What I find most remarkable about the Golden Age of Marvel Comics, or
Timely as it was known back then, is the violent, anti-social nature of the
heroes. I think readers in the modern era have these notions about the Golden
Age heroes being friendly and good-natured and the relative simplicity of the
artwork and storytelling seems to support that in some strange way. In fact,
the earliest Marvel heroes were monsters and outcasts, with the exception of the
Angel, who was really more of a stock, pulp-inspired character meant to fill
some imaginary quota of crime stories in a magazine full of science fiction
weirdos.
Yesterday I took a look at Carl Burgos' Human Torch, a flaming man-monster
whose earliest adventures read like Shelley's Frankenstein, albeit without any
real subtext. The character itself preyed on some very prominent fears of the
time. While a great portion of the population looked to science as salvation
for the brutal daily life of the working man, the unexplored frontiers in
scientific discovery also created a mild hysteria in the minds of some. The
comic book greats of the time were almost notorious for latching onto those
cultural insecurities and crafting a story or character to exploit them in the
most extreme fashion. Today, I'm looking at Bill Everett and Namor, The
Sub-Mariner. Everett's undersea conqueror seemed to spring from another set of
fears. The fear of a foreign superpower.
Unlike the Torch, Namor didn't appear to be American, and his adventures
often didn't take place on American soil. He was a distant threat, lashing out
at man on the high seas and biding his time until he would strike Manhattan
with a massive tidal wave. He was already on a collision course with the other
Timely characters. Namor was a powerful character though, not just a two-fisted
crime buster or a wild man of the jungle. No sir, only one other Timely
character of the time was even close to a match for the Sub-Mariner's power and
ferocity: The Human Torch. Their clash was inevitable.
Before diving into (see what I did there) what is possibly the first comic
book crossover, if not the first really action-packed one, let's look at Bill
Everett for a moment. Everett was as rich a character as any of his creations,
and with just a quick glance at his personal life and adolescence, it's easy to
see that Namor's rage against the world comes from a very real place. As a
child, Everett was stricken with tuberculosis at least twice and moved back and
forth between his father's estate in Maine and Arizona to recuperate. Young and
sickly, Everett's transition into his teen years led to a menagerie of bad
habits including alcoholism and a hefty smoking habit. By his late teens,
Everett was an accomplished drinker and a three pack a day smoker who wouldn't
allow his body to properly bounce back until decades later.
But young men were simply made of different stuff back in those days, and
Everett's health issues and various dependencies didn't hinder his entrance
into the world of comic books one bit. Like Burgos, Everett dropped out of art
school, in this case the Vesper George School of Art. As a reckless teen who
lashed out against his proper upbringing, Everett was a handful, bouncing from
school to school and burning those all-important bridges of a young socialite.
Maybe his father envisioned he would take over the family trucking business or
seek a professional career in the fine arts, but it was not meant to be.
Everett himself claims his father wanted him to be a cartoonist, but died of appendicitis
when Bill was only 16 and never lived to see his son break into the world of
cartooning.
Everett's early forays into professional art fit the profile of a young man
who was raging and restless, and he was once let go of his position as art
editor of Radio News publications for being "too cocky". Already, in
the first twenty-some years of Everett's life, the character of Namor is
forming in his psyche. I'd imagine the chronic drinking didn't help either. He
made his bread and butter producing a strip called Skyrocket Steele for Centaur
Comics. Not long after this, Everett went to work for Lloyd Jaquet's studio and
crossed paths with Burgos and other emerging comic book makers of the Golden
Age. Marvel Comics #1, and the official debut of the Sub-Mariner came
immediately after (Everett produced a prototype story for what was going to be
a giveaway mag at movie theatres, but it never went into production). The
character was derivative of Everett's favorite stories, Coleridge's Rime of the
Ancient Mariner and Mercury by Giambologna.
Unique to the Sub-Mariner and his future rival the Human Torch is the fact
that they were presented as enemies of society. Prince Namor even looked at
America with disdain, far from the jingoistic pinings of other mystery men of
the time. His appearance was foreign and his head had an odd shape. He wasn't
the least bit dashing. Namor's early adventures saw him terrorizing anyone who
dared sail into his territory, and his ruthlessness and power were rivaled only
by a few other comic book characters of the time. Only Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster's Superman may have been a match for the angry Prince of the Seas at
this point but alas, fans even then knew a National character would never meet
a Timely character.
Not long after his debut, Namor is seen by readers sinking German U-boats
and his slow transition into a reluctant ally of the other Timely heroes has
begun. The enemy of my enemy is my friend was clearly the mentality, and Namor
would set aside his grudges to join in the Allied effort, at least temporarily.
Like the Torch, Namor would later team with Captain America on the battlefield,
and their collective Nazi-stomping strike force would come to be known as The
Invaders. Namor would even develop sidekick types in the form of Atlantean
cousins Namora and Dorma. While Namor never stopped being a destructive force,
attaching these superhero tropes to the character did seem to soften the edges
a bit.
Let's get back to the really pure, angry Sub-Mariner that I like so much.
Before the U.S. would enter World War II, Namor was simply a menace to society
and the character arc would culminate in Human Torch's own title, issue number
five. "The Human Torch battles the Sub-Mariner as the World faces
DESTRUCTION" cried the title page. It was a sixty page rampage, an epic of
an issue even in the days of jumbo quarterly comics. Manhattan was leveled in
the battle, and Namor rode in atop a flying horse, poised with ghoulish figures
of Hitler, Mussolini, and Death herself at his sides. The Torch, who had so far
been transitioning from a monstrous mistake of science into a defender of the underdog,
was the nation's last real hope. And thus, the shared universe aspect of Marvel
and the idea of a crossover was born in one massive issue.
In classic crossover fashion, the battle ended in a draw of sorts. The two
characters were both gaining steam with readers and there was more value in
teasing another battle between the two (or perhaps a team-up?) than in having
one slay the other or even win in any decipherable fashion. This was a
watershed moment however, as comic books were becoming more complicated in
their approach. The precedent had been set for stories to intersect and
characters from separate strips to meet. The books were from Timely
publications, but these advances would come to be known as Marvel's. The Marvel
universe was a thing before it had a name.
Namor retreated to the seas at the end of the story, vowing revenge and some
such. Unbeknownst to them and possibly even Everett and Burgos, the next time
they met it would be as allies. For that brief moment though, still stinging
with defeat, Namor the Sub-Mariner would remain angry at the world, with all of
Bill Everett's self-destructive, alcoholic rage pent up inside him.
What is its place in the greater Halloween countdown scheme you ask? It is the only documentary on the list and it isn't necessarily scary nor horrific. What is interesting to me however, is that it is the only documentary that I know of that addresses the phenomena of Fairy belief as it exists today in areas such as Cape Breton, Ireland, and Scotland. 
Welcome to yet another Halloween Countdown post, I'm your host and purveyor of the putrid, Eerie Evan. While this isn't exactly what you'd call a scary movie, it is certainly among the more unique offerings in recent years, and for those of you looking for a healthy dose of gallows humor with your autumnal film watching this season, look no more than this film directed by Eli Craig, appropriated titled Tucker & Dale VS Evil.
You know my fellow fiends, there is nothing quite as unnerving as a good haunted house story. Perhaps because there is such an unsettling quality about a home being violated so blatantly by supernatural elements. We would like to think of our homes as places of rest and retreat from the world, beyond the reproach of spirits or salesman for that matter. This, coupled with themes of loss and despondency is what makes The Changeling one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen. 
Hello hello, your ol' pal eerie Evan again. This time, we're going to take a little trip down memory lane to revisit a film that I hold quite dear. Hellraiser, by Clive Barker. I hold this film in very high esteem, as it's on the same level of Phantasm for me. This film is about as dark as mainstream horror flicks get, and the first two films in the series are brilliant movies. It erodes quickly after that, but hey, they can't all be zingers.