Empathy from Outer Space

The postapocalyptic setting McGregor inherited for Amazing Adventures had huge thematic potential, which the writer and his collaborators proceeded to exploit to great effect.  The aftermath of the second “War of the Worlds” was hardly unique for the times,  Like Jack Kirby’s Kamandi (which began in 1972), the Killraven stories mined territory already made popular by the first Planet of the Apes movie series (1968-1973) (which Doug Moench was simultaneously adapting and extending in his work on Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine (1974-1977)).  As the famous image of the Statue of Liberty buried in the sands at the end of the first Planet of the Apes film so powerfully exemplifies, such stories build upon the sense of near-complete rupture with the culture and history of the past (our present).  

On the plot level, Killraven and his Freemen are pursuing the simple, but noble goal of liberating humanity from the Martians, one small battle at a time.  They are ridiculously outmatched; at any given moment, they number fewer than 10, while their enemies consist of the entire Martian race, countless human collaborators, and a never-ending series of genetically-altered monstrosities either sowing chaos or working on the invaders' behalf.  The incommensurate scale is reminiscent of the abrupt ending of H.G. Wells’ original novel, in which the Martians are laid low by tiny bacteria. But it is also quixotic in every sense of the word:  Kllraven may not be titling at windmills, but he is both fighting for an impossible dream and, on occasion, hallucinating a completely different reality.  More to the point, he and most of his comrades are motivated by the romantic heroism that is the hallmark of McGregor’s adventure tales.

This is why the High Overlord’s disdain for the mural phonics system is so thematically important. As science fiction adventure, the Killraven stories are escapist, to the extent that we frequently have the chance to revel in the heroes’ success, but the setting, details, and violence are disturbing.  Amazing Adventures is meta-escapist in its frequent reflection on the role of stories and the projection of one’s self onto others, both real and imaginary.  This is one of the ways that Amazing Adventures grapples with post-apocalyptic rupture, by confronting the culturally-deprived, precarious protagonists with the romantic, escapist entertainments of the past (our present). 

Like the Planet of the Apes movies and comics, and, to a lesser extent, Kamandi, the Killraven stories would exploit the characters’ cluelessness for the reader’s amusement (Killraven’s group discover what are clearly Nixon’s secret tapes, and use them for New Year’s decorations), but McGregor would also bring pathos to the comedy.  In Amazing Adventures 26, Killraven find himself in Battle Creek, Michigan, engaged in senseless combat with Pstun-Rage, a man who is determined to defend his town’s treasures from outsiders.  Killraven is forced to kill him, but stun-Rage manages to crawl back to his holy relics, which turn out to be old cereal boxes: “Darkness descends, but his last conscious thought is triumphant! At least it was…something worth dying for!” [1] 

How fitting, then, that while the High Overlord tries to turn the seemingly vapid entertainment systems of the past into a tool of oppression, subsequent installments show how the Mural Phonics System (and, by extension, presumably any debased medium) can be transformed into a powerful weapon in the hands of the revolutionary/romantic. In Issue 29, one of the humans who has spent years in a Martian breeding pen offers Killraven encouragement as the rebel leader commandeers the Martain’s holographic megaphone to speak to the newly liberated captives:  

“[S]ome of them will remember your face[….] some of us were here the night the Martians said your death would be televised over the mural phonics system. / You should have seen [the facility’s keeper] when you turned the tables on them…he actually screamed.  You were beautiful.” 

And in Issue 25, Kilraven encounters Hobie, a young technician enslved to the Marians.  Killraven is shocked that Hobie knows his name. Hobie can barely contain his enthusiasm:

“Ever since that night the High Overlord’s face beamed in over the mural phonics receivers and said you’d been captured— 

" —and that for our….viewing enjoyment…the mural phonics system would broadcast your last living moments.  

“I saw you when those rats came at you.  My flesh crawled with your fear.” 

[…]

“Your thoughts carved into mine.  I sat in that crowded cell, unable to believe that torture wasn’t actually happening to me. 

“And then you beat them! And you gave that ultimatum! 

“I swear..I shouted those words with you!” 

Violent entreatment in Amazing Adventures, then, is not torture porn.  Or perhaps, it is not only torture porn. In McGregor’s world, the purpose of art is to harness empathy. 

But when Killraven and the Freemen spend an entire issue (32) grappling with the mural phonic system, McGregor takes the opportunity to make a set of programmatic statements about the value of escapism, all while, once again, exploring the problem of post-apocalyptic rupture.  The issue is called “Only the Computer Shows Me Any Respect!”, a title that starts to make sense halfway through the story.  When they enter a full-scale entertainment complex in Nashville, Killraven is immediately put in the position of the naive audience.  Suddenly we are reminded that Killraven, born in 2001, is the youngest member of his band; as M’Shulla tells him, “You forget, K.R. I have mem’ries before the Marian Invasion.” Tellingly, these are memories of a frustrated, boyish escapism: “I used to shadow box in fronta the bathroom mirror—/ —see myself as one of the heroes in those mural phonics shows.”  On the day of the Marian attack, M’Shulla’s father walked in on him, declining to play with his son as he usually did.  

“I saw ‘im in the mirror…an’ his eyes were dead! He lost his business when I was a baby…and I knew as he looked into the mirror that he was seeing’ the opposite of what I’d seen in my life. 

“Like somebody cut him up raw and let ‘im look at himself.  He couldn’t…face failure! 

“We never played much after that— 

“Not much at all.”

For M’Shulla, the Martian attack simultaneously ended his days of innocent playfulness and his closeness with his father.  

Indeed, something about being in the mural phonics complex prompts Killraven’s colleagues to share not just stories of their past (particular of their fathers), but also reminiscences of their pre-war experiences with entertainment.  Hawk, the grim and bitter American Indian stereotype who had been with the series since near its beginning, is suddenly spurred into four and a half pages of intense self-disclosure: “You don’t really want to know what gnaws at me, Killraven.  We’ve gone without telling for three years” since the Freemen first joined together.  LIke M’Shulla, Hawk is older than Killraven—39, in fact, and remembers fighting with his father on the reservation back in 1995.  His father spends most of his time on the mural phonics system, which Hawk sees as another version fo the whisky that the white men used to enslave his ancestors.  His father will have none of it, defending himself in an argument that prefigures the news few decades of debates in media studies and fan communities about minority audiences and resistant reading: 

Father: “You say I am not an equal.   

“But don’t the others outside the reservation and our hogan scurry for these very same things? 

“And you forget…I enjoy these shows.” 

Hawk: “How about respect? Have you no concern for your loss of dignity?” 

Father: “When I walk into a store with my quote and identity card, the computer shows me respect. 

“It shows me more respect that my son!  Now be still, I’d rather be project  into the world of Hodiah Tist.” 

Hawk: “Our fight is real. This Hodiah Twist was never real!” 

Father: “He was always real!” 

Hawk: “And he’s a racist!”

Father: “How about that.  First, he’s not real…now, he’s a racist.  You can’t have it both ways, son.  Sit down, enjoy.” 

“And he’s not a racist when I become him!" 

Hawk’s father cleverly catches his son in a logical conflict, although it is one that contemporary media critics could easily dismiss: a character does not have to be real to be racist, whether in attitudes expressed or in manner depicted.  This is a point that can (and should) be turned on the equally fictional characters of Hawk and his father. Until this issue, Hawk in particular has been something of a caricature: a taciturn Indian with a chip on his shoulder and a name straight out of Hollywood Westerns’ central casting.  To have two Native American men argue the fine points of racial (and racist) representation in a comic that at times betrays a presumably well-meaning liberal’s attempts at diversity suggests that McGregor knows what he is doing here. Through mural phonics, and particularly through Hawk’s fathe'rs argument in favor of the technology, McGregor once again highlights the power of escapist fiction to be pernicious and liberators at the same time.  When he writes the Black Panther, McGregor is encouraging his white readers to project themselves onto a Black heroic figure, while Hawk’s father happily inhabits the persona of a Victorian Sherlock Holmes pastiche (one whose adventures McGregor himself chronicled in Marvels’ black and white magazines at the time). 

Hawk reluctantly joins his father in the Hodiah Twist simulation, playing Conrad Jeavons (i.e., Watson) to his father’s Hodiah.  When Hodiah is attacked by a demon hound, Conrad/Hawk tries to help, but can’t; unable to differentiate between himself and his character, Hawk is left helpless in a fugue state.  But his father was never upset: the hound is just a fiction. Indeed, the hound is fiction itself, and that is the essence of the conflict.  Hawk wants to rescue his father from escapist storytelling, but his father sees no danger.  Hawk tells his friends “[h]is final words were: Didn’t I tell you this was one helluva show?” Carmiila Frost responds: “Families. […] We’re never free from them.” 

Carmilla should know.  For several issues, she has been dragging along with her the dying body of Grok, the “clonal man” who will soon be revealed to be derived from her father.  Killraven, though technically looking for his brother throughout the series, is the only member of the Freemen not haunted by his family, and certainly not by his father (never mentioned, even in flashback).  He is a child of total rupture: humanity as post-Invasion orphan.  

Note

[1} “Pstun-Rage” is an anagram for “Grape Nuts.”  The other two minor Battle Creek characters follow suit:  “Foropulist” (“Fruit Loops”) and “Rangolar” (“Granola”).  A fan named Jonathan L. Segal pointed this out on the Issue 28 Letters Page .