VON JUNG THE MYSTIFIC (1837)

VON JUNG-- published about 30 years prior to the birth of the most famous Jung in history-- is another of Poe's cerebral joke-tales that doesn't hold up too well these days.

One odd touch of the story is that Poe starts out by telling the reader about the "grotesquerie" of Von Jung's family, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the story:

The Baron Ritzner von Jung was a noble Hungarian family, every member of which (at least as far back into antiquity as any certain records extend) was more or less remarkable for talent of some description—the majority for that species of grotesquerie in conception of which Tieck, a scion of the house, has given a vivid, although by no means the most vivid exemplifications.

The real focus of the tale is that the odd baron has a special talent:

The beauty, if I may so call it, of his art mystifique, lay in that consummate ability (resulting from an almost intuitive knowledge of human nature, and a most wonderful self-possession,) by means of which he never failed to make it appear that the drolleries he was occupied in bringing to a point, arose partly in spite, and partly in consequence of the laudable efforts he was making for their prevention, and for the preservation of the good order and dignity of Alma Mater.

The way Poe sets up the story, it almost sounds like Von Jung's "mystific" talent may have something to do with mesmerism, which became a big thing in France of the 1770s. However, it turns out that Von Jung's "knowledge of human nature" is simply an extremely well developed ability to know how to press people's buttons. The unnamed narrator, after presenting a catalogue of Von Jung's pranks at his Alma Mater, finishes up by telling how Von Jung managed to get away with insulting a fellow named Hermann, known for killing numerous tormentors in duels. The devious Von Jung does so by knowing how deeply Hermann is versed in the *code duello,* and so works a psychological trick that makes Hermann desist from a dueling-challenge on a technicality.

The main significance of this lightweight tale is that Von Jung may be seen as an anticipation of the author's detective-character M. Dupin, who boasts a similar talent for sussing out people's secrets through an understanding of basic psychology. Poe also presents the reader with a very grotesque description of Hermann, noting that the man has "a trunk worthy of a Farnesian Hercules"-- and though his build has nothing to do with the story, its inclusion suggests that this is something of a "brain beats brawn" tale.

On a minor note, the "Tieck" Poe mentions in the first quote was a well-known German author, whose work is largely unread today, though as the link points out, his vampire tale "Wake Not the Dead" predated Dr. Polidori's "The Vampyre,"and appeared in at least one paperback collection of horror stories, as well as being available in translated form online.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #52

Primary MARY ASTOR has just one credit in the 1925 DON Q SON OF ZORRO.

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Primary ROSCOE ATES (in background) has one uncredited relevant role as a photographer in 1933's KING KONG.

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Primary WILLIAM ATHERTON acted in the original GHOSTBUSTERS and THE CROW: SALVATION, as well as voicing "Doctor Destiny" in the JUSTICE LEAGUE cartoon.

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Judgment call here: CHRISTOPHER ATKINS appears to be a Primary, but it's for a movie that hasn't been released yet: a 2015 project called GATHERING OF HEROES.

THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM (1837)

Leslie Fiedler cites documents from Poe's surviving letters to support his argument that Poe's only finished novel was an attempt to emulate the success of Fenimore Cooper's adventure-books. PYM was not successful with a majority audience, and Poe only attempted one other novel-length work, the uncompleted JULIUS RODMAN.

PYM is a corker, though. Like many Poe works the main story takes place within a frame, as the main character details the story of his experiences at a later date, though the full story is given a tantalizing, unresolved conclusion.

PYM is closer in spirit to Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND than to anything by Cooper, for the titular character is a feckless young man who goes to sea for adventure. Instead Pym suffers an assortment of terrors and tribulations that look forward to the constant perils of serial films, to say nothing of "torture-porn" flicks. Though Pym himself is barely competent to survive the sea's rigors, he lucks out in making common cause with Dirk Peters, a "half-breed" sailor possesses of Herculean strength. Given the author's love of epicene, scholarly characters, Peters is an unusual creation, and the closest Poe ever came to creating a combative hero. Peters lacks the depth of character found in both Cooper's Hawkeye and his Indian buddy Chingachcook, but he does have an almost Conan-esque moment when he uses a knife to slay a giant polar bear.

The phenomenality of PYM starts out as purely naturalistic, but the novel enters literally metaphenomenal waters when Pym and Peters, lost at sea, are picked up by a ship set to explore the South Pole. The ship's crew meets a strange race of Negroid people near the Pole; people who are so black ("How Black Are They--?") that not even their teeth are white. The savages ruthlessly kill everyone in the ship's crew, though Pym and Peters escape for a while. The Americans finally manage to steal a boat from the evil blacks-- as well as taking one of the tribesmen hostage-- and find themselves sailing into a world that gets stranger and stranger. The novel ends on a bizarre note, as the two Americans behold a titanic white human figure waiting at the Pole to greet them.

The narrative breaks off, and an interpolation by another hand explains that though Pym returned to the U.S. and managed to write his story, he died before completing the work, thus leaving the narrative an eternal mystery. Peters is also supposed to have returned, but remains unavailable to anyone inquiring about the adventure. Later authors were more impressed by Poe's PYM than his contemporaries. Jules Verne wrote a rationalistic sequel explaining in tedious detail what Pym encountered at the South Pole. In contrast, H.P. Lovecraft understood that Poe was seeking to evoke the sense of a mysterious, imponderable cosmos. HPL not only incorporated elements of the Poe work into his own "Cthulhu Mythos," he also made frequent use of the trope of the "story that breaks off at the end and leaves the reader guessing."

POLITIAN (1835)

POLITIAN is an unfinished play by Poe, set in 16th-century Rome. Early parts of the play appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger, but it failed to garner good notices so Poe never finished it.

I'm tempted to hypothesize that this was Poe's attempt to ape Shakespeare, given that the play's main action depends upon sexual jealousy among the elite classes. Main character Castiglione has become engaged to his cousin, which is probably less reflective of Poe's own tendencies than of a contemporary scandal during Poe's era. The main character also has apparently had some romantic interaction with his father's ward-- who would be his sister in a functional though not biological sense-- and this would seem to be the only relevance of the play for modern Poe-enthusiasts, as it's pretty bereft of either comic or dramatic interest.

The tome I'm using, Running Press' UNABRIDGED EDGAR ALLAN POE, next prints three Poe efforts that I consider to be more in the vein of "essays." I assume they were included because they bear on the way the author composed some of his hoax-stories, like HANS PFALL. I don't consider the three essays relevant to my project and so I'm skipping them.

RAR #19: SNAKE-DANCE AND WITCH-WOMAN

The early 1970s may have given a featured berth to a new Native American superhero, Red Wolf,
but there were still a lot of bad Injuns in them thar comic-book hills-- and two of them appear in the GHOST RIDER comic.

SNAKE-DANCE appears in the last "Ghost Rider" story to be drawn by the character's co-creator Mike Ploog, and Ploog's art, seen in the above cover, is the only thing good about the character. As written by Mike Friedrich, Snake-Dance is an Apache medicine-man who wants to return his people to their old customs, including that of human sacrifice. Friedrich's story-arc dealing with Snake-Dance is essentially just another tired old quasi-imperialist fantasy of dark-skinned people sacrificing white victims. This might not be entirely out of line if there existed any solid proof that archaic Apaches ever had practiced human sacrifice. Both Snake-Dance's character and motives are pretty lame, and the conclusion of the arc, when Ghost Rider destroys the tribe's traditional sacrificial altar, is a little problematic. Given that the monster-hero possesses his power thanks to a deal with Satan, he's not exactly in a position to be throwing stones here.

WITCH-WOMAN, daughter of the unmemorable medicine-man, is a character with a little more potential, but Friedrich bungles that potential in a confused storyline. When she first appears under the name "Linda Littletrees," she's portrayed as the image of the "good Indian" who wants to live by the ways of modernity. However, she reveals to the Ghost Rider that she too has hellfire-powers like his own, and that she too is an emissary of Satan, bent on subjugating the rebellious skull-headed cyclist so he'll surrender into the service of Hell. Ghost Rider doesn't defeat her so much as escape her, and she appears to kill herself at Satan's command, though later she's resurrected and used as a pawn against the hero. This time, however, Ghost Rider manages to free Witch-Woman from her bonds to Satan and return her to the status of an ordinary woman. Friedrich writes one last story with her attempting to romance Ghost Rider's mortal identity, and then she disappeared from Marvel continuity, except for a much later appearance in a 1994 comic.

The most irritating thing about Friedrich's use of the character is that he breaks his own rules. In the debut issues of Ghost Rider's comic, the character only gains his powers because he makes a willing deal with Satan, but is able to avoid surrendering to the Devil by his own willpower (and an occasional assist from his girlfriend, though her role in the series diminished rapidly). However, Linda is victimized by a Satanic sect when she goes away to college. Her sacrifice by a phallic blade resembles the iconography of various "Satan-films" of the early 1970s, but Friedrich doesn't establish that she makes any pact with Satan prior to being killed, so why does she serve him? Indeed, the following panel implies that her murder was almost a form of sexual intercourse.

I don't have a problem with weird sexual fantasies in comic books, but this one undermines the rules of the writer's own universe, and shows that the author was just batting stuff out without much effort. Given the wasted potential of the character, it's just as well almost no one has tried to revive her.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #51

Primary JOHN ASTIN acted in the 1966 BATMAN teleseries and THE FRIGHTENERS, among others.

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Primary SEAN ASTIN acted in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, among others.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #50

Peripheral ROBIN ASKWITH acted in QUEEN KONG with--

Primary VALERIE LEON from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME.

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Primary ED ASNER has a couple dozen relevant credits, starting with "Jonah Jameson" in the 1994 SPIDER-MAN.

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Primary ARMAND ASSANTE has a few credits, but only the JUDGE DREDD role is well known.

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Primary FRED ASTAIRE (left) has just one credit, an episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

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Primary NILS ASTHER (not shown) has an uncredited role in 1949's SAMSON AND DELILAH.