I'm startin off with the topic of censorship in comics😄
Sex and violence, as the cult fantasy artist Chris Achilleos once said, is the foundation of all literature, whether explicitly, or simply as romance and adventure. It was certainly present in the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which provided the subjects for many illustrated books. While Tarzan, at least in film and comic book sported a leopard skin loincloth, John Carter and his friends on Mars lacked even that. Battling their way nude across a Mars of wonder and terror, Carter was frequently called upon to save his Martian princess from violation at the vile hands of Red Planet villainy. Despite having been described as being a plaything of one tyrant, the Princess still manages to retain her maidenhead despite all assaults on her person. Nudity and romance were permitted, but sex, at least in the books, was rigorously outlawed. Nevertheless, the book's perennial appeal to a largely adolescent readership probably rested as much on the first two elements as it did on the enduring power of Burroughs' images of Barsoom.
Despite their popularity, it was only much later in the 1970s that the John Carter stories received the attention, at least in comics, which had much earlier been given to his Tarzan. The two great pioneering SF strips, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers both featured strong women amongst their protagonists, but their attitudes to romance, at least for their heroes, differed considerably. Flash Gordon and Dale Arden were sweethearts, but the relationship between Buck, and Wilma Deering, was much more platonic. As a colonel in Earth's space force, she was a pal, not a girlfriend, no doubt reflecting contemporary views on future relations between the sexes as modern, liberated women increasingly entered previously male domains.
Despite the innocence of these early strips, sexuality and censorship were never very far away. Although deliberately created by the psychiatrist Graham Marsden as a healthy alternative to the aggressively male violence of most of the superhero books, Wonder Woman's sexuality was a cause of real concern to DC's editorial staff. They were particularly vexed by the amount of bondage in the comic, as month by month, Wonder Woman and her fellows were bound or, with her lasso of truth, escaped to do the binding. Marsden's own comment that the comic's themes of domination and subordination accounted for much of her popularity with the male readership was hardly reassuring. In one famous interview he stated quite plainly that, if subjected to a beautiful, glamorous woman who was stronger than them, most men "would be glad to be her slaves." The DC editorial team spent much of their time trying to cut down the scenes of bondage in Marsden's scripts - in one story they counted at least 147 separate images. After Marsden's death control of Wonder Woman passed to Julius Schwartz, who took the opportunity to effectively suppress the comic's smouldering sexuality.
Although innocuous today, one of the comic's problems could have been the amount of flesh Wonder Woman displayed. While Superman, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers roamed the space ways either protected by a bulky space suit, or in form-hugging spandex suits which emphasised their musculature while making sure that the only bare flesh on show was that of their hands and feet, their female counterparts faced the universe clad only in a one-piece bathing suit and knee-length boots. Often on the covers of the pulp SF magazines, they lacked even that. Artists such as Weird Tales' Virgil Finlay and Thrilling Wonder Stories' Earle K. Bergey often depicted women exposed to the vicissitudes of space clad only in a few bandages, or imprisoned completely naked in threatening alien devices with only a few well-placed meters preserving decency. Initially, these covers were not well received. Bergey was the subject of much adverse mail complaining about the sensuality of his covers. This later subsided, though a perennial complaint of the magazine's younger readers was that their mothers tore them off before allowing them to read them.
While it was Wonder Woman's sexuality and physical dominance which the moral watchdogs found questionable, rather than her choice of attire, she was part of a general trend, set by the pulps, to show science fictional heroines wearing as little as possible. Sweetheart, the treacherous heroine of Pete Mangan's 1953 British comic strip, similarly braved the cold wastes of space naked to the stars except for a swimsuit, knee-length sandals and space helmet. Mary, the heroine of the 1948 comic strip, The Mighty Atom, was another casualty of cosmic bondage, bound to a stake wearing only a very ripped, short dress while awaiting assault by the villainous frogmen under Thor, master of evil. Although drawn by Philip Mendoza, the comic strip was written and edited by Stephen Frances, who went on to spawn a legion of crime and sex paperbacks under the pseudonym, Hank Janson. The Pete Mangan comic strip also featured its hero watching the gyrations of an alien female dancer in an off-world bar, showing that at least its writers were no strangers to sleaze. Other heroines who also faced mortal danger clad only in a one-piece swimsuit included Swift Morgan's girlfriend Silver. Blonde and voluptuous, her modesty was preserved by an exotic collar-cum-shoulder piece, which obscured her cleavage. This was an important fashion item sported by a number of other heroines, such as the aforementioned Sweetheart, though hers had a middle section missing allowing a tantalising, though decorous glimpse of upper bust. Morgan, however, wore pretty much the same costume as Silver. As did hero other half, the hero, Pat Peril, who eschewed the upper part of the costume and battled the denizens of an angry cosmos clad only swimming trunks and a space helmet. There did seem to be some kind of sexual equality in the amount of flesh on display.
Some of the more glamorous space heroines, such as the galactic criminal Satin Astro of 1948's Burt Steele And Satin Astro: In The Year 3000 AD comic strip were fully covered up in the same kind of one-piece costume sported by the male heroes. Similar strong, beautiful women were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. EC, never one to shirk a trend, published a comic strip devoted to the adventures of a squad of female space pilots. Although this contained little that would cause any offence, part of its undoubted popularity amongst male readers was due to the characters' figure-hugging costumes. Aside from EC female fighter pilots, these comic strips approached the problem of sexuality in much the same way as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The female characters tended to be the long-term girlfriends of the heroes, though Stella, the heroine of Captain Sciento, was the good captain's daughter rather than wife or girlfriend. Perhaps because, even at the time, married women were not expected to have a career outside the home, Sciento's wife is never shown. The absence of Mrs Sciento presents a problem similar, though not identical to, the absence of any direct relationship between the Disney characters and their relatives. Huey, Louey and Duey are Donald Duck's nephews, not sons. To the author of a Marxist critique of Disney comics, published in Chile just before the CIA-sponsored coup against Allende, this represented the capitalist repression of the forces of biological reproduction, just as the forces of capitalist industrial production were similarly obscured. That was Marxist explanation for why you never saw just how Scrooge McDuck, another uncle, made his money, just that he had enough of it to fill a swimming pool. Like Huey, Louey and Duey's parents, Scrooge McDuck's business is never shown. It was an influential thesis, and is still discussed in cultural studies of comic books today. It does, however, miss the point. There are other reasons for the apparent absence of parents in Disney's comic strips than an apparent connection with obfuscation and the dark workings of Western capitalism. Comics, especially the Disney oeuvre, are by and large written for children. As a rule, children aren't particularly interested in industrial production, except when it's something particularly glamorous like a chocolate factory run by a philanthropic showman with a time and space travelling elevator and a gang of loyal pygmies. Socialist Realist stories about worker heroes tend not to be well-received, and even in China there has been a tendency to move away from such explicitly ideological themes to more traditional heroics, such as the mythological cycle of Monkey. Also, the real reason for the presence of avuncular figures, like Donald Duck, in the Disney cartoons probably lies in contemporary notions of family values. Most children want a degree of independence from their parents, at least in their fantasies.
This is reflected in fairytales, in which the hero leaves his home and family to seek adventure abroad, or in more moralistic versions comes to grief after defying parental injunctions against the performance of certain actions, like venturing into the deep, dark wood. Uncles, rather than aunts, are family, and so can offer protection in lieu of children's actual parents, while having a degree of indulgence and adventure about them beyond that usually permitted to parents. Uncles can therefore offer children a degree of indulgent freedom and escape from parental supervision - the chance to be a bit 'naughty' - that would otherwise be denied them. The relationship also allows the triplets to test Donald Duck's patience in a way that avoids direct criticisms from the censorious about poor parenting skills. With his explosive temper and manic blustering, it's a fair bet that if the Duck was presented as their father rather than uncle, someone might claim that he's a bad parent and his three offspring are going to grow up to be dysfunctional juvenile delinquents. By standing a step away as their uncle, rather than father, Donald Duck can offer his three charges, and by extension his juvenile readership, fun and suitably supervised adventure and social subversion without damaging notions of family values.
Of course, to more cynical eyes grown jaded with recent reports of child molestation and abuse, the idea of a bachelor uncle taking such a deep interest in his preteen nephews is incredibly suspicious. Disney created the characters in a more innocent time, for a more innocent audience, though jokes about the Duck's suspect sexuality have appeared, particularly in Private Eye. Never one to miss a sick joke, the Eye suggested that Donald's questionable relationship with his nephews mirrors Disney's own sexuality. The true subject of the joke, however, was a documentary screened by Channel 4 taking Disney to task for his right-wing political stance and appalling treatment of his staff. The salacious confusion between Donald's suspect sexuality and Disney's own was part of the larger joke against Channel 4. Although made in jest, the comments did, however, reflect real concerns over Batman's sexuality. To the Austrian psychiatrist Frederick Wertham, 'Batman and Robin' were an idealised homosexual fantasy. He came to this conclusion through the entirely scientific method of asking a New York gay what he thought of the Batman comics. The man replied that he wouldn't mind being Robin. It's not hard to see how Wertham came to his conclusion, however. Classical antiquity saw homosexuality in terms of a relationship between 'lover' and 'beloved'. The lover was an older man who took the active role in the relationship, while the beloved was a boy who took the passive, 'feminine' role. One of the definitions of 'punk' is American hobo slang for a young boy travelling with an older man in what could be a homosexual relationship. Given this historical dimension to gay relationships, it's not hard to see Robin as Batman's catamite. Wertham missed the point, however. Robin, like most of the teen sidekicks, was probably included as a deliberate attempt to appeal to teenage and younger readers. Batman himself was an ersatz father figure, although removed from the censorious, supervisory role of real fathers. The relationship between Batman and Robin was probably intended, if anything, to be an idealised father-son relationship rather than anything that would give the Lord Chamberlain a heart attack or frighten the horses. Robin was, like Batman himself, an orphan and so the Caped Crusader was indeed acting in loco parentis, as a surrogate father. Wertham's jaundiced gaze was not confined to Gotham's Dark Knight, however: he hated all of the superheroes. Wonder Woman, of course, was a lesbian feminist dominatrix into bondage, and Aquaman, of course, represented aquatic sexual fantasies. Superman escaped accusations of sexual deviancy only to be denounced as a Nazi because of the origin of the character's name in Nietzschean philosophy.
The heightened tension over the perceived corrupting influences in superhero comics was part of a wider moral panic concerning comics in general, and the horror comics in particular. EC was particularly vulnerable to these accusations as, with the exception of Mad, much of its stable was horror titles like Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror, while its straightforward science fiction did come dangerously near to the taboo, with an explicit treatment of sexuality. In one story, a woman marries a man only to shoot him dead after seeing him naked on their wedding night. Why? Because he didn't have a navel, thus indicating he was a reptile. While the comic strip preserved propriety in having the couple married before going to bed, the sexual theme is explicit and part of the horror. Another tale was a metaphor for racial inter-marriage; again largely taboo at the time it was written. In this tale Earth was importing large numbers of humanoid alien creatures called Ganymedes for degrading, menial labour. These creatures were profusely covered in body hair, but could pass for humans if they shaved it off, in the same way that light-skinned Blacks could 'pass' for Whites. A woman has a relationship with such a shaved Ganymede before she discovers his secret. She does not reject him, however, but is determined to stick by him, even requesting him to make a statement about his identity and grow his hair back. Depiction of interracial relationships in comics was strongly forbidden, and there could be considerable pressure on comic creators to exclude Black characters entirely, or present them as White. Joe Robertson, one of the characters in Marvel/Timely's Sergeant Fury commando comic strip, was given a White colouring, even though his features were definitely 'Black'. Comics did, however, in their way attempt to preach interracial toleration largely by using similar metaphors to the above: in one Superman story, the Man of Steel is called upon to stop the persecution of a Scandinavian blonde by the people of Smallville. While it's unlikely that northern Europeans have ever seen much racial prejudice, read in more general terms about the racial tensions in segregation America it does make a valid, if necessarily veiled point. EC's more explicit treatment of racial and sexual issues no doubt contributed to the publisher's eventual collapse, though not all the sexuality in the comics was quite so benign. There have been allegations that some of the material published under the EC imprint was explicitly sadistic and misogynist, including an SF tale in which one of the female characters has her vagina sewn up. In the comics' world, it's often difficult to tell truth from rumour, and although it sounds unlikely some of the material in the EC horror stable was quite nasty. The comic that finally brought the industry down, and provoked questions in the Houses of Parliament, was EC's Foul Play, in which a cheating baseball player is dismembered and his body parts used as sporting equipment by his dead teammates. Given the extreme content of such comic strips, it's not surprising that such concerns arose, or that in the paranoid climate of the time they should expand to cover the entire industry.
The result of this was the establishment of the Comics Code, designed to reassure parents that the comics under its supervision were suitable for a child of seven. Most comics were, however, written for older children, mainly adolescents around 14-years-old. Romance was a part of this, though often with a touch of naïve innocence or saccharine sentimentality. Robin, for example, was not particularly fond of Batgirl, because she insisted on kissing him and making him blush. The Code's stringent provisions outlawed nudity, frank discussion of sexuality and most linguistic expressions of profanity, even to the point of banning the word 'flick' in case the ink ran to spell an entirely different four letter word. As time went on, however, the Code's rules became slightly less rigorous and society generally became more permissive. There were also liberalising forces counterbalancing the repressive tendencies introduced by the scare.
One of these was the growth in the 1960s and 1970s of a large comic fandom and the development of an underground comics scene linked to the counterculture. While most of these had little direct science fictional material, largely featuring instead the adventures of strange hippy types looking for easy sex and plentiful booze and drugs, like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, they did demonstrate a demand for comics with a more adult orientation. The result of this on the SF scene was the hugely influential French comic, Metal Hurlant. Created in 1975 by Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Jean 'Moebius' Giraud and Philippe Druillet, Metal Hurlant led the way in creating adult-orientated SF comics. Initially this expressed itself in an American version, Heavy Metal, which introduced - amongst others - the superb illustrative skills of Roger Corben. The French publishing industry generally permits a far more explicit treatment of sexuality than is possible in the Anglo-Saxon world, and many continental science fiction comics do include graphic sex and nudity amongst their contents. Moebius' The Inkal, for example, published in the 1980s, contained blatantly erotic scenes, which were largely unacceptable in contemporary American and British comics.
Although not nearly as permissive as the French, British comics were rather more liberal than their American counterparts, often to their creators' surprise. Unlike America, Britain did not have a Comics Code authority, and so otherwise risqué material could get through. For example, the nipples of a female character can clearly be seen beneath her tight-fighting costume in the 1953 Captain Future comic strip. While this is in itself ridiculously trivial, hints of nipples on both men and women were one of the biological details prohibited under the Comics Code, and which resulted in the so-called 'Great Nipple Famine of 1968' when every character in official comicdom appeared minus their papillae. Later in the 1970s an early 2000 AD script featured a scene set in an alien carnival. The illustrator, Jesus Redondo, drawing presumably on his own experience of Latin festivities, included in the scene a topless woman. To the editor's surprise, this got through the publishers' moral guardians and passed uncensored.
Elsewhere in America there were attempts to produce more adult comics like Heavy Metal by the mainstream comics industry. These failed, not because of censorship, but because faced with the freedom to pursue more mature issues, the comics' creators, in their publishers' view, carried on producing the same kind of comic strips they did anyway, with the exception that the women by and large wore fewer clothes. Most of the books produced folded, though the envelope by then had been pushed so far that cracks were certainly appearing. It was in the next decade, the 1980s, that comics would finally permit the explicit handling of material which 30 years previously would have been unthinkable or illegal.
The first of these taboos to be challenged was, obviously, nudity. With the establishment of DC's Piranha Press and Marvel's Epic Illustrated as conscious attempts by the two giants to cater for the adult market, came an increasingly frank depiction of the human body. Characters, particularly if they were female, were shown nude. Camelot 3000, a science fictional treatment of the Arthurian myth in which Arthur and his knights are reincarnated to fight alien invaders, included a scene in which Guinevere is naturally discovered naked about to have sex with Lancelot. This tolerance towards nudity extended downwards towards the more mainstream, 'juvenile' end of the market. Merlin was shown bathing with his daughter Roma in the Captain Britain comic strip, although the water covered everything bar their heads and shoulders. Lovers or couples were, however, shown showering together in a Judge Dredd story as part of a Justice Department health campaign to give the population immunity against a rampant fungus then attacking the population in the aftermath of the Apocalypse War. One of the occult strips in the Marvel monthly anthology magazines then being published in the UK featured a tale of two sisters, possessed of occult powers, who performed their unhallowed rites naked. Full frontal nudity was, as a whole, eschewed. While the publishing rules permitted bare breasts in adult comics like Six From Sirius, the genital areas were still covered or otherwise obscured. Most nude scenes were drawn from the back and sides, or else, in the case of the Slaine comic strip, wherein nude female druids were shown sacrificing the Fomorian villains, in deep shadow to preserve some modesty.
This was accompanied by a far more explicit depiction of the sexual act itself. Previous comic strips had hinted that the characters had, or were about to have sex, such as in a 1970s X-Men story in which Jean Grey, Phoenix, took off Cyclops' ruby glasses preparatory to a reclining clinch. The comics could also bowdlerise traditional erotic material to suggest a close romantic association between the characters without them having sex. For example, in one Dr Strange story, Marvel's resident occultist was shown flying fully clothed across the astral planes with Thea in what was described as a Tantric exercise. Tantrism is a form of Hindu and Buddhist mysticism stressing the union of Shiva and Shakti, in which sex plays an important part. Much Tantric iconography is explicitly sexual, showing the gods in erotic embrace. The rather more modest exercise Strange performed with Thea suggested that their relationship was far deeper than one of master and acolyte while nullifying the defining sexuality of the ritual. As the decade wore on, sex was treated far more graphically. At first this was in the adult and underground comics, such as Heavy Metal, and Quality Communications' Laser Eraser And Pressbutton comic strip, a spin-off from the defunct British magazine, Warrior. Warrior had shown Miracleman's wife walking naked about their bedroom after a night of passion with her husband, and the later Laser Eraser similarly did not shy from sexuality. One of the backup comic strips, set in a future intergalactic matriarchy, showed a female protagonist in bed making love to passive, male sex object, in a way which would have made the Victorian Spectator critic spit teeth. At the same time, Slaine included a scene in which the Celtic hero made love to Niamh, the young wife of Slaine's ageing king. The comic also showed Niamh in the travails of childbirth, bearing the hero's son, Kai.
Nor did comics stop at exploring heterosexual relationships. Homosexuality and lesbianism similarly supplied the subtext for a number of strips. Laser Eraser was shown giving a very warm greeting, albeit clothed, to a former gay lover who tells her that she is now married to a 14-year-old 'minx'; the graphic novel Arkham Asylum explored the undercurrents of sadomasochism and repressed homosexuality in the character of Batman, and his relationship with Robin, a development which no doubt would have simultaneously delighted and appalled Wertham. DC's Sandman covered stories featuring rent boys and male prostitution, a serial killer called 'the Connoisseur' who only murdered pre-operative transsexuals, with an image of an androgynous male figure lying dead, sprawled across the sheets of a darkened room, and the gay landlord of a boarding house, for example. The sexuality of this particular character was made even more ambiguous in his membership of a transvestite revue show, to the point where the character would occasionally appear in drag after a performance. That particular story, A Doll's House, ended with the eventual abandonment of the boarding house after the inmates' dreams began to coalesce in a manner reminiscent of Emma Tennant's novel, The White Hotel. At the end of the story, the landlord leaves to seek a former lover, and the two are shown kissing. The publishers of the comic book adaptation of the Clive Barker short story, In The Hills, The Cities went one step further: they showed the two male gay protagonists actively making love.
In all of this, comics did observe some proprieties. Couples were rarely shown completely naked in the throes of passion. They were either shown in bed, or else the panel was drawn to show only their head and shoulders. Niamh was shown fully clothed during labour with close-ups on her head and face, so that there was very little of any obstetrical interest. The scene of gay sex followed these conventions too, despite the previously taboo nature of the material: the panel simply showed another enraptured male face behind the naked head and shoulders of his prone lover. It was a discrete, subtle treatment of a controversial subject. At the time, homosexual sex was banned on British television, although explicitly gay characters were permitted and dramas, such as the controversial Portrait Of A Marriage, about Vita Sackville-West, had shown lesbian sex. Issues of the increasing sexual content of many comics, and the graphic treatment of alternative sexualities, were the subjects of intense controversy, particularly in America. One adult comic folded after retailers in the Midwest refused to stock it because of the lesbian overtones in the relationship between the two heroines. Swamp Thing too was the target of a similar campaign by the 'Moral Majority' because of its supposed bestiality in a story in which the Swamp Thing makes love to his human wife/girlfriend. Despite this, the treatment of sex has become even more explicit. Couples' whole bodies are now shown together naked while having sex, without restrictions to head and shoulders shots, or the preservation of modesty by a few intervening sheets. The aptly entitled Wet Dreams by the continental artist Carizzi, containing three SF/fantasy stories explicitly, if not graphically, displays the characters' sexuality. There's a similar album of horror art by the veteran comic artist John Bolton. An exploration of mostly predatory female sexuality, the book contains full frontal nudity and scenes of lesbianism and carnage - one naked woman is seen crouched on her bloodied bed over the decapitated corpse of her female lover - in a way which would have been unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago. As for costumes, aggressive, predatory female characters such as the vampire Avengelyne now wear much less than the galactic bikini babes of mid-century. Like the fantasy women of Boris Vallejo, she seems to go through life, or rather un-death, wearing only a few pieces of jewellery, a sword, and strategically placed strands of long hair.
This sexual freedom and frankness is now not nearly so controversial as it once was, and although the nudity and sexual content are clearly not acceptable to everyone, there doesn't seem to be quite the same vocal opposition to the inclusion of such material in comics. The Comics Code has collapsed, and creators now have much more freedom over the sexual content of their books. Despite this, the division between mainstream and adult comics seems to have persisted, at least in the Bristol branch of the Forbidden Planet merchandising chain. The comics section there has a sharp, though not always clear division between the two categories, with the latter gradually edging onto the space reserved for the fetish magazines. The dichotomy is not distinct - the section on graphic novels obviously includes both mainstream and more mature books, but it persists nevertheless. This may be possibly less due to political pressure from pro-censorship groups, such as the Organization of Senators' Wives, who went around slapping labels warning about offensive lyrics on record sleeves, as to purely commercial pressures. After the boom years of the mid-1980s, during which the demand for grim 'n' gritty material was at its height, the comics industry went into a long, slow demand until it seemed by the early 1990s that the industry would not survive. This was partly due to the problem faced by all iconoclasts: what do you do after you have pulled down every taboo? Some of the creators felt that the increasingly amoral stance taken by some of the characters had been a blind alley. Although this was mostly about the violence and brutality permeating comics, it also covered some of the issues involving sexuality. There have also been concerns expressed about comics' lack of appeal to younger readers through the concentration on an older readership. One of the first to raise this issue publicly was one of the translators of the Asterix books into English at the UKCAC 90 comic convention. Discussing the then new trend towards mature comics in the Anglophone world, she stated that French comics had experienced a similar phase 10 years previously, but had lost a sizable readership because of it. Children no longer read comics because that was what their parents did. It's a reasonable argument, especially when you consider that the market for jeans, that most indispensable signal of teen cool, declined when they began to be associated with middle-aged fashion victims like Jeremy Clarkson. A number of commentators and comic book creators have also drawn attention to the lack of books suitable for the pre-teen market, and it's true that there have been a dearth of books that would interest junior school children, usually viewed as the traditional backbone of the comics industry. The result has been a return to some of the innocence of previous generations of comic books. The sexually explicit, dark material still persists, but many of the traditional staples of the American comic book industry like the Fantastic Four continue in a narrative style not so dissimilar from that of the early 1980s before the trend towards gritty realism. Meanwhile, the heroes of the Judge Dredd Megazine remain as violently anarchic as ever.
Possibly as a result of this the industry is recovering to the point where, I hope, we can be optimistic about the industry's future. The problem was not necessarily the inclusion of such explicit material, but the way in which graphic sex and violence often supported weak narratives and clichéd scripts. The Sandman attained its cult status, and in the form of The Dreaming survived the departure of its creator, Neil Gaiman, not just because of its exploration of dark and taboo subjects, but also because it was underpinned by a literate, indeed literary sensibility and a genuine love of storytelling. Conversely, the strictures placed on comics' creators under the Code's direction did act to produce some good storytelling. As the books had to be suitable for a child of seven, the writers and illustrators had to produce writing of quite a high quality, and subtlety, to maintain the interest of both the preteens and their mature fans. It's often the case that because of the pressures of writing for children, children's literature is often better-written, and more imaginative, than more explicit, permissive adult literature. The concentration on darkness, and disturbing sexuality, such as child abuse, overshadowed the traditional super-heroic tropes of nobility and heroism, and drove away that section of the readership seeking the type of innocent entertainment that first drew them to the comics.
People should, however, be allowed to choose the type of material they wish to read, and while the content of many comics may still cause concern, people should still have the option of whether or not they want to read it. The return to a more traditional narrative content for many comics does, however, bode well for the future. Comics shouldn't be the sole preserve of jaded, cynical twenty-somethings, and above. Now, faced with a televisual diet of increasing banality, more than ever, children as well as adults need an element of innocent escapism to feed their imaginations. Comics seem set to return to doing just that.
[Editor's note: many thanks to Steven Hampton and Jeff Young for picture research]
taken from
Silver Metal Lovers:
Sexuality, Romance and Relationships in SF Comics
by David Sivier
The comic topic nearest to my heart the unavailable miracleman😄
Why do I Whirly, the great one, the comics expert, the one whose knowledge is greater than all others on this forum 😖mart: Thinks its the greatest comic ever.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.😄
Lets have Julian Darius tell you why🙂
MIRACLEMAN -
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Introduction
The history of Miracleman is fairly complex. It starts with Captain Marvel, originally published by Fawcett Comics in the 1940s. If we understand Superman as the archetypal costumed super-powered being, characterized most by strength and flight (or the illusion thereof, given that the earliest depictions of Superman were supposed to be merely leaping spectacularly, though this was treated even then like steered flight), we must understand that there were not so many derivatives of this archetype. Superman's cape and lack of wings or other visible means of flight were important and fairly unique traits at the time. It was for this reason that Marvel Comics placed silly little wings on the Sub-Mariner's feet. Well, Fawcett's Captain Marvel was essentially just like Superman, except that his alter ego was a boy -- all the better for wish fulfillment fantasies -- instead of a lovelorn, introverted reporter. It was an era of copying, of frantic art and low wages, of printing with near disregard for the law. But Captain Marvel's case was special: he sold better than Superman; Fawcett was making big bucks. Though Captain Marvel ever drifted more towards clever humor and away from his very Superman-derivative beginnings, creating girl and boy versions prior to Supergirl or Superboy, DC Comics sued Fawcett for infringing the Superman copyright. The legal battle became protracted. Fawcett surrendered in 1953, by which time super-heroes weren't selling very well and the profits weren't there to justify continued legal action. This was the infamous lawsuit over Captain Marvel, for which DC was long demonized in the 1970s to the 1990s without regard for historical context; the charge against DC was convenient, given that Captain Marvel's Fawcett issues were fondly remembered and stopped at the right time (so that no one watched their quality disintegrate), and had more to do with Jack Kirby's fight over his original art, which many creators publically aided, and with the fiascos over Alan Moore and Rick Veitch, than the lawsuit itself.
Less known was the fact that England had its own version of Captain Marvel, a sort of grandchild to Superman. During Fawcett's own publication, Len Miller & Son published black-and-white reprints of Captain Marvel and the rest of the Marvel Family, including Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Junior. Fawcett turned off the faucet of American material in 1954, leaving an impending need for new material. Captain Marvel thus transformed into Marvelman, a new character closer to Captain Marvel than he had been to Superman. The Marvel Family transformed as well, with Captain Marvel, Junior becoming Young Marvelman and Mary Marvel given a sex change to become Kid Marvelman. DC seemed uninterested in a lawsuit, doubtlessly not because of any greater divergence between characters but instead because of England's different laws, geographical distance, and small audience; in other words, Marvelman, a black-and-white feature available only in England, was hardly competition for Superman, who therefore let him be. The Marvelman titles -- including Marvelman, Young Marvelman, and Marvelman Family -- were published prolifically until low profits forced their cancellation in 1963, by which time sleeker super-heroes were popular again in the United States.
The magazine-sized British periodical, Warrior, revived Marvelman as one of its black-and-white serials. Alan Moore wrote the serial, which was first published in early 1982 -- almost two decades after Marvelman had last been seen. Gary Leach provided the art, but left quickly to work on Warpsmith stories and was replaced by Alan Davis. The serial was successful and spawned a one-shot entitled Marvelman Special #1. It was, as the cover itself pointed out, the first time a title had featured the Marvelman name in twenty years. Marvel Comics, however, was less than enthused and threatened Warrior with legal action over the prominent display of the Marvel name. It was a case similar to that of Captain Marvel, who has for the same reason continually appeared under the title Shazam!, despite that Captain Marvel was copyrighted and the Marvel name appeared on his titles prior to Timely Comics even taking on the name Marvel. Marvelman also pre-dated Marvel Comics and had even existed alongside the early 1960s Marvel titles, a legacy invoked by the cover of Marvelman Special #1. But that same cover admitted Marvelman's two-decade absence, during which Marvel Comics had come to dominate the Marvel name. Ultimately, any such arguments were irrelevant in comparison to Marvel Comics' money and (reportedly brutally-weilded) legal might: Warrior and its owners simply did not have the finances required to battle the multi-million-dollar American corportation. This apparently contributed to Warrior #19 being the last issue to feature Marvelman, whose story was left woefully incomplete. Alan Moore had conceived the story as a series of books, and publication was suspended during the second of these. The entire situation, as well his perception of Marvel Comics' insensitivity, caused Alan Moore great resentment towards Marvel Comics, for whom he has never worked since. Warrior #26, cover-dated January 1985, was the final issue of the magazine, leaving Marvelman without a home.
In mid-1985, the American publisher Eclipse Comics began reprinting the feature in colorized form -- in a comic book entitled Miracleman to get around the copyright issue. All references within the text to Marvelman were similarly replaced with references to Miracleman. Dates were not changed, causing some readers confusion as to why Alan Moore began the story in 1982. In addition to being colorized, the pages were shrunk from magazine size to the size of American comic books, causing the artwork to look particularly detailed. Most readers of these issues were American and seeing the work for the first time, when Alan Moore, already respected for his award-winning work on Swamp Thing, was first becoming incredibly hot due to his work on the international hit, Watchmen.
Because the reprinted serials were of relatively short length, each issue contained multiple chapters. The first book stretched through the first three issues and was followed by Marvelman 3-D #1, a 3D version of the Marvelman one-shot that had prompted the legal trouble. Ironically, this is the only material never to have been colorized, as it was not included in any trade paperback collection. The sixth issue, cover-dated February 1986, contained the last of the reprinted stories and the first new episode. The new episode, while well-scripted, featured inferior art, made all the more apparent by its contrast with the reprinted episode just before; this was not solely a product of an inferior artist but also the result of producing artwork for pages of the correct size rather than shrinking magazine size originals for comic book reprints. The all-new issue #7, featuring two new episodes, followed soonafter, but issue #8 was a fill-in issue, mostly reprinting old stories and containing nothing either written by Alan Moore or taking place within his story. Issue #9, featuring a single 16-page chapter illustrated by Rick Veitch, was cover-dated July 1986. It featured the birth of Miracleman's baby in graphic detail and resulted in great controversy by the standards of a small publisher like Eclipse Comics. Issue #10, cover-dated December 1986, featured another 16-page chapter illustrated by Rick Veitch; it concluded the second book of Moore's plan for the series.
Book three began in early 1987 and did not conclude until the start of 1990. Consisting of six issues published over three years, book three, planned as Moore's final book, was entirely illustrated by John Totleben, the only book to have a single artist and a great contrast to the many artists of book two. One reason for the delay was eye trouble on Totleben's part; reportedly, he went unable to draw for months at a time. The story itself began as a continuation of book two, but only accelerrated, linking the expanding Miracleman family to mythological precedents. Issue #15 was a revelation, exploding the super-hero genre that had seemed dead after Moore's Watchmen. Issue #16 moved from deconstruction to reconstruction as the entire world was transformed into a funner, more just and more wonderful place. It was fantastic. It was beautiful. It was one of the few most important moments in American comics history.
A new creative team began book four with issue #17, taking over a title that had received great critical attention but that had become notorious for its lateness. Miracleman was fortunate in having the two greatest mainstream writers of its era: Neil Gaiman, before his rise as writer of The Sandman, had been hand-picked as Moore's successor by Moore himself. Along with artist Mark Buckingham, who varied his artistic style episode by episode, Gaiman envisioned three books, consisting of six issues each. They would be titled The Golden Age, The Silver Age, and The Dark Age. The Golden Age, running from #17-22, jumped the narrative into the future and examined how the transformed society left at the end of #16 affected a series of people. Critics charged that he was simply exploiting the various loose threads left by Moore rather than creating anything new; while largely true, it was a brilliant exploitation that decentered Miracleman and examined the issues left by Moore on a more consciously crafted level. Finding loose threads in Moore's work to exploit, much less doing it so masterfully, was itself no small task. The brilliance of Gaiman's work was that they exposed and illuminated Moore's work, making it stronger; had Gaiman's work carried Moore's name instead, critics would have praised Moore's foreshaddowing. And, taken on their own, Gaiman's stories were brilliant.
As The Golden Age had taken over a year, and Miracleman was Eclipse's best-known and best-selling title, Eclipse published a three-issue mini-series entitled Miracleman: Apochrypha following book four's conclusion. Beginning in late 1991, the three issues could be published quickly because they featured multiple artistic teams. Featuring a very well-done framing sequence by Gaiman and Buckingham, the three issues featured stories by other writers and artists that, according to the framing sequence, occur within comic books published within the world of Miracleman. These stories were off and on, but featured work by Matt Wagner, James Robinson, Kelley Jones, and Kurt Busiek -- as well as an early work by Alex Ross, prior to his fame-launching work on Marvels. The framing sequence took place between The Golden Age and The Silver Age.
Book five, The Silver Age, began with #23, cover-dated June 1992. Jumping further into the future, the issues returned the focus to the Miracleman family, specifically on the revival of Young Miracleman. Touching on hints Alan Moore had dropped, #24 featured Miracleman and Miraclewoman realizing Young Miracleman's homosexuality. In this utopian future, Miracleman sought to soothe Young Miracleman's difficult adjustment to a world that challenged his 1950s sentimentality by kissing him. Critics thought this was going too far, perhaps even catering to liberal concerns, but they ignored the fact that this too had been foreshaddowed and, while perhaps uncomfortable, carefully illuminated each character's personality.
Eclipse, eager to exploit the success of Miracleman, solicited a new monthly series entitled Miracleman: Triumphant, to be published around the same time as Miracleman #25. The main title would continue, ever aiming for a bimonthly schedule and ever failing, while the new monthly series, featuring art by Mike Deodato, Jr. (who went on to popular runs on Wonder Woman and other titles despite his fairly poor work), would feature the Miracleman family and would take place immediately following the events of #22, the final issue of The Golden Age. Before either Miracleman #25 or Miracleman: Triumphant #1 could be published, Eclipse Comics went bankrupt and ceased publication. Few mourned Miracleman: Triumphant, but it later became known that Miracleman #25 was finished and ready for publication. Unfortunately, no one else could take up publication of the issue, nor publish the second half of Gaiman's and Buckingham's three books. Miracleman became entangled in a massive copyright dispute that paralyzed the work.
Gaiman's understanding, as he reported it to the press, was that the present writer and artist at any time inherited the original one-third of the copyright owned by Alan Moore and Gary Leach, then Alan Davis; by some reports, this share would revert to Alan Moore if the series were to end and there were no present writer and artist. As noble as this may seem, it is by no means certain. Mick Anglo, the original creator of Marvelman, and Dez Skinn, editor of Warrior, both may own part of the copyright. Eclipse apparently owned part of the copyright, but whether it automatically lost this upon its bankruptcy is unclear. In any case, Todd McFarlane, the millionaire creator of Spawn and Todd McFarlane Productions (a prominent toy company), purchased all of the copyrights Eclipse owned, at public auction in 1998, reportedly for a mere $25K, in order to gain the rights to Miracleman. McFarlane apparently did not understand the other claims to the copyright; he planned to use Eclipse characters in his regular titles or in a couple new anthologies (ingeniously entitled Todd McFarlane's Twisted Tales and Todd McFarlane's Alien Worlds), while relaunching Miracleman soonafter. McFarlane's company placed hints of its plans to sell the rights to a Miracleman movie and its thoughts of Miracleman toys. All of this was particularly insensitive to Gaiman, who had a long-running dispute with McFarlane over the use of Angela and Medieval Spawn, popular characters Gaiman had co-created in Spawn #9 but for which he had not received royalties despite McFarlane's very public promises at the time. Gaiman was suing McFarlane, who had even made toys of the disputed characters and soon started an ongoing series featuring Medieval Spawn. Some speculated, after the anthologies and movie deals utterly failed to appear or even receive mention, that McFarlane had offered the Eclipse portion of the Miracleman rights to Gaiman in compensation for the disputed royalties. By Gaiman's later account, this was exactly the case and McFarlane's written transfer of rights was accompanied by Eclipse's film to the issues. But McFarlane may have never completed the transfer of rights and Gaiman may not have never formally accepted. Confusion over the Miracleman copyright continued to proliferate as the comics press annually lamented the situation.
Shockingly, in 2001, many years after McFarlane had purchased Eclipse and promised strange titles that never appeared, Miracleman was slated to reappear in the pages of Hellspawn, a spin-off title from Spawn. Mike Moran, Miracleman's alter ego, had appeared months prior and bore no real relation to his Moore-Gaiman version. He was slated to first transform within the book at the end of Hellspawn #12 and was to be featured on the cover to #13. Gaiman publically asked readers to boycot the issues, initially declining to sue. As others rallied to his side, he changed his mind. With his novel American Gods on the best-seller lists, he sued McFarlane with Marvels and Miracles, a limited-liability company to which Gaiman, Moore, and Buckingham transferred their rights to Miracleman and which would represent the interests of Miracleman, as opposed to Gaiman's interests, in court. Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada publically announced a deal to produce a Marvel Universe mini-series written by Gaiman, the profits of which would be donated to the lawsuit. Meanwhile, Ashley Wood, the popular and stylistic artist on Hellspawn, quit the title, leaving the bastardized return of Miracleman unpublished in the wake of the litigation.
Heres a good review of Red King Syndrome
Second volume in Moore's Miracleman series, The Red King syndrome is an almost mythic superhero adventure, but as in all things Moore, with as many twists and turnabouts as feasibly possible.
Begin with a Miracleman rendered utterly powerless by his arch-foe, Dr. Gargunza. He's been led there because his wife's been kidnapped. Too pedestrian? Add to it a genetically altered dog that's sent to hunt down the now-powerless superhero. Still not impressed?
Now have the dog eat Miracleman's companion and bite off two of our hero's fingers. Couple that with the hero's subsequent killing of the supervillain...and then a graphic (censored in many, many stores) representation of childbirth, and then the seeds of a story that will change a world, and then...and then...
Well, who am I to spoil it? It's a phenomenal read, deserving of space on anyone's shelf. If you can find a copy, treasure it; we're not likely to see another story of this caliber in a long while.
Mark Millar and Gnostic Xmen
Second volume in Moore's Miracleman series, The Red King syndrome is an almost mythic superhero adventure, but as in all things Moore, with as many twists and turnabouts as feasibly possible.
Begin with a Miracleman rendered utterly powerless by his arch-foe, Dr. Gargunza. He's been led there because his wife's been kidnapped. Too pedestrian? Add to it a genetically altered dog that's sent to hunt down the now-powerless superhero. Still not impressed?
Now have the dog eat Miracleman's companion and bite off two of our hero's fingers. Couple that with the hero's subsequent killing of the supervillain...and then a graphic (censored in many, many stores) representation of childbirth, and then the seeds of a story that will change a world, and then...and then...
Well, who am I to spoil it? It's a phenomenal read, deserving of space on anyone's shelf. If you can find a copy, treasure it; we're not likely to see another story of this caliber in a long while.
We're monsters. I don't dress it up with fancy names like
Post-Human or mutant. Man was born crueler than animals and
we were born crueler than men. It's the natural order."
---Sabertooth, in Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men
I
Professor Charles Xavier, mutant telepath and genius, describes to a dinner companion (and fellow mutant) his life with his wife and son before founding his superhero team, the X-Men. "Very much in love" with his wife, he was changed forever when he met Magneto.
I don't know about you, but the first time I met another adult mutant was like being hit by a thunderbolt. Far, far more powerful than being in love and our human wives knew it. Our eyes were brighter. Our minds were faster. Sometimes we could spend seventy-two straight hours on the telephone just talking about our ideas for the world. Even poor, little David [his son] felt alienated when Magneto's twins would visit. ... I honestly don't think there was one specific argument which caused me to leave. Just the drip-drip-drip of silent nights in front of the television set and the growing unease with my own child's scent. It's monstrous in hindsight but I don't even think I said goodbye the night I left to build our little South Sea Island Utopia. ... I had no shortage of love for my son, you know. Like an owner's love for his pet, sometimes, but it was love nonetheless. [1]
Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of his son in much the same way, in his essay Experience (1844):
Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, - no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the death of one of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me: some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.[2]
What Professor Charles Xavier and Ralph Waldo Emerson share, in their apparent coldness, is an affiliation with a vanished heretical second-century sect of Christianity known as Gnosticism. It is my belief that this moment in which Emerson and Xavier meet allows Emerson's implicit Gnosticism to reveal Xavier's, as dusted fingerprints appear under ultra-violet light. Starting with a recognition of Xavier's Gnosticism, I am going to connect some dots in two Marvel Comics' X-Men comic book runs - Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men (2000-2003) and Grant Morrison's New X-Men (2001-2004) - to argue that these works present, at least in a subterranean logic, a new conception of the Post-Human: what I am going to call Gnostic, or pessimistic, Post-Humanism.
II
With the exception of literary critic Harold Bloom and some northern Californian lunatics, Gnosticism is dead as a religion, but is still alive and kicking in the works of such literary figures as William Blake, Herman Melville, and Franz Kafka (such work continues far out ahead of us all). It also survives in such science fiction films as Alex Proyas' tragically underrated masterpiece Dark City (1998) and The Matrix (1999) (whose plot should be kept in mind as you read this paragraph). The central tenant of Gnosticism is the belief that the universe is a vast prison, the innermost dungeon of which is the Earth.[3] The universe is created and run by the Archons, basically Satan and his minions (in The Matrix, Smith and the Machines). It is an Archon, not God, that people worship in traditional churches, because the Archons work to keep people ignorant of the true state of things. Each person has, inside themselves, a piece (or spark) of the True God kept hostage in the Gnostic prison; the goal of Gnosticism and the Gnostic messiah is to liberate people to transcend the world-as-prison, to wake up and thwart the Archons through knowledge (Greek: gnosis) of that original spark and the True God of which it is a part. The True God is completely alien, and detached from the universe, which he neither created nor governs.
It ia Gnosticism's conception of the self that is most interesting and radical: Gnosticism makes a distinction between the soul (in Greek the psyche) and the spirit (the pneuma). The psyche is primarily what we traditionally associate with the mental self, most exhaustively treated by Freud in his psychoanalysis: appetites and passions certainly, but also our love and our tastes, and much - perhaps all - of our personality. Emerson, an implicit Gnostic, referred to this as the "adhesive self."[4] Christianity, implicitly or explicitly, conceives of the body as a prison for the soul; Gnosticism conceives of BOTH the body and the soul (again, the personality, appetites and desires) as a prison for the spirit, the Gnostic spark, the part of God. (Freud's "bodily ego" admits the connection of body and psyche, though not as a prison for something else). Emerson's Gnosticism is evident in his remarks about his son. He laments that grief (which occurs at the level of the psyche) cannot get him closer to "real nature"; for a Gnostic everything but the pneuma is unreal, including to a large extent other people. Bloom associates the spark with Genius;[5] it is probably best to think of it as the self that is beyond all categories, catalogues of traits, and definitions. Because Saint Paul defeated the Gnostics in the battle to control the destiny of the church (in much the same way Plato defeated the Sophists in the battle to control the destiny of philosophy), contemporary culture has nothing like this distinction, which is why it is so anti-intuitive. The imagination of the traditional Christian, for example, conceives of an ascent to heaven that would transport the individual to a blissfully happy place; we still recognize personalities, however happy, in Dante. Gnosticism, by contrast, speaks of the afterlife as the re-integration of the Gnostic spark with the divine, shedding the shell of both the body and the psyche. It is difficult to picture what would be left. The Matrix, Gnostic in its cosmology, could have been Gnostic in its "psychology" as well: Morpheus may have gotten Neo out of the illusory prison the Machines built to trap us, but can he get him out of the love he has for Trinity? A fully Gnostic director could conceive of his love for her as occurring on the level of the psyche, as another trap created by the Archons to keep him from waking up to realize his own power, his Gnostic spark.[6] These examples show that recognizing such a distinction has radical consequences, particularly when we use it to question existing conceptions of the Post-Human.
In the world of the X-Men [7] a certain percentage of human beings develop extraordinary powers around the age of puberty - powers like telepathy, telekinesis, wings, or the ability to teleport long distances instantaneously. These are the mutants, hated and feared by the world as "freaks" and "monsters." Many theorize that they are evolution's successors to homo sapiens. Humans (such as those that run the Weapon X program, see below) have attempted to wipe out mutant-kind. Mutants (such as Magneto) have attempted to set themselves and their species up as rulers of the planet, reducing humans to the status of animals. Professor Charles Xavier (Professor X) has created a school where he teaches mutants to control their powers; his X-Men are those students who fight - against forces like Weapon X and Magneto - for Xavier's dream of peaceful integration between humans and mutants. The X-Men have been through a host of various rosters, but the selection for Ultimate X-Men is fairly representative: Scott Summers (code-name: Cyclops, power: optic blasts), Jean Grey (Marvel Girl, telepathy and telekinesis), Bobby Drake (Iceman, freezing powers), Henry McCoy (The Beast, enhanced strength and agility), Ororo Munroe (Storm, weather control), Peter Rasputin (Colossus, organic steel skin and super-strength), and James Logan (Wolverine, healing factor and extendible razor claws).
Recent superhero comics have begun to play games with the basic codes of the genre. Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men follows this trend when the new students comment on their code-names, drawing attention to one of superhero comics' silently accepted structures. Henry McCoy, for instance, wonders if he is the only one who finds "The Beast" derogatory. Professor Xavier (nicely anticipating a point that might be made by an academic writing on Post-Humanism and the X-Men) explains the concept: "You've just been rebaptized as a Post-Human being. It's ... a name which describes your own skills and personality as opposed to those of a long dead ancestor." [8] By rejecting the identification of the self with a long dead ancestor, Xavier rejects identifying the self with inherited traits; Freud, with his belief in Lamarckian genetic memory, would be the first to point out that the psyche (the mere mind) falls clearly into this category. But the pneuma does not. Ancient Gnostics conceived of the pneuma as completely alien to anything like "inherited traits," which could only be inherited from the world, the prison; the pneuma is unique, original, uncreated, and only temporarily trapped in space and time. (Time is just another aspect of the world-as-prison, the Archon's failed attempt to imitate the True God's eternity). At a later point in the story Xavier defines mutants as ordinary people with extraordinary talents, associating the mutant power with abilities in sports and music; [9] this might remind us of Harold Bloom's association of the pneuma with genius. There is a connection lurking here between the mutant power and the Gnostic pneuma, both of which are seen in their respective systems as offering real power. By introducing his students to their Post-Human identity, Professor Xavier is asking them to identify themselves with their Gnostic spark -- their mutant power inspiring, for example, Bobby Drake to take his Post-Human identity from his ice-powers and become Iceman. Thus the X-Men suggests an identification of the Post-Human with the pneuma, the Gnostic spark, the antithetical self opposed to the world, the body, and the psyche. This would locate Post-Human theory, not with Haraway, Hayles, and Moravec, but with Blake, Melville, and Kafka -- something worth thinking about. But this new approach to Post-Humanism has dark consequences, embodied by Xavier himself.
In the most flattering light (e.g. the X-Men films) Magneto is conceived of as Malcolm X to Xavier's Martin Luther King. Magneto is a holocaust survivor whose family was murdered in the concentration camps; in his film incarnation he is sympathetic and justifiably skeptical of the possibility of integration, but in the end goes too far to achieve his goals. Ultimate X-Men, in contrast, portrays Magneto as a tyrant bent on exterminating the human race to justify his eugenic claims for placing mutants at the top of the food chain. Generally, in superhero comics the villain will mirror some aspect of the hero: a reasonable, sympathetic Magneto clearly exists as a counterpart to the dominant portrayal of Xavier as reasonable and sympathetic. But Ultimate X-Men plays with a more radical, edgy Xavier as a counterpart to Magneto's more clearly evil incarnations.
(One way to think about the difference between Millar's Xavier and Magneto might be found in the Ethics 101 debate between the altruist and the egoist. The altruist believes that the most important ethical principle is helping others, so he preaches altruism. If the egoist genuinely believes in self-interest as the most important ethical principle, and if (contra Rand) he believes that a world of egoists is not in his (personal) self interest, he will also preach altruism. Magneto clearly believes that mutants are superior to humans, destined to replace them as the dominant species, and he proclaims as much, bringing every superhero down on his head. Millar's Xavier often seems to believe that mutants are superior to humans ("Our eyes were brighter. Our minds were faster."😉, destined to replace them as the dominant species, but he preaches integration, perhaps because it is the easiest path to mutant succession. This is merely a thought experiment, but one that goes a long way toward understanding Millar's darker portrayal of Xavier.)
Mark Millar and Adam Kubert's Ultimate X-Men, like the films, exists outside X-Men continuity, so readers aren't expected to be familiar with more than forty years of convoluted X-Men history. But unlike Patrick Stewart's Xavier, Millar's novice Xavier is morally ambiguous. Though Xavier is never clearly a villain, Millar peppers his portrayal of him with vaguely villainous moments. When Xavier is first introduced in Millar's run, to both his students and to the reader, he sports the trimmings of a moneyed liberal, a Perrier and a prominently displayed AIDS ribbon; [10] later we will learn that he doesn't like prison and is against capital punishment. [11] But his serenity is made sinister by the room's odd, long shadows, intimidating vaulted cealings, (see figures 1 and 2) and the fact that we learn that it is called a library in spite of the fact that it holds no books, because this is where he reads the minds of his favorite writers as they type. [12] Millar's cleverness here is much more noticeable than the obvious invasion-of-privacy issues, but it is nevertheless a factor. His Xavier also makes his first appearance with a cat, an animal known for being (like Xavier himself) aloof, superior and clever. For these reasons it is an animal often owned by villains like Inspector Gadget's Dr. Claw and Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather. Thirty-two issues later we will learn that the cat shares both her name and her distinctive diamond-marked forehead with the shape-changing supervillain Mystique.
In the course of Ultimate X-Men Xavier will send teenagers on dangerous, life threatening missions; when his mission to gain the president's trust by sending the X-Men to rescue his kidnapped daughter goes wrong, Storm remarks to a fellow teammate, "Even Professor X was ready to sacrifice all seven of us just to save some spoiled little white chick with an old money surname." [13] Xavier's son raises the question of Xavier simply controlling the mind of his students (something clearly within his power); [14] it is a question the Beast takes seriously over the course of several issues. [15] When Iceman tells his new girlfriend all about his secret superhero life, Xavier not only erases the conversation from both their minds, but also erases the knowledge of ever dating this girl.[16] He selects the Guggenheim as neutral territory for discussions with Magneto's terrorist children, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, and sinister language and panel composition (Xavier is at the far end, heading out of panel, in shadow: see fig. 3) suggest he is controlling their minds. [17] Their teammates report that they have become like Xavier after this meeting,[18] and they both eventually turn against their father. [19]
Xavier appears to plan everything to the Nth degree, and announces, in sinister scenes with distorted images, that various "phases" of his plan are complete, that (for example) his bid to gain the trust of humans has succeeded: these are characteristics we associate with the supervillain. Xavier promises Cyclops that the next phase of his plan will be "a lot more interesting," [20] (see fig. 4) a choice of words that makes him sound like an aloof dandy. In another decadent moment he notes that conversation holds few surprises for a telepath. [21] He refers to the "politics of the ape man," [22] an unkind phrase to describe the people he publicly considers equals. There is a scene in which a reporter asks if attacks on mutants ever make him resentful; he is unable to answer right away, but after an ominous pause, says that while he counsels turning the other cheek, one never gets used to hate. [23] His estranged ex-wife describes him as cruel and adds: "no one knows what goes on in his head. After fifteen years I was only scratching the surface." [24] Magneto says of him "Charles is very crafty. How he manages to perpetuate this saint reputation is something I'll never understand." [25] Illustrations, such as this extreme close-up of his eye, (see fig. 5 and 6) make him look like a madman. [26] In the end, by recapturing a Magneto he had allowed to live while convincing the world he had killed him, he is in a position to combine his organization with that of the government military machine. A discussion with the head of that organization suggests this is what he had in mind all along (see fig. 7). [27] In the final issue of Millar's run, Magneto says as much, and Xavier's final act at the closing moment of the book is to erase the conversation from the minds of all observers and destroy the surveillance. In the parting panel of Millar's run, the elevator doors close on this enigmatic genius, placing him just a little off center in the panel composition, to be just slightly unsettling. [28] Ultimate X-Men is the first extended X-Men run to make Xavier the primary character, and its ambiguously dark picture is very persuasive.
There are moments when Xavier seems genuinely concerned about his lack of humanity: he describes himself as an emotional vacuum at one point, because he cannot cry at his son's funeral and his primary concern when his wife is sobbing is that she will get mascara on his shirt. [29] But at another moment, when he is upset, he worries that he is holding on to a human sentiment evolution wanted to obliterate. [30] On the whole his almost ludicrous optimism carries him through every problem - even in prison, with the planet on the verge of destruction, he notes that it is nice that his mutant cell-mates, who rejected his offer to join him, now have to listen to his philosophies all day. [31] Post-Humanism in Xavier (as in Emerson) dangerously verges on something unsympathetic (the merely human reader is, of course, aligned with those "ape men" mutants have come to replace). Freud would be the first to point out that sympathy exists at the level of the psyche, the center of humanism; in breaking with the psyche, his inheritance from long dead ancestors, and identifying himself with his pneuma, his individual mutant power, Millar's Xavier reminds us that the inhuman is the dark side to every Post-Humanism. We should always ask ourselves, when we find a vision of the Post-Human that we feel sympathetic toward, whether our ability to sympathize points to a weakness in that vision: should mere humans be able to sympathize with Post-Humans? Did Neanderthals sympathize with the early homo sapiens who murdered them all?
As a superhero team the X-Men are a significantly more radical concept than, say, the Justice League of America. The primary concern of the JLA is to save humanity from disasters and to fight off those that come looking for a fight. The X-Men live in a world where the evolutionary process has put mankind face to face with its replacement, the super-powered mutants. In Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men and Grant Morrison's New X-Men, Post-Humanism is the central theme, as the X-Men lead the fight for their Post-Human brethren. Xavier and Magneto represent two ways of dealing with the emergence of the Post-Human: integration or the dominance of mutants. But throughout Millar and Morrison's X-Men there are other alternatives waiting in the wings, a full gamut of academic and science fiction thought experiments imagining the Post-Human. The Weapon X program, where Wolverine was made, is run by humans to produce specialized super-soldiers to deal with the mutant threat, with various programs creating ways to make humans super-powered, controlling and experimenting on mutants to use as soldiers, making man-machine hybrids, or just creating advanced machines. In Ultimate X-Men: World Tour, Cyclops and Wolverine run into a machine that has achieved sentience and is creating a Post-Human race of machines integrated with corpses (literally post-humous) that will survive on an ozone-depleted planet or in deep space; it argues, "animals evolve, likewise ideas, why not machines?" [32] In New X-Men: Germ Free Generation, Grant Morrison introduces John Sublime, a self-help Guru who preaches to his followers, the U-Men, of a Third Species (not unlike gender theory's idea of the Third Sex) in which super-powered mutant organs (like X-ray eyes) are transplanted into human bodies: homo sapiens and homo superior (mutants), claims John Sublime, will both be replaced by his third species, homo perfectus. (The U-Men reveal their connection to Gnosticism in their choice to wear a kind of scuba gear: they will not breathe the air of the "fallen world" until their mutant grafts make them perfect.) New X-Men: Riot at Xavier's connects Post-Humanism with the process of education itself; only in the X-Men are the Post-Humans supeheroes and visionary students and teachers. Quentin Quire, leader of a school protest that gets out of hand, eventually experiences a "secondary mutation" in which he is completely dissolved into light, [33] a scene that suggests Gnostic transcendence, but also current theories identifying the Post-Human with the dissolution of the ego. The Stepford Cuckoos, students at the school, are identical telepathic girls who refer to themselves as the "five-in-one," [34] suggesting theories that locate the Post-Human in larger social co-operative units. There is a mutant drug "Kick," [35] for those who look toward chemicals for transcendence from the human.
What is really surprising about these recent X-Men books is the way this lush, Post-Human pluralism is allowed to be completely eclipsed by the Phoenix, a creature described in Ultimate X-Men as "an Ultra-dimensional entity that wants access to this reality so it can annihilate [this world] like it annihilated a billion worlds before us. It talks ... in Latin and ... wants to decreate and unravel everything God has ever made." [36] In Morrison's New X-Men, the Phoenix is simply described as burning away everything that isn't necessary. [37] The Phoenix Force is seen as the highest power - the extreme endpoint of evolution understood in these books. In terms of Gnosticism it might be conceived of as the Gnostic God (a rare figure in pop culture); the language of the leader of the Hellfire Club who attempts to harness it through Jean Grey attests to as much: "We want to replace your God with our own chap, Charles. After twenty billion years in this many-angled prison." [38] The phrase Hans Jonas uses in the subtitle for his seminal book on Gnosticism, "The Alien God," is appropriate here. The Phoenix is alien in every sense (including extra-terrestrial): it is eternal, outside space and time, and has no regard for individuals or any part of the created universe. This is the central problem: the Phoenix is a negative endpoint -- the dark idea that will eventually be produced by evolution's violent progress from Human to Post-Human and beyond -- not a progressive Post-Human utopia, but something completely alien and inhuman that will destroy us all. Visions of a Post-Human utopia are primarily confined to the rhetoric of Xavier and Magneto; when the book gives us a glimpse of the future it is always a version of Chris Claremont's seminal Days of Future Past (Uncanny X-Men 141-142, 1980), a nightmarish future Morrison connects to the activation of the Phoenix Force (since Gnosticism would locate this force outside time, and since it conceives of this world as irremediably fallen, this connection makes sense). As proper comic book superheroes, the X-Men always win, of course, but the real philosophical challenges voiced by the better villains are never really dealt with. The comic book format expresses this dark, subterranean logic perfectly: pessimistic Post-Humanism. The idea that, yes, Post-Humanism is our destiny, but in the end it will do little more than provide the means for our continued violence and ultimate annihilation. As Sabertooth puts it: "Super-people are supposed to be the next stage in human evolution, and all we do is fight each other." [39] This pessimism is an unintentional but undeniable part of the serial form of superhero comics. The X-Men have continued their fight to integrate humans and mutants for forty years. Marvel Comics needs a sustainable universe where the X-Men will always be needed (a Utopia, which can end a book or film, doesn't work in a continuously serial narrative because it generates no new stories worth telling, publishing, or selling). These aspects of the form combine to create a world where no one can win and a dark future always threatens. The X-Men continue their fight for justice, but no higher force than the Phoenix and its attendant nightmare future is offered. Post-Humanism is very often utopian and teleological; the comics form itself fights against both these things.
would like to close with a discussion of Grant Morrison and Chris Bachalo's New X-Men: Assault on Weapon Plus as a Gnostic Post-Human allegory. It should be noted that, unlike a lot of the claims I make about popular culture, this one is actually backed by some source study: Grant Morrison is a man who knows his Gnosticism and takes it as seriously as he takes anything. He has built his masterpiece, The Invisibles (1994-2000), around a Gnostic framework (the villains are actually called Archons) and has made claims suggesting that he takes his fictional universe as more than a mere story. [40]
New X-Men: Assault on Weapon Plus is the journey of Cyclops, Wolverine and Fantomex (a new character introduced in Morrison's New X-Men run) to "The World," a factory-city connected to the Weapon X program. Fantomex describes it as:
a square mile of experimental micro-reality, with its own culture, its own religion, its own history ... a giant petri-dish where the lives of ordinary humans are used up in days, even moments. A torture chamber. They call it the World. [41]
The process that the World uses to create super-soldiers in humanity's fight against mutants is described by one of the faculty's scientists (and serves as a great example of Morrison's prose):
Basically the 'Euthanasium' set-up allows us to fine tune population levels in the World. After splicing human genetic material with Sentinel micro-technology, we're then able to sculpt the resultant strains through high-speed real-time scenarios using artificial evolution technology. Artificial evolution allows us to accelerate nature's own processes to create highly evolved and specialized super-soldiers. [42]
They have created a new kind of super-sentinel, a creature that is a mutant killing machine, and Cyclops, Wolverine, and Fantomex have come to stop it. As an added benefit, Fantomex has promised Wolverine that this is the center of the program that created him, and it contains information on who he was before they turned him into a living weapon and replaced his true memories with false ones in order to to control him.
The interesting thing about Assault on Weapon Plus is that its plot can be summarized to sound like Gnosticism and Emerson (not only because the name of the Weapon Plus base invokes our whole reality): the World is an elaborate prison construct and torture chamber, a place where the powerful -- those that could be heroes -- are broken down into playthings and controlled by a shadowy evil. The hero is the man who sees the World for what it is and, rather than being made, makes himself, and breaks out of its boundaries. Fantomex discovers a note he wrote when he lived there which describes Gnosticism's arc of knowledge in "the World"; he reads aloud, apparently without his accent:
My name is Charlie Cluster 7 ... The World operators tell me I am a living hall of mirrors. I am a stealth fighter. I am a Super-Soldier Generation Thirteen. They say mutant monsters will come to steal the World and kill all my friends. But they shouldn't have made me so smart or I might have believed them.
Cyclops says: "I thought you were French." He responds: "No. I just like the accent. We all find our dignity where we can - mine is in Fantomex.'" [43] The point here is that he is successful in creating himself rather than in being created; he is able to transcend what others tell him he is. Fantomex (see fig. 8) is one of Morrison's perfect creations -- and one of comic books' perfect creations -- because (like the Silver Surfer, for example) he rides a fine line between the hyper-cool and the completely ridiculous: looking like a G. I. Joe figure, Fantomex -- whose name is derived from the French pulp-novel character Phantomas -- is a Matrix-style acrobatic, wise-cracking, double-gun-toting French super-ninja genius with multiple brains for independent processing, whose mutant power is that his nervous system is located outside his body in the form of a sentient, living flying saucer that grew from something he literally coughed up one day. Morrison occasionally hints that Fantomex only appears to have the powers he displays, suggesting at several points (including the line quoted above about being a "living hall of mirrors"😉 that his only powers are illusion and misdirection -- the ability to convince others he is what he says he is. With this height of non-conformist self-creation we should recall the words of Father Irenaeus from the early church complaining about the radically free-thinking Gnostics of his day: "Every day one of them invents something new." [44] Certainly Fantomex has invented himself as something very new. In another clearly Gnostic moment Weapon XV breaks out of "the World" to see if it really is the artificial prison he thinks it is; [45] for the Gnostics, discovering the true nature of the world is the first step toward gnosis. Artificial time and the control of time within the World recall the ancient Gnostic belief that time is a product of the Post-lapsarian fall, the Archons' shoddy attempt to imitate the True God's eternity. The chapter title of Assault on Weapon Plus's first issue, "Brimstone and Whiskey," puts us in the context of a Sermon, and the titles of the follow-up chapters - "The World," "The Flesh," and "The Devil" - each conjure up some Archon control mechanism central to Gnosticism. [46]
In the history of writing on the X-Men, several plot lines have become perennial favorites - "The X-Men versus Magneto" (the plot of the first X-Men film), "Return to Weapon X" (the plot of X2, and the second Ultimate X-Men plot), "The Rise of the Phoenix" (Jean Grey is possessed by an ultra-dimensional cosmic force which offers great power but threatens to destroy existence) and "Days of Future Past" (the definitive anti-utopian superhero future). These plots are re-written in the same way Dante is re-translated every couple of years: a new version for a new generation of readers. Assault on Weapon Plus is a retelling of the standard "Return to Weapon X" story line, in which the X-Men confront the organization that created Wolverine. Morrison's twist (one of his best) is to revise and re-organize a huge amount of Marvel history by "revealing" the role of the World in the creation of super-soldiers: Weapon X is merely a splinter division of the larger program of the World. X-Men continuity has established that Wolverine was made into a living weapon and programmed by a shadowy organization called Weapon X, and that his code-name was Weapon X. Morrison outdoes himself in returning to this classic by revealing that the "X" of Wolverine's former code-name is actually a Roman numeral: he is not Weapon X but Weapon 10 (which is set up in the earlier plot which introduced Fantomex, New Worlds). This huge continuity revision is followed quickly by its fantastic consequences: Weapon XII, two generations more advanced than Wolverine, attacks; [47] Fantomex is revealed to be Weapon XIII, [48] gone rogue like Wolverine; the new threat from the World is Weapon XV. [49] Once inside the headquarters of the World (located in an orbiting satellite), Morrison is able to recast Marvel history into his new mold when Wolverine unlocks the Weapon Plus files: [50] Captain America was Weapon I, an obscure Frank Miller Daredevil villain from the mid-80s was another. The continuity of the Marvel Universe is a given any Marvel writer must work with; Morrison's innovation is his ability to re-cast that continuity and achieve a new freedom within it (a host of new stories are made possible by Morrison's move, including those exploring the identity of the other Weapon Plus creations). If the Marvel Universe is Morrison's prison (the rules he is forced to work within as a writer), then this device - a creative misreading not unlike Fantomex's misdirection - is his Gnostic bid for freedom, and it is very successful. Again we hear Irenaeus' "every day he creates something new," return as the very definition of Morrison's genius
What does Morrison do with his new-found freedom? He completely explodes the idea of the Post-Human. The Weapon Plus program's idea for releasing their "living weapons" on the world, of getting the public to accept their extermination of mutant kind, is to introduce them as a comic book superhero team, complete with a headquarters in space and a round table with code-name-labeled chairs. (Dr. Sublime, the man behind the Weapon Plus program, complains to Fantomex regarding his betrayal: "you should have been our team's cool stealth killer. We'd have scripted you to be the kind of character people love" [51]). The principle of villain as a mirror of the hero comes up again here: like the Weapon Plus program the X-Men only appear to be superheroes. Morrison sets up this coup in his first issue, as the team discusses the new Tommy Hilfiger-style uniforms:
WOLVERINE: Suddenly I don't have to look like an idiot in broad daylight.
THE BEAST: I was never sure why you had us dress up like superheroes anyway, Professor.
CYCLOPS: The Professor thought people would trust the X-Men if we looked like something they understood. [52]
To emphasize Dr. Sublime's explanation of the superhero front as "corn they [the public] can understand," [53] Bachalo dedicates a nice page to Weapon XV's entrance into the satellite that would have been the "team's" headquarters (see fig. 9). [54] It is a full-page cutaway revealing a multi-level structure: this will remind any comic book reader of those cutaway layout maps (e.g. of Wayne Manor and the Batcave below, with secret passages clearly labeled) that were often featured as a sort of appendix to a previous generation of comic books. "A genetic cleansing operation disguised as a comic book fighting team" (as Fantomex calls it [55]) is an extreme parody of the X-Men comic book as the vehicle for optimistic Post-Humanism - how else can we explain the otherwise silent detail that the round table for the World's "superhero team" sports the X-Men logo, which is also a Gnostic cross (the symmetrical, centered cross in a circle) (see fig. 10)? [56]
Even the design for Weapon XV is, in the context of Post-Humanism, parodic (and very funny). If, in the Marvel Universe, we would understand Captain America as the first Post-Human (the first human to possess super-human abilities), then thanks to Morrison's bizarre and brilliant concept of speeding up pockets of time to advance generations in minutes, Wolverine is ten generations beyond, and the super-sentinel he fights, fifteen (so Captain America and Wolverine, who we have seen fighting together in Marvel Comics for years, are generations apart). Bachalo has designed Weapon XV with hands that appear to sport an extra thumb below the little fingers and another in the center of the back of the hands (see fig. 11 and detail). If the evolution of opposable thumbs allowed humans to transcend animals, then of course a fifteenth-generation Post-Human is "gifted" with two more sets. And like Hamlet (that highly evolved consciousness Harold Bloom credits with much of what he refers to as "The Invention of the Human"[57]), Weapon XV's extreme introspection makes him almost totally useless when it comes to his instructions to kill, though (again like Hamlet) he is casually muderous, killing bystanders indiscriminately, as if uninvolved. Confronted with Wolverine he asks:
What is the purpose of life? Doctor Sublime has told me my purpose is to exterminate all traces of the mutant genetic line on Earth. But there are millions of living mutations and ... I wonder ... I could have been a painter as well... [58]
Compared to Fantomex's self-invention, it is hilarious to note that two artificial generations later, re-inventing the self is already decadent
And Wolverine's response to Weapon XV closes the story, as Post-Human decadence leads to Post-Human death. Having just discovered who he was before the Weapon Plus program re-wrote his memories (though we, the readers, do not share his knowledge) he says incredulously: "You're asking me about the purpose of life, you [****ing] genocide machine? It's like this..." [59] and he detonates the explosives Fantomex has placed around the satellite, apparently killing them both (in the obligatory cliffhanger every comic book reader knows is never lethal). Wolverine echos Freud, who made the famous assertion in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, apropos of his concept of the death drive that he introduces in that book, that "The aim of all life is death" [60]. It is the end of Assault on Weapon Plus and Morrison's final punch, in this concentrated barrage that suggests that the Post-Human, while inevitable, is paradoxically silly, decadent, and ominous. It also returns to where Morrison started, as Wolverine inadvertently agrees with Morrison's first X-Men supervillain (and his own creation) Cassandra Nova, who claims that the point of evolution is that all life ends up as manure. In the context of a book whose primary themes are evolution and Post-Humanity, this is a stark rejection of any progress, teleology, or utopia. Like Weapon XV, Cassandra Nova is one of Morrison's devices to explode the utopian Post-Human ideal: she first appears as a creature who is to mutants what mutants are to humans, but she is quickly revised into Xavier's evil twin, the dark side to his dream (as she says [61]). She is, of course, both: the idea that the Post-Human, our successor in the Great Chain of Being, will simply enlarge our capacity for evil and cruelty is the dark side of Xavier's dream, a dark side Millar's Xavier already approaches, as we have seen. (Morrison's Xavier is cut from the same cloth: when he and his X-Men are "outed" as mutants he says "no more need to hide our mutant natures. No more human rules." [62])
The connection of Gnosticism to Post-Humanism has dark consequences because Gnosticism is a deeply pessimistic religion: the world is a prison, and everything in it -- from the people you know to the stars in the sky -- is trying to either keep you locked up or murder you; there is transcendence, but (at least it seems to me) it involves leaving behind, as part of the prison, everything you would recognize as you. Gnostic Post-Humanism suggests it may be our destiny to evolve beyond the merely human, but it may be a move toward a dark future where we are simply destroyed or made more advanced in the realms of torture, cruelty, and humiliation. This perspective, however frightening, is the consequence of our present moment, an antidote to those science fiction narratives that present reactionary humans fighting against monstrous Post-Humans (e.g. Captain Picard versus the Borg) or Post-Humans still working within the bounds of a humanistic ethics (e.g. The Matrix). There are two ethical consequences of the Gnostic belief that the world is a vast prison. One is to become a complete ascetic, staying far away from worldly things because they are all part of the prison. The other response is to recognize that the prison is not only the physical universe but the ethical one as well. There were Gnostic sects that recognized ethical rules as Archon control mechanisms and that encouraged libertinism as a way of fighting the world-as-prison. Neo breaks physical rules in his kung-fu fight against the Archons, but The Matrix cannot ask if the transcendence of ethical rules is also central to the emergence of the Post-Human -- whether bans on orgy-sex, pedophilia, and murder are the equivalents of such physical laws as gravity. Millar and Morrison's work within the superhero framework raises the question of Post-Human ethics that The Matrix avoids. [63] Of course Xavier looks villainous, and Weapon XV decadent: we define these terms according to our received ethical systems. Perhaps we are wrong use our traditional humanistic ethics to judge Post-Humans like Xavier and Emerson as cold toward their sons, their heirs, the next generation - perhaps this is just what the future holds.
fig. 8
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fig. 9
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fig. 10
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fig. 11 (detail below)
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Bibliography
Bloom, Harold. Genius. New York: Warner Books, 2002.
---. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead, 1998.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Lectures. New York: Library of America, 1983.
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Norton, 1920.
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
Klock, Geoff. How to Read Superhero Comics and Why. New York: Continuum, 2002.
Millar, Mark, Adam Kubert, and Andy Kubert et al. Ultimate X-Men. New York: Marvel Comics, 2000-2003. Millar's run breaks up into the following story arcs; issues 13-14 were written by an uninteresting guest writer and the story in issue 25 continued in the four-issue Ultimate War (Millar and Bachalo et al.), which continued in Return of the King.