping, muscle-bound truck
driver serial rapists, drooling, lech
erous, mad Catholic priests whip
ping screaming, virginal nuns with
the cat-o-nine tails, acid-addled
young Mansons brandishing voo
doo dolls and draining the souls
from innocent but confused run
aways. Albrecht Durer had nothing
on Chick where the Gothic horror
of Christian history is concerned.
Chick pamphlets showed up
everywhere in my youth and I an
swered nearly 17 altar calls because
of Chick’s hell on earth. Oddly,
none of his panoramas of the sub
terranean hell were very convinc
ing. His devil was strictly central
casting, pointy beard, horns and
obligatory pitchfork.
Chick is still at work, having
joined forces with Alberto Rivera at
the Anti-Christ Information Center
in Canoga Park, California. Rivera
claims to have been some kind of
Jesuit assassin who barely escaped
theclutchesofthcmonstrousCatho
lic church. Nuns, in the confes
sional, admitted to Rivera that they
had been guilty of lesbianism, of
sex with priests, and that their ille
gitimate children had been smoth
ered and buried in the basements
of convents.
EC comics. Although known for
corrupting the youth of this nation
during the ’50s, EC was actually
fiercely moralistic, as anyone who
watches HBO’s wonderful “Tales
from theCrypt” can tell you. No evil
ever went unpunished in an EC
horror title. As in film noir, one evil
snowballs until no amount of char
acter reversal can stop the hideous
retribution. The only difference
between EC and noir is that the
retribution rarely came in the form
of man-made justice. Instead retri
bution ca me fro m beyon d th e grave,
from the starS, from another dimen
sion, from the animation of inani
mate objects. . . . You name it.
Those who made fun of short people
were shrunk to the size of mi
crobes. Those who used magic to
evil ends, who conjured demons
for material gain, were soon feasted
upon by those same demons.
But EC was also funny. Grinning
candy skulls unlike the ugly, rot
ting damned things that littered
Chick. EC was a hallucinogenic,
exuberant death trip, whose spiri
tual result was a certain indescrib
able self-confidence. As a subur
ban youth there wasn’t as much
chance as I might have liked to visit
the dark side. ECs vault of horror
was filled with undeniable wis
doms about the human condition,
gave a strange worldliness to those
who read it. You wound up with
these dreaded comic book geeks,
wimps with amazing amounts of
ego who might have otherwise
opted for teenage suicide.
In short EC was a life saver,
scorned by adults because — and I
don’t know how the Kefauver com
mittee that investigated the comics
industry knew this at the time — it
created more artists than soldiers.
Spider Man broods for whole
issues. Whole issues. The Silver
Surfer glitters in deep space, a half
god trapped in a universe not of his
own making, reluctantly trying to
help withoutthrowing off the natu
ral balance of an alien and prepos
terous earth. The angst-ridden su
perhero created by Marvel in the
late ’60s was a further sentimental
education. Heroism as curse, as
unbearable responsibility. The pos
sibility of real death unleashed amid
the wish-fulfi]lmentof comicbooks.
From movies I knew what it was
like to be a teen-age werewolf,
cursed'with hairy palms (hmm), but
to be a teen-age superhero, voice
changes, stomach butterflies and
all.
Alas, the teen-age hipster beat
nik hero unafraid of thesupernatu
ral adrift among the Philistines.
Maybe I won’t save the world to
day, how would that be? Maybe I’ll
just sit on this ledge high above the
burning city and blow bazooka
bubbles all day long. How would
that be?
If you want assurances, move to
Gotham or pristine Metropolis.
Ohmigod should I be feeling
this way. Everything’s just vibrating
sort of vibrating. LemmeseethatF.d
“Big Daddy" Roth statue. Lemme
see. His tongue’s blown back three
feet behind his head, his teeth all
chipped and protruding, bulbous
Basil Wolverton eyes, veins like
bloated lightning. Those mag
wheels are bending those axles to
hell, man. What is that, a Chevy? I
saw a kit for that in Car Toons.
You’re such a freaking gear head,
man. You got an SIP sticker for a
brain. He popped me on in the
forehead. Don’t touch my head,
Kyle.
She said, “Yummy Fur" makes
me sick, but I think it’s great.
Whole panels of excrement, she
said. Whole panels. And what’s
with the straight telling of the New
Testament? She said, 1 like “Love
and Rockets" because of the strong
female characters. I can’t believe it’s
drawn by two men.
1 don’t get “Eightball,” she said.
Maybe I need to see more Russ
Meyer movies in order to get it,
right? If I see "Faster Pussycat! Kill!
Kill!" it’ll ail come clear then?
I like Stick Boy, she said. He’s
cute. So what if his world exists
only up a dog’s butt.
I wasn’t really listening, loo busy
reading David Lynch’s comic strip,
"The Angriest Dog in the World”
from the L. A. reader. It’s always the
same three panels. A backyard. A
dog drawn so angry and tense that
the panels pulsate with his wrath.
His head is thrust forward, his
muscular legs taut andshootingout
behind him. He’s chained to a tree
and the chain is stiff. First panel:
Suburban human inanities coming
from the back window. Second
panel: more of the same. Third
panel, the angriest dog in the world.
Have you seen this Drew
Friedman cartoon? She asked. Do
we still call them cartoons? Is that
okay?
It depicts in disturbingly photo
graphic black and white pointillism,
Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors con
summating their love on the magic
fingers bed of a Hollywood motel.
On the next page, Sheriff Taylor,
Goob and Barney lynch a black
man who’s just passing through
town and then they all go back to
SheriffTaylor’s house to have blue- n
berry pie courtesy of Aunt Bea.
Is Art Spiegelman’s “Maus" bet
ter than Elie Weisel’s “Night”? Is it
really possible to compare Thomas
Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” with
“Watchmen”?Marquez’s“ 100 Years
of Solitude” with “Love and Rock
ets"?
And I hope you u nderstand what
I’m getting at here, she said, how
can Superman die without Lois Lane
knowing his secret identity? What
will that do to Western Pop Con
sciousness? Maybe we’ve been
waiting for that revelation before
we can complete some cycle into
new and better beings. Maybe we
need a sense of closure where that
issue’sconcerned. Spiritually speak
ing.
What’s with Harvey Pekar, any
way?
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