MINING POLITICAL MINEFIELDS

 Since OD is a "junk-drawer" blog for stuff that doesn't totally fit the more developed theorizing of ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE, here's a "thought-in-development" post spawned by my current watching of the controversial interview between Tucker Carlson and Hitler-fan Nick Fuentes.

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I'm about halfway through the Carlson-Fuentes interview. I see an additional reason Shapiro didn't like Tucker putting Fuentes out there; according to Fuentes he had a history with Shapiro going back to when Fuentes was just an up and coming Trump conservative, still in college. Though it doesn't sound like Fuentes was ever employed by Daily Wire, he formed various acquaintances there. But Fuentes got cancelled for his antipathy toward Israel, possibly by Shapiro himself, and for a brief time lost a podcast show because of DW cancellation.

Now, Fuentes could be lying as to how "reasonable" he was in questioning the US alliance to Israel. His questions, as HE HIMSELF represents them, sound extremely naive. Of course the US gives Israel money, and for the same reason they give money to the Saudis: dollar diplomacy, as a way to hold influence over a fractious nation. I can only assume, given Fuentes' insistence that the US "gets nothing" out of the connection to Israel, that he'd be in favor of dropping all connection with Israel. To Shapiro this could only be heresy, and deserving of cancellation, ASSUMING that Fuentes said nothing more than he claimed to have said. It's worth noting that Carlson has also butted heads with Shapiro over the whole "Israel is the bulwark of democracy" theme, and that, far more than "normalizing" Fuentes' idiotic racism, may be the main reason Carlson gave Fuentes an interview, DESPITE Fuentes having also insulted Carlson previous to the interview.

Of course it's possible that Shapiro might be 99% correct in all of his defenses of Israel, contrary to both the "America First" Right and the "America Last" Left, but in my view he would still not be right to cancel Fuentes. Yes, don't give him a job if you don't like his politics, but if you try to make him lose a job, then you're as corrupt as the Mad Lib Progressives.

I'm now at the point where Carlson is working his way toward mitigating Fuentes' "White people first" views. More on that later.    

PART 2--

So my verdict is that yes, Carlson did play down his opposition to Fuentes because of their fundamental agreement on opposing "Christian Zionists" who supported Israel's right to exist. Fuentes and Carlson may have very different reasons for that conviction, but yes, Carlson's idea of pushback against Fuentes' real racism was just to make very general comments about the wrongness of imputing racial guilt to any people. Since Carlson didn't challenge any particular Fuentes statement, Fuentes just let Carlson ramble on until they got back to what Fuentes wanted to talk about. 

Nothing Carlson did, however, counts as "normalization." I don't know if Ben Shapiro started that whole thing but it sounds very much like a Mad Lib talking point: "we can't allow this speech because it's RACIST." Shapiro would have better off doing as Dave Rubin did, keeping the objections on a purely moral level and not indulging in "If This Is Allowed to Go On" nonsense, because such rhetoric empowers the Corrupt Lefties, giving them talking points about a fragmented Right. Rubin disassembled much better than Shapiro did, highlighting Carlson's statement that he "hated Christian Zionists" worse than anyone, which would include all sorts of Jihadists and Communists who have been making many more people in the world miserable. 

PART 3-- During a televised conversation between Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro this week (following a convo between Kelly and Tucker Carlson the previous day), Ben Shapiro made the claim that another Con broadcaster, Candace Owens, had claimed that Erika Kirk was somehow complicit in her husband's death. Kelly was aghast at the time, but the next day came back on her show and stated that Owens had said nothing of the kind. The New York Post agreed with Owens in calling Shapiro a liar, and the Post hypothesized that Shapiro had over-invested in a narrative about Owens from another broadcaster, Stephen Crowder. As of 11-13 Shapiro has not produced evidence of his claim. Of course Owens is no stranger to rash claims, either, having recently claimed, with no evidence, that the Federal government had faked the messages Tyler Robinson sent to his trans lover. 

Additionally, to the "Christian Zionist" thing, I still think Carlson has over-invested in this narrative, but Kelly spoke to him and he admitted that he did not really mean his hyperbolic hatred for the Zionists.     

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In 1964 Disney launched a comic co-starring The Beagle Boys and "Mad Madam Mim" from THE SWORD AND THE STONE. This story, "By Hook or Crook"  from DONALD DUCK #96 tosses in a third crossover, that of PETER PAN's Captain Hook as well.

The Captain also plays a more standard villainous role in "Voyage to Azatlan" (DD #119, 1966), opposing Donald and the marine mallard Moby Duck.

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In this post I talked somewhat about the crossovers in the ARCHIE universe of super-teens, including their encounter with the evil scientist Mad Doctor Doom, who originally appeared in a 1962 issue of ADVENTURES OF LITTLE ARCHIE.

But I didn't mention this villain-crossover in CAPTAIN HERO--

-- wherein new villain Witch Doctor seeks to impress three "elder states-menaces," in the form of Doctor Nose, The Consumer, and The Whistler-- though as I recall, technically, The Whistler wasn't IN the ARCHIE superhero stories, but in the contemporaneous ARCHIE spy-spoofs, entitled THE MAN FROM RIVERDALE. Not that even I, after all this time, care about the discrepancy. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #151

Here's a Satanic bacchanale attended by many monsters--"ghosts, zombies, vampires and werewolves." The plot of this 1951 story in ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN #25 was probably borrowed from the more famous 1950 EC story, "Horror Beneath the Streets." In the earlier story EC's three horror-hosts pass into the real world and harangue the EC editors into giving the hosts their own books. The writer of this story, probably editor Richard E Hughes (who had a rep for writing many ACG tales under diverse pen names), asserts that Satan resents ACG writer Alan Hartwood for having given mortals such good instructions on how to dispel supernatural evils. After conveniently overhearing that Satan has designs on Hartwood's life, the aggrieved writer spends most of the story fending off werewolves and vampires but then gets spirited away (sorry) to Hell by some ghosts. And yet there's a happy ending, because for some reason Satan then allows Hartwood to continue sending stories to ACG as their new "ghost writer." Wasn't the whole point of the persecution to KEEP Hartwood from writing new stories?

I used the word "Hell" generically, but the script only claims, on page 3, that Satan's minions are "denizens of the Unknown." This would have to be one of the first times that Hughes or one of his writers used that placename as a synonym for some domain that was two parts "afterlife" and one part "collective subconscious." Sixties comics-readers often saw "The Unknown" cited as the stomping ground of the ghostly hero Nemesis.          

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #150

 

It may not be profound but it's the most fun a JLA crossover has been in years. The four icons from the Monsterverse used here are Godzilla, Kong, Mechagodzilla and the Skull-Crawlers. Some new ones are invented as well, though not all of them are given names in the comic proper.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 

I came across a library copy of the 2012 cluster-crossover JUSTICE LEAGUE TRINITY WAR, and it's pretty standard for its purported architect Geoff Jones: just another sloppy smorgasbord of DC heroes doing stupid things. Its only point of interest is showing a version of Justice League Dark composed of John Constantine, Deadman, Black Orchid, and Frankenstein, though one line asserts that Zatanna was a former member. Whether this was ever a lineup in any other comic book I do not know.    

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Dracula managed to appear on both incarnations of Filmation's GHOSTBUSTERS, though the two Dracs have nothing in common. In the live-action 1970s GHOSTBUSTERS, the vamp is a senile old bloodsucker who gets his long fangs stuck in a tree (which his mate Countess Dracula finds sexy-- a rare adult joke in this kids' show).

 Then he pops up on the cartoon GHOSTBUSTERS once, looking a lot like the studio's comical vamp from THE GROOVY GHOULIES.

  

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Here are two more curiosities in which fictional characters are described as having had real lives, though all are only seen as ghosts.

 In the Filmation GHOSTBUSTERS episode "The Headless Horseman Caper," the heroes encounter a ghost who appears based on the legend of the Hessian soldier recounted in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but without the disturbing detail of getting his head blown off in battle. The cartoon just says he's some ghost-- not even given any specific military designation-- who was told by his boss, Prime Evil, to make himself look headless by pulling his head down into his body in order to scare people. The episode has nothing to do with the Irving story except for giving the ghost what I assume is supposed to be a Hessian costume.

Slightly better is "The Ghost of Don Quixote," though technically there are four ghosts from the pages of the Cervantes book: the Don, his sidekick Sancho, and their respective mounts, a horse and a burro. Ghostbuster Eddie is seen reading a book on the Don's adventures, but there's no mention of the book being fiction, nor that the author wrote the book to satirize chivalric romances. The scene shifts to Spain, where a young boy has been reading the same book. When he and his parents are assailed by motorcycle-thugs, the four ghosts spring out of the boy's book-- implicitly summoned from the vasty deeps by the kid's love of the Don's exploits. The lance-wielding ghost drives off the thugs, but their boss summons the Ghostbusters to get rid of the specters. However, the Ghostbusters make common cause with Quixote in defeating evil, and the ghosts then return to the pages of the "history book."   

MONSTER MASHUPS #149

 Wonder Woman did start fighting more big monsters in the 1960s than she had in the previous two decades. But whereas as the "teen version" for the heroine had two separate monster mashups, the adult WW only had one tale in which she contended with two distinct monsters, ranging from THE SPHINX-BIRD--

And the featured menace, THE BOILING MAN.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #148

 Sixties Wonder Girl has her second and last encounter with multiple monsters, starting with the ICEBERG MONSTER--

 

And THE MEDUSA-BIRD.

'

MONSTER MASHUPS #147

WONDER WOMAN #123's feature story, "Amazon Magic-Eye Album," pits the heroine's juvenile self against a bevy of bizarre beasts:

THE HEDGEHOG FISH and THE GIANT OCTOPUS.

THE GIANT ELECTRIC EEL.

And THE WATER COBRA.

This is a more imaginative Wonder Girl story than most, as the writer tended to pit WG against mundane menaces like sharks and whales, and maybe the occasional giant bird.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I haven't rewatched all the NIGHTMAN episodes of the 1990s lately, but I did rescreen a few that seemed to hold some potential.

In "That Ol' Gang of Mine," a mad scientist brings to life the long-preserved bodies of (going left to right) Al Capone, Bonnie Parker and John Dillinger, none of whom died and all of whom were simply kept on ice by J. Edgar Hoover For Reasons. This is, however, a null-crossover because I don't regard that the real-life criminals ever became what I call "legendary figures," the sort of figures authors often feel free to turn into fictionalized avatars of the authentic human beings.

   

In contrast, the NIGHTMAN episode "Manimal" contains both one legendary (and thus "innominate") figure and one franchise character (who would be "nominative" since his exact status as a fictional character can be easily "named"). The franchise character is Doctor Jonathan Chase, played by the same actor who essayed the character on the short-lived TV show MANIMAL, and here he's playing substantially the same role. He meets Johnny Domino/Nightman and the two battle the evil of the legendary Jack the Ripper, who shows up in the 20th century thanks to a magic crystal-thingie.       

RAR #95: RED ARROW, NAWANDO AND WHITE BULL

In 1951 P.L. Publishing released three issues of RED ARROW, devoted to the adventures of the war-bonneted main hero and his young sidekick Running Deer. The characters had no origin and were given no motive for riding around the West fighting evildoers. The stories were ordinary and the only art I liked was the cover of issue #3, shown below. The "Minnie-Hot-Cha" in the green dress may have actually shared the name of Hiawatha's bride, since in her one appearance she's named "Laughing Water."

  

In this essay I've analyzed the one good story to appear in RED ARROW. This was a one-shot tale about a Navajo medicine-man, Nawando, whose vision guides him to his successor, the young brave White Bull. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #146

 THE SPIDBAT.

THE RADIOACTIVE UNICORN.

And with issue #29 appeared the last of the multi-monster mashes in MIGHTY SAMSON. Issues #30 and #31 just had one monster apiece, and after one reprint the title expired. But if I ever get round to counting up the members of this menagerie, it's possible that this feature may have racked up more "monster mashes" than any other single series in any medium. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #145

 THE TIGRAWK.

THE PENTOPUS. (What, too much trouble to draw more than five arms?)

THE GIANT MOUSE (a real terror to the little elephant next to it).

 THE HORN-TOSSING FAWN.

MONSTER MASHUPS #144

 Whoever wrote MIGHTY SAMSON 26 didn't take as much joy as the regular guys(s) in coining bizarre names for the mutant monsters, leaving me the burden of coming up with names for--

THE SEA DRAGON.

And the GIANT PELICAN.

MONSTER MASHUPS #143

 THE MOLE-WORM.

 

THE GIGANTO-RAT.

MONSTER MASHUPS #142

 THE AERO-PANTHERS.

THE INFRA-RED ANT.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #141

 THE GIANT SEA BULL.

THE QUILLED ANEMONES.

 Then there's (to bestow a name where one does not appear) THE MER-GORILLA.

And the SEA SKATER and THE GIGANTO-WHALE..

All of these monsters are commanded by a mutant race of "watermen," led by "King Nephtoon," but because they seeks a villainous goal, that of conquering N'Yark, they rate as villains rather than monsters.              

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I didn't expect to find a crossover while buzzing through a 1976 HOT STUFF but here's the Little Devil saving Jack Frost from the villainous Iceman in "The Deep Freeze Mystery" (HS #137).

   

NULL-CROSSOVERS #21

 I devoted one post here to an installment of the silly time-travel series from JUMBO COMICS, "Stuart Taylor," in which Taylor and company went back in time to encounter the characters of Washington Irving's purely fictional story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." But hey, maybe in Taylor's universe. Sleepy Hollow was real.

    In the case of the Taylor story from JUMBO #53, however, here we have a null-crossover, despite the writer's use of the legendary folkloric name of Bluebeard. At least the Sleepy Hollow story got most of the details of the original tale right. Here it looks like the writer and/or artist decided to whack out a story of Taylor's group traveling back to ancient Persia and fighting against a potentate who wants to get jiggy with Taylor's gal-pal. I don't have a problem with the creators depicting the French Bluebeard as Persian, because the Wiki article on Bluebeard mentions that sometimes European artists drew the character as vaguely Turkish, in keeping with a craze for Orientalism. But the Taylor tale makes no attempt to emulate any trope of the dominant Bluebeard story, so I tend to think the makers just hacked out a standard tale and stuck the Bluebeard name on it. In the same Wiki-article Victorian writer Andrew Lang pointed out that there was no good reason in the story to imagine Bluebeard as a Muslim, for Muslims of the time, unlike Christians, were allowed more than a single wife at a time. Indeed, the Taylor tale imagines "Bluebeard" trying to add the modern female to his harem. So this is a case where the use of a famous name by itself carries no true crossover-vibe.         

RAR #94: JAMES HIGHWATER

 In the Grant Morrison ANIMAL MAN run, James Highwater is an anthropologist who helps the hero undergo a "vision quest," though he's not a standard "mystical Indian" in any way.

MONSTER MASHUPS #140

 THE FLAME FISH.

THE BATWING PELICAN.

THE LIGHTNING EEL.

THE SEA MONSTER and THE LOBSTER SHARK.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 The cover to KRAZY KOMICS #2 is a null-crossover between Tessie the Typist and her boyfriend (who are in the comic) and Li'l Vinegar (who is not).

But Basil Wolverton contributes a real crossover between a goofy pilot-character, Flap FlipFlop, who'd been launched the previous year, and his much more popular hero Powerhouse Pepper. For good measure Wolverton tosses in another null-crossover, having Pilot Flap comment on reading a "Tessie the Typist" comic book.  

Also in WILLIE #16, we get a totally unheralded crossover between the alliterative Jeanie Johnson and Millie the Model in "A Modeling Mood."

And in MARGIE 46, the cast of Patsy Walker crosses paths with Timely's good-hearted movie star, Hedy Devine.