Heroes Never Rust #35: The Invisible Woman

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, The Fantastic Four, Unstable Molecules

Heroes Never Rust #35 by Sean Ironman

The Invisible Woman

Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules #2 switches focus from Reed Richards to Susan Sturm. We see that the four-issue miniseries takes place in one day, with this issue beginning with Reed’s phone call to Susan from last issue. We also get a little bit of superhero action with panels from the fictional Vapor Girl comic, which Susan’s younger brother, Johnny, read in the first issue. It opens with a short excerpt from Vapor Girl. The heroine is imprisoned by aliens and shot with an “atomic manipulator ray.” When the comic switches to Susan Sturm, she wakes on the couch and doesn’t recognize the room for a moment. “It’s an odd sensation waking up and feeling as if you are a stranger in your own home.” She goes about her tasks of preparing for her book club by reading the book and baking a coffee cake.

On the surface level, this issue could be seen as the typical story of a woman wanting more than being a housewife. But, this issue succeeds (and it’s the best of the miniseries) because Susan isn’t concerned with female rights. At no point, does she say or think anything about the treatment of women at the time. It’s there because it’s integral to the story, but she doesn’t vocalize that idea. Instead, Susan deals with a life she doesn’t want, and in the end comes to realize “I do not like my life and I want it to change.” By avoiding talking about feminism directly, the story gains in two different ways.

First, the story becomes relatable to anyone. Each of us, at times, has wanted more than the life we had. It’s why we learn things, go to school, get a new job. It’s why we pretty much do most things in life. So the story is able to become more universal.

Second, the story is able to get more specific, which, I know, may be confusing since I just said the story became more universal. But, remember, specificity breeds universality. The character doesn’t act as a mouthpiece for feminism. We get specifics about Susan’s life—her relationship with the neighborhood women, with her brother, with Reed. Today’s readers are smart enough to pick up on the feminist aspect of the story. We’ve seen that story a hundred times. But we haven’t seen Susan Sturm’s story before.

Instead of trying to be herself, Susan tries to be her mother, who died some years earlier. Susan does what her mother would have done. She takes part in a book club, even though she doesn’t like the other women. She deals with Reed’s uncaring attitude, even though there seems to be no love between the two. Other than the phone call, we get nothing more about their relationship. There isn’t anything more. Unstable Molecules is about people wanting more for their lives. They seek happiness in roles they think they should live in, and they all know deep down it won’t help. At one point, looking out at the neighbors Susan hates, she thinks, “I allow myself to hate them.” Allows herself to hate. She has trouble even allowing herself the freedom to feel.

In the end, I think one of the things this comic says is that it’s okay to hate, to be emotional. Throughout the issue, Susan doesn’t let herself feel. On the phone with Reed, she just accepts things the way they are. With Johnny, she does the same. She says nothing when Johnny tells her that he hates her. But by the end of the day, she can’t continue anymore. She breaks down on the couch, waiting for the dinner party to start. “I miss my mom. I do not like my life and I want it to change.” She takes no action this issue, but she’s reached an important moment. She’s come to terms with this not being the life she wants, and we’ll see by the end of the mini-series what she does to change things.

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Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Heroes Never Rust #34: Alone Together

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Heroes Never Rust, Jack Kirby, sean ironman, The Fantastic Four, Unstable Molecules

Heroes Never Rust #34 by Sean Ironman

Alone Together

In 1961, Marvel Comics released The Fantastic Four #1, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. That comic changed the comic book industry. In the first issue, the Fantastic Four wore no costumes. Instead of having their abilities from birth, or gaining them through hard work, or finding some piece of alien technology, the Fantastic Four gained superpowers by being reckless. They defied the U.S. government and tried to beat the Russians in the Space Race. They crashed landed on Earth and succumbed to the cosmic radiation due to the spaceship’s weak shielding. The comic began the Marvel Age of Comics and new characters became more and more human. The Fantastic Four succeeded not just because of the wild ideas presented in Lee and Kirby’s run, but also due to the relationship between the four characters. It’s the same reason why most stories succeed.

In 2003, James Sturm wrote Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, a historic fiction about the “real” Fantastic Four. Unstable Molecules is a four-issue miniseries that tells the story of the people who formed the basis of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Fantastic Four. There were no such people. Sturm is making it up, even going so far as to have a “Notes and Sources” section in the back of the comic with fake resources such as Harvey L. Beyers’s The Fantastic Four: The World They Lived In and the World they Created. Imagining people who may have formed the basis of the superhero team is an interesting idea, but the comic is one of the strongest Fantastic Four stories because nothing is in the way of studying the characters. This might as well be a literary short story written by Raymond Carver. It’s a study of the relationship between these four individuals and how alone they truly are.

The first issue isn’t really about anything. In 1958, Reed Richards is working with sub-atomic particles and is called in to help the U.S. government on a project to beat the Russians. Sue is alone at home, waiting for Reed, waiting to be rescued from nothingness. Johnny, Sue’s kid brother who she takes care of, masturbates to Vapor Girl comics and wanders around with a friend on his way to school. Ben, an aged boxing coach, is about to celebrate his one-month anniversary with a twenty-three year old. Characters talk, or in Sue’s case listen. Johnny masturbating in his bedroom is about the only “action” scene we get. But their mundane lives are fascinating.

Each issue focuses on a different character, although the others play a role. The first comic opens with Reed looking at particles through a microscope. “If anything, I know far less now than when I began. The closer I look, the greater my confusion. I’ve succeeded in isolating the sub-atomic particles but after months of research they defy any predicable behavioral patterns. There has to be a stable pattern.” Reed is brilliant and dumb at the same time. He’s one of the nation’s leading scientists, but he knows nothing about people. He doesn’t understand emotion, only logic. Later, he realizes he forgot about a cocktail party he is supposed to attend and calls his girlfriend, Sue. We watch this conversation from Sue’s point of view. We don’t get his words, only her responses, which are short and mostly consist of “Yes, Reed.” Halfway through the conversation, she sits and folds into herself while still on the phone. Reed misses everything.

Sue yells at Johnny to get up and get to school. Johnny seems depressed, maybe angry about his life. He barely says anything in the issue, a far cry from the fun playboy in The Fantastic Four comics. Sue doesn’t see it, doesn’t care to see Johnny for who he is. She is responsible for him and he needs to go to school. What he’s thinking or feeling doesn’t matter to her. Ben is distant from the other three, never actually interacting with them in this issue. At one point, he heads into the city. People greet him. He’s well liked, but he has no real conversations with anyone. When he’s in bed with his girlfriend, she’s talkative, but he only wants sex. When he’s coaching a boxer he speaks a bit more, but it’s nothing personal, just to hit harder, to push his athlete. A man working at a newsstand greets Ben and introduces his son. We don’t get the rest of the conversation, probably wasn’t much of one, if any. The newsstand man tells his boy, “Ben and I fought together in the war, Marty. Ben as a real hero, yes sir!” Ben walks into a dark porn theater.

Except for Reed’s phone call with Sue, and Sue yelling at Johnny to get to school, the characters are never in the same scene together. Instead of ending scenes at the end of pages, the comic begins scenes at the end of pages. Many of the scenes overlap. It gives the comic unity even though characters are apart. It’s all happening at the same time. There’s still movement even though little happens here. The scenes bleed into one another. Like what Reed opens with, the characters defy any predictable pattern. It’s life. It continues from one thing to the next, mostly consisting of small moments instead of those big ones everyone is waiting for. That’s what’s going on here. People waiting for something to change. Reed waiting for his big discovery to break. Sue waiting for Reed. Johnny waiting to grow up, get a girl, get a life. Except for Ben. Like in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comics, Ben Grimm is the monstrous one, the different one. Ben’s not waiting. He’s given up. In a contradiction of his rocky state in the superhero comics, Ben is alive on the outside, the guy everyone wants to talk to, but he’s destroyed on the inside. He’s succumbed to waiting for his life to mean something. All the characters want their life to be more than what it is. It doesn’t seem like it will happen. It’s up to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to give them a fiction of being superheroes so that they break free of their lives and be in the spotlight where everyone can see them, where they reach beyond what they imagined they could do.

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Heroes Never Rust #20: The Future

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, The Fantastic Four

Heroes Never Rust #20 by Sean Ironman

The Future

I keep coming back in my attempt to define a superhero to it being a person with superpowers who saves people. That is the most basic answer I can find. But what does “saving people” mean? Save them from what? In what way? Most superheroes seem to see a bad guy doing something bad, harming people or robbing a place, so the superheroes step in and put a stop to it. The end. It’s pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys when a bad guy is riding a monster and smashing buildings in the middle of New York City. Where’s the line with protecting somebody? If a boulder is falling and you push a person out of the way, that’s good. If a robber fires a gun when rushing into a bank and you step in front of a someone so they don’t get hit, that’s good. Like I wrote about last week, there are actions that take away from a person’s choice and it becomes a gray area.

There are other ways that can save somebody though, outside of physically stopping some other force. A doctor may save my life by giving me suggestions on how to live in order to not have a heart attack. Whoever invented the seatbelt has saved lives. The D.A.R.E cop, from my elementary school, Officer Davis, may have saved lives. Really anybody who gives somebody else knowledge of any kind may save that person’s life. We live longer on average than people a thousand years ago because of the accumulation of knowledge in our society.

There are superheroes who are different from Spider-Man and Bat-Man. Those guys prowl for bad guys, street-level guys who are committing crimes in the moment, or possibly planning their next attack. But there are other types, like the Fantastic Four, who don’t seek out danger. The Fantastic Four don’t patrol at all really. They are more interested in gaining knowledge and exploring the possibilities of the universe, and beyond. But through their research, they will most likely end up saving more lives than all those street-level heroes put together.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the group in 1961, the beginning of the Marvel Universe as we know it. The roster has changed a few times throughout the past fifty years, but the classic team consists of the same four. Led by Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) is a scientist who can stretch his body into any shape. By the way, a scientist in comics means the person has a mastery knowledge of electrical engineering, chemistry, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, biology, and any other thing the writers need the character to know. Susan Storm (Invisible Woman) was introduced as his girlfriend and later became his wife. She renders light waves allowing her and others to become invisible, as well as create fields for defensive and offensive purposes. Her younger brother, Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) can burst into flame and absorb fire. And the final member is a pilot and old college roommate of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm (The Thing), who looks like he’s made of orange rock and shouts, “It’s clobberin’ time!”

What people forget about most of the Marvel heroes of the 60s is that their creations were usually warning messages about what was going on in America at the time. In the 60s, we had the space race against the Russians. In 1961, the Russians put a man into orbit, the first human spaceflight in the history of Mankind, with Vostok I. The Americans didn’t put a man into orbit until the following year. Lee and Kirby had Reed Richards, supposedly one of the smartest people in the world, get caught up in trying to beat the Reds and he spent his private fortune on building a spaceship. He rushed the test of his rocketship, along with Sue, Johnny, and Ben (who Sue called a coward when he initially thought it was too dangerous). The ship’s shielding did not prove enough to stand against the cosmic rays, which is what Ben warned Reed about.

The ship crashed to Earth, and the four passengers were mutated due to their exposure to the cosmic rays. Ben receiving probably the worst of it, being hideously transformed into the Thing. The film version sidestepped the big issue with the Fantastic Four that they get their powers, not trying to cure diseases or do something good, but trying to get around the government and beat the Russians. The Fantastic Four is part morality tale and part cosmic adventure.

The four represent the American family—Reed Richards and Sue Storm as parents, and Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm as the children. Even once Reed and Sue started to have kids, they had a boy and a girl, Franklin and Valerie. The American family. They squabble. The Thing and the Human Torch play pranks on one another and argue like two brothers. Most of it has very little to do with the cosmic rays accident. They are the American household, and even with their accident, they move forward. They explore and invent and discover the future. When Earth doesn’t hold what they want, they go to other planets, go to the Negative Zone or other realities. Nothing can stand in their way when they work together. If you want to see ideas, just crazy shit happening with comic book science and weird worlds, read The Fantastic Four.

It’s a book about the future. Look at the Thing. He’s seen worlds we can only imagine, yet he’s been deformed by a mistake. He should have fought Reed harder, not get so upset by Sue when she called him a coward, perhaps he’d have never become the Thing. But he uses that and does what we will never do. It’s the American dream, isn’t it? To disregard what has happened to make a life for yourself, a life of possibilities? Isn’t that why the team are superheroes? Not because they stop the Mole Man or Dr. Doom, but that they’ve taken the hand they’ve been dealt and they do the impossible?

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