Our Gods Wear Spandex

by Chris Knowles

  IBIS THE INVINCIBLE

  In Egyptian art, Thoth is depicted as a man with the head of an ibis. Not coincidentally, one of the earliest wizard-heroes in comics is Fawcett's Ibis the Invincible. Although on a superficial level, Ibis is influenced by Mandrake, this crime-fighting magus is actually a reincarnation of the fictional Pharaoh Amentep—in other words, a reincarnation of Horus.

  In Ibis' origin story, Thoth gives Amentep the omnipotent Ibis stick, a magical talisman containing the power of Osiris. Twenty or so centuries later, Amentep's mummy is brought to an American museum, where he comes back to life and renames himself Ibis. The reincarnate Amentep then fights demons and other malignant spiritual entities with the magical Ibis stick, dressed exactly like one of Blavatsky's Ascended Masters—a natty suit and cape complete with Sikh turban. Ibis first appeared in Whiz Comics #2 and remained with the title until its very last issue (#155) in 1953, proof that someone at Fawcett (perhaps his creator, Bill Parker) had a more than passing familiarity with the occult. Ibis spent most of his time battling supernatural horrors alongside his scantily clad love interest, Taia.

  DOCTOR FATE

  Doctor Fate made his debut in More Fun Comics #55 in 1940, created by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman. Doctor Fate, who lived in a doorless and windowless tower in Salem, Massachusetts, is similar in concept to Ibis and that other Egyptian-themed DC hero, Hawkman, and bears a thematic resemblance to Doctor Occult. Doctor Fate is sent to Earth in ancient times by the “elder gods” (Lovecraft, again) and is recast in More Fun #67 as the alter ego of Kent Nelson, son of an American archaeologist. While on an expedition to Egypt, Nelson's father opens the tomb of a wizard named Nabu the Wise and is killed by a mysterious poison gas (obviously drawing on “Curse of Tut” rumors). Nabu then resurrects himself, takes young Kent under his wing, and initiates him into the occult sciences. Since no one can acquire superpowers in a comic-book story without also acquiring a garish costume, Fate dons an outfit accessorized by an amulet and a golden helmet that covers his whole face.

  In his first adventure, Doctor Fate does battle with the Norse god Wotan, girded with Egyptian symbols like the Ankh and other occult signifiers. Fox drew on Lovecraft's concepts and pitched his wizard against several arcane horrors, including the fish-men called the Narl-Amen (More Fun #65). Despite a strong premise and some wonderfully moody art by Sherman, Doctor Fate was short-lived in his first incarnation, but was rereleased from Nabu's tomb in the 1960s. No one seemed to know what to do with him then either, and he remains a supporting player in the so-called DC Universe of heroes.

  DOCTOR STRANGE

  Although Fate never really caught on, he inspired a character that hit it big in the Sixties—Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (Strange Tales #110). Doctor Stephen Strange is a gifted neurosurgeon whose career is ruined in a car accident. Left with a tremor that prevents his holding a scalpel, Strange hits the skids and roams the world searching for a cure. His search brings him to the Ancient One, a fabled magician who lives in the high Himalayas. Although the magician does not offer a cure, after a sequence of events he initiates Strange into the mystic arts. The reborn Doctor embarks on a series of memorable adventures dressed in a stylized pseudo-Asian pastiche of stock comic elements and wielding the All-Seeing Eye of Agamatto, a powerful amulet he wears around his neck. Appropriately, Strange makes his home at 177A Bleecker Street in New York's Greenwich Village.141

  Lee claimed that the character was inspired by an old radio show called Chandu the Magician, but he was probably hoping his readers were too young to remember Doctor Fate. After Steve Ditko left the feature in 1966, Strange appeared in a series of apocryphal yarns of wildly varying quality. With sales declining, he was even briefly recast as a superhero. His book was canceled in 1969, and he joined Hulk and Sub-Mariner as the third Defender in 1971 (Marvel Feature #1). Although his title was later relaunched and ran for several years, the early Lee/Ditko material remains the definitive incarnation of Doctor Strange.

  A well-written but cheaply produced Doctor Strange TV movie aired in 1978, starring Peter Hooten as the Doctor. The film, written by Grateful Dead associate Philip DeGuere, took extreme liberties with the source material, turning from the vaguely oriental occultism of the comics to a more traditional British presentation. Strange is pitted against Arthurian villainess Morgaine Le Fey and the Ancient One is portrayed as a British occultist, not a Tibetan ascended master.

  CONSTANTINE

  A new kind of wizard appeared in 1985, created by Alan Moore (Saga of the Swamp Thing #37). John Constantine is not a dandified occultist like Doctor Strange, but a former Punk Rock singer (artist Steve Bissette purportedly based him on Sting) who takes to trafficking with unclean spirits and somehow finds his way to the Louisiana swamps, where he offers advice to Swamp Thing, a muck encrusted “earth elemental” who once believed he was a man. Reflecting the seedy, distinctly unheroic occultists Moore ran across in England, Constantine appears in a shabby suit and trenchcoat, and puffing on his ever-present cigarettes.

  Constantine was given his own series, John Constantine, Hellblazer, in 1988. Through the 90s, Hellblazer helped to bridge the gap between comics fans, Goth devotees, and the neo-occult underground. After Moore's hand-picked successor, Jamie Delano, left the title (with #40), the book was handed over to several different writers and artists, most of them from the U. K. Garth Ennis brought Constantine to New York, both for occult adventures and a pitched battle against lung cancer. Paul Jenkins used the character to explore ancient British myths like King Arthur and the Green Man. Warren Ellis had Constantine punish the murderer of his ex-girlfriend by pumping him full of LSD and locking him in a mortuary drawer with the woman's rotting corpse.

  Constantine tangled with demons, warlocks, gangsters, and ghosts for twenty years before facing his most dangerous foes—Hollywood hacks. An extremely unfaithful 2005 film adaptation starring a miscast Keanu Reeves portrays him as a black-haired American, not a blonde Englishman, who does his business in LA, not London. The script is a typically tedious Hollywood take on Catholic folk demonology that recasts Constantine as a freelance exorcist. Although the film uses every tired religious horror cliché imaginable, pummeling viewers' eyeballs with unconvincing CGI monsters and hellfire, it still failed at the box office, and a hoped-for franchise was nipped in the bud.

  MAD SCIENTISTS

  Wizard heroes have never been truly popular in comics, perhaps because wizards are more familiar to comics and pulp-fiction fans in the form of “mad scientists.” The bad guys in sword-and-sorcery stories are usually the sorcerers. And modern sorcerers like Lex Luthor, Doctor Sivana, Doctor Doom, and the Joker are the villains fans most love to hate. The unfathomable mysteries of science, however, make it the modern equivalent of trafficking with demons and evil spirits. In fact, there has been something of a revival of the scientist-as-sorcerer idea in the American Evangelical community, seen in large-scale and well-funded attacks on evolution and climate-change theory.

  LEX LUTHOR

  Superman villain Lex Luthor is the archetypal comic-book mad scientist. An early Luthor prototype called the Ultra-Humanite appeared in Action Comics #14 in 1939, and was, like X-Men's Professor X, bald, confined to a wheelchair, and endowed with telepathic powers. Luthor himself was introduced in 1940 (Action #23) as a mad scientist, but with a full head of red hair. Siegel introduced a bald Luthor in the following year, released in all his bald glory in Superman #10.

  Although the newly shorn Luthor may have carried echoes of Doctor Sivana of Captain Marvel fame, Luthor was not a raving maniac like Marvel's other Doc. In a 1960 origin story in which Siegel first uses the name Lex (Adventure #271), Luthor starts off as a nearly romantic admirer of Superboy, but turns against him when a laboratory accident causes Luthor to lose his hair. He is later portrayed as a rationalist who simply feels he deserves to rule the world. He envies Superman's incredible physical power and uses science to devise way
s to defeat him.

  Luthor evolved visually to become a dead ringer for Aleister Crowley. His first name is a pet version of Alexander (Crowley's Christian name), and his own surname may even be a sly reference to the historical Martin Luther (a notorious anti-Semite). The connection to Crowley is not nearly as tenuous as some may think, given the parallels between the mad-scientist and sorcerer archetypes, as well as Siegel's own interest in the occult. In Adventure #270, Siegel refers to Luthor as a “magician” and depicts him dabbling in sorcery. In an attempt to find “the very secret of life itself,” Luthor creates a Homunculus, but the creature destroys his laboratory.142 One particularly interesting Superman cover (#74) pictures Luthor looking exactly like Crowley in his prime, shooting a ray that turns Superman and Lois Lane into stone. There is an inexplicable checkerboard floor that recalls a Masonic (or perhaps an OTO) lodge, and the ray emits from a device that resembles a giant mechanical phallus—perhaps an unconscious nod to Crowley's bisexuality and obsession with the biblical story of Lot.

  Luthor has appeared in most of the TV and movie adaptations of Superman, and has been portrayed by actors Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey in the films. The young Luthor is portrayed by Michael Rosenbaum on the hit series Smallville. The present incarnation of Luthor in the comics is that of a powerful industrialist who pursues world domination in the political arena. A recent storyline has him elected President of the United States.

  DOCTOR DOOM

  Doctor Doom, who first appeared in Fantastic Four #5 in 1962, is very much like Lex Luthor in temperament and ambition. Victor Von Doom, the son of a gypsy witch from the Central European nation of Latveria, is a scientific prodigy who comes to America on a scholarship and meets Reed Richards. Doom's great mission in life is to synthesize the occult arts with cutting-edge science—an ambition that leads to predictable disaster. Hideously maimed in an occult experiment, Doom travels to the Himalayas (where else?) to have monks encase his body in armor. Cocreator Jack Kirby later says that Doom's only injury is a small scar on his cheek, but such is his mania for perfection that he can't bear to live with the flaw. Doom returns to Latveria, deposes its petty royalty, and sets himself up as dictator. Like Luthor, Doom believes that his genius entitles him to rule the world and he keeps the Fantastic Four busy trying to thwart his plans. Doom is portrayed by Aussie heart-throb Julian McMahon in the 2005 Fantastic Four film.

  141 Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind, p. 260. Such was the Doctor's rep among Hippies that Jefferson Airplane headlined a “Tribute to Doctor Strange” in 1965.

  142 See Carter, Sex and Rockets, p. 184. Curiously, some believe Jack Parsons blew himself up eight years earlier trying to use Crowley's formulas to create a Homunculus.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE VISIONARIES

  As in other forms of popular entertainment, mystical and mythological themes have never been more prominent and explicit in comic books as they are today. But this is simply a matter of degree. Given the magical history of superheroes and comic books, it's no accident that some of the most influential comics creators have had a strong interest in mythology and the occult. In fact, there is a definite evolution at work in the process by which the comics incorporated the occult. It starts with a naïve fascination (Jerry Siegel), gives way to intentional mythologizing (Jack Kirby), develops into a systematic understanding (Alan Moore), and finally evolves into a new kind of religion best exemplified by Alex Ross. Many others have participated in this process, but these are the main players.143

  JACK KIRBY

  It is impossible to talk about the modern superhero without talking about Jack Kirby. No single individual—not even Stan Lee—is more crucial to the development of the superhero and its influence on the culture at large than Kirby. No other writer—not even Alan Moore—has infused into superheroes even a fraction of the mythological resonance that Kirby did. Kirby is far and away the most influential creator within the superhero comic-book world, and nearly every important artist and writer in the field in the past forty years cites him as a major inspiration for their own work. Ultimately, it is Kirby who is most responsible for turning superheroes into gods.

  Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg in 1917 on New York's Lower East Side. His first experience with the spirit world came early. As a child, he was stricken with pneumonia (a very serious disease before antibiotics), and a group of rabbis were called in to perform an exorcism in a last-ditch effort to save his life. They chanted the names of the offending demons in Hebrew, which, according to tradition, would give the rabbis control over them. Happily, Kirby recovered—whether by virtue of the ritual or the resilience of youth—and the experience had a major influence on his art. In the words of one biographer: “Kirby's life was filled with the mysticism of faith and superstition.”144

  Kirby spent his youth in a cramped apartment in a bad neighborhood, where he spent much of his time defending himself against hostile ethnic gangs. He entertained himself by collecting discarded newspaper strips and pulp magazines, and taught himself to draw by copying his favorite artists' work. Eventually, he sought work as an artist in Manhattan. With the advent of comic books, Kirby saw his chance, and hooked up with writer/editor Joe Simon in what would be a long and fruitful partnership. The team created Captain America for Marvel, then moved over to DC before starting their own company. But first Kirby was drafted into the army and sent to Europe as an infantryman. He was eventually sent home with a serious case of frostbite, and his outlook on life was considerably darkened by his experience on the frontlines.

  Kirby often injected occult and mythological themes into his stories. He and Simon took a different approach during the 1950s horror boom, releasing more esoteric titles like Black Magic and The Strange World of Your Dreams. He returned to DC to write and draw the team book Challengers of the Unknown in 1957 and his work began to drift into mythological realms. Following a dispute with a DC editor, Kirby returned to Marvel, which at that time was circling the drain. Kirby drew a series of monster and western titles, until Marvel publisher Martin Goodman ordered a superhero team book. Lee and Kirby delivered The Fantastic Four. The title opened the floodgates and Marvel became the behemoth we know today.

  As the line grew, Lee found himself too busy to plot the books and turned the work over to his artists, leaving him free to concentrate on character development and dialogue. Left to his own devices, Kirby's titles took a sharp turn toward the esoteric. Thor stopped fighting communists and mad scientists and encountered living planets, monsters that contained the power of a billion souls, and genetic engineers creating new races. The Fantastic Four encountered a planet-eating god, alien sentries, hidden super-races, and other universes. Captain America spent most of his time struggling against a whole host of nefarious secret societies like HYDRA and AIM that set mutated telepaths and artificial intelligences against him. His old nemesis, Red Skull, now wielded a kind of Philosopher's Stone that transformed his thoughts into reality.

  Kirby's artwork was evolving as well. His characters began to take on the powerful shapes and angles of a Rodin sculpture. His panels literally exploded off the paper with unrelenting force. Characters were in constant motion and every panel radiated violence and power. Every page was crammed with his arcane machinery, flames, motion lines, and “Kirby Krackle”—his trademark depiction of pulsating energy fields. With the Negative Zone and the Microverse, Kirby began to depict outer space as a living, breathing organism, bursting with exploding stars, pulsating nebulae, and infinite stars. The greatest designer the genre has ever seen, he created legions of memorable characters that are still used today in top-selling comic books. Kirby's artwork also heavily influenced the psychedelic art movement of the time.

  Kirby's work was not without its critics, however. Art Spiegelman, creator of the award-winning Maus, complained that “the triumph of the will, the celebration of the physicality of the human body at the expense of the intellect, is very much an impulse in Fascist art. It has a lot to do with the motor for
Kirby's work, even though I understand that his work is filled with characters who fought the Fascists.”145 What Spiegelman and others don't understand is Kirby's work is hardly fascist; it is fundamentally psychedelic and intrinsically pagan. It springs from the same impulse that inspired the Art Deco movement, as well as the superheroes themselves. The fascists merely appropriated these symbols for their own nefarious reasons.

  Kirby's own writing is totally lacking in the sunny liberalism of Stan Lee. The violence of his youth, his experiences in the war, and his early struggles in the penny-ante funny-book racket all colored his outlook and prompted him to tap into the deepest recesses of human creativity. Artist Jim Woodring, who worked with Kirby on animations in the 1980s, noted that he was “hermetically sealed in his own imagination, and was like a fountainhead when it came to generating ideas and designs and concepts.” Writer Jonathan Lethem opined that Kirby's work is essentially about “glancing at the raw face of infinity, which is not particularly kind to the small affairs of human beings. There's a sense that you're watching mythology enacted in masks.”146

  Aside from the enduring popularity of his comics, Kirby's influence has seeped into the mainstream by way of blockbuster films made by the fans who grew up with his work. In fact, his influence is so pervasive that it's hard to catalog. George Lucas was especially inspired by him. The four principal heroes of the original Star Wars film arguably have archetypal parallels with the Fantastic Four: Han Solo is an arrogant, overconfident leader (Mr. Fantastic), his future paramour, Princess Leia, makes her first appearance as a translucent hologram (Invisible Girl), Luke is a restless young turk (the Human Torch), and Chewbacca, the brawn of the outfit, is like the misshapen Thing. And even if you find those comparisons forced, you can't deny that Darth Vader is essentially the same character as the Fantastic Four's primary villain, Doctor Doom. Both are hideously scarred men encased in armored suits—promising young mystics haunted by the deaths of their mothers who both became tyrants.