Diamonds among the Garbage
As I imagine has already become clear, there is an inherent problem with trying to attract broader attention to these writers’ works: after finally reaching the point where the likes of Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Chris Ware are treated with respect, looking back to the Seventies once again requires that comics scholars and comics fans engage in the kind of special pleading that we only recently managed to set aside. The great graphic novelists of the past three decades (or at least the ones who have escaped the comics ghetto) might require attention and thought from their readers, but as cultural objects, they tend to be low-context. That is, they can be understood on their own terms without extensive footnoting about a century of comics art.
This is not the case with Moench, Wolfman, Englehart, Gerber, and McGregor. Or with any mainstream comics creator of their era. They were not writing “graphic novels;” they were making comic books. Chasing monthly deadlines in an industry whose products were collectible because they were ephemeral, they rarely produced stories that completely made sense to people picking up just a few issues here and there. Mainstream comics were not serialized novels; instead, they functioned as a continuous flow, with beginnings that were not only beginnings and endings that were never really endings. [1] They referenced events in other comics starring other heroes, excelling at the creation of endlessly immersive worlds. As cultural artifacts, they require explanation and curation, as well as no small amount of patience with stylistic elements that do not work for a contemporary audience.
In one of the early issues of Jim Starlin’s Warlock saga (Strange Tales 181), the title character finds himself in a trippy, Steve-Ditko-inflected virtual reality as part of one of the villains’ attempts to brainwash him. Warlock’s unconscious resists the programming imposed on it, transforming the regimented world of his evil alter ego The Magus into an absurd realm populated by clowns. Most of the satire is primitive and self-explanatory, unless one counts the send-up of Marvel’s own corporate politics, which would only be apparent to readers who knew enough to recognize it. In his excellent Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean (2007), Douglas Wolk calls Warlock “one of the first American metacomics—at least part of its subtext concerned the comics industry and the art of cartooning.” About Strange Tales 181 (“1000 Clowns”), he writes:
“The routine involving clowns building a tower of garbage that repeatedly collapses because of the diamonds someone keeps sneaking into it is not exactly subtle, either, and Starlin himself puts in a cameo appearance as a hapless technician attempting to program Warlock.”
Typically, Warlock’s response to the tower’s collapse verges on hysteria: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Diamonds among the garbage! Let me out of here!”
Starlin’s own comics were presumably some of those very diamonds, whose luster is obscured by the great piles of crap Marvel produced every month. If only that were the case! The problem is not just the various infelicities that marred Warlock, Captain Marvel, or the other comics that built Starlin’s reputation. The real problem is that the diamonds cannot be entirely extracted from the garbage, as the diamonds themselves are partially composed of trash.
Which brings us back to Enigma. Enigma reverses Starlin’s formulation: it is not a diamond among the garbage, but a diamond with a garbage core. Exquisitely constructed, an inspired fusion of the story’s action with the inner lives of its characters, it unabashedly proclaims the influence of its messier, flawed predecessors. That influence is, in fact, the crux of the plot: there was something about a philosophically suggestive, if sophomoric Seventies comic that literally turns the characters into better people, a magic that awakens an even greater magic within them. Milligan and Fegredo have composed a love letter to Seventies comics in a language that wouldn’t exist were it not for the letter’s addressee. Investigating Seventies Marvel will not give us super powers, bring our childhood fantasies to life, or reconfigure our understanding of our sexual orientation.[2]. But I hope it helps us appreciate those diamonds that can never be rid of their flaws.
Note
[1] There is a case to be made that the difference between comic books and graphic novels should be approached according to Deleuze and Guattari’s opposition of a “flow” (which can be started and stopped) to complete “objects” (which can be present or absent). But I’m not entirely sure it’s worth making.
[2] Or at least, it probably won’t. It’s best not to offer any guarantees.