Prose and Pain
Chapter 5:
Bodies and Words:
Don McGregor's Tortured Romantic Individualism
Prose and Pain
When P. Craig Russell, Don McGregor’s artistic collaborator on Amazing Adventures, was interviewed about their 1983 graphic novel continuing the story that had been interrupted by the book’s sudden cancellation, he described a point in the new work where he felt that a transition was too abrupt. As a result, he explained, he was probably “the only artist ever to ask Don McGregor to add more text to the page” (paraphrase; find source). Russell and the interviewer shared a laugh, but it was hardly an in-joke: McGregor’s scripts were notorious for both the sheer quantity of words involved and the florid, emotional style that they brought to he page. While he was still at Marvel, his writing was parodied twice by Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck 2 and 19), and once by Steve Englehart. In Avengers 137, Thor asks the Black Panther if he would like to rejoin the team. The Panther, who at the time was the headliner in McGregor’s extended run on Jungle Action, replies:
“Thor, the fine fools gold of stark velvet morning seems to light the mottled tapestry of desire and disaster that comprises the legend of life for my people and myself in this hidden, half-slumbering nation-state we proudly proclaim Wakanda—/—but the amber eyes of reason widen as mauve shadows of regret creep across all the outside worldscape, and scream the bleeding need for Panther’s presence at this time.”
Thor provides a helpful translation for the reader: “Nay.
Panther’s monologue is literally colorful, running the gamut from gold to amber to mauve in the course of a sentence that threatens to go on forever. But this palette is deceptive: McGregor’s prose is purple.
The parody is funny, but it is not exactly fair. Englehart’s Panther does not speak like any of McGregor’s characters; rather, he sounds like McGregor’s captions. One of the real hallmarks of McGregor’s writing is the ongoing counterpoint between his elaborate, romantic narration and the often witty, and downright funny, dialogue of the characters the narration describes. A McGregor script typically has not one register, but two.
No doubt, we need to pay attention to McGregor’s style, but we should not let his logorrhea distract us from the actual scenes that provoke him to such prolixity, and to what those scenes are about. Yes, McGregor loves words, but those words are so often in the service of a preoccupation with bodies. In particular, with bodies in pain.
There were only three Marvel titles that McGregor wrote for an extended period: Power Man (28, 30-35, 1975-1976), Amazing Adventures (21-32, 34-37, 39, 1973-1975), and Jungle Action (6-22, 24 1973-1976). Two of these titles had generic names that had little to do with the book’s hero (Killraven for Amazing Adventures, the Black Panther for Jungle Action), while the third refers to a superhero identity that never managed to supplant the protagonist’s civilian name (Luke Cage, Hero for Hire/Power Man). In all of them, McGregor cultivates a romantic sensibility tempered by the intense suffering the characters are forced to endure. Where the stereotypical superhero is heroic because he is powerful, McGregor’s protagonists prove their heroism through their ability to survive physical pain.
Torturing the heroic body looks almost like a mission statement in McGregor’s Seventies work; in his first installments of each of these three titles, he subjects his hero to intense, over-the-top excruciation. In Amazing Adventures 21, Killraven is beaten by a cyborg with a metal arm. As comics fare goes, this is a pretty standard trope. But McGregor has given serious thought to the collision of metal and flesh, slowing down the action at the bottom of the page for a four-panel sequence of the hand coming down on Killraven’s (not quite visible) skull
“Before Killraven can turn toward the harsh voice, the warlord strikes mercilessly.
“KRUNK!”
“Once!
“Twice!
“Killraven, who has lived a lifetime of torment, buckles under the splintering pain.”
"THUD!”
“A third time the metal arm descends—and the long red hair is little sheid for the scalp beneath!”
“WOK!"
“Killraven never feels the fourth blow!”
“POK!”
A few pages later, Killraven’s skull is smashed again as he is strapped to table for more torture, a “molten hot” surgical implement burning into his arm while he refuses his torturer’s demand that he scream. Other torments quickly follow, most notably in issue 23, when he is captured and strapped to a table. Sweating and terrified, he hear scurrying sounds, then sees eyes glowing in the darkness. It is a horde of rats, coming to eat him:
“Taloned claws leave red welts creasing Kilraven’s flesh. Furry lips pull back to expose raking fangs that chew and gnaw….”
A twenty pound rat lands on his chest, ready to bit at his jugular. Killraven has tried to break free of is bonds and reach a torch held in a sconce on the wall, “but now he tries again, for the bonds have been severed by ripping teeth!
“Once more, the flames sear his fingertips—
“—but now it is a minor pain, lost besides the savage intensity of the rat’s onslaught.”
Of course Kllraven breaks free, but that is not the point. First, there is the simple fact of dwelling at great length (over several pages) on physical pain and terror, to an extent not found in the superhero fare of the day (unless it is written by Don McGregor). Second, and more important, is the aspect of this torture that makes it specific to Amazing Adventures and absent from Jungle Action and Power Man: this is also a scene that is self-conscious about the viewer’s reception of violence and preoccupied with the question of empathy. Killraven’s suffering is televised.
More than televised, actually. thanks to the science fictional nature of the comic. McGregor did not invent the premise of the Killraven series; like so many of the series we have explored, it changed writers every issue before gaining a permanent scribe (McGregor). But he was the one who fleshed it out. Killraven takes place in the future (2018-2020), after H.G. Wells’ Martians returned to Earth for a successful second invasion in 2001. Jonathan Raven (nicknamed Killraven) was stolen from his mother as a young boy and raised to be a gladiator for the Martians’ amusement. Before the series begins, he has broken free and gathered a band of warriors (the “Freemen”) to rebel against humanity’s oppressors. But since the series takes place in the “future” (35 years separated the date of the first issue’s publication and the time frame it describes), the Martians’ have access to some of the advanced technology developed by humanity before the conquest.
The Martian High Overlord, an alien encased in giant humanoid armor, praises the “mural phonics system” as “one of the last advancements made by your race before the end of their dominance.” Mural phonics is an entertainment system that will make several appearances throughout the series, serving as a vehicle for a set of concerns that might otherwise seem alien to a postapocalyptic saga of war and survival: the value of romantic heroism and the perils of escapist entertainment.[1] Here it is introduced as an instrument of twisted entertainment repurposed as torture:
“The system was a psychosensor communication registered directly into the individual mind, creating semi-tangible images and emotions!
“Your death will be transmitted to receivers set in slave quarters—breeding pens—scientific labs across the face of the planet—
“—and they will all witness your death in their minds!
“Through that device, they will smell your fear and hear your screams…as the rats slowly devour you!
“We will kill the legend you’ve become…and the reality of your human whimpering.”
McGregor states the series’ aesthetic credo using the mechanical lips of the main antagonist: heroic storytelling is a matter of shared pain, transmitted through the medium of art. Killraven is built on suffering and empathy. At this particular moment, forced empathy is yet another violation committed by the Martians: “He hears the whirr of the mural phonics system, and knows his fear is not a sacred, private emotion!/ The emotion is ripped raw from him just as fangs tear at his limbs!”
There is a more balanced principle at work here, one that is difficult to see during this moment of torture. While it is easy to mock McGregor’s prose for its excess, the madness not infrequently sublimes into method. McGregor is torturing the reader with his prose, to the extent that the unpleasant reading experience reproduces the misery that he is describing. We are meant to identify with Killraven when he triumphs, but also when he is in pain.
I dwell on this scene, and this question of suffering and empathy more broadly, for two reasons. First, it is connected to, and redeemed by, Killraven’s one legitimate superpower, which he calls clairsentience (more on this below). And second, to provide a counterpoint to a valid critique of McGregor’s work on the Black Panther, Luke Cage, and, eventually, his own creation, Sabre (published by Eclipse Comics as a graphic novel in 1978 and a series from 1982-1985). McGregor’s otherwise defiantly anti-racist comics display a disturbing propensity for extended, graphic scenes featuring the torture of black bodies. The example of Killraven is not used to dismiss the concerns such scenes raise (“he does it to white people too, so there’s nothing racial about it”), but to suggest two possibilities: 1) the preoccupation with physical suffering is not only about race, and 2) there is something about black bodies that McGregor (unconsciously) finds conducive to exploring this particular dynamic.
But first, Killraven.
Note
[1] McGregor never actually explains what mural phonics is or how it works, and neither the word “mural” nor “phonics” is particularly helpful. The term was probably a transposition of Phil Spector’s famous music production formula known as the “wall of sound"