A Comic Lover's Memories
Nov 7, 2016 14:10:04 GMT -5
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 7, 2016 14:10:04 GMT -5
A Comic Lover’s Memories
Chapter 8
Patroclus in Smallville
For whatever reason, I was out and about walking around town one Saturday in May 1963, right around my ninth birthday. I can’t remember why, but I must have ventured into Cohen’s down on “the Avenue,” as we referred to the main drag in town, because I came home with a comic book, having made sure that I had 12, not 10 cents, to purchase it.
It was the only comic I can remember buying that month. I don’t recall picking it put from the comic rack, but I definitely remember reading it more than once in the first couple of days after I bought it.
(I think I first read it on my way home from the Avenue, something I tended to do because I just couldn’t wait with a new comic.)
I’m sure I chose it because I had liked reading about Superboy just a couple of months before when he was the main character in the first story in Superman 161 in “The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent.” One of the many reasons I liked that story was that Superboy wasn’t as “super” as he was cracked up to be. Even a little kid like me could see that Superboy had acted foolishly and endangered his parents’ lives; despite all of his great powers, he did not yet have the wisdom that experience might have brought him. In that sense, for all his strength and extra-normal abilities, he was just like me or any of my friends.
Something about the cover must have grabbed me besides the Superboy character. It’s certainly not the kind of action-filled cover a kid might be expected to prefer. Looking back, it may be the poignancy of the death of a young person; leave aside the word balloons, which are only the second or third design elements that register here. I think that it was Pete’s pose, his expression and his plight that got me to buy the book, though.
Curt Swan’s simple, yet masterful way of drawing facial expressions was always one of the strengths of many Superman Family story and it’s on display here. Pete’s gently arched eyebrows, his sad eyes and his mouth, ever so slightly opened and drawn down, show us that he’s about to break into tears over his friend’s apparent death. The expression on Superboy’s face, with his mouth open, suggests that rigor mortis has already set in and thus justifies the stiff design of his body that makes him look as if he’s floating an inch or two above the ground.
The killer (NPI), though, is Krypto’s corpse. Yikes! Does he ever look dead. I’m glad he wasn’t more front and center. A dead pooch front and center might have made the cover unbearable.
(I still remember asking my mother if you could will your heart to stop beating. I don’t know if she saw the comic lying next to me where I was sitting on the bench at our kitchen table, but I think she very quickly ridiculed the idea and, perhaps, its source.)
All in all it was a somewhat grim portrait of death to use on a magazine aimed at kids.
The story is quintessential Silver Age melodrama, with an in medias res opening that leaves both the supporting cast and the readers baffled. In short order we see the death of Superboy (courtesy Virus X), a cadre of his robots blown apart by the Superboy Revenge Squad (in a panel that’s a clever way to show the kind of dismemberment and destruction the Comics Code Authority wouldn’t allow humans to endure), and his dying wish that Pete accompany his last surviving (one-armed) robot to a secret location where Pete will inherit Superboy’s costume and powers and continue his legacy.
Wow! Talk about a kid reader’s wish fulfillment!
Of course Pete does so and we see right away how noble he is when he muses to himself that it is “awful that [acquiring these newfound powers] occurred only because of the death of my best friend!”
When I was reading Superboy 106 with all the bated breath a nine-year-old kid could muster, I had no inkling of the phenomenon we all know now: “Super-Dickery,” the condition marked by Superboy/man’s unbridled eagerness to screw with the minds of those who love him most. Even if we give him a pass for all the stuff he pulls with Lois and Lana because they are equally enthusiastic hoaxers, he deserves the brickbats for the times he played with the affections of his parents and Pete.
And in this story, Superboy doesn’t even let the reader in on his plot until we’re deep into the story, so he’s screwing with us, too. A veteran Superboy reader might have known something was up right away, but for a newbie like me, Superboy’s death, the destruction of his robots and his dying bequest to Pete were serious business and the stuff of high drama.
Even when his parents question the cruelty of Superboy’s hoax, he waves off their concern with a classic deflection technique, saying that he’ll keep an eye on Pete to keep him safe, completely ignoring the notion that he’s being cruel and manipulative to his best friend.
The typically convoluted Silver Age Weisingerian plot lurches toward its end with an overwhelming number of events occurring in a disproportionate number of panels, but, in a classic bit of “turnaround is fair play,” we do have another moment of Superboy hoist with his own petard, as he had been -- for a while at least -- when his parents died.
The well meaning Pete, determined to protect his best friend even beyond death, decides to use 1930s science and his new super-powers to transmute the pyramid in which the duplicitous Superboy is entombed into green kryptonite, the better to prevent the Phantom Zone criminals from desecrating the dead hero’s body.
So now, Superboy (and Krypto) are really dying!
Well, just as in “The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent,” Superboy escapes both the trap and the anger of those whom he has manipulated.
And of course, as every Silver Age fan knew, the idea that Superboy needed to test Pete’s fitness to replace him is shot through with irony, for as we are inevitably reminded whenever Pete appears in a Superboy story, he has long known Superboy’s greatest secret, having once seen him change from Clark Kent into the Boy of Steel.
Here’s what always stuck with me: Pete was by far the nobler of the two friends. It never occurred to him to reveal what he knew, even to Superboy himself. (I have no idea if that condition changed over the decades; doesn’t matter, because the Pete Ross of the Silver Age never did, and never would have betrayed his friend. One of the sour notes in Alan Moore’s coda to the Silver Age Superman saga was the Pete Ross episode, IMHO.)
In our darker, more cynical world, we might think that Silver Age Pete’s a little too good to be true, but the contrast between his maturity and Superboy’s immaturity (despite having the powers of a god) did not escape my notice. Little did I realize as a fourth-grader that the bravery, loyalty and wisdom of Pete Ross, which so touched me here and in other stories, were rooted in a tradition that stretched back as far as the literary tradition of Western civilization. And just a few years later, when I started to read the Greek myths, I discovered another “too-good-to-be-true” type who was Pete’s long-ago ancestor, Patroclus, the best friend of Achilles.
In the Iliad, Achilles is the one guilty of Super-Dickery, retreating to his tent in a juvenile tantrum when he cannot have his way. The Greeks, lacking his presence, are in danger of being overwhelmed by the Trojans, when suddenly Achilles appears to inspire and lead them. It is not Achilles, of course, but his beloved friend Patroclus, who, clad in Achilles’ armor, attempts to lead his fellow Greeks. Patroclus had persuaded the sulking Achilles to allow him to wear his armor and lead his Myrmidons.
The ploy works, but Patroclus disobeys Achilles’ command not to drive the Trojans back to the gates of Troy, and he is impaled by a spear before the great Trojan hero Hector delivers the deathblow.
In Superboy 106, we see a similar pattern: the immature superhero, the friend clad in his armor hiding his own identity in deference to the supposedly greater hero, the willingness to sacrifice all for the love of a friend. Had the conventions of comics in the Silver Age not intervened, the ending might well have had Pete dying as a result of Superboy’s manipulation. It would have been fascinating to see the wrath of Superboy in the Silver Age evoking the wrath of Achilles in the Heroic Age.
You may recall that Achilles sought out Hector, slew him, and then stripped him of his armor before dragging his corpse behind his chariot nine times around the walls of Troy. There but for the Comics Code Authority went Superboy.
It’s a stretch to infer that it was intentional on the part of creator Robert Bernstein to make Pete’s name so similar to "Patroclus,” perhaps it was the offhand allusion of a clever writer who saw more in his newsprint tale than his nine-year-old readers might. Still, over the years, it is Pete whose humility, wisdom and nobility always resonated with me just that much more than Superboy’s, who, like Achilles, was nigh invulnerable, but too often fell prey to pride.
Pete was just a kid from Smallville, but like Patroclus, he could be a hero, too, one who needed neither fame nor glory, and may therefore be considered even greater than the hero he replaced.
Chapter 8
Patroclus in Smallville
For whatever reason, I was out and about walking around town one Saturday in May 1963, right around my ninth birthday. I can’t remember why, but I must have ventured into Cohen’s down on “the Avenue,” as we referred to the main drag in town, because I came home with a comic book, having made sure that I had 12, not 10 cents, to purchase it.
It was the only comic I can remember buying that month. I don’t recall picking it put from the comic rack, but I definitely remember reading it more than once in the first couple of days after I bought it.
(I think I first read it on my way home from the Avenue, something I tended to do because I just couldn’t wait with a new comic.)
I’m sure I chose it because I had liked reading about Superboy just a couple of months before when he was the main character in the first story in Superman 161 in “The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent.” One of the many reasons I liked that story was that Superboy wasn’t as “super” as he was cracked up to be. Even a little kid like me could see that Superboy had acted foolishly and endangered his parents’ lives; despite all of his great powers, he did not yet have the wisdom that experience might have brought him. In that sense, for all his strength and extra-normal abilities, he was just like me or any of my friends.
Something about the cover must have grabbed me besides the Superboy character. It’s certainly not the kind of action-filled cover a kid might be expected to prefer. Looking back, it may be the poignancy of the death of a young person; leave aside the word balloons, which are only the second or third design elements that register here. I think that it was Pete’s pose, his expression and his plight that got me to buy the book, though.
Curt Swan’s simple, yet masterful way of drawing facial expressions was always one of the strengths of many Superman Family story and it’s on display here. Pete’s gently arched eyebrows, his sad eyes and his mouth, ever so slightly opened and drawn down, show us that he’s about to break into tears over his friend’s apparent death. The expression on Superboy’s face, with his mouth open, suggests that rigor mortis has already set in and thus justifies the stiff design of his body that makes him look as if he’s floating an inch or two above the ground.
The killer (NPI), though, is Krypto’s corpse. Yikes! Does he ever look dead. I’m glad he wasn’t more front and center. A dead pooch front and center might have made the cover unbearable.
(I still remember asking my mother if you could will your heart to stop beating. I don’t know if she saw the comic lying next to me where I was sitting on the bench at our kitchen table, but I think she very quickly ridiculed the idea and, perhaps, its source.)
All in all it was a somewhat grim portrait of death to use on a magazine aimed at kids.
The story is quintessential Silver Age melodrama, with an in medias res opening that leaves both the supporting cast and the readers baffled. In short order we see the death of Superboy (courtesy Virus X), a cadre of his robots blown apart by the Superboy Revenge Squad (in a panel that’s a clever way to show the kind of dismemberment and destruction the Comics Code Authority wouldn’t allow humans to endure), and his dying wish that Pete accompany his last surviving (one-armed) robot to a secret location where Pete will inherit Superboy’s costume and powers and continue his legacy.
Wow! Talk about a kid reader’s wish fulfillment!
Of course Pete does so and we see right away how noble he is when he muses to himself that it is “awful that [acquiring these newfound powers] occurred only because of the death of my best friend!”
When I was reading Superboy 106 with all the bated breath a nine-year-old kid could muster, I had no inkling of the phenomenon we all know now: “Super-Dickery,” the condition marked by Superboy/man’s unbridled eagerness to screw with the minds of those who love him most. Even if we give him a pass for all the stuff he pulls with Lois and Lana because they are equally enthusiastic hoaxers, he deserves the brickbats for the times he played with the affections of his parents and Pete.
And in this story, Superboy doesn’t even let the reader in on his plot until we’re deep into the story, so he’s screwing with us, too. A veteran Superboy reader might have known something was up right away, but for a newbie like me, Superboy’s death, the destruction of his robots and his dying bequest to Pete were serious business and the stuff of high drama.
Even when his parents question the cruelty of Superboy’s hoax, he waves off their concern with a classic deflection technique, saying that he’ll keep an eye on Pete to keep him safe, completely ignoring the notion that he’s being cruel and manipulative to his best friend.
The typically convoluted Silver Age Weisingerian plot lurches toward its end with an overwhelming number of events occurring in a disproportionate number of panels, but, in a classic bit of “turnaround is fair play,” we do have another moment of Superboy hoist with his own petard, as he had been -- for a while at least -- when his parents died.
The well meaning Pete, determined to protect his best friend even beyond death, decides to use 1930s science and his new super-powers to transmute the pyramid in which the duplicitous Superboy is entombed into green kryptonite, the better to prevent the Phantom Zone criminals from desecrating the dead hero’s body.
So now, Superboy (and Krypto) are really dying!
Well, just as in “The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent,” Superboy escapes both the trap and the anger of those whom he has manipulated.
And of course, as every Silver Age fan knew, the idea that Superboy needed to test Pete’s fitness to replace him is shot through with irony, for as we are inevitably reminded whenever Pete appears in a Superboy story, he has long known Superboy’s greatest secret, having once seen him change from Clark Kent into the Boy of Steel.
Here’s what always stuck with me: Pete was by far the nobler of the two friends. It never occurred to him to reveal what he knew, even to Superboy himself. (I have no idea if that condition changed over the decades; doesn’t matter, because the Pete Ross of the Silver Age never did, and never would have betrayed his friend. One of the sour notes in Alan Moore’s coda to the Silver Age Superman saga was the Pete Ross episode, IMHO.)
In our darker, more cynical world, we might think that Silver Age Pete’s a little too good to be true, but the contrast between his maturity and Superboy’s immaturity (despite having the powers of a god) did not escape my notice. Little did I realize as a fourth-grader that the bravery, loyalty and wisdom of Pete Ross, which so touched me here and in other stories, were rooted in a tradition that stretched back as far as the literary tradition of Western civilization. And just a few years later, when I started to read the Greek myths, I discovered another “too-good-to-be-true” type who was Pete’s long-ago ancestor, Patroclus, the best friend of Achilles.
In the Iliad, Achilles is the one guilty of Super-Dickery, retreating to his tent in a juvenile tantrum when he cannot have his way. The Greeks, lacking his presence, are in danger of being overwhelmed by the Trojans, when suddenly Achilles appears to inspire and lead them. It is not Achilles, of course, but his beloved friend Patroclus, who, clad in Achilles’ armor, attempts to lead his fellow Greeks. Patroclus had persuaded the sulking Achilles to allow him to wear his armor and lead his Myrmidons.
The ploy works, but Patroclus disobeys Achilles’ command not to drive the Trojans back to the gates of Troy, and he is impaled by a spear before the great Trojan hero Hector delivers the deathblow.
In Superboy 106, we see a similar pattern: the immature superhero, the friend clad in his armor hiding his own identity in deference to the supposedly greater hero, the willingness to sacrifice all for the love of a friend. Had the conventions of comics in the Silver Age not intervened, the ending might well have had Pete dying as a result of Superboy’s manipulation. It would have been fascinating to see the wrath of Superboy in the Silver Age evoking the wrath of Achilles in the Heroic Age.
You may recall that Achilles sought out Hector, slew him, and then stripped him of his armor before dragging his corpse behind his chariot nine times around the walls of Troy. There but for the Comics Code Authority went Superboy.
It’s a stretch to infer that it was intentional on the part of creator Robert Bernstein to make Pete’s name so similar to "Patroclus,” perhaps it was the offhand allusion of a clever writer who saw more in his newsprint tale than his nine-year-old readers might. Still, over the years, it is Pete whose humility, wisdom and nobility always resonated with me just that much more than Superboy’s, who, like Achilles, was nigh invulnerable, but too often fell prey to pride.
Pete was just a kid from Smallville, but like Patroclus, he could be a hero, too, one who needed neither fame nor glory, and may therefore be considered even greater than the hero he replaced.