It’s time for another Everything But Imaginary column, friends… but it seems this week’s column will be delayed a mite. It’s finished! It’s written! But when I uploaded it onto Dropbox on my computer at work… I dunno, maybe it didn’t take. Whatever, it’s not in my Dropbox now. So tomorrow I’ll e-mail it to myself or something and we’ll all enjoy it then, right?
Anyway, no reason to skip this week’s classic EBI. Let’s travel back to October 27, 2004, and an early EBI Halloween celebration…
The Monster Mash
Last year, I took a little time in Everything But Imaginary to talk about horror comics just before Halloween. (You can read that classic, brilliant, prestigious, exemplary column right here: Comics That Go Bump in the Night.) Since I love Halloween, I wanted to do something to touch on it again this year, but how do I follow-up something that magnificent?
But Halloween doesn’t necessarily have to be about something scary. It can be about something ugly too. It can be all about the crazy costumes and the gooey makeup and the rubber masks. One thing that I think makes Halloween a lot of fun are the monsters, and you can find more and better monsters in comic books than you can anywhere else.
Virtually every classic monster of screen and film has graced the comic book page at some point or another — Godzilla, Dracula, King Kong and Freddy Krueger have all starred in their own comics, both miniseries and long-running ongoing titles, over the years. But they didn’t get their start in comics — and a lot of the greats did.
Classically monsters were the villains. One of the early Captain Marvel serials, in fact, pitted him against the evil machinations of the Monster Society of Evil. This storyline, which lasted from Captain Marvel #22 through #48 (proving that Brian Michael Bendis was not the first person to stretch a story out beyond all reasonable expectations of sanity), brought together all of Cap’s most dastardly nemesis — Dr. Sivana, Captain Nazi, Ibac and the like, under the leadership of the mysterious Mr. Mind. Granted, few of these characters were monsters in the traditional sense, until the end of the series when Cap finally confronted and captured Mr. Mind, only to find his arch-enemy was a tiny worm from outer space. The story became a classic, and is even inspiring Jeff Smith’s upcoming Shazam! miniseries (and if DC has a brain in their marketing department, they’ll put out a paperback collection of the original “Monster Society” serial to coincide with that comic.)
Then in the 50s, a new monster came to comics, but not a traditional one. He was a hero, a monster and even a little green man. He was the Martian Manhunter. Transported to Earth by an experiment that left him stranded, J’onn J’onzz basically looked like a bald guy at a football game covered in green paint, but despite this obstacle, he went on to be a superhero. He had it easy, though, he was a shapeshifter, and found it very easy to disguise himself as “John Jones.” (Martians are renowned throughout the universe for their ability to conjure up clever pseudonyms.) As time went on, though, you saw him in human form less and less, and even his “default” form became a bit more inhuman, particularly in the face. We got a nice surprise, years later, when we found out the J’onn we’d been reading about wasn’t his “real” form at all — the true shape of a Martian was much more alien, much more monstrous, but he took on the “default” form as a sort of compromise between his true form and a human form so he wouldn’t leave kids he saved in falling school buses wetting the bed until they were in college.
When Stan Lee revolutionized Marvel Comics in the 60s, though, he brought in two monsters that didn’t have the luxury of morphing into a steel-jawed John Wayne type and taking their girl out for a night on the town. Most well known, of course, is the Hulk. Lee famously said he created this hero to be a mixture of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein, but the end result was an icon in its own right.
Dr. Bruce Banner — a nuclear physicist, a weapons expert, and a Pisces — was working on a top-secret, highly-experimental Gamma Bomb. (The next projects included the Theta Bomb, the Lambda Bomb, and the Delta Delta Delta Bomb which, according to instructional films of the 1980s, caused women to spontaneously have pillow fights in their underwear.) Banner got exposed to the bomb when he pulled some punk kid who was joyriding on the testing range out of the way of the blast. Instead of turning Banner into a wad of Banner-related gel that could have fit inside a Silly Putty egg, the bomb turned him big and gray and strong, but only at night. Then later big and green and strong, when he got angry. Then gray and green. Then possibly plaid at one point, but it was getting confusing.
Stan Lee was trying to tell a parable about a good man trapped inside a monster, and for the longest time, that’s essentially what The Incredible Hulk tried to be. It took Peter David to take all of the Hulk’s weird permutations and make sense of the whole thing. Banner, as it turned out, had multiple personality syndrome. The “real” Banner had trained himself to be cold and stoic, so his other emotions manifested as alternate personalities that were given physical form by the gamma rays. His frightened, angry side manifested itself as the green Hulk, while his lustful, hedonistic side became the gray Hulk (or “Mr. Fixit,” as he was sometimes called, and you can insert your own joke here because I’m not touching that one).
Suddenly, what was a cool story about one monster became a cool story about a lot of monsters, all in the same guy. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what the current status quo of the Hulk is (I think he’s rampaging again, but I’m not sure), but it’ll be hard for anyone to come up with something so simple, and so well thought-out, as the monster stories Peter David told with the character.
Then there’s one last great comic book monster to consider, my personal favorite. I gush about him, I know, but he’s a fantastic character, and fully deserves praise, accolades and a better makeup job than Michael Chiklis has if the promotional pictures are to be believed. You know him, you love him, let’s hear it for the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing, Benjamin J. Grimm.
Stan Lee had already broken some of the rules when creating the Fantastic Four. Sure, he had the hero scientist, the girlfriend and the teen sidekick, but unlike most comics, the teenager and the girlfriend were equals to the hero, full-fledged members of the team. So how better to round it out than to bring in monster — a gruff, burly creature that hated the scientist for what he did to him? That’s how Ben Grimm started out. But like all truly iconic characters, he evolved. His hatred faded and, while still stuck with a really lousy hand, he adapted. A lot of FF stories over the years have dealt with people fleeing from the Thing’s orange hide, his inhuman visage, but his heart has truly become more human than anyone else’s. If you’re looking for a great monster hero, you need look no further. Come Friday night just put on your blue Speedos, paint orange rocks all over your body and trick-or-treat as the Thing.
So now we come to the reason I like doing these sorts of columns — I know I’ve left somebody’s favorite off the list. It’s inevitable. So who do you think are the greatest monsters in comics, heroes or villains? The Beast? Bizarro? The Monolith? Michael Jackson? It’s called a message board, folks. Tell me who you dig and what makes ‘em a great monster.
And Happy Halloween!
FAVORITE OF THE WEEK: October 20, 2004
Identity Crisis #5. There, I said it. Do I even need to qualify this? Do I need to explain what makes this so all-fired fantastic, so incredible, the best crossover of the past two decades? Do I have to tell you this comic rocks my socks and anyone who isn’t reading it is a great big doodoohead? No? Good. Let’s talk about another great comic book, then.
Fantastic Four #519, the last issue of the unfortunately named “Fourtified” story arc (vaguely an Avengers Disassembled crossover, but you can read it independent of that) features the team captured by an alien race that wants to destroy Manhattan all to wipe out the Invisible Woman because they believe she’s going to prove useful to the planet-devourer Galactus. The solution to get the team out of the situation is simple but clever, and the twist at the end is incredible. Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo continue to deliver one of the best comic books in the business.
Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People’s Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the Christmas-themed eBook A Long November. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast and the weekly audio fiction podcast Blake M. Petit’s Evercast. E-mail him at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page.
With Halloween so close, Blake and Erin discuss the greatest movie monsters of all time. Our picks, your choices, and the number one monster in cinema history wait for you in this week’s episode! In the picks, Erin loves The Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 2 and Blake goes with Locke and Key: Grindhouse and Marvel Zombies Halloween. Don’t forget to vote for this year’s Halloween movie marathon at the Fighting Fitness Fraternity Facebook Page! Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@CXPulp.com!
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