MONSTER MASHUPS #96

 This is probably purely a cover gag on SPOOKY 90.

STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE

My most definitive statement on the rise of identity politics in the 21st century has been the three part TRUMP VS SHAME CULTURE, starting here. But I started thinking about the role of humor in culture, thanks to a Youtube podcast in which Michael Rowe interviewed Greg Gutfeld. 

Gutfeld's first contention was that for some forty years, Liberals working in American popular culture had largely succeeded in portraying Liberal characters as cool, compassionate and funny, while Conservative characters were mean and reactionary. Gutfeld's contention was not new, and finds support in Ben Shapiro's 2011 book PRIMETIME PROPAGANDA. For this book the author interviewed dozens of movie and TV professionals who were very candid (in the days before Shapiro's high visibility) about slanting their stories in order to make Liberals look good and Conservatives look bad. Gutfeld illustrated his point with the movie ANIMAL HOUSE, which pitted good natured slobs against the controlling Dean Wormer. But a better example of the political slanting would be IMO the 1982-89 sitcom FAMILY TIES, in which two middle-aged flower children gave birth to three teenagers, one of whom, Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox), was the Conservative Who Was Always Wrong.

The meme of "cool Liberals vs. uncool Conservatives" continued through the later years of the 20th century. Reagan and Bush Senior appealed to voters who wanted constancy, but Bill Clinton grabbed the part of America that wanted a rockstar President. Conservatives were clearly horrified, and they tried every trick to make Clinton look like a swindler or a murderer. They did finally expose him an adulterer during his second term, but as far as I can tell, it did little to harm his general popularity, though we'll never know he could have won an election with that "blot" on his escutcheon. Throughout much of the first decade of the 2000s, the Left also seemed to control the sense of which group was cool in the school, and indeed George "Dubya" Bush was the Republican gift that kept on giving-- the gift being endless opportunities for satire.

Yet even though I held some Liberal sensibilities during the 2010s, I sensed a greater shrillness in many Liberal comedians of the time, though I blogged only about one, Larry Wilmore, in this ARCHIVE essay. And slowly pundits like Shapiro and Gutfeld were becoming cooler than ultraliberal puppets like Wilmore and Stephen Colbert. What caused the shift?

I think it was the election of Obama in 2009.

In theory, it should have made the Democrats the coolest kids in the political school, to have fostered the election of the country's first Black President. However, I think the Dems subconsciously shifted into the mindset that had dominated the Republicans in the nineties. THEY became the defenders of the faith, of the new order. 

Further, they hitched their collective stars to the idea that Obama was a great President because he was the first Black person to achieve the office. That in turn led them to make increasing investments in what we now call Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And that's how we got a race-grifting zero like Kamala Harris as second in line to the Presidency.

On some level, they know they've done wrong by arguing that skin color and ethnicity should be factors in judging candidates. And that results in psuedo-comedians like Stephen Colbert rattling off monologues that are nothing but solid Trump-hatred putdowns, rather than anything resembling wit.

MONSTER MASHUPS #95

CASPER'S SCARE SCHOOL, reviewed here, is the only one of the Casper films that can fairly be called a "monster mash."

CROSSOVER MADNESS

Though Spooky had appeared in a handful of CASPER  theatrical shorts, I don't think both he and his girlfriend Poil appeared in animation until an episode of the 1996 TV cartoon.

The ghostly girl with the Bronx accent also appeared alongside her freckled boyfriend in CASPER'S HAUNTED CHRISTMAS.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Though the totally unfunny Captain Caveman continued to make appearances even after losing his show, such as in SCOOB, the only time Caveman and his associates The Teen Angels made a featured crossover appearance together seems to be in the final issue of Marvel's SCOOBY DOO comic.

In one panel artist Dan Spiegel mixed up the Angels, so that DeeDee tells Taffy (the blonde one) to go relate something or other to "Taffy," by which the script writer actually meant third girl Brenda.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #15

In my review of the Italian fantasy-film THE GIANTS OF THESSALY, I stated that despite its attempt to adapt one of the first crossovers in Greek epic, the crew under Jason either don't include the really famous characters of the epic's crew, or they have a couple of ordinary guys with similar names, mainly a crewman named Orpheus.

...while the ARGONAUTICA is an early example of a "crossover story." the non-legendary nature of Jason's crew nullifies that aspect of the original story. If the only action taken by Orpheus, the one "big name" in Jason's crew, is that of moaning over his lost Eurydice, I see no reason to equate this character with the master singer who sang his way in and out of Hell.

In contrast, the 1963 JASON does satisfy my criteria, as does the 2000 telefilm adaptation, since both use the legendary icons in such a way as to evoke the earlier myth-figures.

RAR #72: THE MEDICINE WOLF

In DEVILINA #2 (from defunct publisher Skywald), John Albano and Frank Thorne spin a story of western horror. Two White yokels violate a young Indian woman and then kill both her and her brother. Their relative, an unnamed medicine man, transforms himself into a wolf-creature to levy vengeance.

MONSTER MASHUPS #94

 See WEIRD MYSTERIES #6. Read, read, read. Read story "Full Moon," see hitchhiking man accept left from pretty woman driving car. Read, read, read. See man change into werewolf and start to ravage beautiful woman. See beautiful woman change into vampire. See biter bit, for millionth time, albeit literally.

RAR #71: RANARK THE RAVAGER

 Possibly the worst Real American character in comics is Ranark the Ravager, some sort of king-size Canadian demigod who just looked like a big Indian guy. He's so unimaginative, weirdies like "The Waquo Idol" and "The Indian Monsters" are positively refreshing by comparison.

RAR #70: OWLWOMAN

Owlwoman appeared in 1977, the same year as Dawnstar. Until I find something earlier, that probably ties them for the place of "first costumed Native American superheroine." 

Although the new X-MEN feature had been appearing for roughly two years, I like to think that the creator of Owlwoman only gave her "clawed gloves" to make her more owl-like, rather than out of some desire to emulate Wolverine.

RAR #69: QUEEN BEE

 The earliest Native American super-villainess I've encountered is the character of Queen Bee. She appeared in the 1966 LONE RANGER cartoon, each episode of which consisted of two "Lone Ranger" shorts (with or without Tonto) and one "Tonto" short. Tonto got to take on Queen Bee in one of his solo shorts, but all one knows of the villainess is that (1) she herself appears to be Native American, and (2) she somehow got hold of a massive honeycomb, and this in turn allowed her to control massive bee-swarms that she could use against intrepid settlers. Guess her motto was, "Bee all that you can bee."

RAR #68: NURA,, QUEEN OF THE APACHES

 The fine arts of Revolutionary America often used Indian "queens" or "princesses" to represent the newborn country in terms of prosperity, as seen in this 1778 engraving.

In comics and the majority of other cultural artifacts, though, Native American usually had no such exalted roles. The image of the "squaw" was that of a subservient female who accepted the duties assigned her by her tribe.

One of the few counter-examples comes from BILLY THE KID #56 (1966). This scant 8-page story, probably by the team of Joe Gill and Charles Nicholas, depicts a feisty Indian maiden riding into war alongside her braves, proclaiming herself "queen of the Apaches" and knocking Billy the Kid off his horse with her gun-butt. She takes him prisoner and makes her regular redskin beau jealous, so Billy has to fight the guy and escape-- after which Nura's threat just arbitrarily ends.

In this respect I tend to think canonical literature is no better than pop literature, since both tended to elide female Native Americans in favor of males. Even the crude jungle comics at least included a smattering of Black females who were evil plotters or voodoo queens. The idea of strong Native American women seems very rarely explored in any medium until such notions were explored in the pop culture of the 1970s.

RAR #67: SCALPHUNTER

 DC Comics' Scalphunter was launched in WEIRD WESTERN TALES #39 (1977). The protagonist was a White Indian, Brian Savage, abducted by Kiowas as a child and raised as one of them, though as the page below clarifies, the Kiowas of the story have their own "caste system" and don't allow Scalphunter to earn "warrior feathers." In addition to sustaining his own feature the character occasionally interacted with both other western heroes and with superheroes via time travel.

The name of Brian's father, Matt Savage, may have been a call-out, subconscious or otherwise, to a 1959 DC feature, "Matt Savage, Trail Boss," though nothing in the story explicitly links the two characters.

RAR #66: HAWK

 Hawk was a member of the Freemen in Marvel's KILLRAVEN title, who sought ways to expel H.G. Wells' Martians from Planet Earth. He was introduced somewhat "on the fly" before being given a good backstory, plus an unfortunate but heroic death.

RAR #65: JOHNNY CLOUD

 Johnny Cloud, "the Navajo Ace," may have been the first Real American to get his own series during the "Silver Age" (1956-70). This WWII army pilot premiered in ALL AMERICA MEN OF WAR #82 (1960) and appeared in most of the issues until the title's demise in 1966, often being pictured on the cover. The initial story has a strong "Virgil Tibbs" feel as Cloud resents constantly being called "Chief" by most if not all Caucasian soldiers on his own side, although the denouement of that story sports a minor twist on the theme.

After Cloud lost his feature he was recycled into the ensemble group of WWII fighters, The Losets, and later played a prominent role in Darwyn Cooke's DC THE NEW FRONTIER.

RAR #64: ARAK SON OF THUNDER

 I've devoted this writeup to DC Comic's "sword-and-sorcery Native American" Arak, who journeys through the historical Dark Ages having various adventures. As mentioned in the writeup, only one storyline involves a true crossover, as Arak encounters the Chinese warrior-maiden Mulan.

There's also a knockoff of Arak who appeared in INFINITY INC, but he's so awful I can't stand to write about him more than this little bit.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Marvel's DEFENDERS series of the seventies and eighties was of course a "static crossover" in most if not all issues, due to the series' continued use of high-stature icons with their own features, like the Hulk and Doctor Strange. A majority issues also included many "dynamic crossovers," like the one seen below, in which Moon Knight guest-stars for the multi-part story "Who Remembers Scorpio?"

The "Scorpio" sequence was arguably the best story, and the best crossover, in the tenure of writer Dave Kraft, made more effective by strong Kirbyesque art by Keith Giffen. At first glance, the villains-- the crime combine "Zodiac," led by Scorpio-- appears to be a charisma-crossover, since Scorpio appeared first in the NICK FURY feature while he, together with eleven other astrologically-themed aides, took on THE AVENGERS. But the twelve zodiacal foemen of this DEFENDERS arc all android approximations of the human characters, so none of these artificial antagonists, appearing in DEFENDERS for the first time, were aligned with any previous feature.

Kraft also brought about one of the worst crossovers in Defenders history, when a TV documentary persuaded a dozen or so unaffiliated heroes into auditioning for membership in the "non-group." Many of the guest-heroes were written out of character by Kraft and the interior art was bland. The above cover is about the only good thing about this three-issue farrago.

A more amusing, if minor, crossover appeared in issue #65. Hellcat, the superheroine who had once starred in her own teen-humor series as everyday teen girl Patsy Walker, sought out another Marvel "funny girl," Millie the Model. The two characters actually did cross paths in a handful of earlier comics, but only when both were humor-types. I believe issue 65 is the first time Millie the Model appeared in a Marvel superhero title. She got a mention in the "wedding of Reed and Sue" story in 1965's FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3, but there too it was Patsy Walker who took primacy, as she and her support-character Hedy get a one-panel cameo talking in part about whether Millie is around.